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Comment by mlthoughts2018 | Hacker News Reader

mlthoughts2018

I disagree. I find these types of cutesy “culture” things very infantilizing and belittling. I don’t do my job for a fruit basket. If I have a blind spot in testing or bug finding because of my perspective as a developer, then my goal is to improve that skill for myself, because I am a professional and it matters for delivering a product to customers or stakeholders.

If anything, events like this just make me question management and think, “these people have no idea what they’re doing... they want to satisfy some ego drive to be praised as inventive leaders by making shit up instead of just choosing the boring, well-known kinds of solutions.”

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> I find these types of cutesy “culture” things very infantilizing and belittling. I don’t do my job for a fruit basket.

This always just feels like negative-sum macho posturing to me. I'm a serious programmer and good at my job, but of course I'd rather have a fruit basket than not have a fruit basket.

But does that contribute in any way to your productivity? In my experience I’d rather have the investment be prioritised towards more tangible things like additional training. Flashy and marketable perks like fruit basket often unfortunately get prioritised over non sexy, but meaningful improvements and articles such as this, don’t help.

> But does that contribute in any way to your productivity?

It contributes to my happiness, which is ultimately what I care about - productivity is another means to the same end.

> In my experience I’d rather have the investment be prioritised towards more tangible things like additional training.

You talk about things being "prioritised" but I just don't think that matches how these decisions are made. It's not like they're taking money out of some fixed pool (again, at a practical-decision-making level); I see no reason to think that fruit baskets make training less likely. (Indeed I'd say that providing fruit baskets speaks to a willingness to offer cheap-but-effective things, and I'd rather work for somewhere that tried to offer cheap-but-effective training than somewhere that tried to offer expensive training).

Not at all, especially because the status signalling effects are very real. If I accept the fruit basket from a manager with a shit-eating grin and act like a cheerleader about it, it’s a big net loss for me. I’m agreeing to a status system that devalues my work ethic and rewards managers for cheap tricks instead of true skill building or cultivating motivation. It positions me like a child in need of a parent to give me a gold star for doing my basic responsibilities.

This way of management to cultivate “downward looking perspectives” that intentionally belittle or undermine subordinates is a very real and pervasive thing.

A large part of the sociology book Moral Mazes is dedicated to the taxonomy and descriptive analysis of exactly this kind of corporate behavior.

I used to think, "oh, cool, there's bagels." Or, "Oh nice, they bought us lunch and it's not pizza and soda.". But then those niceties go away. Then they stop filling open positions and I start nosing around. "Nope, the company is making money hand over fist." And then raises stop. And I inquire more. "Nope, the company is making money hand over fist." And the figures I find online back that up. So, no bagels, no new hires, no raises. Ok, so all the money is being shared only with the execs and the shareholders and not me.

I don't care about fruit. Pay me. Period. That's my attitude anymore.

>If I have a blind spot in testing or bug finding because of my perspective as a developer, then my goal is to improve that skill for myself, because I am a professional and it matters for delivering a product to customers or stakeholders.

I don't know you, but most developers aren't robots, so little psychological tricks can help boost productivity. Of course you work for money, the money you already agreed in your salary negotiation. But this is not really that much about monetary incentives and more about creating a little playful competition that improves the product.

I'd say people take a job for the salary, but a good salary in a bad team atmosphere won't lead to productivity.

Nobody is forcing anyone to participate, I also hate forced company culture. But if it works, enough people must be willingly doing more work to best their colleagues.

> “I don't know you, but most developers aren't robots”

Huh? So wanting to get better at side skills in my job makes me a robot?

Most developers I’ve worked with, apart from some exceptions (usually due to youthful inexperience or immaturity) definitely do proactively take it as their responsibility to improve job skills holistically.

Any manager who thinks they need to use psychological tricks to get more from subordinates (or worse, believes they are clever for doing so) is somebody to run right on away from.

>Huh? So wanting to get better at side skills in my job makes me a robot?

No, but assuming there's no connection between the company culture and productivity assumes that developers are completely emotionless robots that only focus on skill development because of professionalism.

Of course most developers do somehow proactively try to improve their skill set, but assuming that emotions and psychology don't matter, only salary, is very weird. Developers are often some of the most emotional people I know, they're curious, opinionated, playful etc. This is all from emotions, not from salaries, or purely self-driven. And if you use the innate playfulness and curiosity to improve the team, by creating little games like this, then you are doing one aspect of good management.

Surely it shouldn't be your only management strategy, but nobody implied that.

There are big connections between company culture and productivity... which is exactly why the fruit basket idea is so harmful.

Fruit's delicious though.

“she still embodies all the awful stereotypes she did before!”

... “but she’s got a new hat!”

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