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Comment by code4tee | Hacker News Reader

We had a bad manager at my last company who really wanted to do this sort of thing.

I said to him “So this is an interesting proposal... if we install this software then I can save on management costs by replacing your position with this spyware?” He never brought it up again and we later just got rid of him completely.

Micromanagement and this sort of spying rarely builds high performing teams. Managing worker productivity is one thing but blatant spying is a sign of much deeper problems with a company and its management.

I’ve generally found a fairly strong inverse correlation between how good a manager is and the amount of paranoia they have on their teams not doing what they should. Good managers build great teams and then trust them.

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I ran into this once:

Another team (team A) needed a lot of help and my team (Team B) was 'similar'. So we were brought on to help despite Team A's objections that we surely couldn't do the job.

So we went to work and were out performing them from day 1.

Team A's management was not happy and was sure we were somehow 'gaming the system'. They had all sorts of ways and theories on how Team B must be doing it and convinced another layer of management to get someone from the outside to investigate.

They investigated and found the only folks 'gaming the system' (they were doing a lot of underhanded things to manipulate KPIs and etc).... were Team A.

Sometimes the folks out there throwing a lot of shade and being excessively suspicious only think of those things about others ... because they would do it and they assume everyone else would too.

With unfounded accusations and etc, I've found that to be true time and time again.

What happened at the end to team A?

The company was acquired and they managed to convince the powers that be (they always had more traction with them because of history) that they were worth keeping on and they could handle the workload.

So team B was laid off after the acquisition.

Last I heard team A was scrambling for warm bodies to keep up with the workload and didn't want to be seen as not being able to do the work of A + B so they were pretty much working to the bone. Also some of their management were cut as they had grown their management team under the theory that "well we've got to keep an eye on team A".

Granted there were good folks on team A who had nothing to do with the politics that I'd be happy to work with in a heartbeat, but after the layoff I decided to change professions and so I've largely lost contact with them.

I did actually apply to join team A again after some good folks asked me to apply and I did so out of curiosity, but having actually done the job for years apparently wasn't enough to make it through their resume filter and I was rejected and didn't bother to follow up ;)

Thank you so much for filling in the ending.

micromanagement is life support for low performers

That is true, and I've seen it deployed to good effect... but it's a knob you should turn when it becomes evident it is needed for a particular person, not something you just nail to "maximum" for all employees.

For those doing it or for those receiving it?

yes

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