Hacker News Reader

Comment by hennell | Hacker News Reader

Were bosses being paranoid that workers were setting up their own businesses though? I thought they were more concerned workers wern't working? This rather suggests workers can actually work very well at home - well enough to set up their own business anyway.

I appreciate what this is trying to say is - workers weren't doing their jobs and were instead setting up business. Except this could also quite easily show that if you get rid of peoples long commutes, and they have a space in their home they consider 'work' space - they might have the time and space to start their own biz.

And as this seems to be only people who left to do so, it rather suggests people were doing their jobs. Might not be doing 'their hours', but the argument against remote work rarely seems to be 'we can't allow remote work because its so effective people complete their jobs much faster'

View on HN

What it shows is managerial insecurity. Despite the obsession with monitoring "productivity", managers really haven't the faintest idea of what they're doing.

A healthy relationship is one in which managers don't monitor and don't micromanage and don't rely on Jira or commit logs to lazily monitor employees. A manager isn't there to lord over employees. He is there to support employees and help them do their jobs. But to do that, you need to know what they're doing.

Talk to them. Listen. Hold 1-on-1s on a regular basis. Assume they're doing their jobs instead of defaulting to a defensive and adversarial posture. If you treat employees like adversaries, they'll behave like adversaries. Grant them reasonable trust and they will take initiative and view the relationship as one that is cooperative. They will be less likely to want to risk losing the reasonable trust they have been gratuitously given; if you default to suspicion, then employees have little to lose. You already think poorly of them, so who cares.

If someone is genuinely slacking or not well-suited, that will come out sooner or later. 1-on-1s, individually and taken in aggregate, will give the manager an idea of what is really happening, especially if the manager is competent and knowledgeable of the domain, which he should be. 360 EOY reviews can also help here, not as an adversarial tactic, but as a way to share feedback. A competent manager can read the tea leaves.

I was also thinking the same and advocated with pretty much the same words. Until became a manager, and noticed that yes, most of the employees are like that, but there are some that will screw you over. And just that minority is why we cannot have nice things. Hell, we wouldn't even need written contracts if everyone behaved responsibly.

It's like leaving your bicycle on a street, in Japan you don't need a lock, in San Francisco a lock wouldn't help. Even when 99% people are honest and responsible.

It's worth noting that for those edge cases all the productivity monitoring in the world won't make that employee any more effective, and you won't need those tools to see that they're not cutting it (assuming you're engaged with your team as the other commenter describes). You'll likely lose more in annoying the rest of your team and burning your own cycles with surveillance than you'll gain from it.

> It's worth noting that for those edge cases all the productivity monitoring in the world won't make that employee any more effective, and you won't need those tools to see that they're not cutting it (assuming you're engaged with your team as the other commenter describes).

The main purpose of the tracking of the “edge cases” is basically insurance in the event of a law suit.

Yes, it irritates the folks with good intentions, but a good manager will keep the tracking tax as light as possible for the folks who are actually working.

The amount of headache it saves when the lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit comes around is quite a bit.

> most of the employees are like that, but there are some that will screw you over. And just that minority is why we cannot have nice things.

I would argue that excessive worrying about edge cases like that is destructive. It shifts all energy and focus on the pathological and shapes policy and attitudes around the pathological case instead of the normal case. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

In large organizations, you will always have abusers. That just needs to be accepted. One should not assume an inquisitorial stance that seeks to extirpate every last evil from the organization. You will corrupt the norm that way. Pathological cases ought to be handled when they surface. A pervasive attitude of suspicion creates toxic relationships that harm the organization far more than the occasional abuser.

Wait what? Why are you putting yourself and your team in a position where your reports can screw you over? And if one or two people are doing whatever that is, why aren’t you firing them or managing them out?

I don't have magician or telepathy skills, I don't immediately see the problems. Even on 1:1s I can be persuaded and believe lies.

And well, for reporting I kinda agree, we don't do that many reporting as others. I would say other managers need advanced tracking and reporting to automate their own reporting to higher management.

As someone that sees the employee-employer relationship as inherently adversarial, you are correct. I normally say that I am never loyal to corporations, but I can be loyal to people when they earn my loyalty.

I job-hopped mercilessly to a better paycheck in my career, and I would keep doing it had I not found myself in a company I happen to enjoy working at. My manager does not micromanage me but is always very aware of what I am doing, mostly because he is a very competent developer himself. I get treated as a responsible adult - I can work remote without any suspicion that I am not doing my job, and in response I act as an adult, putting some effort to match the freedom I am given.

From time to time I get reached out by recruiters, and I can't find motivation to job hop again because, well, I might not find an environment that treats me as an adult, especially as I keep reading how so many managers are insecure as hell about their employees.

Never thought I'd say that, but in the end there is a bit more to work than the cash that trickles to my bank account by the end of the month.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com