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Comment by deepsun | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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