When employees feel slighted, they work less | Hacker News Reader

When employees feel slighted, they work less

penntoday.upenn.edu

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There's a lot of jeering, I suspect at the headline more than anything, but having documented research can be helpful in changing management behavior. The changes in employee behavior documented here are not ones that managers would easily connect to their past behavior, such as a late birthday recognition.

When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior. Likewise, a manager is not going to associate a slight towards an employee with an increase in absenteeism or lower productivity that happens days and weeks later.

> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior

Regarding dog training, one can use a placeholder for the reward. This is useful, for example, if you want to reward a dolphin jumping through a hula, because you will not be able to give the reward at that moment, but for example, you can say "yes!" or use a clicker at that moment, and give the reward later, and it will be clear what caused it.

For anyone training any animal, I recommend the book: Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor (not affiliated in any way)

I suppose the employee-getting-revenge-on-manager equivalent would be playing some loud, annoying sound immediately after the slight, and then engaging in absenteeism and cutting work early later on.

Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.

Having a documented effect and effect size puts this in terms that can change manager behavior, even a somewhat callous one, because they can see how it affects their own professional goals.

Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.

Well, to many it seemed that an obvious cause-and-effect fact that should have come from empathy and introspection--that workers are just like you and I don't like being slighted--and didn't need to be written about.

Yet when of the top comments used dog training to explain manager-worker relations--something that empathy and introspection could tell you was a bit off (would you feel slighted if I make our interactions analogous to an owner and dog?)--it may show, yes, such does need to be spelt out these days.

I recall the University of Manchester was teaching university students empathy.

Again, the comparison was between a dog and a manager. There's zero insinuation that a manager is like an owner and an employee like a dog. It does feel like you're looking for a pretext to feel slighted here.

That aside, I completely agree with you that managers should engage in empathy and introspection. I still think it's helpful, even for those that do, to have some empirical confirmation of how strongly employees can be affected by what might seem a simple oversight to an otherwise empathetic and introspective manager. But unfortunately, callous people tend to be chosen for management, and this research is also potentially helpful in aligning their own self-interest with their employees.

I'm with tarkin. It was a thoughtless and cruel comparison.

There are a million other ways to illustrate the point without being a creep.

Teaching the rich/elites that we are all human is probably the best chance at self preservation they have.

I thought it was interesting. Going through something like this myself right now, I learned that I don't lose motivation to do the work. I gain a motivation to cut the person out of the picture.

I thought this was more about training your manager...

I think you responded to the wrong post. I did not suggest or made any of these comparisons or comments. I simply recommended a book about training dogs or other animals, and the clicker method.

> Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation?

American culture is unfortunately permeated with examples, and habits, and expectations around punishing the behaviors you'd want to see. I see subtle things like that all the time. So while I doubt anyone who stopped to actually think about the concrete implications of their behavior, more specifically their unconscious habits; wouldn't be able to describe how insulting people, or really, how discouraging people is likely to have a negative outcome. The catch being, most people don't stop to consider anything. Thoes who do, are exceptionally rare.

As an example, someone posted a comment providing context, and encouraging people to be curious and grow their skill set with techniques that will help them with dogs, (and yes, these do translate to humans as well.)

Which invited a negative comment from you attacking people who aren't perfect every single moment of every single day, who might benefit from a reminder that how they treat others matters. Also indirectly attacking the person you replied to.

(See what I mean about the culture of punishing the behavior, you want to see? Or did you intend to discourage curiosity?)

> Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.

You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog. Just because humans are also, in addition to those able to do a lot more, and learn in an astronomically larger set of ways, doesn't exclude the techniques that work best with dogs. You forget this at your own peril. I.e. if the way you behave wouldn't encourage the behavior you want from a dog well, it sure as hell wont encourage the behavior from a human. All humans, including you, are not that special, get over yourself. rhetorically speaking

> You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog.

Depending on the context, this can traumatize a human though. This idea has been the basis for both gay conversion therapy and applied behavior analysis. The latter I have had the misfortune to directly experience myself.

You don't think those same things traumatize the dog too? There's a reason why all reputable dog trainers advocate exclusively positive training methods. It's because training with exclusively positive feedback is not only most likely to get the behavior you want. It critically avoids destabilizing the dog. Negative reinforcement learning does works, but it also leads to anxiety, and "reactionary outbursts". i.e. the dog learns to become afraid, and is more likely to bite you. Only abused dogs bite their pack in fear. Just like only abused humans attack their community.

Agreed. I didn’t intend to specifically exclude dogs. My wording could have been better.

> Just like only abused humans attack their community.

Gonna have to pull you up here.

It’s estimated that approximately 1% of the general population is estimated to have high levels of psychopathy.

These people don’t need an excuse, and have no reason, to be dangerous.

> It’s estimated that approximately 1% of the general population is estimated to have high levels of psychopathy.

> These people don’t need an excuse, and have no reason, to be dangerous.

Psycohpathy is defined as behaviors that conflict with pro-moral and pro-social norms. Are you trying to say that antisocial behavior is exclusively genetic, and isn't influenced by the environment? And if it is influenced by the environment, how does that conflict with what I said.

Or, more directly do you think that someone abandoned and abused by their caregivers as a child wouldn't test high on a psychopathy evaluation?

Also IIRC that 1.2% is just any clinically significant symptoms. Non-violent, pro-social, low empathy. Would still test high on that test.

Technically I believe the dog is the manager in this metaphor.

The length of time between behaviour and reward/punishment is too great. So to train your manager you need to go home straight away.

Leadership, authority, command, etc. have many forms that don't necessarily match up with what is effective or how people would like to be treated as a subordinate. Assuming that managers know better than to be assholes to their employees (or vice-versa) is a huge and very wrong assumption. Social skills also benefit from training and practice like anything else. Many people have never seen or experienced professional and competent management, so they have no example to follow or model to emulate.

People are animals like any other. That’s not a slight. Managers respond to incentives much like dogs do too, and so do execs, and board members, and every human.

The top-level comment was being ironic. To explain the joke, the employees are withholding the reward of hard work from the employer because the employer behaved badly (by slighting them in some way).

I have an example of this that happened to me:

I received a referral bonus and where the company payroll made an error and accidentally gave me a higher bonus per the level of employee my referral reward was (they set it to the bonus level for a VP and she was a Sr. Director). So unbeknownst to me they gave me $5000 extra in my bonus that should have been only $3000, not $8k. Accounting figured this out next tax season, so then they informed me the would be clawing their error overpayment back had, which apparently is legal. Thus the $5k was taken out of my next paycheck. Their error was not my fault!

I was really annoyed and basically stopped going above and beyond for that company the rest of the year. :-/

It just seemed very petty and reactionary of them for something that was their error originally. This messed up my budget and suddenly having $5k less 9 months later that I hadn't anticipated was a bit of an unforeseen financial hardship. Also she had been my 5th referral to date that they'd hired!!

The whole thing was very demoralizing.

I love that example. It’s a basic exercise in “for how little money can you break any amount of trust”. Not sure how they could avoid that (besides being competent in the first place..)

I felt like they should have just written off the error and let me keep it, as by the time they realized it, it was almost a year later, and I was a high-performer who had gotten promoted twice. I left the following year for a better opportunity, but this was sort of one thing that turned me 180* from being an all-in, kool-aid drinking culture-carrier to feeling kind of bitter and shafted by them.

Depends on the future expected value that they assign to you. But.. yes

Given that many organizations literally refer to their employees as “Resource Units” literally abstracting away their humanity I’m going to say… yes. We are at that point (and have been for quite some time).

There are few things that make me irrationally seethe like being called a resource. I understand why they do it, I even accept that I'm nothing more than a resource to them, but it really isn't a big ask for them to refer to us as humans when speaking directly to us.

> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior. Likewise, a manager is not going to associate a slight towards an employee with an increase in absenteeism or lower productivity that happens days and weeks later.

Note that GP is comparing the _managers_ motivation to a dog’s motivation, not the worker. It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).

The point is that /anyone/ is being compared to a dog, that the whole relationship is being compared as such. It's demeaning and is pretty much a slight, ironically enough (albeit directed towards the manager in this occasion)

You don’t find Pavlov’s manager the least bit humorous?

Do you reckon Pavlov associated a ringing bell with feeding his dog?

(Also as a furry this whole thread is funny.)

Well, when the situation requires working like a dog, some people can do it and some cant :)

The entire point of comparison is to be able to point out similarities between two different things.

If you ignore the specific similarities being pointed out (learning and training work similar in different mammals), and you instead focus on the most offensive differences you can think of (dogs are lesser intelligent creatures than man), then of course you can find a way to be offended.

But doing so is optional, FYI. And counterproductive to an interesting conversation as well.

>It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).

It's delayed because the employee fears further retribution still. You need some distance between yourself and the bloodthirsty dog before you can even hope to reduce your productivity, or you'll be mauled quite enthusiastically. By delaying it for days or weeks, by being out of sight when it happens, there is plausible deniability that can let them survive the attacks.

Managers do this to themselves, they punish people who would give them the quick feedback loop.

So it's the manager who is in need of further training more so than the nominally-producing worker, if the overall productivity is to increase most directly.

Maybe maxing productivity should not always be the goal

Probably, which is unfortunate. I have personally seen a VP be shocked that morale tanked after a large layoff. I think he said “you would think they would be happy they still have jobs”. Lots of sociopaths in the C-Suite.

We definitely do. How else are the LLMs that are going to replace managers will learn that? /s

Indeed, they're not animals--we don't want them demanding hay https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2002-08-05

This comment comes across as written by someone who hasn't seen a toxic work environment.

Sociopaths often make up an unusually large percentage of the upper layers of management. They won't hesitate to step on people to get ahead, and use the typical conflict aversion of regular people to their advantage- causing drama and fights, wearing others down, and eventually getting their way because most people just want their pay cheque, not to go into battle constantly.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

> Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation?

Never met a manager in your life, I take it?

If you’ve read some Carnegie, you'll find that he just discusses a lot of well-worn idoms: such as that sincere praise is better and the importance of treating people kindly... His work built the foundations of management. I guess from the moment middle managers existed, humans have generally been poor at managing others.

It's surprising how dumb management has gotten in the Almighty Chase for A Quarterly¹ Profit.

Remember, "it is very difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his job depends on his not understanding it." [editor:and that goes doubly for MBAs] —Upton Sinclair

¹—added adjective

A lot of this is already known.

If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries, giving crap equity offers) I've put pressure to let heads roll. Similarly, if I've seen ICs become adversarial (eg. quiet quitting, overemployed, ignoring brutally honest conversations to upskill, constantly undermining product roadmaps) I've often allowed heads to roll as well.

At least in the Bay Area, the "Netflix Model" has become the norm post-COVID - pay top dollar, but also be open to fire if interests do not align.

What I've noticed in my career as an IC and management is a lot of lower-mid level management are people who were promoted well beyond where their capabilities. To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.

> If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries

I find this funny because it suggests an equilibrium point where 75% of management must be adversarial by definition.

Adversarial is a loaded word. In my experience, the management I’d call most adversarial occurred at companies paying 80th to 90th percentile or higher. The attitude is that they’re paying employees enough that they need to shut up and put up with anything that comes their way. If you don’t like it, we have a list of qualified applicants who will gladly take your place in a heartbeat and won’t complain as much because those paychecks are larger than what they made at their last company.

> To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.

I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time. It’s a trap because those people are often very valuable right after they’re promoted, but the roles where they become disconnected from writing code but retain the engineer title leads to a disconnectedness that flips toward counterproductive after a few years. It goes from having an experienced person coaching others to having someone with outdated and mostly abstract knowledge who gets to gatekeep everyone’s activities based on how things worked several years ago when they were still hands on.

> companies paying 80th to 90th percentile or higher. The attitude is that they’re paying employees enough that they need to shut up and put up with anything that comes their way. If you don’t like it, we have a list of qualified applicants who will gladly take your place in a heartbeat and won’t complain as much because those paychecks are larger than what they made at their last company

Well, yes in a way.

Criticism is expected and encouraged, but if it is done so while ignoring the 3 primary goals of a business:

1. Drive revenue growth

2. Expand TAM

3. Land strategic deals (not all customers are equal)

and is provided without a solution, you will be replaced. I don't care about prioritizing a bug fix or codebase refactor if the alternative means not being able to release feature X to help land Acme's mid 7 figure TCV deal.

The best Engineers I've worked with learnt how to merge valid engineering concerns with the top-line concerns mentioned above as well as being able to provide solutions. It's also how I was able to go from an IC to management.

If an employee thinks they know better, they can try to become a PM or start a competitor.

The bad experiences mentioned above really took off shortly before and during COVID, and this is why we are seeing the pendulum swing the opposite direction.

> I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time.

I partially agree.

I think a Staff Eng role where it is someone who is deeply technical but helps align their team's delivery with other teams is extremely valuable (basically Staff+ as an architect role).

What I feel is the severe title inflation that arose during COVID turned "staff" into the new "senior", with too many people who floated into the role without aptitude.

> Criticism is expected and encouraged, but if it is done so while ignoring the 3 primary goals of a business:

I didn’t mention criticism, though.

The abuse I was talking about was more like: “VP so-and-so mentioned this in a meeting so I need you to work nights and weekends until it’s done” for trivial features or bugs.

In one case we had a CEO who would do surprise visits to offices and demand an on-the-spot demo of what he thought the team should have been working on, often without prior communication that he wanted it to be our top priority. If you didn’t have something highly polished to demo or any bugs occurred during the impromptu demo, you could expect hours of verbal lashing and insults.

When he left, the top manager would run around trying to explain that it’s just part of the job operating at this pay grade.

I’m not talking about whiny or unproductive employees being pushed out. This is about managerial dysfunction being justified by high compensation. When people’s hands feel tied by any job change coming with a step down in compensation, a lot of toxicities can thrive. Not all highly paid companies are like this, but at big companies that pay well you can find pockets of managers who use the high pay as a weapon.

Fair enough!

The kind of management you had in mind is different from the kind of management I had in mind. With bad managers (and there are plenty), you have no choice but to cut your loss and leave.

I find the interests do not align phrase telling. Because it is usually not the employee vs company interest, it is the employee vs the manager’s interest.

> late birthday recognition.

if someone is going to feel slighted and similar things add up to them working less, they probably are not a great colleague to begin with.

What matters more are: assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc.

Now, as a people manager, if you're not steering those kinds of things, you are not a great manager and you should be replaced with someone who does those things.

Being primarily interested in money and career advancement would also make you not a great colleague in many people’s eyes. It’s rather subjective.

Whether people like to admit it or not, very rarely do people work for anything but money and career advancement. You can claim you work for passion, the love of the game or whatever 100 other reasons people tend to give out. All it takes is 2 years of no raises and a couple of promotions for colleagues for you to start not wanting to work for whatever reason you convinced yourself you were working for.

I find a lot of people work at a certain place for the social life, and the money comes second. Including some surprisingly high performers.

I think that becomes more common with income brackets that can start to feel like "enough".

If you've spent time struggling to make ends meet, even median income can feel like previously unimaginable wealth and security, and workplace satisfaction is rarely something that you had a great deal of choice around. If you've spent most of a decade making six figures with benefits, it's easier to decide an extra 10k or even 50k isn't worth the added stress.

Cost of living and personal situation (dual incomes, dependents) can shift that needle around quite a lot too.

The only reason money comes second is because they’re paid enough. And even with enough money, like I said, two years without a raise while everyone else gets it, suddenly social life isn’t going to be that important.

No, I have plenty of friends who are not making enough (and could be making double) but due to being risk-averse and relatively content stay in low-paid jobs. Only a crisis moves certain people from their comfort spot.

People are emotional and react in unexpected ways to even the smallest perceived slights, myself included.

A late birthday recognition might not feel important, but if one already feels like management doesn't care about them? I can easily seeing that as a confirmation of it that causes resentment. I can also see it doing the same for any number of management related issues.

I can tell you personally that the action which most seriously affected my performance at a workplace was being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one. I felt more than slighted and every single negative action taken afterwards by HR/management, no matter how small, caused me to resent them more.

it also depends on whether everyone is treated equally, or whether some are treated worse or better than others.

> being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one

I think when setting up policy like this you have two choices:

a) have a fixed number of days --> fair, objective

b) allow it to the manager to use their judgement --> variance across company

The former has the tradeoff that you experienced.

You could also give people an additional unpaid day off if they ask for it. The good thing about bereavement days is that people don’t tend to abuse the policy much given they would have to kill someone first. Dead grannies are only allowed to make you sad for 72 hours sharp, is a bit of a harsh rule if executed without leeway

Or I mean, just treat people as human beings and let them deal with family emergencies? I'm in the Netherlands and I don't think I've ever had a manager that would say anything other than "Take all the time you need" (and genuinely meant it) for a family member who either died or is in hospital/got injured etc. I'm sure there's a minuscule chance of someone abusing this by lying, but I find that if you don't treat people like shit in the first place, they're not gonna lie about stuff like this.

> I can tell you personally that the action which most seriously affected my performance at a workplace was being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one.

One of the things I remember most from my career was a manager "rules lawyering" about bereavement leave when my aunt passed away. Ironically, HR was very sympathetic and accommodating, and it was a non-issue with them.

I've been treated "worse" by jackass execs and managers, but always in the context of work. Someone acting in the way this manager did about a personal situation sticks with me much more than those.

My ex didn’t go to her own father’s funeral because the company said she couldn’t have that much time off. Six months later when she talked about it at work they were horrified she hadn’t felt she could go, but how could you possibly make that up to someone? I think they might have actually worried she would sue them.

I told her to go and we’d sort out her work situation when she or we got back.

It kinda came out of the blue so we didn’t have time to hypothetically it out so we could just operate on autopilot.

Since then I’ve had bosses who heard of a death/critical illness in the family just say, “Go.” No discussion or details needed. Just go. Because being petty or precious about the whole thing just makes you public enemy. And when clever people work for you they don’t always come at you straight on. They come at you sideways and you don’t even know it’s revenge. They just passive aggressively let something slide that made your life miserable.

> People are emotional and react in unexpected ways to even the smallest perceived slights, myself included

Most people react quite predictably to slights. The issue is, if you don't have enough context, you might not understand you are slighting someone.

I think the biggest problem in the workplace is that those higher up, or more successful in a company will put more stock in following the company rules/culture than making sure someone is ok.

Your point about bereavement leave is a good case in point, I had a similar incident where my manager at the time said "Well your aunt's not your close family is she?" when I asked to attend a funeral. I told HR and they went wide-eyed and silent for a bit before ushering me to the comfy seat while they tore a bollock off my manager. Had they not done that, I think I probably would have rage quit.

But why would my manager think that this would be a rational thing to do? Did she thing that one day would mean I delivered a critical project on time (no, I was a junior) My manager made a judgement that it would be fine to reject a bereavement leave.

The point is, now that I am manager, I make sure that my underlings are and feel cared for. The short term productivity for being a prick to them will evaporate in days. If I can't do something for them, or allow them to do something, I say I can't and why.

Am I a great manager? no, because I'm not really organised. But my team work well despite me, rather than because of me.

> when I asked to attend a funeral.

This is where you went wrong.

You don’t ask, you tell.

Whether they pay you for any additional bereavement leave beyond what is required is a different matter. They could agree to pay from accrued leave, or sick / personal leave, or unpaid time off.

The example was a birthday card, but the mechanism is more important: the manager disregarded a policy in a way that was disrespectful to a specific employee.

People don’t care about the birthday card. They care when the manager does something nice for everyone but them.

Nobody cares about a pizza party, they care that the manager didn’t think to save any pizza for the team that had to do an emergency call out to a client site during lunch.

I always immensely disliked workplace birthday celebrations. I've never really celebrated my own birthday.

If your actual friends or family want to do something, that's fine. But mandatory birthday card signings and having your workplace surprise "decorated" with stuff for a children's birthday party (that gets taken down and reused for the next office birthday) is grim, impersonal, and infantilizing. Nothing at all would be better.

It isn’t about the birthday card. It is about someone with power over you demonstrating through actions that they don’t care about you. As an alternative think of this scenario: I prepared a presentation and arranged for the entire team to attend specifically for a manager above mine who had asked for it. He ghosted the meeting, and asked for a TLDR. Every single person in that meeting felt disrespected personally, and stopped taking the issue that we were meeting about seriously.

Note: If your workplace celebrates birthdays and you don’t want yours celebrated, just ask, they will almost certainly accommodate you.

I liked the system one of my old workplaces had.

If you want to celebrate your birthday with your team, you bring in your own cake. The manager will designate time for the team to eat it and maybe have some company beers at the end of the day.

If you don't bring in anything then there's just private words throughout the day.

The system eliminates any need to ask to split the cost or go through a budget request, since it's one dessert item once a year.

> assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc.

How likely is one to find all of the above in a job? My current job is essentially the opposite of all of those items. Though, believe it or not, it's not a bad place to work. Just very old school and non-tech focused.

Please don't compare employee relationships to dog training. I've had a few encounters with poor managers (or potential managers) who wanted to treat me like a dog.

I turned heel and ran in those cases. It's a bad analogy for managing people and should not be perpetuated.

It sounds to me that they are actually saying that managing an employee is _not_ like training a dog

It is, rather, that managing a manager is like training a dog. As in, if you take a day off later in the week after feeling slighted as the article suggests people do, the manager will never realize that your absenteeism is a result of what they did and not just some other random life event that came your way, such as becoming sick. Much like training a dog, it posits that you need to give the feedback soon after in order for the association to become recognizable by the manager.

Although it seems unlikely to me that anyone who is taking time off after feeling slighted is doing so as some kind of silent protest in hopes that the manager will change. I expect it is done to nurse the wound.

I read gps comment as the reverse: in their analogy, the manager is the dog.

On a related note, I wouldn't mind being treated like a dog by someone who is up to date with modern dog training practices: instant rewards for success, no negative feedback(unless I'm being aggressive, but I think I can manage that much), and tons of belly and/or back rubs! Where do I sign?

"Are we... bonding?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkGfF7LBlk4

Humans, even pointy-haired ones, do have slightly larger brains than dogs precisely for the purpose of being able to form associations over longer timespans. That's a big part of what intelligence is.

I think the analogy with dogs is flawed. Association is merely correlative, not causal. It is irrational per se, because it does not concern itself with causes. And the more time passes, the more options there are with which to form associations. So it's not a question of brain size or anything that this might be standing in for.

Human beings can with varying degrees of success reflect on their behavior. They can recognize how certain behaviors on their part might encourage certain responses among employees. More importantly, however, they can recognize which behaviors on their part are simply not good in the first place and learn to behave as they should. It's not a question of aligning domino tiles so they fall over a certain way. First and foremost, it's a question of justice and benevolence. Be just and be benevolent, not a domino-aligning psychopath.

To be fair, I could name managers who would do less damage if they were replaced by a dog. Managing upwards would be greatly eased with the application of dog treats.

Econometrics allows us to understand and measure these things. This result isn’t surprising at all. Treating employees well has a similar effect in improving productivity.

Imagine if the dog was only rewarded once a year…

Maybe I'm a bit jaded, and corporate environments have taken their toll, but I see the employee-manager relationship as adversarial by default. Whether my boss wishes me happy birthday or not doesn't move the needle much. I'm there to contribute as an individual and he's there to answer to his boss about staffing, budgeting, and performance.

Although, I do feel slighted when a manager acknowledges the absurdity of all the corporatisms we hear everyday then proceeds to preach them to everyone and waste time anyway. Like, please, I thought we just agreed this is all fluff.

Employee is a resource to be mined at as little cost as possible. Employment is designed to take advantage of you in every way possible. Never go above and beyond, always work enough to piss off your manager, but not enough to get you fired.

Yeah, I am always going to interpret that sort of thing as performative. There seems to be whole corporate mythology that is absolutely sure there are a bunch of cheap, low-effort things managers can do to raise morale and get more productivity out of employees, like office birthday parties. I propose a name for adherents to this philosophy: the Pizza Party Cult.

> see the employee-manager relationship as adversarial by default.

I don't see how anyone can be happy in their job if that were the default. Maybe I am naive or lucky, but I have a very goed relation with my boss, as well as with the boss above.

When that condition is not fulfilled, i definitely tend to slack off and I will eventually leave. I believe such should be the default.

The relationship between owners and workers has always been extractive. The adversarial relationship is built in. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good relationship with your employer, but there is always a conflict of interest, so to speak.

I’ve had great relationships with my bosses, but they’re always under pressure to extract more work from the workers. In turn, their bosses are also pressured to do the same.

So yes, it’s not the default and you and I have both been lucky.

This is an oversimplificstion. The relationship between the person holding the scarce resource, and the person holding the common resource, has always been adversarial.

As labor becomes more skilled and less common this dynamic changes.

I’m looking at the status quo. Which still puts vastly more negotiating power in the hands owners of capital in most economies today. I agree it’s an oversimplification and there are some markets where this is not the case.

If I consider my experience it’s clearly still in the minority, so I still consider myself fortunate.

Yeah we're on the same page.

I figured it was worth mentioning since the status quo among HN users, skews closer to markets where this does not apply, than the status quo of the general population.

This has almost never been my experience in ~20 years of working. Other than a few fleeting assholes, all of my work relationships have essentially been collegial, with all parties, regardless of position, looking at how we can best get the work done that’s in front of us. I’ve never felt exploited or used and never felt I was exploiting those I managed.

I think if one sees their work this way, maybe it comes true? It’s a very cynical way of looking at things.

You’ve never worked in retail or service industries, have you?

I have, and your reply is a pretty weak fallback from

  The relationship between owners and workers has always been extractive. The adversarial relationship is built in.

I’m sure extractive relationships exist, but it’s certainly not an iron law of work, and I’m not even sure it’s that common in most modern workplaces.

Why is this a weak fallback?

Since we’re speaking anecdotally: I’ve also worked in service industry, and I have personally observed employers/managers abusing their power to elevate themselves at the expense of their employees. Does that make you reconsider? I would hazard to guess it doesn’t.

My point being that anecdotal evidence isn’t particularly useful.

> I’m not even sure it’s that common in most modern workplaces.

I don’t know what to tell you honestly. This is an incredibly naive take

Edit:

I feel I’ve been uncharitable in responding to you. I think we are likely talking past each other and what an “extractive” relationship is. I don’t think people are malicious. Most people (IMO) are essentially good and maliciousness is relatively rare. That said, if you work for an employer, you will always be resisting pressure from above to do more work for less pay. Maybe you’re lucky and you have an excellent middle manager (I have had some) who are skilled at preventing shit from rolling downhill. The fact remains the pressure exists and eventually, someone breaks. Maybe they have a bad day, or fall into financial distress, or the economy sucks. It doesn’t really matter. The people who pay the highest cost are the people at closer to the bottom of that hierarchy.

Classifying a relationship as adversarial presumes a competitive context. I don't believe we are in competition with our employer but in a cooperative relationship, so we're talking game theory. A good employer cooperates with their employees to achieve business goals, a bad manager defects and prioritizes their personal goals/desires above the shared business goals. Your relationship falls out of this behavior (assuming no personal issues).

What about a farm worker who tills the land? Is every farmer/farm worker achieving business goals through _cooperation_? What about seasonal farm workers? I guess the farmer can set up incentive payments, but even so, are you saying there no adversarial component to the relationship?

Any relationship can be framed however in different ways that embody different ideals. What one person views through an adversarial lens, another can view through a cooperative lens. All (above board) worker/employer relationships can be seen as cooperative. Neither entered into the agreement by force and each is getting something out of it.

Yeah the framing is just a tool to do different analysis. Both can be useful simultaneously.

Isn't there competition for your own time? I'm thinking of crunches, or justifying a schedule despite workhour efficiency varying way too much (what are you going to achieve if you finish your last task at 16:40 on a Friday?)

I'm happy buying groceries at the grocery store without having to pretend that the checkout clerk loves me.

I also feel that the emotional attachment to one's source of income could cause people to compromise their morality for them, as if they were family e.g. I don't think one child should be favored over another, but I'm happy when my child is favored over others.

> I believe such should be the default.

It's delusional. Your boss is trying to pay you as little as possible for as much work as possible, and you are trying to get him to pay as much as possible for as little work as possible. You've both examined your leverage and have come to a temporary accord which may change a year from now (or a day from now if you get another offer.) The relationship is adversarial. It's not a matter of opinion.

Maybe my knowledge of the English language is subpar but what you describe looks more like _transactional_?

First, you're certainly lucky. Secondly, the emphasis should be on "by default"; managers can, and some easily and quickly do, prove that they aren't adversarial. But companies (especially tech companies with high stress on unsustainable growth) don't often incentivize that, and sometimes disincentivize it whether they mean to or not.

Maybe I'm a bit childish, but I feel neglected when I am asked to sign an work anniversary card for a colleague and next week my manager doesn't even acknowledge my work anniversary. It happened for the last 4 years and, yes, it affects my productivity in the day.

Some time ago I had my 10 year anniversary forgotten once in a company (where I had written almost the entire codebase for their core product myself) and I did feel slighted. I had felt invested in the company, to me this day was a big deal and my company was completely unaware. It felt like a disorienting mismatch of unreciprocated commitment and made me feel a bit sick in the pit of my stomach. I started looking for a new job the next day.

Sounds like you are extremely valuable in the product you built.

In your experience it’s not just the manager direct report relationship that’s adversarial, it’s you against the whole company for the mismatched value they place in you.

You should use that as leverage. This comes with an mindset of looking out for yourself and not any loyalty to the company (I really wish that we could all find companies loyal and nice to their employees, in reality they are few and far between).

Something along the lines of “Hey I built our product. We’re making X in profit. I deserve Y in comp. I’ll give you a week to decide. If you reject I quit and build my own product or join another company.” Obviously add some fluff to reduce harshness.

The basic problem there was that salespeople were viewed as the ones who actually made things happen, engineering and building the actual product was just an inconvenient necessity.

Does your company have a culture of recognizing work anniversaries? To me it feels very arbitrary. Maybe I’m jaded by big tech.

My company gave out nice plaques for ten year anniversaries. As my anniversary neared I frankly got really excited to receive mine.

My manager started a couple months before myself, and a colleague started a couple months later. We still work together all our anniversaries in a line.

My manager got his plaque and showed it off. I patiently awaited mine.

When my 10 year anniversary came around we were in the middle of being acquired. It seemingly got lost in the fuss. My anniversary came and went. Zero acknowledgement beyond an automated email and some points towards the company store. No plaque.

When my colleague's 10 year anniversary came around a few months later and he got an even nicer plaque than my manager AND a small celebration...

I'm not one to usually express anger or disappointment, but I got salty and maybe said some things I shouldn't have. I'm frankly still salty and it's five years later.

I feel a little childish but I just wanted a plaque. I waited ten years for my plaque. My wife had offered to make me one.

My fifteen year anniversary is coming in a few months. We'll see if anything comes of it.

The little things are more important than they seem.

Oof.

I was the second person to not get a plaque after they stopped the 10-years at work. Instead I got an email.

I knew one of the last people to get one, so was expecting mine two weeks later.

And I knew Sarah, who started a week before me, and had printed out her 10-year email and a picture of the clock. I found mine at a thrift store. When I left I set it on her desk on the way out. Hope she liked it.

Your boss is playing a role, same as you.

I've always worked in smaller companies where my boss is either the company owner/founder, or someone very very close to them. It makes things very different (and more difficult).

Just last week I was tasked with configuring an automated happy birthday email.

It feels worse to know that it's just an automatic message and that the person who supposedly signed it doesn't even know who you are.

Work is just work, don't expect anything more than that.

> then proceeds to preach them to everyone and waste time anyway

This has happened to me, but it's important to distinguish when boss is speaking for himself, and when he is just forwarding orders from above. These two cases can happen literally in the same sentence.

The big concept which needs to be included in this discussion is "payslope" --- for an excellent article on this, and an example of a company which handles this well, see:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/h...

I have never regretted a purchase from Lee Valley, and highly recommend all of their products.

Of course a small company of under 1000 employees is going to have a lower executive pay and therefore lower pay gap/ratio than a Fortune 500 company.

As someone who has a 401k, I certainly hope that the CEOs of our biggest companies are more highly compensated (~competent) than the CEO of Martin's Chicken Shack.

And yet the tolerance for bad decisions is much higher in bigger companies. Make a bad decision at large company and simple intertia will keep you going. Make a bad decision in a small company and you're out of business.

I mean, last November amazon laid off 14k people claiming pandemic over hiring.

Inertia certainly seems to insulate Jassy from ownership

Yes

I hope that the CEOs of our biggest companies will be called to demonstrate the same sort of integrity and compassion which Robin Lee and his father have, and I'd rather have that than more money in my pocket or my 401K (which I've done my best to direct towards investments which I consider to be ethical).

Do you? It is all a matter of incentives. When the sky is the limit for executive compensation and we tie it to lagging short term indicators such as stock prices aren’t we incentivizing executives to focus on short term gain at the expense of long term value creation?

Doesn’t this general climate disproportionately advantage the well connected, the insider traders?

And as a citizen of a given jurisdiction, even if you are doing great in the capital markets, is it worth the living in an increasingly enshittified society?

Lee died about a decade ago; I don't know whether they still have this policy. (One immediate change was that their stores started being open on Sunday.)

In ‘our’ field, HP, under founders Hewlett and Packard, ran into some trouble in 1970 and instituted a “9 day fortnight”: rather than lay anyone off, everyone took a 10% cut in pay and hours.

I worked for a small company through the dot-com crash (when I was lucky to get a new position as a previous employer cratered). 20% pay cut. Things eventually recovered with a much later employer.

Some friends of mine in sales roles took a pay cut during the pandemic. Not just the lost commissions because nobody was buying, but base salary as well. They liked their jobs otherwise and felt it was a worthwhile sacrifice to help the company survive. During that time they worked less, and that was the expectation, because there wasn't really much revenue producing work they could do anyway.

This article hits close to home. Recently management provided some 'training' for everybody at where i work, specially focused at team leaders/supervisors, about being courteous based on a training that Disney offers around the world. The focus was not only to be courteous to your end-users, but also to those who you manage and are on your team.

I'm really good at my job, and a few years ago i became a supervisor. But not because i was good with people, simply because i am technically competent. My company was (and still is) rather small (less than 20 on the technical side, but almost 200 overall) and there was no one else remotely apt for the job. I was always a 'cold' person, didn't care much about closeness at work, didn't cared about birthdays, company parties (people absolutely love those where i work, and the company spends a good money on it), and i had to make an effort to remind myself to say 'Good morning' to everybody, because it didn't felt necessary. While i treated everybody with the same respect i wished for myself, eventually i found that that wasn't enough. Fast forward a few years i got better at the basics, but I'm still struggling on the people aspect of it. My team's productivity is good and so is mine, everybody receives good pay and they are happy on that aspect. The only reason to why my team may not have fallen apart, is probably because we still closely interact with other people from other teams, who are way better at this.

> "An easy place to start is simply acknowledging what’s important to people outside of their jobs: birthdays, graduations, marriages, a new baby, death of a loved one, or religious observances. Doing so makes them feel valued as human beings, not just human capital."

For a long time i never considered others would find that important, not at the workplace anyway. When you don't care about that stuff yourself, caring for the sake of work feels fake and people can spot it which may backfire. Is it a case of "fake it until you make it", or just brute-force until you get better on it? I admit it is exhausting. I love my work and what i do on the technical side, and i cannot complain about the company or the pay, but i do sometimes regret accepting that offer.

Sometimes the best managers are the ones that aren’t emotionally vested and just expect the work to be done right.

You don’t have to be anyone but yourself. You don’t have to change who you are simply because you’re a manager now. You can simply continue being you. Allow those under you to be them. The hardest part of management is managing up.

“They don’t pay you to be perfect, they pay you to be yourself.” -Ted Lasso

Keep meaning to watch that series

I hear you on the line of thought that here at work we do work and we keep personal things to ourselves.

I also commend you on your concern for doing things that appear fake, because people indeed are good at spotting fakeness. And I bet they appreciate that you are not acting fake, because that’s often refreshing to see, and they probably value what you have to say more as a result, and quite likely respect you considerably because of that.

For birthdays, wish the employees a happy birthday. You don’t need to get a cake or throw a party (getting cakes for birthdays stops scaling past 10 employees). But everyone should feel a little bit special on their birthday. If you don’t feel that way on your birthday, or you grew up in a family that didn’t celebrate birthdays (e.g. in a Jehovah’s Witness cult), it can be difficult to understand why it matters. But look at it as a technical challenge: can your manager “database” of people hold a birthday field? And can you trigger a smile and a “happy birthday!” greeting on each employee’s birthday? You probably can. The risk for fakeness is quite low (so don’t get a cake and make a big deal out of it), your effort is very low, but the upside for employees is a higher feeling of you caring about them as a person.

Death of a loved one is a really important thing to be aware of. Grief fucks people up and it takes at least a year to come back for it. Grieving employees will need more time and space, and are likely to struggle more. They will come back. And they will stick around more if they felt supported. Offer them to take some time off right away and support them by making sure they can take at least a few days off right away. So if someone tells you of a death of a loved one, you must take note! There’s no good advice to give, so don’t feel pressure to give any advice. Offer condolences and acknowledge that it really sucks (“I’m so sorry for your loss, I can’t imagine how difficult it is right now”). You have to be aware of this as a people manager, because your people.

Religious observances? I’m meh on that one. You can try to develop curiosity about it if the employee talks about it. Ask them why is the observance important to them? If they don’t talk about it, I leave it. For winter time, it’s happy holidays, and done with it.

Okay, a new baby is another one that’s important because your employee will have reduced sleep or be sleep-deprived and have a whole lot of new worries. Be more forgiving with the schedule, let them leave work ad hoc for baby emergencies. You do that, they are much more likely to make up work on their own time as gratitude. Ask them how they feel they are handling the workload—-is there an opportunity to change the type of tasks they are doing? Maybe they are not in a position to be writing deep design docs while they are sleep-deprived. I don’t know, but you can check in when you do your one-on-ones.

Write down their spouse or partner’s names, and write down their children’s names. Keep it in your personal manager file. You probably don’t have people with 5+ children. It’s not a lot. It’s hard to remember. But if the employee feels like they don’t have to say “my son” or “my daughter” or “my wife”, but can just say their names to you and you know who they are, it makes them feel more comfortable and more like a human being. This is another one where it’s hard to be fake—-nobody expects you to remember these things, but it sure feels nicer if you do.

Regarding feeling like you have to fake it till you make it, it’s like picking up a new habit. You have to practice. You will get better at it. It’s part of your job as a manager.

If you find it exhausting, adopt things incrementally. What’s most exhausting? Why is it exhausting? Is it because it’s on top of everything else you’re already doing for 40 hrs a week?

As a manager, you have to care about the people, because they are human beings. It’s a part of your job. You can’t not do your job. If it means you spend less time being technical, so you can spend more time managing people as people and not feel exhausted, then that’s what it means. Push back on your manager to make room to do more people stuff and less technical stuff. You can’t spend 90% of your time being technical and 10% managing, unless you have completely self-directed staff. You’re a person too—-and if you job is to manage, you must make time for it, and if there’s not time for it, then that’s your boss’s problem. If your boss doesn’t think it’s a problem, that’s on you because you haven’t told them.

Managing engineers is like herding cats. They won’t respond to lashing. And cats don’t show that they are sick because they don’t want to show weakness. So if you don’t ask about what’s going on in their personal lives, you’ll be blind to how it’s affecting their work. And because ultimately they get paid to do work, it is therefore in your interest (and company’s interest) to not be blind to how their personal life is impacting their work.

Going back to “fake it till you make it” or brute-forcing until you get better at it—-what you’re not considering is the additional information you will get or increased personal response/appreciation from your people. It might feel like brute force at first, but consider the very real possibility that it can start feeling like a smart thing to do because of the results.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply and all the tips. Truly appreciated.

> I hear you on the line of thought that here at work we do work and we keep personal things to ourselves.

For me that is precisely it. It's how i always worked to avoid possible conflicts, but also because i like to focus on the tasks. At least where i work (and have worked for the past decade) people are somehow personal, and i believe that it is good for them since they seem to like it, but they do find it weird when others aren't like that. I guess that's where culture plays a big role.

> I also commend you on your concern for doing things that appear fake, because people indeed are good at spotting fakeness. And I bet they appreciate that you are not acting fake, because that’s often refreshing to see, and they probably value what you have to say more as a result, and quite likely respect you considerably because of that.

Thanks. Being honest is something i always valued, i really dislike doing things for appearances, and i believe people (including yourself) only grow if you show them the truth. I stopped showing on casual company events/hangouts because i didn't want just to be there as work while not having fun at all. People still expect you to do it tho.

> If you don’t feel that way on your birthday, or you grew up in a family that didn’t celebrate birthdays (e.g. in a Jehovah’s Witness cult), it can be difficult to understand why it matters.

Also that's spot on. My family was never actually religious (although that was the only church they ever went), as far as i remember, and i never correlated the not caring about birthdays with that. But indeed, i forget my own most of the time. The company do provide simple birthday gifts and even a day off, so that is covered i suppose, people do appreciate it. And it was the day my upper manager handed me over my gift that i got called out, because apparently my reaction to it wasn't "human enough" upon receiving a gift, i was so focused in something else that i didn't even thought about a reaction, and took me a second to understand what was the gift for. But the call out was not because of only that.

> If you find it exhausting, adopt things incrementally. What’s most exhausting? Why is it exhausting? Is it because it’s on top of everything else you’re already doing for 40 hrs a week?

Both in and outside of work i do tech related stuff, that ranges from creating scripts for games as a hobby to finding firmware bugs in devices of popular vendors. My whole drive is to solve problems and create things, and make both my life better and improve what (and who) is around me, and for most of the time is also fun. The whole process of people managing is exhausting because, even as a human, i don't understand how to deal with other humans entirely. It's exhausting because that one aspect of my professional life is something i haven't been able to improve despite years trying, as i feel i would need to be somebody else entirely to have a chance on it. It's a "unsolvable problem" that i have to deal day after day, 'punching the nail with my bare hands' as a popular saying goes. I have known lots of engineers who refused management positions because of that same thing, but also a few that accepted because they believed it was a problem they could solve and the offer was too good to pass.

> Push back on your manager to make room to do more people stuff and less technical stuff.

In that aspect i am at fault. Management does give me a lot of room, despite still having technical tasks, but it's up to me to make my team able to solve the tasks that i would have to otherwise. Failing to manage and delegate tasks results in a pile of tasks that i need to finish anyway.

In order to improve my management skills i did many courses, including the Dale Carnegie one (paid by the company). While i don't think those courses are 100% useful, i didn't find them worthless either. You get to see different point of views from people like you, with problems similar to yours, which will make you think different on how you approach them. After those i think i understand the basics, at least in theory, on how to manage people properly but the challenge still in making it natural as to type on a keyboard. You don't look at the keys, you just know where they are and how to do it.

Ok actually you sound kind of awesome. The article is about how thoughtless, petty slights demotivate employees. You are talking about the opposite of thoughtlessness: doing something that takes effort for you, going out of your way to stretch out of your default for their benefit. They see you making the effort. And on a team that size, you’re not fooling anybody—they know it’s effort. I imagine they appreciate that quite a lot.

People like dazzling conversation from their manager for like two weeks. Manager who will flex against their own instincts out of respect for my needs? I’ll line up behind that person every time, even if they’re a little awkward here and there.

> the retail chain, which has a well-established policy that managers hand-deliver a card and small gift to each employee on their birthday.

> The faux pas was never intentional; the managers who were late said they had other priorities.

If it's such a well known company policy and you forget that, it is not a small slight at all.

If it’s a known company policy and people know it’s supposed to happen, they’re going to notice when it doesn’t. So it highlights that the managers priorities don’t include you.

Exactly, and even worse, I'm sure the managers remember some people's birthdays.

I couldn't care less that my manager wishes me happy birthday, but when the company makes 12% profit growth and doesn't give raises because of "the crisis", I feel like taking that raise myself in the form of less work

I just got my annual review and for the 4th year in a row, no changes. I'm still "meeting expectations" but apparently not deserving of even a crumb of the millions in additional profits I've brought in. I am damn sure not going to work as hard going forward when working hard doesn't even lead to a positive outcome. I may not control the scope or even volume of work assigned to me, but I do control the pace and why bother working faster/harder for nothing?

That sucks. The following is unsolicited stuff you probably already know - feel free to ignore.

I would heavily suggest speaking frankly about this with your manager or even going above their head if needed to ensure someone hears and acknowledges this. With your review in hand and any other additional info that can help back you up.

Ask what you need to focus on to secure a substantial Y raise/promotion and bonus etc. over the next X months and work towards that, keeping management updated as things progress. Probably have specific numbers for X and Y to mention as targets.

Thanks and appreciate it.

I did try that last year but it honestly went no where. I work on a financial system at a fintech company but I am on the finance side and my managers and above have never even logged into the system so they don't understand, appreciate, or really have interest in it. All they hear about are breaks in data, or some trivial error (99% caused by the bank or employee inputting a payment incorrectly, etc.) so they hear more negative feedback which I think biases them instead of them understanding that the failure rate is less than 1% and when you have 50,000 payments there's going to always be something that goes wrong--it could be as simple as the date. I implemented a change that allowed us to invest more funds and added almost 10 figures in interest income, but I'm not sure anyone but my manager even knows that. I ultimately blame my manager, he's old and useless and seems to be unmotivated to deliver anything for his direct reports.

Ouch, maybe hopefully there is someone else not directly above you but somewhere off to the side that can understand the value you bring, it may be worth fishing around for other managers/directors/?? to adopt the project if it isn't being managed and resourced properly.

Good luck either way!

At a past company, we originally had a fairly flat org structure. Jr, Mid, Sr, for the ICs. It worked, and everyone was happy. Eventually they brought in some new leadership from one of the big tech companies, and the new leadership brought a levels system. Suddenly we went from a large and flat org, to having all sorts of letters and numbers for levels. And none of the existing staff was promoted to the new levels, they just got moved to the equivalent, while the new leadership hired their own people to the higher eschelons. This already damaged morale, because you had new E6 and E7 or whatever engineers who didn't know their way around the codebase at all, while an E2 or E3 was having to do everything.

Eventually they promoted a few of the original engineering staff. I was told during one of these promotions cycles that I just barely missed the promotion targets. I asked for concrete metrics of what I could improve on, and was given a few vague and nebulous answers. I worked on these, even though they lacked definition. Come the next promotion cycle, I was, once again, passed up. When asked for clarification, I received more vague, nebulous answers. I was assured that I was going to get it the next round, and they'd be doing promotion cycles more than annually.

They kind of kept their word: promotions cycles started happening every 6 months. But the next cycle came through, and once again I was left behind. So this time, instead of asking for clarification, I just started looking for a new job, and handed in a letter of resignation a few weeks later. Upon handing in the letter, I was told "oh we were going to promote you next week!"

I wasn't born yesterday, so I told them thanks but no thanks.

>At a past company, we originally had a fairly flat org structure. Jr, Mid, Sr, for the ICs. It worked, and everyone was happy. Eventually they brought in some new leadership from one of the big tech companies, and the new leadership brought a levels system. Suddenly we went from a large and flat org, to having all sorts of letters and numbers for levels. And none of the existing staff was promoted to the new levels, they just got moved to the equivalent, while the new leadership hired their own people to the higher eschelons. This already damaged morale, because you had new E6 and E7 or whatever engineers who didn't know their way around the codebase at all, while an E2 or E3 was having to do everything.

This is exactly what has happened. I've had 6 different reporting structures in the 6 years I've worked there. So much leadership change and more levels to the pyramid added. I was promoted the first/only time after my first year and a half--for something that has scaled exponentially since then and I still manage individually despite other teams who co-manage the system being given 8 more employees.

>They kind of kept their word: promotions cycles started happening every 6 months. But the next cycle came through, and once again I was left behind. So this time, instead of asking for clarification, I just started looking for a new job, and handed in a letter of resignation a few weeks later. Upon handing in the letter, I was told "oh we were going to promote you next week!"

Yep, I was part of the original 3 on the team. Only one has been promoted, the other left, and I am still in the same position. Even though the promo cycle has been increased, it's no different. I am 95% sure that my manager didn't even read my self-evaluation because he specifically asked for more metrics and that's what the first bullet point of my self-evaluation had.

Sadly I think its a fairly common approach. I later found out that I was passed over for promotions because a manager two or three levels removed from me didn't like that I pushed back on an unsound architectural decision. Said architectural decision was rammed through, and eventually blew up and got egg on several people's faces.

This seems obvious but I guess needs 'official research' to register.

A quote I remember from a coleage - 'They wouldn't give me a pay rate rise, so I gave myself one, by working less hours in a day'

Yeah, I think nobody is gonna tell their boss "I did not like the way you treated me, so I will take a day off for feeling slightly sick". So, while it all sounds obvious, the extent of "idgaf then" is not easy to quantify.

I think zfg is a measurable quantity.

It'll never register, lol.

It'll end up being a tick box moment in some Friday after 5 minute management training document that got completed while thinking about what to do over the weekend.

> It'll never register, lol.

Which is why people do it.

You get fired if you just stop showing up on Thursdays, but not if you start reading comics on your phone for the first hour of every workday.

Yeah, naw. My team ended up firing an engineer who could have been reading comics or something for the first hour or two. The guy usually showed up to meetings but didn't deliver any work for three months.

From the further linked https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/when-employees-f... -

> "They found the perfect observational setting in the retail chain, which has a well-established policy that managers hand-deliver a card and small gift to each employee on their birthday. The company designed the policy to foster meaningful personal interactions and strengthen the employee-manager relationship"

> "The team found no issues when cards and gifts were given within a five-day window of the employee’s birthday"

Part of me wonders more now if the slight also comes from the expectation of receiving a gift under this policy? If someone told me "hey, happy birthday, dude" that'd be good enough for me.

I understand the co-authors are research fellows at the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious

If only it were Surprisingly Obvious. IME there are a large number of emotionally stunted middle and upper managers that could use a pedigreed reminder that being a jerk at work is not good for anything in the end.

Would the people who need such a reminder actually accept the research, and change their behavior?

Are they even aware of the effects of their behavior?

> Would the people who need such a reminder actually accept the research, and change their behavior?

No. They will give you formal discipline for raising such concerns regardless of your professionalism in doing so and ultimately lay you off for being a squeaky wheel. Ask me how I know.

> Are they even aware of the effects of their behavior?

This is the better question to be asking, IMO. Many are aware of the effect and either don’t care or find enjoyment from it, while many more have no clue why their star worker has dropped the ball after being denied a raise or promotion three years running. There are a few who know the effects and are sympathetic, but they’re often in the position of facing similar retribution if they stand up for their workers, and so they don’t.

It’s a gruesome shit show, man.

When I was in university I took a lot of courses in management science, which is basically a lot of applied psychology, and learned a lot of stuff like this.

Then I went out into industry and watched as all these principles about managing employees effectively were ignored, or at best received lip service.

It led me to the conclusion that actually effectively managing employees to motivate better performance wasn't a priority. Not in the top ten anyway.

Most corporations and therefore managers operate using resource extraction principles. How do I extract maximum labour from this resource at lowest cost?

The 'R' in HR always bothered me, and others judging by the companies that used nomenclature like 'talent' or 'people'.

However that was whitewash. Underneath the nomenclature resource extraction continued unimpeded.

The irony being that treating people like resources is counterproductive and hurts performance.

Companies extracted the illusion of more resources, more hours, while productivity largely plateaued or decreased.

Somehow corporations expected to hire smart people, smart enough to do an intellectually challenging and technical job, and not have them do the math that the additional pay for performance generally amortized lower than the hourly rate, and that by doing more employees were actually lowering their effective hourly rate -- i.e. discounting labour for the employer.

The wag in me would observe the reason companies were so eager to portray everyone as family is that's the only model where this is marginally acceptable. Family taking advantage of family, like a family farm. Working more hours to get paid less certainly doesn't work as a business model for the employees. They'd be better off with a second salaried job -- and there were apocryphal stories about employees doing actually that, hanging up a coat on the door hook, throwing a newspaper on their desk, then leaving to go to their other job.

This is all observational and anecdotal however, but over a three decade career with a dozen plus companies, some of them Fortune N (where 20 <= N <= 500) in both contractor, IC, senior leadership and C-level roles.

> that being a jerk at work is not good for anything in the end.

The problem with such phrases is that the opinions what being a jerk means differ a lot between people.

Sure, the headline of the article that's summarizing the study is obvious

Is this obvious?

> The study finds that when managers at a national retail chain failed to deliver birthday greetings on time, it resulted in a 50% increase in absenteeism and a reduction of more than two working hours per month.

Unfortunately it seems like it costs $20 to access the actual paper but I'm guessing it's more interesting than your snark warrants.

Sure, the headline of the article that's summarizing the study is obvious

Is this obvious?

Unfortunately it seems like it costs $20 to access the actual paper but I'm guessing it's more interesting than your snark warrants. I mean, maybe. Maybe it's a bad study too, who knows.

I received a title bump without pay increase to Senior after doing senior work for 4 years because our senior bracket is capped by lifers waiting to retire (I like them as people but they are checked out, professionally). It just left a bad taste in my mouth that it took so long to be recognized officially.

To put things into context, I'm basically operating as an engineering consultant to the rest of our senior staff and directors across multiple teams. In larger companies, perhaps I would be an intermediate IC, but in this company I am definitely responsible for more than my ICs.

It's my fault for not holding them to it, and should have realized earlier that I'm working under management that only reacts to things immediately happening to them.

> I received a title bump without pay increase

I have been SWE for 30 years now and this is one of the most boggling things I’ve seen over the years. I hope my daughter never has to do the work I did in my career but if she actually has an office job I will tell her to quit immediately if this was offered to her (leave the job immediately without any notice, just pack up and go). This is not a promotion but an insult.

Lots of “no shit” in these comments makes me wonder how many VP level managers you guys have interacted with. Maybe it’s just my location, but this is one of those things that legitimately NEVER makes it through to upper managers.

When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to the base employees, they will absolutely feel resentment and do LESS work, not more.

For more than one reason.

A quite small few will be pushed over the edge and spend their energy trying to find a new position altogether. But the impact of losing them and having an open position for months will have a huge impact. The impact of losing even a below average worker is nearly always underestimated by uppers who see their 200+ indirects as just numbers on an HR chart. And the employees who hop jobs over bad management are usually in the top half of performance, not bottom.

Another handful of over-achievers will realize that their “extra mile” approach is clearly being ignored or not having any effect, and simply become achievers. This alone can have an impact that outweighs any potential gain from whip cracking.

The one thing that nearly all employees will do when this happens though: talk to each other and bitch about it. This will tank morale yes, but it more literally just takes a bunch of time and energy. A very large distraction from the actual work.

I’ve seen this now at several jobs in a few fields. The negative impact is so much larger than I ever would have guessed starting out.

If you want to get more work out of the same workers, you cannot use negative reinforcement. It will backfire. Positive reinforcement is not bulletproof but rarely makes things WORSE.

Manage smarter not harder.

> When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to the base employees, they will absolutely feel resentment and do LESS work, not more.

The bosses with half a brain do this only when the supply of labor is increasing relative to demand for labor. The bet is that the sufficient employees won’t have a choice to find a different job, and people that fail to maintain the new pace can be replaced with newer, and maybe even cheaper employees.

Yup. We just lost our "slightly below average" developers, but he was a nice guy and tries to deliver. But they have been slow to replace him, and now we are likely looking at 3 months before a new hire will just be in place, plus the new hire will not have the three years worth of experience the other guy had, so their project will likely be slower than at it already was for the rest of the year.

I’d take “slightly below average but is generally good to work with and tries hard” over “genius asshole” almost any day. Few projects require the latter.

There’s also the problem with how useless so many are at their jobs with no way to be sure until its too late.

mostly agree but the below average try hard is also the one introducing the most bugs so I'm torn on this.

That very much depends on the workplace. I was let go once for being 'slightly below average', because I kept foolishly spending the time to fix things in ways that didn't result in more bugs.

I literally inherited a dev once that was so bad we vastly improved velocity once he left. Every couple of months we fixed a weird bug in the code he wrote and laughed about it. The middle manager loved him because we was very eager to work and always around

Are those people in an environment where they need to close tickets at any cost or else?

I've seen less capable people changing from slightly productive to incredibly destructive by changing that one variable.

> I’d take “slightly below average but is generally good to work with and tries hard” over “genius asshole” almost any day.

I'd take either before the utterly dangerous "below average hard-working asshole" which tend to quickly rise to managerial positions and cause untold damage with their ineptitude.

"I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."

— Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

Hehe, yes. The naive, but very hardworking developer is the most dangerous. He will dig you holes so deep nobody will ever find out if there is even any light in there.

I've found those genius assholes are mostly just assholes and not much on the genius side

A lot of people appear to be highly productive by creating more work for the ones around them. That tends to correlate well with being an asshole.

You're missing the person hours lost in hiring the new member.

... plus those hours!

I agree with everything you are saying, but it’s still a “oh well, no shit, Sherlock” research. Coming up next: Water is wet.

The most influential question from team lead trainings over the years has been: Do you trust your employee to want to complete the task and purpose they have, or do you need to control them? There are a few names for this, Theory X and Theory Y mainly.

And don't be snide and just say that the current economy forces you to work due to wages. A lot of people I know would just create their own creative work if they had all the money in the world. So yeah, I think if you frame a persons job and purpose in the company right, you can trust them to work. This may not work in all industries, but in tech it seems to hold.

An example where this is in my experience a good guidance: Someone starts slipping their metrics, whatever those are. Comes in late, is hard to reach remotely. Naturally they should get slapped with the book right? Nah. If you assume they want to work well, the first question should be: Why, what is going on?

In a lot of cases, there will be something going on in their private life they are struggling with. If you help them with that, or at least help them navigate work around this, you will end up with a great team member.

Like one guy on the team recently had some trouble during the last legs of building a house and needed more flexible time. We could've been strict and told him to punch it and take their entire annual vacation to manage that, even if he just needs to be able to jump away for an hour or two here and there. Instead we made sure to schedule simple work for him and have him work with a higher focus on educating his sidekicks, tracked the total time away and then booked it as 3-4 days at the end. Now it's a fun story in the teams lore they are fond of having navigated that, instead of one guy sulking about having lost all of his vacation in that nonsense.

> In a lot of cases, there will be something going on in their private life they are struggling with. If you help them with that, or at least help them navigate work around this, you will end up with a great team member.

Note that there already has to be a pretty high level of trust between that employee and their manager for this to work; if I don't feel like I can trust my manager, I will absolutely keep my lips zipped about anything not directly work related.

Oh absolutely, and it would be my responsibility to build this. In fact, I don't even need details. I just prefer to know about a team members situation and have a plan around it, before clients, internal customers, our boss and HR start coming knocking with hard questions or worse.

This is a great post on this topic: https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/02/23/OhForemanWh.... I'm not sure I'd agree with the full argument as such about commit rights (vs. e.g. pull request review), but it does illustrate parent's point

> When they tell their base managers to crack the whip [...]

This all reminds me of a phrase that I have heard, repeatedly, in many different organizations: "We need to start working with a sense of urgency."

Aside from the complete lack of leadership (so, your plan is ... keep working, but moreso?), it's almost always insulting (all those people you've been praising for skipping vacations and working while sick, what "sense of urgency" were they missing exactly?)

The subject may sound silly, but we evolved this way. For the greatest part of human existence we were part of small social groups. We each took part in every activity. Our 'work' was for the group, and for ourselves. Those we worked with, we lived with, so in order to maintain group cohesion (and to not get stabbed in our sleep) we learned to get along. Current work practices violate a lot of those deeply set social mores. I'd love to see a study that looks into this hypothesis. Could explain a lot of the misery and depression in our modern life.

Isn't that Karl Marx's theory of alienation?

I believe that's more along the lines of being alienated from the work itself.

IE a potter sees the results of his work in the pots he creates.

A worker in an assembly line sees a small aspect of the pot creation and is separated from the end result.

Many of us will understand the joy of a personal project and the lack of joy in completing an issue ticket. It's generally good for one's mental health to have some kind of purpose behind their work.

As a Brit, the birthday card example feels oddly American. The effect seems plausible, but the UK equivalent slight would be something much more informal

I wonder if this is generationally specific. I'm an American and have zero expectation that anybody at work should acknowledge my birthday.

On the other hand, I can understand feeling slighted if the manager consistently recognizes their employees' birthdays but overlooks mine.

My only experience with acknowledging birthdays at work is that you do it yourself if you want to. Most jobs I've had, birthdays are just not recognized at all, but at one employer the tradition was that you brought in donuts to share on your birthday (if you wanted to--it wasn't required of course).

As an American, I would be totally creeped out if a manager even knew my birthday, let alone gave me a card.

When I've seen people feel slighted in the workplace, it's usually due to uneven praise or criticism, or discriminatory stuff like passing over all the black workers with years of experience to promote the one white guy who's been there for 6 months.

Well, if your manager can see your employee file (which they can.... certainly in Worlday) they will know your birthday. Oddly, at my employer, celebration of individual birthdays is discouraged, I have heard it is because it might make someone feel uncomfortable being called out for aging. As someone who is probably in the oldest 1% of the company... I find that amusingly curious. Birthdays are a good excuse for a team celebration, and that is almost always good team bonding.

A company I worked for used start date anniversaries rather than birthday for a variety of reasons.

The example wasn’t about birthday cards specifically in my reading. The example was more about a manager selectively deprioritizing/violating a policy that exists for the sole benefit of the employee.

Sounds like it's not unheard of in the UK: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1fabd0c/how_does_you...

Slightly off topic but does anyone know if there are studies looking at the use of negative vs positive "reinforcement" on employees in order to increase productivity, reduce costs, whatever-metric-you-want-to-pick?

In my professional life I have never seen people respond well to cost cutting, layoffs, understaffing, corporate bs, etc. It is always demoralizing, resulting in reduced performance and I can only imagine worse outcomes for the company overall. But despite this I have never seen a company do the opposite and respond with offering incentives for better performance. I don't know if this is industry specific (I've mostly been in defense oriented companies) but was curious.

Off the top of my head, I think people that work sales and earn commissions and any tip-based work might be the ones to look into. I imagine there's studies around those types of jobs.

Yes. We needed an essay to crack this one

You mean those memes stating "The beatings will continue until morale improves" aren't effective?

Have there been any studies about the lack of raises and productivity? Because the way I see it, if you hired me 3 years ago at X per hour, and I haven't gotten any raises, then because of inflation, I should work 5% or so less hard every year.

In my ~10 year tenure, every single manager/boss I had was a variation of Michael Scott. This is in terms of both good and bad.

I could literally write 20 page essay about every single piece of slighting, favouritism, discrimination, overstepping labour law, then trying to cover up by denial/not remembering/false pretences even fake witnesses.

But, this firstly quite lots of work, secondly the risk of them chasing me back and suing for damages is not worth it, thirdly, it will seem "unprofessional" by the managers/leadership (or future prospects) anyway.

A good leader believes in the team and the team’s mission.

Celebrating birthdays and milestones are a possible side effect of this, but these celebrations can’t take place of the power of that belief.

If you consistently smile, you can force yourself to be happier, and if you force yourself to celebrate others, that’s still a good thing. But, your team will know if you don’t believe.

You’re better off being Gary Oldman in Slow Horses (only secretly believing in the mission and with a team that all care) than just being in it for the paycheck.

I’m not saying to quit if you can’t believe, but don’t expect top productivity.

Thanks professor, my boss didn't believe me when I tried to hint it

Ehrm, actually, it’s better to constantly threaten layoffs and lead by fear. Employees are replaceable cogs who need to prove their value to the business. President Musk has made this very clear and most leaders in big tech (with the notable exception of Tim Cook) have followed suit. This radical approach (based on Jack Welch management principles from the 80s) will certainly yield outstanding business outcomes.

All of the above is sarcastic for those who find it difficult to pick up on tone in text.

On some level the headline is like "yeah, no shit," but the surprising thing is the claimed strength of the effect. 50% absenteeism increase for missing a birthday congratulations? Really?

Base rate is likely quite low.

I don't really mind but I take a slight objection to supposedly confidential data (like birthday) being widely shared even with good intentions.

Birthdays are hardly confidential.

They should be unless you want to publish one of the things that too many (eg sites) regard as a reasonable secondary security verifier.

And health records, e.g. prescriptions, as well.

Get a single speeding ticket in most jurisdictions in the U.S. and your birthdate is never confidential ever again.

It depends on the culture/religion. Not everyone celebrates birthdays.

I had multiple ICs ask me not to say public birthday wishes, as they didn’t celebrate their birthday and/or did not want the rest of the team to know.

They're not really for many people (and, personally, I don't go to any extremes to keep it a secret). But sharing info like that from an HR record without permission feels a bit wrong even if others here obviously disagree.

I'm now somewhat interested in the study to see how they accounted for possible hidden factors.

If a team lead or manager spent the time to track birthdays and took time out of their day to have a 10 minute chat with someone on their birthday, they probably exhibit a number of other behaviors that could be summarized as "treating their employees as humans". That's the boss people tend to like to work with and possibly go another mile for them.

If tolerating your boss during a normal day takes 9 of your 12 spoons of energy for the day, it takes very little further push to be spiteful. At worst, they may force you to find another workplace with a better boss.

This is a study from an elite institution published in a respectable journal in the social sciences. Certainly they took the time to perform a controlled experiment and assigned managers at random to deliver the birthday cards late or on time. That would be cheap to do and minimally invasive for the human subjects.

[Reads abstract]

They didn't? It's a pure observational study that one measure of sloppiness in the organisation correlates with another? What do we pay these guys for?

Per abstract it's a "a dynamic difference-in-differences" analysis, which means likely that they see whether the employee behavior changes after the event. But establishing causation with it still requires quite a few assumptions.

PNAS is kinda known for headline grabbing research with at times a bit less rigorous methodology.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2017/10/04/breaking-p...

> Certainly they took the time to perform a controlled experiment and assigned managers at random to deliver the birthday cards late or on time. That would be cheap to do and minimally invasive for the human subjects.

If the results are true, it would be actually quite expensive because of the drop in productivity. It could also be a bit of a nightmare to push through ethical review.

They could start by observing the rate at which birthday cards are delivered on time, and not vary too much from that.

I suppose the impact on productivity isn't known in advance, and it might be that failing to receive a birthday card from a normally diligent manager costs the company more in productivity than it gains from a sloppy manager unexpectedly giving one on time.

However, if at some point somehow it shines through, that this is just another checklist being ticked off, without actual sincerity behind it, this all goes down the drain, and the time would be better spent on actual work environment improvements, rather than wet handshakes and pseudo "we are a family".

Agreed. 3 things are interesting.

How small the slight is.

How big the effect is.

Meta thing: how the slight is not the kind of thing most managers or executives, or even knowledge workers generally, would care about. (As evidenced by the software people here questioning if a birthday wish is a big deal.)

Lesson: your employees think differently than you. Get curious.

I wonder if this is true for PhD students

Bad PIs seem to be a real problem.

Luckily I'm self-funded and with good supervisors, so not a problem that I face!

It’s just their roundabout way of complaining about their boss forgetting their birthday.

I usually don’t shame my reports in public unless shaming them in private doesn’t work twice. However the most “successful” people I’ve seen do all their shaming immediately and in public. I also find shaming in person a lot easier than shaming on slack.

Don't do that. High-performing teams maintain a ratio of approxima ~6:1 positive comments for every criticism.

Systematic use of shame aligns with toxic leadership patterns that produce measurably negative outcomes.

Public humiliation at work can compromise social connectedness, threaten an employee's sense of belongingness, and create adversarial environments where constructive measures become impossible. When employees are disciplined publicly in front of their teams, they experience a complex mix of shame and self-doubt directed inward, compounded by anger and distrust directed outward.

Organizations lacking psychological safety fail to create cooperative collaboration environments, directly harming employee well-being and organizational performance.

The scientific literature overwhelmingly supports constructive feedback delivered privately with specific, actionable guidance focused on behaviors rather than personal attacks.

I was just talking about the criticism. There is plenty of affirmation, probably more than 6:1

Ok, you're probably fine, then.

Conversely, I wonder if employers who feel slighted by those employees, pay and promote them less.

My lived experience in America is that employers often feel slighted by default by their employees, with rare exception. Otherwise they wouldn’t put so many obstacles in the way of paying livable wages for work performed.

That said, half a century of continued slighting of employees is quickly snowballing against them. While I’d hope these studies lead to positive change in the short-term, I doubt anything will move the needle short of mass collective action.

I think this is actually where the study is interesting. Because the “no duh!” Comments actually have merit on their face. But the argument is that these are tiny slights—not harassment, not pervasive toxicity. By definition it’s the kind of thing management doesn’t notice. So I think the argument is that employers consider those employees to be some default percentage of the workforce, and the argument is that you can move the entire performance bar up by hiring/training managers to be thoughtful and consistent.

The headline is missleading. The study is not about actually being slighted, but imagining being slighted ("percieved mistreatment"). Whether the outcome would be similar when people were really mistreated in the described way is unknown.

Right, if you're nasty to people, they're less likely to be helpful in the future.

And helpful employees are priceless.

Goes around, comes around.

Bad news for all the a-holes out there who've built careers out of bullying others to do mediocre work.

The first two paragraphs of that article are a wild incoherent ride, mixing all kinds of things, that have very little to do with each other (feel slighted [...] even the slightest mistreatment [...] failed to deliver birthday greetings on time)

Regardless of the analysis and without having read the study, I agree with the sentiment in the headline and it's sad agreement that matches my experience: Making employees feel not slighted works really well – for both the company and the employee. It does not require that you respect anyone, and actually often runs counter it.

Once you figure that out as an employer, I can see why you would chose to just get better at fooling and distracting people.

That sounds about right from my experience. There's nothing worse than feeling excluded or manipulated by management or coworkers.

> There's nothing worse than feeling excluded or manipulated by management or coworkers.

What people call "social skills" is nearly always manipulating other people into liking you. People of who its is said that they "lack social skills" are often more honest and much less manipulative.

.... no... That's not how that works

In my experience, where management is concerned, when employees demonstrated a bit more knowledge, a bit more fluidity, greater ease of communication, I noticed a very distinct change in management's demeaner towards the employees. The above comments are based on my past experience only. This past experience has made everyone involved a bit more sinical with respect to the importance of management. I personally think management should be replaced with an AI that can be turned on and off, as needed :)

Hmm, that has a ring of truth to it. I rarely stayed in jobs where managers tended to silence my points of view or opinions, rather than listening to it. That's not to say that there have been many job opportunities. Perhaps managers/others view honesty and directness as a threat to their position or authority. I've noticed that it is not localized to places of work but looks to be prevalent in most other societal situations. Perhaps emotional intelligence training should be incorporated into school curriculums, so children learn at an early age a bit of tolerance to other diverse points of views. I've tended to limit my posting in places like these as I've noticed a lack of emotional intelligence from some of the people that have replied. This is rather evident from the downward spiral exhibited by the constant downvoting of my comments. I prefer to take the high road with sarcastic levity whenever possible :)

At a company I work for we get b-day cards promptly. They all get sent by workday :) What I found upsets me the most is companies paying no respect to my private time.

They all want me to be on-call and carry my laptop with me. Hiking, on a beach, at a restaurant, sleeping at night – i am expected to be reachable and get on it right away.

Some international companies don't even try to schedule support according to time-zone sighting on-call efficiency and knowledge segregation.

And yet, they fücking refuse every effort developers make to focus on fixing issues leading to incidents.

They fücking need to fix their act.

Oranges are orange, tonight at 11…

So, now we have metrics of what "slighted at work" does to work.

Just like the terrible outcomes of fraud elimination indicate non-zero fraud is preferred, I can see a similar nom-zero dissatisfaction at work the same.

Except now companies can calibrate how much dissatisfaction due to terrible policies can be done in response to lower work quality, and minmax that.

Reading between the lines, the paper is how to manage dissatisfaction in relation to work and cost. In other words, "How bad can we make it for the minimum work product needed?"

A surprising effect, who would imagine it?

A lot of work is fake work. It's just social signaling. It's just a game of being liked. Just look at the stats for autistic people who have difficulty finding and maintaining employment, not because they're bad at their actual job but because neurotypical people just don't like them. Anyone who has worked for a remotely large organization has met plenty of people who have been promoted well beyond their actual abilities or output.

In this space you'll often hear about Dunbar's number [1] and the idea that organizations with more than about 150 people tend to break down. In larger organizations, a whole layer of middle management seems to rise up with questionable output. Like you might have no idea who your VP is. One place I worked had the VP visit once a quarter, walk aroudn and ask what people worked on and occasionally yell at them.

The military is an interesting example because it's millions of people, often in confined spaces so a whole bunch of rules have to be created so they don't kill each other, basically. And if you talk to any current or former servicemembers you'll hear stories about how not much gets done there either. Toxic leadership, lots of waiting around for nothing, bureaucracy and so on.

One can view this "research" as "be nice to your employees" but I think it's more nefarious than that. Or at least "be nice" won't be the lesson Corporate America takes from it. Instead it'll be that employees need to be even more closely monitored so they're not slacking off.

I think about what I call "organizational churn". This is where every 6 months you'll get an email saying a VP in your direct chain whom you've likely never met now reports to a different SVP under some restructure or reorganization to "align goals" or for "efficiency".

What you realize after awhile is that organizational churn only exists so nobody is every accountable for their actions or output. They're never in the same place long enough to see the consequences of their action or inaction.

But what I've thought about a lot recently in terms of organization is the Chinese Community Party. Millions of people work for the CCP. Yet it's output has been stunning. Some 40,000km of high speed train lines in 20 years for less than the US spends on the military in one year. Energy projects, metros, bridges, cities, housing, roads, ports, the list goes on.

How does the CCP avoid empire-building, institutional rot and general bureaucratic paralysis?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

> How does the CCP avoid empire-building, institutional rot and general bureaucratic paralysis?

Oh they don't! In exactly the same way US didn't. Right now, a lot of factors have put enough tailwind into Chinese economy and the inertia is a bitch to retreat, as can be seen with US itself. These tailwinds are strong enough that they lift everybody up, even considering the corruption taking its share.

I think you'd enjoy reading about the Gervais Principle. It's pretty much what you're talking about.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

how does most academia ever get funding?

yeah why have data when you can just use vibes

Is paying $20 to read this the only option?

Addendum:

Tables from the study available here: https://www.pnas.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1073%2...

Breaking news: when it rains, people get wet

As a small business owner who often has to deal with that worst possible ratio 1:1 for management/employee, I can promise you that emoloyees are premptivly looking for reasons to get there digs in, and often show up enacting vengence? in the form of vandalism from day 1. As I have never taken shit from an employer, I walk out and get another job imediatly, I have no sympathy for passive agressives whatsoever and despise the world we have built that can absorb the damage and still net a profit, which of course does not work for small business, so I am becoming very up front with prospective hires, and forceing a conversation about personal expectations and needs, which is very challenging as they have been trained to say whatever is needed to get hired, NOW!, and worry about anything else later.

https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*ikF...

When nobody wants to work for you, that should be a strong indication that you are the problem.

And thinking that employees are "enacting vengence? in the form of vandalism from day 1."... You must be terrible indeed.

I get unsoliseted offers from job seekers, every day. Any destructive actions on the part of employees has been completly unprovoked, the reasons might be conected to a perception of metal working bieng a "macho" tough guy, right wing, field, but I am more of a "nature boy" back to the lander, and aint shy, or small, or tollerant of "dog whistles".......so in that way, oh fuck ya!, I am a n8ghtmare on preconceptions.

I hope you get the mental health care you sorely need.

The world is not out to get you, no matter how much you think it is.

Worthy of the Ig Nobel. Not surprised it's a management consultant factory in Israel that have uncovered these titillating results.

What are you trying to say?

"The lost productivity was a form of revenge, with slighted employees taking more paid sick time, arriving late, leaving early, and taking longer breaks."

Someone will feel slighted no matter how well you treat them. I blame all of the 'micro-aggression' nonsense we've seen in the last couple of years and subreddits like /r/antiwork. This sounds like just the kind of thing that's encouraged there.

"The study found that when managers at a national retail chain failed to deliver birthday greetings on time, it resulted in a 50% increase in absenteeism and a reduction of more than two working hours per month. "

Most people I know don't care about their birthday (or being recognized) to this extent. Years ago, I worked at a place that decided to celebrate everyone's birthday that week with a cake and a 10/15 minute meeting (usually multiple birthdays were celebrated at the same time). As the company grew, we were having these meetings 3-times per week.

My 6 year old would care if their birthday didn't get recognized and similarly pout all day and seek this type of 'revenge'.

I wouldn't want to work with anyone that did this.

> I blame all of the 'micro-aggression' nonsense we've seen in the last couple of years and subreddits like /r/antiwork.

Also known as "passive aggressive behavior" to people who aren't primarily educated by episodes of South Park.

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