I’m so sorry that you are unable to judge someone’s competence except through the clothes he wears.
Ever been on a set? Actors get judged by how they perform when the camera goes on and the sound is up to speed. These people should be judged by how they generate code, which is like the camera being on, no how they act in the dressing room.
Maybe you think that code production is a direct function of hours worked, like assembly line work. Not hardly. I don’t know about other people, but I don’t write code by typing it line by line, I write it in my head and then dump it onto the screen. Most of my stuff works the first time, and I am a lot more productive than industry averages. I write code while reading the Dope. I write it while taking a walk. Places with top intellectual performers have very relaxed atmospheres because they know that intellectual work is not done in obvious ways.
I had a guy working for me who often fell asleep in the afternoon. He developed some revolutionary algorithms, and implemented them also, and I figured he was more productive asleep than a lot of people were awake (and I had good people.) You think he would have been more productive if I yelled at him for napping?
Elegantly stated. Thank you.
First, if you can automate what these guys do, you will, and should, and their future is not going to depend on what they wear at work. Can they do something more creative, something that cannot be automated? If not, too bad.
Second, talent and connection to the customer are not at all equivalent. I did a lot of technical marketing support, and the sales guys seemed to like me to talk to customers. But we had some very good engineers who were disasters doing demos for customers. Part of our trade show prep was figuring out which engineers could be trusted on the floor and which could not be.
However, if you talk to successful writers, the vast majority set themselves up with this sort of discipline. Now the question becomes, are SQL writers a different population (not as individuals, but as a population) that they don’t need this discipline? If they are, great, but if, like most human beings, most of them require the discipline in order to do the job, then setting up an undiciplined corporate culture is going to be one In wHich most people fail.
Moreover, if tech folks don’t want external discipline, they can go into business for themselves, like my writer friend has. Or like many, many consultants I know in the IT business (I used to be in the IT consulting busisness). But these guys are choosing to work for The Man, and The Man gets to set parameters around how they work.
Of course The Man does; if you think I’m saying otherwise, I’m not making myself clear. I’m speaking to The Man and offering guidelines for figuring out whether specific parameters will lead to The Man getting what He wants out of the situation.
Here’s the thing: I don’t see anyone denying that some highly productive workplaces (Google, Pixar, etc.) have very untraditional workplace cultures. I haven’t heard anyone suggest that those workplaces succeed in spite of their untraditional culture. So the question becomes not whether an untraditional culture CAN succeed, but whether an untraditional culture can succeed in this particular instance.
msmith hasn’t given any specific reasons why it can’t; instead, he’s called that culture childish and abnormal, which makes me think it repels him for irrational reasons, and that he ought to take stock of his own prejudices and figure out how to set them aside before making any decisions.
Google and Pixar aren’t exactly “average” companies in terms of who they hire. In both cases, they get to cherry pick employees, and in both cases, they select for extraordinarily driven individuals who have a lot of self discipline. Both are profitable companies, so they can afford some inefficiencies. If msmith’s employees are Google or Pixar caliber, I’d be shocked. Moreover, his company isn’t profitable and therefore can’t afford inefficiencies.
Netflix is another company that does this…and their managers are told to coach out anyone who isnt a top 10% performer, so you’d better be pretty fantastic to get by with their casual atmosphere, most people have their nose to the grindstone despite their casual policies just to survive. Apple is, and they expect minimum ten to twelve hour days. If you want any time away from work, you work at work.
Then this is how to address it: explain that, as long as the company isn’t profitable, the work culture needs to change. That’s no-harm, no-foul. Again, I’m not saying the work culture there is perfect; I’m saying that if msmith regards Google’s employees and Pixar’s employees as being spoiled children (along with his own) simply because of their dress standards and their recreational activities, he’s way off-base. Instead he needs to be evaluating them on relevant criteria like the ones you mention: are his employees driven? Are they self-disciplined? Are they producing a lot of wonderful stuff?
In other words, the questions I posed earlier :).
and as I posted earlier, “talent” needs to be aware of those pesky pointy haired boss concepts like cost and efficiency or standard processes…or they may be shocked when the reduction in force happens.
msmith537 didn’t day why his company was unprofitable. I doubt it has much to do with how much SQL these guys turn out. He also said that the powers that be were going in the wrong direction.
Unprofitable companies don’t become profitable by taking away coffee or limiting potty breaks. Who knows - maybe the CEO taking a 10% pay cut might do more for the bottom line than all of these. More likely the right products and processes will.
Anyhow, it is not clear that the bulk of workers are the problem - only the one underperformer who seems to have been forgotten.
Hmm. I learned that managers should coach everyone, including top 10% performers. Even really good people deserve feedback on presentations and the like. Even the best of athletes have coaches.
My friends at Apple haven’t complained about 12 hour days all the time. Before a deadline sure. I’ve done a column about a paper which shows that continual 60 hour weeks don’t actually make you more productive than 40 hour weeks. When I was at Intel we did 12 hour days. We weren’t forced to, but they served dinner and they took names (just to track consumption, of course) and one person who left at 6 for a car pool wound up with a bad rating. It didn’t do anything to make the project more successful, and half the people weren’t doing anything productive after dinner anyway.
Maybe if they hadn’t been working such long hours they wouldn’t have screwed up the antenna.
Not coach…coach out. i.e. 90% of the employees at Netflix are told that their futures are not with Netflix and they shouldn’t count on Netflix being their long term employer.
My husband just interviewed with Apple and was told 10-12 hour days were expected. He chose not to follow up.
No, but they do become profitable by cutting labor costs. i.e. if I have ten SQL guys who are at work ten hour days, but have five hours of productivity in a day, with five hours of meals, internet surfing, chatting, and playing games, I get 50 hours of productivity out of the group of them in a day. If I can get a little more than seven productive hours out of each of them, I can cut my labor costs by 30% by getting rid of three of them.
And maybe msmith is in a position to give the CEO a 10% paycut, but I suspect his only sphere of control is to get cost control for his own team. Although it sounds like it really doesn’t make a difference, these guys are going to be proceduralized into a much smaller department sooner or later if the company survives - I’d look at the writing on that wall and start looking for another employer with a pool table and beer in the fridge where I don’t need to wear pants. Or I’d decide I wanted to be one of the last out the door and I’d work my butt off to make sure when I did leave, it was on my own terms or because they were turning off the lights.
By the way, I was just at a company that saved itself from bankruptcy by laying off 20% of its staff and giving the rest of us 10% paycuts. A year later, the company was back, we got our pay back, and old faces started showing up again. And they took away free coffee. Having just gone through this - if the fundamental business model is sound and you are in a tight spot because of debt covenants and a sudden loss of revenue - cutting expenses, including labor, can work short term
So Netflix admits they screwed up on 90% of their hires? Interesting.
Working at Apple is like Fight Club. You don’t talk about it. So the only people who do talk about it seem to be disgruntled ex-employees and former job candidates. It leads to a distorted reputation at times. (Disclaimer: you’re not actually allowed to be without clothing of some sort on the lower half of your body. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if “no naked ass” was the only entry in the dress code, from some of the getups I’ve seen).
I will in general echo Voyager’s description of coding and/or creative tech work. It’s very non-linear. Creativity, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to function well in a gray box between the hours of 9-5. Engineers have a particular environment they prefer. So do designers & creatives. Not because we feel like being a pain in the ass, but because it’s what makes us most productive.
I realized I can’t resist this. My team at work plays an MMO together (off hours) as a team-building activity. My boss, and the guy I share a cube wall with discussed WoW during his interview process. I know someone who asks interviewees for an opinion on the Enterprise vs. the Death Star. Clearly, you need to meet more geeks.
Ah see, my writer uncle has some days when he “gets in the zone” and pumps out a dozen poems and four chapters for three novels, and other days when he goes to walk up and down the nearest hill, munching on ideas but not putting anything on paper.
He never left his “day job” (hey, four kids…), but he was making more from the writing than from the other job the last twenty years before he retired.
My process in the visual arts is similar. There are days when I get up and have my ideas and sub processes clear and laid out in my head, and others that require contemplation. The best ideas spring from activity that is not directly related to the work, so I’ll take a shower, or play my guitar, play with the dogs or watch a bad movie on netflix while my hindbrain works out the details. I have days where I can work for 12-14 hrs and produce well over a normal weeks output in one go. On the flipside I have days where the creativity* simply isn’t there* and forcing myself to work doesn’t bear any good fruit. Oh I could force myself to doodle or sculpt little heads or something just to “look busy”, but they amount to nothing. I have to wait for the ideas to form up, and that goes a lot faster if I turn my focus to something non related. That’s why I work for myself when it comes to art, I haven’t found a company that is willing to understand that creativity and quick production of high quality work is not like a faucet that you simply turn on and off. I always bring my work in and on time, but I need the process to be hands off.
You have no idea how many geeks I know. I used to run SF conventions. I spent a couple of years in the SCA and more than I care to admit doing Ren Faires. I played WoW for a long time, sometimes with coworkers off hours, and have been playing City of Heroes since its release (being more obscure, I haven’t yet met a coworker who plays it - but a short female project manager I know plays Call of Duty). I own dice which I roll every other Friday night in 4th edition D&D. I’ve been to Star Trek weddings - note the s at the end of wedding. I’ve made my living in IT for 25 years. The last two concerts I’ve been to are They Might be Giants and Jonathan Coulton (though admittedly, I don’t get out much for music) That writer friend writes Fantasy.
You know, it IS possible to wear a suit to work in the day and a Witch Hunter Robin t-shirt on Saturdays.
When you are the boss you get to ask questions about the Death Star in interviews or determine if your interviewees WoW class is something needed in your raid group. When you are the interviewee, you don’t mention these things unless cued to. This is something a lot of geeks don’t get. Its great to be a geek - but work is not necessarily the place to let your geek freak flag fly. And if it has and your group has just gotten a new boss who can’t name any members of The Justice League, the company is having profitability issues, and things appear to be changing, it might be time to lower it a bit.
Yep. Hellish environment. Very casual and loose though, you don’t have to show up for work on any given day.
I’m not holding them up as an example of where I’d want to work. I’m holding them up as a place where they have the carrot of a very loose professional environment, but high performance expectations that mean you’ll have to have a lot of discipline to succeed.