[barrkel]

Wellbeing, even when it's sincere, is a top-down effort - as in way up the tree-tops - and usually raining down diagonally from a different org.

Meanwhile, down on the leaves of the org tree, you have delivery pressure from users, peers, and so on. If the pressure is high, no amount of messaging about wellbeing will make any difference. Taking time off, whether it's some kind of leave or for some wellbeing meetings of some kind, just takes time out of your workday, resulting in increased pressure because now you're even further behind.

It's quite hard not to become cynical about the disconnect between aspirational messaging and these pressures.

There are answers, but they require cultural and managerial enforcement. Heroism needs to be discouraged. Delivery slippage and failure to make dates need to be seen as organizational process and planning failures, and not as individual failures: feedback that schedules are too tight, expectations are unsustainably high, resourcing isn't right.

If your team or org has a culture of heroism - people risking burnout, working into the night, on weekends, on holidays, to make deadlines - stop it. Don't reward it. It's not sustainable, it creates peer pressure to do the same, and it is one of the most damaging things you can do to employees' wellbeing.

[granshaw]

Let me tell you, delivery pressure exists even right at the very top. You think there’s no pressure as a CEO/COO beholden to 30% top line growth this quarter? I sometimes think about being in that position and it seems pretty scary too

[PragmaticPulp]

Delivery pressure increases as you go higher in the management structure.

The most stressful part is that as you transition from IC to manager and work your way up the org chart, you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself. More responsibility, less direct influence.

Some managers struggle with this pressure and resort to trying to make their teams feel as much of the pressure as possible. Good managers learn how to set a healthy cadence, manage expectations upward, and keep a healthy but reasonable amount of delivery pressure on the team.

There is no realistic scenario where teams have zero delivery pressure, but it needs to be kept in balance. Burning everyone out all the time only works if you have a constant stream of replacement employees as everyone leaves, but then you lose institutional knowledge and reputation tanks. Managers who use these tactics need to be coached or removed from the company.

[cjrp]

> you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself

You're definitely less able to do the work yourself, but ideally you can still influence the outcome by getting the right people to do the work and making sure they're not blocked, etc.

[lazide]

You can if you’re thinking clearly and able to be a good manager that can attract those people. Easy to fall down the hole of overwork, over stress, over pressure others.

[telmo]

Yes, but the typical CEO/COO does not have to worry about their family becoming homeless if they lose their job. Let us not be disingenuous about the stakes here.

[belval]

Employees targeted by workplace wellbeing efforts are employees that need to be retained, almost always because of limited availability (see software). Let's no kid ourselves into thinking that in 2021 a software engineer will go homeless if they lose their job.

[ErikVandeWater]

Software engineers can go bankrupt on healthcare costs alone. Either for them, or their family. Losing a job on top of high healthcare costs can force bankruptcy.

[pdimitar]

That, my friend, is called a privilege and a filter bubble.

I envy you how you have no idea how many devs are almost literal slaves. Not me, but I know plenty.

[belval]

That statement does not make sense, if the devs you are referring to have no work mobility why are their employers even doing "workplace wellbeing"?

[pdimitar]

To deflect responsibility and employee resentment to other people. They don't care whether their almost-slaves are happy at the workplace but they want to maintain the status quo because even for them, losing devs and retraining new ones is costly.

[danaris]

Ah, yes. The pressure to deliver on specific growth targets in a nearly-completely arbitrary marketplace, which, if met, will result in massive compensation here, and if missed, will result in....massive compensation, then a shift to doing the same thing somewhere else for also-massive compensation.

Truly, my heart bleeds for the plight of the beleaguered CEO.

[shoto_io]

I came here to say exactly that. There is pressure everywhere. CEOs are scared of boards. Boards are scared of shareholders. It's just not that visible because there is no tool like "OfficeVibe" showing this transparently.

Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.

[geofft]

Stop having boards and shareholders then.

Or, at least tell them, our growth target this year is 2%, our growth max is 10%, if we grow more than that I'm concerned about the pressure on my employees and my goal is to have a great and sustainable place to work and not to fill the universe with paperclips, and I'm going to start laying off sales and marketing if we're taking on more commitments than we can handle. We're not letting you into the board if you disagree with it, and you'd better price this assumption into the stock if you want to hold stock.

You don't have to grow forever just because you're a company.

(I think I've heard companies register as a public benefit corporation to make it easier to push back on growth-seeking entryists.)

[PeterisP]

I don't understand what the target audience of your suggestion is - it's certainly not something CEOs, managers or employees can do.

I mean, there's a strict hierarchy there of who answers to whom and who gets to choose who to work with.

If the CEO tells the board "our growth target this year is 2%, our growth max is 10%, if we grow more than that I'm concerned about the pressure on my employees and my goal is to have a great and sustainable place to work and not to fill the universe with paperclips" then the board is likely to answer "it seems that our goals are not aligned, you'll be replaced with someone who does not share your concerns". If the board tells something like that to shareholders, then there's going to be a shareholders' meeting to replace the board.

"We're not letting you into the board if you disagree with it" - who's "we"? CEO's certainly can't say that unless they happen to be majority shareholders since e.g. founding the company; CEOs don't get to veto who comes on board, the board gets to choose who will be appointed CEO.

"you'd better price this assumption into the stock if you want to hold stock." - those who bought the stock get to set the rules including changing most company bylaws, so it's a legitimate tactic to buy stock in a company that's focused on being a great workplace instead of growth (i.e. the stock is likely to be cheap due "pricing in that assumption"), then destroy that assumption and replace the management to focus on growth, and sell the (now more expensive) stock. And it's very likely to happen since there are organizations whose whole business is to identify such opportunities and execute on them.

You don't have to grow forever just because you're a company, you're required to try to grow forever because the company shareholders want to. Companies can register as a public benefit corporation iff shareholders choose to do so, it's certainly not a way for someone to stop having shareholders.

[geofft]

The target audience of my suggestion is founders who don't yet have board members or CEOs who currently have like-minded board members, and who don't currently have public ownership.

You're right, once you've given up ownership to the public, it's a little too late for the current legal entity. But it's not too late to quit your job and start a new workplace.

[PeterisP]

Okay, that makes sense. However, that's plausible only if the founders can afford to start a new workplace from their savings alone without ever attracting external investment. A fully bootstrapped company can keep full control, but any significant investment will require the company to cede that control and have a "standard" board structure that can ensure that the interests of the owners are taken into acocunt.

[Grustaf]

In other words, founders without investors. They seldom have a lot of employees though.

[_huayra_]

I wonder if anyone works in a worker cooperative software company. I'd imagine there are some, but I wonder what kinds of software they do / products they make.

From what I've read about co-ops, I would definitely love to work at one one day. Even having to work more hours would feel more meaningful because I'd by benefitting my own bottom line in a way, not just going towards the CEO's private island fund.

[ryanchants]

I've actually thought about starting one. It seems like a software consultancy would probably be the best fit.

[eitland]

I work for a employee owned software consultancy in Oslo, Norway.

It is in deed ideal in many ways or ay least has been while I've worked there.

(It doesn't hurt either though that it is the first place I've worked for more than two - three years without spotting an a__hole or two. Take this into account.)

[_huayra_]

Yes it seems like software consultancy would be the most obvious choice. I wonder if such a structure could expand to build a complicated B2B product, for instance. The example that comes to mind is some sort of enterprise wifi / networking thing. Could a co-op grow to encompass a manufacturing supply chain?

I just wonder how one would handle this beyond ~Dunbar's number. I've only heard of the company that makes Gore-tex handle this in a creative way [0], essentially splintering organizations into separate orgs once they became large enough.

[0] https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2011/06/21/dunbars_number_span...

[Narnach]

Yep, I think for long term sustainability we need many more B Corps, because otherwise we’re all working ourselves to the bone for private equity companies (which often seem to be the aggressive profit seeking shareholders).

There is a lot of value in being good for your people, the environment and the rest of your supply chain.

[vageli]

Do you mean B Corps as benefit corporations defined by some state statutes, or those certified to be B corporations by B Lab certification?

[shoto_io]

Well, it depends what you want to achieve I guess. Apple and the like are very, very successful. And not because the pressure there is low. Quite the opposite.

[ghaff]

A private company can do more or less what the owners want. Of course, they'll probably have less access to capital and employees should expect commensurate compensation/no opportunity for public stock appreciation/etc.

[kenjackson]

And there are people who say we’re paid well. There’s always someone who thinks you need to suck it up because of how much you get paid.

[shoto_io]

I’m not saying it’s fair. I’m simply articulating what most people think, I believe.

[ganzuul]

Shareholder liability is much too limited.

[shoto_io]

Liability for what? Burn-outs? They are liable. When the company goes bust they lose their money.

[patrickk]

If the case of CD Projekt Red with the recent Cyberpunk 2077 game is anything to go by, the shareholders will get large bonuses while the cannon fodder get mandatory crunch time, stress, overwork, are forced to ship out shoddy work etc. Of course the bonuses are due to the companies prior good reputation so it remains to be seen whether or not that continues. But this situation is quite typical in the games industry and most likely others too

[ganzuul]

Don't a lot of those employees have options?

[ganzuul]

Unless they lose more it's not liability.

Ed: I can't take the first question seriously... Is it really a serious question?

[shoto_io]

Yes it is! I wouldn't even know how to measure the responsibility of a shareholder. What if I own just 1 stock of Apple? Am I then liable? I don't get it

[inter_netuser]

I’ll take it with a golden parachute.

Why not? Can’t lose.

[koonsolo]

As a leader, you will have to decide if you push a short or long term vision.

When it's short term, put pressure.

When it's long term, plan.

In a sense, a company run by the owner is more inclined to think long term than one where some CEO takes the wheel for 5 years.

[boringg]

100%. However the bias for people to write comments are through the lens they see the world. Most people are in the middle to lower strata of an organization (just as a numbers part) therefore they only see their own lens.

That and a general narrative from the news media that C-Suite has it pretty good relative to the rest of the world (financially they definitely do).

[chasd00]

you know, now that i think about it, all the tears shed on conference calls i've been on have been from either senior management or directors. The pressure at the level is pretty intense, everyone is nipping at your heels to expose any weakness and take your spot.

[joefife]

Of course there is. But I'd hope the CEO revives compensation to make that worth while.

[tails4e]

I agree. We're inundated with wellbeing emails and events, and while I appreciate the effort, it is just a token as only the lucky few with spare time can go to these things. When the balance is way off, taking more time for such meetings feel like a distraction rather than a fix. What was great was one Friday off per month, for the last year. It was just so nice to have a 3 day weekend so reguarly.

[bombcar]

This is the takeaway - it has to be REAL and not just boil down to a few emails and some seminars.

And the only real way to make it real is for management, starting at the Board, being willing to take some pain - real pain like "we didn't get X done because we were concerned about employee wellbeing" instead of the "pain" of a budget item for some consulting company.