[baz00]

A finding I had when I took a management role was that it's really hard actually getting anyone to do a good job of something. This is utterly frustrating. So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required. I've found that the teams usually divide into functional elites that do the work unattended and I'm dealing with micromanaging the rest and trying to educate them.

I've spoken to managers in other sectors and it's the same for them too.

[scottLobster]

It's an issue of incentives, and sadly my experience is it's often not the immediate management that's the problem, it's structural issues with the company that low-level managers have little if any say in.

Speaking for my own experience, program-level and above management often doesn't put their money where their mouth is. Maintenance is chronically under-funded, well-articulated and respectful feedback is ignored with a thank-you. Hell more than once I've been forced to spend an entire day in a conference room with all the other relevant devs to do a "Root Cause Analysis" of a given recent crisis, and we took it seriously each time and came up with genuine solutions. But said solutions required more hardware, more maintenance, more stuff that no one wanted to budget for.

You work in that environment long enough, you learn to clock in and clock out. If you allow yourself to give a shit you'll just be constantly tearing your hair out. Those of us with some objective sense of professionalism usually evolve into the functional elites you mention, but I completely understand those who go the other way.

[rgifford]

Sociopaths, the clueless and losers. This great essay analyzing The Office argues that in a modern business context you're one of the three. [1]

Those "functional elites" you mentioned? Usually they're working 20-50% more for 0-25% percent more pay. They're called the clueless because they've been conned into working more for less, usually under some clever guise like company being family or company values or the promise of a promotion that's always a cycle or two away. The essay then goes on to argue that losers are really just the clueless once they "get it." Losers understand the treadmill and lean into the tedium always aiming to save their time by playing dumb as needed. Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power and switching up how they talk to folks based on whether they're clueless, losers or fellow sociopaths.

Sociopaths speak in powertalk -- an exchange of information on clear terms. It's usually veiled because the clueless and losers listen in and it makes them feel uncomfortable. If it weren't veiled it would probably sound like lawyer-jargon with lots of plausible deniability, conditions, arguing and explicit shared definitions.

Losers and clueless speak in their own languages based on who they're talking with. It's basically just lots of trying to feel okay... except for when it comes to losers speaking with sociopaths. There the only communication is straight talk, which is basically just direct requests of a master-slave dynamic (i.e. "do this"). The essay is well worth the read!

1. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...

[vasco]

Not every place in life is a place of struggle and fight. Some people actually enjoy their work. This just sounds like "class struggle" and "proletariat and bourgeoisie" under different names. Also thinking of your colleagues and people as "elites", "losers" and the "clueless" gives me some understanding to the state of mind of who writes this.

To keep it lighter, in the companies I've worked in the architypes of people were more like:

- The "anger problem that shouts every once in a while" guy

- The "chronic nervous person that is paralyzed by impostor syndrome"

- The "i find more problems than solutions" guy

- The "i'm here to socialize, make friends, maybe get married"

- The "i gave up 10 years ago and just want my paycheck"

- The "i'm a kid learning everything I can and am just excited to be here"

- The "i'm working on my true passion outside of work while hanging out here with you guys" etc etc

People have their own lives, not everything is just a power play of losers and elites.

I'll be honest, even if the world was exactly as you described, which it isn't, I'd choose to not see it that way so that my life wouldn't be such a bleak existance. Rather be a naive happy fool than enlightned and depressed.

[j-bos]

The article uses struggly words like sociopaths and losers, but defines them very differently from common use, often the 'losers' have the most fulfilling and rounded lives, i.e. true winners

- The "chronic nervous person that is paralyzed by impostor syndrome" - clueless

- The "i find more problems than solutions" guy - clueless

- The "i'm here to socialize, make friends, maybe get married" - loser

- The "i gave up 10 years ago and just want my paycheck" - loser

- The "i'm working on my true passion outside of work while hanging out here with you guys" etc etc - loser

It's a rough model of org interactions with poorly named categories.

[krapp]

>The article uses struggly words like sociopaths and losers, but defines them very differently from common use, often the 'losers' have the most fulfilling and rounded lives, i.e. true winners

They're "losers" from the point of view of capitalism and corporate hierarchy. If you're not committing your life to ruthlessly climb the ladder to grasp at wealth and power by any means and you don't buy into the game or its rules, you're basically a defective cog, a useless part of the machine.

If you're unaware that success is a rigged lottery designed to find and promote sociopaths and actually believe that reward comes with hard work, determination and passion, you're clueless. A mark. A rube. If you're smart enough, with enough abuse you'll eventually wake up and become a loser.

[robertlagrant]

> They're "losers" from the point of view of capitalism and corporate hierarchy. If you're not committing your life to ruthlessly climb the ladder to grasp at wealth and power by any means and you don't buy into the game or its rules, you're basically a defective cog, a useless part of the machine.

You have too narrow a definition of capitalism and of corporate hierarchy. What you describe is one outworking of them, but not the outworking.

[j-bos]

yes.

[KirillPanov]

> Sociopaths break out of the cycle by operating only with concern for power

There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.

[aleph_minus_one]

> There are other ways to break out of the cycle. Keep looking.

What are these ways (besides founding a startup or something similar)?

[sph]

Working for oneself is how we're meant to work, not to be a cog in someone else's machine. It is sad that for the past ~100 years it has become the norm and we idolize entrepreneurs, as if they are mythical creatures.

[harimau777]

Many people lack the business skills, resources, or temperament for starting their own business. So this is certainly an option but not a panacea.

[Draiken]

I hard disagree here. That's what capitalism wants us to evolve into: individual enterprises. But no, there's nothing inherent in the universe or human nature that determines individualism as the true way of working.

You don't have to go far to see people contributing to bigger causes that are not owned by someone else. Open source is a great example of this.

The main reason people idolize entrepreneurs is because they symbolize capitalism's perfect individual. There's a reason society today wants everyone to be an "entrepreneur", but it's not some higher meaning. It's just capitalism.

[unicornmama]

> It's an issue of incentives

Please do not just oversimplfy a challenging problem into just "incentives".

Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do.

It's not just a matter of incentives. If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people, you will not get results.

The right approach here is to avoid hiring these peoples (not a perfect science). In absence of that, provide feedback expetations to provide a resaonable opportuntiy to change their behavior, then move them to other projects or terminate them.

And there are organization where non of this is possible - like government and many corporate IT.

[anonymous_sorry]

> Some people lack resilience, and they will collapse under the pressures of professional and personal life. Some people lack ambition and drive, they don't want to exceed their level of productivity no matter what you do.

Few people don't want to improve their productivity. Improving your productivity makes you more valuable. But plenty of people don't want to work harder. There is of course a difference!

I deal poorly with stress, and am thankful I have reached a point in my career where I can earn pretty good money in positions where I'm not pushing myself too hard.

I enjoy learning of course, and do want to get better. But that's in balance with the demands of family and the happiness and fulfillment I find in other pursuits.

I have been promoted reasonably quickly over the past 5 years without playing political games. My productivity has improved through experience, and it seems like that got recognised through promotion. But I guess it's possible I got lucky with managers making bad decisions in my favour.

I don't know if you'd want to hire me. I'm not sure I'd want to work for you. Do you find success with your approach compared to peers with a more empathetic approach to management?

[BlargMcLarg]

>If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people,

Then you didn't offer the right incentives and opportunities. GP simplified it correctly.

Most people aren't lazy or malicious in the face of good rewards, they just realize there's no point working 5x for 1.1x the income after putting in 3x the effort fighting for that 10% raise. If you can't filter them out through hiring practices or termination, you're doing something wrong or you're experiencing the downside of supply/demand.

The only non-trivial thing here is the owners pushing the downside of that market back onto the managers to magically solve, because we all know saying "that's not possible" is going to make you the target of 'disciplinary actions' instead. Welcome to the catch-22 that is management, enjoy your stay.

[rndmwlk]

>So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required.

I've found that's due to completely backwards incentives. Most people don't give a fuck because they aren't rewarded properly. If I do an excellent job and complete whatever task I'm given well ahead of schedule the only reward I get is more work. Even if I sandbag a bit and do an excellent job and complete on time, often the reward for being "better" is more responsibility or more difficult tasks (without compensation). Some folks want that, many do not. Dollars to doughnuts if your team members know that quality work on schedule will be actually rewarded then you'll find more of those members capable of producing that quality of work.

[xracy]

Honestly, this sounds to me a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want people to care about things, you have to listen to what they care about... I can influence some of what people care about as a manager, but it's long-term steering a spaceship a few degrees at a time.

I think too many people see managing a team as "managing the people to do good work." When, in fact, managing is much more about managing the right projects/opportunities into your team's scope. I very rarely tell people what to do, because ultimately, I don't have any power to change what they do. And they'll respect me, and the project, more if they think they're making the decision instead of me.

[mhss]

> If you want people to care about things, you have to listen to what they care about

Ultimately we are all paid to solve the problems the business needs solved, even if the solution is boring and not 'exciting' or 'cutting edge' tech (which is often). The best people finds excitement and challenge in almost any work and are self-motivated. Sure, as a manager you should try your very best to shield the team from crap work and have a healthy balance, understand their interests and find opportunities that match (even outside your team), but ultimately also work is work and is not always, or even often, possible to have super exciting bleeding edge work that fits everyone's interests. Even harder when people have a very narrow set of interests or they don't even know, they're picky, etc.

> I very rarely tell people what to do, because ultimately, I don't have any power to change what they do.

Are you a manager? you very much should be able to change what they do if you are. If project x comes along with twice the value of the current project someone is working on, you very much should be able to preempt what someone is working on. It's not ideal and we all try to avoid project churn, but it happens and needs to be handled effectively by the manager.

> And they'll respect me, and the project, more if they think they're making the decision instead of me.

I mean, delegation and ownership are fine as a mechanism to boost engagement and career growth, but you can't delegate everything (otherwise what are you doing again?). Also, what's up with the "if they think" wording here. Are they making the decision or not, are you tricking them into thinking they're making the decision?

[xracy]

> Ultimately we are all paid to solve the problems the business needs solved, even if the solution is boring and not 'exciting' or 'cutting edge' tech (which is often). The best people finds excitement and challenge in almost any work and are self-motivated.

I think the best managers are able to find relevant challenges/projects for their reports interests. Everything you're saying says to me, that you depend on in "good employees" is broadly something I see as being an option in "all employees". And I see it as a failing of me, as a manager, if I can't bridge that gap for all of my reports.

> Are you a manager? you very much should be able to change what they do if you are. If project x comes along with twice the value of the current project someone is working on, you very much should be able to preempt what someone is working on.

Yes, I am a manager. I can absolutely try and sell people on a new project. I can't make them work on it. When I was an IC, I ultimately worked on what I thought was most important, and would slowly move to projects that people asked me to work on, (but I didn't want to work on). I was an effective IC, so people couldn't complain. Don't see any reason that wouldn't hold true for the ICs that I work with, now that I'm a manager.

> I mean, delegation and ownership are fine as a mechanism to boost engagement and career growth, but you can't delegate everything (otherwise what are you doing again?). Also, what's up with the "if they think" wording here. Are they making the decision or not, are you tricking them into thinking they're making the decision?

Did you read the article? At least in engineering, if you think you're going to make the decisions just because "you're the manager", then I think you're managing backwards. If I need to make a decision, I'm in charge of convincing people it's the right decision. But I also have to listen to those people when they tell me their concerns, and change course if their concerns are reasonable.

It sounds to me, if you're a manager, that you're only an effective manager for people who are already succesful. I think the thing that makes someone a good manager, is that they can make anyone effective. Everyone can grow and flourish under you.

[mhss]

> if you think you're going to make the decisions just because "you're the manager", then I think you're managing backwards.

You're making it sound black and white when is not. You do make some decisions. Judgement is required around what decisions can be made by you (+ provide reasoning) and which ones require building consensus or just be delegated.

> I think the thing that makes someone a good manager, is that they can make anyone effective. Everyone can grow and flourish under you.

If that were true good managers never would PIP or let go anyone, and that's just not true. The opposite is true. If you think everyone can flourish and never let go poor performers you're the one doing a disservice to your team.

[re-thc]

> Ultimately we are all paid to solve the problems the business needs solved, even if the solution is boring and not 'exciting' or 'cutting edge' tech (which is often).

Sadly, we're not. And that's the gist of the problem.

We're paid to do whoever's in power wants us to do and it might not solve any business need. Often some manager or otherwise decides to implement something that might not even be what customers want. It's not about the challenge or anything like that. A lot of people are frustrated at implementing things that make no sense.

> If project x comes along with twice the value of the current project someone is working on, you very much should be able to preempt what someone is working on

Only if think you control your destiny. Your manager above may have their own direction or ideals.

[makeitdouble]

> Ultimately we are all paid to solve the problems the business needs solved

There's usually leeway in this: the business has many needs and they get prioritized depending mostly on perception (project impact projections are usually fuzzy with no concrete evidence to back them up)

A manager can be good at pitching interesting/rewarding problems to solve, and get the higher ups' buyin to prioritize them over more boring asinine work.

[starwatch]

I've found that culture is king in terms of governing what's shipped. From day 1 new hires are looking at what their peers are doing, and more importantly what's being tolerated by the manager and the rest of the team.

As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly. I point out opportunities for improvement, and more importantly I call out excellent solutions. The excellence can be in the form of elegance or just hard graft finding a bug. It's a small action that's additive and doesn't interrupt work. But it does wonders at setting the tone.

One thing I've found very hard indeed is if the team you manage is surrounded by peers that "don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality". However, if you reinforce your culture of excellence it becomes resilient to it ... and then the tricky thing becomes avoiding arrogance within the team.

[BlargMcLarg]

>As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly.

If you did this in an environment with undercapacity, with the exception of being a very well respected or lead dev, I'd eventually call you out for being a snake trying to set the tone of development with nothing better to do. I had a colleague do this and its obnoxious. Especially because

>reinforce your culture of excellence

is almost entirely subjective.

[starwatch]

I can see how that'd be weird for everyone to do it (unless they're themselves reviewing the PR). But in this context I am the engineering manager so it's my job to have oversight - so maybe that helps in my team?

One other bit that's probably worth mentioning is that I'm quick to point out when I've learnt something new from the PR in question. I guess I bundle that with "call out excellent solutions" - but it's a slightly different thing.

> is almost entirely subjective.

Of course. But even the regular discussion of what amounts to excellence helps move teams in that direction. What we're trying to get away from is "don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality" which exists in bucket-loads in giant corporations and I want my teams to have no part of it.

[re-thc]

> So many people actually don't give a fuck if what they do works or is of merchantable quality as long as it's perceived they are working for the hours required.

Well they are paid for the hours required. That's the problem (as some commenters have already mentioned).

It's not just the pay. It is often unfair. It might not be you but I've seen plenty of managers reward those that do a lot less compared to others. When people start to experience these things, how. do you expect them to care?

[zgluck]

Making software is a bit special in that you can't really make use of people like that. In e.g. a supermarket you can.

[baz00]

That is exactly the problem. Business assumes highly technical people are fungible. They are not. There are very few highly competent people on the market. Not enough to cover realistic requirements for business. So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks.

[lylejantzi3rd]

> So they hire anyone who makes duck noises assuming they are ducks.

Isn't it more accurate to say they hire anybody making duck noises assuming they are wolves? Technical interviews in no way identify the skills developers are going to use in their daily work.

[baz00]

Finding technically competent people is easy. Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.

[lylejantzi3rd]

> Finding technically competent people is easy.

This is not what I've been told by many, many hiring managers over the past few years.

> Finding people who continue to give a fuck the moment their trial period is over is difficult.

Well... yeah? I've been saying for years now that if passion is a hard requirement to getting a job, then you're begging your applicants to lie to you.

[re-thc]

> Well... yeah? I've been saying for years now that if passion is a hard requirement to getting a job, then you're begging your applicants to lie to you.

Caring about the work is not passion. Most of the time work involves politics, paperwork and dealing with all sorts of things that people don't like. I doubt anyone is passionate about this type of thing.

[baz00]

It's really easy. The problem they have is finding technically competent people in the desired budget.

[hajile]

It's demotivating when you know you're doing 80% of the work, but getting paid the same as the other 5 people on the team. When a company finds a great dev, they seldom have the sense to pay that person enough to make them feel motivated to outperform their colleagues.

[whywhywhywhy]

Used to be "You can pay people to show up but you can't pay people to care" now it's more "You can pay people... they might show up"

[brmgb]

Of course you can. Managing people mean having to deal with people of various skill levels and with different things motivating them. You have to find way to make it work and that means finding way to get something out of people who are not intrinsically motivated. No one said it was easy.

[zgluck]

Eh, can, sure. Should, meh.

[harimau777]

That's kind of why I want to be a manager. As a developer I'm tired of having to work with code written from people who don't give a fuck.

At least as a manager, it wouldn't be my direct problem. If the developers want to crunch to fix last minute issues because they didn't do it right the first time then that's their decision; but I don't want to be part of it anymore.