[smachiz]

Yes and no. There's another view where employees set actually ambitious goals and only get 90% of the way there and are still rewarded and the company also wins.

If you are hitting your goals every quarter, that is a great thing - but I tend to agree, at the other end of the spectrum you have people setting easily achieved goals to check a box.

The real issue is weeding out people just there to check a box when you're small, and when you're large, it's designing a system that internalizes a lot of your employees are there to check a box.

[shortrounddev2]

the vast majority of workers do not internalize empathy for their company. They are there for the paycheck. You can either thrash against the entirety of the human race and demand that people lie to your face about how much they care about the company's goals, or you can create a system which takes advantage of the self-serving nature of your employees so that their goals align with your own

[itsoktocry]

>They are there for the paycheck.

Well the paycheck ends when the company folds. "Doing good work" is in the best interest of all parties.

[zer8k]

For years I was the one who went above and beyond. I thought of brand new ideas, approaches, and wrote so much code some weeks would just fly by.

You know what happened?

1. I got even more work. So much more that I no longer had the freedom to explore and think.

2. The carrot on the stick would be re-attached to a longer stick. It was never enough. I was performing "exceptionally" but my yearly review would never move me closer to my goal.

3. I would end up getting tied down in a bunch of stuff from (1) that ended up leading to burnout because I was no longer working in a place where I felt useful and needed.

4. I still got laid off.

Now, I just go to work and come home. I am pissed I even have to do pagerduty because 9/10 times the problem is someone wasn't given enough time, creating a bug, which was then subsequently never addressed because aGiLe methodology says you only move forward.

"High power" CEOs and PMP-certified project morons are the reason why people's care for your product ends with their paycheck. No amount of "demo days", "email updates", or metrics will fix it. I, and everyone who is like me, will game your metrics until they stop being useful. It's not malicious. It's an optimization. If you want me to do exactly what your metrics ask I will. Nothing more, nothing less. You pay me for 80 hours a check, you get 80 hours. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don't want me to think I won't. Afterall, I'd rather save my brain cycles for things I enjoy. You're paying me to squander my talent. That's YOUR problem. Not mine.

[BowBun]

> Well the paycheck ends when the company folds

So, you get another job. With great odds of increasing your salary more than you could at your current position. There's really few downsides for workers in having this attitude.

[ipsento606]

> Well the paycheck ends when the company folds. "Doing good work" is in the best interest of all parties.

Option A is being an average worker, not trying especially hard, not thinking about work outside of work hours, and having absolutely no emotional investment whatsoever in the wellbeing of the company - and potentially having to get a new job in a few years time, often with a pay increase

Option B is "doing good work", "going the extra mile", "being a rock star", putting in lots extra time and effort and emotional energy (for years!) - just on the tiny chance that your particular efforts will be the difference between the company folding vs. being successful

Option A sounds a hell of a lot better to me than option B.

[shortrounddev2]

There are more companies. I also tend to abandon ship before the company folds. I left before the 100mil loss and subsequent layoff.

Additionally, at such a large company (1500 people), my individual efforts have little to no effect on whether or not a multinational corporation goes under.

[nonameiguess]

This is the "I swear communism works, you just need people who actually care about worker life quality and aren't tyrants to lead the revolution" school of org theory.

[smachiz]

I mean, that's also probably true. Best form of government is a benevolent dictator and all that...

More that you have to have realistic expectations when you structure an org, that people doing the work are going to pad and sandbag in successive tiers up, and people in charge of outcomes are going to push for bigger and more down.

[nottorp]

I would have laughed at that if i hadn't lived the first 14 years of my life in a communist country...

[93po]

Does capitalism work?

[mitthrowaway2]

Interestingly, individual firms behave more as centrally-planned economies, and market activity is mostly absent inside of them. This is a long-studied curiosity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

[Propelloni]

The book _The People's Republic of Walmart_ by Leigh Phillips <sp?> and Michael Rozowski <sp?> makes a compelling argument why employing the same technologies companies use to manage supply chains and decision making on a state level could actually produce a working communist system.

Of course, we first would need to agree that this is desirable and that's probably the point where it breaks down.