[jasonlotito]

This is from part 2, but wow...

> Do not use mushy words like ... ownership,

If you think ownership is just mushy words, you've never given someone ownership. Giving someone ownership isn't just mush. It's real, and can have real impact. Of course, this also literally means giving them some actual, real, legal ownership in that project and it's results.

This is especially hypocritical when paired with an "actual example"

> The intended outcome is to increase the rate at which we create value for customers, facilitate easier troubleshooting, decrease downtime, enable more developers to work across different code bases seamlessly and improve developer morale.

Talk about mush. That's just one part of a completely mushy "behavioral statement" that just reeks of insincerity and mush. This is also covered under specifics, and the entire thing lacks ANY specifics.

Give them ownership. Real ownership, not this fake "ownership" that clearly comes from someone who doesn't know what the word means. Give them power to drive direction and results, and reward them for that.

There are more things that could be said about this, but honestly, reading that, it just screamed hypocrisy.

[SlavikCA]

Ownership becomes mushy word, when you get to own duty and lack the power to make decisions.

Manager: you need to take ownership, meaning that you figure out requirements (and get the blame when requirements changes), you make the product and project decision (and get the blame, when for outcomes), you find all the people needed to figure out deploy details and no, you can't make decision about what we're using in production.

Employee: I'm better figure out how to cover my butt...

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

That line you cherry-picked is in the context of what someone else wants:

> Here is an example I worked out with a real person, imagining what they hoped the Marias on their team would do more often. In their mind, this is what "going above and beyond" looks like.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the author also thinks the statement in your second pull quote is mushy. It sounds about as mushy as the "fake ownership" stuff.

[xyzelement]

I disagree with you. I spent most of my career in a great company that is privately owned (famous billionaire.) The company pays extremely well but does not provide any sort of "legal ownership" as you describe.

Still, I felt massive ownership of stuff I've .. well .. "owned" and I benefited financially and emotionally from it. I am no longer at the company but I have pride in what I've built there and the fact that it still exists and generates tremendous value.

On the financial side of things, people (leadership) think of certain people as owning/driving certain things, because we do. So even though I am not the legal owner of platform X, you go get to have some good reviews for having created and nurtured that thing which is now creating goodness.

After I left the company, my wife and I were in the south of Argentina on an ice trek. Started talking to a fellow trekker, who turns out what in finance. I told him that I used to be in finance and had built systems X and Y - and he was like "you're the guy?! I use those things every day, they are game changing in our industry." That felt very good.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a chunk of equity in that company but it doesn't matter - I am still very happy in how "ownership mentality" worked out in terms of $ and pride.

To be clear it takes two to tango. I'd never operate like this in a place that didn't reward me for operating this way.

[Jerrrry]

>>I told him that I used to be in [z] and had built systems X and Y - and he was like "you're the guy?! I use those things every day, they are game changing in our industry." That felt very good.

It is taken a bit for granted, developers' massive ability to impact the workflow, and thus morale, for a significant amount of people; for better or for worse.

Knowing my 15 minute coffee HTML exercise can save 500+ people 10+ minutes daily, with a near instant feedback loop, was about as resolved as I could had been.

It plays into the need to be needed, the inverse of the fear of being replaced, the most basic innate thought in our psyche's.

[hedora]

The stuff you quoted as “mush” can be continuously quantified as part of normal ongoing business.

Legal ownership can’t be quantified in that way. You’d need to go to court and have a judge decide who really owns the product and liability, and then evaluate that person / entity’s job performance.

To use an aviation analogy, you’re proposing replacing randomly spot checking of assemblies for properly tightened bolts, etc., with the legal shell game that Boeing currently uses.

The spot checks would have been less expensive upfront, and also alerted them to their current issues 5-10 years earlier. At that point it would have been trivial to fix.

[jf22]

How are you using the word hypocrisy here?