[gradstudent]

> how do you pick which two?

You (=hypothetical manager, please excuse second-person tense) use your managerial skills to make a decision, which considers metrics and other contributing factors. Then you write a justification which you defend, to higher ups and to those who weren't promoted. Because that's your job.

[jjav]

> Then you write a justification which you defend, to higher ups and to those who weren't promoted.

What happens next is this manager gets a low performance rating themselves, for making decisions not backed by metrics. So next year they conform.

[ryandrake]

This "don't make a decision unless it is 100% derived from metrics" mentality I just don't get. A robot could do that. Why is your company out there trying to hire/promote smart managers with good judgment if they don't let those managers apply their brains and judgment? "If employee's measured results > threshold, then reward employee" can be done by a computer. No need for a human manager.

[marcosdumay]

People create process because of the principal agent problem.

The upper managers do that because they think the lower ones are lying or incompetent. A traceable process doesn't lie.

And yeah, it's stupid, and it makes the problem worse. It's the reason nonetheless.

[jjav]

> And yeah, it's stupid, and it makes the problem worse. It's the reason nonetheless.

While that's true, it's also a difficult problem to solve. In tiny organizations like startups where the CEO personally knows everyone and what they do, it's easy.

But as soon as you grow beyond that (and I've been in a number of startups that cross that gap), how do you objectively but fairly handle this? There is no easy answer.

You could go with fully empowering all managers to do as they wish. Trust them to hire, fire and promote correctly. This is great, until you hire some bad managers. And as you grow, it is 100% guaranteed at some point you'll hire bad managers. So then they ruin it for everyone, hiring and promoting their buddies.

And that's how you end up with more objective metrics. Take away some of that freedom, make everyone measure and justify actions based on metrics. It's terrible, but probably better than the alternative.

[eesmith]

Yes, the Nuremberg defense - "I was just following orders" - is one approach.

It's a lot easier than applying back pressure, fighting for your reports, or quitting in solidarity.

"Sorry, Hugo and Maryna, you two only got the Fields medal while Anton and Alain got a Nobel Prize, so we'll have to let you go for your under-performance."

[Arainach]

Here's how this works in practice:

* Corporate says "here are the buckets. They should match at the VP level since that's a large pile of people"

* VPs tell their Directors to match these buckets, who recurse further

* L1/2 Manager Alice says "my team is too small, this isn't how statistics work, I want an exception"

    * Problem #1: the teams with actual low performers will often make similar claims

* If the claim actually gets escalated all the way to the VP, the VP says "tough, fit the buckets".

* Alice is now a troublemaker in VP/Director's eyes

* If Alice and everyone who feels the same way quits in protest, nothing changes except that the org is full of yes men, none of whom are even trying to push for changes in the system any more.

[eesmith]

So it's better that Alice stays because ... why?

[Arainach]

Because Alice is a good manager who cares about their reports and is otherwise supporting them, advocating for them, pushing for changes to team culture, etc.?

The fact that they can't control this one thing does not mean that they should just abandon the whole company. If Alice finds a company where they can get similar compensation for similar workload without the forced bucketing, perhaps that's a good idea for their mental health, but Alice leaving is a large negative for the team.

[eesmith]

I wrote 'applying back pressure, fighting for your reports, or quitting in solidarity'. Alice leaving was the third of these.

'advocating for them' and 'pushing for changes' are parts of the first two.

When back pressure and fighting for your reports does not work, what do you do then?

As you wrote it, Alice leaving is a large negative for the company to, making it full of yes men, unable to change away from a collision course.

[Arainach]

>When back pressure and fighting for your reports does not work, what do you do then?

Continue fighting the battles you can win. Do your job and do it well. Changing jobs is hard, stressful, unavailable to many people for a variety of reasons, and not guaranteed to improve things. Particularly once you start becoming senior and in management.

If I left a job every time I was faced with a bad situation I would never built up the soft skills or connections to be any good at any connection. Particularly as a first-level manager, where 80% of your job is delivering messages you had no say in but have to own anyway.

[marcosdumay]

Nah, it's better on the long term if she goes work somewhere better.

But changing jobs doesn't happen immediately, and "somewhere better" may be very hard to find.