[mji]

> you say some filler to get someone incapable of understanding what it is that you're doing off your back for 24 more hours has consistently been one of the most useless and unpleasant parts of the job

This sucks for the 50% or so who are like you, but there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common)

[aprilthird2021]

> there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common)

Idk I barely ever work with people who are like this, and if people become like this, it's usually obvious to everyone that it's happened and they get a talking to in the office then get shown the door

[littlecranky67]

I assume you are in a country with fire-at-will policies. In Germany you have a job security, you can't just fire people without a reason. The difficulty is actually proving their incompetence or unwillingness to work. Thus in my experience (working a self-employed contractor in Germany) this group is far larger than 50%. Also one of my reasons why no good software comes out of germany (and this includes SAP, as long as you show me a single end-user that is happy with working with SAP software).

[goodpoint]

The ability to deliver a 30 second summary in a daily standup has very little to do with real productivity.

[aprilthird2021]

Yes I work in the US but my company has extreme time wasting practices designed to have engineers explain every thing they do and why it's worth it. I never found this helpful and find it causes more problems than it solves.

[dd_xplore]

Incompetent workers migrating to the US is a big issue.

[latency-guy2]

Why is incapability to make progress at work tasks not a valid reason for job dismissal in Germany? Unless I am misunderstanding something

[littlecranky67]

You have to prove it is the employees fault by intentionally not completing the task. Incompetence or incapability is not the employees fault, because well, you hired them and judged their ability - probably due to their education (it is a little more complex than that of course). As a concrete example, if you have a CS degree from the 80s and job as a COBOL programer and your employer decides to assign you to a new team doing react+js, the employee is still formally qualified. You couldn't fire him for incompetence, just because a 22 year old bootcamp graduate delivers 10x the results.

[TexanFeller]

Those people should not have been hired, or should have been let go at 6 months when that became obvious. The real solution to this problem doesn't fit with most management methodology though.

[SonOfKyuss]

It only makes sense to fire someone who needs to be nudged into getting their job done if you can find a replacement at a similar cost who doesn’t.

[jwHollister]

1+1 is often less than 1.

The mediocre unmotivated person is dragging down the other, killing their motivation. You'd be better off without them even if you couldn't replace them.

[therein]

Just if there were a way to filter people at hiring and perhaps some way to choose to not employ them after doing so...