Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017)

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> (Don't do) Performance reviews

> Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go.

If you are firing someone for performance, you have done a performance review. It's just that it might be entirely in your head or based on office gossip about who appears most productive.

You wouldn't optimise a program without a profiler, so you shouldn't make hire/fire decisions on productivity without some means of measuring productivity. I know it's hard and tends to result in stupid metrics, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.

Idk about the US, but I imagine it's more similar to the EU than the press suggests....

Anyway in most of the EU, by law and by convention^ people don't get fired often. When they do, it's a part of a greater process where a department is reorganized, jobs have been made redundant or somesuch. Firing individuals for below average performance is rare. It needs to be an extreme. If it is dines, it's done as part of a performance review) evaluation process with feedback, time...

The reality is that

^The convention part is important. Regardless of laws, it's very hard to operate a business that's firing a lot. Firing someone is like exiling/outlawing them, to borrow analogies from older societies.

If you try, you'll encounter a huge pile of difficulties. Moral/culture will be one. Politics will be another.

I’ve fired and been fired for sub-par performance. I’m from the EU. Its not that rare at all.

The difference is, it's rarely an on-the-spot firing (at least in the UK). There are usually a few levels of "performance improvement" / "how can we help you get back on track?" before you get anywhere near "you're goneski".

Assuming we're just talking about "not quite the best" work performance here.

It’s really expensive to fire people. Not only do you lose out on the recruiting, the training, the profiling. You will have to do it all over again. I’ve never fired anyone in my entire career in the EU. I do not understand how it’s feasible to do it willy-nilly in the USA. Can anyone tell me that? Or is it much more rare than I think?

Firing is rare in the US. Layoffs (bulk termination of many people at once) are common, and much scarier because of US's weak social safety net.

I've never fired and never been fired for sub-par performance. I'm from the EU. It must be ultra rare then.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal

Everyone is saying "EU" here, but the laws are all national, not at the level of the EU.

It also depends on how you choose to exercise your rights. Many countries have a lot of ways to push back if you are fired, but afaik they aren't automatic.

Usually each worker have management, I mean those guys to whole everybody is reported. In IT I am talking about TLs, PMs and so on. Maybe it's easier just to ask them or even better to have a a personal meeting. Nobody experienced believes in performance reviews, it's a fiction.

Personally I hate performance reviews, but if a formal system doesn't exist people will demand something. In the absence of a system there can be appearances of favoritism and, if the managers aren't disciplined, things like raises and promotions can end up being ad-hoc and random.

That said a performance review system doesn't necessarily completely cure favoritism but it at least leaves a paper trail. It should also force management into thinking about how to structure raises and promotions in a way that they're more evenly and rationally applied.

Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go

This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing. Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that the company also had a different department that did Y.

> Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review'

I have never seen a company implement a performance review:

  - That mattered
  - That would have detected anything
  - That would be more than the obvious

I feel that most performance reviews I've had have been at least pretty decent. Basically just going through what I've done the past 6 month, talking about what I'd like to be working on over the next 6 month and if there's anything that I should work on or might need to help me manage to do those things better. Often there is some sort of checklist that has be worked through, but I always get a few minutes to just talk in general about my work.

that sounds like feedback you should be getting in manager 1:1s, the formal review process isn't necessary

It's not even a performance review; it's just root cause analysis. Something like, "Why isn't Sally meeting her deliverables?" "Because she spends her time doing PM work." "Ok, let's see if she want to transfer roles."

And they were hired for y in the first place.

Your world class Y people should have valued communication. They should raise red flags every time they need management to remove an obstacle in order to increase their productivity and realize their full potential.

They obviously should, but many don't. Some people don't like causing 'trouble', some people just quietly do what they're told, some people are just shy or introvert or have trouble communicating clearly. I good manager should be able to work with and get the most out of these sorts of people as well, without those people also having to the managers job for them.

From your brief description that sounds like a useful meeting. Useful enough to do more often than once or twice per year. But it doesn't really sound like a performance review.

If you retroactively define a performance review as whatever isn't good, of course they are bad.

Indeed some of these rules and policies are ridiculous. I particularly enjoyed my time as a mid-level manager at a large aerospace company where we did stack ranking each year. We had to stack rank an organization that consisted of five departments with over 300 engineers. I was one of the department managers. Each department manager's goal was to get as many of his members ranked as highly as possible. The game theory was thick in those meetings. Unfortunately, one of the other managers had weak game and ended up with poor rankings every year. It seemed very unfair to his better people.

However, this statement in the article is pretty dumb: "If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them but once they started working they proved themselves untrustworthy. That's not rocket science; it's something that happens and is not particularly rare.

"If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them

Or just as likely, "you" didn't hire them. Someone else in the company did based on criteria that are different than yours.

Very good point. Encountered that situation a few times.

Let people work from home at their own whim. Never inquire about their performance. Never document anything related to their performance. Shutter your company in 5 years when you have a bloated payroll, terrible products, and nothing ever gets done on time.

I get that actually managing people and their performance is harshly frowned upon on HN, but it is a very necessary evil. Working in a place where the inmates run the asylum is is not fun either from my experience.

Employees aren't inmates. A place where the employees run the company is a strong organization.

There have been lots of discussions here on HN, personally I think that an employee-run company still needs leadership. And companies can be good for employees without needing to be employee-run.

See for example Valve, there's been a lot written about it, not all of it good:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bos...

https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...

Politics will ALWAYS exist at a workplace.

Adding another one: the advice on "Feedback methods" (don't send out engagement surveys, just walk around and ask people how they're doing) is incredibly hard to get right.

It takes a remarkable amount of trust for a random individual employee to feel confident that they can voice their concerns to management. And that trust takes an enormous amount of effort. If you're a manager and you're not absolutely sure that your employees would feel free to speak their minds, giving them a risk-free way of doing so isn't a bad idea. Employees feeling they can't speak honestly to someone who is in control of their livelihood isn't a "problem with communication", it's the status quo at the majority of companies.

"If you have mediocre people doing mediocre work, you are going to have a mediocre company."

Aren't most people mediocre per definition?

I really hate all this talk about "We want the best of the best!"

Sure you want them, but there aren't enough for all and chances are, if you aren't a really big company, you won't get the few that exist.

You need to shape you company so that you can deliver value to your customers without the need of a few geniuses. Your company should be more than the sum of its (mediocre) employees.

Even more common is "we want the best of the best, but want to pay median wages."

That's a whole other story.

Even IF they all had the money, it won't work.

A lot of articles recommend against formal performance reviews, and in some sense I agree, but it is important to be thoughtful about how you're going to give feedback and work with your employees to help them perform more effectively.

Oftentimes formal performance reviews are replaced with some sort of continual feedback system (whether through an actual formal system or just an informal process), but in my experience a lot of continual feedback systems just turn into a back-patting machine and lose a lot of the constructive criticism that a formal review process can bring out.

Stack-ranking is obviously dumb, and yes, assigning things to a 5 point scale probably is too. But those were never the actually valuable parts of good reviews. You should always find a way to spend time and be thoughtful about where team members are excelling and where they're falling short.

I've worked a few jobs that decided that performance reviews were a pointless exercise and I honestly couldn't have told you what everyone thought of my performance prior to me leaving.

I agree. I have a very good relationship with my boss, we speak about performance and stuff casually all the time. But we also have a formal review once a year, and it’s really helpful for me. I learn some weaknesses that I have that I might not always have time to talk about in every meet ups.

It’s hard to explain but the context change definitely helps to see exactly where you stand as an employee.

For most people I think this makes sense.

Personally, blunt candor can work as well. I do not let anything slip, if I think someone needs some direction or coaching it basically happens in realtime. There's really no need for a formal review if feedback is constant. Sometimes the feedback can be more general, I feel someone needs some hints I just give it to them.

I don't make it personal and don't expect people to take it personally, it's jarring at first but quickly it just feels really quite normal.

Technically, there are still room for performance reviews ... but if as a manager you're telling someone in a review something they're hearing for the first time then you've failed. They should know right away.

I think that's fair, even better than performance reviews, so long as it's happening. In my experience that's generally a rarity, and "replacing performance reviews with continual feedback" turns into "we'll post a happy emoji once in a while on something you said in Slack and that should be enough."

Blunt candor seems great until my response is "I have too much work"

Performance appraisal / coaching is pointless when workload means someone can never give 100% to any task.

Personally, blunt candor can work as well.

Only if it goes both ways. If I can't respond to my managers blunt candor with "the reason we're so far behind is because you suck at time management and promised the customer two features we hadn't even begun to plan for" without fear of being reprimanded or punished then blunt candor isn't very effective.

""the reason we're so far behind is because you suck at time management and promised the customer two features we hadn't even begun to plan for" "

First, if you ever said that to your boss you should definitely be fired.

Second, that's operational information, not performance feedback.

Third, it's not your prerogative to tell your boss what he's good or bad at. They give you the review, not the other way around.

Right, because managers never need feedback on how well they're managing their staff...?!

Some shops have "360 degree reviews", where you need to get reviews from your colleagues and people you serve (or to use an ungenerous phrase, your underlings), not just your boss.

Surely you understand how it creates bad incentives, if feedback about individual productivity can be delivered bluntly but feedback about prioritization can't be given at all.

If it's about who's the boss rather than the project being the boss the project is fucked and then so is the boss.

Good bosses know this and like honesty. Bad bosses fire people for stating the truth and wind up with shit.

However I will agree that saying "You suck at.." is pretty bad, and it would be equally bad coming from a boss.

I would add dress code to this list.

"We have smart casual dress code in this software department. So you can't wear shorts event if its 40 degrees celsius. Oh and shirt is mandatory"

We had a chap who wore leather, except sometimes a T-Shirt expressing quite harshly an opinion about a globally recognised major religious figure from antiquity.

I was glad to see a dress code come in.

When I worked in the medical field, doctors would occasionally visit unannounced. We were required to wear a shirt and tie, with an available jacket, at all times.

I remember my brother in law, who worked in very senior position in a large UK financial institution that "holidays are when you can go into the office and take your suit jacket off".

I don't even own a suit :-)

Edit: A few years back I turned down a second interview at the same organisation after they insisted I turn up "in standard business attire" - i.e. a suit.

"holidays are when you can go into the office and take your suit jacket off"

Last time I went on holiday, I took a tailored suit and dressed smarter than I do at work. Three-piece suit (typically I wore just the waistcoat; done right, that looks smarter than the jacket), tailored shirt to go with it.

When it's your own choice to look sharp, it's a whole different game.

Crass T-shirts are certainly one thing, but what is wrong with leather..?

I was wondering that as well. Exactly what sort of leather garments are we talking about here?

They were leather trousers, as I recall. Laced up at the sides; not sure if they were permanently joined at the top, or if they were just a front and a back that one had to completely tie together.

Nobody had a problem with the leather (although a peekaboo stripe of visible leg down the outside of each, covered in a criss cross of something that looked like shoelace was sometimes a surprise). That was just flavour detail.

Yeah, OK: not loving the lace-up aspect.

I feel absolutely blessed that I can wear camo cargo shorts and metal band shirts at work.

Obviously I don't wear any of the graphic or gory ones, or from bands with obviously offensive names, and I will choose a nice polo shirt if I know I'm going to be having meetings people from other parts of the organization, especially if they're higher up in the hierarchy.

That said, the best head of development we ever had would wear leather pants, ass-kicking boots, rivet belts and band shirts, and he had a Mongol warrior-style beard and hairstyle. He also consistently got the very best reviews and the best results out of his teams.

A literal Rockstar head of development. Wow. :)

I think it's possible to deal with offensive (or otherwise inappropriate) clothing on a case by case basis without the need to bring in a smart dress code. Sometimes people implement policies as a way of avoiding awkward conversations but, to me at any rate, part of being a good manager and leader is measured by your ability and willingness to treat your staff like human beings and have those awkward conversations when it's necessary.

The dress code that came in was effectively "Do not have the word 'Cunt' written in four inch high letters on your clothing".

Amazing. I'm going to make it my mission in life to get exactly that wording into the HR handbook where I work now.

A religion user should be able to handle that.

I'm not at all religious, but when I found myself reading "Jesus is a cunt" every time I happened to look at him, it did irk me. I think it would have not mattered what specific name was there, emblazoned in four inch high letters on his clothes.

"Oh and shirt is mandatory"

So wait, coding without a shirt on is how a thing?

My god man.

If there is air conditioning, slacks shouldn't be a problem though shorts aren't extraordinarily unsuitable.

You can wear a shirt man.

I think the contrast is shirt vs. t-shirt, rather than shirt vs. bare chest.

In some countries a "shirt" means specifically a button-down. In the same way that "slacks" means long pants. So this likely just means that a button-down is required rather than a t-shirt.

A button down shirt is one where the collar is buttoned to the yoke. I think you mean a button up shirt, one that has a placket and buttons in the front versus a pull over or t-shirt.

Oh fascinating, I had no idea they had different meanings!

"Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go."

This sentence is contradicts :

"Let’s be honest: Performance reviews are a waste of time."

How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews?

People know when you're not productive. Co-workers in particular but managers, too. When this is detected, I would rather tell a non-productive person this right away and not wait for any review. Perhaps then, after a few of these, an adjustment in salary or employment can be made.

I think the key point is that you're having conversations and attempting to get the root of a lack of productivity, rather than just assuming that the employee is a bozo and firing them.

How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing performance reviews?

You have to take an active role in managing them rather than just passively checking in occasionally.

The two aren't really mutually exclusive. I (generally speaking) know what my performance ratings will be weeks before I'm given them, but that doesn't mean that the performance review process isn't valuable (depending on how its implemented, obviously).

Rally anyone? I have a hard time getting used to it, and I've seen stories being worked on for the sake of being in rally even though there isn't enough information for good work to be done. I've seen engineers do good work to build features that the product needed but engineer was discouraged from doing it because it wasn't in rally first. And pointing sucks, we're trying to fill stories in just to meet certain point quota per Sprint.

> Faced with a rule-driven culture, the best employees ... are usually the first to go, because they’re in high demand and have more opportunity than most. What’s left is a pool of people who are mediocre at what they do ...

And that is when I stop reading any article.

EDIT: She's stating rules in the workplace make good employees leave and only mediocre employees remain. The term BS automatically applies here.

Why?

Indeed, why? I've seen exactly that. Stupid rules coming up, extremely performing employees leaving or making it clear that unless that's revoked they'll leave.

My favourite example of this was when one company tried to issue all the devs with new contracts with the "standard" IP clauses claiming ownership of everything we did. Since there were a number of Free Software devs on the team, this was unacceptable ... so, while asking for clarification and a change, we simply didn't sign the new contracts. There was no way the company could have taken action against us without completely wrecking their ability to ship, so it stalemated until they backed down.

These are usually the first clauses I query ;)

This works pretty well as a response:

"Okay so I maintain some open-source stuff, it's all on Github. I appreciate you want to maintain your IP, and I agree to give you first-refusal on anything new before I make it public, and stay out of any market where the company has an interest."

This is usually enough to swing things from "we own everything" to "we own everything you make on work time, unless it intersects with one of our products".

Excessive check-box rulemaking certainly does.

Clean-desk policies, bans on "personal items" (want a photo of your family on your desk? nope), strict uniform policies ("failure to wear the company polo shirt AND jumper, even if it's 30C, will result in dismissal")...

Individually the rules don't mean much. But when they're added together -- and especially if they're changed (removing 'dress-down Fridays', say) can end up creating a bit of a "death by a thousand papercuts" scenario.

Because really, who's harmed by someone putting a photo of their wife and kid on their desk? Or a quiet little office toy (a stress ball maybe?) they were given at a trade show?

But easily the biggest way you can show that you don't trust your employees is to pretend to listen to their concerns and suggestions for improving the workplace, only to laugh at them and dismiss them. That type of treatment is just about guaranteed to lose you good people.

Let your staff work on their own initiative, foster their creativity, and they'll produce magic. And when they're slipping a bit - have a polite, private conversation, away from the eyes of the madding crowd and office gossipers, and ask how you (As a manager) or the company can help them.

TL/DR: Treat your staff like adults.

Some rules are good, some rules are bad. Too many bad rules result in people with the possibility of leaving to leave. The better an employee is, the more possibilities it has to leave. In conclusion, given a company with enough bad rules, good people will leave.

I don't see a problem with this premise. You can argue about which rules are good, and which rules are bad, but to skip the entire article (and brag about doing it) is shortsighted.

I think she was close to figuring out what can happen, but missed the mark. Great developers leaving are your canaries, and the Dead Sea Effect is a real thing. So what do rules and processes have to do with this?

I'm currently happiest at my job that is the most "enterprisey" and has more rules. I can't wear shorts or sandals to work, which perpetually irritates me. I can't run the OS I want at work, and I have a hard time getting simple things like a decently sized monitor because of esoteric rules. A lot of these rules are dumb, and sound like the ones in the article, but I'm planning on staying for as long as I'm challenged and having fun.

Our team runs kanban instead of scrum/sprints, and we're constantly asking to use non-approved technologies (where appropriate) in a traditionally Java-based company. We have individual and team agency, and there is an implied trust that we will prioritize accordingly, get things done, and make good technology decisions. I would gladly deal with a dozen other dumb rules as long as I'm able to hold onto the above, as interesting work and agency to solve it in creative ways is the number one thing I'm looking for.

Contrast that with some of the other places I've worked. I used to be able to drink beer at work, we could have dogs in the office, I had more vacation time, free beverages and snacks, etc. All those things are nice perks, but they came tethered with what I consider the detestable processes that the article glosses over.

Any process related to productivity is designed to set a bar which will bring up your lower performing individuals. This bar will drag down your good developers - that is what makes good developers leave. Knowing how to fix problems and being unable to do anything about it while stuck in an endless barrage of sprint planning, sprint retros, forced demos, velocity tracking, etc. is not fun. Forced consensus on any decisions is like pulling teeth and people end up afraid to contribute or have a dissenting opinion.

The people that are OK with the productivity bar are the ones that stick around for 15 years and become "indispensable" because they know where the bodies are hidden. Anyone good that joins the company probably won't last more than 18 months.

I apologize for the long rant, but it's been a topic I've spent a great deal thinking about in the last 2 years after trying (and eventually succeeding) to find a good place to work.

This is the first time I've heard of the Dead Sea Effect, I just had to look it up. Thanks for the informative post, it explains a lot about "churn" in a few organisations I've worked for in the past.

The issue I have with cellphones is I've routinely seen people browsing Facebook or chatting to their friends. This lasts for _hours_, as in 1pm-6pm with overtime all while others working extremely hard.

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