What we talk about when we talk about performance (2021)

> I want team members to feel like their reward for performance is the opportunity to participate. I don't want them to ever believe that they can succeed if their team fails. I think this suggests that we need to shift the focus from rewarding top performers to managing out under-performers. In fact, maybe it's time to revise our ideas about the modern employment agreement. No one is going to work for the same company for twenty years and retire with an engraved gold watch and a pension. In this fast moving employment market, why do we still act like it's such a big deal to let someone go?

Similar to the "Netflix culture" where they talk about building a world class team.

I really like this approach from the outside.

Not because I am cold and heartless but because I have witnessed every company I have been at suffer from poor performers that are not cut quick enough. They inevitably leave or have to be fired long after their issues are identified but not corrected.

I think people need the opportunity to grow and fix problems but once the problem has been identified it is time for quick action before they drag more people down. But this also assumes competent management and caring employers (caring but not ruinous empathy - could be expressed in dollars in severance package).

I’ve done a lot of personal performance tracking and I’ve found that productivity (for me at least) correlates very highly to number of hours slept and not really much else. Ignoring environment/culture/team issues that don’t change often enough to test.

The thing that worries me about the idea of engineering being a team sport is, what does “Moneyball” look like? Get everyone to wear sleep trackers?

Performance is the distance between two (or more) measures.