
Ways You’re Making Your Employees Less Productive - greenyoda
http://quickbase.intuit.com/blog/2013/09/24/10-ways-youre-making-your-employees-less-productive
======
pasbesoin
Hypocrisy. Telling employees it is "up to them" while in reality giving them
no resources, control, nor choices -- or none that matter, i.e. not really
listening and responding to them.

Aka "passing the buck".

~~~
jonnathanson
Exactly.

I have had this boss, unfortunately. To a t. He'd tell me a project was
"completely up to me," that I was "the leader" of it, and that I should feel
"totally empowered" to make decisions, allocate resources, etc. He proceeded
to show up to each of my project meetings, often late and out of context,
disagree out loud, offer unsolicited opinions, micromanage, and badger me into
implementing his ideas -- thoroughly undermining any ostensible authority I
had over the project, or reversing any progress the team had made up to that
point. His ideas came in two flavors: a) completely off-the-cuff and
unconsidered, and b) foregone conclusions (what the team and I liked to call
his "pet" ideas). Both of these types I had to entertain, and often to
implement. And of course, when it came time for him to chip in with the
execution in any way, or even to explain his rationale, he'd bolt for the
door.

Essentially, I was his task rabbit. If a project went to shit, he'd claim it
was "mine" and be able to pass the buck accordingly. If it went well, he'd
swoop in and scoop up the credit. Attempts to talk to him about it in one-on-
ones went nowhere. Attempts to "check in" with him prior to meetings, in the
hopes of pre-selling him on a plan, went nowhere. He'd be dead set on a pet
idea, and it was my job to "totally lead" the execution of that idea.

Bosses like this are toxic. I'm not sure I've ever found a good way to work
successfully with this personality type. If this describes your boss, figure
out how to transfer, how to escape, or how to develop Vulcan-like mastery over
your anger and your pride. Some tigers can't change their stripes, and I can
guarantee you that this kind won't.

~~~
misterjangles
I have been on both sides if this, although as a boss I have always tried to
give others the glory and take the heat. Also I probably do swoop in with
ideas, but I don't leave people high and dry to figure them out.

The solution is really to speak up for yourself. You may have to remind your
boss that he put you in charge. I can be a tough boss but I will listen to any
argument and will be glad to be proven wrong or told that my idea is going on
the list for later. But - you must convince me that your idea is better, or
more practical, or that you at least have thought things through.

I know it can be tough because bosses tend to be older and, maybe in some
cases wiser (but not always). As the boss your pressure is to keep a team
moving forward and so you grow used to delegating. I had to be reminded that I
gave somebody a project once and I felt really bad about not letting him do it
on his own. I really just didn't want to see him fail, but I was
micromanaging. It was difficult for him to bring it up to me but I was glad he
did and we got past it.

I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start figuring
out another employment opportunity.

~~~
jonnathanson
_" The solution is really to speak up for yourself. You may have to remind
your boss that he put you in charge. I can be a tough boss but I will listen
to any argument and will be glad to be proven wrong or told that my idea is
going on the list for later. But - you must convince me that your idea is
better, or more practical, or that you at least have thought things through."_

I'm fine with that, and believe me, I tried on almost every occasion to take
that approach with this boss. Whenever I did, I'd get some condescending
reassurance that he'd respect my plans, etc. From there I figured, as you
suggest, that perhaps he didn't understand how I'd been thinking about
something. Attempts to walk him through my thinking, or my team's line of
thinking, would be met with a mixture of apathy and hostility.

It became pretty clear, in this particular guy's case, that he wasn't really
interested in empowering anybody. He had some ideas, and he wanted them
executed. Over the months, that became the path of least resistance, and we
all just sort of accepted it. Unfortunately, many of his ideas -- perhaps even
most -- turned out to be pretty bad.

Wisdom was probably the one thing this guy really needed, to be honest with
you. He was older than I was, but only by 3 or 4 years. He was the type of guy
who'd either been good or lucky early in his career, and who'd risen to a
position of leadership for which he was probably not ready, or to which he was
just not suited. He had been a strong individual contributor in his early
days, and what I saw in him was an individual contributor uncomfortable with
delegation and management. And the frosting on the cake was a big dollop of
narcissism. (Not all inexperienced or uncomfortable bosses are narcissistic or
bad; this guy happened to be, pretty nakedly).

 _" I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start
figuring out another employment opportunity."_

True. But depending on the case, I'd amend that to "Face it head on _and_
start figuring out another employment opportunity." Those things should happen
in parallel, because, depending on how big a narcissist your boss happens to
be, and depending upon the organization's culture, facing the issues head-on
could result in your getting blacklisted within the organization, or
negatively reviewed for insubordination.

It's possible your boss is just looking for you to step up. But it's equally
possible he's just a douchebag. Hope for the better case, but prepare for
both. Hope you don't have to pull your parachute -- but pack one, just in
case.

------
bonemachine
My faves:

4\. Pretending To Know

3\. Not even attempting to communicate (or "communicating" through hints.)
Particularly in high-pressure situations.

2\. Microcontrolling. (By which I mean: grabbing control of some low-level
aspect of the project, or of the team communications, thinking you know better
than the team member who already took action to such an extent that you don't
need to explain your actions. See also (1), (2).

And my favorite of all:

1\. By your very presence. Seriously -- things like overbearing demeanor, poor
tact, sexist or jockish language etc can not only be toxic, but instant
invitations for your team members to not only begin their job searches
immediately, but look forward to the task with vim and glee.

~~~
jiggy2011
Number 2 is what Joel Spolsky calls "hit and run management".

 _" hit and run management because managers tended to pop up unannounced, give
some silly order for exactly how they wanted something done, dammit, without
giving any thought to the matter, and leave the room for everyone else to pick
up the pieces."_

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html)

This is the most frustrating when you have spent an entire afternoon carefully
considering different approaches to solving a problem and figured out all of
the non obvious but important edge cases that show why a particular approach
won't work to have someone come in and give it five minutes consideration and
say "nah, we should do it that way, it'll work out".

~~~
mprovost
AKA Seagull Managers ("Fly in, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, fly
out").

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager)

------
bane
Fun pop-psychology on hiring people by 1-10 ratings and what it says about the
hiring manager.

If you hire an n, where 0<=n<=5 then you must be an m where n<m and 1<=m<=6.
Because incompetent people want to hire more incompetent people to make them
look good and secure their position in the organization.

If you hire an n, where 6<=n<=7 then you must be an m where n<=m and 6<=m<=7.
Because reasonable competent people don't want to bring failure into an
organization, but don't want anybody showing them up.

If you hire an n, where 8<=n<=10 then you must be an m where 8<=m<=10 and
there is a high probability that n>=m. Because truly competent people want to
bring in other truly competent people and aren't threatened by people with
higher levels of competency, and even might welcome it.

~~~
mryan
Interesting - sounds like a more detailed version of "A's hire A's, B's hire
C's".

------
InclinedPlane
It seems self-evident to me that if you treat experienced, talented, highly
paid developers like minimum wage workers then you're either losing out on
much of that experience and talent or you're paying far too much.

------
RougeFemme
#5 is one of my favorites. One of my co-workers refers to one of our managers
as a "drive-by" manager. He agrees with the _concept_ of carving out chunks of
time - even remotely - to focus. In reality, if you are on-site, he is
constantly "driving by" with things that could have waited or been
communicated via IM/email.

------
andyjohnson0
_" 8\. Insisting on doctor’s notes in order to take sick days."_

Is this common in the US? Even for a single day?

I'm in the UK and my contract states (from memory) that I have to get a
doctors certificate after five contiguous days of sickness. I'm fairly sure
thats been the same for all other companies I've worked for.

------
ffrryuu
Process, management, de-empowerment, hiring B people.

~~~
jiggy2011
Somebody has to hire us "B people".

~~~
DrJokepu
I understand that you are using self-deprecation to poke fun of the elitist
parent comment, but the fact is that nobody is required to hire "B people".

~~~
jiggy2011
There aren't very many "A people" to go around, most people who think they are
hiring A people are hiring B or C people.

Most of the useful work on the planet is done by B or below people.

------
famousactress
I live in San Diego (where a huge Intuit campus is located) and have known
lots of people who work there, but none that work remotely with any
regularity. I'm curious what #7 (let employees telecommute when they need to)
means at Intuit. I wonder what their definition of "need to" is.

~~~
yzap
I worked at Intuit in the bay area for about three years. During that time, I
knew many people that would work from home regularly 1-2 times a week. I
really preferred working on my multi-monitor setup in the office (I lived
easily bikeable three miles away from campus), so I never took advantage of
the liberal WFH policy while I lived out there (except for when waiting for
cable man visits and the like).

After three years working in Mountain View, my girlfriend got into a PHD
program at the University Wisconsin and Intuit was A-OK with me working
remote. So I packed up all my office gear, got issued a Desktop VPN VOIP
phone, and moved to Madison, WI. I did that for about two years before I left
to cofound a company with several longtime CS friends here in Madison.

So, yeah, Intuit is pretty liberal with telecommuting when it fits the
situation (as long as you don't abuse it). : )

------
JoeBlog
Allowing unrestricted Internet access.

Seriously, whitelist only the domains necessary for the job. If it's
programming, I would only recommend specific StackExchange sites, GitHub, and
any documentation sites. Some people have horrible self control and will waste
all day on the Internet, despite that they may be great programmers and can
actually get stuff done if they put their mind to it. It's not even that the
job is boring, it may actually be exciting, and their project may be something
they really enjoy, yet the distractions are still more entertaining to them.
Like reading and interacting on Hacker News.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> Allowing unrestricted Internet access.

On the contrary - filtering my internet indicates that you don't consider me
capable of self-regulation... I prefer being treated like a responsible adult
- responsible for my great code or my slacking off, whichever I choose.

I greatly value this level of respect from employers.

