

Ask HN: What can be done to fix a dev team that has become complacent? - sv_throwaway

Our dev team is no longer producing quality work at a pace fast enough for the business. They&#x27;re complacent. They give estimates of days versus hours for even the simplest of asks, and when outsiders hear how long it took for our team to fix a bug or add a new feature, they are shocked.<p>Extremely competitive pay, free food at the office, catered meals daily, activities, video game areas, arcade, lounge areas, and work-from-home flexibility are used by all extensively... but none of those things actually motivate the 12+ men and women on this team to work to get the job done.
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alexnking
"Our dev team is no longer producing quality work at a pace fast enough for
the business. They're complacent."

B does not follow from A. Just because your team is not producing "fast enough
for the business" does not mean they are complacent. It may simply mean the
business has unreasonable expectations. Outsiders (especially non-developer
outsiders) cannot really give you any insight on this, as all codebases are
different, and the time it takes to fix a bug or add a feature will vary
depending on the amount of technical debt and complexity that have
accumulated.

Your team however, is in tune with your codebase, and appear to be able to
tell how long things will take (you don't mention that their estimates are
inaccurate, just that you dislike the estimates). If you would like the amount
of time it takes to be different, perhaps instead of assuming they are
complacent, it would help to ask what needs to be done to make changes to the
codebase faster. The answers you get (such as a higher level of test coverage
to increase change confidence) might surprise you.

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DigitalSea
Have any of the managers/developers been confronted on their complacency, and
if not, why? Sadly, you can't just fire someone without first giving them a
chance to turn things around. Nothing motivates better than fear, but it can
also cause people to become resentful towards the company.

You need to pull each employee aside, especially the manager(s) who should be
ensuring efficiency is kept at acceptable levels. This sounds like a double-
edged problem. Employees not realising they're dropping in efficiency and
managers not noticing the drop in performance and also failing to do anything
about it if they have noticed. Sounds very much like a safety in numbers
scenario at the moment.

All you need to say is, "Hey, we've noticed you're not performing as well as
you have in the past. Is there a problem we are not aware about, is there
anything preventing you from doing your job properly? Lack of resources, lack
of proper tools, personal issues? Are you being asked to do too much, is the
work too difficult and is there anything we can do better to make it easier
for you to do your job?" but at no point should you start pointing fingers and
placing blame upon people. Talk to your employees like you would your best
friend, only more professionally.

Free food and a great environment shouldn't be the only motivators the company
offers by the way. It's like those code hackathons that offer free pizza, beer
and cans of Red Bull, just because you're giving away free stuff, doesn't mean
you are entitled to overwork or unreasonably expect more from your employees
or those around you. If the work isn't stimulating or challenging people will
grow bored as well, there is usually more than one answer to a problem. Are
unreasonable time frames and expectations being placed upon your employees? If
you're asking for things to be done within 2 weeks, but it should be a 3 week
job, who is to blame? The business imposing unreasonable time frames or the
employees who have to try and get the work done within said time frame?

The fact you're saying it's a twelve person team and it's the whole team to me
signals it is a management problem. Solve the problem at the top and you'll
most likely notice the trickle down effects to the rest of the team.

~~~
cjbprime
I agree with almost everything you said, but:

> Nothing motivates better than fear

Seriously?

~~~
DigitalSea
If you confront someone who is deliberately not doing their job correctly and
it is their fault, the fear of losing your job is greater than all in my
opinion. If you're knowingly slacking off, maybe fear is what you need.

I don't agree that fear is an excellent motivator in all situations, but in
some situations it is warranted. It is no different than receiving a legal
letter asking for payment because it is 2 months overdue. The legal letter is
a fearful reminder you need to pay and it's sad that some situations call for
fear tactics, but sometimes you need to understand it is how things go.

~~~
RollAHardSix
The problem is in the workplace environment, where one's own personal
liability and livelihood is at stake, fear will only serve as a reason to find
a new position.

Personally if I was involved in any type of one on one like you mentioned, I
would go home and start putting out resume's that day. You just can't take the
chance of being fired later on, plenty of companies will use the 'you're not
performing' bit to motivate employees to work themselves far beyond what they
should be working even on a regular schedule.

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sixQuarks
Dude, you're asking this question to the wrong crowd (as can be seen from the
backlash).

My advice would be to pay to talk to a mentor who has been through this
problem - use [http://www.clarity.fm](http://www.clarity.fm) (I have no
connection to this site). They have some of tech's most prominent business
guys willing to talk to you for an hour, at between $1 to $5 per minute. I've
used it and it's worth it.

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jwheeler79
have you ever considered the problem might be you? i mean, just your attitude
that 12+ people have something intrinsically wrong with _them_ seems a little
far fetched, doesnt it? maybe you have a stupid idea, and youre developers are
happy taking the money but cant stand your ideas or you. sorry to be blunt but
if you think the problem is 12 other people, you probably need a reality
check, fast.

~~~
sv_throwaway
There are 68 people total in this profitable multi-tens-MM/year net revenue
company and everyone outside of the dev team is frustrated.

When the arcade/gaming area is packed for several hours a day while everyone
else in the company is grinding on their respective jobs and we are filing
urgent, revenue jeopardizing bugs, complacency is the only logical conclusion.
The dev team is the only team that comes in at 10 or maybe 11 or sometimes
1130 then have "hard stops" at 630 or 7.

In the org chart, I'm unrelated to the dev team, but have visibility into that
side of the org.

~~~
sheepmullet
Working 10:00am - 6:30pm or 10:30am - 7pm is an 8.5 hour day. Lets say they
have a 30min lunch break and stuff around at the arcade/gaming area for an
hour. That is still a solid 7 hours worth of work each day!

So 12 developers each working a solid 7 hours each day but unable to produce
quality work within a reasonable time frame. That says one of a few things:

1) The team is working hard but you have a lot of crap code (aka technical
debt) and so it takes a long time to make even simple changes.

2) The team has implemented more thorough processes. E.g. Previously they
might have went straight from coding a fix to putting it into production but
now they have proper QA and Testing phases. So now it looks to outsiders that
they are "complacent" when they have really just improved processes.

I would never give a business person an estimate of anything less than a day.

3) Politics/dynamics between the dev team and the rest of the office have
changed. For example if management had a serious go at the developers for a
defect in production or business users have been passing the blame onto
developers, or everyone got pay rises/bonuses but the devs, etc then it is
likely they are operating in an extreme risk averse, document everything
manner.

I know entire dev teams who have stopped being productive because business
stopped listening to them.

4) Team politics. Are one or two of the developers/managers doing something
that is really throwing the other developers out of joint?

5) The team _is_ productive and business expects too much or is only looking
at superficial indicators. For example you keep mentioning standard working
hours as though working 8 hours is being lazy. The devs having fun at the
arcade/gaming area. The rest of the company "grinding" etc. It almost looks
like you care more about shared misery than results.

If you bring in a new developer and they are significantly more productive
than the existing team then you could rule out 1&2&5.

------
shellab
It sounds like the code might be part of the issue. If code isn't developed in
a way that makes refactoring easy then as time goes on the code becomes more
complex and it's harder to add even simple features without breaking stuff.
You may want to look for a developer who knows how to refactor legacy code. If
someone recommends a rewrite it's almost always a bad idea.

------
j4ck4l
looks like there's waste happening in that team...

sounds like they're taking an extreme attitude... this usually happens when
they experience the opposite extreme of being pressured with unrealistic
deadlines and work... so the team finds estimates the only hope of protection
from "outsiders"...

Need to build trust that the management is not out to screw devs and that devs
are not there to waste time but can get job done... a suggestion would be to
get priority on all items and realistic estimates and have daily/weekly
cadences to track/plan for them...

Below are some relevant principles of the agile manifesto: -Business people
and developers must work together daily throughout the project. -Build
projects around motivated individuals. (Give them the environment and support
they need, and trust them to get the job done.) -The most efficient and
effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is
face-to-face conversation.

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cynthiakellogg
Sounds like a management issue. Make sure whoever leads them is making clear
requests (who is responsible for the task, what is the task, how is completion
of the task measured, when should the task be finished) and that will give you
a framework for communicating expectations and you can measure performance on
it. The developers can negotiate the timing of it - but always make sure they
give you specifics, "I can have that done by Friday at 5pm". It's a simple
thing to do, but leads to powerful results.

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aytekin
In real world, if a worker sits all day and reads newspaper or chats with
friends you can easily see and prevent it. In dev work, you don't see it. One
of the commenters at HN was proud of how smart he is that he can work half an
hour a day and coast the remaining time.

So, the best solution is to make things visible. Make everyone's work visible
to everyone else. Daily agile meetings/reports are one way.

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jmspring
This feels like one of those cases of second guessing the development team or
having pushed them to get the first iteration of something out there and then
expect the same super human effort every time.

It doesn't scale.

Teams can certainly ramp up for short bursts, but more often than not there
are PMs and other managers that think that should be the norm rather than the
exception.

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esw
>They give estimates of days versus hours for even the simplest of asks, and
when outsiders hear how long it took for our team to fix a bug or add a new
feature, they are shocked.

Unless you're a developer who is familiar with the codebase, then you
literally have no idea how long it should take to implement these changes.

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sharemywin
why not ask instead of second guessing them. could be other priorities. could
be testing to make sure things aren't going to break. the code could be
unorganized. if everyone one for several years has been slapping code in might
be hard to work with like the other comment mentioned.

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mh370survivor
May I humbly suggest a productivity app built on nudge theory?
[http://belimitless.co/](http://belimitless.co/)

The ~ 25K users of the app seem to be happy and claim that their productivity
has increased a little bit.

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qpeoii
First, have you communicated your concerns with the dev team or dev team
leads? They might not even have the same perception of their productivity as
you.

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sv_throw2
Have you tried blocking the internet access to HackerNews from the office?

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bnolsen
it may be collective burnout as well. Can you shuffle their responsibilities?
Try to get them out of the office sometimes instead of keeping them there?

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dmourati
Start over.

