
The psychology of how being told what to do impacts our productivity - sherm8n
http://blog.goodsense.io/2013/02/16/the-psychology-of-how-being-told-what-to-do-impacts-our-productivity/
======
crazygringo
> _Some product manager/project manager/engineering manager already broke
> things up into user stories. Those user stories were further broken down
> into tasks. The tasks were then evenly divided amongst all the engineers.
> Each engineer didn’t have much of a say in it. Some might call this slave
> work. It was the most unproductive time of my life._

This is one of the central dilemmas. To some people, it sucks -- they'd rather
be programming rockstars, solving big problems in a way that's interesting to
them.

But in most of the real world, when you've got various stakeholders, a big
project, lots of programmers whose work needs to be coordinated, with
standards, and you can't get bogged down in n-to-n communication, this is just
how it often has to be. Face it, _most_ work in this world is "slave work", if
that's how you want to call it (although I think that sounds rather insulting,
when you think about how an unfulfilling office job you're free to quit is a
million times better than _actual_ slave work).

And part of being a professional and mature programmer is realizing that,
look, that's life. Sometimes you will get a job with a big say in how things
are done, be super-independent, and it will be amazing. And sometimes you'll
look back five years later and realize how it was a great learning experience
for you, but you over-engineered it in a language or with a library that
nobody could use afterwards, the whole system was replaced a year later, and
you effectively wasted a lot of time and money of the company's.

But at the same time, sometimes you _do_ need rockstar programmers, who are
talented enough to be given free reign, and they'll produce amazing results,
as long as you don't micromanage them, or even barely manage them at all.
Different projets are different. And different employees are different, too.

~~~
sherm8n
But this is also hacker news -- where people don't settle on normal work.
They're bold enough seek out only meaningful work. Either by starting their
own company or joining one where they can make a huge impact without the
typical fluff.

~~~
kamakazizuru
thats a bit broad - define meaningful work? - why is it more meaningful to go
work at say a YC funded startup - than it is to go work for a larger
corporation working in the same space? Lets face it - most startups dont make
a huge "impact" - on anything other than the pockets of investors and founders
- and that too in a small percentage of the successful cases that get overly
romanticized!

~~~
elbear
He didn't define meaningful, because it's subjective and unique individual, so
it might well be working for a larger corporation. His point was that the
attitude around HN is to look for meaningful work as opposed to work that just
pays the bills.

~~~
kamakazizuru
why cant "just pay the bills" be meaningful? - for more than 70% of the world
thats very meaningful. Its also flawed to assume that everyone on HN is
someone sitting in the valley with a bunch of job offers.

~~~
elbear
You wouldn't call it "just paying the bills" if it was meaningful. Meaningful
in this context means something that you would do for free. At least, that's
how I define it.

That's not to say that 70% of the world's struggle is meaningless. It means
survival.

Also, you don't have to be in the valley to wish for meaningful work. I'm not
and I do look for work that I enjoy doing.

~~~
sherm8n
I have many friends who are working just to pay the bills. And they hate their
jobs. Most people actually dislike their job in some way.

------
mvkel
This is the exact philosophy that businesses use to promote perfectly good
specialists to "management."

Some people _need_ structure. Some people don't want to define the plan
because they take it personally and any minor failure is, to them, a personal
catastrophe.

Not wanting to be "the boss" is a perfectly acceptable way to be productive.
Some of the brightest developers in the world are the most productive when you
let them sit in front of their workstation and code on something that flexes
their brain.

The key is identifying how each individual is wired and what their motivating
needs are. Not everyone wants to be promoted to tell people what to do, or
have more control.

~~~
sherm8n
Would you want a developer who needs to be told exactly what to do? Or would
you rather have a developer can define what to build in the product and then
build it.

I don't understand why you want to promote people so they can tell other
people what to do. As a manager, it's more beneficial to have an employee who
can tell me what they want to do.

~~~
onemorepassword
There's a middle ground: developers that need to be told _what_ problem to
work on, but who are smart enough to take it from there.

It's very useful to have a few of those on the team, because as a manager it
allows you to ensure certain priorities are met, whilst giving those that
thrive on freedom the space they need.

So, to answer your question: I'd rather have both.

~~~
sherm8n
This is why it's so hard to hire right now. The people who can and are willing
to do both can work anywhere they want.

------
leepowers
The key thing when working with engineers is to give them a problem to solve -
but don't tell them _how_ to solve it. As a programmer I relish the challenge
of problem solving. But I hate being told how to think.

 _In this case I was part of a scrum team at a large company. Some product
manager/project manager/engineering manager already broke things up into user
stories. Those user stories were further broken down into tasks. The tasks
were then evenly divided amongst all the engineers. Each engineer didn’t have
much of a say in it._

This is definitely a management mistake that I've been on both sides of.
Getting everyone involved during with architectural process accomplishes
several things: 1) Everyone comes away with a bird's-eye view of the project.
2) Everyone has input into the decision making process. When done properly no
one feels out of the loop or under another's direct control.

 _Some might call this slave work. It was the most unproductive time of my
life. I spent an hour at the gym every day. Another hour eating lunch. Several
hours surfing the internet. I was really bored sitting under the fluorescent
lighting. It felt like a chore to write code._

I can understand this attitude, but only up to a point - as a professional
programmer you should be able to handle an assigned problem, figure it out and
complete it. Instead of taking a long lunch take a few minutes to talk to your
boss and voice your concerns. There's no excuse for half-assing it.

~~~
sherm8n
I never said I was slacking off. In fact I got more done than anyone else on
the team. It just felt like I was there only to work.

I openly told everyone how I felt. That's when I decided I didn't want to be a
professional programmer anymore. I talked to boss man and we mutually agreed
that there was no way for me to be happy being a cog in the wheel.

~~~
greghinch
You can be a "professional programmer" without being a "cog in the wheel" so
directly. At the end of the day though, we're all cogs in the great machine of
society. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can be happy in your work

~~~
sherm8n
I'm a little delusional. I believe that having the ability to choose what I
work on makes me happy. This is why founders like being founders. They don't
want to accept things the way they are. They just want to make it better for
everyone else.

------
goldfeld
Wow, psychological reactance.. there's a name for my illness! I thought I was
the only freak who procrastinated immensely on a task just because someone
ordered me to do it--especially if I was just about to do it anyways. Since I
was a kid I would get bummed because if I did as ordered, the person would
think I was only doing it because I was told, and self motivation has always
been my biggest driver. Luckily I love my day job exactly for the lack of
direct pressure from superiors.

~~~
sherm8n
I thought it was only me too. I didn't understand why I hated being told what
to do. I would purposely start new skunkworks projects instead of doing what I
was supposed to.

------
jedmeyers
When I hear stories about how someone successfully broke into the highly
competitive <insert name> industry without any previous experience the quote
from IT Crowd comes to mind: "When i started Renholm Industries I had just 2
things in my possession. A dream and 6 million pounds."

------
vacri
This is _highly_ contextual. If the US were to go to war with China, can
anyone imagining the USN being more productive by saying to its sailors
"Choose what you want to do and how you want to do it".

Or on a smaller scale, professional sporting teams are _much_ more effective
when they're able to work to a common plan than just being a bunch of
individual stars. The teams of individual stars may feel better because they
each get to behave the way they want to, but overall they're less productive.

~~~
sherm8n
I was speaking on behalf of personal productivity. Not team productivity. But
there are definitely failures in professional sports too. When one player
doesn't feel like he's not being included enough then communication breakdowns
ensue.

~~~
vacri
Much of this debate centres around whether you define 'being productive' as
'enjoying your work' or 'providing value'. I've certainly done work which was
enjoyable and progressed quickly in it due to that fact, but in the overall
scheme of things had negligible value for the company - that's not productive
work, in the sense that most people would use.

~~~
sherm8n
Well, which is more important for you personally?

~~~
vacri
Having fun, obviously, but that's not the title of your article.

~~~
sherm8n
Neither is providing value.

~~~
vacri
'Productivity' is the efficiency of creating product. You'd be drawing a
pretty long bow to suggest that most people would call 'having fun' product
over 'something that provides value'.

~~~
sherm8n
I don't think I implied anywhere that having fun meant being productive. I did
imply however that having fun will make you more productive.

------
kamakazizuru
i think its a lot more to do with how you're told to do something.
Additionally - this effect strongly varies from person to person - you might
be better off titling your post "the pysch....impacts MY productivity".
Working in the corporate world and on startups I've seen 3 types of people
-all equally productive (mind you im not talking about how happy they were or
how much fun they had - but since your point is productivity lets stick with
that).

Type 1 - entrpreneurs/intrapreneurs - these were the kinds who figured out
their way within organizations to make their own niche - do whatever they
truly felt like doing - and people typically let them do their own thing -
because they delivered results. Of course they had to play the occasional bit
of politics - but that is a part of any job or field, and you're never working
in a vaccuum where this wont affect you.

Type 2 - the 50/50s - these are people who can overtime become Type 1s - they
like beign given some goal or target and a genera framework / project to work
on - and then take it from there - checking in every now and then but mostly
figuring their way out - and being allowed to figure their way out.

Type 3 - the TaskRabbits - these are the folks that make up i'd say 60-80% of
a company (depending on the industry and company culture it can vary.. a
creative agency might have a lower percentage as opposed to say ..a bank).
They work with strictly defined rules, have goals and targets defined for
them. They usually (atleast the non mediocre ones) try had to get their goals
met within that time frame - and wouldn´t be able to perform as well without
having all that structure set up for them.

~~~
sherm8n
The productivity impact is common enough where it didn't happen to only me.

~~~
kamakazizuru
what?

~~~
sherm8n
The article resonated with a majority of those who read it.

------
cpressey
If you're an engineer doing scrum, and the product owners are "telling you
what to do", imo you're doing scrum wrong. Engineers should be involved in
turning user stories into tasks.

Even outside scrum, even in a traditional workplace, good managers don't "tell
you what to do", because they know it's demotivational. Good managers explain
to you why something needs to be done, that is, how it will benefit the
enterprise, and let you do it.

~~~
gruseom
I was once in the room when one of the guys who wrote the book on Scrum
described how many companies implement it. For those who don't know, Scrum
says that team members should answer three questions each working day:

    
    
      1. What have you done in the last day?
      2. What are you doing today?
      3. Are you experiencing any impediments to your work?
    

Here is how he said these questions get implemented:

    
    
      1. Did you do what I told you to yesterday?
      2. Here's what I want you to do today.
      3. Fuck the third question.

~~~
sherm8n
Haha, so true. Especially when engineering managers are the scrum masters.
They repurpose scrum to get status updates.

------
dschiptsov
So, If I write a blog post about Framing Effect I will get lots of karma
points too?)

~~~
sherm8n
If you're not going to do it I will.

People frame things in a different way to make it sound good all the time. "If
you can crank out this code by EOD you're going to be a hero." versus "If you
can crank out this code by EOD you still won't get a raise until next year."

