
Working the System at a BigCo - jasonkester
http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/working-the-system.html
======
ben1040
At a prior employer of mine, you accrued 12 sick days per year, up to a
maximum of 120 in your bucket at any given time.

If you were ill, you were permitted to use as many of your accrued sick days
as necessary. In any given calendar year you could take five sick days without
any documentation, but the rest had to come with a note from a doctor
indicating you were too ill to work.

There was also a company policy that stupidly tried to incentivize attendance
at work: if you used _no_ sick days in a year, you would receive a "bonus"
vacation day to use the following year. Setting aside how this incentivizes
people to come into work when they're sick, it also set up an perverse
incentive after an employee actually had to call in sick.

Suppose you had to actually take a sick day due to illness. That day off cost
you the free extra vacation day next year. Now you may as well just "call in
sick" later in the year and exercise your remaining un-validated sick days.

~~~
kafkaesq
_Now you may as well just "call in sick" later in the year and exercise your
remaining un-validated sick days._

You gotta love policies like these. What a way to shore up morale.

------
jjguy
In a past life, I ran a consulting team at a BigCo whose business centered on
T&M contracts like OP's. BigCo had 10k employees, mostly associated 1:1 to
contracts with the same "bill exactly 40 hrs, but never overhead" constrains.

Our little team had 100 employees, but we matrixed those guys across all our
contracts. While the clients disliked the idea of not having "their guy," they
really liked having access to the technical depth of 100 guys vs. just the 10
they could afford. Turns out being able to have a Linux kernel guy, OS X
kernel guy, Android kernel guy, database expert and hardware hacker on call at
all times is incredibly valuable.

Since we matrixed across contracts, we managed to instuitionalize the
"overtime hack." The guys were exempt status, so they didn't get time and a
half for hours over 40, but they did get paid for every hour they worked. It
was a phenomenal hack - guys were routinely making 20-50% more than their base
salary. We intentionally understaffed by a bit, to make sure there were always
extra hours to burn.

That team is 15 years into existence at a BigCo, and the hack still lives. If
you find yourself in a consulting org and think you can make something like
this work, don't think for just yourself, but shoot for the moon - set it up
so it works for everyone and outlasts you.

~~~
tome
I don't get it. What did you actually do? Multiplex their time so they worked
for two clients during the same hour, or what?

~~~
awjr
I think each contract was for 10 people working for 40 hours each per week. In
effect buying 400 hours of expertise. That did not stop one of those 10 people
doing 40 hours on one contract and another 10-20 hours on another. As long as
both contracts were satisfied all was good.

By under resourcing the operation, employees were guaranteed to earn
'overtime' if they wanted it. However implication is that you would be happy
putting in 50-60 hours.

~~~
jjguy
> However implication is that you would be happy putting in 50-60 hours

You're taking a too narrow a view of it. We never committed anyone to 50-60
hours, that's unsustainable. But by _allowing_ it and building a system to
manage it, you let folks work what they want and still meet the client needs.

Without that flexibility, what happens is what OP describes - folks work more
than 40 because you need to / want to, but you don't get compensated for it.

------
throwaway4252
I would be interested in reading any advice for developers/engineers on how to
"handle" management. Based on some limited reading I've done, the goals of
management and what engineers intuitively think management wants are often
very different. Basically, what behaviors do I need to adopt to make my
relationship with technical or non-technical managers as mutually beneficial
as possible?

~~~
pzs
I think it is not enough to be good, you also have to look good. What I mean
by that is you have to make sure your contributions are visible and
comprehensible to your bosses. This should establish some level of credit with
them. Once you have that credit you can build on it to have more informative
discussions, perhaps during one-on-ones. Dare to ask.

Unfortunately, I have seen managers, technical and non-technical, who are
seriously non-transparent. That is, they have and promote their own hidden
agenda, without regard to how that affects others. Sorry for the pessimistic
tone, but management tends to entail politics in big companies, which itself
attracts those with the non-transparent personality trait.

~~~
noxToken
> I think it is not enough to be good, _you also have to look good_.

[emphasis mine]

This rings true in a lot of large places and in some medium places. If your
butt is in a chair in the office, you better be working on something. It
doesn't matter if you clear your plate, took a few tasks from someone else,
finished those as well, and are looking at the Software Engineering or Code
Review SE sites or OWASP to help holistically contribute to your project. Your
billable time better be used for tangible results that can be demoed or shown
on an agile board. Never mind that you crushed estimated 50 hours in 30 - you
don't get to be a warm body.

~~~
s73ver
The real advice in this comment is to not finish your work too early, as the
only reward you'll get is more work.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
Which of course leads to trying to flex the deadlines to give yourself as much
time as the other party is willing to tolerate. After all, if they were
willing to budge to a new time but no further, you've just found their actual
time.

------
protomyth
I was happiest at a place where I was either paid 70% of the billed hours
(client pays $100 per hour, I get $70, company get $30) with the company doing
weekly paycheck (withholding the taxes, W-2, and handling the health insurance
& 401k payments), or 90/10 split on a 1090 (but paid long before the client
paid). I went with the 70% because I was a bit scarred of mucking up.

It is amazing how enthusiastic you can be in hour 50 with that situation. I
frankly think its unhealthy but at least there was a pain point for requiring
it and that pain ($) also benefited me.

------
prions
Billable hours are the work of the devil. I remember my boss explaining how "I
needed to work back all my vacation hours" was a good thing.

------
iamthepieman
It makes complete sense (I mean from their point of view kind of sense, not
the system is logical and the compensations are well structured kind of sense)
but I would not have thought of the bosses point of view unless it was spelled
out for me like in the OP.

In the author's case the mismatch in understanding worked out for them. I
wonder how many times it works out quite badly for one party or even both.
Even between two sympathetic people where both desire to understand the other,
sometimes you just don't.

------
CapitalistCartr
Most executives and managers don't know how, or don't want to, solve problems.
So they dump those problems onto employees, vendors, even customers. Anyone to
avoid having to do their job. Their most valued employee is the one in whom
they can see value without having to work at it.

~~~
skybrian
You say that like it's a bad thing. I think the management perspective would
be that they're good at hiring and/or outsourcing, which are definitely good
management skills to have and arguably what doing the job well is all about.

~~~
s73ver
It is bad, because the managers take the bulk of the credit and reward, rather
than those that actually do stuff.

~~~
jermaustin1
You say that like it's a bad thing. Obviously a manager didn't do everything,
and no executive would think they did. What they know though, is the manager
hired the team that worked together and delivered the appropriate solution. If
you want credit from the executives, you should become a manager and manage
expectations and deliverables.

~~~
s73ver
"You say that like it's a bad thing."

Because it is a bad thing.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing
this a lot, e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14573073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14573073)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14571905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14571905).

If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully;
otherwise please don't comment until you do.

------
djb_hackernews
Why did the employee need to fill out any paperwork to be taken off of the
performance plan? Shouldn't that happen at the direction of their manager?
Feels a little bit like a deus ex machina.

~~~
LanceH
Have you not worked at a big company? This is 100% normal for everything.

For the required training I do because my work touches health care: The
company has a record of what training I need. It sends me a list of courses. I
then have to register for those courses -- within the same company. They can't
register me for it on their own. I take the course, get my passing grade and
now the course and my training record know that I have a passing grade for the
course. So naturally I have to print that out, upload it to another site and
mark it complete. Someone in India (literally) checks this. Not done yet, I
fill out a paper copy by hand with course numbers and dates and sign it.
Upload that _and_ turn in physical copies to my management. If I want credit
on the number of hours training I have for the year, I need to update that
manually as well. Expect these forms to be kicked back multiple times on the
way because the date is in the wrong format or some other reason. Also expect
to take multiple forms of the same training within the same training year
because it has been repackaged (not new courses, regrouped same courses).

~~~
djb_hackernews
I currently work for a large corporation. This is not 100% normal for
everything. This wasn't a training, this was the fundamental employment status
of the employee. I don't need to sign any paperwork to accept a raise or
promotion, etc. I've never been put on a PP but I'm guessing my company
wouldn't require the employee to handle any paperwork if they came off of it
either.

Luckily our training system sounds more streamlined than yours. Different
strokes for different companies I guess.

------
thatwebdude
There's a gray area between "good worker mode" and happily salaried. If
they're taking advantage of that, then you need to leave BigCo. There are
other SmallToMediumEvenSomeOtherBigCos out there who'll pay what you're worth;
even if that coincides with 50 or 60 hour weeks.

~~~
bussierem
If the latter are paying you "what you're worth" in return for 50-60 hours a
week, aren't you getting paid 50-75% of what you're worth...? I think you've
been fooled.

~~~
Bartweiss
...no? Salaried jobs break the direct correlation between hours worked and
hours paid, but it doesn't mean there's no plan there. There are absolutely
salaried jobs which openly expect 50+ hours, it's up to you to decide if the
salary matches the expectation.

(There are plenty of jobs which _aren 't_ upfront about it, obviously. That's
more of a scam.)

------
hpcjoe
I had a guy work for me once, I was trying to transition him from hourly to
salaried. He had some longer weeks prior to this, and made the assumption that
this would always be the case. He said, "I don't want to do this, because I
will make more money this way."

Sounds like the article, right?

Except ... this extra time was a very temporary scenario, and he would be
getting benefits, an effective hourly raise, etc. Even more to the point, when
we didn't need his services ... and he didn't grasp this part, we wouldn't
bring him in and pay him, though, as a salaried person, I would expect he
would be doing self-education while we had "down" time, so he'd increase his
value and utility to the organization.

Basically, I was trying to provide value to both the company and to him. As we
were a very small company, I was able to see the value aspect very clearly,
and I made the bet (later proven wrong as it turns out) that he would make a
stronger contribution to the company if he had a steady source of income, with
less worries about billable hours.

The big reason why he was getting more hours was that he was helping us set up
our lab space. That project was almost complete ... maybe 2 more weeks of
longer weeks, after which ... we'd need him 25%-50% time at best. I did need
someone with expanded skills that he didn't have, and thought (mistakenly)
that I could grow this particular individual into that role ... he expressed a
strong interest in it.

The incentives aren't usually well aligned in BigCo and employee. We are,
effectively, cannon fodder, for their plans, up through and including the
senior exec ranks. Your incentive alignment with the corporation varies
inversely as some power of the distance from the strategic decision making.

In SmallCo and employee, there are typically better alignments, though still
not perfect. For someone like me, an entrepreneur CEO/CTO at the time, I was
looking to build a culture, an environment, where we took a long view, beyond
the next billable event. Where value took time to grow, where we cultivated
it, where we grew people into roles that they wanted but might not have been
able to do at the time.

The problem is, when you are sufficiently removed from the decision making
process, your alignment is entirely economic. When you can't impact outcomes,
and gain professional satisfaction and positive reputation from helping to
steer a better course, your focus is, correctly, on other matters that benefit
you personally.

To a large extent, this is the way things work. What benefits you personally
and professionally, and is the compensation, work, and culture, aligned to
mutually maximize the value of all of these things. In the case of the OP, no,
the compensation was specifically architected to minimize cost to the BigCo,
and maximize the benefit to the big co, even at the expense of the employee.
Which would, undoubtedly, negatively impact the culture, and the way the
employees interact with BigCo.

I am sorry to say this is to be expected ... but it isn't the first time I've
heard this type of story.

For me personally, I remember working for some small silicon valley outfit in
the 90s, where they treated some of the specialist developers like crap, but
paid the contractors something like triple the hourly rate to use their
expertise. So, a fairly sizeable cohort of my colleagues resigned, formed
small consulting groups, and were hired back at (then) outrageous rates to do
effectively the same work.

This misalignment is manifest in many large Cos.

~~~
chris_wot
Hey... that sounds similar to what happened under the Howard Government in
Australia. The then new PM John Howard thought that the bureaucracy was lazy
and bloated (and in some ways, it was). So he sacked a good proportion of
workers, and set about his legislative and national agenda, only to realise
(much like Trump is now!) that you actually need people to make this work.

So not able to increase the numbers he employed, it was decided to bring in
contractors to do the same work. Many of them were former workers at the same
departments. However, there were less of them, but they still cost a lot more.
Then the government started to realise they needed some way of overseeing
their work, but they didn't have enough staff to do so, so they employed
people to check on the contractors' work. As the workload was still high, they
kept employing more contractors, and you guessed it - more supervisors.

By the time Howard left office, he was employing three times the number of
people than the previous Labor government.

------
pzs
TL;DR It is a case of organizational incentives being poorly aligned with
individual incentives.

~~~
adekok
And managers not understanding what their employees were doing. In this case,
they understood the technical side, but were not paying attention to the
financial side.

