
Dumb Rules That Make Your Best People Want to Quit (2017) - matfil
https://medium.com/s/story/10-dumb-rules-that-make-your-best-people-want-to-quit-8491b446dde5
======
pjc50
> (Don't do) Performance reviews

> Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go.

If you are firing someone for performance, _you have done a performance
review_. It's just that it might be entirely in your head or based on office
gossip about who _appears_ most productive.

You wouldn't optimise a program without a profiler, so you shouldn't make
hire/fire decisions on productivity without some means of measuring
productivity. I know it's hard and tends to result in stupid metrics, but that
doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.

~~~
dalbasal
Idk about the US, but I imagine it's more similar to the EU than the press
suggests....

Anyway in most of the EU, by law and by convention^ people don't get fired
often. When they do, it's a part of a greater process where a department is
reorganized, jobs have been made redundant or somesuch. Firing individuals for
below average performance is rare. It needs to be an extreme. If it is dines,
it's done as part of a performance review) evaluation process with feedback,
time...

The reality is that

^The convention part is important. Regardless of laws, it's very hard to
operate a business that's firing a lot. Firing someone is like
exiling/outlawing them, to borrow analogies from older societies.

If you try, you'll encounter a huge pile of difficulties. Moral/culture will
be one. Politics will be another.

~~~
realandreskytt
I’ve fired and been fired for sub-par performance. I’m from the EU. Its not
that rare at all.

~~~
philpem
The difference is, it's rarely an on-the-spot firing (at least in the UK).
There are usually a few levels of "performance improvement" / "how can we help
you get back on track?" before you get anywhere near "you're goneski".

Assuming we're just talking about "not quite the best" work performance here.

~~~
Klover
It’s really expensive to fire people. Not only do you lose out on the
recruiting, the training, the profiling. You will have to do it all over
again. I’ve never fired anyone in my entire career in the EU. I do not
understand how it’s feasible to do it willy-nilly in the USA. Can anyone tell
me that? Or is it much more rare than I think?

~~~
fjsolwmv
Firing is rare in the US. Layoffs (bulk termination of many people at once)
are common, and much scarier because of US's weak social safety net.

------
jgh
Personally I hate performance reviews, but if a formal system doesn't exist
people will demand something. In the absence of a system there can be
appearances of favoritism and, if the managers aren't disciplined, things like
raises and promotions can end up being ad-hoc and random.

That said a performance review system doesn't necessarily completely cure
favoritism but it at least leaves a paper trail. It should also force
management into thinking about how to structure raises and promotions in a way
that they're more evenly and rationally applied.

------
dagw
_Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go_

This is incredibly wasteful and an easy to way to lose good people. Take a few
minutes to conduct a 'performance review' and see why they aren't producing.
Sometimes it's an easy fix. I've seen companies fire people who where world
class at Y simply because they weren't performing at X, despite the fact that
the company also had a different department that did Y.

~~~
krainboltgreene
> Take a few minutes to conduct a 'performance review'

I have never seen a company implement a performance review:

    
    
      - That mattered
      - That would have detected anything
      - That would be more than the obvious

~~~
dagw
I feel that most performance reviews I've had have been at least pretty
decent. Basically just going through what I've done the past 6 month, talking
about what I'd like to be working on over the next 6 month and if there's
anything that I should work on or might need to help me manage to do those
things better. Often there is some sort of checklist that has be worked
through, but I always get a few minutes to just talk in general about my work.

~~~
apahwa
that sounds like feedback you should be getting in manager 1:1s, the formal
review process isn't necessary

------
geomark
Indeed some of these rules and policies are ridiculous. I particularly enjoyed
my time as a mid-level manager at a large aerospace company where we did stack
ranking each year. We had to stack rank an organization that consisted of five
departments with over 300 engineers. I was one of the department managers.
Each department manager's goal was to get as many of his members ranked as
highly as possible. The game theory was thick in those meetings.
Unfortunately, one of the other managers had weak game and ended up with poor
rankings every year. It seemed very unfair to his better people.

However, this statement in the article is pretty dumb: "If you don’t trust the
people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about because they interviewed
well and you thought you could trust them but once they started working they
proved themselves untrustworthy. That's not rocket science; it's something
that happens and is not particularly rare.

~~~
dagw
_" If you don’t trust the people you hired, why did you hire them?" How about
because they interviewed well and you thought you could trust them_

Or just as likely, "you" didn't hire them. Someone else in the company did
based on criteria that are different than yours.

~~~
geomark
Very good point. Encountered that situation a few times.

------
mberning
Let people work from home at their own whim. Never inquire about their
performance. Never document anything related to their performance. Shutter
your company in 5 years when you have a bloated payroll, terrible products,
and nothing ever gets done on time.

I get that actually managing people and their performance is harshly frowned
upon on HN, but it is a very necessary evil. Working in a place where the
inmates run the asylum is is not fun either from my experience.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Employees aren't inmates. A place where the employees run the company is a
strong organization.

~~~
GFischer
There have been lots of discussions here on HN, personally I think that an
employee-run company still needs leadership. And companies can be good for
employees without needing to be employee-run.

See for example Valve, there's been a lot written about it, not all of it
good:

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-
bos...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/30/no-bosses-
managers-flat-hierachy-workplace-tech-hollywood)

[https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-
ruthless...](https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-
industry-politics/)

Politics will ALWAYS exist at a workplace.

------
ryanbrunner
Adding another one: the advice on "Feedback methods" (don't send out
engagement surveys, just walk around and ask people how they're doing) is
_incredibly_ hard to get right.

It takes a remarkable amount of trust for a random individual employee to feel
confident that they can voice their concerns to management. And that trust
takes an enormous amount of effort. If you're a manager and you're not
absolutely sure that your employees would feel free to speak their minds,
giving them a risk-free way of doing so isn't a bad idea. Employees feeling
they can't speak honestly to someone who is in control of their livelihood
isn't a "problem with communication", it's the status quo at the majority of
companies.

------
k__
_" If you have mediocre people doing mediocre work, you are going to have a
mediocre company."_

Aren't most people mediocre per definition?

I really hate all this talk about "We want the best of the best!"

Sure you want them, but there aren't enough for all and chances are, if you
aren't a really big company, you won't get the few that exist.

You need to shape you company so that you can deliver value to your customers
without the need of a few geniuses. Your company should be more than the sum
of its (mediocre) employees.

~~~
Jedi72
Even more common is "we want the best of the best, but want to pay median
wages."

~~~
k__
That's a whole other story.

Even IF they all had the money, it won't work.

------
ryanbrunner
A lot of articles recommend against formal performance reviews, and in some
sense I agree, but it is important to be thoughtful about how you're going to
give feedback and work with your employees to help them perform more
effectively.

Oftentimes formal performance reviews are replaced with some sort of continual
feedback system (whether through an actual formal system or just an informal
process), but in my experience a lot of continual feedback systems just turn
into a back-patting machine and lose a lot of the constructive criticism that
a formal review process can bring out.

Stack-ranking is obviously dumb, and yes, assigning things to a 5 point scale
probably is too. But those were never the actually valuable parts of _good_
reviews. You should always find a way to spend time and be thoughtful about
where team members are excelling and where they're falling short.

I've worked a few jobs that decided that performance reviews were a pointless
exercise and I honestly couldn't have told you what everyone thought of my
performance prior to me leaving.

~~~
sonnyblarney
For most people I think this makes sense.

Personally, blunt candor can work as well. I do not let anything slip, if I
think someone needs some direction or coaching it basically happens in
realtime. There's really no need for a formal review if feedback is constant.
Sometimes the feedback can be more general, I feel someone needs some hints I
just give it to them.

I don't make it personal and don't expect people to take it personally, it's
jarring at first but quickly it just feels really quite normal.

Technically, there are still room for performance reviews ... but if as a
manager you're telling someone in a review something they're hearing for the
first time then you've failed. They should know right away.

~~~
dagw
_Personally, blunt candor can work as well._

Only if it goes both ways. If I can't respond to my managers blunt candor with
"the reason we're so far behind is because you suck at time management and
promised the customer two features we hadn't even begun to plan for" without
fear of being reprimanded or punished then blunt candor isn't very effective.

~~~
sonnyblarney
""the reason we're so far behind is because you suck at time management and
promised the customer two features we hadn't even begun to plan for" "

First, if you ever said that to your boss you should definitely be fired.

Second, that's operational information, not performance feedback.

Third, it's not your prerogative to tell your boss what he's good or bad at.
They give you the review, not the other way around.

~~~
amarkov
Surely you understand how it creates bad incentives, if feedback about
individual productivity can be delivered bluntly but feedback about
prioritization can't be given at all.

------
Mtntk
I would add dress code to this list.

"We have smart casual dress code in this software department. So you can't
wear shorts event if its 40 degrees celsius. Oh and shirt is mandatory"

~~~
EliRivers
We had a chap who wore leather, except sometimes a T-Shirt expressing quite
harshly an opinion about a globally recognised major religious figure from
antiquity.

I was glad to see a dress code come in.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I feel absolutely blessed that I can wear camo cargo shorts and metal band
shirts at work.

Obviously I don't wear any of the graphic or gory ones, or from bands with
obviously offensive names, and I will choose a nice polo shirt if I know I'm
going to be having meetings people from other parts of the organization,
especially if they're higher up in the hierarchy.

That said, the best head of development we ever had would wear leather pants,
ass-kicking boots, rivet belts and band shirts, and he had a Mongol warrior-
style beard and hairstyle. He also consistently got the very best reviews and
the best results out of his teams.

~~~
philpem
A literal Rockstar head of development. Wow. :)

------
csunbird
"Trust them to produce, and if they are not producing, let them go."

This sentence is contradicts :

"Let’s be honest: Performance reviews are a waste of time."

How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing
performance reviews?

~~~
onion2k
_How are you going to know if the person is productive if you are not doing
performance reviews?_

You have to take an active role in managing them rather than just passively
checking in occasionally.

~~~
joshuamorton
The two aren't really mutually exclusive. I (generally speaking) know what my
performance ratings will be weeks before I'm given them, but that doesn't mean
that the performance review process isn't valuable (depending on how its
implemented, obviously).

------
songzme
Rally anyone? I have a hard time getting used to it, and I've seen stories
being worked on for the sake of being in rally even though there isn't enough
information for good work to be done. I've seen engineers do good work to
build features that the product needed but engineer was discouraged from doing
it because it wasn't in rally first. And pointing sucks, we're trying to fill
stories in just to meet certain point quota per Sprint.

------
sureaboutthis
> Faced with a rule-driven culture, the best employees ... are usually the
> first to go, because they’re in high demand and have more opportunity than
> most. What’s left is a pool of people who are mediocre at what they do ...

And that is when I stop reading any article.

EDIT: She's stating rules in the workplace make good employees leave and only
mediocre employees remain. The term BS automatically applies here.

~~~
pjc50
Why?

~~~
Tor3
Indeed, why? I've seen exactly that. Stupid rules coming up, extremely
performing employees leaving or making it clear that unless that's revoked
they'll leave.

~~~
pjc50
My favourite example of this was when one company tried to issue all the devs
with new contracts with the "standard" IP clauses claiming ownership of
everything we did. Since there were a number of Free Software devs on the
team, this was unacceptable ... so, while asking for clarification and a
change, we simply didn't sign the new contracts. There was no way the company
could have taken action against us without completely wrecking their ability
to ship, so it stalemated until they backed down.

~~~
philpem
These are usually the first clauses I query ;)

This works pretty well as a response:

"Okay so I maintain some open-source stuff, it's all on Github. I appreciate
you want to maintain your IP, and I agree to give you first-refusal on
anything new before I make it public, and stay out of any market where the
company has an interest."

This is usually enough to swing things from "we own everything" to "we own
everything you make on work time, unless it intersects with one of our
products".

------
nwmcsween
The issue I have with cellphones is I've routinely seen people browsing
Facebook or chatting to their friends. This lasts for _hours_, as in 1pm-6pm
with overtime all while others working extremely hard.

