Managing high performers? Step one: pay them what they're worth.
With the reliable incompetence of the average job, we shouldn't ever expect this kind of rational fair compensation. Really, we should be seeing truly talented people making an exodus away from what is called a socially appropriate job. Due to there being a gross monopoly, right now, on economic resources (led by the dictatorship of midwits).
Many high performing people receive great compensation, at least in financially flush fields like technology, and maximizing compensation isn't everyone's game. In fact, I'd say that high performers are often less distracted by that than most.
What keeps a sufficiently paid high performer around, usually, is a personally rewarding and comfortable work environment. What that means can vary quite a lot though, making it hard to summarize in blogspam and short comments.
I'll second this. Most of the top performers I know, at any given time, could probably double their salary if they really wanted to. I know I could almost certainly by moving from a nimble smaller company that treats me with respect and responsibility (and a lot of fun problems) to one of the big tech companies.
Yeah, I don't understand these sort of hot takes in the articles like it. As said middle-management dimwit, isn't sort of the definition of a high performer is that they perform without much coaching? That doesn't mean lack of management as the article implies - it means setting them up for success.
Set them on a task, give them a few constraints as needed, and act as a bulldozer to remove blockers as they come to you with them. That's roughly the management a high performer needs in my book. Make sure you listen to them when they complain about something, and fix it within reason. Or explain why you cannot. Don't let penny wise pound foolish stuff fester. Advocate for merit based raises and bonuses - they are making you look good so they should be your first priority when expending political capital. Make sure higher ups and the rest of the org knows about their accomplishments. Simple stuff!
I am not aware of any role in tech (or really anywhere in wage labor) where people are being paid what they are worth. Nearly every job that exists gets paid a whole lot less than they make for the company, sometimes millions less per year.
So I'd say, pay us all what we are worth, and pay the high performers proportionally more.
> Nearly every job that exists gets paid a whole lot less than they make for the company, sometimes millions less per year.
In our specific industry, innumerable people are earning high compensation as part of companies and teams that have relatively little revenue (if any) and may very well collapse before turning a profit. Should they not be paid until their work actually makes some money? What if it doesn't?
"Worth" is pretty tricky in salaries, but tech workers happen to have very very little to complain about when it comes to compensation right now. The labor fight for them (us) is real but exists almost entirely on other fronts.
A person’s worth is magnified by the company as well. A software developer’s work is worth less without a salesperson who can sell that work, and vice versa.
The market is not an organization, the market is a disorganization—except in the case of a monopoly/monopsony, in which case intervention is desirable.
Nobody said that the market is some organization, it's a way of organizing people, and it happens naturally. It's not something you invent, create and maintain, it's something you discover and observe - and try to control, often in vain or with unintended consequences, like weather. There was a market long before anybody thought of the word - and it was one of the first words. The oldest known written text is not some religious fluff or descriptions of market-less utopia, it's a "warranty claim" about a shipment of copper.
My point was that the word organization implies a planned structure, and a free market is explicitly not that. I'd consider it fair to say a market is a way of humans self-organizing, but a market is not an organization in any common sense of the word.
"Organization" (verb) doesn't necessarily result in "an organization" and almost definitely not in something "optimally organized". Your brain is organized and yet nobody planned it and it's definitely not an organization.
I also disagree that "an organization" (noun) implies anything other than "a group of people" as described in dictionary. An organization can exist without any planned structure - doesn't stop it from being an organization. In my teenage years I was part of few "hacker" groups (in the HN sense of the word) - we tinkered with computers and had a website with cool stuff, all under our 1337 H4X0R-esque name and logo. We definitely were an organization, but we really didn't plan any structure at all. We just liked tech.
You forgot to calculate risk. Wages have to be paid even when the company loses money, and before it makes any from your work. And it has to be paid even if you did a bad job. And in many places, they can't get rid of you for a long time even if you keep doing a bad job or practically no job at all. And when they finally can get rid of you, it's probably going to cost some more money.
Just become a shareholder, share the upside and share the downside. Don't have the balls? Be an employee, get a nice risk-free sum every month and live a worry-free life.
(Yeah I know being an employee isn't entirely without worries, but it's nothing compared to being a founder/shareholder.)
Yes, they can - stock can be part of compensation. I'm sure almost any company would happily pay you in stock rather than in cash. And buying isn't the only way of becoming a shareholder, especially in software.
I co-founded my first startup when I was 16, as soon as I reached the lower age limit for being a company shareholder in the UK - I'm not from the UK, but I wanted it and so I found a way. If a 16 year old kid with acne and 300 euro in their wallet can do it, any adult professional can.
Yeah it's a load of risk, you work crazy hours, the stress is insane and sometimes you end up paying instead of earning - so don't be surprised that nobody will share the upside if you don't share the risk. It's not for everyone. But anyone can, if they actually wanted.
That’s great when what they want to do is aligned with what the organization needs. It’s essentially not-managing.
The issue is, many times high performers just aren’t aligned with what needs doing, and by not-managing them, inexperienced managers create a world where you have tons of “high performance” arriving absolutely nowhere. You see this at every bloated organization (in particular at big tech).
I’ve got a high performer on my team and I do think (okay, wouldn’t I ;) that in managing speed vs quality and explicit attention to the learning curve of others I’ve managed to create a few more golden nuggets. No high performer (perhaps: nobody, ever) has all professional skills in the same measure.
I'm convinced real coaching doesn't exist. I don't think I've ever had real coaching. I've even requested additional coaching as a medical accommodation. It's just additional low quality feedback. There's no focus on growth or improvement.
I have no doubt that I'm not living up to my potential. I don't see any way to get there given my disability and lack of real coaching.
Coaching exists. I've had it and done it. I've worked with folks with disabilities too and been able to help them grow.
The problem is that companies often promote folks with excellent technical skills into people centric roles like an EM. Sometimes you get lucky and they are naturally good at the stuff. But more often than not, they really struggle. It's a conundrum. If you hire someone who nails it on the people stuff but is weaker on the technical side then they aren't able to make informed decisions.
I've been head of eng before. It's a hard job and I ultimately switched jobs to go back to IC work. I took the coaching aspect seriously when I was in the role though. I think ultimately you need to understand what your report wants and give them projects, feedback, and resources to achieve those goals. The big caveat being that sometimes the role that person is looking for isn't available. You can't have an entire team of principle engineers for example. So another aspect is to be clear about what is and isn't possible in terms of career path at your co. and try to find other incentives like pay etc to keep them happy. YMMV of course.
Hah, know what you mean. I'm ADHD and also incapable of entertaining bureaucracy. My personal solution to the bureaucracy and lack of perceived mentorship in our industry was just to work in small teams, startups, cultivating executive skill so that the number of people I have to argue with decreases.
I mentor a few juniors and CS students outside of work and it's rewarding, but it frequently makes me wish I had a mentor of my own as well, ideally someone with ADHD who could give me specific advice. I guess all we can do is be the change we want to see in the world, and to stay vigilant against bureaucratic systems.
My advice is to figure out exactly where you want to be and make no compromises on getting there. It can be difficult navigating politics with ASD, but over time it can become one of your greatest assets as you pay more attention to it than the average person. I know this seems like a vague generality, but without knowing specifics all I can offer is general advice.
That's probably in part because mid-level management (like me) didn't get promoted to that role because we are great coaches. I spend the vast majority of my time putting out fires, protecting the team from bullshit, making offerings to the audit monster and running the corporate HR playbook. I probably spend an hour a month for each of my 15 directs really trying to think how to help them improve their skills and advance their career.
I've noticed this too. If you want to get better, you're basically responsible for doing it in your own time. Using work time for unproductive learning seems frowned on and punished.
One thing that is not in the article is the fact that high performing people are often asked to do things that aren't part of their job description and for which there is no time in their timetable.
As someone who is currently in that role I expect my managers to know where the limits lie and defend them against other higher ups, departments etc. And that means there should never be a long period of over-straining these resources.
Some good advice here but contains (paraphrasing) "Always ask them for more".
Why not help them find and keep balance? We get to be excellent because we care and want to do the work well. Always mindlessly pushing for more is advocating for burning out your best people. Yes we want to grow but sometimes we need rest and further, that rest and proper balance is key to getting the best results.
Sarcasm aside, this can actually lead to situations where most people just rely on the “savior” and don’t grow to the level they should. Very common problem, and you only realize it after the high performers leaves
This is one case where I agree, and I'd even argue that a person who acts as "the savior" in this fashion is not as high a performer as they would seem, since they're introducing a negative productivity multiplier to their coworkers. The best advice you can ever give to a high productivity person is to create a barrier of resistance to helping others. When someone comes to me for help, I always ask what they've tried and let them work through the solution, because if I do it myself, they'll never learn and in the future my productivity will suffer since I have to spend more time helping them on things a junior or mid-level should be capable of doing.
When someone comes to me with a blocker, I help them get unblocked if I can make the time.
This means that my duties as CTO or lead might be more spread out, that I have to work extra hours to feel like I'm getting enough personal coding time after factoring in administrative work, but it's worth it for me because my entire team moves faster and writes more robust software.
Unblocking someone doesn't mean doing someone's work for them, it means being a mentor, understanding their problem, and providing surgical assistance while also teaching them the same process you used to arrive at the solution.
I've had coworkers push back on this style before, opting sooner to fire employees for not immediately being key players. Meanwhile, I've cultivated some tight-knit teams where everyone is in sync and motivated to work and assist one another, regardless of skill level. Over time, the culture matures and the team is capable of managing more problems on their own.
Asking for help != asking the other person to do it
I completely agree that when the high performer jumps to “let me just do it” it creates a negative multiplier to the team as most of the work will be only understandable by that one person and the rest of the team can do less than one unit of work.
Which is why it is very important for high performers to either know how to work in a team, or be assigned work where they can just do their things on their own.
I can tell you've never been reprimanded for being a blocker, when management sides with the people asking ridiculous learned helplessness questions, instead of learning how to help themselves. Bully for you, but just be aware that not everyone works for people this understanding.
This is the correct take. Another way I like to think of this is you actually really just have a bus factor of 1 spread across the whole org if you need the high performing savior to step in and actually get things done.
The article assumes that managers of software high performers have the same quality as Tiger Wood's coach. Nothing is further from the truth.
In general, I feel that the article is geared towards making the high performer work harder and ignoring his often legitimate complaints. It does not address the question why high performers sometimes get irritable. The reasons can range from people intriguing against them with lies to being underappreciated.
"Cutting off the oxygen" is a one-sided and primitive measure.
Even the best performers need structure and guidance - a coach. Without coaching, high performers can meet all sorts of suboptimal fates…
Why don’t tech companies generally employ coaches? Yes you can get an “executive” coach, but not widely and really depends on the culture for the perceived purpose. Coaches aren’t widely available for helping people using (and not abusing) their brain’s gifts every day.
I guess it depends on what you mean by less capable. I've had great managers that had pretty negligible technical skills but they were able to provide me with good direction and made sure that I wasn't wasting my time on work that didn't matter. And on the flip side I've had bosses that were way better at my job than I was but they were not at all fun to work for, for a variety of reasons.
Some of my best managers weren't really as technical as I was, or were experts in completely different domains.
The job of a manager isn't being a "better developer", it's to remove blockers and isolate reports from annoyances, so that they can do their best work.
I disagree. Sports gives lots of great examples... the all-time greats almost always fail as coaches. But great coaches often come from the ranks of the less successful players and get more out of the greats. I've seen the same over and over in software engineering.
Nobody, not even the best, is perfect. Even if they are perfect today, things constantly change, and they need to grow to accommodate change. A good manager will have different context (e.g., from being in more meetings than high performers have capacity for) and be able to synthesize information for them. They will see what is working for other high performers more deeply and share that. They will be a good sounding board. They will be someone who can listen. They will be someone who will be honest about what they are seeing. And they will know when to get themselves and others out of the way.
Also, part of being a great high performer is learning how to collaborate with a manager on growth. A manager can't do nearly as much to help if the high performer is not being reflective, looking for opportunity, willing to change / grow, and being vulnerable enough with the manager to share all of that. People who are really good at this can get more out of all but the worst managers.
That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of terrible managers just getting in the way. But there are great managers too, even those who weren't the highest performers as ICs.
This is a silly idea. Managing is a different skill than performing (at any task). Usain Bolt's coach was not a very fast sprinter. LeBron James' coach at Miami was merely a middling basketball player.
This won't go over well here, but: we might have to dismantle a lot of the economy if we want to fix draining overproducers until you can discard them...
That's only true if you expect managers to control the people they lead. Another approach is to empower them instead. As a manager my expectation is that each of my direct reports eventually grows to be better at their job than I am at their job. My job is to make sure they have clarity on the team and organizational goals, make sure my management has visibility and confidence in our team, and create a healthy, high trust environment that allows my team members to work at their best. Again, it is my hope and desire that my reports exceed my own expertise. Additionally, management is itself a different skillset.
You likely again have never seen a true high performer and are confusing them for high output.
High performers will be good enough to fundamentally question leadership decisions at an exec level and will have good reasons to. They will not just he fast at their work. They will be so good at it that it makes you almost unnecessary in the equation.
High output just does the work you assign them well.
Theres generally no room for "high performance" in large corporations like Amazon and Google. There is room for getting work done quickly and to spec, but that's different than high output creative problem solving. The value in many businesses is that they have compartmentalized employees into high output replaceable cogs. High performing employees outside of startups and "innovation teams" are a risk to a business
It's also a lot harder to recognize high performance at these companies because of the natural impediments to getting anything done. If you aren't on the right project, or if your leadership doesn't understand/advocate for your work, or if you're just constantly churning through reorgs, etc. Large complex systems breed large complex bureaucracies to manage them and the skills to understand and manipulate one don't necessarily translate to the other.
I’m at a FAANG right now and this couldn’t be further from the truth.
We basically bought out a ton of A- to A+ players from the rest of the industry and there are many high performers developing entire modules of core functionality themselves with a team of juniors and contractors supporting them. I also have a hunch they make $350-$750k.
Didn't they make John Carmack leave? Obviously I do not know Meta's internal projects, but the open source ones often have a poor quality and the main metric appears to be LOC (or KLOC in the case of those geniuses).
It can even be seen from the outside if you observe the actual output of high ranking Googlers in open source projects and compare that with their status at Google.
Some are just nasty politicians that produce neither quality nor quantity.
People lower down on the ranks never realize that this is going on. They also have no exposure to what people are like higher up, and how much of it is bullshit politics
From my own experience as a high performer: don't bullshit them, and be upfront when you are parroting required HR talking points.
Worse than anything else in TFA is insulting my intelligence, especially when it comes to career advancement. That's why I left a job I'd been at for quite a long time. The company suddenly decided to gamble that I didn't know the difference between inflation and core inflation.
But first, we have to argue about our own individual interpretations of what a "high performer is", and then justify our belief that it is every single one of us, because-
Understand what they value as an individual: compensation, work life balance or interesting work can all be valued by top talent and it often depends where they are in life.
With the reliable incompetence of the average job, we shouldn't ever expect this kind of rational fair compensation. Really, we should be seeing truly talented people making an exodus away from what is called a socially appropriate job. Due to there being a gross monopoly, right now, on economic resources (led by the dictatorship of midwits).
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