There is a great way to monitor employee’s performance. This one weird trick will save you losing your best employees!
Are their tasks getting done on time and with quality work?
Congrats! You just learned how to treat your employees like adults.
Now kindly fuck off and let me continue to work in my underwear.
Also, ask “how did you spend your time last week” and “what are you planning to do this week”. The answers may surprise you!
I actually like daily standups. I know many don’t, but they can be really useful.
What did you do yesterday. What are you doing today. Any issues for the group?
Then get back to work!
Daily standups are fine, but they need to be like 10-15 minutes tops. And between 10am-1pm. Putting them at 9am sharp is just rude.
A few jobs back the director was having daily standups with the whole dev team for 60-90 minutes and sometimes longer.
The goal was to figure out why the project was behind schedule… yeah.
Yeah I hate this. At 9 I don’t remember where I was yesterday.
What I used to do was make notes at the end of the day. Just a couple short bullet points to say at standup and help me get back on track a little faster the next morning.
I try this but it never sticks, so I try and log everything in tickets instead.
Honestly I like your way better. Makes the ticket easier to hand off. Pocketing that for later.
Ugh. I hate being on the west coast of the US. Most office jobs start at 7 or 8 AM here.
That sucks.
I sometimes work with west coat companies and the quiet time in the morning was great. It sucks having to be on calls at 8/9PM though.
God, I hear that…plus I usually need to meet with my coworkers in India, so I’m often needing to start meetings at 6 AM. I am nooooot functional that early
I usually had to do that for Europe. Most Indian coworkers I have worked with work a later schedule so there has always been a bit of overlap. Generally the Europeans I have worked with have been German and they generally have a labor rep on the board so they can fight against messed up work schedules.
Yeah, check your email, get a bit of a plan, “hey what’s your plan, what’d you do yesterday”
Keeping the meeting short was the whole point of them being “standups” (as opposed to “sit-downs”) in the first place!
Frankly, even 10 minutes is excessive: it means either people are talking too much or your team is too big.
I’m fucking sick and tired of cargo-cult managers adopting the trappings of agile without understanding WTF they’re for.
Ha! Yes.
For the first time, we are trying out a full scrum team in our company, with an external “scrum master” who really seems to know what he’s doing. It’s bloody amazing. Small team, the daily meeting has yet to exceed 10 minutes and is usually <5 minutes, the planning and refinement meeting keeps everyone in the loop. The rest of the time I can just be a happy code monkey :)
Ha, I could not be more the opposite. I want to be 75% done with my day by 1pm. I’d rather them be at 8am
I’m the same way. If I could start work at 5:00 a.m. and be off by noon or 1:00 p.m. I’d be happy. It’s just hard to find people who want to do therapy at 5:00 a.m. 😂
They are out there, in other time zones.
Indeed, move to Alaska then do therapy exclusively for east coasters.
Is there some kind of rule that you can’t do any work until the stand-up?
My stand-ups are at 10 am (11 am for most of the team), last between 3 and 15 minutes depending on how many of the 7 of us show up and how much everyone has to say, then we all go back to what we’re doing. My project manager and boss both care about the work that gets done rather than monitoring us to make sure we’re working the entire time, and we actually get reasonable (even generous) timelines for most things unless it’s something super important.
I love my job.
This would be a massive waste of time if it were with the whole team every day. I don’t need to know what every other employee on the team is doing every single day, and I don’t need to spend time listening to them explain it. I’ve got shit to do.
My husband holds his team meetings at 3/4pm ish on friday on zoom with beers. Afterwards he tells everyone to fuck off home.
THAT is how you do it. It turns into a pile of geeks talking geek and part post-mortem, part decompressing from the week and they’ve actually had some absolutely mint ideas rising out of deformalising the dev pileup.
Late on a Friday? Yeah, no.
nah yeah, mate. You spend the arse end of your friday workday drinking beer and talking shit in an informal setting and then fuck off early
the problem is, then i a can’t leave at lunch if my shit’s done. And lets be honest, nobody was doing shit on friday anyhow…
I’d rather be doing that on my own time, or something more productive with friends, thanks.
We used to have a rigorous schedule. Arrive at the office between 8-830. Make coffee and chat. At 9am we started the daily meeting. We all read what we were going to do today to each other. By then it was 1130 and so we broke for lunch. After lunch, at 1300 we would do the thing we said we would do. At 1530-1630 we would submit out updates to the project management system and produce tomorrow’s report for us to read to each other. 1700 we would go to the bar then head home around 1830.
When I started working for myself I would usually start around 9 to finish at noon, including travel time.
It wouldn’t be explaining it. It would be your teammates telling everyone where they are on the projects you all work on. If you aren’t working the same projects, then you aren’t on the same team. Or you need sub-teams. If your work is so independent you don’t rely on anyone else’s work and vice versa, then you probably don’t need standups.
I agree with you. That’s why we make our teams small enough in size that standups are 10min max, usually more like 5.
That said, it can be really beneficial to hear that Joe is working on something similar to a thing I’m going to start today. He may be able to give me some lessons learned or point me to a library.
But I completely agree that big teams a make this an annoyance. I used to be on a 20 person team and standups were completely worthless.
Now, we have 3-5 devs per team and it’s usually really quick.
So what if it’s a waste of time. Gotta make the 40 hours anyway.
I don’t like them daily, it’s too much accountability to always say something, and there’s always that one person who stretches it out.
I prefer a weekly priority list and a weekly planning meeting.
if i stood up on a video-conference everyone will see my underpants.
I was doing daily technical meetups in the morning so that my team in India and the more local members could stay in sync and ask each other questions. Usually 10 minutes, but occasionally an hour or more when we had to go way out into the weeds.
Do you mean standups where you are actually standing up? Many places I’ve worked have called a daily meeting a “stand-up” but it has been an hour-long sit-down meeting.
Then there are the actual “stand-ups” where the tall guys tower over the group, and the shorter people (typically women) are either talking into the chests of those guys, or they’re craning their necks up at painful angles.
But… but… but…
It’s proving that my 25 years of being paid 3 times as much as the people I “manage” has been a complete scam the entire time!
Hey, if they’re getting all their work done on time, they’re probably not getting enough work /s
And the 9 floating around managers will figure out to send THAT email, right?
Oh. Wait. No. You right.
Dem 9 gonna have 7 pointless meetings.
So frustrating how a remote world is exposing that…
Edit: not sarcastic. Satiracle.
Call me Candide.
Thats the thing… boses are basically saying that they cant do that. They cant actually measure how productive people are so they fall back on watching them like a hawk
pssshhh underwear.
Is it underwear if it isn’t under anything?
It’s under my ass all day, does that count?
Under where?
Under there.
I like to save that for Casual Friday. It helps the weekend feel special.
You’re overlooking that most managers don’t actually do anything, so they need desperately to justify their positions. I have a manager who has seven hours of meetings every day, five days a week. We make a fucking app. It barely changes month to month. What on earth are you spending 35 hours a week talking about?
The manager has so little to do they just micromanage everyone, and cause a massive backlog of work that doesn’t have to exist.
I always thought that Office Space was satire, but it really is like that in a lot of companies. I spent more time updating managers than doing actual work since I started this position.
So what do you do when it isn’t on time or quality work?
The same thing you’d do if they were working in an office. How does being remote change this?
Are you suggesting that physical punishment is necessary?
The beatings will continue until morale improves
Paddlin’ is only for A+ work. It’s a reward.
No. Is working in an office physical punishment?
Yes. Yes it is.
Why do you need physical access to employees that don’t do their work on time or up to quality?
Training and education have been found to occur better in person than online.
If someone needs help, shouldn’t they be given the best chance at success?
I’m going to want a citation on that. I learn just fine on my own, and I’m sure many others do too. If you’re really concerned about giving people “the best chance at success” rather than just forcing them into boxes then you’d be presenting options.
Is requiring all employees to spend multiple unpaid hours in a car during rush hour in order to put them in unattractive cubicals or desks akin to prison cells, where they are only allowed to shit x amounts a day, and where the manager keep looking over the shoulder to see if you are not wasting a minute thinking about anything other than work a punishment?
What do you think?
I don’t tell employees where to live.
Make them a manager, obviously
My company has a management mentorship program for remote employees. The boss actually travels to different employees homes and will stay with them and work with them at their house for the week. This keeps the execs happy enough to know that they’ve got middle management keeping an eye on the employees, while also allowing the remote work with no fuss. It’s an interesting approach for sure.
Is that real? No way in hell I would be hosting my boss for a week. I’m not even sure where they would fit.
No lol. I’m just being dumb
That sounds interesting, but I really wouldn’t want my boss at my home.
Sounds like a solution for when management can’t even pay rent.
Actually it’s simple. Work well done? Cool, the employee is working. This “monitoring” mentality needs to fucking die.
But then how do you justify keeping “middle management” hall monitors on a payroll after admitting they’re pointless?
Well, they could focus on distributing or coordinating things and assembling results, things they now leave to those who’s job it definitively not is.
It’s this thinking that allows the business bro to think that they contribute to the world while they are really no better than you average insurance company.
“In probably unrelated news, remote workers love how they can’t be micromanaged or watched over their shoulders and are frustrated and disoriented by return-to-office plans.”
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
You don’t say!
FYI, this posted twelve times, in case you aren’t aware.
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Fascinating!
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Employment, right?
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
You said it!
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Fascinating!
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Bosses, right?
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Really?
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
This seems to be a popular opinion!
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Really?
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Whoa, deja vu!
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
Managers, right?
The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.
Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!
A unique viewpoint!
I’ve been working remotely for almost a decade now and have been a manager for 6 of those years and I do the following:
Is [EMPLOYEE]’s work getting done? If yes then do nothing aside from thanking them. If no then talk to employee and/or start the corrective action process.
I have neither the need nor the desire to hover over them. They’re grown ass adults.
A few issues with your method for the average manager.
What work exactly is the employee doing?
How do you know if it is being done correctly?
The average manager has no clue on either of these questions.
These managers rely on wandering around the office judging productiviy by who looks busy and holding constant meetings to hear themselves talk.
Fair. I’ve had a few bosses like that.
That sounds like the manager is the one not doing their job and is in need of monitoring.
As a manager, agreed
The average manager has no clue on either of these questions.
But being in person wouldn’t help.
I managed a support team of about 30 people at a fully remote company. I’d check their numbers of closed cases, review cases when customer feedback was bad, and take into account any other side projects they were working on.
Praise when people did good and have one on one talks with people that were falling behind to see what the cause was so we could work on it. It’s not that hard.
I have a pretty similar work flow. I stay on top of my crap, they stay on top of theirs and everyone’s happy. As long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to I don’t give a damn if they’re also taking some down time during their day.
Skill issue.
This is correct.
They can’t adapt or change. They don’t know how as they are too comfy and stuck in their ways…
But then they force us to read “who moved my cheese”…
It also likely reveals that for many of these managers, their role as micromanagers is completely unnecessary. So they have an identity crisis, unable to justify their position.
My department has transitioned to WFH and it’s been wonderful. Every single employee much prefers it and my boss notes that productivity has increased while “issues” have subsided. That’s what you want to see.
Now that I’m doing WFH, I will forever seek a job that enables me to do this at least 75% of the time.
So don’t. Give your employees tasks and then leave them the hell alone. If they don’t get things done, find a new employee.
I had a one on one with my boss today. He told me he was very happy that sometimes he doesn’t even know what I’m doing, but he doesn’t get any complaints and all my deliverables are on time. I am for help when I need it and before everything is urgent
Meanwhile he needs to babysit the two most senior employees and have daily meetings with them because they don’t deliver anything on time and is going to force them to go to the office twice per week. I guess not everyone knows how to be responsible, but at least my boss knows he can trust some people
Last meeting with my boss he told me “I don’t know what you’re doing but keep doing it because you’re the most productive employee we’ve got.” Having a job where it’s easy to see what people accomplish day to day clearly helps though…
I think this is what a lot of people here miss. Yes many people can be productive from home, but a few are not and I could see them ruining it for everyone on some teams. If you say ‘just fire them’ you either work for a terrible company or have never been a manager. It doesn’t work like that, for good reason.
The other one I think a lot of people miss is training. I’m not worried about my senior engineers, I’m worried about my junior engineers. The juniors specifically complain about seniors not being around to train them and I worry about their career development. Obviously it depends on the role/type of work/etc, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some time in the office for senior positions that are responsible for training others. My junior staff shows up to the office voluntarily every day because they see a lot of value in it in terms of technical growth.
And before you say they can just call/message. Sure, but they won’t. Even in the office I have to go up to junior staff and only then do I get the ‘well while you’re here’. I know there’s a lot of shit managers and shit companies out there but I think blanket saying ’ any form of any level of in office work is tyranny!!!1!’ is really oversimplifying things. Also, not everyone writes code for a living, you’re in a bubble. I’ll now accept all your hate
This is what the problem is. If you trust your team, you don’t need middle management whose sole purpose is to hover around. They’re the ones complaining to uppers about wanting in-person time. If everyone’s at home checking off their milestones, what do you need all these managers around for?
what do you need all these managers around for?
I think a lot of careers are bullshit but we somehow tolerate them so the rich kids who went to college for them don’t have to work at burger king.
I could write a long-ass reply to this, but I’ll get to the point, I rock at multi-tasking and juggling all my priorities. It makes absolutely no sense to me that some random dude should get to what I can and can’t be working on, for the only benefit of meeting made-up deadlines and not mixing “points” up in some burn chart. I am good at this because I know how to exploit my brain to fill my entire days with relevant work. If you assign me stuff at random because of office politic it is gonna be shit.
“Bosses” can go fuck themselves, alongside the astroturfing scum that keeps pumping out articles trying to validate the idiotic decision of returning to offices.
You can monitor the work being done. Is the work being done? That’s all you need to know.
They’re frustrated because it shows that they aren’t necessary. People can just get on and do their work without some micromanager breathing down their neck.
This is true. Your job as a “boss” should not be to command and control but rather to remove obstacles preventing your workers from doing their jobs effectively.
A good boss trusts their employees to do their work, but is comfortable working with them if there is an issue with their performance.
Exactly this. I like my manager, but they busy themselves with their own job and making sure I’m not going to quit. If they had time to look over my shoulder, I would question their utility to the company.
Micromanagers HATE this one trick.
Simple solution. Is the work getting done? Then your minions, sorry employees, are doing their jobs.
A lot of the time there is no way to tell if the work is getting done because most of the jobs have at least some amount of bullshit job woven into it. Most of what people do is just time filler.
This is a symptom of jobs undervaluing good workers…
If working harder gets you no raise, then why would anyone work harder than they need to?
I’ve discovered this at my current job. I worked tons of unpaid overtime (I’m salary), did everything I could get my hands on, I was getting compliments from upper management, my reviews were stellar, etc, etc, and my raise was 3%. My rent went up more than my paycheck did. After that, I started doing only the bare minimum. Some days I even play some Xbox in the afternoon to kill time. My latest review was excellent, and I got a 5% raise. They can go fuck themselves. I’m not going to work any harder for this company than I absolutely need to. Working less got me a bigger raise.
I’ve noticed with each increase in my income, the work has gotten easier and easier to do. The opposite result of what I have been told to expect. We have nothing in common with a meritocracy.
Food for thought: I bet you were happier when you were working less and taking time. Good things (career wise) seem to find happy people.
And then they call it “quiet quitting”. Fuck em.
This exactly. I work at 40% because any faster irritates my supervisors.
Lesson I learned early in life: most bosses prefer predictability over excellence.
I hate remote work because it means I have to pay attention to overall output and the progress of the project instead of constantly surveilling and lording my authority over the workers, who I view as subhuman tools for my own enrichment.
Does that about sum it up?
One thing I’ve learned is people don’t read, at all, even short text.
The micromanagers they have no fucking clue what’s going on if it’s written down, they need to interrupt and have you explain what it is or they have no idea what is happening.
Their boss goes “how’s the team doing, what are they working on” and they look like shit because they don’t actually read your status updates or standup or project board.
I really think that’s 80% of the problem here. We went remote without retraining and rethinking who the bosses are for that environment.
Is the work being finished and timelines being met? Congratulations, you know all you need to know.
But how will the managers know if the employees are being abused enough in workload? We can’t have people doing an adequate amount of work. They need to suffer for the company.
drinking alcohol during work hours is against company policy bud
im a commie but i can understand why workers need to stay in line or seek more Relaxing work.
of course if drinking is not against policy im drinking too if i dont got to anywhere
/idk lil drunk
I’ve worked at places that regularly drank in the afternoon
Only thing I miss about the office is the free taps 😞
this. a 2 hour, 4 beer lunch was a twice a week thing when we were in the office. Now that I’m WFH and don’t have any soul-crushing office horseshit to deal with staying sober til 5 is actually a lot easier than it was.
Did we work together? Lololol
I wouldn’t remember
Most industries should do remote work as much as possible, specifically the ones that involves sitting in front of a computer all day: less traffic on the road, no commute time, more commercial office real estate that can be converted to housing/shops…
I don’t really see the downside to any of this except to micro-managers.
real estate billionaires will have their office buildings devalued.
I think this is one of the major reasons they’re forcing RTO down our throats
But the micormanagers will find it much harder to justify their existence which is why they’re freaking out.
Because they’re fucking morons that don’t deserve to hold the reigns
Why’d you just say “bosses” again?
