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Midjack posted:http://www.sjgames.com/svtarot/net/ Well do they work?
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May 11, 2020 17:30
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Tnuctip posted:Well do they work? They work as well as any tarot deck does.
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May 11, 2020 18:18
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Midjack posted:They work as well as any tarot deck does. He was asking about the deck of cards, not your business cycle planning group.
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May 11, 2020 20:44
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Sundae posted:He was asking about the deck of cards, not your business cycle planning group. At my last job, the plan was to customize a magic eight ball and use that to answer useful questions such as "Will there be any weather delays next month?" but we  'ed out.I do want a crystal ball to keep in my desk drawer though. What can I say, I'm a prop comic.
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May 11, 2020 21:40
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https://twitter.com/MrAndrewCotter/status/1259931151403290624
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May 11, 2020 21:42
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You both look a bit... worried
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May 11, 2020 22:18
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Wednesday: New department head wants to schedule 1:1's with everybody in the department as a touch-base, asks his admin assistant to schedule all of them. She emails the entire department with an attached excel document, tells us to pick a timeslot and whether we'll be in person or virtual and then update the sheet and send it back to her. Thursday: AA emails us all again to let us know that yes she knows she messed up, that wasn't a smartsheet or anything so now she's got dozens of copies of the same spreadsheet with one time marked in it. Now just tells us to email her what time we want and if we'll be in-person/virtual, and she'll handle any conflicts. Friday: AA emails us and says this is all too complicated and she's just gone ahead and assigned everybody a time slot, please email to confirm if you can make it in person or if it needs to be virtual. Today: AA emails me and a couple other people to tell us she's going to have to reschedule our 1:1's because of conflicts, she'll let us know what they are. That was 9AM, still haven't gotten a follow up with a new timeslot. Eagerly awaiting Tuesday's email that the department head has decided he actually doesn't want to do 1:1's after all.
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May 11, 2020 22:26
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Sydin posted:Wednesday: New department head wants to schedule 1:1's with everybody in the department as a touch-base, asks his admin assistant to schedule all of them. She emails the entire department with an attached excel document, tells us to pick a timeslot and whether we'll be in person or virtual and then update the sheet and send it back to her. Wednesday: unfortunately AA was made redundant.
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May 11, 2020 23:14
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AA is probably somebody's niece/nephew/side piece, so I doubt it
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May 12, 2020 00:02
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Sydin posted:Wednesday: New department head wants to schedule 1:1's with everybody in the department as a touch-base, asks his admin assistant to schedule all of them. She emails the entire department with an attached excel document, tells us to pick a timeslot and whether we'll be in person or virtual and then update the sheet and send it back to her.  I've been at this tech writer "gotta be a pseudo project manager too" thing with zero relevant experience except "rites gud" for two months, and even I know how to use Outlook's meeting planner feature.
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May 12, 2020 03:54
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Does anyone have any advice about getting rid of someone... I've recently taken over a department and it has become pretty apparently that there is a donkey who thinks the are a thoroughbred. I've pointed out simple mistakes in work that is simply duck off a water's back as they lack the self-awareness to realise that the team is covering them. If a task is not done up to standard individually and someone has to jump into fix mistakes, its just clearly that is a two person job that kind of thing. There always seems to be an excuse...
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May 12, 2020 11:54
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first off you need to to TELL them that they aren't meeting expectations and the team is covering for them. It's not usually realistic to expect low performers to realize they are being covered for. if they were self aware they probably wouldn't be low performers or they would have left. set very clear expectations and communicate them to the person. document their shortcomings to those communicated expectations. let them know when they are not meeting expectations. if they continue to not meet expectations, try to counsel them out (eg - for things that they claim are clearly 2 person job, the other team members do these things alone and it's an expectation of the role. if you find that you are not able to do that, perhaps this role isn't the right fit for you professionally). put them on a PIP. manage the PIP. terminate them.
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May 12, 2020 12:51
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Finally had the all-staff Zoom presentation we've been awaiting for nearly a month, after getting a long rear end email that redundancies were inevitable and there'd be more info in this session. It was a shitshow. Started with the CEO being unaware that his mic and camera were both on, then 25 minutes of waffle about the importance of looking forward, shared understandings and togetherness, and culminated in "I was going to present you with Stage 1 workplace changes today but now I can't because I got something from the union on the weekend which I can't tell you anything about, I don't agree with their proposal but I can't tell you anything about why, so...hold on for another fortnight". So glad we waited a month to hear no more news. On the upside, we then got to watch him cop half an hour of increasingly salty questions.
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May 12, 2020 13:01
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Lizzy posted:Does anyone have any advice about getting rid of someone... I've recently taken over a department and it has become pretty apparently that there is a donkey who thinks the are a thoroughbred. I've pointed out simple mistakes in work that is simply duck off a water's back as they lack the self-awareness to realise that the team is covering them. If a task is not done up to standard individually and someone has to jump into fix mistakes, its just clearly that is a two person job that kind of thing. There always seems to be an excuse...
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May 12, 2020 13:34
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:first off you need to to TELL them that they aren't meeting expectations and the team is covering for them. It's not usually realistic to expect low performers to realize they are being covered for. if they were self aware they probably wouldn't be low performers or they would have left. Dik Hz posted:Echoing KYOON GRIFFEY JR here, but the way to fire someone is to sit them down, clearly communicate exactly what your expectations are, tell them that they will be fired if they don't perform to those expectations, and then hold them accountable to those expectations. If you can't do this for either personal or business reasons, you're effectively neutered as a manger. Both of these guys have been managing longer than me but its my experience as well. Though I agree more with KGJR as I think prior to Dik Hz's PIP conversation you should have 1-on-1s that bring up the issue. I'll share a personal one that stuck with me. At our 5 person company, the first engineer I hired was a senior engineer (PhD in CS, IT work background) who didn't do well as the job needs changed and the company evolved and found what was working and what wasn't. I definitely made the new manager mistake of taking too long to fire them. We had several in person meetings where I'd discuss what was going well and what wasn't, but they only heard what was going well. We got to a PIP, it completely demoralized them though they needed the job so they worked hard to complete it. I made another mistake making the PIP not very challenging. Something that would take an engineer of equal tenure, no more than 2 weeks they got a month for. This person worked until midnight to complete it, finishing about 3 days early. About a month after the PIP their work quality and speed went back to what it was before and I had to terminate them. Feels bad man. The end result: The actual productivity and morale of the team as a whole improved as it turned out some of the other team mates were helping this person along, slowing down the whole team. I also started doing 1-on-1s with the rest of my team as a result of the PIP where I ask them the same open ended questions each time every 2 weeks. It kinda turns into a bit of a therapy session and we do performance feedback in both directions. I've definitely changed manager behaviors of mine as a result of feedback from my team and they say they really like it so it's been good in both directions. If you start doing 1-on-1s pick a time that you can definitely have them. Prepare your feedback 10-15 min in advance. Don't cancel them. That's another mistake I've made and learned from. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 13:59 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 12, 2020 13:54
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Make sure to document every one of the interactions. That will be the key that will let HR/Your Boss/Whatever actually do something. I'm sure this depends, but everywhere I've ever been the HR team has been petrified to actually let someone go (even with a verified sexual harassment claim!) without months of paperwork. Start that now. A lot of places require PIPs, and like its been said don't make it easy. A lot of managers say to make it impossible which I am not comfortable with but I usually target something that I would expect an engineer to be able to do in the time allotted but not give them a bunch of extra rope or life vests. There is someone out there that needs this job and will not complain/make excuses. Don't punish that person trying to be a nice guy.
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May 12, 2020 14:14
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Maybe the thread has some ideas here. The situation: My boss manages two teams, me (Azure engineering) and core Windows engineering. He's wanted to automate some tasks that the Windows team has to do on weekend evenings. We want the automation to be from our ticketing system. The members of the Windows team only do the tasks in question 10-14 times a year. Ticketing system devs say it's going to be a $15,600 chargeback to do a proof of concept as to whether or not the ticketing system can do the automation. They want to have a meeting with me over how much it will then cost to do the automation on the three tasks in question. Boss is angry that we have to pay it, wants cost breakdowns, and is a big messenger-shooter. The people who actually do the tasks don't really have a big issue with doing the work - they'd like to not have to do it on Saturday evenings but it's really the boss that's driving it. He once threatened to make it one of my responsibilities to do the work when I told him that I had to do some justification for the devs to actually work on it. Should I be trying to talk him down saying the costs are already way over the benefits? Should I be telling the boss he needs to be on the calls where the devs explain why there are hoops, why it costs, etc.? I'm not even going to suggest having one of the core Windows team guys handle it since they're probably too busy, hence why it's on my plate to begin with.
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May 12, 2020 14:14
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anyone else automatically give lower priority to anyone who uses "please advise" e: Also in a more serious note re the firings: I've had a manager be fired after a PIP for... well, the official reason that she was on it was "favoritism". Behind the scenes the CEO had decided she "didn't fit the company's image" so on the very last day of her PIP he told her supervisor to fire her. Do it better than that. Just make sure you get actual things that the person has in fact done, demonstrably, with documentation. If they're in any way smart they'll shape up. I still think about that firing because it's such a perfect half-truth since she really WAS fired due to favoritism.... just not hers. Same CEO later on got fired by the owners after throwing a bitch fit about not getting a bonus and overriding the budget for store cleaning supplies to $0. Yeah, that'll fix the situation 
Shugojin fucked around with this message at 14:34 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 12, 2020 14:21
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MJP posted:The situation:
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May 12, 2020 14:31
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Shugojin posted:anyone else automatically give lower priority to anyone who uses "please advise"
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May 12, 2020 14:31
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Dik Hz posted:You could have left out the rest of your post, tbh. Just do the bare minimum, given how your boss is. There's no point in doing more. There's an 18% bonus subject to his evaluation of my performance. That's a big chunk of money and if he starts thinking I suck, I lose out a lot. I just want the money and to do the absolute minimum required. Probably all I can do is tell him I'm getting delays from X person, let him open fire, then offer to bring him in to discuss it directly with them if he wants. Then I'll present everything to him, and maybe my best shot is the rationale of "yes it's expensive but if you want to remove the labor, this is the cost of doing so, plus it's a one-time cost to evaluate and then $X per automation we do" or something like that. FWIW I am going to apply for a transfer to a different role in the same technology under a completely different boss, who I at least know is a decent enough human being. There's no real positive outcome here for me in the long term working for this guy. If nothing else I'm actively pursuing learning coping skills! Shugojin posted:anyone else automatically give lower priority to anyone who uses "please advise" Likewise I tend to use it but only in the context of me having tried stuff and failed, or if it's a gauntlet-throw to get someone refusing to do their work to do their drat work. MJP fucked around with this message at 15:42 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 12, 2020 15:40
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MJP posted:Ticketing system devs say it's going to be a $15,600 chargeback to do a proof of concept.... Is your ticketing system implemented by third party vendors? It’s quite strange to me for a department to put a dollar cost on a feature request otherwise. It’s not really your job to talk your boss out of this imo. It’s clearly not your idea to implement this. By saying you don’t think it’s worth the cost, your boss will see you as on the side of the ticket system devs and against him. Let him waste the department budget if you’re getting out of that team anyway.
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May 12, 2020 15:43
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In my experience, once in a great while an employee will actually meaningfully improve their work after a PIP and manage to stick around long term, but it's like 10% at best. The rest is like 70% the employee is fired by the end of the PIP term and 20% they manage to survive but revert to their previous baseline of underperformance and are fired soon after. The point of a PIP isn't really an expectation that the employee will actually improve. The point is to put the employee on notice that they're on their way out and now is the time to start looking for their next job. I will echo CFP and say that in my first managerial role my biggest rookie mistake was waiting too long to fire two people who it was clear within a week were anchors dragging the team down. You should be putting the PIP together starting on the very same day you realize an employee is underperforming and/or too much of an rear end in a top hat to keep around. Also echoing Dik that sometimes you're stuck with the bad employee because they're related to/buddies with an executive who is protecting them (you might even find out that's why your predecessor left the role!) in which case you are powerless to meaningfully manage your team and should spend all your time on networking, so as to manage blame when your team inevitably fails and to angle for a clean move to a different job. That's not actually common (an executive's buddy/relative is more likely your boss than your report) but if it does happen to you, your strategy is to get the hell out of that department as soon as you can.
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May 12, 2020 15:50
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MJP posted:Maybe the thread has some ideas here. The situation: $15k is in the neighborhood of three dev-weeks at "ordinary contractor" rates - rule of thumb for a dev most places is a thousand bucks a day. Either this is a complex integration that's going to need substantial new work, or they're giving you a "go away, we don't want to do this" number. It would be a good idea to figure out which one it is. If your boss has a habit of shooting messengers, he should probably hear all the issues and justifications from the people who came up with the number, regardless. If you think that the cost isn't worth the benefit, or the ticketing system devs just plain won't do it, your best option is probably to lead him to a decision that ends in "oh, those grapes were sour anyway." brainwrinkle posted:Is your ticketing system implemented by third party vendors? It's quite strange to me for a department to put a dollar cost on a feature request otherwise. Some large organizations run "activity-based budgeting" or even put shared services like facilities and IT under their own P&L. In theory, it's supposed to make sure that heavy users of those services can justify their costs without being subsidized by lighter users, and allow for neutral comparisons to external vendors. In practice, it usually turns into tight lock-in with a vendor that might theoretically be part of the same org, but definitely doesn't have your best interests at heart.
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May 12, 2020 16:14
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brainwrinkle posted:Is your ticketing system implemented by third party vendors? It’s quite strange to me for a department to put a dollar cost on a feature request otherwise. Purely internal chargebacks for internal devs. Ironically, it was the intake person for the team who wanted to do the POC to make sure they could even do the automation, which boggles the mind, but that's why I'm not in the dev team, I guess. I'll have to start answering his "why are they doing X" questions with "I'll ask" at the risk of looking like I'm not doing due diligence. Space Gopher posted:Either this is a complex integration that's going to need substantial new work, or they're giving you a "go away, we don't want to do this" number. It would be a good idea to figure out which one it is. It's to find out if the ticketing system can take a new request from the web catalog, use fields in the request to populate wildcard variables in a Powershell script - e.g. replace %requestoremail% with Jblow@company.com - then run the script and return the output to the requestor. They mentioned to me that they were running into issues getting a completely unrelated module added on, and even after I pointed out that we didn't want to do anything with that module, they said it was still going to be $15k. I'm starting to think it's a go away number, but based on the deal above about not wanting to side with the devs, I'm stuck between the rock of just relaying info without giving context and the hard place of explaining their logic and getting yelled at.
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May 12, 2020 16:19
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Some kind of org restructuring happened stratospherically above my head and now there's a new slack channel for this super group. It contains 437 people, and we're all being encouraged to each of us individually introduce ourselves in this channel, which - let me stress this again - has 437 people in it.
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May 12, 2020 16:22
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MJP posted:It's to find out if the ticketing system can take a new request from the web catalog, use fields in the request to populate wildcard variables in a Powershell script - e.g. replace %requestoremail% with Jblow@company.com - then run the script and return the output to the requestor. They mentioned to me that they were running into issues getting a completely unrelated module added on, and even after I pointed out that we didn't want to do anything with that module, they said it was still going to be $15k. First of all - on the technical side, that integration does sound like a pain. Your JIRA server really, really shouldn't have access to do arbitrary system administration, so to implement it right, they're going to need to set up some kind of specialized channel that lets JIRA kick off some small set of known-and-approved tasks. Three devs for a week still feels excessive, but this probably isn't a small job, either. On the people side, this isn't "you don't want to side with the devs." It's "your boss shouldn't perceive you as being on their side." What should be happening here is people trying to solve a problem in a mutually agreeable way. If it does come down to taking sides, then you're on the devs' side, because your interests align with theirs. But, if your boss is so irrational he'll literally yell at you for summarizing what somebody else told you, then you should probably try to manage his perceptions to at least make him recognize that it's the ticketing system devs telling him he can't have his toy, not you. I'm sorry, but your boss sounds like a low-grade abuser, and you need to manage his triggers for now and GTFO as soon as possible.
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May 12, 2020 16:42
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No. No god drat it. Developer guy, you said it yourself: the thing you built in 2017 looks half baked and you don't know why it was left like this. Why are you buying into the product manager's and system engineer's bait for a "quick" fix. Quick got us into this mess and is how it ended up on my desk with me poking all of you with pins about it! 
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May 12, 2020 17:10
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Hoodwinker posted:Some kind of org restructuring happened stratospherically above my head and now there's a new slack channel for this super group. It contains 437 people, and we're all being encouraged to each of us individually introduce ourselves in this channel, which - let me stress this again - has 437 people in it. I look forward to that still happening when I've started
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May 12, 2020 17:12
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Hoodwinker posted:Some kind of org restructuring happened stratospherically above my head and now there's a new slack channel for this super group. It contains 437 people, and we're all being encouraged to each of us individually introduce ourselves in this channel, which - let me stress this again - has 437 people in it. I'd be tempted to wait for a busy time and then drop in some kind of meme copypasta.
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May 12, 2020 17:25
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Che Delilas posted:I'd be tempted to wait for a busy time and then drop in some kind of meme copypasta. *holds up spork*
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May 12, 2020 17:34
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Eric the Mauve posted:In my experience, once in a great while an employee will actually meaningfully improve their work after a PIP and manage to stick around long term, but it's like 10% at best. The rest is like 70% the employee is fired by the end of the PIP term and 20% they manage to survive but revert to their previous baseline of underperformance and are fired soon after. I got put on a PIP pretty early in my career (at the place I still work at!) and it worked out for me. But I agree that in most cases once you're getting to that point you are likely going to have to fire the person.
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May 12, 2020 17:52
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I wasn’t ever formally on one but I was close with my first real career job several times. I eventually quit before I got fired. I ended up being fired at my next place, for largely the same reasons (disorganized, showing my emotions - sarcasm and anger mostly - too much, getting overwhelmed and not being able to manage it properly). I figured it out by the time I hit my late 20s but it was tough and I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger. Some bosses were much better at handling it than others, so I have varying levels of respect for them based on their actions, but fundamentally what needed to change was me. And at the end of the day I think I’m a much better manager and employee because of my failures. From a manager perspective though, there are good ways and bad ways to manage it. Be empathetic, be firm, and be consistent. You are not attacking the person, you are trying to help them succeed. Possibly somewhere else if this job isn’t the right fit.
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May 12, 2020 18:13
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I think everything said on PIPs has been excellent advice. I've also struggled at times (not that it never happens now) particularly in my early career. An emphasis on guidance and empathy should help the person see the light, but if not at the end of the day you do have to be consistent with the guidelines you establish for your team. Part of an ideal work environment is a meritocracy, right? Inner Light fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 12, 2020 |
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May 12, 2020 18:32
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Space Gopher posted:First of all - on the technical side, that integration does sound like a pain. Your JIRA server really, really shouldn't have access to do arbitrary system administration, so to implement it right, they're going to need to set up some kind of specialized channel that lets JIRA kick off some small set of known-and-approved tasks. Three devs for a week still feels excessive, but this probably isn't a small job, either. It's ServiceNow, FWIW, but I have no clue if that helps or harms. "Manage his triggers" sounds like a good summary - didn't even think of that. And maybe I'm overstating the yelling-at here, he doesn't raise his voice but he just starts getting sort of aggressive-ish. Unless I'm oversensitive, he just gets irritated and angry.
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May 12, 2020 18:41
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Jordan7hm posted:From a manager perspective though, there are good ways and bad ways to manage it. Be empathetic, be firm, and be consistent. You are not attacking the person, you are trying to help them succeed. Possibly somewhere else if this job isn’t the right fit. Honestly, the things I've done that I am proudest of as a manager was when I worked with people on the "You're not being fired right now but this clearly isn't the right job so let's work together to make this work for everyone." If everyone acts like an adult you can actively help them land a job (Don't need to take time off for a interview, current management can give recommendations, lots of flexibility on transition/new job start times), and you can still set expectations for someone to keep things afloat instead of being motivated to just slack until they get fired. It might not be "CORPORATE IDEAL" but it's humane and my other employees are aware that that is how they can expect to be treated and generally reflect that maturity back. Importantly, don't confuse "humane" with "pushover". You can make a termination sting less but that doesn't mean letting a poor performer hang on and hurt the rest of the team.
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May 12, 2020 18:52
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I’ve never worked in a slack shop but I imagine them to be an endless scroll of animated gifs.
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May 12, 2020 19:00
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priznat posted:I’ve never worked in a slack shop but I imagine them to be an endless scroll of animated gifs. this accurately describes all of the teams channels that have executive staff in them at my work
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May 12, 2020 19:04
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priznat posted:I’ve never worked in a slack shop but I imagine them to be an endless scroll of animated gifs. I would imagine the Minion GIF ratio would probably be a good way to rate the quality of these channels.
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May 12, 2020 19:06
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Importantly, that works when both you (the manager) and the employee are on the same page about the fit and performance of the employee in the role. It sounds like that may not be the case in the situation originally described.
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May 12, 2020 19:08
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