DISQUS

Great post.

I'm curious if there's any documented research on organizations that swear by "stand-up meetings only". I can imagine the time savings would be huge.

People just don't think about the money they're burning through when they waste time in meetings. Maybe a visible taximeter would help. :)

Hmm... I think my reply got eaten but in short, it's not like Google is holding out money to get people to work in a lousy environment. To the contrary, everything I read about them (like this) makes me wish I were a good enough coder to work there, even for half a market salary!

Because even if you don’t like it, even the best and the brightest know how to use a calculator. (Yep, people do work for money, no matter what you heard.)

To be sure there are a lot of psychic benefits of working at Google too. At best any competing employer is probably going to be even on the quality of life issues and way behind on the financial compensation. And even if they were even on both... it's Google, man! Who doesn't want to work there? (I'm sure the work culture of Google is well-documented a million places, but nevertheless I found this article interesting -- just skim past the Agile-bashing if it doesn't interest you.)

Then again, there's a lot of talent among the 99.99% of us who aren't smart/knowledgeable enough to work at Google.

Well, my intuitive guess backed up by experience is that most large organizations have a surprising amount of contempt for the idiots that they hired to work there. What kind of hiring process ends up with a bunch of employees that can't be trusted to behave like adults is an interesting and related question. The most effective HR communication ever was probably the Nordstrom employee handbook, though apparently they've succumbed to legal requirements for something more detailed like everyone else.

Along these lines, I found this nugget in a Martin Fowler essay that I've been quoting quite a bit:

The problem, too often, is that methodology has been opposed to the notion of people as the first-order factor in project success.

This creates a strong positive feedback effect. If you expect all your developers to be plug compatible programming units, you don't try to treat them as individuals. This lowers morale (and productivity). The good people look for a better place to be, and you end up with what you desire: plug compatible programming units.

Likewise, if you communicate to your staff like 8th-graders, don't be surprised to end up with staff that acts like 8th-graders.

Yeah, OK, the Connected Ventures video you loved is a much better example of self-parody.

The PA video just sucked. :)

But it appears to suck in a self-aware, ironic, jaded Gen. X way. Or maybe I just give them too much credit and am projecting my own values onto the video. Maybe they really thought they were being clever or hip.

It's like, being cheesy and being aware you're being cheesy can be comical, but being cheesy and not being aware of it is fatal.

Not that I liked it anyway, just saying....

I'm not an HR professional, rather a techie, so I have no idea if my views are even valid.

On one hand, I have a deep suspicion of human nature that underlies everything from theology to politics, so Theory X would be more intellectually consistent with my other beliefs. On the other, I really like the idea of HR's scope including "motivating" employees. This is probably because I have found myself demotivated so many times in the past, and HR has been pretty much useless in that regard. (To be fair, on only one occasion did I actively seek their help, but they were still pretty useless.)

Motivation is a complex topic, especially in technical circles. Of course some people are highly motivated by traditional compensation, but I've always struggled because I simply *CAN'T* be happy doing work I hate just for the paycheck. Most people fall somewhere along a continuum between "motivated by money" and "not motivated at all by money", rather than at one of the poles. But I'm closer to the "not" pole, and that means corporations don't know how to handle me.

By the way, if I like thinking about questions like this, does that suggest that HR might be a good career choice?

(Yes, baseball aficionados will cite Moneyball, but where are the low budget teams now?)

Frank, since you referred to Moneyball in your comment in a much different context -- in understanding what makes great performers great -- I'd like to clarify an understanding that I have about that book and about the Red Sox.

I've not read the book, but to my understanding the "Moneyball approach" is largely about using certain quantitative analysis in ways that the salty old "baseball people" would find quite surprising -- e.g. valuing on-base percentage more highly than traditionally is done, because your leadoff batter walking is almost as good as him hitting a single. And to my knowledge much of this quantitative reinterpretation goes back to the work of Bill James. Of course Bill James now is a consultant to the Red Sox!

So in my mind, the Theo-and-the-trio era Sox are the marriage of Moneyball with a really huge operating budget. Teams like Oakland have to some extent overcome their lower revenues with smart decisions, but obviously if you pit a rich Moneyball team against a poor one, the difference in money will still tell in the end.

Thoughts? And does that have any real-world implications?