Control and money

Post #440,941 by crazy 2/19/22 6:53:47 AM 2/19/22 6:58:09 AM Reply	Control and money First of all, is the building already paid for? Do we have a multi-year lease that we can't get out of? If they can get out of that lease and save a bunch of money they're going to. But if they can't, it's no longer part of the equation. Worse, it's lost money that somebody has to justify. Someone's losing their career over not justifying the building costs. So they have to yank people in. Now on to control. 90% of work done in the office could be done at home. But these Gen xers are worthless pieces of s* when it comes to job dedication. They actually believe in a work-life balance. How dare they. And then the gen after that? Worse. I bet they're having more sex than answering the phone. I know I did when I had the chance. I was billing by the hour on those phone calls and it was just conference calls that they thought I needed to pay attention to. Nah, I answered a question once every 15 minutes. Other days I took the conference calls in the gym. My boss knew I was working out while having the conversation. Those were the good old days. You can do that with self-motivated people. I had projects with deadlines and I hit my deadlines. My boss did not give a s* what I did as long as I hit those deadlines. We are talking cogs in the wheel for the vast majority of the people. Can those people be trusted to accomplish the task in a timely manner? Many other people depend on these people. It's all a big goddamn machine. If you've got all these people in front of you in an office and one of them is screwing up at that moment you can walk over and say hey, what's going on? You cannot do this with remote workers. You cannot manage. You could put spyware and be big brother and have everybody hate you. Or you could trust. And that would be incredibly stupid. Managers are f*** right now. Edited by crazy Feb. 19, 2022, 06:58:09 AM EST Control and money First of all, is the building already paid for? Do we have a multi-year lease that we can't get out of? If they can get out of that lease and save a bunch of money they're going to. But if they can't, it's no longer part of the equation. Worse, it's lost money that somebody has to justify. Someone's losing their career over not justifying the building costs. So they have to yank people in. Now on to control. 90% of work done in the office could be done at home. But these Gen xers are worthless pieces of s* when it comes to job dedication. They actually believe in a work-life balance. How dare they. And then the gen after that? Worse. I bet they're having more sex than answering the phone. I know I did when I had the chance. I was billing by the hour on those phone calls and it was just conference calls that they thought I needed to pay attention to. Nah, I answered a question once every 15 minutes. Other days I took the conference calls in the gym. My boss knew I was working out while having the conversation. Those were the good old days. You can do that with self-motivated people. I had projects with deadlines and I hit my deadlines. My boss did not give a s* what I did as long as I had those deadlines. We are talking cogs in the wheel for the vast majority of the people. Can those people be trusted to accomplish the task in a timely manner? Many other people depend on these people. It's all a big goddamn machine. If you've got all these people in front of you in an office and one of them is screwing up at that moment you can walk over and say hey, what's going on? You cannot do this with remote workers. You cannot manage. You could put spyware and be big brother and have everybody hate you. Or you could trust. And that would be incredibly stupid. Managers are f*** right now. Collapse All History
Post #440,956 by drook 2/20/22 9:06:22 AM 2/20/22 9:06:22 AM Reply	Can't tell if any of that is sarcasm "Can those people be trusted to accomplish the task in a timely manner?" The problem isn't that people aren't accomplishing the tasks in a timely manner. It's that managers who see themselves at cogs in a machine all too often couldn't tell you what most of their people are supposed to accomplish this week. You weren't a cog in the machine. You were a one-off, building the machine. You had discrete deliverables. The more typical white collar worker has much more nebulous responsibilities, and are rarely the only one tasked with getting them done. Good managers know how to track this output. Bad managers track effort. -- Drew
Post #440,957 by crazy 2/20/22 7:41:14 PM 2/20/22 7:41:15 PM Reply	And that's the best sarcasm Which part though? I was playing everybody's parts. Bottom line: whether or not tracking output versus effort is the issue, it can't be caught early with a remote worker. And it can't be guided and micromanaged as needed. We all hate micromanagers but I'd say 80% of cogs in the wheel need that type of management.
Post #440,964 by drook 2/21/22 12:40:24 PM 2/21/22 12:40:24 PM Reply	Operations or project work? Operations, let's take call center. They've got metrics: Calls handled, avg. duration, 1st-call resolution, survey results/customer satisfaction, call-back rate, etc. You measure who's meeting standards and, for those who aren't, train to improve capabilities or go the discipline route. Project work, you need specific deliverables and expected completion dates. Either they're delivering or they're not. Either way, start with trust. Check in every week (ops) or two (project) and see how it's going. If you don't see what you expect, check in more often. If it's true that 80% "need" micromanagement, is that because we've trained people to only do exactly the minimum required? When exceeding the minimum isn't rewarded, why would you expect people to do it? -- Drew

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