<story><title>People leave managers, not companies</title><url>https://blog.intercom.com/people-leave-managers-not-companies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>subsubsub</author><text>Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?&lt;p&gt;To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional.&lt;p&gt;As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. 
Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit:&lt;/i&gt; Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.</text></item><item><author>crdoconnor</author><text>IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you.&lt;p&gt;A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won&amp;#x27;t engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can&amp;#x27;t will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like &amp;quot;does he show dedication by being in at 9am rather than 9:05am&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Managers should form a very deep understanding of whom to trust and why or understand on a very deep level what it is that they are managing.&lt;p&gt;Managers who cannot do either of those things should be terminated with prejudice.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;You have performance metrics for a reason!&lt;p&gt;As far as developing software goes, every single performance metric is terrible.</text></item><item><author>Greed</author><text>One of the issues I&amp;#x27;ve had that isn&amp;#x27;t mentioned here is the value of mutual trust. Communication and trust are the two cornerstones of a really solid manager &amp;lt;-&amp;gt; managee relationship in my experience. Whether that lack of trust manifests itself as micro-management, constant check-ins, or a constant threat of surveillance it can easily turn an above average performer into an apathetic and demoralized employee.&lt;p&gt;I used to work remotely for a company that spanned more than a few timezones, with a wonderful daily team manager and a not-so-great weekly department manager. Learning that my minutes and output were constantly monitored completely destroyed my trust with the latter, and had me searching within the week. My reaction to that was so strong I actually considered it a fortune when I was laid off for unrelated reasons rather than having to quit.&lt;p&gt;I would be reprimanded for signing on five minutes later than usual despite being on a team of individuals that spanned multiple countries, and would get a questioning ping if I was offline for more than 10 minutes (especially problematic if you&amp;#x27;re the type of programmer to write or plan code on the whiteboard &amp;#x2F; paper first). Extremely draining to deal with that sort of nonsense and mistrust.&lt;p&gt;Please, managers of the world, trust your employees! You have performance metrics for a reason!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sudhirj</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an interesting read by Taleb:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;incerto&amp;#x2F;how-to-legally-own-another-person-4145a1802bf6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;incerto&amp;#x2F;how-to-legally-own-another-person...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The argument made is that being a &amp;quot;good employee&amp;quot; and following the rules is a signal to your employer that you&amp;#x27;re willing to make personal sacrifices to be dependable - the implication being that someone who follows the rules almost all the time is by necessity sacrificing some part of their personal interest.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just that, though - managers want dependability as much as they want competence, sometimes more so. This may or may not be good for the company depending on the company. If the leverage of each employee (in terms of their ability to affect the bottom line) is small, then dependability is far more important. If the leverage is high, then the employee&amp;#x27;s results dominate - the employee can come in whenever they want wearing whatever they want and say anything they want, as long as they make it rain.</text></comment>
<story><title>People leave managers, not companies</title><url>https://blog.intercom.com/people-leave-managers-not-companies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>subsubsub</author><text>Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?&lt;p&gt;To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional.&lt;p&gt;As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. 
Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit:&lt;/i&gt; Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.</text></item><item><author>crdoconnor</author><text>IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you.&lt;p&gt;A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won&amp;#x27;t engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can&amp;#x27;t will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like &amp;quot;does he show dedication by being in at 9am rather than 9:05am&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Managers should form a very deep understanding of whom to trust and why or understand on a very deep level what it is that they are managing.&lt;p&gt;Managers who cannot do either of those things should be terminated with prejudice.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;You have performance metrics for a reason!&lt;p&gt;As far as developing software goes, every single performance metric is terrible.</text></item><item><author>Greed</author><text>One of the issues I&amp;#x27;ve had that isn&amp;#x27;t mentioned here is the value of mutual trust. Communication and trust are the two cornerstones of a really solid manager &amp;lt;-&amp;gt; managee relationship in my experience. Whether that lack of trust manifests itself as micro-management, constant check-ins, or a constant threat of surveillance it can easily turn an above average performer into an apathetic and demoralized employee.&lt;p&gt;I used to work remotely for a company that spanned more than a few timezones, with a wonderful daily team manager and a not-so-great weekly department manager. Learning that my minutes and output were constantly monitored completely destroyed my trust with the latter, and had me searching within the week. My reaction to that was so strong I actually considered it a fortune when I was laid off for unrelated reasons rather than having to quit.&lt;p&gt;I would be reprimanded for signing on five minutes later than usual despite being on a team of individuals that spanned multiple countries, and would get a questioning ping if I was offline for more than 10 minutes (especially problematic if you&amp;#x27;re the type of programmer to write or plan code on the whiteboard &amp;#x2F; paper first). Extremely draining to deal with that sort of nonsense and mistrust.&lt;p&gt;Please, managers of the world, trust your employees! You have performance metrics for a reason!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelt</author><text>In software engineering, many companies prioritise &amp;quot;getting your work done&amp;quot; (which is admittedly a subjective, hard-to-quantify metric) and consider any metric that contradicts it to be suspect.&lt;p&gt;A person who believes this would say that if according to policy my best employee should work 9am-5pm, but he prefers to work from 7am-3pm and is my best employee, it is the policy not the employee that needs changing.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I always try to get to the bottom of this stuff during job interviews - nobody wins if the employee assumes there will be flex-time and the company doesn&amp;#x27;t allow it!</text></comment>