Why Musk is winning
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I've worked for three corporations in three separate industries(retail, food service, and manufacturing). At all three, I've seen the same three tightly interwoven problems: lack of communication, lack of coordination, and poor management.
I suspect what happens over time is people are expected to get promoted, or they're great kiss asses, so they do, in spite of making terrible managers. It's a sad reality, but yeah, some people are great workers, but terrible managers, just the way things go.
What then happens is those terrible managers realize they're shit at their new position and hide the fact by keeping garbage employees on as a cover, while pushing the people who are actually good at their jobs extra hard so they still keep their numbers in an 'acceptable' range that keeps the hire ups off their asses.
The problem persists over time as the company expands, and eventually you end up with a company full of workers who are lazy as sin, managers who are incompetent/lazy, and all the people who are worth a shit being driven off or quitting from the extra workload dumped on them by the shit heels they have to deal with.
If Musk has any sense, he'll go back through the old employees who quit long before he came on board and see if any of them are worth bringing back...
It's been a while since I've heard anyone invoke the "Peter Principle," "people in a hierarchy tend to rise to 'a level of respective incompetence': employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another."
I wasn't intentionally invoking it (is that what it's called, by the way? I've heard of it, but yeah.), but it applies.
Fiance also has a theory that corporations intentionally promote psychopaths/sociopaths, assuming they'll make better managers, but that doesn't always work out. Dunno how right he is, but I can certainly see where he's coming from
This is really a problem with the one size fits all pay structure almost all businesses use. Where instead of paying based on work or productivity, you are exclusively paid based on seniority and "how many people are under you."
So someone who dominates the job will get paid the same as the stoner barely coherent for his entire shift. But the company wants to reward him for his years of work and make sure he is paid enough to want to stay, so he is forced into management as that's the only way to accomplish that task short of literally telling him to wait for years. And there his skills are now far less used because he is now 50% working and 50% mangerial bullshit, instead of dedicating himself 100% to his task.
Its one area where I've seen the cubicle/tech industry actually do better. Where some companies will hand out bonuses, both pay and benefits, for quick and effective launches of new products. My buddy who used to work for TMobile would get visa cards with thousands of dollars every time his group pushed out a patch before the deadline.
makes sense. i know a guy at my current job whose losing his mind, because he's gotta be lead man, and overnight saw operater, and he can't do both at the same time.
honestly, i wish bonuses were given more often for getting things in ahead of deadlines. might encourage more people to work hard for the bonus, though some will still slack off and drag everybody else down, unfortunately.
somebody else on one of these forums mentioned a strategy he employed where he basically told his workers if they got all of their work done ahead of schedule, their time was theirs, and he'd pay them like they had been there all week (ie: if they got everything out on tuesday, they could stay home wednesday to saturday and still get paid as if they were still there). his department was apparently one of the best in the company for years because of this.
Back in my time in management, I would generally always let people go home early if they finished their work. Harder they worked, sooner they went home. As it was a "overtime is expected" job, the hours/pay weren't as big a concern as was getting time to relax so they all took it. Usually wasn't a great full shift motivator, but would give them a huge burst of productivity in the last two-ish hours to keep fatigue going.
If I could have paid them for the missed time I would, but corporations don't give that flexibility or power.
ugh, how did you stand it? every manager I've ever seen spend their whole shift, running from department to department, putting out (metaphorical) fires...
The problem is this doesn't work.
Measuring fine grained productivity goes one of two ways:
what they actually measuring is ass kissing and wasting time faking productivity, or
the company turns into a burn-and-churn environment that burns out the people doing the work, once again the advantage goes to people in unmeasurable roles
You're right when it comes to office jobs, but that's less applicable to something like factory work. Also contractors seem to work out just fine getting paid for product. We're seeing more gig work by people who don't want the typical office BS.
I was going to add blue collar and laborers but they are pretty damned good at faking productivity too. Then they get a union and don't even have to fake it.
Well I'm sure glad in the current model ass kissing, faking productivity, and mass burn out aren't common issues regardless. Plenty already reach management doing only the first two in a huge chunk of industries already meaning we are already doing it with extra steps.
I used to work for a MegaCorp that had explicit parallel mangement/technical tracks, where the pay scales and seniority were matched and based on one's experience and responsibility in their respective track; and policy disallowed you from reporting to a manager with a lower seniority level.
Said MegaCorp had its share of problems (hence the "used to work"), but that policy solved many issue that relate to experienced techies working for inexperienced retards (they might have still been retards, but they'd at least be experienced ones).
In some cases, it's not being horrible managers, but "not being able to manage at the level they get sent to.
That's fair. I'm mainly speculating here. It's not like I've ever been a manager (nor do I really want to, to be perfectly honest. Seems like a massive headache for a moderate rise in pay, honestly)
Most middle management positions function as pyramid schemes. People graduate from entry level to middle management One to work longer hours for mediocre salary, all just for the privilege of a mere shot at the real payday aka upper management. But there are dozens or hundreds of middle managers competing for a handful of executive positions, and those executives are lifers who only vacate their positions when they retire. And anyways, most of those higher slots will actually be filled via “networking” aka nepotism, so even the prize is an illusion.
It's the dangling carrot for wage slaves. You can still be a wage slave, but be responsible for other wage slaves too!
Sounds awful, tbh...
There are some people who make excellent team leaders. Some are good mid-level. FEW are good at the upper echelon. Dealing with that now in my professional life...