Why Musk is winning
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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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...
Luckily my team was around a dozen to dozen.5 people, which meant I could foster a real "family" environment and idea. Not in the gay corporate sense, but in a real "I'm not calling off because that would make you guys have a bad day" one. And because I tried to keep things on the level with them, they'd do the same with me. They'd pick up slack on things I didn't notice, kept each other accountable without turning into drama, and stepped up when things got rough. Not all of them mind, but having a solid 2-3 guys getting your back does wonders.
The biggest contribution to that was I made sure I was always last to leave and made sure they knew I was better than them at this job. That's something a lot of management misses, making sure your employees know anything you can ask of them can do yourself and good enough to put you in charge. I'd always be knee deep in the shit with them, unflinchingly trying to be the example to keep shoveling. That did sometimes involve dick swinging contests to shoot guys in the pride enough to make them step up, which meant a lot of learning what motivation people had to maximize them (for others its family, either more or less hours for that, or the aforementioned letting them just go home in general).
I also argued with upper management nearly daily. Telling them to fuck off and stay out of our business as much as I could get away with was a constant. Keeping corporate fuckery out of our hair increased productivity immensely. As did outright refusing to do bullshit paperwork as much as possible, to avoid wasting time. Something a lot of managers fall for is just doing whatever they are told to do, and not realizing a lot of it is busy work that you can get away with skipping. Getting yelled at is meaningless until they fire you, so its a valuable tool to maximize.
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).