Stop Complaining, You Are Probably Doing Ok

WOW!!!

We all have different experiences - I think the view of value is perhaps a view of value from an employee’s position.

As I have aged, I have a more Machiavellian view on who really constitutes “value” to a company – simply, one’s value is directly proportional to the amount of margin loss and the time it takes to replace that margin if one were gone.

Indeed. It is better to be lucky than to be good. One can hit a home run early on, but home runs are few and far between. Training oneself to economize for the first half of life is also a way to implicitly train one’s offspring to also economize, lest one’s offspring waste the fruits that are given to them with a lavish lifestyle.

Both of these comments point to another corollary — to FIRE, never get involved with high-maintenance people. :wink:

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Employees who work long hours and produce normal amount and quality should be demoted fir the sake of lower healthcare cost and better employee well-being

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Is the employee bringing value to the company even though they are not that efficient? I don’t really agree with demoting those employees - demoting them will cause a loss of pride/status and only reduce their motivation.

If the employee is still valuable, I would say one can put that employee in a position, perhaps a lateral move, where the employee can still feel a good amount of pride, yet pay that employee an amount that is commensurate with the margin they contribute.

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What if they are elderly?
CA’s overtime laws killed work opportunities for older folk who didn’t manage to set enough aside to retire. State-forced poverty.

I never understood rewarding peoole who work the most hours with a promotion. How are they going to handle more responsibility? It’s why people get promotored to the point they burnout or just can’t keep up anymore.

Of course I was talking about value to the company :slight_smile: Everybody thinks they are valuable - what good does that do for the company? It’s just a self glorification.

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While I still find useful information here from time to time, truth be told it’s more of a place where I hang out online and gossip nowadays :smile:

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I found it quite addictive. :slight_smile:

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What is the latest?

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@Jane,

Come on, @Jane, do you not work hard for every dollar or house/stock you have? I just don’t have much patience for lazy people who are bent on automation processes to save their arse. Yes, I count my blessings at every Thanksgiving dinner I host. Just like everyone probably does. But, is it because I was lucky? Heck no. I earned it. Never count yourself short. A hungry and willing individual will always find a paycheck.

You tell me - it’s best to hear it from the source :blush:

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Obviously, it is not about the most hours you spend. All I am saying is that smart managers know which of their employees are the ones that are stars and the ones that they can drive harder for overall team success. Why would you give a high profile project to an average worker? You wouldn’t, unless you are stupid. Obviously, your seniors are doing the more complex, out of the box, higher risk projects. Well, those projects tend to demand more time. Why is that difficult to understand? You may need to go to other internal depts or even external places for assistance. Our seniors are expected to help new or junior employees. It is part of my performance goals, special projects and mentoring youngsters. But, I also have my clients that I need to service and they tend to be the bitchy/needy ones.

Anyone who has worked for stable, blue chip companies know it is not that easy to just say, oh, automate everything. Realistically, there are only so many initiatives that make it through for implementation each year and a lot of times your request for more automation processes is put aside. It is what it is.

Um, was Constance waiting for improved automation or did she just work harder???

You can’t burnout your star employees, or they’ll leave. They are the most marketable and most able to get a new job. It’s actually easier to get someone giving 50% up to 75%, than it is to squeeze a star from 90% to 95%. You also get a much bigger gain for the team. It’s also critical to get rid of low performers. They put more stress on everyone else, since others have to take on more to cover the workload. Most managers avoid getting rid of low performers, but it’s a critical part of retaining the high performers.

I just had a guy in my team that wasn’t coached at all and was ranked least effective. He was in danger of being fired. Now he’s 3 more months of sustained performance from promotion. He wasn’t dumb or lazy. He just wasn’t coached on the stuff you don’t learn in school, but is critical to your quality of work and people’s perception. Once he was aware of it, then he was able to easily make changes.

There’s always more value in bringing up the bottom than trying to burnout the top.

We’re huge on process automation. We have entire BI teams that focus on it. Automating reporting is a must, so teams can spend time driving improvement in metrics instead of creating the metric.

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BI = Business intelligence? I thought should be BPR (business process re-engineering). BI focuses on analytics for decision-making.

There are much easier ways to burn out a top performers - part of it comes from basic things like trying to micromanage them, or trying to make technical decisions when the manager has been out of touch of the reality (ie tech skills no longer sharp). The mediocre/average performers will choose to follow the manager’s lead, since it’s the safer choice. End result is project not finishing after quarters, work produced not being useful to anyone, and so on.

This probably results in average engs to stay average engs…

I was a total star performer. I fired for life because they burned me out totally… :rofl:

I disagree. Employees of all elk, star or slacker, will leave anyway regardless of reason. You mean to tell me you don’t have a star employee who is also somewhat dependent on the job? Come on. A star employee with a fair amount of years is not automatically going to just leave and start over. A person like that more than likely has a good vesting in the pension plan, a good amount of vacation, and what I loosely call an otherwise “cushy” relationship with the boss(es). Bosses simply treat you differently. Yeah, they work hard but they also get away with a lot too. I can freely have a frank, argumentative discussion with my boss and he is cool with it. Sometimes, he gives in and let’s me gamble. Sometimes not. My boss is not going to assign me a crap assignment that some newbie can do. I get to be way more creative and out of the box. The bottom line is, it is a two way street. I work hard and can be depended on. I am NEVER sick or call in sick when I am not. Last minute emergencies that come up, I am usually called upon to step in. And most importantly, I do get it. Work is work and if I need to stay to midnight because some unreasonable client needs some figures or reports well I don’t complain too much. Just get me dinner, Sir…

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