"it's clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees"
It's statements like this that drive me deep into despair. That bland, banal platitude of "value". That non-statement of inaction phrased as "we need a better vision".
And, increasingly off-topic and misanthropic: Why has "ask" replaced "request" as a noun? "The ask is that we improve database response times by 25%". Why is that any clearer?
My apologies for the grumpiness. A security team has decided to throttle all AWS modification requests and it's breaking all our pipelines through timeouts.
>It's statements like this that drive me deep into despair. That bland, banal platitude of "value". That non-statement of inaction phrased as "we need a better vision".
The sad thing is, it isn't even that hard to do; creating value for workers, I mean; at the risk of intensifying your despair.
Keep workloads reasonable. Establish humane feedback loops so that your labor force can actually attempt to actualize themselves. At the end of the day, every human being in a workplace creates value, and the more you can make life simpler and more straightforward for those who work for you without hemming them in or pidgeonholing them, the safer they'll feel taking reasonable risks that may just pay off, and most importantly coming to you first for input, advice, and a courtesy heads up.
One of the biggest challenges I've had to face since getting actual reports, is de-programming the tyranny-of-the-manager in the whole lot of them. I need people questioning things, correcting misunderstandings, making me aware of things. It is my job to do what needs to be done to enable my team to succeed. My team's inexplicable or unanticipated sudden failure is my failure. I am the one ultimately responsible for ensuring the reliability and stability of the processes that effect those I am tasked with managing for.
As a nuts and bolts person, it's totally new to me. However, I had someone volunteer to take a paycut to stay on with me. I'm... Not sure whether that's ultimately a positive, or what. I wonder sometimes if I'm falling down into the abyss of narcisstic management/business tendencies I've fought against my entire career because the descent is more insidious than I ever imagined... Then I look at all the stuff I have to balance, and re-evaluate what I could do different, and well... It is what it is.
Management was never something you should do to others, rather you do it for them to in the end make the entire working unit more productive. It's all work and overhead that has to occur for any task to get done; somebody has to do it. I just try to do for them what I always wished mine would do for me. I have a hunch they may have productivity gains in their personal lives. (At least I hope so.) I figure that's for someone else to judge though.
I just don't understand treating people like machines.
>It's statements like this that drive me deep into despair. That bland, banal platitude of "value". That non-statement of inaction phrased as "we need a better vision".
Value has a very specific economic meaning. It means a product or service with a price. Providing employees with more value is a way of stating they plan is to give them more XYZ, but not necessarily pay them more.
There are lots of non-pay increase propositions that employers can do that add a ton of value for employees. On site, at-cost daycare. On site medical/dental visits (e.g. staff Direct Primary Care). At cost cafeteria services. Amazon's scale & logistics prowess enable them to provide these things at much lower cost than an individual can purchase them for. At some point, these things add up and Amazon becomes a company town. But for many Americans, a company town run by Amazon would be welcome if it ads value to their lives. My guess is this is exactly what Amazon will do.
Surely executives aren't confusing their administrative requests with computing system concepts. The correct answer is simply that it's become a passive way of telling someone to do something. Instead of "Can you provide us a 25% growth this year" it is now "The ask is 25% growth this year."
It's statements like this that drive me deep into despair. That bland, banal platitude of "value". That non-statement of inaction phrased as "we need a better vision".
And, increasingly off-topic and misanthropic: Why has "ask" replaced "request" as a noun? "The ask is that we improve database response times by 25%". Why is that any clearer?
My apologies for the grumpiness. A security team has decided to throttle all AWS modification requests and it's breaking all our pipelines through timeouts.