When you have that blurring, though, the idea that you can measure productivity the same way as you did when we spent 8 hours building a widget seems a little overly simplistic, doesn’t it?
The challenge is finding the thing we can measure to evaluate whether people are accomplishing the goals we set for them, but those goals can’t be the “number of things or hours” when the work is so much more than that.
So please, read the whole thing and be prepared for the possibility that someone you work with may be at risk for suicide or surviving after a loved one’s death by suicide. The more you know the more you can support them.
Nevertheless, the most significant point of the article below isn’t to argue about the negatives of being a public company or not, it’s to point out what should have been obvious but too many people in tech have lost sight of. A company that consistently reminds you that you’re part of the family and that everyone should view it that way and dedicate themselves accordingly will let you go in a heartbeat when things aren’t going as well as they’d like.
And people wonder why quiet quitting is all the rage.
I’m sure at some point, Elon Musk thought for sure that he could buy Twitter and do a better job of content moderation. I’m sure most of us have had a similar thought. We just didn’t have $44 billion lying around.
He did, and now he gets to realize something the rest of us should know by now. There’s no easy way to do it.
Suppose you or your management forces staff back into the office because you need the face-time. Or because you don’t think your team can collaborate, you don’t know who is being productive, etc. Instead of forcing it and running the risk of losing your best performers, ask yourself if what you need to do is manage differently.
There’s no reason for promotions to be based on face time. With all of our technology, there is also no excuse for not collaborating or communicating effectively. Managing a remote team is not impossible. It’s just different. It requires that you change the way you manage.
It’s true. There are times when we need to meet virtually. With each other, or with a customer. A lot of our work, however, simply doesn’t require us to be in a meeting to get it done, and yes, that includes reporting on the status of projects. There’s no reason much of our work can’t be done asynchronously, and if people felt free to work that way, they would get more work done instead of showing up to meetings just to be marked present.
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