> People generally don't do what they're told, but what they expect to be rewarded for.<p>This key assumption behind the whole article is actually a terrible mentality to take for true and self-evident, as the author has -- at least within the scope of one's relationship with a manager.<p>The people that most of us have been impressed by in our careers, and in our life, are often very hard to characterize this way. They aren't going around fitting themselves to the next nearest supervisor's desires (stated or unstated). Instead, they've generally developed a strong and characteristic signature to the way they approach their work and they've learned how to quickly impress that personal signature onto the people around them so that those people know what to expect. Here and there, that mean leaving some workplace for being a poor fit to its needs and capabilities, but the long term arc is towards settling into some role as a respected expert who <i>advises</i> and <i>informs</i> the management team that leverages them.<p>If you think everybody ("generally") will just strive do what their immediate boss wants, and so don't challenge yourself to <i>not</i> do that, you just trap yourself into thrashing around and being frustrated by trying to read people's minds, parse direction vs incentives, impress people who can't even pin down what you're about (because you yourself don't know), etc.<p>It's a dead end. Don't buy into it.<p>A defense of the initial assumption might be made by tossing the bit about the proximate manager who you're either obeying or anticipating and widening the scope to say that we're all pursuing reward over plain obedience. And that's a good defense, but only because the "reward" is something abstract and personal like fulfillment of our own career/lifestyle trajectory or our own vision of the craft.
One problem is that while many managers may know what they want, but not how to prioritize. They just want all of it. They don’t know what they want most or like to believe they don’t have to choose.<p>Another is that what they want depends on the last person they talked to. That is, what they want changes.<p>Within that situation of shifting goals, often what they want from their direct reports is validation. “You’re right, this org is broken, let’s fix/purge it together.”<p>Sometimes there is not much mind to read.
There is a huge amount of detail and nuance to digest in this one. Though the author speaks in absolutes he puts forward examples that clearly indicate they mean "Most people do ..." and that fuzziness should be more prominent because the problems will be fuzzy too.<p>Consider the hypothetical shop that values fancy math but claims to reward bugs. There might be an official bug hunting program. But the rewards might be low value like pizza or a lame company award while the mathematicians are getting raises and promotions. There are mixed messages and it won't be clear to every what is valued and some people will overhear at the water who just got a raise and put the pieces together and others won't.<p>It is messy and fuzzy when goals and statements don't align internally, and I suppose talking about it is also often messy.
The underlying premise of this post is an autocratic one, wherein a manager is assumed to be the originator of value for whatever dominion they rule. In this model, the higher said manager exists in an org chart, the more value they purport.<p>For example:<p><pre><code> People generally don't do what they're told, but what they
expect to be rewarded for.
</code></pre>
The kindest way I can describe this managerial perspective is "transactional." A more honest description is feudalistic.<p>And:<p><pre><code> Finally, don't expect people to enlighten you and tell you
what your blind spots are. Becoming a manager means losing
the privilege of being told what's what.
</code></pre>
This sentiment is the same found in many writings throughout history, often regarding kings and the like.<p>But managers are not kings. No matter how much they wish it so.
This is definitely true. I joined a team where the manager used to measure LOC per week and chastise “low performers” in public. (Early 90s for context.)<p>Now this was a telecom MMI product with lots of what we now call CRUD operations, bracketed with range checks. Instead of making a library, this team would copy/paste code and customise each MMI command, and naturally they had copy/pasted defects galore across the system.<p>I came from a firmware background (16kbytes of 8 bit micro assembly) and this enormous waste of resources was astounding to me. When I called it out in public in the weekly review meeting, well, let’s just say it was not a pleasant experience.
Incentives rule this world. Words are weak, if someone says they'll be rewarded for something, but isn't. Will they truly do the same thing again?<p>Valve is a good example, their long term support of existing features is poor. But their ability to come up with new and interesting features is amazing. Their compensation for new things is much higher than maintaining old things.<p>Yes, on an individual level people might not always chase the rewards. In fact, it's better not to always do that. In tech, it's way better to learn more to up skill ones self as that'd lead to better earns later. However, on average, what is rewarded will advance further than what is not.
I had a very frustrating relationship with a manager once, where it seemed every conversation went like this:<p>Manager: [Situation] is happening. What is your plan for dealing with it?<p>Me: I'm thinking I should do A, B, and C, for reasons X and Y.<p>Manager: No, that's not right. I think you should do D.<p>Me: OK, I will do D.<p>Annoyed looking Manager: Don't do D just because I told you to. I want you to understand <i>why</i> you should do D so next time this happens, you can reason yourself into D without me suggesting it.<p>Me: <shrugging> OK, help me to understand why we're doing D.<p>Manager: No, that's not what I want. I need you to get to the reason by yourself!<p>Me: OK, I don't know what you want me to do at this point. Should I leave this 1:1 and do D or not?<p>I <i>wish</i> I could read [Manager's] mind. We could just never get past this merry-go-round, and I eventually just left the job. I think this was [Manager's] attempt at career development for me but we just couldn't see eye to eye on any decision I made.
I reflect a lot on how tech leadership can’t seem to find a way to incentivize preventing problems. It’s so so so easy to measure fixing problems that have already happened, and so so so hard to measure effectiveness of decisions that prevent problems. It always, despite stated intentions by said leadership, leads to celebrating heroics, and punishing prevention. It’s so fucking stupid, but whatever lol.<p>I do sympathize though, it’s not exactly easy to measure this… but it’s also not impossible?
> Managers often say they'll reward something – perhaps they even believe it. But then they proceed to reward different things.<p>Going on vacation, a manager once sent me a long message detailing all the priorities (sic), in order, that I should focus on (sic). Not 2 weeks later, the same person proceeded to escalate things, borderline shouting at me, when something that wasn't even in the original list "wasn't receiving the proper attention". I should have known, somehow.
Ah, that explains what I've been doing wrong.<p>I generally take people at their word, even management, and when I spot the difference between words and choices I find things more difficult than they need to be.<p>If they're deceiving themselves, that's more interesting than my old model, and suggests possibilities I need to think about.
Related:<p><i>People can read their manager's mind (2015)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786436">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34786436</a> - Feb 2023 (68 comments)<p><i>People can read their manager's mind</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820158">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820158</a> - Dec 2015 (60 comments)
It sounds like this boils down to stated vs revealed preferences.<p>The more interesting part to me is realizing that people care so much about what their manager values. I've always had the mindset of focusing on what the team/product/org needed the most.
I find this behavior when using ChatGPT.<p>If I ask for a task, and the output is not the one expected: I ask for the motivation that lead to the bad decisions. Then, ChatGPT proceeds to retry the task "incorporating" my feedback, not answering my question!!