I'm doing all this, although after 2 years now I feel the very fact that I am not 'micro managing' is affecting our team's productivity. I notice my team is on social networking websites for a long time daily with some work (we all sit together), come late and go early, and I don't say a word to them and am always that 'cool' with them. I'm thinking may be that's a bit wrong on my part, but there is just no way to tell them these things without sounding 'uncool' and micro-managing.
I've been on a team with someone who basically does this -- spent half the day not working, usually selected a single low-difficulty task at a time from Jira to drag out over a couple days or a week, and often went home having put 30-45 minutes less time in per day than others on the team.
There was an unspoken but very palpable dissatisfaction from everyone else on the team. No one wanted to be the Bad Guy that calls them out on it, but the manager was unwilling to push them to do more, and a result they were able to get away with slacking off while others were actually putting in effort.
It was tremendously bad for morale. That's the biggest effect it had. All the other team members were bitter about the manager's unwillingness to keep the team on a level playing field. If you let this slide, you're ultimately letting everyone else on the team down.
The point absolutely shouldn't be to police someone's time; it should be to ensure that, if they have time to slack off, they should be pushed to take on more tasks during sprint planning. "That seems like it won't take too long, can you take on these two tasks as well?" is really all it takes.
This is actually a difficult problem, because there are two kinds of slackers: (1) the kind that work less but produce roughly the same as, or sometimes even more than, everyone else (i.e., smart but lazy), and (2) the kind that don't work or produce.
Dealing with (2) is absolutely the manager's job and such a person should be fired if attempts to identify and fix an underlying problem fail.
But (1) is really difficult. We have one of those right now, let's call him Bill. Our manager is hesitant to do anything about him, because the manager wants to incentivize productivity, not butt-in-chair time (we're all salaried, with no set hours). But Bill comes in 4 hours a day, seemingly works 1 of them, and spends the other 3 trying to distract everyone else with off-topic conversations. If he comes in at all.
Amazingly Bill does get work done, somehow. But it is terrible for morale. Worse, some of the junior members are starting to think they can get away with the same thing Bill is doing, and they can't. As the senior dev, the "big brother" to our manager's "dad", it falls to me to do something about it, but I have no idea what, if anything.
Manager fears that if he rewards finishing tasks quickly with more work, it will also harm morale and productivity. And there is a decent argument to be made for that. Having experienced that firsthand, it is highly irritating and incentivizes people to work slowly.
Additionally, in reply to GP, a manager that has great technical skills (10) and good managerial skills (1-9) must be as rare as a unicorn. Even a manager who started with good technical chops inevitably will lose them over time when they are an Outlook jockey all day. OTOH, I have seen plenty of otherwise decent managers who think their technical chops are good when they aren't. Pretty much the whole premise of Dilbert. The best realistic alternative seems to be managers who know their technical limits, delegate, and seek advice from their subordinates.
This is a real problem on your team and it needs to be fixed, likely from several angles.
For Bill, at a minimum he needs an honest conversation regarding his impact on the rest of the team. If he's accomplishing his work but dragging everyone else down then he's not really being a net-positive member of the team. Bill needs to understand his impact and either work more, work remotely, or pick some side projects / technical investigations to keep himself busy. If he's that good, then part of his job is teaching and setting and example for others on the team.
Second, everyone else on the team needs to know the score. I've found that it's tremendously helpful for junior devs to understand that people on the team are not treated equally. "See Bill? He turns in great work and thus gets to work remotely / leave early / etc. He's been super consistent for a long time. You don't get to do that, because you haven't proven yourself yet. I expect X, Y, and Z from you. If you start turning in super-star work like Bill over a period of time, then you get special consideration too." I've had this conversation a number of times before, and the recipients were always very receptive because now they understand the rules.
How do you define what "get work done" means? Everywhere I worked (as a developer) there has never been a situation where you can say "OK, there is nothing else useful to do today". So it obviously can't be that.
Is it related to seniority? Or even salary? As in, "we expect our senior/highly paid people do accomplish 2X (or whatever multiplier) amount of work that the junior members of the team do".
Or is it just related to how much work the developer estimates they can do? You say you will take these 4 tasks this week, everyone agrees that it's a reasonable amount (for your level/role) and then if you complete them your work is considered done.
Or is it something else completely? I'm interested in anyone's thoughts on this.
What I mean is that he produces an amount and quality of work that is comparable to other people at his experience and title level. In some ways better, in other ways worse, but on average, he is producing at least as much as his peers are. He's quite talented but lazy.
Obviously there is never a situation where you are out of work to do but some would say it is unfair to expect a talented person to produce more for the same salary and title as less talented people (I have no clear opinion on that, I'm only concerned about the morale issues). After all, the whole premise of being salaried rather than hourly is that you are paid to produce a certain amount of work, not work a certain amount of hours.
Normally a solution could be promotion but that is not an option right now.
This. A person that gets their work done is not a slacker. I mean when I was in university there was a lad that did nothing, doodled in his notebook, smoked a lot of weed every day. And then aced every exam. He didn't need to appear "busy" to accomplish what he needed in his mind.
Likewise a lot of people work obliquely, letting problems percolate in their subconscious until it comes together and they can put together a solution quickly. These people may drive others crazy with how they work but that is not the profile of a slacker.
You misunderstood accountability with micro-managing!
If they are using social media sites its their choice, you should not call them out, because that would be micro-management.
But if the same thing is not allowing them to be productive call them out for poor performance. That's how you teach accountability.
Performance and, to a much lesser extent, accountability are not the easiest topics in software engineering outside of strict waterfall. Still, awareness of these is critical for teams.
In that particular example that you are replying to I would go a few "why" steps deeper though.
Why are they not motivated enough by their work maybe?
Are they not aware maybe how a higher than "normal" engaging in distracting activities will hinder their development and ultimately their career?
Slacking off once in a while is perfectly normal. It is rare to find the perfect situation of engineer's brains being constantly on fire, churning out great solutions because they are so motivated, in the right place at the right time being asked to and capable to do the right thing in the right way.
No manager can make their team get closer to that nirvana alone - It needs a good environment but most of all an intact network of trust inside the team and the openness to speak about lack of motivation or other issues and trying to tackle it together.
Imho it is your task to help them become aware (calling out and other methods), reflect on the issues and gain the confidence that a change can be made that benefits them.
> Why are they not motivated enough by their work maybe? Are they not aware maybe how a higher than "normal" engaging in distracting activities will hinder their development and ultimately their career?
Great point, and I think it needs elaboration. Particularly if increased slacking/FB use is something that has increased over time for a person, I would also take it as a sign that they are losing motivation. Banning FB or chastising them when you see them use it won't restore that motivation.
A lot of people go through phases like this. It can be symptomatic of:
- Overwork, stress, potential burnout
- A workload the person finds repetitive, not challenging, or uninteresting (maybe they need a change in task type)
- A feeling that work is not rewarded, possibly that person needs more praise or recognition, or even just interest from manager/others about what they are doing
- Person is lost or stuck on what to do next, the task may be too hard for them or they need to talk it over with someone. Many introverts especially will not ask for help when stuck.
> engineer's brains being constantly on fire
The elusive flow. In my experience flow states are most common when: (A) there is sufficient freedom to explore the problem space, (B) fairly rapid feedback, and (C) people are impressed by or interested in what I am doing. Success breeds success. I am convinced that one of the most important jobs of a manager is to cheerlead for the team and remind them why their work is interesting and valued. Who else is going to do that if not the manager? Feelings of success and confidence breeds more success.
Having people do quick demos or small green-field projects, even if it isn't exactly the top priority at the moment, then complimenting the result, is a good way to boost morale and interest in my experience.
> It needs a good environment but most of all an intact network of trust inside the team and the openness to speak about lack of motivation or other issues and trying to tackle it together.
Openness is the key, but still I have seen team mates judging you when you talk about being non-productive at work. Better to talk about it 1-to-1 with your manager and avoid it during meetings where everyone is present.
They are engineers, it's normal. Is the work getting done? If yes, then who cares?
If not, then you might need to crack the whip a little, but butts-in-seats time and blocking Facebook are incredibly ineffective ways to get people back on track. These are highly trained, competent people, presumably, so treat them like it, not like they are unruly third-graders.
Yes, the 'work' is getting done, but again I think it could be around 40% more productive. I do realize that we have to refresh ourselves time to time but when it's a long stretch of time on work looking at investment/finance websites, I think these are signs of trouble. Of course, no one wants to block anything from anyone, or have butts-in-seats time. But I think at "some level" little bit of accountability is needed, I will need to have that uneasy conversation in some or the other way :|.
Why do you think this? What metrics do you have to support this thought?
The one thing I wish managers everywhere would burn into their memory is this, "If you can't measure productivity outside of time spent in chair (looking at code), then you're not actually measuring productivity."
Productivity should be measured based on whether or not a team is meeting both their team goals as well as the team's individuals meeting their own goals. These goals need to be clear and realistic. A manager that is setting unrealistic, vague, or otherwise unclear goals is a problem.
When teams and individuals repeatedly meet their goals then you can increase the amount and/or difficulty. Or if it is an agile shop, the team should be increasing their "velocity" or whatever metric is used to determine work done, you shouldn't be left with too many empty days in a sprint. If you increase the amount of work or difficulty of work and these individuals are still looking at investment/finance websites after accomplishing their goals, then it is likely that you as the manager were under-utilizing the skills of the individuals on your team.
The other important thing to remember is that engineers get blocked. Sometimes more frequently than is desirable. When this happens, managers need to get involved in order to work with others in the organization to alleviate the block and potentially alter processes for the long-term.
Quite frankly, the time in the office is some of my least productive time, and I'm sure that is the case for a lot of other people as well. Most of the real work gets done in the car driving in, or in the shower, or laying in bed trying to get to sleep.
The time to get worried is when you see that people are spending big chunks of time on LinkedIn or Indeed, or they start unexpectedly coming to work in attire that is one or two levels up from the normal day-to-day. The end is nigh when that starts to happen, and clamping down with poorly conceived attempts to wring more blood from the stone is a great way to accelerate the effect.
This is helpful. I check linked-in just to see what exists fairly frequently and dress in random attire depending on what laundry is done (sometimes really nice, sometimes shorts).
I'd never really considered it as something that meant that I would be leaving.
There are many resources describing how to have this conversation and do it well. I particularly liked Crucial Confrontations, now titled Crucial Accountability. I use its techniques daily with my team and it’s obvious that my boss uses the techniques with me.
Your job is not to be their friend, your job is to make them as effective a team as possible by identifying impediments to them becoming their best selves. If their work is being done, objectively you should know this, then your next task is to find ways to improve the with being done. If there's enough time to socialize then there's enough time for improvement. This is where you find time for projects that might not work, experiments that might improve quality, quantity, or just improve the overall experience for you customers and team members. There are tons of ways to be firm without micro managing.
Here's what I would recommend for you.
* Define the primary work that needs to be done. What is the purpose of your team? How effective are they at this?
* Identify the gaps. Where can you improve? What can you be doing better to delight your customers? What skills or process improvements can you add that will make things better?
* Who can you build to take your spot? You can't be promoted if no one could fill your role. This is hard and you'll get it wrong a few times, that's fine. Just keep working to build up your team
Complaints and gripes are common at first. No one likes change. Eventually it will become normal and your team will adjust. No need to micromanage, no need to complain about showing up on time unless it's crucial, i.e. a call center, just set your expectations and took forward the work starts with you though.
I see the long discussion about micro-managing, but allow me to suggest that addressing that employee’s problem may not micro-managing at all. Micro-managing would be saying something if you ever saw Facebook on their screen even once, and doing it every time. But seeing a clear pattern, and feeling that their behavior is being noticed by all and affecting team morale, that is a real problem that needs to be addressed, and it’s not micro-managing to try and fix it.
In addition to the GP’s great list, good managers also tackle problems when they see them, immediately. Don’t let something slide because it’s awkward! Do attempt to fix the problem the first time without blaming or shaming the employee. You can save that for the second warning if the person doesn’t respond by fixing their behavior.
Here are a couple of ideas:
- Make sure that you or your company have set clear enough guidelines in the first place. Clearly the employee doesn’t think what he’s doing is wrong, therefore it might be a failure to set expectations for work time. Find out or decide what they are and say them in a way that makes clear that hours on social media while at work isn’t part of the deal for getting paid.
- Ask the employee to define what is a normal amount of social network time while at work, and then ask them to track their own time using a time tracking app. They might not be aware of how much time they’re spending. You could even ask the whole team to do it, but I would recommend not doing that as a way to avoid confronting the individual directly. The other people on your team won’t respect a move that affects them without directly dealing with the problem.
- Rather than accuse the employee, ask them how they feel at work and find out if there’s a motivation problem. Maybe they feel stuck. Sometimes a problem like this is due to the person not feeling like they fit it, not having or understanding their identity or role in the team/company.
