Post by Geo 🇺🇦 🌻 on Dec 17, 2022 11:52:09 GMT -5
Recently the co-CEO and co-founder posted a slack message that was subsequently distributed to the press. www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/marc-benioff-says-newer-salesforce-employees-are-less-productive.html
I’m not here to talk about whether or not the message should have been leaked. That’s a different topic.
My initial question for this leader is “How are you measuring productivity?”
I don’t think the company is naive enough to measure lines of code as productivity. We know that this is not a great measurement because sometimes requirement and design discussions center around a small bit of very critical logic. I also don’t think number of projects delivered is the right approach because projects vary in size and complexity.
Assuming they follow some sort of agile methodology, it could be number of story points delivered each sprint if they are using Scrum. That is a common measurement but it’s also not without it’s issues because I was at a firm that did that and it was almost a culture of fear. People got yelled at when they added work after the fact to the sprint, even when it was some additional work that popped up after deeper understanding of the situation. Or you know, some major issues could surface and require resources which may cause stories to sit and carry over into the next sprint.
I then thought about how I measure productivity in my current situation.
I will preface this with a note that I’m fully remote at my job, and I prefer it that way for many reasons but one of them happens to be my physical disability which makes going to an office daunting because I don’t know what to expect in terms of accessibility.
So, putting that aside, I have tasks on a board that I work at daily. We don’t do scrum, we are fully Kanban. We do daily meetings about what we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what’s blocking us. But we don’t have a hard commitment every two weeks which is unlike what you often see in scrum. I think my best measurement is “did I do something to move that task forward? Did I write some code? Update some design? Talk to someone about requirements? Debate the best approach with someone? Did I spend time with someone asking questions if I was stuck or confused?”
There is a culture of willingness to drop things and help someone where I’m at so things are pretty healthy here. And we don’t expect super long hours as a measure of productivity.
Of course, we live in a world with deadlines still and we still have to set goals and occasionally rally to meet those deadlines. And maybe the cofounder of Salesforce is using number of deadlines met/missed as a measuring stick.
When I first saw the headline, I did scoff and almost ride it off as “oh another tech leader is just mad at his workers”. But I thought about it some more. I feel like it’s okay to talk about productivity if the intention is to help people be more productive and not to blame WFH or hybrid or other circumstances as a root cause.
But since all we got was the post without any context of what the culture and policies are at the company, it’s hard to say that this particular tech leader is looking for “hardcore” work or maybe just genuinely concerned and wants to help his employees.
That said with a discussion this serious, I’m not sure if the “Asking for a friend” attempt at comic relief is a good idea.
So I wonder, do you think his message was fair or does it come across as another rich tech leader mad at his workers for not generating enough revenue?
And do you have your own way to measure productivity that works for you? And I chose a work example since that relates the most to me but it doesn’t have to be that of course.
I’m not here to talk about whether or not the message should have been leaked. That’s a different topic.
My initial question for this leader is “How are you measuring productivity?”
I don’t think the company is naive enough to measure lines of code as productivity. We know that this is not a great measurement because sometimes requirement and design discussions center around a small bit of very critical logic. I also don’t think number of projects delivered is the right approach because projects vary in size and complexity.
Assuming they follow some sort of agile methodology, it could be number of story points delivered each sprint if they are using Scrum. That is a common measurement but it’s also not without it’s issues because I was at a firm that did that and it was almost a culture of fear. People got yelled at when they added work after the fact to the sprint, even when it was some additional work that popped up after deeper understanding of the situation. Or you know, some major issues could surface and require resources which may cause stories to sit and carry over into the next sprint.
I then thought about how I measure productivity in my current situation.
I will preface this with a note that I’m fully remote at my job, and I prefer it that way for many reasons but one of them happens to be my physical disability which makes going to an office daunting because I don’t know what to expect in terms of accessibility.
So, putting that aside, I have tasks on a board that I work at daily. We don’t do scrum, we are fully Kanban. We do daily meetings about what we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what’s blocking us. But we don’t have a hard commitment every two weeks which is unlike what you often see in scrum. I think my best measurement is “did I do something to move that task forward? Did I write some code? Update some design? Talk to someone about requirements? Debate the best approach with someone? Did I spend time with someone asking questions if I was stuck or confused?”
There is a culture of willingness to drop things and help someone where I’m at so things are pretty healthy here. And we don’t expect super long hours as a measure of productivity.
Of course, we live in a world with deadlines still and we still have to set goals and occasionally rally to meet those deadlines. And maybe the cofounder of Salesforce is using number of deadlines met/missed as a measuring stick.
When I first saw the headline, I did scoff and almost ride it off as “oh another tech leader is just mad at his workers”. But I thought about it some more. I feel like it’s okay to talk about productivity if the intention is to help people be more productive and not to blame WFH or hybrid or other circumstances as a root cause.
But since all we got was the post without any context of what the culture and policies are at the company, it’s hard to say that this particular tech leader is looking for “hardcore” work or maybe just genuinely concerned and wants to help his employees.
That said with a discussion this serious, I’m not sure if the “Asking for a friend” attempt at comic relief is a good idea.
So I wonder, do you think his message was fair or does it come across as another rich tech leader mad at his workers for not generating enough revenue?
And do you have your own way to measure productivity that works for you? And I chose a work example since that relates the most to me but it doesn’t have to be that of course.
