Author Topic: "Training out the stupid"  (Read 13862 times)

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Offline CJay

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #50 on: December 16, 2020, 10:09:23 am »
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.

If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.

That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.

If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.

I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?

And in the civilised world, people have employment rights.
 
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #51 on: December 16, 2020, 12:35:53 pm »
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.

If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.

That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.

If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.

I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?

So you need contractors rather than employees. That is perfectly reasonable.

What is not reasonable is to confuse the two, and try to have the benefits of either option without the penalties.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #52 on: December 16, 2020, 02:24:37 pm »
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.

If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.

That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.

If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.

I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?

And in the civilised world, people have employment rights.

And are not fungible 'human resources' to be hired and fired on a whim, but are people. One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #53 on: December 16, 2020, 02:38:32 pm »
One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.

Quite; I've bemoaned that too.

Do any companies still have personnel departments?
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline bd139

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #54 on: December 16, 2020, 03:09:26 pm »
I’ve not seen one for a few years. HR is in the job title so there has to be an HR department  :-//
 

Offline CJay

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #55 on: December 16, 2020, 03:17:16 pm »
One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.

Quite; I've bemoaned that too.

Do any companies still have personnel departments?

Don't think any modern ones do, there may still be a few long established ones which do though.

Can't see what's wrong with getting the measure of a person with a firm, manly handshake and a hard look into the eyes, should be able to size anyone up in only a minute or two surely?
 

Offline newbrain

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #56 on: December 16, 2020, 03:29:32 pm »
I sometimes was involved in interviews in the early 90's, usually with persons just out of university, for the technical part.

I had one question I liked to ask: "How many bits does a CD-ROM contain? Why?"
Usually the best candidates were the ones who did not know the answer straight away (remember: early 90s), but could find the answer when helped with some data - a basic level of digital signal processing knowledge was needed for the job.
The answer from one candidate went beyond my imagination:
"I don't know"
"Ok, no probs. How'd you go around calculating that?"
"I could not care less, I want to be a manager"
At least he was honest, though jobless.

If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip.
This is what happened to me in my first ever job interview.
Just a short informal chat: being right out of Uni, about my master dissertation and interests.

I think I made a good enough impression:
  • I got the job
  • In two years I married the examiner (and no, we didn't know each other before).

PS, about long ongoing contracts: The job lasted four years, but the marriage is still going after 28...
Nandemo wa shiranai wa yo, shitteru koto dake.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #57 on: December 16, 2020, 03:36:23 pm »
I tend to have as much disdain for HR as anyone, but have to admit they have a purpose and a method that works to some degree.
Also, HR comes in handy when, in spite of your best efforts, you hire a completely psychotic and useless employee.  HR can help make sure you dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s as you go through the firing process.  Otherwise you may find yourself in a time-consuming and expensive legal mess.  This happened once at my company, and there was no way in hell that we were going to let the creep keep his stock options.  HR made sure we did it all correctly.
I've worked with two people who were perfectly good employees who cracked up. One went through a period of harmless eccentricity, like wearing a kilt every day, to being a threat to other people. The other descended into heavy drinking and aggression, to the point where he was dangerous to others. People felt sorry for these guys, as something had clearly gone horribly wrong in their lives, but they needed to be removed from the work environment for the safety of others. In both cases HR was largely useless. In one case a fresh grad, straight out of a human resources management course which he'd studied well, was hired at the right moment. He gave us the proper formula of warnings and letters to get the guy out of the place fairly quickly. If he hadn't been hired I think there would probably have been a violent incident coming. In the other case the guy's drunken behaviour got him into trouble with the law outside work, and he disappeared. This was in the UK.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #58 on: December 16, 2020, 03:41:37 pm »
I sometimes was involved in interviews in the early 90's, usually with persons just out of university, for the technical part.

I had one question I liked to ask: "How many bits does a CD-ROM contain? Why?"
Usually the best candidates were the ones who did not know the answer straight away (remember: early 90s), but could find the answer when helped with some data - a basic level of digital signal processing knowledge was needed for the job.
The answer from one candidate went beyond my imagination:
"I don't know"
"Ok, no probs. How'd you go around calculating that?"
"I could not care less, I want to be a manager"
At least he was honest, though jobless.
Every country where I've been involved in recruiting has seen a trend to people thinking an engineering degree should take them directly into some kind of management role, before they have developed any understanding of what it is they might be managing. When recruiting fresh graduates "I want to be in management" used to be an answer to the question "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?". Not "Where do you aim to get your first job?".
 

Offline bd139

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #59 on: December 16, 2020, 05:21:10 pm »
I tend to have as much disdain for HR as anyone, but have to admit they have a purpose and a method that works to some degree.
Also, HR comes in handy when, in spite of your best efforts, you hire a completely psychotic and useless employee.  HR can help make sure you dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s as you go through the firing process.  Otherwise you may find yourself in a time-consuming and expensive legal mess.  This happened once at my company, and there was no way in hell that we were going to let the creep keep his stock options.  HR made sure we did it all correctly.
I've worked with two people who were perfectly good employees who cracked up. One went through a period of harmless eccentricity, like wearing a kilt every day, to being a threat to other people. The other descended into heavy drinking and aggression, to the point where he was dangerous to others. People felt sorry for these guys, as something had clearly gone horribly wrong in their lives, but they needed to be removed from the work environment for the safety of others. In both cases HR was largely useless. In one case a fresh grad, straight out of a human resources management course which he'd studied well, was hired at the right moment. He gave us the proper formula of warnings and letters to get the guy out of the place fairly quickly. If he hadn't been hired I think there would probably have been a violent incident coming. In the other case the guy's drunken behaviour got him into trouble with the law outside work, and he disappeared. This was in the UK.

Yeah only times I've met people like that it's always because something is seriously fucked in their lives. As always "friends" drift away when that happens so they're stuck on their own and the only outlet is work. Also why I never go to work Christmas parties.
 

Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #60 on: December 16, 2020, 05:24:32 pm »
I’ve not seen one for a few years. HR is in the job title so there has to be an HR department  :-//

Ironically the one fungible resource that comes in meat popsicle form often has that job title.  >:D
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #61 on: December 16, 2020, 05:27:18 pm »
One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.

Quite; I've bemoaned that too.

Do any companies still have personnel departments?

Don't think any modern ones do, there may still be a few long established ones which do though.

Can't see what's wrong with getting the measure of a person with a firm, manly handshake and a hard look into the eyes, should be able to size anyone up in only a minute or two surely?

I think that only works for "chaps", especially chaps with a handlebar moustache and who smoke a pipe.  :)
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #62 on: December 16, 2020, 06:17:39 pm »
Also why I never go to work Christmas parties.

I've always kept work and home separate, to minimise the chances of everything going wrong simultaneously.

At my first job, the company was taken over and merged into a division of the larger company 15 miles away. During interviews the engineers were told that an advantage(?!) would be that we could socialise after work. Without exception we either smiled politely (while laughing internally) or looked quizzical.

While we got on with each other just fine at work, there was no way that we wanted to continue that elsewhere! None of us had any idea what the droids were thinking.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline james_s

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #63 on: December 16, 2020, 06:21:37 pm »
I'm friends with a number of my coworkers, prior to covid we would occasionally go grab dinner or a couple beers after work. Actually quite a few of my friends are people I've met through work over the years. I guess it really depends on the company.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #64 on: December 16, 2020, 06:25:22 pm »
I've always kept work and home separate, to minimise the chances of everything going wrong simultaneously.
I've broadly tried to be good friends with some of the people at work, but keep those friendships largely confined to work. There are important exceptions, though. A couple of my closest friends through life have been people I worked with, and I met my wife at work.
 

Offline JohnG

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #65 on: December 16, 2020, 07:20:51 pm »
The last place I worked had a large HR department extremely capable of dotting "i"s and crossing "t"s. They used this to follow corporate mandates like "cutting the bottom 10%" and so forth. I saw many very good, hard-working, and capable people get pushed out, and many others left in disgust. All technical folks were considered fungible. My experience is that HR will keep the toxic manager as long as they can, and get rid of a long line of subordinates in an attempt to keep the fire under control rather than risk an explosion.

Also, I second the use of contractors if you want to hire and fire as you need. I have worked with contractors, selected contractors, and supervised contractors. My luck has been mostly good, but only because I have only used them for either very well defined projects with a fairly tight boundary, or for projects not in the critical path.

But, contractors are not employees. If you are doing anything core to your business, you take a big risk with a contractor. They take their hard-won knowledge with them, and if someone decides to pay them more, they can drop you in a flash. They can also leak information, even unintentionally. Kind of like a FET leaks current when it's supposed to be off. Sure, you can take legal action, but there goes your savings.

Cheers,
John
"Reality is that which, when you quit believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick (RIP).
 
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Offline JohnG

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #66 on: December 16, 2020, 07:24:06 pm »
On a different note, I have a hardware centric job. One of the best places to interview potential hardware engineers is in the lab, i.e. a lab tour. If they are a good fit, they will be happy to get a lab tour. If they don't recognize anything, maybe you shouldn't hire them.

Cheers,
John
"Reality is that which, when you quit believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick (RIP).
 

Offline fourfathom

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #67 on: December 16, 2020, 08:34:33 pm »
corporate mandates like "cutting the bottom 10%" and so forth.
I've worked in places where we cut the bottom 10% while bringing in new-hires, and I've also worked at places where the human deadwood accumulated to the point where many engineers left in disgust (on a few occasions me being one of them). No doubt times and circumstances are also critical factors, but on the whole I prefer the vitality of enforcing some turnover.  Obviously it sucks if some clueless manager deems you to be one of the deadwood, but that's actually a separate problem.
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Offline Syntax Error

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #68 on: December 16, 2020, 08:45:23 pm »
But, contractors are not employees. If you are doing anything core to your business, you take a big risk with a contractor. They take their hard-won knowledge with them, and if someone decides to pay them more, they can drop you in a flash. They can also leak information, even unintentionally. Kind of like a FET leaks current when it's supposed to be off. Sure, you can take legal action, but there goes your savings.
Agreed, you could try a restraint of trade clause, but that's not going to be enforceable unless they copy your business contact database. But then what the hell, our newly signed third party services company based in Bangladesh is already doing that.

A truth of the modern company is fewer employees are full-time employees. Consultants, contractors, consultant-contractors, consultant's contractors, semester academics and random pre and post grad interns, all make up the team mix in the workplace. "Do you work here full time?" is a question often whispered at the vending machine. A reply maybe, "everyone who works here is loyal to the business. It's just not our business they're all loyal too."
« Last Edit: December 16, 2020, 08:47:26 pm by Syntax Error »
 

Offline JohnG

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #69 on: December 17, 2020, 12:21:18 am »
I've worked in places where we cut the bottom 10% while bringing in new-hires, and I've also worked at places where the human deadwood accumulated to the point where many engineers left in disgust (on a few occasions me being one of them). No doubt times and circumstances are also critical factors, but on the whole I prefer the vitality of enforcing some turnover.  Obviously it sucks if some clueless manager deems you to be one of the deadwood, but that's actually a separate problem.

Companies that need to cut an arbitrary percentage per unit time already have a problem in identifying deadwood, so they don't get rid of the right people. If they do it year after year, people develop survival strategies that rarely have to do with actual performance, but rather perceived performance. Typically much of the deadwood in these companies is higher up, and that almost never gets cut.

If a company has already accumulated so much deadwood that it needs a program to repetitively cut the bottom 10%, it is too late. If you are an engineer or scientist at such a company, you would be wise to "git while the gittin's good". Don't look back, because there is nothing you can do.

Cheers,
John
"Reality is that which, when you quit believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick (RIP).
 

Offline fourfathom

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #70 on: December 17, 2020, 12:52:47 am »
If a company has already accumulated so much deadwood that it needs a program to repetitively cut the bottom 10%, it is too late.

You are probably right, but an institutionalized process like this can help at some levels.  As you suggest, there are probably other problems that won't be addressed.  This is no doubt why I've always thrived in smaller, more agile companies.  In fact, I've helped start up a couple and the experience, while often grueling, was also immensely professionally rewarding.
We'll search out every place a sick, twisted, solitary misfit might run to! -- I'll start with Radio Shack.
 

Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #71 on: December 17, 2020, 01:08:10 am »
Na, turning that into an institutionalised process is an incredibly bad idea. Doing it will require some metric to do it on. To be fair, the metric would have to be published (and with a bit of Googling it wouldn't be hard to find employment tribunal cases or similar that have ruled against using hidden metrics to evaluate people). The second it was published, people would start gaming it. The kind of people who game metrics rather then get on with their jobs are exactly the kind of people you don't want to retain.
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Offline coppice

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #72 on: December 17, 2020, 01:29:26 am »
Companies that need to cut an arbitrary percentage per unit time already have a problem in identifying deadwood, so they don't get rid of the right people. If they do it year after year, people develop survival strategies that rarely have to do with actual performance, but rather perceived performance. Typically much of the deadwood in these companies is higher up, and that almost never gets cut.
Whether a company culls in this way or not, being politically savvy always ensures greater progress than being competent. Just look at the people who rise to be senior politicians.
 

Offline fourfathom

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #73 on: December 17, 2020, 01:47:02 am »
it wouldn't be hard to find employment tribunal cases or similar that have ruled against using hidden metrics to evaluate people

Perhaps it's different over here in California or Washington State, where we have "at will" employment (at least for non-union jobs).  Here, I can be fired at any time, no reason necessary.  If I can make the case that I was fired because of my race, sex, religion (and perhaps more protected classes, I'm not sure) I have some protection. Otherwise, no.  Since I'm a straight white male I guess I'd better be good at what I do, and not work for idiots.

For what it's worth, one of the best things that happened to me was being fired from my first tech job.  Of course I was young, and recovery was fairly easy.  I wouldn't recommend it to someone with a family and a mortgage.
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Offline JohnG

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #74 on: December 17, 2020, 04:17:59 am »
Yes, being somewhat politically savvy is important. But, I'm an engineer at heart, not a manager or politician. So there's that.

Most places in US are "right to work" for "exempt" employees, which ironically means you can be fired without cause, and you are exempt from overtime pay :-\. All my employers have had this. However, it is actually very expensive to fire someone without cause, because you are on the hook for unemployment, etc., and costs go up if you make a habit of it.

My prior employer handled this by telling them that they were "on the improvement plan", which all knew was code for "we are going to fire you in x months". After a year or two of bottom 10% cuts, you can't avoid having to cut good people. A key selection criteria of savvy managers and HR people was to pick those who they thought wouldn't put up much of a fight, and would quit before they were to be fired, thus saving the company money. I worked with a number of these people. Most got better jobs and ended up happier, but most had to move. Many top employees also left in disgust after witnessing this.

It is one thing to get rid of bad employees. This should be done carefully, but once you know they should go, do it quickly without BS. It's better for everybody. Picking 10% (or any arbitrary percentage) is indicative of serious and long-term management failure or the desperation of an MBA in over his or her head.

Just MHO,
John
"Reality is that which, when you quit believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick (RIP).
 


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