Well at least they tried. I'm in a Fortune 500 with no IC/TC promotion path that spams the entire company with promotion announcements that land like insults every week.
I see those all the time too well knowing that for me that for me any further promotion is close to impossible.
One thing that happened a few years ago was that I was on an improvement project that supposedly saved the company millions of dollars. At the end we won an award and i received an email talking about a big party at headquarters with great entertainment and good food where people could mingle with top management and the board of directors. It described what fantastic opportunity this would be. This went on for paragraphs.
Then the last paragraph said something like “by the way to save money we will send only the project lead and your management (who had nothing to do with the project) to the event but you will also get a nice plaque instead of the $500 or so gift card that used to be normal for this type of award. “. I still don’t know how anyone could write this and not see how crazy it was.
Anyways this was a good reminder to look after myself and not be a “team player”.
It's way better than the secret promotions that happened where I used to work (a fortune 500 company). The levels were spaced much farther apart than FAANG and when someone did get promoted you'd only find out if they decided to make a change to their email signature.
I'd prefer that. We're big enough that there are nice promotions every week upgrading marketing/sales and M&A people into upper management. The last (last as in terminal, final) time I privately asked about promotion pathways all it got me was the manager's ridicule in a later engrg department meeting.
Reminds of a job where they would wait until the last day to announce someone was quitting. Management required the resigning employee to keep quiet. So hand-over then became a mad-dash for all involved.
I once traveled with a college who was socially a bit hard to handle. So we go out to the valley from the Midwest and he keeps suggesting we go to burger joints with the local team that is about %70 Indian.
Everyone kept looking at me like "What the hell?".
One of the places I mentioned in another post did pizza on fridays as a teambuilding lunch thing. It would have been nice except it took us about two months to convince them to order a vegetarian pizza for our Indian coworkers. Didn't feel like teambuilding.
But as I meet more and more people with food sensitivities I think that providing food for an event is just fraught anyway, and maybe you should try something else.
That's really weird, when done right, it isn't that hard to find a vegetarian or similar alternative. Most places that cater or just about any place have good options these days.
At one place I worked we just used the same folks to bring in food. Rather than debate what they just had packages and we would check boxes (vegetarian, etc) and numbers and blamo reasonable food showed up.
I think the real issue is when you have folks who don't know what they're doing trying to manage it.
Only about one-quarter of Indians eat beef, so it's not at all safe to assume that any random group of Indians you encounter will be majority beef-eaters.
The metaphor doesn't work. You wouldn't dangle a steak dinner as a reward to a group of people who you could reasonably assume were mostly vegan. The intended reward _is_ the steak, because steak is expensive and delicious when prepared well. Yes, you could order a nice salad, but don't you think it sort of misses the point? It's not on the employee to enjoy the reward they're being offered, it's on the management to pick a reward that's valued by the employee. And sometimes, that means having even a tiny bit of cultural sensitivity.
That's debatable, I'm American and would take an offer of a "steak dinner" to literally mean steak. Even presupposing you're correct that it's generally understood by Americans as an idiom, assuming that non-Americans understand American idioms is a form of ignorance, if not deliberate arrogance.
No one's saying "assume they are vegans," we're saying "don't assume they eat meat." Big difference.
I'm American and if someone offered me "a steak dinner" I would expect to be taken to a steakhouse, where steak was pretty much the only item on the menu.
I'm American, and if someone told me they're taking me out for a steak dinner, I'd immediately assume we were going to a steakhouse. It couldn't be any less of an idiom. If they took me out for pork chops, I would be completely and utterly confused.
I don't think I've ever been in an Indian restaurant that has pork or beef on the menu, but that's in my corner of the US. Pretty much universally, they have chicken, lamb, goat, seafood, and vegetarian versions.
Pork is probably even less popular than beef among Indians. At least a lot of the Muslims eat beef, but they don't eat pork. A majority of the Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs eat neither.
For real, any corporation employing a significant proportion of Indian people (hell, even non-Indian people too) should be culturally sensitive enough to know that any offer of a morale dinner must feature vegetarian options. This is basic cultural sensitivity and anyone who doesn't understand this has no business managing people.
Sure, but that's not the point. The point is whether you're likely to find a group where everybody is fine with beef (or pork, or any meat at all).
Also, not all Indians are fine with the Indians who are fine with steak. Significant conflict over that sort of thing sometimes makes the news outside the country.
Oh dear! I can relate to this as I am invariably the lone vegetarian. I don't have meat or fish smells in my life and so the idea of dining out with people eating steaks is just abhorrent. I prefer not to go if I know I am going to struggle with the menu but it is never easy to refuse the kind gesture. It comes across as anti-social.
People also order from the more expensive end of the menu if the company is paying. Normally they might eat a chicken sandwich for lunch but if the company pays they are eating dead octopus or some other endangered species more intelligent than them.
The other one that I have seen is outright vegetarian baiting, so that means ordering things like crispy chicken's feet or sheep testicles just to push things to the culinary extreme.
Working with Indian co-workers on training in the UK the Friday treat was KFC. Eaten at desks. So the whole place reeked of the stuff and every surface had the finger licking slime. Bins had bones in them. If you are the lone vegetarian you have to just keep quiet. But with 6-7 people over from India in the office? The company can't just change its KFC ritual.
Few people were what you might call athletic in that office.
At a company I worked at it was bonus time. Bonuses had been a point of contention forever as the company always bugled the metrics and despite a lot of talk bonuses were hard to account for.
So anyway they announce a "Christmas Bonus":
$50....
I mean I'll take $50 but it felt like such an empty gesture. Just a few years earlier I had gotten $150 bonus while working at a pizza joint. The HR person who sent out the survey that year did not like that factoid about the pizza joint that I provided on their benefits feedback survey.
I worked in a startup eng. org that worked everybody to the bone for several months with a dubious SOA overhaul. The prize was a cheap open bar. At least it looked like an open bar, privately reserved and such. We each got two raffle-style tickets to exchange for drinks, lest us peons get carried away. Three days off? That would've been amazing.
hahaha. "drink tickets" I don't honestly know if it's a cost thing so much as some trick HR has convinced people will limit their liability if something bad were to happen. Every time I see that done, it seems like there is a little black market for them the develops, some folks don't drink or leave the party early and people tend to accumulate more than their 2 or 3 tickets.
This company no longer exists but they routinely demanded 6 days a week effort as a matter of principle (if you put the hard work in up front, it pays dividends as the project goes on... and then they just add stuff near the end of the project) Some people left, morale was terrible, what did they do? The C-level staff that a) had limited culinary ability, and b) nobody really wanted to spend time with made a special dinner for everybody, it was quasi mandatory on a Friday night. The CEO even gave a speech about how they could have just taken us to a nice restaurant but it felt more personal and special for them to make and serve us dinner.
To make it even better, there were some vegans in the mix and they didn't have anything that they could eat.
>To make it even better, there were some vegans in the mix and they didn't have anything that they could eat.
I was on the reverse end of that. A small group of folks eventually became in charge of company morale type events... they only liked "different" things.
So there would be a presentation or event like thing and lunch. Except lunch would be these weird vegan-ish "pizzas" and other dishes catered out, but absolutely NO standard type lunch stuff. I don't mind odd stuff here and there but it was all very unusual and honestly sometimes gross (even the vegans on our team wouldn't eat it). Like at least have a few standard sandwiches.... At one point it became such an issue people stopped going to the events.
The saga went on and on with this group of folks "guarding" the door so people didn't leave early, events eventually became mandatory (people still did not go), etc.
Why, when I was young, well, about 20 years ago at least, the small team that included me was offered a bonus to get something done on time. We worked hard and hit the deadline. The very afternoon we delivered it, I was made redundant.
They gave me a week's severance pay. Unfortunately I had a contract both sides had signed that they'd forgotten about, which entitled me to a month's pay. I waved that in their face (very carefully, I literally did not put it past them to grab it off me and rip it up, they would do that). They paid up.
My share of the bonus? They told me I had no proof so I wasn't getting anything. I took them to the small claims court and got it all plus interest.
It took 18 months but I knew how much they hated losing money, and how they loved screwing people over just because they could.
This is almost as bad as the US government using taxpayer dollars to run covert social media campaigns to make everyone feel better about the government.
The documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway suggests that those productions got positive reponses from employees, but that probably had to do with good production values (some of the shows cost more than actual Broadway runs) and it being an expenses-paid day trip for everybody.
These still exist in the form of corporate newsletters filled with high-production videos of very serious people saying very serious things. It's still considered a musical, it's just you hafta have the right Dadaist frame of mind to get it.
These are times when I remember that in a hierarchy people at the top are so removed and deluded that they think their employees aren’t full grown adults that see this bullshit for what it is. It is insulting actually.
A certain startup I worked at, the CEO would give out... gift cards. Occasionally, usually after someone was severely overworked. And I’m pretty certain he got them for free/cheap in the first place.
Of course, the real red flag was starting at $10/hr 1099’d (almost definitely illegally) and being told it’s more than most people start at. For software engineering. After a good interview. I was astounded and perplexed, but it was my first software job, I was a college dropout, and I was still living with my parents, so I took it anyways. But if I knew what I know now, just a few years later, I would’ve laughed in their faces. Oh well.
> the CEO would give out... gift cards. Occasionally, usually after someone was severely overworked. And I’m pretty certain he got them for free/cheap in the first place.
I've been there, and it wasn't even a startup. The company credit cards had 1% back, redeemable as gift cards. The owner/CEO insisted on paying as many vendors and contracts as possible via credit card to rack up the points. The stack of gift cards (for places he didn't like enough to keep the cards) became the de-facto office "perk me up", particularly after bouts of excessive overwork.
I don't mind gift cards. It's a bit tacky when you can tell they are Christmas leftover by the eGiftCard that is included with it expering back in Feburary, and it's June.
When I first started out as a software dev for an agency, I was offered $9/hr. I took it because it was more than the minimum wage I was making at my restaurant job.
After a few months they rewarded me for my hard work by giving me a raise of $1. At the time I was grateful but now I realize what an insult that was.
That was the only raise I received unfortunately. But once I realized that the work I was doing produced the same value as salaried employees, I learned to use leverage to negotiate better compensation. I haven't waited around for a raise ever since.
Get a competing job offer. Whatever they offer you, ask for a comparable raise of your current workplace. Be very explicit about it being non-negotiable. Whether to mention the competing job offer is a matter of taste; it helps prove you mean business, but it can damage trust. Either way: if they say no you leave.
This only works if, and because, you are ready to walk away. It's the easiest form of negotiating. But it does require you to actually be able to walk away!
This strategy works extremely well if you are actually underpaid, and if you are you might not need that offer at all: I once bluffed my way into a 16% raise that was issued on the spot.
This is not a success story - it only worked because I was an incredibly poor negotiator and signed on for at least 20% under my market value.
My younger sister received an award for being a promising new grad or something in her first year at one of the Big 4 accounting companies. Her prize? A public ceremony where a senior manager handed her a copy of 50 Shades of Grey.......
If I really stretched my imagination, maybe 'She's worked so hard and did so well for our company, maybe she deserves to take a nice vacation, here's the most popular book for women to symbolize that'.
You are putting a bit too much thought into the decision making. I figure someone walked into the book store and picked the book from the first bestseller display.
Never attribute to malice or ignorance what can adequately explained by lazy.
It is very common for abusive people to exploit this attitude and commit acts that are clearly over the line but have some barely plausible innocent explanation. Gaslighting the victim is, perhaps, another intentional part of the abuse.
You'd have to work pretty hard to convince me that gifting a young woman a sexually explicit novel is not malicious.
I didn't know 50 Shades of Grey was erotica until the movie trailers started hitting TV.
Most guys had no clue about the book other than thinking it was a straight forward romance book. I could make the same claims against other people about how they can't tell the difference between spam and real emails or ad results and real results. I know because I'm consistently around it and I HAVE to know. It takes a level of maturity to understand that everyone else doesn't know what you may know.
Really? I gifted romance books before to women. Not publicly, since I've never been in a situation to do so. They've all been happy about it since I always get them something random that they would never pick. Or is it that people really don't gift books? I remember the original book cover to 50 Shades was like a tie or something. It actually looked like a "tasteful" book if you didn't know better. Literally, I would have picked that up for my mom in a similar situation, if she didn't own it already...
I'm really thinking you're pushing a bias on the situation. Someone did something potentially nice, but in a lazy ass way. Like getting flowers for someone who is allergic to flowers. The laziness really bit them in the ass. It'd be the same if I told someone I liked horror and they got me Twilight because they heard it was about vampires and werewolves.
That's a situation where you laugh your ass off about it and crack a joke.
Firstly you shouldn't reward significant work achievements with a cheap book. That's tone deaf no matter what the book is.
Secondly if you do pick a book, you can at least try to make it relevant to someone's actual professional competence - something useful, but not insultingly peppy.
Thirdly if you're going to do that, you can ask them what they want, in a way that indicates you value their competence and opinion.
Gifts and rewards are all about social signalling, hierarchies and statements of relative value. The messages are understood whether or not you're aware you're speaking that language.
If you get it wrong, it's not just demotivating for the person, it's demotivating for everyone else too.
And no, you don't have to be super-serious about it. Jokey gifts are fine, although riskier than something straight. If the culture can take it, they're a good choice. But you have to be very sure that is the culture.
Whoa! You ask people what to get them as a gift? Do you also just tell them "Hey, I'm too important to remember your likes/dislikes and to make an effort to get you something that's at least somewhat meaningful." You realize a lot of people take that as a really bad insult right? Being asked what to get as a gift is just a "fuck you, I'm forced I get you something against my will". Why do you think when some people are asked that, they just say not to worry about it. That signals utter uselessness. Jesus, even my neighbors, who I barely know, got me Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest book for Christmas because they knew I like science. Seriously, like how heartless are you to just give advice to "Just ask what they want. Don't bother thinking about it. It's not important to think about that person on a human level and surprise them." Like, WOW. I just reread Man's Search for Meaning again last week, but your comment really just bothers the hell out of me. And you want to talk about cultural appropriate actions?
Now, check the op, it's "Most promising grad that's been there for a year." It's a borderline participation trophy. "Congrats, we didn't fire you." More than likely, senior management, who gave it to her, probably felt the same thing and thought making a big deal out of it was pointless. "At least get her something other than some stupid piece of paper". So the guy, who 99% likely didn't know her either, but did ask around what she likes and probably someone said "she likes to read". Maybe he even saw her read a book. Then he just either quickly ordered it off amazon if there was time for it to come in, or just walked into barnes and noble and saw the "New York Times Bestselling Book" table right at the door and picked it out. It is after all, someone he doesn't know. But at the same time thinks a stupid piece of paper and making a big deal about nothing is insulting to her as well. At least get her something of some minor tangible value.
The main point, most guys had no idea what the fuck the book was about the first year or two it came out. They just knew women liked the book and asked no more questions. It has a not racey cover on it. It's easy to think it's not too crazy judging by the cover.
Yea, profession book. Think about that one. "Congrats, we didn't fire you for a year, here's a book that'll teach you to do your job better." Talk about lacking empathy. At least getting a fiction book means, "Congrats, we didn't fire you, have fun with a book."
A gift that's demotivating is one of being generic. A gift that can apply to anyone. At least a book narrows you down to around a rough 30% demographic of a given population with written language. "Oh hey, I notice/heard you like to read. Since you've proved not to be useless to the company, here's a book people seem to like and I hope you enjoy it yourself."
I also highly doubt it was a joking gift. ESPECIALLY AT AN ACCOUNTING FIRM. You realize the HR nightmare and a half. Like, seriously. Because no one has ever fucked up by trying to do a simple nice gesture, ever, in human history. Everything is full of malice, hate and evil. Every single person. Must be if you think asking someone what they want as a gift is even remotely appropriate.
Gving the gift of a romance novel to a non-significant other is strange. Please consider that if the gift is from a man, most women would see it as odd at best, a misguided come-on at worst.
Depends on when. When the book first came out and Amazon did TV ads about moms in the bathtub reading it, I just thought it was a random popular chick lit book.
It was also a book that was enormously popular among women. At that time, if you were to randomly choose a book from the best-seller list, there’s a good chance you’d land on Shades of Grey.
We’ll have to agree to disagree about the plausibility. I consider it perfectly plausible that an assistant was dispatched to buy a book for a prize and, having no knowledge of the dire state of women’s popular literature, grabbed whatever topped the best sellers list.
Thinking about it, I would bet money that the book buying was staffed out. As many have pointed out, prior to the movie, it would take someone who cares to figure it out beyond its on the best seller list.
50 shades of Gray is perfect book for office manager to be "awww, you see, we are not so boring office hamsters, hehehe. We may be informal and naughty"
I promise you, when people give a f*ck about you they don't gift you the most plastic overhyped book they can find you don't even need to open.
Yea, people do this all the time with kids too. They pick up the first thing that's either popular or they see as "child appropriate". It's just laziness. It's not hard to think adults do it to other adults. Especially if they think the whole thing is pointless to begin with.
Somewhere down that path one of the executive admins should have put the brakes on that particular book purchase. The fact that they didn't says something about the company.
If she was the only person that received 50 Shades and other people received different books then that is an obvious case of harassment.
Or somebody thought "50 Shades of Grey is a popular book with young women, and it'll show we're cool and modern", and didn't think farther than that.
You can definitely make a case for this being harassment of some sort if you _really_ want to see it under that light, but without more context it could easily be an honest mistake.
I read this and was immediately reminded of David Sedaris' short story about working as a Macy's Elf:
>I spend all day lying to people, saying, "You look so pretty," and "Santa can't wait to visit with you. You're all he talks about. It's just not Christmas without you. You're Santa's favorite person in the entire tri-state area."
>
>Sometimes I lay it on really thick. "Aren't you the princess of Rongovia? Santa said that a beautiful princess was coming to visit him. He said she would be wearing a red dress and that she was very pretty, but not stuck up or two-faced. That's you isn't it?" I lay it on and the parents mouth the words, "Thank you," and "Good job."
IBM: I was to be sent at short notice to the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam. They wanted every one to wear a "uniform": black pants and an IBM shirt. My manager said they'd get me button-down shirts, but at the meeting where they distributed the shirts, no button-downs were to be found. They'd mysteriously disappeared. They had to scrounge me up some XXL polo shirts.
I worked at one of those companies that earned ridiculous money refinancing peoples homes during the run-up to the financial crisis. (Yes, I now know it was quite unethical)
They had a boiler room team of salespeople who made an insane amount of money. We are talking six figures a month. They were not at all highly skilled or had any financial background or degree.
Their bonuses could be a luxury car. (or once a horse).
I worked on the IT side. We made the software that basically did all the work.
It included instructions of a spiel to sell loans, how to get around various excuses and such. And it did all the work with filing the required paperwork
ensuring all the required information was there, sending out information to the people who refinanced all that crap. You could, in practice, take someone from the street, set them up with this software and they could sell loans. (this is not as far fetched as it may sound).
I have so many stories about my time there but anyways, the IT team was not at all
highly paid, nor very appreciated. One Christmas we knew we were getting a bonus,
and given what we knew about bonuses being handed out we were kinda excited.
There's something about that particular (shady) business model of ethically questionable work that over-values "commission activity" and under-values technical achievement that makes it possible.
A past employer used the software we built to create a commissions lottery [1] for a call center floor, and paid huge commissions to an "R&D team" that "value added", but really just created idiotic Access reports from the software's databases (sometimes bringing the Production databases to their knees until we started forcing them to use clones and BI data lakes), but software development was a "cost center" ineligible for commissions, despite doing all the "real" work (including any and all efficiency gains). At one point the executives convinced themselves despite huge turnover that they were somehow magically hiring "better" call center staff.
I feel somewhat confident that that companies misplaced ideas of work/efficiency/how it was profitable were directly correlated with its misplaced sense of ethics. The "R&D team", for instance, seemed representative of the sort of bottom feeder scum that play political games well but don't actually have any skills of their own, and arguably at the end of the day that was roughly what the company as a whole was, a bottom feeder parasite playing politics well enough to make a ton of money surviving in an ethically dubious evolutionary niche.
[1] We had proof that it was a really bad lottery, too. The software was something like 95%+ accurate in how much money was likely associated with each item that went out to the call center. To make things "fair" we kept getting a lot of feedback to make it as "random" as possible.
We need to find a name for a gesture so small in its generosity that it ends up being offensive. No bonus would have left me disappointed, but a $50 bonus would have made me angry.
Like when Delta gave a food voucher to make up for a 5-hour delay on a 30-minute file. The voucher was for $3. Fuck Delta.
When my entire engineering team was laid off, work organized farewell drinks for us.
Except they didn't actually budget for this. Their idea was that the whole office would go out and... celebrate? Us being laid off? And pay for it ourselves?
When something similar happened to me in the first dotcom crash, my boss at least had the decency to say "screw it, I'm putting it on my company AmEx", and even when he went home, he told the bartender "Keep it open all night, and add a 25% tip" and told us to stay as long as we wanted.
Man, when my company got shut down in the dot com days, after the 10am all hands, I said screw it and took my entire team out for drinks until about 4, out of my own pocket.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the way you do it if you're going down with the ship. Drink with the crew, pay for them, and tell stories and try to make plans as you slip into the waters. 19 years later, I'm still friends with all but one who disappeared to the offline somehow.
Ended up giving my director a slightly embarrassing hug when we got back in, but we'd been through enough over the past that she forgave me and we're still friends.
She and I were somewhat standoffish people back then, not really huggy types. Meanwhile, I come into the office, 3 sheets to the wind, see her, and said something like "S., I am going to miss working with you so much!" at a fairly loud volume, and I'm a good half foot taller than her.
It's something I still have to buy her a beer for every couple of years or so.
I grok. Our business relationship was very good (thus my outburst) but our somewhat distancing (and very "proper" and "professional" Midwestern based) personalities in the 90s led to it being slightly embarrassing for us, then.
We obviously got past it, but it makes for an amusing story as she's never seen me that inebriated since, and actually didn't know I could get that buzzed as well as be demonstrative.
Ah, the US. 3+ hour delay in the EU and you’re automatically entitled to a minimum of €250 compensation. Airlines try _very_ hard for that not to happen.
At a former place I worked (a university), there was no annual cost-of-living increase to your salary. Instead, any increases were performance based.
If you scored the _highest_ level on your performance review, the level that required approval from several levels of HR to ensure that not too many people got it... you might get a 1.25% salary increase. If you scored "satisfactory" you might get a 0.75% increase.
Eventually some consultant told them that doing performance-based raises for such meager amounts and meager differences between high and low end, were actually found by research to have a negative impact on morale. (I left soon after that, so not sure what they changed to).
One more case of many of paying an expensive consultant to tell you something that was obvious to most of your staff already but you didn't listen to them.
I have a friend who worked as a consultant for a few years. I asked him what he did exactly, he said "well a company asked me to help them solve X, so I would go to the company's developers, ask them how they'd solve X, then I would tell the management that and get paid handsomely for it, and everyone's happy. Management got a solution, the devs got listened to, I got paid well, win-win."
I remember a study that noted that random awards not given to everyone were seen to have more morale boosts than rewards that people thought were small that were given to be everyone.
But yeah it amazes me people can't figure out the tiny reward is wonky.
I find "merit"/"performance" based raises for like 2 or 3% to be insulting.
You think I wasn't already doing my best, but what's going to motivate me to really give you my best is the promise of a 2% raise, if I successfully navigate the insane beurocracy to fill out my paperwork the right way to game the system and have my manager cooperate?
You don't just think I take no pride in my work and don't care about the project/mission itself, you also think I'm cheap/desperate.
> a gesture so small in its generosity that it ends up being offensive. No bonus would have left me disappointed, but a $50 bonus would have made me angry.
This is basically how I felt about the Amazon employee discount program, which if I remember right was 10% off all purchases, capped at $100 / year.
I worked for a company that was always handing out cheap tokens of their "appreciation" (we all knew they didn't appreciate the employees but I guess they figured pretending might reduce turnover). Sometimes it was a free pretzel or water ice, other times it was a Thank You email that sounded like it was written by some cheap marketing AI. You could also get a "Shout Out" in the monthly newsletter that nobody read, but only if you twisted your coworkers' arms enough to submit one. In the end, all their efforts only served as constant reminders of how little the executives actually appreciated everyone, which decreased morale and increased turnover.
There's something extra depressing about working for a company where the millionaire executives think workers can be placated with 25-cent junk food. I think that company is still limping along somehow, which is great because the new Glassdoor reviews are usually pretty amusing.
A place I worked at one time had the vending machines removed. The owner's neice was overweight and died of cancer and had other health issues, so he didn't want any of the rest of us making poor deciisions and ending up like her
So they took the vending machines out. Great, now we need to go to the gas station a block down the road to get a candy bar, chips, or afternoon soda.
One particularly hot day, the sales team went out to the production floor/warehouse to hand out Powerade (generic gatorade) to the workers.
They brought the social media and marketing people with them to take photos and post the 'good deed ' online. We can only have a soft drink when they deem it necessary!
There was a story about Steve Jobs seeing an overweight engineer in the hallway eating a donut. He glared at him and next day there were no donuts in the Apple cafeteria. I don't remember where I read this.
Was at a place that did something similar, but at least they replaced it with free (if crappy) coffee and giant bowls of fruit. I actually appreciated it, even if it was a touch “we want to pay lower Health insurance premiums” paternalistic.
Not a counter point to this article, but a counter point to the efficacy of monetary rewards.
> "Study showed that monetary incentives are great for routine, mechanical work. But how does it play when talking about cognitive, advanced tasks? Not well at all."
Counter-counter point: If anyone ever points you to this for evidence _you_ shouldn't get a bonus/monetary reward system, ask if _they_ get a bonus/monetary reward system...
> "Every day was a hot new idea and yesterday’s priority was forgotten. Why bother making progress towards a goal that will change tomorrow?" ("Rob's" comment on the OP's article)
This to me is the single biggest killer of motivation / productivity. If you've got this problem, I agree with the video that even large monetary rewards won't salvage productivity.
This is a different topic than the article and the discussion so far.
A yearly bonus or a "thank you"/party/etc aren't rewards tied to specific tasks. They're meant to be gestures of appropriation. You're discussing a bonus structure that ties financial incentives to very specific work items, and rewards them accordingly.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, just pointing out they're two different topics.
Appropriation or appreciation? If it's appropriation I'm intrigued!
Like what if someone shows up to an event you planned, and starts thanking people for coming. They're basically implying/claiming ownership of the event. Appropriation through appreciation.
In other words what if you thought a project was yours, and then someone appropriates it by thanking your team, implying it was for that person all along?
I don't think one reward method is objectively better than any other because individuals are all motivated by different things.
Some people want to feel appreciated, some want to feel like their work makes a difference in the world, and some really are motivated by huge wads of cash.
That study is probably true but does it apply to engineers, people who are paid to be logical and rational as much as possible? Your efficient-because-people-are-irrational reward system is demotivating your best people.
I feel happier when I get a bonus that brings retirement closer, or lets me give more to charotsbt causes I believe in, or gives me a day off, instead of a throwaway toy or schwag or a gift card or a meal at an expensive restaurant that doesn't serve food I can eat.
I'm completely uninterested in bonuses, because they're a one-time thing.
A merit increase at the end of the year stays with you for the rest of your career. A $1,000 bonus is gone as soon as it's spent.
I've seen some organizations that use bonuses to cover over the fact that people aren't getting raises, and I would expect people who do cognitive tasks to be better able to run the math on why that's bad.
I can't watch the video, so maybe it was covered, but it can also have the opposite effect. Applying a reward or a fine pegs a "price" to the action and can produce something opposite to the desired outcome.
The common example is if a daycare has parents frequently turning up late for pick up, so they have to stay open late. So they decided to apply a surcharge for latecomers in a study. The problem got worse, since the the value of the fine was less impactful than the guilt felt by most parents. It was now seen as more acceptable to be late.
Considering how expensive staff are, I've never understood the culture surrounding penny pinching the stuff that would keep them happy/improve moral/improve retention.
Forget the moral arguments for a second, even in purely financial terms it would likely pay for itself in recruitment savings alone, let alone brain drain/efficiency, training costs, and so on.
Even a "cheap" employee in a white collar job, is likely costing $60K or more (inc. the employer's share of taxes, benefits, etc). 1% of that is only $600. But people won't pay even that towards bonuses/comfortable chairs/second monitors/"thank you" lunches/staff parties.
At some point it seems a lot less to do with what is rational/logical, and more to do with the power dynamics and people higher up the chain's apathy. Companies are actually hurting themselves for seemingly no good reason. It isn't even fiscally responsible.
I'm with you, with all the costs a bonus seems like a pretty arbitrary place to make the call to be cheap.
In the situation I was in there were some penny punchers who felt quite proud of saving a couple hundred bucks here or there and couldn't see the forest through the trees of the misc expenses they were "saving".
It must be hard to quantify the benefits of preventive measures to reduce employee turnover.
It would probably take a company that had all of its shit in order to have a nice report about how HR initiatives over some amount of years was directly correlated to lower employee turnover. If you can't put it in a report to accurately understand the impact of the expenditure it probably becomes hard to justify. I think this must explain all the ineffective half measures and low budgets.
I work in the US and since the Great Recession the swag that we used to get around the office (e.g. t-shirts, ice cream days) have really dried up. Spending on buildings, on the other hand, has increased rapidly.
Last year I went to a meeting in France that was held in a rather old building in Grenoble. It was a day long meeting so they brought in a boxed lunch for everyone. Shocking. There was some sushi, chicken in pasta, hot rolls, chocolate cake, and two small bottles of wine and water. It was fantastic.
I was slow on the uptake, but then it hit me, given a choice between spending money on people or things, they chose to spend it on people. Honestly, a total shock for me.
In one of my European jobs we'd have quarterly "seminars", where we ostensibly studied something. But they were really quite costly parties at exotic locations.
Prioritizing penny-pinching in general over being nice to people in general is an easy temptation for entrepreneurs, and it goes well with generic egoism.
For example, I'm used to more or less annual all-hands dinners at inadequate restaurants, with better wine for the partners (all sitting together, of course) and combined with partners-only yacht weekends and the like.
What it boils down to is that the penny-pinching stuff is the stuff that's least painful for managers to cut. Firing people sucks, selling big things like buildings is hard and takes a long time. Whereas cutting off the free soda is something the manager can do right now, without having to pick a fight with other managers or launch into a whole gigantic process.
The irony is that cutting the penny-pinching stuff is usually the wrong thing to do, because by the time the managers accept that they're underwater cutting small expenses is no longer enough to right the ship. What they should do is bite the bullet and make one big cut that's big enough to solve the problem; that at least would minimize the effect on morale, since they could tell everyone who's still there that they survived the cut and are now safe.
But again, that requires some courage and willingness to accept some pain, whereas cutting off the sodas is easy and painless. So they do the easy thing, and start down the road of endless little cuts that sap morale and drive people away without actually solving the problem.
This reminded me of when my old company cut the cheese from the salad bar. Mind you, this company was famous for their free lunch perks, but when a salad bar in WI cuts the cheese... well.. it stinks.
This was in 2009/2010. They did a intranet article about how smart they were for cutting the cheese and how it saved $10k a year... in a lunch program that staffed ~100 and fed ~10000.
It was quite clear that it cost MORE to cut the cheese in lost wages from people bickering, complaining, and spinning the decision. however, I'm sure it looked like a quick win for the non-salad-eating manager in charge.
I think often there just truly isn't the money because the company is dying. It can take a long time for a company to die, and people will put up with a lot in the process.
Christmas 2010, HostGator gave everyone an e-cigarette or some other option but since we were mostly 20-somethings working there the vast majority chose the e-cigarette.
It was, there are probably some videos of us double, or triple barreling them and blowing clouds everywhere. My throat still hurts thinking about that day.
At the end of a project death-march (at one point I turned in a >100 hour timecard), the division director had a celebratory thank-you dinner for all the managers involved in the project.
My direct supervisor was at first puzzled as to why I wasn't coming with him to the dinner at the end of the day, and then he was quite appalled - I think he later had words with the director about the whole thing.
I'd bet money that most of those managers weren't even in the building for most of that death march.
I have a standing rule. If I work overtime it's because I fucked up. I said something would be done by Friday but I goofed off, I'll work.
If I'm working nights and weekends for business reasons, then my manager is in the building the entire time. A lot of them tone down their rhetoric when you make them put skin in the game. All of a sudden some of the scope gets negotiated down.
I have the same rule. If I’m expected to come in on the weekend, my manager had better be there. If it’s important enough to ask me to sacrifice my personal time, then it had better be important enough for him to be there too.
Unless it’s because I screwed up and need to fix something post haste. In which case, he won’t have to ask me at all.
It’s funny to tell this story in a thread about bad incentives, but the “managers not there” part reminded me of it.
I worked at a startup that did citizen identity management for government (think SSO for an entire province). Because of gov’t IT policies, we often had to deploy after hours, in a kind of weird “managed IT” process. We still automated the process, but couldn’t press the button without being on a conference call etc.
Anyway, we had a deployment go south on Friday night, rolled it back, and decided to come back and try again Sunday. The CEO himself showed up about 10 minutes after we did with a big box of Dilly Bars. Normally that would put this in the category of this thread: “thanks, I’m working overtime for ice cream...” but what he said made it all better: “I know this sucks to be here today. Help yourselves to ice cream. And I’ll be in my office all day, stop by if you need anything. And please let me know when you’re done so I know I can go home.”
Yes, having a manager just be there showing appreciation is huge. My story is trying to crack a hot, high-impact bug that got reported days before product launch. Daily 8:00AM and 5:00PM status meetings on Saturday and Sunday reporting to multiple VP's kind of hot. So the debug lab manager had little clue how to hang a logic analyzer probe any more, and no clue how to read the traces. But he brought in take-out 3 meals a day and did whatever else to keep us well-fed and caffeinated during the ordeal. And if we wanted to consult with somebody, he tracked them down and got them on the phone. Basically just hung out and said "Thanks" often.
That is 100% awesome. I've had a few managers over my career that got that.
The counterpoint (funny enough, at the same company as the ice cream) was a different exec who came close but just missed the mark. Weekday evening deployment (started at 5:30pm) and he orders pizza. A lot of pizza. Things go smoothly and since we're just sitting and watching monitoring for a bit to make sure all is good, he decides to head out. Ten minutes after he leaves, we get a call about a third-party site that broke after the deployment... guess we're not leaving.
So the debugging drags on, and around 11pm we start getting hungry. AHA! Leftover pizza in the fridge! We go to the kitchen to discover... he took all of the leftovers home. Like 4 pizzas worth. So what's our conclusion? "Fuck it, we'll fix it in the morning. Let's go home."
Call me ungrateful but I can't think of anything I'd less like doing than being forced into a dinner with coworkers that I already spend more time with than my family or friends.
People with a greater emphasis on work-life balance probably wouldn't stay at a job requiring occasional massive overtime, like the comment you replied to. At that point, the dinner after work is no longer the issue.
My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000.
Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency. Forms had to be filled out, lost, found, signed, routed, xeroxed, left on desks while people were on vacation. Passed through legal and security.
Also, the bonus was distributed among all the team members being rewarded. The $1000 figure was the maximum allowed for the total bonus, not the individual bonuses.
My team did something outstanding. It took 18 months of hard labor. Overtime. High stakes demonstrations. We ended up bringing in tens of millions of dollars in funding. A full year later an extra $150 showed up in my paycheck.
PS I forgot another incident. I was nominated for a prestigious award, given by an official very high up at the Pentagon. I was asked to write my own nomination letter. I was given the award; to receive it I had to dress up in a suit, show up early to work, shake the official’s hand, and then spend an hour giving him a tour. The actual award was a letter of commendation and a challenge coin. There was no bonus.
Theoretically, the challenge coin would be worth a lifetime of free drinks in bars frequented by military members. Or so I’m told. I don’t drink.
Net by definition means after certain adjustments have been taken out (like taxes). Regardless $75/$150/$300 in any case, it's a slap in the face. A slap that you need to pay taxes on.
Damn! My current CEO wants to do the same. But he wants people to vote across teams. EG, backend engineer nominates machine learning researcher. Machine learning nominates HR. For a $1000 bonus, or a new ipad previous generation. Reasoning is that the manager cannot approve because that would reward favoritism, so random people nominating random people it is. Bad ideas coming from a good place I guess, but people are going to feel demoralized for sure in the end.
It's surprisingly easy to accidentally be designing a game and not realize it. And designing games is hard. And one can closely approximate the percentage of the population that's put so much as one thought toward how to do so—the limits of the practice, the balance, the ways your rules can be abused or encourage behavior you hadn't anticipated—ever, as zero. That when someone starts to recognize what they're accidentally doing they tend to give up, or abandon any effort to do it well, or ditch it and go with some familiar, proven pattern instead even if it sucks and doesn't fit the situation, makes sense. It's hard, and very few people are good at it.
It's easier to recognize that you're playing one than that you're making one, it seems.
These schemes always suck. After a major datacenter migration and other big transformation projects, that place I worked at setup an awards committee and had unbiased judges rate nominations. I was the only technical reviewer... the rest were customer success manager types, hr, even accounting.
End of the day, the most passionately written nominations were for people in IT support, mostly for doing shit they weren’t supposed to do. The “customer champion” replaced toner quickly at our expense, (it was supposed to be paid for by the customer for reasons). The other big one, that came with cash, was given to someone who was a notorious master of getting other people to do their work.
I felt bad for the organizers, as they really intended to do a good thing.
Early on in a recently IPO'd security company, HR thought it would be great to allow anyone in the company to give an award to anyone else. It was points worth about $50. Eventually, word got out that nobody was paying attention to the awards going out, and it was an automated system, so the points would be applied automatically.
You can imagine what happened. My favorite was two folks that were related to each other awarded the "Nepotism Award" to each other.
I think it's more a cultural thing. Not everyone is financially motivated, they want the recognition. A challenge coin is a tool for doing that. It's in a similar vein to a medal.
It might have been misjudged in this instance however, but they're a thing in military circles so I can imagine how it seemed like a good idea.
Tbh I'd have been really pleased, but I can appreciate that's not universal.
If you are in the military, you can use challenge coins to get yourself free drinks. The idea is that when everyone is at a bar, the guy or gal with the challenge coin from the highest ranking officer never has to pay for rounds of drinks.
I've never seen a civilian use one. We don't spend much time in bars, and the feeling I get is that if I did try to whip one out in the presence of uniformed personnel -- a challenge that I would almost certainly win, given who this coin was from -- that would be a tremendous faux pas.
So at best, this is the sort of object that carries some real meaning in a very particular social context among a very particular set of people, but that meaning doesn't carry over to anywhere else. Like baseball or Pokemon cards, I suppose. How would you feel about your boss switching out Christmas bonuses for packs of World of Warcraft cards?
How long are challenge coins "valid"? If someone had a challenge coin from Eisenhower (not sure those exist, let's pretend they do) would that person essentially always win, forever?
From my weird lay understanding, it's somewhat similar to childhood games where people would try to determine who had the "coolest" Pogs [1]. There are multiple "axes" that determines which challenge coin "wins": highest rank associated, most interesting challenge involved (some coins represent specific deployments or activities or actions), perceived rarity (there only three of the coins ever made), etc. To some extent the challenge coins serve what medals/badges always have: an excuse to tell a cool story, maybe brag about something. Similarly the "free alcohol" rules follow the same general principles of "that's a really cool story, I owe you a beer for it", just reduced to simple evocative coin form.
Which "axes" are in play, and who "wins" (or ties, a lot of the rule variations I've heard are set up to optimize towards ties; the most common challenge is just whether or not the other person has a challenge coin of any sort, not necessarily trying to figure out which wins if both people have coins on them) varies a lot between groups.
Also, challenge coins have seeped into some parts of lay culture, especially bar culture (given that alcohol has always been the big bet, it shouldn't be a surprise). For instance, the liqueur Fernet has its own challenge coins that bartenders tend to challenge each other for free shots of Fernet. (Bars try to keep one in reach of the bar at all times in case the bar is challenged, and the number of people that have them that have them that aren't themselves bartenders is supposedly kept quite rare.) https://talesofthecocktail.com/history/part-family-behind-sc...
It’s a big thing among some Infosec people who get a rise out of the cyber warrior nonsense.
One guy I know has enough of these things you’d think he was a navy seal, mostly from training sessions. His actual job is monk-like copying/summarizing of NIST documents and CVEs.
Public can be difficult to award people without running afoul of ethics rules. You're suprisingly constrained on what, and to what extent, you can award with congressionally appropriated funds. Sometimes people just eschew the whole idea because it's so difficult.
Besides the overtime everything else would be part of the job you were being paid to do. As a federal employee depending on your job classification you were paid either 1.5x your salary or 1.5x the salary of a GS-10 Step 1 adjusted for your locality for the overtime. Most likely in private industry you would be a salaried employee and not have received overtime pay or a bonus which exceeds what you received in overtime pay.
Also challenge coins, especially given to a civilian employee, are considered an honor in the DoD. Your post gives the impression of a great sense of entitlement on your part.
Maybe they are to uniformed members of the military. I've never once seen a civilian use, display, carry, or talk about a challenge coin. They typically get thrown in the back of a desk drawer and forgotten about. We literally have no use for them whatsoever. They don't even make good paperweights.
I have a stack of fourteen of them. Most of them I was given for spending thirty minutes giving some random officer a tour of the lab. They're not exactly hard to get.
Custom made motivational posters, with elegantly typeset quotations and slogans. Part of the same great rebranding/reorganization initiative in which employees got company-branded mugs and pens.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadOne thing that happened a few years ago was that I was on an improvement project that supposedly saved the company millions of dollars. At the end we won an award and i received an email talking about a big party at headquarters with great entertainment and good food where people could mingle with top management and the board of directors. It described what fantastic opportunity this would be. This went on for paragraphs.
Then the last paragraph said something like “by the way to save money we will send only the project lead and your management (who had nothing to do with the project) to the event but you will also get a nice plaque instead of the $500 or so gift card that used to be normal for this type of award. “. I still don’t know how anyone could write this and not see how crazy it was.
Anyways this was a good reminder to look after myself and not be a “team player”.
Well you can do both, just don't expect anyone to do the first part for you. Especially if that means moving on.
Everyone kept looking at me like "What the hell?".
But as I meet more and more people with food sensitivities I think that providing food for an event is just fraught anyway, and maybe you should try something else.
At one place I worked we just used the same folks to bring in food. Rather than debate what they just had packages and we would check boxes (vegetarian, etc) and numbers and blamo reasonable food showed up.
I think the real issue is when you have folks who don't know what they're doing trying to manage it.
Person B: Sure
- goes to taco stand -
Person A: 3 tacos please
Person B: I'll take the enchiladas
Person A: Oh my god, we were supposed to be getting tacos for lunch. How could you do this to me?
No one's saying "assume they are vegans," we're saying "don't assume they eat meat." Big difference.
For real, any corporation employing a significant proportion of Indian people (hell, even non-Indian people too) should be culturally sensitive enough to know that any offer of a morale dinner must feature vegetarian options. This is basic cultural sensitivity and anyone who doesn't understand this has no business managing people.
Less than 1/10th percent Indians eat beef.
Also, not all Indians are fine with the Indians who are fine with steak. Significant conflict over that sort of thing sometimes makes the news outside the country.
People also order from the more expensive end of the menu if the company is paying. Normally they might eat a chicken sandwich for lunch but if the company pays they are eating dead octopus or some other endangered species more intelligent than them.
The other one that I have seen is outright vegetarian baiting, so that means ordering things like crispy chicken's feet or sheep testicles just to push things to the culinary extreme.
Working with Indian co-workers on training in the UK the Friday treat was KFC. Eaten at desks. So the whole place reeked of the stuff and every surface had the finger licking slime. Bins had bones in them. If you are the lone vegetarian you have to just keep quiet. But with 6-7 people over from India in the office? The company can't just change its KFC ritual.
Few people were what you might call athletic in that office.
So anyway they announce a "Christmas Bonus":
$50....
I mean I'll take $50 but it felt like such an empty gesture. Just a few years earlier I had gotten $150 bonus while working at a pizza joint. The HR person who sent out the survey that year did not like that factoid about the pizza joint that I provided on their benefits feedback survey.
This company no longer exists but they routinely demanded 6 days a week effort as a matter of principle (if you put the hard work in up front, it pays dividends as the project goes on... and then they just add stuff near the end of the project) Some people left, morale was terrible, what did they do? The C-level staff that a) had limited culinary ability, and b) nobody really wanted to spend time with made a special dinner for everybody, it was quasi mandatory on a Friday night. The CEO even gave a speech about how they could have just taken us to a nice restaurant but it felt more personal and special for them to make and serve us dinner.
To make it even better, there were some vegans in the mix and they didn't have anything that they could eat.
I was on the reverse end of that. A small group of folks eventually became in charge of company morale type events... they only liked "different" things.
So there would be a presentation or event like thing and lunch. Except lunch would be these weird vegan-ish "pizzas" and other dishes catered out, but absolutely NO standard type lunch stuff. I don't mind odd stuff here and there but it was all very unusual and honestly sometimes gross (even the vegans on our team wouldn't eat it). Like at least have a few standard sandwiches.... At one point it became such an issue people stopped going to the events.
The saga went on and on with this group of folks "guarding" the door so people didn't leave early, events eventually became mandatory (people still did not go), etc.
Why, when I was young, well, about 20 years ago at least, the small team that included me was offered a bonus to get something done on time. We worked hard and hit the deadline. The very afternoon we delivered it, I was made redundant.
They gave me a week's severance pay. Unfortunately I had a contract both sides had signed that they'd forgotten about, which entitled me to a month's pay. I waved that in their face (very carefully, I literally did not put it past them to grab it off me and rip it up, they would do that). They paid up.
My share of the bonus? They told me I had no proof so I wasn't getting anything. I took them to the small claims court and got it all plus interest.
It took 18 months but I knew how much they hated losing money, and how they loved screwing people over just because they could.
The biter bit. I enjoyed myself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_musical
Of course, the real red flag was starting at $10/hr 1099’d (almost definitely illegally) and being told it’s more than most people start at. For software engineering. After a good interview. I was astounded and perplexed, but it was my first software job, I was a college dropout, and I was still living with my parents, so I took it anyways. But if I knew what I know now, just a few years later, I would’ve laughed in their faces. Oh well.
I've been there, and it wasn't even a startup. The company credit cards had 1% back, redeemable as gift cards. The owner/CEO insisted on paying as many vendors and contracts as possible via credit card to rack up the points. The stack of gift cards (for places he didn't like enough to keep the cards) became the de-facto office "perk me up", particularly after bouts of excessive overwork.
After a few months they rewarded me for my hard work by giving me a raise of $1. At the time I was grateful but now I realize what an insult that was.
This only works if, and because, you are ready to walk away. It's the easiest form of negotiating. But it does require you to actually be able to walk away!
Aren't we all adults and know this is how this game is played ?
This is not a success story - it only worked because I was an incredibly poor negotiator and signed on for at least 20% under my market value.
I'm trying to mentally justify how this isn't the craziest, stupidest idea ever.
Never attribute to malice or ignorance what can adequately explained by lazy.
You'd have to work pretty hard to convince me that gifting a young woman a sexually explicit novel is not malicious.
Most guys had no clue about the book other than thinking it was a straight forward romance book. I could make the same claims against other people about how they can't tell the difference between spam and real emails or ad results and real results. I know because I'm consistently around it and I HAVE to know. It takes a level of maturity to understand that everyone else doesn't know what you may know.
I'm really thinking you're pushing a bias on the situation. Someone did something potentially nice, but in a lazy ass way. Like getting flowers for someone who is allergic to flowers. The laziness really bit them in the ass. It'd be the same if I told someone I liked horror and they got me Twilight because they heard it was about vampires and werewolves.
That's a situation where you laugh your ass off about it and crack a joke.
Secondly if you do pick a book, you can at least try to make it relevant to someone's actual professional competence - something useful, but not insultingly peppy.
Thirdly if you're going to do that, you can ask them what they want, in a way that indicates you value their competence and opinion.
Gifts and rewards are all about social signalling, hierarchies and statements of relative value. The messages are understood whether or not you're aware you're speaking that language.
If you get it wrong, it's not just demotivating for the person, it's demotivating for everyone else too.
And no, you don't have to be super-serious about it. Jokey gifts are fine, although riskier than something straight. If the culture can take it, they're a good choice. But you have to be very sure that is the culture.
Now, check the op, it's "Most promising grad that's been there for a year." It's a borderline participation trophy. "Congrats, we didn't fire you." More than likely, senior management, who gave it to her, probably felt the same thing and thought making a big deal out of it was pointless. "At least get her something other than some stupid piece of paper". So the guy, who 99% likely didn't know her either, but did ask around what she likes and probably someone said "she likes to read". Maybe he even saw her read a book. Then he just either quickly ordered it off amazon if there was time for it to come in, or just walked into barnes and noble and saw the "New York Times Bestselling Book" table right at the door and picked it out. It is after all, someone he doesn't know. But at the same time thinks a stupid piece of paper and making a big deal about nothing is insulting to her as well. At least get her something of some minor tangible value.
The main point, most guys had no idea what the fuck the book was about the first year or two it came out. They just knew women liked the book and asked no more questions. It has a not racey cover on it. It's easy to think it's not too crazy judging by the cover.
Yea, profession book. Think about that one. "Congrats, we didn't fire you for a year, here's a book that'll teach you to do your job better." Talk about lacking empathy. At least getting a fiction book means, "Congrats, we didn't fire you, have fun with a book."
A gift that's demotivating is one of being generic. A gift that can apply to anyone. At least a book narrows you down to around a rough 30% demographic of a given population with written language. "Oh hey, I notice/heard you like to read. Since you've proved not to be useless to the company, here's a book people seem to like and I hope you enjoy it yourself."
I also highly doubt it was a joking gift. ESPECIALLY AT AN ACCOUNTING FIRM. You realize the HR nightmare and a half. Like, seriously. Because no one has ever fucked up by trying to do a simple nice gesture, ever, in human history. Everything is full of malice, hate and evil. Every single person. Must be if you think asking someone what they want as a gift is even remotely appropriate.
> Most guys had no clue about the book other than thinking it was a straight forward romance book.
These are not compatible sentences. Romance novels are erotica.
I promise you, when people give a f*ck about you they don't gift you the most plastic overhyped book they can find you don't even need to open.
Regardless of motive, they deserve to be mocked for such a stupid act.
And we put them back to front, so they look nicer. https://twitter.com/PeteOtway/status/947495792788590594
I'm unable to think of an explanation for this that isn't terrible: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48348431
If she was the only person that received 50 Shades and other people received different books then that is an obvious case of harassment.
Or maybe there's another 50 SoG book that about suits for accountants.
Or they confused 50SoG with Lean In, another book about women getting ahead in the corporate world
I'm not going there.
You can definitely make a case for this being harassment of some sort if you _really_ want to see it under that light, but without more context it could easily be an honest mistake.
>I spend all day lying to people, saying, "You look so pretty," and "Santa can't wait to visit with you. You're all he talks about. It's just not Christmas without you. You're Santa's favorite person in the entire tri-state area."
>
>Sometimes I lay it on really thick. "Aren't you the princess of Rongovia? Santa said that a beautiful princess was coming to visit him. He said she would be wearing a red dress and that she was very pretty, but not stuck up or two-faced. That's you isn't it?" I lay it on and the parents mouth the words, "Thank you," and "Good job."
Source: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/47/transcript
They had a boiler room team of salespeople who made an insane amount of money. We are talking six figures a month. They were not at all highly skilled or had any financial background or degree.
Their bonuses could be a luxury car. (or once a horse).
I worked on the IT side. We made the software that basically did all the work. It included instructions of a spiel to sell loans, how to get around various excuses and such. And it did all the work with filing the required paperwork ensuring all the required information was there, sending out information to the people who refinanced all that crap. You could, in practice, take someone from the street, set them up with this software and they could sell loans. (this is not as far fetched as it may sound).
I have so many stories about my time there but anyways, the IT team was not at all highly paid, nor very appreciated. One Christmas we knew we were getting a bonus, and given what we knew about bonuses being handed out we were kinda excited.
Wanna guess what it was?
A $50 gift card for a ham.
Sounds like they were a little too inspired by National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I guess the Jelly of the Month Club was all sold out though.
A past employer used the software we built to create a commissions lottery [1] for a call center floor, and paid huge commissions to an "R&D team" that "value added", but really just created idiotic Access reports from the software's databases (sometimes bringing the Production databases to their knees until we started forcing them to use clones and BI data lakes), but software development was a "cost center" ineligible for commissions, despite doing all the "real" work (including any and all efficiency gains). At one point the executives convinced themselves despite huge turnover that they were somehow magically hiring "better" call center staff.
I feel somewhat confident that that companies misplaced ideas of work/efficiency/how it was profitable were directly correlated with its misplaced sense of ethics. The "R&D team", for instance, seemed representative of the sort of bottom feeder scum that play political games well but don't actually have any skills of their own, and arguably at the end of the day that was roughly what the company as a whole was, a bottom feeder parasite playing politics well enough to make a ton of money surviving in an ethically dubious evolutionary niche.
[1] We had proof that it was a really bad lottery, too. The software was something like 95%+ accurate in how much money was likely associated with each item that went out to the call center. To make things "fair" we kept getting a lot of feedback to make it as "random" as possible.
Like when Delta gave a food voucher to make up for a 5-hour delay on a 30-minute file. The voucher was for $3. Fuck Delta.
Except they didn't actually budget for this. Their idea was that the whole office would go out and... celebrate? Us being laid off? And pay for it ourselves?
We did.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the way you do it if you're going down with the ship. Drink with the crew, pay for them, and tell stories and try to make plans as you slip into the waters. 19 years later, I'm still friends with all but one who disappeared to the offline somehow.
Ended up giving my director a slightly embarrassing hug when we got back in, but we'd been through enough over the past that she forgave me and we're still friends.
It's something I still have to buy her a beer for every couple of years or so.
We obviously got past it, but it makes for an amusing story as she's never seen me that inebriated since, and actually didn't know I could get that buzzed as well as be demonstrative.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
If you scored the _highest_ level on your performance review, the level that required approval from several levels of HR to ensure that not too many people got it... you might get a 1.25% salary increase. If you scored "satisfactory" you might get a 0.75% increase.
Eventually some consultant told them that doing performance-based raises for such meager amounts and meager differences between high and low end, were actually found by research to have a negative impact on morale. (I left soon after that, so not sure what they changed to).
One more case of many of paying an expensive consultant to tell you something that was obvious to most of your staff already but you didn't listen to them.
But yeah it amazes me people can't figure out the tiny reward is wonky.
You think I wasn't already doing my best, but what's going to motivate me to really give you my best is the promise of a 2% raise, if I successfully navigate the insane beurocracy to fill out my paperwork the right way to game the system and have my manager cooperate?
You don't just think I take no pride in my work and don't care about the project/mission itself, you also think I'm cheap/desperate.
This is basically how I felt about the Amazon employee discount program, which if I remember right was 10% off all purchases, capped at $100 / year.
There's something extra depressing about working for a company where the millionaire executives think workers can be placated with 25-cent junk food. I think that company is still limping along somehow, which is great because the new Glassdoor reviews are usually pretty amusing.
Also, if you want to see an example of morale boosting gone wrong the Healthineers song is pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5LiUrezV6k
A place I worked at one time had the vending machines removed. The owner's neice was overweight and died of cancer and had other health issues, so he didn't want any of the rest of us making poor deciisions and ending up like her
So they took the vending machines out. Great, now we need to go to the gas station a block down the road to get a candy bar, chips, or afternoon soda.
One particularly hot day, the sales team went out to the production floor/warehouse to hand out Powerade (generic gatorade) to the workers.
They brought the social media and marketing people with them to take photos and post the 'good deed ' online. We can only have a soft drink when they deem it necessary!
Did the owner's wife also get "employee of the year" at the annual Christmas party?
...what?
> "Study showed that monetary incentives are great for routine, mechanical work. But how does it play when talking about cognitive, advanced tasks? Not well at all."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKKPQiRRag
Counter-counter point: If anyone ever points you to this for evidence _you_ shouldn't get a bonus/monetary reward system, ask if _they_ get a bonus/monetary reward system...
This to me is the single biggest killer of motivation / productivity. If you've got this problem, I agree with the video that even large monetary rewards won't salvage productivity.
A yearly bonus or a "thank you"/party/etc aren't rewards tied to specific tasks. They're meant to be gestures of appropriation. You're discussing a bonus structure that ties financial incentives to very specific work items, and rewards them accordingly.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, just pointing out they're two different topics.
Like what if someone shows up to an event you planned, and starts thanking people for coming. They're basically implying/claiming ownership of the event. Appropriation through appreciation.
In other words what if you thought a project was yours, and then someone appropriates it by thanking your team, implying it was for that person all along?
Some people want to feel appreciated, some want to feel like their work makes a difference in the world, and some really are motivated by huge wads of cash.
I feel happier when I get a bonus that brings retirement closer, or lets me give more to charotsbt causes I believe in, or gives me a day off, instead of a throwaway toy or schwag or a gift card or a meal at an expensive restaurant that doesn't serve food I can eat.
A merit increase at the end of the year stays with you for the rest of your career. A $1,000 bonus is gone as soon as it's spent.
I've seen some organizations that use bonuses to cover over the fact that people aren't getting raises, and I would expect people who do cognitive tasks to be better able to run the math on why that's bad.
The common example is if a daycare has parents frequently turning up late for pick up, so they have to stay open late. So they decided to apply a surcharge for latecomers in a study. The problem got worse, since the the value of the fine was less impactful than the guilt felt by most parents. It was now seen as more acceptable to be late.
Example write-up: http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what...
Forget the moral arguments for a second, even in purely financial terms it would likely pay for itself in recruitment savings alone, let alone brain drain/efficiency, training costs, and so on.
Even a "cheap" employee in a white collar job, is likely costing $60K or more (inc. the employer's share of taxes, benefits, etc). 1% of that is only $600. But people won't pay even that towards bonuses/comfortable chairs/second monitors/"thank you" lunches/staff parties.
At some point it seems a lot less to do with what is rational/logical, and more to do with the power dynamics and people higher up the chain's apathy. Companies are actually hurting themselves for seemingly no good reason. It isn't even fiscally responsible.
In the situation I was in there were some penny punchers who felt quite proud of saving a couple hundred bucks here or there and couldn't see the forest through the trees of the misc expenses they were "saving".
It was really just poor management.
It would probably take a company that had all of its shit in order to have a nice report about how HR initiatives over some amount of years was directly correlated to lower employee turnover. If you can't put it in a report to accurately understand the impact of the expenditure it probably becomes hard to justify. I think this must explain all the ineffective half measures and low budgets.
Last year I went to a meeting in France that was held in a rather old building in Grenoble. It was a day long meeting so they brought in a boxed lunch for everyone. Shocking. There was some sushi, chicken in pasta, hot rolls, chocolate cake, and two small bottles of wine and water. It was fantastic.
I was slow on the uptake, but then it hit me, given a choice between spending money on people or things, they chose to spend it on people. Honestly, a total shock for me.
In Silicon Valley I make 3 times as much (after tax) as I made in my high tax European country, but my work place life is crap in comparison.
I had my space and some level of control of the environment, but everyone was within earshot if needed.
It's always a balance.
For example, I'm used to more or less annual all-hands dinners at inadequate restaurants, with better wine for the partners (all sitting together, of course) and combined with partners-only yacht weekends and the like.
What it boils down to is that the penny-pinching stuff is the stuff that's least painful for managers to cut. Firing people sucks, selling big things like buildings is hard and takes a long time. Whereas cutting off the free soda is something the manager can do right now, without having to pick a fight with other managers or launch into a whole gigantic process.
The irony is that cutting the penny-pinching stuff is usually the wrong thing to do, because by the time the managers accept that they're underwater cutting small expenses is no longer enough to right the ship. What they should do is bite the bullet and make one big cut that's big enough to solve the problem; that at least would minimize the effect on morale, since they could tell everyone who's still there that they survived the cut and are now safe.
But again, that requires some courage and willingness to accept some pain, whereas cutting off the sodas is easy and painless. So they do the easy thing, and start down the road of endless little cuts that sap morale and drive people away without actually solving the problem.
This was in 2009/2010. They did a intranet article about how smart they were for cutting the cheese and how it saved $10k a year... in a lunch program that staffed ~100 and fed ~10000.
It was quite clear that it cost MORE to cut the cheese in lost wages from people bickering, complaining, and spinning the decision. however, I'm sure it looked like a quick win for the non-salad-eating manager in charge.
Dude you're still young!
Did they give you a couple Bitcoin in 2011?
My direct supervisor was at first puzzled as to why I wasn't coming with him to the dinner at the end of the day, and then he was quite appalled - I think he later had words with the director about the whole thing.
I have a standing rule. If I work overtime it's because I fucked up. I said something would be done by Friday but I goofed off, I'll work.
If I'm working nights and weekends for business reasons, then my manager is in the building the entire time. A lot of them tone down their rhetoric when you make them put skin in the game. All of a sudden some of the scope gets negotiated down.
Unless it’s because I screwed up and need to fix something post haste. In which case, he won’t have to ask me at all.
I worked at a startup that did citizen identity management for government (think SSO for an entire province). Because of gov’t IT policies, we often had to deploy after hours, in a kind of weird “managed IT” process. We still automated the process, but couldn’t press the button without being on a conference call etc.
Anyway, we had a deployment go south on Friday night, rolled it back, and decided to come back and try again Sunday. The CEO himself showed up about 10 minutes after we did with a big box of Dilly Bars. Normally that would put this in the category of this thread: “thanks, I’m working overtime for ice cream...” but what he said made it all better: “I know this sucks to be here today. Help yourselves to ice cream. And I’ll be in my office all day, stop by if you need anything. And please let me know when you’re done so I know I can go home.”
Awesome awesome dude.
The counterpoint (funny enough, at the same company as the ice cream) was a different exec who came close but just missed the mark. Weekday evening deployment (started at 5:30pm) and he orders pizza. A lot of pizza. Things go smoothly and since we're just sitting and watching monitoring for a bit to make sure all is good, he decides to head out. Ten minutes after he leaves, we get a call about a third-party site that broke after the deployment... guess we're not leaving.
So the debugging drags on, and around 11pm we start getting hungry. AHA! Leftover pizza in the fridge! We go to the kitchen to discover... he took all of the leftovers home. Like 4 pizzas worth. So what's our conclusion? "Fuck it, we'll fix it in the morning. Let's go home."
All it would have taken waa leftover pizza...
Get the money, then go home.
Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency. Forms had to be filled out, lost, found, signed, routed, xeroxed, left on desks while people were on vacation. Passed through legal and security.
Also, the bonus was distributed among all the team members being rewarded. The $1000 figure was the maximum allowed for the total bonus, not the individual bonuses.
My team did something outstanding. It took 18 months of hard labor. Overtime. High stakes demonstrations. We ended up bringing in tens of millions of dollars in funding. A full year later an extra $150 showed up in my paycheck.
PS I forgot another incident. I was nominated for a prestigious award, given by an official very high up at the Pentagon. I was asked to write my own nomination letter. I was given the award; to receive it I had to dress up in a suit, show up early to work, shake the official’s hand, and then spend an hour giving him a tour. The actual award was a letter of commendation and a challenge coin. There was no bonus.
Theoretically, the challenge coin would be worth a lifetime of free drinks in bars frequented by military members. Or so I’m told. I don’t drink.
The net bonus was probably $150 before tax; it's a rare employer that pays the tax for you.
It's easier to recognize that you're playing one than that you're making one, it seems.
End of the day, the most passionately written nominations were for people in IT support, mostly for doing shit they weren’t supposed to do. The “customer champion” replaced toner quickly at our expense, (it was supposed to be paid for by the customer for reasons). The other big one, that came with cash, was given to someone who was a notorious master of getting other people to do their work.
I felt bad for the organizers, as they really intended to do a good thing.
You can imagine what happened. My favorite was two folks that were related to each other awarded the "Nepotism Award" to each other.
It might have been misjudged in this instance however, but they're a thing in military circles so I can imagine how it seemed like a good idea.
Tbh I'd have been really pleased, but I can appreciate that's not universal.
I've never seen a civilian use one. We don't spend much time in bars, and the feeling I get is that if I did try to whip one out in the presence of uniformed personnel -- a challenge that I would almost certainly win, given who this coin was from -- that would be a tremendous faux pas.
So at best, this is the sort of object that carries some real meaning in a very particular social context among a very particular set of people, but that meaning doesn't carry over to anywhere else. Like baseball or Pokemon cards, I suppose. How would you feel about your boss switching out Christmas bonuses for packs of World of Warcraft cards?
Which "axes" are in play, and who "wins" (or ties, a lot of the rule variations I've heard are set up to optimize towards ties; the most common challenge is just whether or not the other person has a challenge coin of any sort, not necessarily trying to figure out which wins if both people have coins on them) varies a lot between groups.
Also, challenge coins have seeped into some parts of lay culture, especially bar culture (given that alcohol has always been the big bet, it shouldn't be a surprise). For instance, the liqueur Fernet has its own challenge coins that bartenders tend to challenge each other for free shots of Fernet. (Bars try to keep one in reach of the bar at all times in case the bar is challenged, and the number of people that have them that have them that aren't themselves bartenders is supposedly kept quite rare.) https://talesofthecocktail.com/history/part-family-behind-sc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_coin
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_caps_(game)
Incidentally, Howard Tayler's Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins is excellent.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/assets/img/uploads/UAHCC/UA...
One guy I know has enough of these things you’d think he was a navy seal, mostly from training sessions. His actual job is monk-like copying/summarizing of NIST documents and CVEs.
Also challenge coins, especially given to a civilian employee, are considered an honor in the DoD. Your post gives the impression of a great sense of entitlement on your part.
I have a stack of fourteen of them. Most of them I was given for spending thirty minutes giving some random officer a tour of the lab. They're not exactly hard to get.
This may be frowned upon in the military, but you could rent the coin out to people?