Gemba walks denote the action of going to see the actual process, understand the work, ask questions, and learn. It is also known as one fundamental part of Lean management philosophy.
It's not. Actually it's almost worse because it tends to hide issues even deeper.
This practice is very similar to when teachers would reward students for good behavior on days the teachers would be evaluated.
Principal looks good to the board/state, teachers look good to the principal, and students look good to the teachers - but yet, we get caught up in looking good and impressing others, that we forget the real issue of children that are still getting left behind.
I was searching for someone to mention Gemba. The Toyota Manufacturing system is so amazing: its tenets keep somehow following us into the tech industry, reminding us that all of these have been tried and tested in the grind of the shop floor.
I spent a few years at a motorcycle parts manufacturing plant in India, and while I am in software now, I keep seeing how effective the Lean Manufacturing system would be here. We need more of it.
That being said, how would a company like this deal with Gemba if their employees can't drive anything. I can't drive a car or a motorcycle. So how would I be able to join the Gemba walk?
Great idea. Not sure why boards of directors don't require this of all their CxOs. For example, make a CEO in the travel industry sit at a counter and rent out cars or hotel rooms for a day and see if they don't demand improvements.
I don't think it would. I'd like to believe leadership in companies that exploit their workers know exactly what they're doing, grilling burgers for a day won't change that.
It might help in e.g. startups, but I think it'd have less of an impact than you think it will.
Its not just exploitation, the way managers imagine the work is done is very different from how it really gets done. Imagining how things work is never exactly how it works and you cant imagine how far off you could be. We've all been surprised by reality.
I entered software engineering by making simple web tools for my job in customer support. For a while I continued making tools for the department and those were some of my most effective projects because I knew the domain intimately and what the pain points were and the mentality of my former colleagues so I knew what kind of UX would work for my users.
So I don't think it's managers who need this so much as engineers who can do something to help, because as a colleague put it, laziness is a powerful motivator for engineers.
If engineers aren't working closely with the end-users who do each piece of work their systems directly support most frequently on a regular basis in the course of development, doing deliveries once (whether that's one delivery or one shift) a month won't make up for that fundamental process defect, and if they are, then it won't add anything meaningful for what that process already provides.
These days it's a lucky accident when the engineers and the end users are on the same continent and maybe speak the same language. The business will certainly optimize for lowest cost until it becomes so bad that it's impossible to overlook.
Managing by walking around is still amazingly more successful than managing by arbitrary metrics, but it's still rare.
> These days it's a lucky accident when the engineers and the end users are on the same continent and maybe speak the same language
Seems to me that dealing with that is even more of a problem with requiring engineers to do one particular class of the work one day a month as it is for having the engineers engage with those during the work as part of product design and development, so I’m not sure what relevance it has to the present discussion.
There's some amount of overlap between what workers perceive as painful or abusive practices or systems and things that are flat out wasteful or pointless. Sometimes the pointlessness is what pisses people off.
> Not sure why boards of directors don't require this of all their CxOs.
There's a belief among managers that "profesionnal management" is a thing and that there's no need to understand what you are managing; only the art of management itself.
Think about Apple under John Sculley or Boeing since the merger with McDonald Douglas...
Being an internet commenter doesn’t require any particular expertise in the thing…
I think GP’s claimed belief “among managers” is true for a very small sliver of the management ranks (and I think a smaller sliver than in the internet commenters’ case).
It certainly seems true of a breed of MBA. When interviewing candidates for PM it's interesting to see the breakdown in people who care about how the product works and those who consider it a widget to be put in a box. "Bring the customer demands to the eng team (without providing a useful translation)".
This is certainly true among some managers, and is also how you wind up with useless project managers and "scrum masters" who can't actually do anything except send an email or slack.
Worked at a place where a natural disaster knocked our call center offline for a couple of weeks. We relocated the center to our HQ and marketing and tech staffed the calls. I made several improvements to our call center tools after just a couple of shifts taking calls. None were difficult, but it would have taken quite a while for those requests to come in naturally I think.
Forget delivering food, just a week ago there was a discussion on here where the predominant attitude in the comments was about how CTOs shouldn't be programming, and CTOs who program are wasting their time when they could be doing much more valuable things like the "setting direction" and "vision" of the company.
As someone who is now a C-suite exec, I was aghast reading that discussion. If you're a CTO who doesn't code, so be it do what works for you, CTO is such a broad title that there are plenty of companies that don't need a CTO who codes. But the shock was at how adamant people were that CTOs have better things to do than contribute to software. Not only have I worked with excellent CTOs who all contributed source code to projects, many CTOs I admire and look up to do the same, such as John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Cal Henderson.
There are domains where a CTO absolutely need not code, and coding is not the end all be all of building a technology company by any means, but it's hard to imagine many situations where CTOs who do code are doing it at the expense of a more valuable skill, and furthermore I can think of many companies that would benefit from having CTOs who did actually contribute source code.
One of my friends is a CTO. In some ways he was my first boss too (it depends what counts as a real job). He actually moved from programming to management, because for him writing code wasn't something he was passionate about and he felt his skills were more appropriate in managing tech (I'm sure the money helps too). But though I haven't worked for his present outfit, I'm sure I'd find that where it seemed appropriate he's still writing toy SML or Python code that shows what he wants, knowing the finished system will likely be written in another language entirely. Not doing that seems as crazy as if you had an exec with good German, addressing your German-speaking team, via a translator just because that's how their predecessors who didn't speak German did it. He can write code and that's the natural way to express how the code should work.
Dogfooding is a good idea in general, but it seems like a horrible idea for Doordash specifically:
- In car-oriented areas, it's very unlikely that a standard car insurance policy would permit commercial use like this. If employees end up in a crash, and it is discovered that they were performing a delivery their claim may be denied. This seems like a compliance and liability nightmare.
- In urban areas where bikes are preferred, employees may or may not have one, but it's very possible they won't have one that is appropriate for delivery. Also, woe on Doordash when the first $500k+ TC SWE gets doored and puts in a worker's comp claim.
The actual deliverers are contractors, so it is reasonable to expect them to provide their own equipment: a car with proper commercial insurance, or a bike that can be locked outside safely. That's part of being a contractor. It is not reasonable whatsoever to expect FTEs to use their own equipment to perform job duties.
The only company that I can think of forced dogfooding of the "provider" side being worse at (besides obvious jokes like MindGeek) is Airbnb.
But that's not all: it doesn't accurately simulate the contractor experience at all! There's no pressure! They have no incentive to actually ride fast (and, from my experience from encountering delivery riders as an NYC cyclist, in the wrong direction, at night, with no lights...) since there's no actual correlation between my delivery performance and my TC. It's just SWEs cosplaying as delivery people for a day.
Any employee in a C-level position isn't going to be managing front-line processes, and getting down to that level of detail betrays a mistrust of your management teams and/or a failure of process feedback mechanisms that move information about inefficient or ineffective processes up to the C-suite.
Also, I would hope that a C-level manager would have an understanding not only of how the front-end processes work, but also how they affect the company's "big picture".
Strongly disagree. Everyone in a large organization already OUGHT to distrust the effectiveness of feedback mechanisms that move information up the chain of command.
This is a good exercise. “I would hope” is no substitute for ACTUALLY seeing how the sausage is made.
Its not really about managing the process as much as experiencing it end to end. Seeing the "big picture" while still experiencing the customer facing parts.
Its not that unique in businesses, amazon used to expect that office workers do a few shifts in a warehouse, not to manage the warehouse process, but to view how 90% of the workers work, and what a critical component of their business is like.
> I would hope that a C-level manager would have an understanding not only of how the front-end processes work, but also how they affect the company's "big picture".
Do you think they can get that understanding in their home office while taking zoom calls with the finance dept?
But I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the exercise, they actually really do end up unearthing some weaknesses that the process feedback mechanism failed to put sufficient spotlight on.
I mean, how else do you actually test the process feedback mechanisms? I realize that nobody does that, but you'll never know if that mechanism truly works unless you let your CxO do all the work end to end and then ask them if they had sufficient awareness about each small point of friction they encountered.
Another more subtle detail: not sure if DoorDash experiences this, but in my experience it can be difficult to get a newly poached manager from a different company to wrap their head around how - and why - this company is different. The more experienced people are, the more they tend to reach for their old playbooks, which can be good and bad.
You do have a point that large parts of the company could have been carved out (eg: the communications team), and the exercise would have still yielded the same insights, which is why in the end this is a publicity stunt.
In the beginning, there was a plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form,
And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers,
And they spoke among themselves saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,
"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them,
"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,
"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor
Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan
And saw that it was good,
And the Plan became Policy.
> "As the company grew, the founders wanted everyone to experience different parts of the product so we could get closer to all our audiences and understand how the product works," a DoorDash spokesperson said
It's still a salient point though. For example, I'm constantly seeing a pileup of delivery drivers parked illegally around restaurants while they run inside for a pickup. You're probably a lot more motivated to cut corners like that when you're hustling to make a living from delivery fees, and at the same time the prospect of paying a ticket yourself is a lot scarier on $200/week. Maybe these companies would care more that their service model basically requires drivers to break the law in urban areas.
I was discussing this earlier, something about a supermarket using deliveroo to deliver food rather than their salaried employees in company vans. Those employees get sick pay and thus obey the law like isolating after a positive test. If you're paid per delivery you aren't going to put health and safety first, you aren't going to park safely and spend 15 minutes doing the delivery, you're going to break as many laws as you can and deliver as much as you can and generally make everything worse for everyone because you have a financial incentive to do so.
That's the kind of "difficult to predict and unlikely to be reported" thing that this sort of activity is well suited to capture. Otherwise you'd never know how much of an issue it was until it was on the news.
Anyone who rides a bike in New York will quickly become familiar with the negative externalities of delivery app riders. I'm guessing the equivalent behavior (sounds like illegal double parking?) in car-oriented areas is similarly obvious to anyone that drives a car?
> "As the company grew, the founders wanted everyone to experience different parts of the product so we could get closer to all our audiences and understand how the product works," a DoorDash spokesperson said
Does that mean delivery persons get to be an engineer or a CEO for a day?
Even if they had the skills / training to do it the goals of those mid/high level positions are munch longer term than a discreet 30min pickup/delivery transaction. You’d have to be an engineer for a month at least to see a full release cycle or a CxO for a year to see an annual plan go from concept to execution to review.
I understand why this would be valuable from a team-building perspective (and support it as such), but I'm not totally convinced this is valuable as a way to improve the product.
Typical user testing is monitoring your users as they succeed/fail to use your product. So I could imagine developers monitoring a sampling of Doordash drivers (with a dashcam or the like) as they use their apps in a typical delivery process.
White-collar Doordash engineers/CxOs doing a blue-collar tour for a day would provide insight into some of the initial onboarding struggles for the "new driver" persona, but seems like it would provide limited feedback for the "experienced driver" persona. Even then, app devs/designers are so familiar with getting around odd workflows in their apps that they wouldn't really represent a new driver. It risks biasing product development in a particular way.
> "It risks biasing product development in a particular way."
I'd agree that it's biased, but I still think it's valuable. Being intimately familiar with all possible personas would be nice, however I'd hope that Engineers/PMs/Employees will use this as an additional input into their decisions about how to run the business. Just as they already use a combination of metrics, customer interviews, financial impact, and intuition about the future when deciding how to operate.
Perhaps it'd be valuable for employees to do "ride-alongs" with experienced dashers for the additional perspective you mention
They're not doing it for a day, they are doing it once a month. Eventually they will get out of the newbie persona and into the casual one, which is the vast majority of drivers for these kinds of apps AFAIK.
Eating your own dogfood is powerful at many companies, and a bad sign at a B2C company if your staff don't use it unless there are special circumstances that prevent them.
Personas are just that, models. Models are wrong but useful.
There is a ton of unspoken information that even veteran users don't communicate. I used to sit for hours watching people use microscopes, and learned way more in those hours than I would have sitting at my compiler. Many of my really killer ideas came from watching users.
I was once in sales for a majors electronic components distributor. All salespeople and sales management were required to spend two weeks in the warehouse for onboarding, and were told that if the warehouse staff didn’t give them a favourable evaluation, they would fail probation and be let go.
We often debated whether this was actually effective overall, or was just a culture-building stunt (like Amazon’s door desks). But there was no question that it helped the sales team quickly build relationships with fulfillment, relationships that could make or break their ability to solve problems for their customers.
I started one job as a software dev and new starters had to spend the first two weeks with customer support, answering requests and basically just learning about what the users generally experienced.
It was onboarding so I was still setting up my environment at the same time, but I credit that startup for shifting me to a much more empathic mindset where I would learn how to question designs based on my own understanding of what it would be like for someone to have to interact with it. It also resulted in me getting on especially well with the support team.
Honestly I wish more places would do onboarding that way. Put new hires on the front-line as it were, so they understand the product from the perspective of users and those who have to run support. Maybe give people refreshers every year or so, so they don't become detached from the reality of using the product.
I was an international sales for an electronics company. One time there was customer payment delay for which held the goods at the pending-payment zone in the factory for more than 1 month!. We were basically waiting for the payment to clear before we ship. There were two 20-ft containers worth of electronics in the corner of the outgoing area. It was such an eyesore that manufacturing head yelled at sales head during every management meeting for that month.
When the customer finally cleared the payment, CEO made the responsible sales team fill the container by hand (I was one of them). But it was an eye-opening experience. We dragged our ass from our A/C equipped office and wore our usual suits and leather shoes, oh boy were we stupid. What I remember the most was how stuffy and hot the air was nearing the innermost end of the container especially when carrying boxes. The entire team was drenched afterward except somehow the ladies managed to wiggle their way out by "hey we are just gonna get everyone an ice coffee, be right back". It was fun still.
I used to drive Uber and deliver Uber Eats for something to do in retirement. I don't know why, but it struck me funny that I delivered a bunch of smoothies to the Uber Palo Alto office. They tipped well.
I generally agree. I’d prefer everybody made a living wage (or better) and priced goods & services appropriately.
But, does Uber (or whatever other gig employer) actually pay that? I hate that in the US, as a consumer, I don’t know. Much easier in much of Europe, where wait staff is paid a reasonable wage and tipping isn’t expected.
Tipping is a horrendous cultural artifact stemming from bribery and aristocrats creating a servile class
As Scott said, "tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the breast of democracy"
At the start of the 20th century when Tipping was infecting the USA, it was common for business owners not only to fail to pay a salary, but to actually charge people to work for them!
Gunton's Magazine stated that tipping was offensively un-American, because it was contrary to the spirit of American life of working for wages rather than fawning for favors. Caiman's defence from that era boiled down to "you should be able to bribe your way to preferential treatment".
It's ironic that the "home of capitalism" is so much in favour of hiding information. Rather than a posted price for a given good or service, it's a price, plus an unspecified amount of tax, plus a tip of some sort which can vary from 0% to 30%.
Tips of course also allow us to bypass all those pesky problems that we try to eliminate. If you're a racist? Great, you don't have to pay black people, only white people (or vice versa). Don't like that waitress having a Trump2024 bumper sticker, don't pay her wage.
When Uber Eats launched in Australia, the tipping functionality was quite subtle, and not pushed.
Then they started pushing it hard, and it's received an almost universally poor response. We don't have a mandatory-tipping culture, because it's expected that everyone doing a job is at least earning a living-wage. Tipping is reserved for exceptional service or doing something out of the ordinary.
I live in California where gas is expensive. I kept detailed records for a yr and half. I included all expenses (tires, etc...) and taxes, the depreciation on my car due to the extra miles and the time waiting for a ride (which wasn't much), then I came up with $6 an hour. More tips would have been nice. Drivers who make a living at it drive long hours.
Had, because I wrecked it crossing the bridge over the mouth of the Columbia River (rain soaked bridges are extremely slick it turns out) I had a Ford Focus 2008 that got about 38 mpg. Maintenance costs are also a big expense if you keep everything up to date like I did, like changing the tires, transmission fluid and flushing the radiator.
Edit: Some have questioned my $6 figure and have talked to drivers who say they are making good money. I think it's because they are not taking into account the wear and tear on their car and subsequent decrease in value. They are basically taking equity out of their car and putting it into their pocket and thinking they are making money.
From the perspective of many Australians, the cause of all those issues lies with Uber paying so little that their employees are forced to request charity from every single person they have a professional interaction with, just in order to survive.
They've gone the other way. In France where tipping isn't mandatory and is only done for exceptional service or as an optional payment for a service ( e.g. a person walking you to your place in the theatre or a performance in a public place), Uber Eats heavily push you to tip the driver while ordering. When you still don't know what you'll get, which i find ridiculous. But at the same time a few months ago i found it absolutely impossible to tip a driver after a trip because they went above and beyond and managed to shave some minutes off running late - there was just no such option anywhere.
How do I know the service was any good? If it's grub hub it probably isn't so low tip is definitely justified. Hell if we go the traditional route of what a tip is, many actually deserve zero
I'm single, live alone and have been retired voluntarily for about 2 1/2 years and can't say I've ever been bored or lonely. It's probably because I'm always curious and love to learn, and my spirituality is such that I came to the realization that thinking of myself as an isolated mind in a body is an error of thinking. I think of myself more of a wave on a ocean of consciousness that we are all part of. I have family and friends that I travel through this timeline with. I always feel connected, never disconnected. Without the internet it would be more difficult I think.
Many years ago I had a ride in the Bay Area with an Uber investor as the driver (he was a partner at one of the VCs). It was quite an interesting ride has he wanted to know a lot about why I choose to use Uber and all the good and bad about it. He told me that while they are already investing, he wanted to better understand how Uber is coming along.
I can relate to this very well, and it was very intriguing situation to be in. I used to work part time delivering groceries with Instacart and I actually delivered stationery stuff to Instacart Office in Downtown Toronto. Bonus: I got to pick-up a cool sticker while on my way out.
I like this idea. I wish insurance company management and software engineers would handle some insurance claims. The processes they create without experience are poop.
Congressmen's children are overrepresented in the military. As of 2007 12 senators and representatives out of 535 (2%) had kids in the armed forces. By comparison, there are 1.5 million active duty and 1.5 million reserve/guard soldiers in the US, or 3 million out of 310 million (1%).
In the 2008 US presidential election, three of four presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Biden, McCain, Palin) had children serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
That seems like you're not comparing apples versus apples.
If there are 3 million military personnel in the US, because humans have sexual reproduction [meaning two parents per individual] that means they would have up to 6 million distinct adult parents, out of about 250 million US adults, making the Congress pretty normal with about 2% of its members being parents to service members.
A more detailed demographic analysis might tell us something more interesting, but would of necessity also reduce the size of the comparison so it would be less statistically valid (e.g. age breakdown, because of how time works humans have more children when they're older, Congress is older than the US workforce)
Empathy is a powerful thing. We make many little decisions during the work week around if it's ok to take something down, if an engineer's request needs to be handled immediately, etc. I think the goal of the company is to align everyone around empathy for the drivers (I presume you're all already customers), so that you make those decisions in ways which enable engineers to deliver software well.
It would connect you with what actually matters to the customer. You may be building features for the developers that paper over or hide issues for the end user. I've see this where frameworks chose metrics that paged engineers less but caused micro outages. Not saying this is you but the end user's experience is the core product. Sometimes you have to make the devs life a bit worse to make the customers better. Hopefully you get to come back and also make the devs experience better over time.
It's just feel-good horseshit. DoorDash wanted some PR, and CNN is there to give it to them. Now we're discussing them by name on HN. It's all very clever.
I think it's important to use your own product (so get food delivered), but I don't really see any value in doing someone else's job as a pretend fantasy for a day. If you have any empathy, you'll know that the work isn't so bad, but the lack of health insurance, childcare, long-term career growth, etc. are the problems with the gig economy. The job itself is fine. The most positive outcome is probably having the realization that the gig economy is quite abusive and that you want nothing to do with it, so stop working for the company entirely.
You should learn that this is what would have happened to you if you had not worked hard during your education years. Now you can pass that lesson on to your children. :P
I don’t know if they still do it, but Home Depot used to have the same policy when you went to work at the headquarters in Atlanta. No matter your role, you had to go work at a Home Depot store for a week. You got to choose which store though, didn’t have to be the ones in Atlanta.
Going to guess that was only for direct employees. I was a contractor at the SSC in various software development roles and it was never suggested that I go work at a store though it wouldn't surprise me if it was policy for actual employees. I did hear a lot about the importance of "voluntarily" contributing to the "Orange Voice" which is Home Depot's lobbying organization. Haven't seen any other company push so hard for workers to pay into the company's lobbying arm.
The "it wasn't part of the job description" engineer would be on my short list for reevaluation. In a dynamic org, change is constant, and stick-in-the-mud complainers like this range from underproductive to actively toxic. If it's just an isolated bad day, fine, but if it's an underlying 'not-my'job' attitude, then they're likely better employed elsewhere.
This practice should be pretty standard, as well as flexible roles & responsibilities, mentoring/interning, etc. to spread & grow knowledge as much as possible.
Where I'm from (western europe) we have this, but unironically.
Imagine the horror not having to worry over not being able to pay your mortgage or rent whenever your boss or some power tripping middle manager decided they want you to start juggling bowling pins while riding a unicycle while you were hired to develop software.
Won't someone please think of the poor employers? /s
How are tech salaries in Western Europe compared to the US?
There are pros and cons. How would you hire someone at a startup? Do you specify they can only write code for the website and then if you need their help with something else they just say "not in my job description"? Eventually you'd just get contracts that have laundry lists of vague responsibilities to get around this and it would just wind up like standard terms of service for websites/electronics where people just sign and take the job. Too much money at stake to not do it and for little gain.
We have a justice system based on reasonable interpretation by judges, which is a bit less "strict" literal interpretation of contracts.
Mine says "Software development", some collective bargaining agreements have more specific descriptions (to prevent under paying of employees by classifying them as lower salaries jobs).
As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees.
Salaries for contractors are I guess similar to the US maybe a bit lower, for salaries employees definitely lower than the US (for tech at least).
But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that.
At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
You have a choice over here for both models essentially.
> We have a justice system based on reasonable interpretation by judges, which is a bit less "strict" literal interpretation of contracts.
We as in all of Western Europe or for a specific country? What are some examples you've seen where the US has "strict", literal interpretations of contracts that are unreasonable as it relates to employment/the topic at hand? Off the top of my head the only thing that comes to mind immediately is maybe non-competes but I think that's an issue of leverage and not really a contractual issue, and even so it's risky for companies to enforce except for key employees.
> As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees
Isn't this just sidestepping the protection? And without needing to do an exhaustive list what are the labor protections? I assume there are like a minimum number of paid days off/holidays/vacation, exact job you'll do (though this is still vague to me how it's handled practically) and some protections around being fired/how you are fired?
Is there a big protection for tech workers I'm missing?
> But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that. At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
My "rent" (mortgage in this case) is pretty cheap and so is my insurance. I work remote for a great company, get PTO, and take it as you need it sick days and stuff like that too. Of course rental rates in certain markets (NY, SF, etc.) are much higher, as is compensation. $250k-$300k for many tech workers. I think that probably compensates for the higher costs though who knows what'll happen with the post-pandemic labor market (2024-2026 or so).
It's an interesting topic, I think a comment could't accommodate all the differences between the labor markets.
I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
When it comes to contractors, yes they have less rights (at-will employment, no PTO, no sick-days etc. etc. etc.) So yes it does side-step labor protections but it's more expensive, also in my country at least contractors are required to get disability insurance and not everyone can be considered a contractor. If a judge finds that a contractor actually more resembles an employer (so not being independent of the company hiring), they will retro-actively be considered an employee. (This has happened with Uber drivers for instance)
Some of the protections employees enjoy over here are:
- Not being fired unless the labor board approves (which required documentation from the employees, and them to follow strict labor rules).
- At least 4 weeks PTO.
- Up to 2 years of continues sick-days, (with a doctors note) (after which you'd get fired and get social security)
- After being fired you'd get 1 month of continued salary for each year you were employed, until you find new work
- Paid Maternity/paternity leave
- The right to bargain for a collective bargaining agreement which allows for additional minimum rights/salaries to be applied to all workers within a field
- The right to ignore your boss after hours unless additional consideration (salary) is offered and time schedules are agreed upon
- The right for employees to have a employee-board whenever there's at least 50 employees within a company/org
- The right for employees to keep their jobs if they become disabled (if possible, judged by the labor board not the employer)
When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
Thanks! I think there are some good things here for sure. I think I'd have to really sit down and go over these to better understand the trade-offs but I wasn't aware of a few of these like the right to have 2 years off continuously for sick days.
> When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
I do want to bring this conversation back to make sure we're still talking about tech workers per my original comment.
> I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources
Thanks for the link. I really like the common law approach myself. It's interesting that you noted that common law was based on strict contract interpretations (which I think you noted in a negative context since one was considered reasonable but the other wasn't) but then at the same time common law tends to be more predictable (according to the article) versus civil law since case precedence acts as law. I guess it depends on your interpretation of reasonable. As an American I'd want the law to be applied equally no matter who you are, but that's my culture and lens. I also like that it's flexible and, again noted by the article, able to cope with social changes better. With respect to contracts I think I prefer to enforce what was written - how else do you know what the contract is then?
>>That's a nice way to say "Do what I tell you regardless of what we agreed your role would be or I fire you".
No, it is specifically NOT that.
It is exactly what I said, expecting people to have a "Can Do / put your shoulder to the wheel / solve the problem" attitude, and to be flexible about how it gets done. Especially in a development situation (vs production that's been static for years).
If the company failed to make clear at the beginning that it was a dynamic and changing environment, and that Can Do attitude is expected, then yeah, it is their fault.
But even in relatively staid environments, a "not my job" attitude can become toxic and contagious in a hurry. Then, it may not be far before no one has a job.
I'm strongly pro-union and pro-workers getting a larger slice of the economic pie. But I also recognize that the "not my job" attitude and over-constraining work rules is an enormous part of what lead to the demise of unions. Of course you don't want plumbers doing electrical work and vice-versa, but when a plumber or manager cannot toss a stray shovel onto the truck without a foreman/union/mgt meeting being called for stepping over the line (literally seen it happen), that's beyond unsustainable.
Sounds like a great way to end up even more short handed in a tight labor market, especially when there are plenty of other employers who aren't going to make similar demands. "My way or the highway" isn't a great policy when you need them much more than they need you.
It is not a "my way or the highway"; it is expecting a "can do" attitude (and yes I understand that "my way or the highway" is toxic).
Attitudes of "Can Do", "Solve the problem", "How do we get better than our competition" are pretty much the polar opposite of a "not my job" attitude.
It is one thing to see in a low-level position, where a certain percentage of it is expected. But in a responsible position like serious software development, it's a red flag for lack of engagement. I've also seen it turn into an actively undermining the company attitude, which is toxic for everyone. I'd look for it to get fixed fast, or they're on the short list for "we don't really need to pay you to come here anymore" attitude.
I think that's a really great idea. In Germany we have a fairly strong 'grey collar' culture and this was one of the things I missed most in the UK. (and I think the US is similar in that regard).
The huge division between 'service workers' and professionals I think is not good for companies but much more importantly it's bad socially. People lose empathy for the day-to-day problems of what is probably the majority of employees in numbers and it creates a class of people living in a bubble. You learn a lot of humility pretty quickly if you go from management work or coding to carrying packages around and having to deal with angry customers.
I wonder what changes you'd see at companies like Facebook if the management had to sit in one of their outsourced content moderation centers for a few weeks.
This sounds extremely ableist and as a disabled sr developer whose disability bars operating any vehicles it certainly made me raise an eyebrow. But it turns out this is just shoddy reporting. A better version is at https://www.marketwatch.com/story/doordash-will-require-all-...
> The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said.
Don't you think you have to be reading with bad faith or a huge amount of preemptive judgement to jump to the conclusion that DoorDash would penalize disabled employees based on this?
I would guess they simply forgot -- as usual! -- initially and when realized they just opened themselves to an ADA lawsuit which they would surely lose then they hastily issued this comment and then scrambled to fill it with meaning.
They forget because neurological disabilities of this kind most of the time are completely invisible at a "white collar" workplace and even in personal lives most of us live mostly normal lives. You can live fine without swimming, skydiving, driving...
"*except for employees on visas, employees with disabilities, employees outside the USA, part-time employees, and contractors." -- some fine print somewhere, probably.
I did a tour at a shop that tried this, but then it really fizzled out by the time HR figured out they couldn't really make everyone do this sort of thing. I wonder how DoorDash is dealing with those issues.
As a former Uber engineer I did the employee delivering program a couple of times (pre-covid) and it was really eye opening. I’m based in Amsterdam so cycled on bicycle to make deliveries - it’s hard work, but also was a great way to explore the city and discovered some great eateries I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise.
I still remember a story about being yelled out of a restaurant for coming in to pick up a delivery. The restaurant owner set a message to couriers in the app that instructed us to wait outside for the pickup, but I didn’t see it because the text was so small. Instantly filed a bug report for the Driver app team to make the messages easier to read!
I've initiated "process improvements" a few times. It's always unpleasant since you're rocking the boat (kinda like when you report a security issue to a company with no established process.)
- got Royal Bank Canada while I was there to star out account numbers on ATM receipts. Had to find a competitor's receipt first (CIBC) and show a senior manager to "prove" there was an issue.
- shortly after leaving Netscape found email parsing bug and submitted that to a an ex-coworker who channeled it to the right developer.
I kind of wish those writing cloud services were forced to use and build things on those services. I suspect it would result in a good number of usability issues - like consistency in networking in different services.
Stupid question: I assume that some of those employees -- if only some of the software/UI devs -- must be disabled or mobility-challenged.
How are they going to square this policy with disabilities legislation when it runs into a wheelchair user or someone with juvenile onset rheumatoid arthritis?
Or are they unintentionally indicating that as an employer they discriminate against the disabled?
(Wanting all your employees to be familiar with what the job demands is in principle a good idea, but the second-order consequences can be a bear.)
Someone who can't drive could simply join another employee who can, basically a ride along, maybe not as useful but still doable. If you can't do that there are other customer service jobs you could do like a call center or something.
Will DoorDash be paying for the employees to rent a car to make deliveries? No way I’m risking my new car on delivering groceries. No way I’m paying for commercial auto insurance either (I suspect my normal policy won’t cover DoorDash or other gig activities).
Yeah I am very confused on this. Is the idea to develop customer empathy or deliverer empathy? Wouldnt I get customer empathy by you know actually being a customer? What if I am not a customer? Does that mean I cannot get a job here? If this is the right thing to do how should this extend to other companies? Say CIA? Grindr/Tinder? On a more general note what suggests I cannot have customer empathy or give my best just because I don't prefer doing this?
Actually that's a good point. So I guess now the point is whether customer empathy actually is a key ingredient to professionalism. I suppose you can be a professional without having customer empathy (well ok maybe customer contact) but you won't be a fanatic and that's what companies are trying to recruit to reduce churn?
"What if I am not a customer? Does that mean I cannot get a job here?"
Facebook recruited me a few years ago. I told them 100% that I don't use Facebook. I think a few people I met with didn't get the memo because...well, I ultimately didn't get a job because I don't use Facebook.
I think this is pretty cool. I wanted to do something like this at work. I work on a platform internal infra team and was thinking we should use our own service in some of our team tools we build. People seemed somewhat onboard with the idea but using it seemed like it was becoming pretty over-engineered for our own small uses.
sounds like an interesting way to break up the monotony of work too and actually see the effect of changes you make. It kills my motivation sometimes when something gets rolled out and you don't really see an impact
I sat with customer service for years as an application support engineer. I was able to learn the business much faster than if I was just talking to other devs and IT people who had barely groped one part of the elephant.
Normally, if you ask to be integrated with the business people look at you like you just crawled out of a swamp. Personally, I have a hard time deciphering code if I don't know the business case (intent) first...once I have that knowledge the code is easy to read. Rarely is code expressed in domain language.
156 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadGemba walks denote the action of going to see the actual process, understand the work, ask questions, and learn. It is also known as one fundamental part of Lean management philosophy.
This practice is very similar to when teachers would reward students for good behavior on days the teachers would be evaluated.
Principal looks good to the board/state, teachers look good to the principal, and students look good to the teachers - but yet, we get caught up in looking good and impressing others, that we forget the real issue of children that are still getting left behind.
I spent a few years at a motorcycle parts manufacturing plant in India, and while I am in software now, I keep seeing how effective the Lean Manufacturing system would be here. We need more of it.
That being said, how would a company like this deal with Gemba if their employees can't drive anything. I can't drive a car or a motorcycle. So how would I be able to join the Gemba walk?
It might help in e.g. startups, but I think it'd have less of an impact than you think it will.
So I don't think it's managers who need this so much as engineers who can do something to help, because as a colleague put it, laziness is a powerful motivator for engineers.
Managing by walking around is still amazingly more successful than managing by arbitrary metrics, but it's still rare.
Seems to me that dealing with that is even more of a problem with requiring engineers to do one particular class of the work one day a month as it is for having the engineers engage with those during the work as part of product design and development, so I’m not sure what relevance it has to the present discussion.
Engineers are usually far removed
See how things are from the bottom up.
There's a belief among managers that "profesionnal management" is a thing and that there's no need to understand what you are managing; only the art of management itself.
Think about Apple under John Sculley or Boeing since the merger with McDonald Douglas...
I think GP’s claimed belief “among managers” is true for a very small sliver of the management ranks (and I think a smaller sliver than in the internet commenters’ case).
I've seen this pattern many times on smaller and larger scales. Betting on a technical manager is almost always the correct bet to place.
As someone who is now a C-suite exec, I was aghast reading that discussion. If you're a CTO who doesn't code, so be it do what works for you, CTO is such a broad title that there are plenty of companies that don't need a CTO who codes. But the shock was at how adamant people were that CTOs have better things to do than contribute to software. Not only have I worked with excellent CTOs who all contributed source code to projects, many CTOs I admire and look up to do the same, such as John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Cal Henderson.
There are domains where a CTO absolutely need not code, and coding is not the end all be all of building a technology company by any means, but it's hard to imagine many situations where CTOs who do code are doing it at the expense of a more valuable skill, and furthermore I can think of many companies that would benefit from having CTOs who did actually contribute source code.
- In car-oriented areas, it's very unlikely that a standard car insurance policy would permit commercial use like this. If employees end up in a crash, and it is discovered that they were performing a delivery their claim may be denied. This seems like a compliance and liability nightmare.
- In urban areas where bikes are preferred, employees may or may not have one, but it's very possible they won't have one that is appropriate for delivery. Also, woe on Doordash when the first $500k+ TC SWE gets doored and puts in a worker's comp claim.
The actual deliverers are contractors, so it is reasonable to expect them to provide their own equipment: a car with proper commercial insurance, or a bike that can be locked outside safely. That's part of being a contractor. It is not reasonable whatsoever to expect FTEs to use their own equipment to perform job duties.
The only company that I can think of forced dogfooding of the "provider" side being worse at (besides obvious jokes like MindGeek) is Airbnb.
But that's not all: it doesn't accurately simulate the contractor experience at all! There's no pressure! They have no incentive to actually ride fast (and, from my experience from encountering delivery riders as an NYC cyclist, in the wrong direction, at night, with no lights...) since there's no actual correlation between my delivery performance and my TC. It's just SWEs cosplaying as delivery people for a day.
Any employee in a C-level position isn't going to be managing front-line processes, and getting down to that level of detail betrays a mistrust of your management teams and/or a failure of process feedback mechanisms that move information about inefficient or ineffective processes up to the C-suite.
Also, I would hope that a C-level manager would have an understanding not only of how the front-end processes work, but also how they affect the company's "big picture".
This is a good exercise. “I would hope” is no substitute for ACTUALLY seeing how the sausage is made.
Its not that unique in businesses, amazon used to expect that office workers do a few shifts in a warehouse, not to manage the warehouse process, but to view how 90% of the workers work, and what a critical component of their business is like.
> I would hope that a C-level manager would have an understanding not only of how the front-end processes work, but also how they affect the company's "big picture".
Do you think they can get that understanding in their home office while taking zoom calls with the finance dept?
But I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the exercise, they actually really do end up unearthing some weaknesses that the process feedback mechanism failed to put sufficient spotlight on.
I mean, how else do you actually test the process feedback mechanisms? I realize that nobody does that, but you'll never know if that mechanism truly works unless you let your CxO do all the work end to end and then ask them if they had sufficient awareness about each small point of friction they encountered.
Another more subtle detail: not sure if DoorDash experiences this, but in my experience it can be difficult to get a newly poached manager from a different company to wrap their head around how - and why - this company is different. The more experienced people are, the more they tend to reach for their old playbooks, which can be good and bad.
You do have a point that large parts of the company could have been carved out (eg: the communications team), and the exercise would have still yielded the same insights, which is why in the end this is a publicity stunt.
In the beginning, there was a plan, And then came the assumptions, And the assumptions were without form, And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers, And they spoke among themselves saying, "It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan And saw that it was good, And the Plan became Policy.
And this, my friend, is how shit happens.
http://web.mnstate.edu/alm/humor/ThePlan.htm
Reading reports filtered up through an organization is no replacement for going to the Gemba.
> "As the company grew, the founders wanted everyone to experience different parts of the product so we could get closer to all our audiences and understand how the product works," a DoorDash spokesperson said
It's going to have to change.
Does that mean delivery persons get to be an engineer or a CEO for a day?
Typical user testing is monitoring your users as they succeed/fail to use your product. So I could imagine developers monitoring a sampling of Doordash drivers (with a dashcam or the like) as they use their apps in a typical delivery process.
White-collar Doordash engineers/CxOs doing a blue-collar tour for a day would provide insight into some of the initial onboarding struggles for the "new driver" persona, but seems like it would provide limited feedback for the "experienced driver" persona. Even then, app devs/designers are so familiar with getting around odd workflows in their apps that they wouldn't really represent a new driver. It risks biasing product development in a particular way.
I'd agree that it's biased, but I still think it's valuable. Being intimately familiar with all possible personas would be nice, however I'd hope that Engineers/PMs/Employees will use this as an additional input into their decisions about how to run the business. Just as they already use a combination of metrics, customer interviews, financial impact, and intuition about the future when deciding how to operate.
Perhaps it'd be valuable for employees to do "ride-alongs" with experienced dashers for the additional perspective you mention
Eating your own dogfood is powerful at many companies, and a bad sign at a B2C company if your staff don't use it unless there are special circumstances that prevent them.
There is a ton of unspoken information that even veteran users don't communicate. I used to sit for hours watching people use microscopes, and learned way more in those hours than I would have sitting at my compiler. Many of my really killer ideas came from watching users.
It's hard to know what you don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
We often debated whether this was actually effective overall, or was just a culture-building stunt (like Amazon’s door desks). But there was no question that it helped the sales team quickly build relationships with fulfillment, relationships that could make or break their ability to solve problems for their customers.
It was onboarding so I was still setting up my environment at the same time, but I credit that startup for shifting me to a much more empathic mindset where I would learn how to question designs based on my own understanding of what it would be like for someone to have to interact with it. It also resulted in me getting on especially well with the support team.
Honestly I wish more places would do onboarding that way. Put new hires on the front-line as it were, so they understand the product from the perspective of users and those who have to run support. Maybe give people refreshers every year or so, so they don't become detached from the reality of using the product.
When the customer finally cleared the payment, CEO made the responsible sales team fill the container by hand (I was one of them). But it was an eye-opening experience. We dragged our ass from our A/C equipped office and wore our usual suits and leather shoes, oh boy were we stupid. What I remember the most was how stuffy and hot the air was nearing the innermost end of the container especially when carrying boxes. The entire team was drenched afterward except somehow the ladies managed to wiggle their way out by "hey we are just gonna get everyone an ice coffee, be right back". It was fun still.
Someone gave me a 20$ tip for a bag of egg rolls once.
disagree. I don't like tipping culture in general, so I welcome any effort to uproot it.
But, does Uber (or whatever other gig employer) actually pay that? I hate that in the US, as a consumer, I don’t know. Much easier in much of Europe, where wait staff is paid a reasonable wage and tipping isn’t expected.
As Scott said, "tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the breast of democracy"
At the start of the 20th century when Tipping was infecting the USA, it was common for business owners not only to fail to pay a salary, but to actually charge people to work for them!
Gunton's Magazine stated that tipping was offensively un-American, because it was contrary to the spirit of American life of working for wages rather than fawning for favors. Caiman's defence from that era boiled down to "you should be able to bribe your way to preferential treatment".
It's ironic that the "home of capitalism" is so much in favour of hiding information. Rather than a posted price for a given good or service, it's a price, plus an unspecified amount of tax, plus a tip of some sort which can vary from 0% to 30%.
Tips of course also allow us to bypass all those pesky problems that we try to eliminate. If you're a racist? Great, you don't have to pay black people, only white people (or vice versa). Don't like that waitress having a Trump2024 bumper sticker, don't pay her wage.
Then they started pushing it hard, and it's received an almost universally poor response. We don't have a mandatory-tipping culture, because it's expected that everyone doing a job is at least earning a living-wage. Tipping is reserved for exceptional service or doing something out of the ordinary.
Edit: Some have questioned my $6 figure and have talked to drivers who say they are making good money. I think it's because they are not taking into account the wear and tear on their car and subsequent decrease in value. They are basically taking equity out of their car and putting it into their pocket and thinking they are making money.
How do I know the service was any good? If it's grub hub it probably isn't so low tip is definitely justified. Hell if we go the traditional route of what a tip is, many actually deserve zero
In the 2008 US presidential election, three of four presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Biden, McCain, Palin) had children serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
If there are 3 million military personnel in the US, because humans have sexual reproduction [meaning two parents per individual] that means they would have up to 6 million distinct adult parents, out of about 250 million US adults, making the Congress pretty normal with about 2% of its members being parents to service members.
A more detailed demographic analysis might tell us something more interesting, but would of necessity also reduce the size of the comparison so it would be less statistically valid (e.g. age breakdown, because of how time works humans have more children when they're older, Congress is older than the US workforce)
My customers are the developers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc
The possibility there could be something to learn by personally understanding/experiencing your employer's core business?
Developing a shared sense of empathy and responsibility towards making the jobs of the drivers as efficient as possible?
I think it's important to use your own product (so get food delivered), but I don't really see any value in doing someone else's job as a pretend fantasy for a day. If you have any empathy, you'll know that the work isn't so bad, but the lack of health insurance, childcare, long-term career growth, etc. are the problems with the gig economy. The job itself is fine. The most positive outcome is probably having the realization that the gig economy is quite abusive and that you want nothing to do with it, so stop working for the company entirely.
The "it wasn't part of the job description" engineer would be on my short list for reevaluation. In a dynamic org, change is constant, and stick-in-the-mud complainers like this range from underproductive to actively toxic. If it's just an isolated bad day, fine, but if it's an underlying 'not-my'job' attitude, then they're likely better employed elsewhere.
This practice should be pretty standard, as well as flexible roles & responsibilities, mentoring/interning, etc. to spread & grow knowledge as much as possible.
Talk about toxic, this kind of garbage is why workers need strong labor laws and unions protecting them.
Maybe we should have laws as well to protect companies from rogue employees do things outside of their job descriptions.
Imagine the horror not having to worry over not being able to pay your mortgage or rent whenever your boss or some power tripping middle manager decided they want you to start juggling bowling pins while riding a unicycle while you were hired to develop software.
Won't someone please think of the poor employers? /s
There are pros and cons. How would you hire someone at a startup? Do you specify they can only write code for the website and then if you need their help with something else they just say "not in my job description"? Eventually you'd just get contracts that have laundry lists of vague responsibilities to get around this and it would just wind up like standard terms of service for websites/electronics where people just sign and take the job. Too much money at stake to not do it and for little gain.
As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees.
Salaries for contractors are I guess similar to the US maybe a bit lower, for salaries employees definitely lower than the US (for tech at least).
But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that. At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
You have a choice over here for both models essentially.
We as in all of Western Europe or for a specific country? What are some examples you've seen where the US has "strict", literal interpretations of contracts that are unreasonable as it relates to employment/the topic at hand? Off the top of my head the only thing that comes to mind immediately is maybe non-competes but I think that's an issue of leverage and not really a contractual issue, and even so it's risky for companies to enforce except for key employees.
> As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees
Isn't this just sidestepping the protection? And without needing to do an exhaustive list what are the labor protections? I assume there are like a minimum number of paid days off/holidays/vacation, exact job you'll do (though this is still vague to me how it's handled practically) and some protections around being fired/how you are fired?
Is there a big protection for tech workers I'm missing?
> But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that. At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
My "rent" (mortgage in this case) is pretty cheap and so is my insurance. I work remote for a great company, get PTO, and take it as you need it sick days and stuff like that too. Of course rental rates in certain markets (NY, SF, etc.) are much higher, as is compensation. $250k-$300k for many tech workers. I think that probably compensates for the higher costs though who knows what'll happen with the post-pandemic labor market (2024-2026 or so).
I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
When it comes to contractors, yes they have less rights (at-will employment, no PTO, no sick-days etc. etc. etc.) So yes it does side-step labor protections but it's more expensive, also in my country at least contractors are required to get disability insurance and not everyone can be considered a contractor. If a judge finds that a contractor actually more resembles an employer (so not being independent of the company hiring), they will retro-actively be considered an employee. (This has happened with Uber drivers for instance)
Some of the protections employees enjoy over here are:
- Not being fired unless the labor board approves (which required documentation from the employees, and them to follow strict labor rules).
- At least 4 weeks PTO.
- Up to 2 years of continues sick-days, (with a doctors note) (after which you'd get fired and get social security)
- After being fired you'd get 1 month of continued salary for each year you were employed, until you find new work
- Paid Maternity/paternity leave
- The right to bargain for a collective bargaining agreement which allows for additional minimum rights/salaries to be applied to all workers within a field
- The right to ignore your boss after hours unless additional consideration (salary) is offered and time schedules are agreed upon
- The right for employees to have a employee-board whenever there's at least 50 employees within a company/org
- The right for employees to keep their jobs if they become disabled (if possible, judged by the labor board not the employer)
When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
> When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
I do want to bring this conversation back to make sure we're still talking about tech workers per my original comment.
> I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources
Thanks for the link. I really like the common law approach myself. It's interesting that you noted that common law was based on strict contract interpretations (which I think you noted in a negative context since one was considered reasonable but the other wasn't) but then at the same time common law tends to be more predictable (according to the article) versus civil law since case precedence acts as law. I guess it depends on your interpretation of reasonable. As an American I'd want the law to be applied equally no matter who you are, but that's my culture and lens. I also like that it's flexible and, again noted by the article, able to cope with social changes better. With respect to contracts I think I prefer to enforce what was written - how else do you know what the contract is then?
It's nothing personal, it's business.
No, it is specifically NOT that.
It is exactly what I said, expecting people to have a "Can Do / put your shoulder to the wheel / solve the problem" attitude, and to be flexible about how it gets done. Especially in a development situation (vs production that's been static for years).
If the company failed to make clear at the beginning that it was a dynamic and changing environment, and that Can Do attitude is expected, then yeah, it is their fault.
But even in relatively staid environments, a "not my job" attitude can become toxic and contagious in a hurry. Then, it may not be far before no one has a job.
I'm strongly pro-union and pro-workers getting a larger slice of the economic pie. But I also recognize that the "not my job" attitude and over-constraining work rules is an enormous part of what lead to the demise of unions. Of course you don't want plumbers doing electrical work and vice-versa, but when a plumber or manager cannot toss a stray shovel onto the truck without a foreman/union/mgt meeting being called for stepping over the line (literally seen it happen), that's beyond unsustainable.
Attitudes of "Can Do", "Solve the problem", "How do we get better than our competition" are pretty much the polar opposite of a "not my job" attitude.
It is one thing to see in a low-level position, where a certain percentage of it is expected. But in a responsible position like serious software development, it's a red flag for lack of engagement. I've also seen it turn into an actively undermining the company attitude, which is toxic for everyone. I'd look for it to get fixed fast, or they're on the short list for "we don't really need to pay you to come here anymore" attitude.
The huge division between 'service workers' and professionals I think is not good for companies but much more importantly it's bad socially. People lose empathy for the day-to-day problems of what is probably the majority of employees in numbers and it creates a class of people living in a bubble. You learn a lot of humility pretty quickly if you go from management work or coding to carrying packages around and having to deal with angry customers.
I wonder what changes you'd see at companies like Facebook if the management had to sit in one of their outsourced content moderation centers for a few weeks.
> The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said.
I would guess they simply forgot -- as usual! -- initially and when realized they just opened themselves to an ADA lawsuit which they would surely lose then they hastily issued this comment and then scrambled to fill it with meaning.
They forget because neurological disabilities of this kind most of the time are completely invisible at a "white collar" workplace and even in personal lives most of us live mostly normal lives. You can live fine without swimming, skydiving, driving...
I did a tour at a shop that tried this, but then it really fizzled out by the time HR figured out they couldn't really make everyone do this sort of thing. I wonder how DoorDash is dealing with those issues.
Definitely reads like marketing fluff to me.
I still remember a story about being yelled out of a restaurant for coming in to pick up a delivery. The restaurant owner set a message to couriers in the app that instructed us to wait outside for the pickup, but I didn’t see it because the text was so small. Instantly filed a bug report for the Driver app team to make the messages easier to read!
- got Royal Bank Canada while I was there to star out account numbers on ATM receipts. Had to find a competitor's receipt first (CIBC) and show a senior manager to "prove" there was an issue.
- shortly after leaving Netscape found email parsing bug and submitted that to a an ex-coworker who channeled it to the right developer.
Stay tuned for some more in process.
How are they going to square this policy with disabilities legislation when it runs into a wheelchair user or someone with juvenile onset rheumatoid arthritis?
Or are they unintentionally indicating that as an employer they discriminate against the disabled?
(Wanting all your employees to be familiar with what the job demands is in principle a good idea, but the second-order consequences can be a bear.)
Facebook recruited me a few years ago. I told them 100% that I don't use Facebook. I think a few people I met with didn't get the memo because...well, I ultimately didn't get a job because I don't use Facebook.
So yeah, I could see that happening.
sounds like an interesting way to break up the monotony of work too and actually see the effect of changes you make. It kills my motivation sometimes when something gets rolled out and you don't really see an impact
Normally, if you ask to be integrated with the business people look at you like you just crawled out of a swamp. Personally, I have a hard time deciphering code if I don't know the business case (intent) first...once I have that knowledge the code is easy to read. Rarely is code expressed in domain language.