I definitely think the change of vocabulary is not only potentially helpful, it's critical.
In the teams I've led (and even some I haven't, officially) in recent years, I've worked to squash dehumanizing vocabulary like "individual contributor" ("teammate" being my replacement of choice for that one). I've never been in management, but those seem to be the people most likely to use vocabulary like that. In fact, I don't ever remember an actual team member referring to himself or teammates as "contributors." Hmm, wonder why that is...
Similarly, when I hear HR (yuck) or management refer to people as "resources" it makes me cringe and lose some amount of respect for the person saying it.
It rather saddens me, but I think that if team success is the measure, it does make sense for teams to lose less-effective members and take on more-effective ones. (I freely state that teams may not recognize the value of certain members or member types, and might make mistakes in this process. But I think the "team success" measure means that they will try to get rid of perceived under-performers and take on perceived high performers.
I do not have an answer, other than eating the rich. And I'm not sure that would help. :)
I'm sure I'll be judged for saying this, but in the interest of continuing the thought experiment... is that situation _necessarily_ a bad thing? Corner cases aside, if the ultimate goal is delivering quality software consistently, is it each team's (collectively) job to carry freeloaders or incompetents? Have't we all worked on teams with 1 or 2 members who simply did not carry their share of the load? Were those teams better off continuing to carry those members, or to cut them loose to find a better fit for them? I don't think there's a universal answer, but I do think many cases like that have an obvious resolution: a person who doesn't fit into or understand or care about the team's success should be freed from that team to find another where they _can_ contribute value.
Again, I'm not intentionally being cold or an a-hole, just drawing on experience. I've been on teams dragged down by underperforming teammates, I've also been one of the "corner cases" where I _could _have contributed but did not fit the team; in those rare cases, it was absolutely best for me (and probably the team) to move on.
I always see a contradiction with the language "get rid of unproductive members". Shouldn't this be done during the hiring (or team-assembly) process? I think the question should be re-phrased to "what are we doing wrong that prevents so and so from giving their best?" or finding out why through inquiry b/w team lead and member etc. Otherwise insecurity and "rock star" mentality sets in and people act primarily to favor their own survival instead of doing their genuine best for the common goal.
These are not mutually exclusive options. We always want to help every person do their best work, and we should embrace that knowing it's worth a lot of sustained effort. At the same time, our hiring processes will not always be perfect, and sometimes someone is genuinely not a good fit. Both can be true.
“people act primarily to favor their own survival instead of doing their genuine best for the common goal.” really resonated with me because it’s what I’ve seen happen. Though not everyone is like that, the reward system and language promotes being selfish rather than doing what would help the team. Personal visibility and networking have been emphasized to me a lot more than teamwork.
I guess another angle to consider is cost. For example, including a junior resource at zero cost (or perhaps negative cost?) to the project would allow the to be trained up. Those who are not performing can see be dropped as needed.
My concern is that this thinking, and I freely grant that I started it, is about profit and productivity, not about humanity. We should, I feel in my aging soul, concern ourselves first with the benefit to every individual, and only then to the profit and productivity. Too often we let the person go and wash our hands of them. Too often, that can happen after years of service, not a three-month trial run. That is inhumane, and, I feel in my aging soul, probably morally wrong.
I think the thing is to allow each person to contribute to their own personal fullest, whether that's a ten or a four, not to try to pack our team with tens. But we are a long way from that in most organizations.
"No individual can get a rating higher than their team." so what does a rating mean for an invidual anyway? Do they get a gold star or something?
What would it mean for members of a team when a team rating is high/low? Who benefits most from a high team rating?
Ohhhh man, Phil's team (as the manager of team x) has been killing it, they got a really high rating. Does it mean I did that or that a couple of team members are just great people who know how to get the job done well? Should I get most of the credit for that (Phil's team)? Even if it was in spite of my contributions?
Or... Phil's team is not meeting our expectations. Always missing the deadlines we set, bugs left and right especially when it comes to Legacy App X. They got such a low rating...what is Phil doing?
I like to make a point of recognizing the contributions of each person, whatever they be. I don't think you translate that into ratings really. Maybe you can put some value on contributions, but you'll still get people hoarding value. And no one will want to do the boring but necessary work. You've got to recognize those contributions as well. My team has been doing a sort of "pay it forward" recognition sometimes during our Friday social hour. Each person is recognized by a teammate for their contributions, paying that recognition forward. At the least, it's engaging. At best, everyone feels recognized as a valuable part of the team.
It kind of boils down to incentives. A scout troupe's incentive is to camp overnight. There are no alternatives there.
Software delivery team members may not operate under such constraints. If those ahead of the pack feel shortchanged, they may get tempted to pack up and leave for greener pastures. If those behind, who are struggling, feel the pressure to rise ot the occasion, they may also start considering leaving.
What are their incentives to stay and collaborate?
Lets think about when we usually start to think about incentives for programmers: when we don't feel we are getting enough "productivity" out of them. So incentive programs are a response to what are probably issues with the codebase. While incentives can affect things like this, perhaps they need to be incentives to clean stuff up.
Like dig in to "Your Code as a Crime Scene" and target the hotspots. Whenever you remove a hotspot from the top ten, you get a free beer or something. So your spare time and decisions are led to a cleaning up of the parts of the codebase that cause trouble.
Rating teams, presumably against each other, as in competition, is no better in my opinion than rating individuals. It all is detrimental to the aim of the company, business, market, system. Rating systems should be abandoned all together at least as it applies to compensation.
I believe in The Goal, the camping experience was an experiment in the small and the team improving for itself. There was no option to leave the slow kid behind and hope he survives on his own. But the experiment was effectively a PDSA cycle towards attempting to save a company.
I do like the idea of measurement at the team level, but for the purposes of helping the team improve itself. At the IC level, it is far too easy and dangerous to point fingers at the slow kid and leave him behind rather than improve the system where everyone’s contribution helps.
I definitely think the change of vocabulary is not only potentially helpful, it's critical.
In the teams I've led (and even some I haven't, officially) in recent years, I've worked to squash dehumanizing vocabulary like "individual contributor" ("teammate" being my replacement of choice for that one). I've never been in management, but those seem to be the people most likely to use vocabulary like that. In fact, I don't ever remember an actual team member referring to himself or teammates as "contributors." Hmm, wonder why that is...
Similarly, when I hear HR (yuck) or management refer to people as "resources" it makes me cringe and lose some amount of respect for the person saying it.
It rather saddens me, but I think that if team success is the measure, it does make sense for teams to lose less-effective members and take on more-effective ones. (I freely state that teams may not recognize the value of certain members or member types, and might make mistakes in this process. But I think the "team success" measure means that they will try to get rid of perceived under-performers and take on perceived high performers.
I do not have an answer, other than eating the rich. And I'm not sure that would help. :)
I'm sure I'll be judged for saying this, but in the interest of continuing the thought experiment... is that situation _necessarily_ a bad thing? Corner cases aside, if the ultimate goal is delivering quality software consistently, is it each team's (collectively) job to carry freeloaders or incompetents? Have't we all worked on teams with 1 or 2 members who simply did not carry their share of the load? Were those teams better off continuing to carry those members, or to cut them loose to find a better fit for them? I don't think there's a universal answer, but I do think many cases like that have an obvious resolution: a person who doesn't fit into or understand or care about the team's success should be freed from that team to find another where they _can_ contribute value.
Again, I'm not intentionally being cold or an a-hole, just drawing on experience. I've been on teams dragged down by underperforming teammates, I've also been one of the "corner cases" where I _could _have contributed but did not fit the team; in those rare cases, it was absolutely best for me (and probably the team) to move on.
A common sentiment you hear from people after firing a bad performer is that coworkers all thought s/he should’ve been fired a long time ago.
I always see a contradiction with the language "get rid of unproductive members". Shouldn't this be done during the hiring (or team-assembly) process? I think the question should be re-phrased to "what are we doing wrong that prevents so and so from giving their best?" or finding out why through inquiry b/w team lead and member etc. Otherwise insecurity and "rock star" mentality sets in and people act primarily to favor their own survival instead of doing their genuine best for the common goal.
This is why I always cringe when I hear a company say things like "we only hire the best developers!".
These are not mutually exclusive options. We always want to help every person do their best work, and we should embrace that knowing it's worth a lot of sustained effort. At the same time, our hiring processes will not always be perfect, and sometimes someone is genuinely not a good fit. Both can be true.
“people act primarily to favor their own survival instead of doing their genuine best for the common goal.” really resonated with me because it’s what I’ve seen happen. Though not everyone is like that, the reward system and language promotes being selfish rather than doing what would help the team. Personal visibility and networking have been emphasized to me a lot more than teamwork.
I guess another angle to consider is cost. For example, including a junior resource at zero cost (or perhaps negative cost?) to the project would allow the to be trained up. Those who are not performing can see be dropped as needed.
My concern is that this thinking, and I freely grant that I started it, is about profit and productivity, not about humanity. We should, I feel in my aging soul, concern ourselves first with the benefit to every individual, and only then to the profit and productivity. Too often we let the person go and wash our hands of them. Too often, that can happen after years of service, not a three-month trial run. That is inhumane, and, I feel in my aging soul, probably morally wrong.
I think the thing is to allow each person to contribute to their own personal fullest, whether that's a ten or a four, not to try to pack our team with tens. But we are a long way from that in most organizations.
"No individual can get a rating higher than their team." so what does a rating mean for an invidual anyway? Do they get a gold star or something?
What would it mean for members of a team when a team rating is high/low? Who benefits most from a high team rating?
Ohhhh man, Phil's team (as the manager of team x) has been killing it, they got a really high rating. Does it mean I did that or that a couple of team members are just great people who know how to get the job done well? Should I get most of the credit for that (Phil's team)? Even if it was in spite of my contributions?
Or... Phil's team is not meeting our expectations. Always missing the deadlines we set, bugs left and right especially when it comes to Legacy App X. They got such a low rating...what is Phil doing?
I like to make a point of recognizing the contributions of each person, whatever they be. I don't think you translate that into ratings really. Maybe you can put some value on contributions, but you'll still get people hoarding value. And no one will want to do the boring but necessary work. You've got to recognize those contributions as well. My team has been doing a sort of "pay it forward" recognition sometimes during our Friday social hour. Each person is recognized by a teammate for their contributions, paying that recognition forward. At the least, it's engaging. At best, everyone feels recognized as a valuable part of the team.
It kind of boils down to incentives. A scout troupe's incentive is to camp overnight. There are no alternatives there.
Software delivery team members may not operate under such constraints. If those ahead of the pack feel shortchanged, they may get tempted to pack up and leave for greener pastures. If those behind, who are struggling, feel the pressure to rise ot the occasion, they may also start considering leaving.
What are their incentives to stay and collaborate?
Lets think about when we usually start to think about incentives for programmers: when we don't feel we are getting enough "productivity" out of them. So incentive programs are a response to what are probably issues with the codebase. While incentives can affect things like this, perhaps they need to be incentives to clean stuff up.
Like dig in to "Your Code as a Crime Scene" and target the hotspots. Whenever you remove a hotspot from the top ten, you get a free beer or something. So your spare time and decisions are led to a cleaning up of the parts of the codebase that cause trouble.
Rating teams, presumably against each other, as in competition, is no better in my opinion than rating individuals. It all is detrimental to the aim of the company, business, market, system. Rating systems should be abandoned all together at least as it applies to compensation.
I believe in The Goal, the camping experience was an experiment in the small and the team improving for itself. There was no option to leave the slow kid behind and hope he survives on his own. But the experiment was effectively a PDSA cycle towards attempting to save a company.
I do like the idea of measurement at the team level, but for the purposes of helping the team improve itself. At the IC level, it is far too easy and dangerous to point fingers at the slow kid and leave him behind rather than improve the system where everyone’s contribution helps.
Thanks for the post, very thoughtful-provoking.
I have a dumb question: what does IC stand for? "Individual Contributor"? Thanks.
yep! Individual Contributor
I love this ! Resonates with me.