I'm trying to set up this archaic Rocket Unidata connection so I can see what our data analyst teams are gonna pull out of the system. It's totally hodgepodge'd together, but it has been working for a few years.
Typically it uses an ODBC connection into a virtual SQL Schema. Well, my preferred SQL IDE doesn't do ODBC, because java. So I tried looking at how to do it with JDBC, and I gave up way too fast.
So now I'm having to open Access....
*shudder*
DataGrip, yo
*swears on the JetBrains EULA"
And if you just need to bash out some SQL, Azure Data Studio from Microsoft is good enough and free. DataGrip is rad though.
I'm trying to set up this archaic Rocket Unidata connection so I can see what our data analyst teams are gonna pull out of the system. It's totally hodgepodge'd together, but it has been working for a few years.
Typically it uses an ODBC connection into a virtual SQL Schema. Well, my preferred SQL IDE doesn't do ODBC, because java. So I tried looking at how to do it with JDBC, and I gave up way too fast.
So now I'm having to open Access....
*shudder*
DataGrip, yo
*swears on the JetBrains EULA"
That's what I was trying to use! I just... gave up... too early... *cries*
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
Aww jeez you're right they don't have ODBC support, my bad. I've been using it to connect to postgres and now snowflake and the default drivers for both work great so I haven't tried an ODBC driver yet. Seems like your db does have a JDBC driver but yeah... legacy software...
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Current work status: the Zoom meeting tech demo has been completely derailed by a backchannel group text trying to figure out why the icon is so weirdly stacked.
Ok good because I blind clicked on this thread and that was my immediate thought
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
+2
Options
sponoMining for Nose DiamondsBooger CoveRegistered Userregular
I'm gonna need some time alone with that icon
Every get outta this thread, I'm putting a sock on the doorknob
Esoteric metrics based on analyzing extensive data about employee activities has been mostly the domain of fringe software vendors. Now it's built into MS 365.
A new feature to calculate 'productivity scores' turns Microsoft 365 into an full-fledged workplace surveillance tool:
Employers/managers can analyze employee activities at the individual level (!), for example, the number of days an employee has been sending emails, using the chat, using 'mentions' in emails etc.
Yuck. Also that's clearly intended to drive up engagement with Microsoft software, so it would actively suppress people finding other options that might impact subscriptions.
WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited November 2020
But mid level management has to have numbers to present to the board!
Weaver on
+11
Options
WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
Kroger got rid of a stupidly enormous amount of people across it's banner brands over the last couple years because they realized having an ass-load of salaried people sending emails back & forth about metrics didn't really generate profit or increase front line worker productivity.
+20
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thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
Wow - lets judge people's productivity on the things that are typically the least productive things on the planet - e-mail, meetings, and teams chat.
what. the. fuck?
Time to start sending 40 cat picture filled emails every day while @ing the entire company.
Basically.
EMail rule that auto-replies to emails revived with the author, to: and cc: fields all “@“ed with a generic response: “Message has been received but processing will take up to 3-5 business days.”
Hourly cron job that sends an email randomly to a list with some sort of content and an “@“.
I know I talk about how we had two back to back positive tests but this was kept secret from the workers only because a manager let it slip did the mood at work went from a horrible slog to doom
We have to take tests every two weeks but the question of are we paying for them out of our checks was met with vague non answers. They even blocked on the company webpage to view our paychecks so yeah
I could easily increase my "engagement in e-mails" by 100%. Just have to send e-mails in cases when a phone call would have been more efficient. Ta daaaaa. With a bit of luck I could phrase something so awkwardly that the receiving party would instantly CC a bunch of extra people and those numbers are gonna skyrocket!
+3
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I know I talk about how we had two back to back positive tests but this was kept secret from the workers only because a manager let it slip did the mood at work went from a horrible slog to doom
We have to take tests every two weeks but the question of are we paying for them out of our checks was met with vague non answers. They even blocked on the company webpage to view our paychecks so yeah
The funny thing is that manager was placed on paid leave because of "back problems"
This last week being the lead up to Thanksgiving and the state shutting down again due to the pandemic. It did not help several of the other stores nearby got closed down because of the virus and the lines were super huge
As a side I feel someone is going to get fired
The dairy manager is an idiot they ordered so much thinking It's a pandemic! it will sell not thinking about how this is NM and a good chunk of people are unemployed
You cannot walk around in the dairy cooler
0
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
That would definitely have been a better use for the metrics to some degree.
The problem is that a lot of executives and directors in mega corps exist in a space where their jobs are literally 100% meetings, emails, phone calls and in the gaps of all that collecting and collating power points to present.
To these individuals, that are making these decisions, those activities are productivity. For a small fraction, this level of work is necessary, but the problem occurs when there are enough people that go to far with the email/meetings-means-adding-value. It becomes a death spiral (The term in the hallways of Motorola in the late stage decline after they spun off Freescale - Death by meetings)
I get worried because it was really bad in my current job even before the pandemic. People pretend to not know the answer to something, or “get buy-in” by abusing people’s Inboxes. If you don’t reply to these individuals they pretend that it’s ok to exclude non-responders from critical decision processes or artifact reviews. It becomes a political mess.
Aside from concerns I have witnessed from the above, my knee jerk reaction is also rooted in seeing bad management, and/or bad-faith management, attempt to use technology solutions to solve what are personnel/human problems.
Often times the problems in the work I do, can’t be solved by some metric collection and analysis. Instead it requires a manager that can empower and enable folks to do their best.
I’ve seen enough people argue that we need to rely on data driven metrics - but those people and their teams game and report the metrics in bad faith to make things look a lot better then they are in reality (I’ve mentioned in passing in the G&T Programmer thread at least once, I have a Beer story about a growing company’s market cap tanking by 66% over the course of 1 month - this kind of behavior was one of the reasons - If I had better access to the emails I’d try to make my thesis a case study on this time period).
/ramble off - time for some morning coffee.
+2
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Ugggh. In book club, and in my interviews for the team lead position, I made it clear that I believe we need to track our time and overall productivity better so we have a baseline of what our team is capable of and how long it takes to solve issues. All this would be in the service of finding the true pain points so we can address them.
Those analytics are like the antithesis of everything I have been advocating for. Heck, even Gitlab's analytics, which track commits, are better than that -- and even that is a weak KPI that doesn't properly reflect reality!
Naturally I let our director that oversees the Office 365 team know. We typically default to all new options being off, and then turn them on after evaluation and requests. Hopefully I can convince them to turn these off... before some overjealous manager starts playing with them.
Wow - lets judge people's productivity on the things that are typically the least productive things on the planet - e-mail, meetings, and teams chat.
what. the. fuck?
Oh, I assumed they measured those things because they want to see who's spending too much time doing that stuff instead of being productive
-
That would definitely have been a better use for the metrics to some degree.
The problem is that a lot of executives and directors in mega corps exist in a space where their jobs are literally 100% meetings, emails, phone calls and in the gaps of all that collecting and collating power points to present.
To these individuals, that are making these decisions, those activities are productivity. For a small fraction, this level of work is necessary, but the problem occurs when there are enough people that go to far with the email/meetings-means-adding-value. It becomes a death spiral (The term in the hallways of Motorola in the late stage decline after they spun off Freescale - Death by meetings)
I get worried because it was really bad in my current job even before the pandemic. People pretend to not know the answer to something, or “get buy-in” by abusing people’s Inboxes. If you don’t reply to these individuals they pretend that it’s ok to exclude non-responders from critical decision processes or artifact reviews. It becomes a political mess.
Aside from concerns I have witnessed from the above, my knee jerk reaction is also rooted in seeing bad management, and/or bad-faith management, attempt to use technology solutions to solve what are personnel/human problems.
Often times the problems in the work I do, can’t be solved by some metric collection and analysis. Instead it requires a manager that can empower and enable folks to do their best.
I’ve seen enough people argue that we need to rely on data driven metrics - but those people and their teams game and report the metrics in bad faith to make things look a lot better then they are in reality (I’ve mentioned in passing in the G&T Programmer thread at least once, I have a Beer story about a growing company’s market cap tanking by 66% over the course of 1 month - this kind of behavior was one of the reasons - If I had better access to the emails I’d try to make my thesis a case study on this time period).
/ramble off - time for some morning coffee.
I agree with everything here, but I also see the other side of it, sitting where I am in a company that is now moving rapidly away from any sort of formal review for the employees. On the one hand, yay tailored solutions and the idea that people are individuals! But it also opens the door very wide for good ol' boy behavior and cliques, and in our case at a relatively small place that already has a bit of a "well if these 3 people like you you are gold, otherwise good luck" problem.
So formal metrics are both a great way to make sure that you don't end up with cliquey bullshit, but they are also crazy hard to implement, much less across job titles. I can't imagine making the system that can measure both how well deborah in accounting handles accounts payable vs minnie the scientist doing exploratory development. But it is super fraught for both of them for the answer to be "however their manager was able to pitch them to the next level up". A good manager might still not have a great handle on THEIR manager, or their manager might just be a dick.
As ever the good path is the narrow one with peril on both sides, especially as it's not like you can give the benefit of the doubt to the company, or believe they'll act in what the employee would consider to be good faith.
I've had to explain to multiple companies that the way they were using jira time tracking was both stupid and toxic. If any boss comes to me with this type of shit I calmly explain to them how they're a dumbass, point out their, usually very obvious, failings in regards to productivity, and send them on their way. No I don't give a shit about your metrics I'm not spending my precious life force on this shit I'm getting shit done with a mental disability that makes such task splitting highly detrimental to my work. Stopping to try and figure out how long this took me makes me spiral for an hour. Oh you can't figure out how we're doing, or how to scope shit without the metrics? Maybe you suck at your job and should figure out better KPIs and project scoping techniques that don't involve highly flawed and easily manipulated data wells.
Oh and if it wasn't clear, there is no world in which that office 360 metric package is a good idea for anything.
And sleep I hear you on the "please break your task to do task because two task is better than one task!" problem. Plenty of recent "talks" about "I turn my notifications in slack off midday for a reason, and it's because I'm desperately trying to get something DONE, you have my cell if something is actually on fire."
Performance measures are a big thing in the public sector, but often they're made and then just ignored by budget staff when making resource allocation decisions (like me). Improving on the measures is a pet project of mine in my current role and it's fucking hard because
1) you shouldn't measure things that are useless (like # of mail opened that is an actual fucking metric in one department here)
2) it needs to relate to the goals of the program
3) it would be nice, but inherently necessary, to link the measure to the resources put in
4) the act of measurement can't influence the measure, and most importantly
5) you need buy-in from all stakeholders
the thing often ignored by managers and people making decisions are those last two points and why nearly all "performance measure" initiatives are a fucking waste of time in any sector. if your employees think they're fucking stupid and waste of time you have to listen to them
Just got to give my first "The Talk" to a student this morning. User's account was suspended for downloading illegal torrents on our network. Called and left several frantic voicemails about how he can't have his account suspended he has a test to take online this morning. I asked him "Did you do anything that might be considered illegal to get suspended?" 'No No, nothing' "Have you maybe been downloading torrents?" 'Oh yeah, I downloaded a torrent of Diablo II but thats totally legal' "Just so you know I regularly play all the Diablo games, so I know its not." 'Oh ok yeah, ok sure it was an illegal thing. I'm sorry next time I'll wait until I'm at home to do it.'
My dude. Don't tell me your going to keep downloading illegal shit.
Just got to give my first "The Talk" to a student this morning. User's account was suspended for downloading illegal torrents on our network. Called and left several frantic voicemails about how he can't have his account suspended he has a test to take online this morning. I asked him "Did you do anything that might be considered illegal to get suspended?" 'No No, nothing' "Have you maybe been downloading torrents?" 'Oh yeah, I downloaded a torrent of Diablo II but thats totally legal' "Just so you know I regularly play all the Diablo games, so I know its not." 'Oh ok yeah, ok sure it was an illegal thing. I'm sorry next time I'll wait until I'm at home to do it.'
My dude. Don't tell me your going to keep downloading illegal shit.
I should put you in touch with our spider. It's fun watching him intimidate the hell out of people.
Aww jeez you're right they don't have ODBC support, my bad. I've been using it to connect to postgres and now snowflake and the default drivers for both work great so I haven't tried an ODBC driver yet. Seems like your db does have a JDBC driver but yeah... legacy software...
So bad news, I couldn't get the JDBC to work. I found some examples of the connection URL, but my database did not like it. And I saw references to needing to set up even more esoteric shit to get JDBC to work.
Good news, I fell back to ODBC to figure out WTF I couldn't see things. And it turns out I had some wires crossed. So I'm able to query data now! Yay! .... now I just need to figure out why it's not populating with the useful data people need.
What's funny is that this particular software has been trying to move to SQL, but it hugely benefits from being a multi-relational database. So while data could be stored in SQL, the underlying core operations of the application still use Unidata. And that just adds extra complexity while lowering functionality.
I swear it's a good program, but it needs a complete code re-write in the worst way. And sadly there are too many customers with custom code (ourselves included) for that to be a profitable enterprise for the company in question. Of course, all the people who were around when the software was first written / implemented are retiring...
I know I talk about how we had two back to back positive tests but this was kept secret from the workers only because a manager let it slip did the mood at work went from a horrible slog to doom
We have to take tests every two weeks but the question of are we paying for them out of our checks was met with vague non answers. They even blocked on the company webpage to view our paychecks so yeah
Oh my fucking God.
I just
I
Fuck.
Insert Mrs White gif here
Uh... I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to prevent you viewing your paystubs, like, by law? Not a lawyer and all but... that one might not be legal even in the worst states for worker's rights.
Just got to give my first "The Talk" to a student this morning. User's account was suspended for downloading illegal torrents on our network. Called and left several frantic voicemails about how he can't have his account suspended he has a test to take online this morning. I asked him "Did you do anything that might be considered illegal to get suspended?" 'No No, nothing' "Have you maybe been downloading torrents?" 'Oh yeah, I downloaded a torrent of Diablo II but thats totally legal' "Just so you know I regularly play all the Diablo games, so I know its not." 'Oh ok yeah, ok sure it was an illegal thing. I'm sorry next time I'll wait until I'm at home to do it.'
My dude. Don't tell me your going to keep downloading illegal shit.
Ask that kid what class/character they chose in Diablo II.
Zonugal on
+30
Options
thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
Wow - lets judge people's productivity on the things that are typically the least productive things on the planet - e-mail, meetings, and teams chat.
what. the. fuck?
Oh, I assumed they measured those things because they want to see who's spending too much time doing that stuff instead of being productive
-
That would definitely have been a better use for the metrics to some degree.
The problem is that a lot of executives and directors in mega corps exist in a space where their jobs are literally 100% meetings, emails, phone calls and in the gaps of all that collecting and collating power points to present.
To these individuals, that are making these decisions, those activities are productivity. For a small fraction, this level of work is necessary, but the problem occurs when there are enough people that go to far with the email/meetings-means-adding-value. It becomes a death spiral (The term in the hallways of Motorola in the late stage decline after they spun off Freescale - Death by meetings)
I get worried because it was really bad in my current job even before the pandemic. People pretend to not know the answer to something, or “get buy-in” by abusing people’s Inboxes. If you don’t reply to these individuals they pretend that it’s ok to exclude non-responders from critical decision processes or artifact reviews. It becomes a political mess.
Aside from concerns I have witnessed from the above, my knee jerk reaction is also rooted in seeing bad management, and/or bad-faith management, attempt to use technology solutions to solve what are personnel/human problems.
Often times the problems in the work I do, can’t be solved by some metric collection and analysis. Instead it requires a manager that can empower and enable folks to do their best.
I’ve seen enough people argue that we need to rely on data driven metrics - but those people and their teams game and report the metrics in bad faith to make things look a lot better then they are in reality (I’ve mentioned in passing in the G&T Programmer thread at least once, I have a Beer story about a growing company’s market cap tanking by 66% over the course of 1 month - this kind of behavior was one of the reasons - If I had better access to the emails I’d try to make my thesis a case study on this time period).
/ramble off - time for some morning coffee.
I agree with everything here, but I also see the other side of it, sitting where I am in a company that is now moving rapidly away from any sort of formal review for the employees. On the one hand, yay tailored solutions and the idea that people are individuals! But it also opens the door very wide for good ol' boy behavior and cliques, and in our case at a relatively small place that already has a bit of a "well if these 3 people like you you are gold, otherwise good luck" problem.
So formal metrics are both a great way to make sure that you don't end up with cliquey bullshit, but they are also crazy hard to implement, much less across job titles. I can't imagine making the system that can measure both how well deborah in accounting handles accounts payable vs minnie the scientist doing exploratory development. But it is super fraught for both of them for the answer to be "however their manager was able to pitch them to the next level up". A good manager might still not have a great handle on THEIR manager, or their manager might just be a dick.
As ever the good path is the narrow one with peril on both sides, especially as it's not like you can give the benefit of the doubt to the company, or believe they'll act in what the employee would consider to be good faith.
I totally feel you on the bolded 100% - been there, done that, didn't even get a T-shirt (would have burned it if I did, however).
The issue is that no matter where, there's always going to emerge a clique/in-group. This is the personnel problem that industry continually attempts to solve with seductive but short-sighted technology approaches.
Even when there are clear criteria and metrics, the clique/in-group will game it.
The best places I've been at have had a large number of people not willing to rat-fuck around, and actually want to make a product and ship it. The worst places I've been in have been political bee hives with nothing but in-groups pretending like they're doing all the work and that the other people (who are actually doing the work) don't exist for purposes of 'sign-off'/seniority.
Absolutely, I have no good answers, just a good outline of the problem, and still agree with your previous post too! Hell I don't know if there IS a particularly good answer in the current frame of competitive capitalism that highly incentivizes ratfucking.
On the funnier note, Bucketman I love how fast the guy backed down. "Oh it was fine." "I happen to know it was not" "yeah ok it was not."
Related:
So for work things, my Dad is "retired" but works semi under the table at my cousins pawn shop that really is mostly a gun shop, all in small town north carolina. You can imagine the mask usage is...not high, and mom is a long time pack a day smoker with a sedentary lifestyle and all the accumulated damage you'd expect from years of alcoholism and is in the age risk group. You can imagine that we would prefer she not catch covid.
So anyway, Cousin (who denied covid existed) find his wife has it, is hacking and coughing and he tests positive too, though without symptoms. (Notably cousin ALSO has a lot of health issues and should be pretty afraid of adding anything to his precarious stack, but I digress). Of course he keeps coming in to work. So recently the NC gov finally got around to a state mask mandate, and pop goes to him to state:
Pop: "hey, you want me to print the signs for this?"
Cousin: "naw i don't think we'll do that."
P: "Fine, I'll come in before anyone else, do the books and leave before opening, I don't want to see anyone else and I'll come in as early as that takes."
C: "well we'd really like you to work the counter too"
P: "as long as there is anyone in here without a mask I won't be doing that. Also isn't your wife still sick, why are you here and where is your mask?"
C: "welllll i dunnoooo, the doctor said she wasn't still infectious..." (editors note: this is almost certainly a lie)
P: "I do not care, I'll come in, do the books and leave until this changes"
C: "well I guess make the signs then"
Dad and I had a decent grim laugh over cousin not only being a harmful dipshit, but being such a weak willed coward about it on top. Obviously better than the alternative but jesus what a lack of conviction to top it off. Still very ready to drive down to NC to beat his ass if mom catches covid though. It won't make anything better but I might feel ok about it.
+5
Options
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Just got to give my first "The Talk" to a student this morning. User's account was suspended for downloading illegal torrents on our network. Called and left several frantic voicemails about how he can't have his account suspended he has a test to take online this morning. I asked him "Did you do anything that might be considered illegal to get suspended?" 'No No, nothing' "Have you maybe been downloading torrents?" 'Oh yeah, I downloaded a torrent of Diablo II but thats totally legal' "Just so you know I regularly play all the Diablo games, so I know its not." 'Oh ok yeah, ok sure it was an illegal thing. I'm sorry next time I'll wait until I'm at home to do it.'
My dude. Don't tell me your going to keep downloading illegal shit.
Posts
And if you just need to bash out some SQL, Azure Data Studio from Microsoft is good enough and free. DataGrip is rad though.
Also, Rocket Unidata??? Oh god
That's what I was trying to use! I just... gave up... too early... *cries*
Ok good because I blind clicked on this thread and that was my immediate thought
Every get outta this thread, I'm putting a sock on the doorknob
Who's ready for bonuses/demerits tied directly to your new Productivity Score?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
what. the. fuck?
Time to start sending 40 cat picture filled emails every day while @ing the entire company.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
This will also have the salubrious effect of destroying their "emails with @'s in them have a __% higher response rate!" bullshit.
Measure the actual outcomes you want from people, not their gods-damned email habits.
Basically.
EMail rule that auto-replies to emails revived with the author, to: and cc: fields all “@“ed with a generic response: “Message has been received but processing will take up to 3-5 business days.”
Hourly cron job that sends an email randomly to a list with some sort of content and an “@“.
Mix it up with other animals and hot oiled machine pics
We have to take tests every two weeks but the question of are we paying for them out of our checks was met with vague non answers. They even blocked on the company webpage to view our paychecks so yeah
Oh, I assumed they measured those things because they want to see who's spending too much time doing that stuff instead of being productive
bender-serious.gif
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Oh my fucking God.
I just
I
Fuck.
Insert Mrs White gif here
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
The funny thing is that manager was placed on paid leave because of "back problems"
This last week being the lead up to Thanksgiving and the state shutting down again due to the pandemic. It did not help several of the other stores nearby got closed down because of the virus and the lines were super huge
The dairy manager is an idiot they ordered so much thinking It's a pandemic! it will sell not thinking about how this is NM and a good chunk of people are unemployed
You cannot walk around in the dairy cooler
None of that can get downstacked well at all.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
@Brovid Hasselsmof -
That would definitely have been a better use for the metrics to some degree.
The problem is that a lot of executives and directors in mega corps exist in a space where their jobs are literally 100% meetings, emails, phone calls and in the gaps of all that collecting and collating power points to present.
To these individuals, that are making these decisions, those activities are productivity. For a small fraction, this level of work is necessary, but the problem occurs when there are enough people that go to far with the email/meetings-means-adding-value. It becomes a death spiral (The term in the hallways of Motorola in the late stage decline after they spun off Freescale - Death by meetings)
I get worried because it was really bad in my current job even before the pandemic. People pretend to not know the answer to something, or “get buy-in” by abusing people’s Inboxes. If you don’t reply to these individuals they pretend that it’s ok to exclude non-responders from critical decision processes or artifact reviews. It becomes a political mess.
Aside from concerns I have witnessed from the above, my knee jerk reaction is also rooted in seeing bad management, and/or bad-faith management, attempt to use technology solutions to solve what are personnel/human problems.
Often times the problems in the work I do, can’t be solved by some metric collection and analysis. Instead it requires a manager that can empower and enable folks to do their best.
I’ve seen enough people argue that we need to rely on data driven metrics - but those people and their teams game and report the metrics in bad faith to make things look a lot better then they are in reality (I’ve mentioned in passing in the G&T Programmer thread at least once, I have a Beer story about a growing company’s market cap tanking by 66% over the course of 1 month - this kind of behavior was one of the reasons - If I had better access to the emails I’d try to make my thesis a case study on this time period).
/ramble off - time for some morning coffee.
Those analytics are like the antithesis of everything I have been advocating for. Heck, even Gitlab's analytics, which track commits, are better than that -- and even that is a weak KPI that doesn't properly reflect reality!
Naturally I let our director that oversees the Office 365 team know. We typically default to all new options being off, and then turn them on after evaluation and requests. Hopefully I can convince them to turn these off... before some overjealous manager starts playing with them.
I agree with everything here, but I also see the other side of it, sitting where I am in a company that is now moving rapidly away from any sort of formal review for the employees. On the one hand, yay tailored solutions and the idea that people are individuals! But it also opens the door very wide for good ol' boy behavior and cliques, and in our case at a relatively small place that already has a bit of a "well if these 3 people like you you are gold, otherwise good luck" problem.
So formal metrics are both a great way to make sure that you don't end up with cliquey bullshit, but they are also crazy hard to implement, much less across job titles. I can't imagine making the system that can measure both how well deborah in accounting handles accounts payable vs minnie the scientist doing exploratory development. But it is super fraught for both of them for the answer to be "however their manager was able to pitch them to the next level up". A good manager might still not have a great handle on THEIR manager, or their manager might just be a dick.
As ever the good path is the narrow one with peril on both sides, especially as it's not like you can give the benefit of the doubt to the company, or believe they'll act in what the employee would consider to be good faith.
And sleep I hear you on the "please break your task to do task because two task is better than one task!" problem. Plenty of recent "talks" about "I turn my notifications in slack off midday for a reason, and it's because I'm desperately trying to get something DONE, you have my cell if something is actually on fire."
1) you shouldn't measure things that are useless (like # of mail opened that is an actual fucking metric in one department here)
2) it needs to relate to the goals of the program
3) it would be nice, but inherently necessary, to link the measure to the resources put in
4) the act of measurement can't influence the measure, and most importantly
5) you need buy-in from all stakeholders
the thing often ignored by managers and people making decisions are those last two points and why nearly all "performance measure" initiatives are a fucking waste of time in any sector. if your employees think they're fucking stupid and waste of time you have to listen to them
My dude. Don't tell me your going to keep downloading illegal shit.
I should put you in touch with our spider. It's fun watching him intimidate the hell out of people.
So bad news, I couldn't get the JDBC to work. I found some examples of the connection URL, but my database did not like it. And I saw references to needing to set up even more esoteric shit to get JDBC to work.
Good news, I fell back to ODBC to figure out WTF I couldn't see things. And it turns out I had some wires crossed. So I'm able to query data now! Yay! .... now I just need to figure out why it's not populating with the useful data people need.
What's funny is that this particular software has been trying to move to SQL, but it hugely benefits from being a multi-relational database. So while data could be stored in SQL, the underlying core operations of the application still use Unidata. And that just adds extra complexity while lowering functionality.
I swear it's a good program, but it needs a complete code re-write in the worst way. And sadly there are too many customers with custom code (ourselves included) for that to be a profitable enterprise for the company in question. Of course, all the people who were around when the software was first written / implemented are retiring...
Uh... I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to prevent you viewing your paystubs, like, by law? Not a lawyer and all but... that one might not be legal even in the worst states for worker's rights.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Ask that kid what class/character they chose in Diablo II.
I totally feel you on the bolded 100% - been there, done that, didn't even get a T-shirt (would have burned it if I did, however).
The issue is that no matter where, there's always going to emerge a clique/in-group. This is the personnel problem that industry continually attempts to solve with seductive but short-sighted technology approaches.
Even when there are clear criteria and metrics, the clique/in-group will game it.
The best places I've been at have had a large number of people not willing to rat-fuck around, and actually want to make a product and ship it. The worst places I've been in have been political bee hives with nothing but in-groups pretending like they're doing all the work and that the other people (who are actually doing the work) don't exist for purposes of 'sign-off'/seniority.
On the funnier note, Bucketman I love how fast the guy backed down. "Oh it was fine." "I happen to know it was not" "yeah ok it was not."
Related:
So for work things, my Dad is "retired" but works semi under the table at my cousins pawn shop that really is mostly a gun shop, all in small town north carolina. You can imagine the mask usage is...not high, and mom is a long time pack a day smoker with a sedentary lifestyle and all the accumulated damage you'd expect from years of alcoholism and is in the age risk group. You can imagine that we would prefer she not catch covid.
So anyway, Cousin (who denied covid existed) find his wife has it, is hacking and coughing and he tests positive too, though without symptoms. (Notably cousin ALSO has a lot of health issues and should be pretty afraid of adding anything to his precarious stack, but I digress). Of course he keeps coming in to work. So recently the NC gov finally got around to a state mask mandate, and pop goes to him to state:
Pop: "hey, you want me to print the signs for this?"
Cousin: "naw i don't think we'll do that."
P: "Fine, I'll come in before anyone else, do the books and leave before opening, I don't want to see anyone else and I'll come in as early as that takes."
C: "well we'd really like you to work the counter too"
P: "as long as there is anyone in here without a mask I won't be doing that. Also isn't your wife still sick, why are you here and where is your mask?"
C: "welllll i dunnoooo, the doctor said she wasn't still infectious..." (editors note: this is almost certainly a lie)
P: "I do not care, I'll come in, do the books and leave until this changes"
C: "well I guess make the signs then"
Dad and I had a decent grim laugh over cousin not only being a harmful dipshit, but being such a weak willed coward about it on top. Obviously better than the alternative but jesus what a lack of conviction to top it off. Still very ready to drive down to NC to beat his ass if mom catches covid though. It won't make anything better but I might feel ok about it.
And I'd copy that floppy, but like there aren't any floppy disk drives any more, so....