Regarding dog training, one can use a placeholder for the reward. This is useful, for example, if you want to reward a dolphin jumping through a hula, because you will not be able to give the reward at that moment, but for example, you can say "yes!" or use a clicker at that moment, and give the reward later, and it will be clear what caused it.

For anyone training any animal, I recommend the book: Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor (not affiliated in any way)

Note that GP is comparing the _managers_ motivation to a dog’s motivation, not the worker. It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).

If you ignore the specific similarities being pointed out (learning and training work similar in different mammals), and you instead focus on the most offensive differences you can think of (dogs are lesser intelligent creatures than man), then of course you can find a way to be offended.

But doing so is optional, FYI. And counterproductive to an interesting conversation as well.

(Also as a furry this whole thread is funny.)

It's delayed because the employee fears further retribution still. You need some distance between yourself and the bloodthirsty dog before you can even hope to reduce your productivity, or you'll be mauled quite enthusiastically. By delaying it for days or weeks, by being out of sight when it happens, there is plausible deniability that can let them survive the attacks.

Managers do this to themselves, they punish people who would give them the quick feedback loop.

Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.

Yet when of the top comments used dog training to explain manager-worker relations--something that empathy and introspection could tell you was a bit off (would you feel slighted if I make our interactions analogous to an owner and dog?)--it may show, yes, such does need to be spelt out these days.

I recall the University of Manchester was teaching university students empathy.

That aside, I completely agree with you that managers should engage in empathy and introspection. I still think it's helpful, even for those that do, to have some empirical confirmation of how strongly employees can be affected by what might seem a simple oversight to an otherwise empathetic and introspective manager. But unfortunately, callous people tend to be chosen for management, and this research is also potentially helpful in aligning their own self-interest with their employees.

There are a million other ways to illustrate the point without being a creep.

I received a referral bonus and where the company payroll made an error and accidentally gave me a higher bonus per the level of employee my referral reward was (they set it to the bonus level for a VP and she was a Sr. Director). So unbeknownst to me they gave me $5000 extra in my bonus that should have been only $3000, not $8k. Accounting figured this out next tax season, so then they informed me the would be clawing their error overpayment back had, which apparently is legal. Thus the $5k was taken out of my next paycheck. Their error was not my fault!

I was really annoyed and basically stopped going above and beyond for that company the rest of the year. :-/

It just seemed very petty and reactionary of them for something that was their error originally. This messed up my budget and suddenly having $5k less 9 months later that I hadn't anticipated was a bit of an unforeseen financial hardship. Also she had been my 5th referral to date that they'd hired!!

The whole thing was very demoralizing.

American culture is unfortunately permeated with examples, and habits, and expectations around punishing the behaviors you'd want to see. I see subtle things like that all the time. So while I doubt anyone who stopped to actually think about the concrete implications of their behavior, more specifically their unconscious habits; wouldn't be able to describe how insulting people, or really, how discouraging people is likely to have a negative outcome. The catch being, most people don't stop to consider anything. Thoes who do, are exceptionally rare.

As an example, someone posted a comment providing context, and encouraging people to be curious and grow their skill set with techniques that will help them with dogs, (and yes, these do translate to humans as well.)

Which invited a negative comment from you attacking people who aren't perfect every single moment of every single day, who might benefit from a reminder that how they treat others matters. Also indirectly attacking the person you replied to.

(See what I mean about the culture of punishing the behavior, you want to see? Or did you intend to discourage curiosity?)

> Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.

You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog. Just because humans are also, in addition to those able to do a lot more, and learn in an astronomically larger set of ways, doesn't exclude the techniques that work best with dogs. You forget this at your own peril. I.e. if the way you behave wouldn't encourage the behavior you want from a dog well, it sure as hell wont encourage the behavior from a human. All humans, including you, are not that special, get over yourself. rhetorically speaking

Depending on the context, this can traumatize a human though. This idea has been the basis for both gay conversion therapy and applied behavior analysis. The latter I have had the misfortune to directly experience myself.

Gonna have to pull you up here.

It’s estimated that approximately 1% of the general population is estimated to have high levels of psychopathy.

These people don’t need an excuse, and have no reason, to be dangerous.

> These people don’t need an excuse, and have no reason, to be dangerous.

Psycohpathy is defined as behaviors that conflict with pro-moral and pro-social norms. Are you trying to say that antisocial behavior is exclusively genetic, and isn't influenced by the environment? And if it is influenced by the environment, how does that conflict with what I said.

Or, more directly do you think that someone abandoned and abused by their caregivers as a child wouldn't test high on a psychopathy evaluation?

Also IIRC that 1.2% is just any clinically significant symptoms. Non-violent, pro-social, low empathy. Would still test high on that test.

I don't mean that to be facetious. I mean that a small but significant portion of the people here will die because of their social isolation and inability to communicate effectively.

Thank You

The length of time between behaviour and reward/punishment is too great. So to train your manager you need to go home straight away.

Sociopaths often make up an unusually large percentage of the upper layers of management. They won't hesitate to step on people to get ahead, and use the typical conflict aversion of regular people to their advantage- causing drama and fights, wearing others down, and eventually getting their way because most people just want their pay cheque, not to go into battle constantly.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Never met a manager in your life, I take it?

Remember, "it is very difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his job depends on his not understanding it." [editor:and that goes doubly for MBAs] —Upton Sinclair

¹—added adjective

if someone is going to feel slighted and similar things add up to them working less, they probably are not a great colleague to begin with.

What matters more are: assignment to rewarding work, get paid top dollar, not be bored, get recognition for success, coaching on career growth, given leeway to make mistakes, not overlooked for promotion, etc.

Now, as a people manager, if you're not steering those kinds of things, you are not a great manager and you should be replaced with someone who does those things.

If you've spent time struggling to make ends meet, even median income can feel like previously unimaginable wealth and security, and workplace satisfaction is rarely something that you had a great deal of choice around. If you've spent most of a decade making six figures with benefits, it's easier to decide an extra 10k or even 50k isn't worth the added stress.

Cost of living and personal situation (dual incomes, dependents) can shift that needle around quite a lot too.

A late birthday recognition might not feel important, but if one already feels like management doesn't care about them? I can easily seeing that as a confirmation of it that causes resentment. I can also see it doing the same for any number of management related issues.

I can tell you personally that the action which most seriously affected my performance at a workplace was being denied a bereavement day because the official policy was to only allow one. I felt more than slighted and every single negative action taken afterwards by HR/management, no matter how small, caused me to resent them more.

I think when setting up policy like this you have two choices:

a) have a fixed number of days --> fair, objective

b) allow it to the manager to use their judgement --> variance across company

The former has the tradeoff that you experienced.

One of the things I remember most from my career was a manager "rules lawyering" about bereavement leave when my aunt passed away. Ironically, HR was very sympathetic and accommodating, and it was a non-issue with them.

I've been treated "worse" by jackass execs and managers, but always in the context of work. Someone acting in the way this manager did about a personal situation sticks with me much more than those.

I told her to go and we’d sort out her work situation when she or we got back.

It kinda came out of the blue so we didn’t have time to hypothetically it out so we could just operate on autopilot.

Since then I’ve had bosses who heard of a death/critical illness in the family just say, “Go.” No discussion or details needed. Just go. Because being petty or precious about the whole thing just makes you public enemy. And when clever people work for you they don’t always come at you straight on. They come at you sideways and you don’t even know it’s revenge. They just passive aggressively let something slide that made your life miserable.

Most people react quite predictably to slights. The issue is, if you don't have enough context, you might not understand you are slighting someone.

I think the biggest problem in the workplace is that those higher up, or more successful in a company will put more stock in following the company rules/culture than making sure someone is ok.

Your point about bereavement leave is a good case in point, I had a similar incident where my manager at the time said "Well your aunt's not your close family is she?" when I asked to attend a funeral. I told HR and they went wide-eyed and silent for a bit before ushering me to the comfy seat while they tore a bollock off my manager. Had they not done that, I think I probably would have rage quit.

But why would my manager think that this would be a rational thing to do? Did she thing that one day would mean I delivered a critical project on time (no, I was a junior) My manager made a judgement that it would be fine to reject a bereavement leave.

The point is, now that I am manager, I make sure that my underlings are and feel cared for. The short term productivity for being a prick to them will evaporate in days. If I can't do something for them, or allow them to do something, I say I can't and why.

Am I a great manager? no, because I'm not really organised. But my team work well despite me, rather than because of me.

This is where you went wrong.

You don’t ask, you tell.

Whether they pay you for any additional bereavement leave beyond what is required is a different matter. They could agree to pay from accrued leave, or sick / personal leave, or unpaid time off.

People don’t care about the birthday card. They care when the manager does something nice for everyone but them.

Nobody cares about a pizza party, they care that the manager didn’t think to save any pizza for the team that had to do an emergency call out to a client site during lunch.

If your actual friends or family want to do something, that's fine. But mandatory birthday card signings and having your workplace surprise "decorated" with stuff for a children's birthday party (that gets taken down and reused for the next office birthday) is grim, impersonal, and infantilizing. Nothing at all would be better.

Note: If your workplace celebrates birthdays and you don’t want yours celebrated, just ask, they will almost certainly accommodate you.

If you want to celebrate your birthday with your team, you bring in your own cake. The manager will designate time for the team to eat it and maybe have some company beers at the end of the day.

If you don't bring in anything then there's just private words throughout the day.

The system eliminates any need to ask to split the cost or go through a budget request, since it's one dessert item once a year.

How likely is one to find all of the above in a job? My current job is essentially the opposite of all of those items. Though, believe it or not, it's not a bad place to work. Just very old school and non-tech focused.

If I find out that management is being adversarial to ICs (eg. not offering to pay 75th percentile salaries, giving crap equity offers) I've put pressure to let heads roll. Similarly, if I've seen ICs become adversarial (eg. quiet quitting, overemployed, ignoring brutally honest conversations to upskill, constantly undermining product roadmaps) I've often allowed heads to roll as well.

At least in the Bay Area, the "Netflix Model" has become the norm post-COVID - pay top dollar, but also be open to fire if interests do not align.

What I've noticed in my career as an IC and management is a lot of lower-mid level management are people who were promoted well beyond where their capabilities. To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.

I find this funny because it suggests an equilibrium point where 75% of management must be adversarial by definition.

Adversarial is a loaded word. In my experience, the management I’d call most adversarial occurred at companies paying 80th to 90th percentile or higher. The attitude is that they’re paying employees enough that they need to shut up and put up with anything that comes their way. If you don’t like it, we have a list of qualified applicants who will gladly take your place in a heartbeat and won’t complain as much because those paychecks are larger than what they made at their last company.

> To be brutally honest, the stereotypical snarky HNer who is promoted to Staff Eng with an option to become an EM is the worst hire in any organization.

I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time. It’s a trap because those people are often very valuable right after they’re promoted, but the roles where they become disconnected from writing code but retain the engineer title leads to a disconnectedness that flips toward counterproductive after a few years. It goes from having an experienced person coaching others to having someone with outdated and mostly abstract knowledge who gets to gatekeep everyone’s activities based on how things worked several years ago when they were still hands on.

Well, yes in a way.

Criticism is expected and encouraged, but if it is done so while ignoring the 3 primary goals of a business:

1. Drive revenue growth

2. Expand TAM

3. Land strategic deals (not all customers are equal)

and is provided without a solution, you will be replaced. I don't care about prioritizing a bug fix or codebase refactor if the alternative means not being able to release feature X to help land Acme's mid 7 figure TCV deal.

The best Engineers I've worked with learnt how to merge valid engineering concerns with the top-line concerns mentioned above as well as being able to provide solutions. It's also how I was able to go from an IC to management.

If an employee thinks they know better, they can try to become a PM or start a competitor.

The bad experiences mentioned above really took off shortly before and during COVID, and this is why we are seeing the pendulum swing the opposite direction.

> I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time.

I partially agree.

I think a Staff Eng role where it is someone who is deeply technical but helps align their team's delivery with other teams is extremely valuable (basically Staff+ as an architect role).

What I feel is the severe title inflation that arose during COVID turned "staff" into the new "senior", with too many people who floated into the role without aptitude.

I didn’t mention criticism, though.

The abuse I was talking about was more like: “VP so-and-so mentioned this in a meeting so I need you to work nights and weekends until it’s done” for trivial features or bugs.

In one case we had a CEO who would do surprise visits to offices and demand an on-the-spot demo of what he thought the team should have been working on, often without prior communication that he wanted it to be our top priority. If you didn’t have something highly polished to demo or any bugs occurred during the impromptu demo, you could expect hours of verbal lashing and insults.

When he left, the top manager would run around trying to explain that it’s just part of the job operating at this pay grade.

I’m not talking about whiny or unproductive employees being pushed out. This is about managerial dysfunction being justified by high compensation. When people’s hands feel tied by any job change coming with a step down in compensation, a lot of toxicities can thrive. Not all highly paid companies are like this, but at big companies that pay well you can find pockets of managers who use the high pay as a weapon.

The kind of management you had in mind is different from the kind of management I had in mind. With bad managers (and there are plenty), you have no choice but to cut your loss and leave.

Anyway, maturity is overrated, and sometimes A holes need to be called A holes, I haven't read the comment at issue so whether the parent deserved it is left as an exercise for the reader.

I turned heel and ran in those cases. It's a bad analogy for managing people and should not be perpetuated.

On a related note, I wouldn't mind being treated like a dog by someone who is up to date with modern dog training practices: instant rewards for success, no negative feedback(unless I'm being aggressive, but I think I can manage that much), and tons of belly and/or back rubs! Where do I sign?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkGfF7LBlk4

Although it seems unlikely to me that anyone who is taking time off after feeling slighted is doing so as some kind of silent protest in hopes that the manager will change. I expect it is done to nurse the wound.

Human beings can with varying degrees of success reflect on their behavior. They can recognize how certain behaviors on their part might encourage certain responses among employees. More importantly, however, they can recognize which behaviors on their part are simply not good in the first place and learn to behave as they should. It's not a question of aligning domino tiles so they fall over a certain way. First and foremost, it's a question of justice and benevolence. Be just and be benevolent, not a domino-aligning psychopath.