Company leadership, like people in general, are not necessarily rational.
What I’ve learned is that most leaders don’t just have a strained relationship with their subordinates. They have an adversarial relationship with them.
They assume that employees are basically trying to do as little as they can, and that they’re running a game on them. Leaders stop being leaders and instead become babysitters or cattle herders.
It isn’t enough to complete your tasks and do it well. If you complete all your tasks excellently but you’re not fully suffering the 40 hours a week, you are cheating them. Because that’s the agreement. The agreement is not “do your job”. It’s work 40 hours a week.
The reality is that an employee working 35 hours a week but getting 10x more done is liable to be fired as compared to someone working 40 hours but mostly twiddling their thumbs. Measuring stuff you do is hard, measuring hours is easy.
Of course this is bad all around. It’s bad for the company because they incentivize poor behaviors. Going above and beyond is punished, so employees don’t. They become warm bodies. If you treat your employees like cattle, they will sit around and moo. But it’s also bad for the employees.
What I’ve learned is that most leaders don’t just have a strained relationship with their subordinates. They have an adversarial relationship with them.
They assume that employees are basically trying to do as little as they can, and that they’re running a game on them. Leaders stop being leaders and instead become babysitters or cattle herders.
It isn’t enough to complete your tasks and do it well. If you complete all your tasks excellently but you’re not fully suffering the 40 hours a week, you are cheating them. Because that’s the agreement. The agreement is not “do your job”. It’s work 40 hours a week.
The reality is that an employee working 35 hours a week but getting 10x more done is liable to be fired as compared to someone working 40 hours but mostly twiddling their thumbs. Measuring stuff you do is hard, measuring hours is easy.
Of course this is bad all around. It’s bad for the company because they incentivize poor behaviors. Going above and beyond is punished, so employees don’t. They become warm bodies. If you treat your employees like cattle, they will sit around and moo. But it’s also bad for the employees.