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‘Foundational promise’

I love these as a new mgr - new guy shows up, I know nothing of their unique ‘foundational promise’, I have no idea if they can contribute or work well with team, I put some effort in to get them going, then they start sending long (they are always WAY too long) emails about being special cased over 20 people who I’ve known longer and have worked harder for me. I check with HR and a hard pass. I’m not considered humane for failing to give someone I’m paying lots of money to lots of remote work time. And I know what remote work time is like when an employee is visiting family - even though they are “working“ it takes them hours to respond to slack.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but if you look at compensation rates - your manager does get to call the shots at least a little in return for money they are throwing at you.

And yes, if a top performer keeping you is pretty high up on list. 20 reports is too many though - def not a great sign in my book.




> even though they are “working“ it takes them hours to respond to slack.

Interesting, I feel the opposite. The longer it takes me to respond to someone’s messages, the more real work I am actually getting done because I’m deeply focused. The days where I quickly reply to everyone are usually the most unproductive.


I think it depends on the team and your role. In many cases, much of your value comes from being a team member, not a lone wolf, which extends beyond your personal git commits. Sometimes being available to answer questions, remove blockers, review a proposal, etc., is simply more valuable to the team than you plugging away on a ticket for four hours in isolation. In other words, while you might feel more productive because your personal output in git is higher, your impact on the team's progress might actually be lower. Of course, this can also be taken too far to the point where you're always being distracted and can't do any substantial coding. The right balance depends on what the team is trying to accomplish.


I agree - but my own experience is remote workers working at home etc -> can have very high productivity.

Remote workers on vacation / traveling / visiting family -> low productivity.

That said, overall situation -> totally reasonable to bail out for the employee, clearly not a good fit overall. But for the last, new manager - they may not have had a good impression of employee given employee was themselves not treated properly by company before and the expectations they brought were out of the blue for new person.




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