It's not the author's conclusion, but this is basically my fantasy ever since watching Billions with Wendy Rhoades's character. In that show, Wendy is a performance coach working for a hedge fund whose job is to emotionally pump up the people who work for the hedge fund. The hedge fund employs her because (leaving aside the soap opera dynamics for a second) it recognizes that emotional support is both (a) necessary for fully realizing the potential of their knowledge workers (b) not something that every employee is naturally gifted at providing, neither at work for their colleagues nor in their personal lives.
More companies should employ such coaches and schedule regular sessions for all their employees. If everything's great, then great. If not, it's definitely cheaper than employee churn.
> If you want your employees pumped up about work, focus on treating them well not hiring cheerleaders.
How is the company supposed to know what "treating you well" means if they don't have people who try to figure out what that phrase means to each individual?
Different strokes for different folks, and all that. I'm not picking on you personally, but throughout this entire thread the sentiments I quoted above have been echoed by others.
Look at it a different way ...
A therapist on the payroll (not a cheerleader) will talk to individuals not groups, and in individual engagements will be able to figure out what "treating you well" actually means to that individual.
After all, you want to be treated well by (for example) having some leeway in adopting new tech, while the engineer next to you considers that an additional stress and for him that is "treating him badly". For him, treating him well might involve fewer hours.
Or more Pay.
Or more direct reports.
Or fewer direct reports.
Or company-funded conventions once a year.
Or fewer meetings.
Or more meetings.
Whatever activity the company did that you considered to be "treating you well", I can all but guarantee that one of your peers would consider it "treating me poorly".
Now, granted, I haven't seen the show mentioned, but I think a role along the lines of "wellness engagement and support" is probably a good idea for any company that actually wants to treat their workers well.
How else are they supposed to figure out what "well" means?
Yep, plus, "treating people well" is something that's truly difficult to scale. Think of any nationally size company that interacts with the public - hotel chains, airlines, etc. Everything is process layered on top of process layered on top of process, which helps define minimum standards, but no process can truly standardize how to go "above and beyond" because that's such an individual and in-the-moment thing.
Instructing dozens, hundreds, thousands of managers to treat their employees well wouldn't achieve anything. It's similar to how legal codes can't just prescribe "being a good person is legal, being a bad person is illegal". There's so much room for interpretation that it would be effectively meaningless.
It was a comment on a message board, not a comprehensive guide. I wasn't trying to be fully prescriptive - I was summarising and assuming some interpretation on the part of the reader.
As a line manager, ask your employees what they're looking for and provide an environment where they trust you enough to be honest. Then have an adult discussion about the feasibility of delivering what they want and whether some compromise is in order - 'more ponies' is not possible, 'more money' might engender more responsibility, 'more flexible working hours' can easily be accommodated, for example. If doing this effectively requires a therapist then perhaps the organisation should focus on coaching the managers, not the workers.
A therapist?! Good lord. Call me old fashioned but everything you've described, I would normally expect to be the responsibility of a line manager. If you need a therapist to extract that information then doesn't that indicate a dysfunctional relationship? Why can't a manager just sit down and chat with an employee about what they're looking for, like two adults diacussing someone's career aspirations? Why does it require weekly therapy sessions unless something is badly wrong?
Ever morning we look at the burn down chart. Every morning he tries to tell people to "just see if we can close a ticket because it would be good for the chart".
I've submitted feedback pointing out how negatively useful this little ritual is (because if the task was actually done we'd close the ticket, it's not not being closed just because).
Cynical take is that the company is performing psy-ops on its own employees. Having a psychologist as a performance coach at your workplace is kinda f-ed up if you think about the ways things can go wrong
>More companies should employ such coaches and schedule regular sessions for all their employees.
Yet another fluff meeting that detracts from getting stuff done, adds pressure to deadlines, and is just supposed to make us feel good like a 'pizza party'? To try to encourage us to ignore our families and stay up late working for the company's gain?
I haven't seen the show, but I'm a little cynical of the premise.
I once worked for a company that hired consultants for something like that, and mostly it just increased the already high turnover and burnout level. Maybe there were good intentions, but in practice it just added pressure, fuel to the fire.
The character portrayed is a trained therapist. Not a consultant, not a lifestyle coach (most of whom have little formal training and are there because they don’t know what else to do with their lives), but somebody who is there to figure out what you need to work through emotionally to succeed in your role.
I have a private therapist who deals with my personal, and sometimes work, issues. It has been a major contributor to me avoiding burnout through 4 of the roughest years in my career.
I don’t consider therapy to be fluff, and I’d see an employer investing in it as a good sign, not a “pizza party” type event.
My employer does try to invest in mental health awareness but it’s limited to discounts on meditation apps and internal docs on structuring your work a little better.
Employers should give their workers the money they need to get a therapist themselves, if that’s what they choose. I’m so sick of this seemingly parental outlook where companies try to pretend they’re looking out for you while really their only goal is to extract maximum value. It’s okay that the relationship is transactional. Companies should acknowledge that and act accordingly.
When I hit burnout I had a therapist for awhile, and that was very helpful.
But I certainly wouldn't want my therapist to be owned by and reporting to my employer, nor would I want to lose my therapist if I switched jobs. It's likely when you do lose or quit your job that you need your therapist most.
I had a more cynical understanding of her role. The hedge fund employs her to influence the workers to fulfill the company’s goals. Preferably while aligning these goals with the worker’s health/own goals but that’s not the priority.
Watching this show I kept thinking that I would never ever ever go to see the psychiatrist/psychologist who’s on my employer’s payroll… and I often wonder how these traders who are so smart can’t see the massive conflict of interest or potential for a “play” (as they call them in the show) on themselves from the information gathered.
This is a really good idea, but all the negative comments in this thread proves the point that receiving help for mental health has a negative stigma associated with it.
When we can't solve a technical problem, we often talk to others to unblock ourselves. This is 100% the exact same thing with emotional/mental problems. You need to talk to someone to help "unblock" you as well and allow you to go back to your full productivity.
Having said that, this coach definitely needs some sort of professional license. Having "Life Coach" on the resume isn't going to cut it.
> More companies should employ such coaches and schedule regular sessions for all their employees. If everything's great, then great. If not, it's definitely cheaper than employee churn.
Actually a few companies i know do that for their executive staff just not rank and file employees like in the show. Also if we’re talking about engineers beyond very early stage imo it would have very limited utility for the company
The idea that encouraging your engineers in some way — whether through this particular method or not — would have limited utility is absurd. It goes to show how poorly and inaccurately they are often regarded, and it’s no surprise to see it in another weekly 100-comment burnout HN thread.
Specifically having a therapist or a coach around is not a big concern, but if your company considers you and your performance important, you will be encouraged to develop yourself and develop your network in the company one way or the other. Whether this happens is the quickest way to determine if you are considered an NPC or not. For example, if travel between offices is common in your company, but you don’t travel and are just thrown in on projects with random people around the world, then you know it’s you. Main characters meet up, plan, improve, guide, imagine, act, change; NPCs more or less do what they’re told. If you rarely hear a word of encouragement or feedback about what you’re doing, it’s probably because nobody cares — or they think they could replace you in a week — and you should calibrate how much you care accordingly.
I'm thinking small gains in performance for executive/sales/trader-type roles could lead to disproportional gains for the business (big deals, trades, etc). For engineers and similar type roles what are you going to write couple thousand more lines of javascript a month?
> what are you going to write couple thousand more lines of javascript a month
I think this code-only mentality is what will replace engineers with chatGPT.
We need to understand the business, make high level decisions, coordinate across functions - all are crucial to the outcome of our work. It’s not just managerial types that need to do this, so we could all benefit from some coaching and help.
Well, I'm skeptical of the overall approach, but isn't the premise of this thread, that coaching keeps people from quitting? You probably won't improve performance of a single engineer, but make a key player quit, and you can kill performance of the whole operation for months and years.
It's not the author's conclusion, but this is basically my fantasy ever since watching Billions with Wendy Rhoades's character. In that show, Wendy is a performance coach working for a hedge fund whose job is to emotionally pump up the people who work for the hedge fund. The hedge fund employs her because (leaving aside the soap opera dynamics for a second) it recognizes that emotional support is both (a) necessary for fully realizing the potential of their knowledge workers (b) not something that every employee is naturally gifted at providing, neither at work for their colleagues nor in their personal lives.
More companies should employ such coaches and schedule regular sessions for all their employees. If everything's great, then great. If not, it's definitely cheaper than employee churn.