An Ideal Employer
I fell down a rabbit hole and found an interesting article that reminds me of the intangibles that led me to working here. Sam at CodeOdor.com writes about the Top 6 Non-Monetary Features I Want In An Employer.
Truly food for thought if you are looking for a new job or currently interviewing with a new employer.
The list that really strikes a chord with me is the comment left by Rob Wilkerson. A reprint below, since I can’t link directly to his comment:
Wow. Something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, so here comes a bit of stream-of-consciousness:
1. Interesting work. Yeah, I know it looks like a blatant rip-off, but I want – and frankly expect – to enjoy my work more often than not. I’ve _often_ taken pay cuts (albeit relatively minor ones) to do interesting work. This one’s non-negotiable.
2. Trust. Again, another rip-off, but another must. Trust me to administer my own machine. Trust that he company will get (usually far) more than the required 40 hours from me when I’m not chained to my desk. Trust my management to spot abuse. Trust me to spot abuse by those who report to me.
3. Flexibility. This dovetails nicely with trust, but allow me to come and go – within reason – as I please. Understand that when I’m working from home, I’m _really_ working from home; I’m not “working from home”. Understand that when you see me reading feeds rather than writing code, it’s not whimsical. I’m reading stuff that will, hopefully, make me better at what I do because I enjoy what I do and because I’m a professional.
4. Casual Atmosphere. I’m a developer. I spend most of my day at my desk engineering and coding solutions. I’m not in board meetings. Don’t make me dress to impress. There’s no one to impress. Don’t tell me that dressing professionally makes me act more professionally. The fact that I’m a professional makes me act professionally. That I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt doesn’t confuse me into thinking I’m hanging with buddies at a bar. I recognize the office scenery. Seriously.
5. Productivity Focus. You tell me what you need done. As long as I’m getting it done satisfactorily, don’t jerk me around about the fact that I left a little early last Thursday. Put down the abacus and the time sheets.
6. Competent Management. I can live with incompetent co-workers because I can avoid them for the most part. I can’t live with incompetent management. My rules for managers follow: know what you don’t know, be okay with what you don’t know, understand that I don’t expect you to know everything, recognize that 90% of your job is to know who to ask when a question arises about one of those things you don’t know and then trust my input when I’m asked about the things that I know. Simple.
A lot of these things boil down to this: treat me like an adult and like a professional unless I do something to indicate that I’m not one or the other.
Posted by Rob Wilkerson
I think these are reasonable demands, but sadly it exists in too few work places. When I interviewed for my job here, my immediate supervisor seemed to embody all of these ideas. The real disappointment came later, when I realized that the higher ups did not.
Have anything to add to the discussion? Stop by and leave a comment.
Tags: On the Job, reflection
I’m glad that this resonated with someone. Thanks for bringing it back to life. As I mentioned, it’s something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.
In my mind, this is really just common sense and basic consideration among adults. It shouldn’t be that hard to comprehend or implement. I’m often shocked at the stupid stuff employers ask their people to do or put up with for absolutely no good reason.
I would be interested to see you become a supervisor. There are too few in management who understand how to treat their employees as human beings, let alone expecting them to act with personal responsibility. I think that in the end it comes down to trust. Most management types are unwilling to extend it, which in turn is detrimental to employee morale and performance.
(Oh, and on a side note I apologize for misspelling your name in my post. Some days I forget to edit what I write.)
Actually, I am a supervisor. I’m fortunate that my own supervisors have a similar focus on productivity. It’s much easier to do my job when I don’t have to fight to get them to recognize common sense.
It works pretty well, I think. My guys have a lot of latitude to come and go, but they have to get their shit done and not abuse that latitude.
Hear hear! Those are reasonable demands. Have you been able to infect other supervisors with an attitude of reasonableness?
Edit: This conversation and a refined version of Rob’s thoughts are available in this post.