Piece for the mechanical manager
Consider a classic storyline, many of us have already managed to visit this scene ...
Director
Manager
Timlid HR
Developer Director: Colleagues, I gathered you to discuss the situation with the recruitment for the position of “front-end developer”. Yesterday, the customer called me and reminded that according to the ToR, delivery deadlines come in a month, and instead of the client part we have an html page with two buttons. What about the frontend? Pause. Everyone silently looks at the developer. Developer: Listen, I'm actually a server developer. You asked me two months ago to make one button for this project and that’s it! And no one took off other tasks from me. And now it began, where is the frontend, where is the frontend ... I have not been on vacation for two years. Where is the frontend?
Pause. Everyone silently looks at the manager.
Manager: What am I? I have no people. We’ve been looking for the front-end six months, and still nothing. And the terms require me! Let HR tell us why there is still no person.
HR: Over the past two weeks, we have looked at six candidates. Ivanov wants 300 thousand, Petrov merged, Milich does not fit, Sidorov does not know the backend, Vasiliev is from other cities, Filippov is age, he will be 32 in the summer.
Manager: How did Petrov merge? We wanted to make him an offer.
Timlid: Yes, he even merged ugly, he said that he would not do the third test task, allegedly he had no time. It’s good that he fell off, then would have suffered with him. According to Vasiliev, I am against it, he is from the region. Well, what? We are a springboard for him. It will work for us a year and will go to 300 thousand, like Ivanov.
Manager: Well, with Ivanov it’s clear that we don’t have 300 thousand, but what’s wrong with this Milich?
Timlid: Milich is her. I take against the girls. No, I'm not a male chauvinistic pig! We’ll teach her everything now, and she’ll dump her on maternity leave.
HR: She already has a baby.
Timlid: Well, especially since she has a baby, washing, diapers, a kindergarten!
HR: Does she have a diaper over your table or something to dry?
Timlid: How old is she? thirty? Well, then the second decree will go. Not! We need a person for a long time.
Director (answers the call): Everyone is quiet! This is the customer! Good afternoon, Sergey Ivanovich! How does it work again? That writes? And what browser did you open in? In the explorer? It should be in chrome. Do not like chrome? I will tell the guys they will finish it. Yes, yes, remember that in a month. And we’ll fix the colors, our designers are working on it.
Developer (smiling sadly): Are designers also me?
Timlid: Yeah, you too. You are the front, the back, and the designer. I said it was necessary to look for a full stack. In the resource plan I wrote.
Manager: I do not remember this. Let's see the resource plan. Alexander Viktorovich, please open, there is a letter from me with the subject “plan”. No, "resource plan."
The director unfolds the monitor, shares mail on the screen, begins to rummage through all folders.
Director: I’ll find it now. I have 100 letters a day and without your plan! When did you send it?
Solemnly retrieves an unread message with the subject “resource plan” from the “spam” folder.
HR, manager, and team leader swear loudly and irritatedly, looking at the monitor.
Director: All over! Understand each other! So that in a week the front-end is sitting here.
Manager (contacting the developer): Well, you, until we found the front-end, finish it there. Color at least look, fonts. Yes, another customer wants pop-ups. I did not say? Well, now I say. Yes, and cross-browser compatibility. Yes, it was not in TK, but the director was talking to you right now! So come on, do it, the deadline is yesterday.
Developer (whispers in HR’s ear): "By your own" is written with two "n"?
A familiar situation, right? Let's look at breaking down the problems into two main categories: managerial errors of managers and problems with resource planning.
Selection of candidates according to criteria that are not relevant to their professional skills . Screening of qualified specialists on such grounds as gender, age, nationality, place of residence, stereotypes and cliches, which the supervisor applies without hesitation to all candidates. It is very difficult to form a team of 25-year-old blond male beasts with a Moscow residence permit in the current realities of the labor market. The search is eventually delayed.
Greed.The confidence of the head is that if you search, you will surely find a “signora" who agrees to work for the salary of "June". If you have to look for a year for this, then there’s time. “But in 2001 I received 15 thousand and lived on them!” Questions about how much the dollar cost in 2001, a communal apartment or a bottle of beer are not taken into account. As well as why a person should go to you for a salary of 70 if he can easily find an offer of 120 on the market.
Many managers have high expectations regarding the competitiveness of their current team in the labor market and the relevance of tasks. Remarkable descriptions of the requirements for the applicant from the series "knowledge of all programming languages" in the vacancy with the tasks of the encoder, this is certainly one of the symptoms of this problem.
Choosing a candidate, the manager assumes responsibility and bears risks. This raises doubts about the correctness of the decision . How many questions do not ask at the interview, how many do not give the candidate test tasks, you will not receive answers to all questions. It seems that if you look at more candidates, the decision will be easier to make: “I want three or four interviews a day, we'll see twenty people, and then I will choose”. The leader expects that one of the applicants will magically “stick” that this is the same ... And the problem of choice will be removed itself.
Problems with the team.The team does not want a new person and actively resists. How can this be? For example, because of the bonus system, in which the larger the team, the lower the bonus. A limited number of interesting tasks, which is why everyone is afraid of a new distribution in favor of a beginner. A daffodil leader pushing his foreheads together, encouraging intrigue.
Resource planning is a complicated, ungrateful thing, and it is subject only to the coolest and most experienced managers. What is a resource plan for? For the correct calculation of margins, project dates and planning the workload of employees. With unprocessed resource planning, part of the team will be underloaded, the other part will be constantly processed. As a result, from a smooth, beautiful, but not related to reality Roadmap, we get the same unviable recruitment plan.
The costs of illiterate planning may include the following situations.
Finding an employee is a “crutch,” a temporary solution to resolve a local problem, and everyone understands this well. The question, what should the specialist do next, after the problem is solved, begins to torment the team leader long before the interview. To fire? Upload a chore? Retrain?
In the process of working on the project, it turns out that the Roadmap is a curve and we are looking for the wrong person. The manager did not consult with the team leader, or did not understand and scored. Well, this is not the worst situation, unless, of course, it happened during someone’s probationary period. Only 3-4 meetings on the topic of " who we are really looking for, " the re-coordination of the vacancy, half a year of HR HR work under the tail.
Nobody really needs. It is enough to decompose the tasks, maybe attract outsourcing or free resources from another team. A job was opened, selection was allowed, cheers! And what to do with a person? Well, let's just see the market, suddenly a genius will come and write a new operating system for us. Everything
is so bad on the project that only the magician will save the situation. Gandalf from development, capable of magically transforming a shaky structure from “crutches” and “bicycles” into a fault-tolerant scalable system. In this case, “knowledge of all programming languages” is no longer a show off, but an objective necessity. The problem is that the magician’s salary expectations do not fit into the budget, after the project by common efforts turned from a commercial into an investment one. Signor’s salary is 250-300K, and this, you know, is a million from the project budget for one trial period only.
Personnel Manager - to prevent the existence of hovering vacancies of the "red spot" type, an endless storm in the atmosphere of Jupiter, observed since 1665. It seems that the spot is decreasing, but this is not accurate. The director is not the all-seeing One, and you may forget that you are looking for a front-end soon for a year. The situation is complicated if HR and decision-makers for vacancies are in different weight categories. What can you do, you need to be able to work with any managers, with the forever busy, with TOPs, shareholders.
The project manager should do resource planning. To analyze the structure of work, really analyze, and not hastily reduce the figures taken from the ceiling after the director promised to close the selection to everyone who does not provide a resource plan. Estimate the amount of labor required to meet the budget and deadlines without losing quality. Calculate the number of specialists with the necessary qualifications and experience. Lack of resources is, of course, a universal justification for shifting deadlines. “I don’t have anyone to work with, point, deal with HR, they can’t find the analyst for the second year.” At some point, the director will just get tired of listening to it and then their heads will fly.
And back to the office, because the front-end has still not been found, and the lead developer ran to collect things with thesourcelabor book. What can a leader do in a similar situation:
Write in the comments how you would solve the case.
Director
Manager
Timlid HR
Developer Director: Colleagues, I gathered you to discuss the situation with the recruitment for the position of “front-end developer”. Yesterday, the customer called me and reminded that according to the ToR, delivery deadlines come in a month, and instead of the client part we have an html page with two buttons. What about the frontend? Pause. Everyone silently looks at the developer. Developer: Listen, I'm actually a server developer. You asked me two months ago to make one button for this project and that’s it! And no one took off other tasks from me. And now it began, where is the frontend, where is the frontend ... I have not been on vacation for two years. Where is the frontend?
Pause. Everyone silently looks at the manager.
Manager: What am I? I have no people. We’ve been looking for the front-end six months, and still nothing. And the terms require me! Let HR tell us why there is still no person.
HR: Over the past two weeks, we have looked at six candidates. Ivanov wants 300 thousand, Petrov merged, Milich does not fit, Sidorov does not know the backend, Vasiliev is from other cities, Filippov is age, he will be 32 in the summer.
Manager: How did Petrov merge? We wanted to make him an offer.
Timlid: Yes, he even merged ugly, he said that he would not do the third test task, allegedly he had no time. It’s good that he fell off, then would have suffered with him. According to Vasiliev, I am against it, he is from the region. Well, what? We are a springboard for him. It will work for us a year and will go to 300 thousand, like Ivanov.
Manager: Well, with Ivanov it’s clear that we don’t have 300 thousand, but what’s wrong with this Milich?
Timlid: Milich is her. I take against the girls. No, I'm not a male chauvinistic pig! We’ll teach her everything now, and she’ll dump her on maternity leave.
HR: She already has a baby.
Timlid: Well, especially since she has a baby, washing, diapers, a kindergarten!
HR: Does she have a diaper over your table or something to dry?
Timlid: How old is she? thirty? Well, then the second decree will go. Not! We need a person for a long time.
Director (answers the call): Everyone is quiet! This is the customer! Good afternoon, Sergey Ivanovich! How does it work again? That writes? And what browser did you open in? In the explorer? It should be in chrome. Do not like chrome? I will tell the guys they will finish it. Yes, yes, remember that in a month. And we’ll fix the colors, our designers are working on it.
Developer (smiling sadly): Are designers also me?
Timlid: Yeah, you too. You are the front, the back, and the designer. I said it was necessary to look for a full stack. In the resource plan I wrote.
Manager: I do not remember this. Let's see the resource plan. Alexander Viktorovich, please open, there is a letter from me with the subject “plan”. No, "resource plan."
The director unfolds the monitor, shares mail on the screen, begins to rummage through all folders.
Director: I’ll find it now. I have 100 letters a day and without your plan! When did you send it?
Solemnly retrieves an unread message with the subject “resource plan” from the “spam” folder.
HR, manager, and team leader swear loudly and irritatedly, looking at the monitor.
Director: All over! Understand each other! So that in a week the front-end is sitting here.
Manager (contacting the developer): Well, you, until we found the front-end, finish it there. Color at least look, fonts. Yes, another customer wants pop-ups. I did not say? Well, now I say. Yes, and cross-browser compatibility. Yes, it was not in TK, but the director was talking to you right now! So come on, do it, the deadline is yesterday.
Developer (whispers in HR’s ear): "By your own" is written with two "n"?
A familiar situation, right? Let's look at breaking down the problems into two main categories: managerial errors of managers and problems with resource planning.
Mistakes of leaders
Selection of candidates according to criteria that are not relevant to their professional skills . Screening of qualified specialists on such grounds as gender, age, nationality, place of residence, stereotypes and cliches, which the supervisor applies without hesitation to all candidates. It is very difficult to form a team of 25-year-old blond male beasts with a Moscow residence permit in the current realities of the labor market. The search is eventually delayed.
Greed.The confidence of the head is that if you search, you will surely find a “signora" who agrees to work for the salary of "June". If you have to look for a year for this, then there’s time. “But in 2001 I received 15 thousand and lived on them!” Questions about how much the dollar cost in 2001, a communal apartment or a bottle of beer are not taken into account. As well as why a person should go to you for a salary of 70 if he can easily find an offer of 120 on the market.
Many managers have high expectations regarding the competitiveness of their current team in the labor market and the relevance of tasks. Remarkable descriptions of the requirements for the applicant from the series "knowledge of all programming languages" in the vacancy with the tasks of the encoder, this is certainly one of the symptoms of this problem.
Choosing a candidate, the manager assumes responsibility and bears risks. This raises doubts about the correctness of the decision . How many questions do not ask at the interview, how many do not give the candidate test tasks, you will not receive answers to all questions. It seems that if you look at more candidates, the decision will be easier to make: “I want three or four interviews a day, we'll see twenty people, and then I will choose”. The leader expects that one of the applicants will magically “stick” that this is the same ... And the problem of choice will be removed itself.
Problems with the team.The team does not want a new person and actively resists. How can this be? For example, because of the bonus system, in which the larger the team, the lower the bonus. A limited number of interesting tasks, which is why everyone is afraid of a new distribution in favor of a beginner. A daffodil leader pushing his foreheads together, encouraging intrigue.
Planning problems
Resource planning is a complicated, ungrateful thing, and it is subject only to the coolest and most experienced managers. What is a resource plan for? For the correct calculation of margins, project dates and planning the workload of employees. With unprocessed resource planning, part of the team will be underloaded, the other part will be constantly processed. As a result, from a smooth, beautiful, but not related to reality Roadmap, we get the same unviable recruitment plan.
The costs of illiterate planning may include the following situations.
Finding an employee is a “crutch,” a temporary solution to resolve a local problem, and everyone understands this well. The question, what should the specialist do next, after the problem is solved, begins to torment the team leader long before the interview. To fire? Upload a chore? Retrain?
In the process of working on the project, it turns out that the Roadmap is a curve and we are looking for the wrong person. The manager did not consult with the team leader, or did not understand and scored. Well, this is not the worst situation, unless, of course, it happened during someone’s probationary period. Only 3-4 meetings on the topic of " who we are really looking for, " the re-coordination of the vacancy, half a year of HR HR work under the tail.
Nobody really needs. It is enough to decompose the tasks, maybe attract outsourcing or free resources from another team. A job was opened, selection was allowed, cheers! And what to do with a person? Well, let's just see the market, suddenly a genius will come and write a new operating system for us. Everything
is so bad on the project that only the magician will save the situation. Gandalf from development, capable of magically transforming a shaky structure from “crutches” and “bicycles” into a fault-tolerant scalable system. In this case, “knowledge of all programming languages” is no longer a show off, but an objective necessity. The problem is that the magician’s salary expectations do not fit into the budget, after the project by common efforts turned from a commercial into an investment one. Signor’s salary is 250-300K, and this, you know, is a million from the project budget for one trial period only.
What to do with all this?
Personnel Manager - to prevent the existence of hovering vacancies of the "red spot" type, an endless storm in the atmosphere of Jupiter, observed since 1665. It seems that the spot is decreasing, but this is not accurate. The director is not the all-seeing One, and you may forget that you are looking for a front-end soon for a year. The situation is complicated if HR and decision-makers for vacancies are in different weight categories. What can you do, you need to be able to work with any managers, with the forever busy, with TOPs, shareholders.
The project manager should do resource planning. To analyze the structure of work, really analyze, and not hastily reduce the figures taken from the ceiling after the director promised to close the selection to everyone who does not provide a resource plan. Estimate the amount of labor required to meet the budget and deadlines without losing quality. Calculate the number of specialists with the necessary qualifications and experience. Lack of resources is, of course, a universal justification for shifting deadlines. “I don’t have anyone to work with, point, deal with HR, they can’t find the analyst for the second year.” At some point, the director will just get tired of listening to it and then their heads will fly.
And back to the office, because the front-end has still not been found, and the lead developer ran to collect things with the
- Review Roadmap, analyze remaining tasks. According to them, recalculate labor costs, based on the number of hours received, determine the necessary load.
- Decide on the qualifications of a specialist. Calculating the effectiveness of outsourcing, it may be cheaper.
- Talk with team leader and manager that xenophobia narrows your search.
- Talk with the developer, perhaps write him a prize to maintain morale.
- Request a weekly report with HR, talk with him about timely reporting of hung vacancies. Set a deadline for selection.
Write in the comments how you would solve the case.