I "lied" to my teams about work expectations
Welcome to Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans.
It wasn’t intentional but it happened. What was the lie?
I "honestly" told employees: "We don't care where you work or how long, as long as you get your work done."
When I said these words, I meant them.
But an older and slightly wiser me now thinks I misled them.
You have probably heard similar words. If you are a manager, you may have said them and meant them.
The reason this statement is false is because of how corporations work.
While it is true that I never cared if a clever employee finished a tricky assignment quickly and could relax a bit, it was also my job to get "full value" and "maximum productivity" out of my team. What that meant is that if an employee was really good at getting things done, I gave them more and more to do.
Since I gave more work slowly over time, and separately from when I said "I don't care how long you work," I honestly never connected the dots until now.
This is the classic story of turning the heat up on the frog in the pot a bit at a time.
Companies boil people slowly.
Thus, while I truthfully did not care how long a project took, I did have to care if I was getting all I could from an individual.
That is part of a normal manager's job - maximize productivity and output.
Tech companies expect "full-time" employees to work at least 50 hours a week.
Thus, an employee getting all their work done in less time is ultimately considered "underutilized" and the manager's job is to get more work from them.
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I never intended to "lie" to anyone. But I can now see that the system meant that my short-term truth led to a longer-term "lie."
Some people will say that the way around this is to purposefully slow down your work so that you can take your time, take breaks, and fill your week with less work. In the past, I would have recommended against this. Now, it does make sense to me in this one way: I wouldn't rush through something expecting to gain free time long-term.
What you will likely gain is more work.