Do you tell?

[Madrigal]

I was appalled to receive a form in which I was expected to make a list of outsourced employees who were doing their jobs wrong. In other words, be a snitch. It wasn't just for me, it was for everyone to fill in. I was even more appalled when I discovered how many people were actually doing it.

So, on top of the fact their salary is an insult and probably half of it depends on meeting a series of complicated, often illogical performance standards, they're supervised not only by the assholes who are watching every break they take, but a whole mass of regular morons also gets to give them shit?

Supervise your own godddamn workforce! If they don't work well then the company's not training them, motivating them or even making it objectively possible for them to work well. How about paying decent wages and setting realistic standards that don't drive people clinically insane, instead of trying to drag us all into your fascist little scheme. I wouldn't even do this shit for money, assholes.

Ugh. I started telling people to boycott this, I regret I didn't do it immediately, I lost a day.

[stigmatica]

I only snitch on the people that make everyone elses lives more difficult and miserable in the workplace, such as the person that sent out that form, and/or ordered the form to be sent. That's a nuclear bomb to moral/happiness/teamwork and everything else that matters.

ESPECIALLY when it comes to outsourced workers. It creates an us vs them mentality.. and mob mentality where the outsourced will never look good.

[starla]

I've trained a lot of people in my career and "snitched" on two, who were subsequently fired. In both cases, management already knew they were problems but needed backup to get them out the door. I don't feel sorry for either of them. Both were getting paid good salaries and doing nothing despite being smart enough to handle the work. And I don't think they weren't trained enough; I've trained a lot more people who worked out than didn't.

I also think that if you need a lot of hand holding to learn your job, you probably aren't capable of anything more complex, thus your growth is extremely limited. Sometimes this is ok, and sometimes it's even preferable. People who don't have better options are the ones who are still sticking around 20 years later.

I'll snitch on management in a heartbeat though. Those MOFOs better be doing their jobs well because it's not like they add any value to the product in exchange for their fat salaries. They're just skimming off the backs of the hourlies.

[ciphersort]

Ugh. I started telling people to boycott this, I regret I didn't do it immediately, I lost a day.

I'd submit fictitious names. Fuck 'em.

[Senseye]

Never really been asked to do this in the way you describe. Snitch so to speak. I would be reluctant to do so.

Per Madrigal supervise your own damn workforce. Managers get paid the big bucks (or bigger than me anyway) to deal with this kind of issue. Don't try and make me the bad guy because you can't do your job.

[Thevenin]

This is a "divide and conquer" strategy. It sows distrust and suspicion among employees and confers more power on management. But, it's really dumb and counterproductive because it destroys morale.

[Rhu]

Of course I snitch. Snitching is part of the job. If there's a bug in the code and someone asks, I'll give the name of the person that put it in the codebase. I'll even give my analysis of why they might have done it.

If the bug-creator happens to be on the same development team as me, I'll even walk up to them in order to discuss where their error was and why it had to be fixed. Often, this involves me talking to myself.

[pensive_pilgrim]

Morale only matters if you want people to stick around in the long term, right? If you just want to squeeze productivity out of people, turning them against each other seems like a good bet.

[Anon]

No, even though it's a small company and we don't really have much room for fucking up. I work pretty closely with the delivery driver, and I've seen him fuck things up plenty of times, but I've never considered snitching. If the customers aren't complaining, the equipment isn't breaking, and the truck isn't crashing, then ultimately it isn't that big of a deal. And in general, this isn't something that I'd do.

[Polemarch]

When evaluating outsourced employees, who are not employed by your own company, this feedback process is necessary. Often, the client service representatives who manage an account like that don't have very good information about how their employees are performing, and sometimes, as the firm hiring their services, you have better information. How the hell can you manage any kind of services organization without feedback?

I also don't think anyone should be afraid of factual feedback being gathered about them. Part of my annual performance review involves my manager asking all of my business partners for feedback on my performance. Some of it's constructive, and we use that. Some of it isn't useful, so we disregard it. My manager and I discuss it together, and even though I don't always see the actual comments or where they came from, she does her best to paraphrase so I can benefit from it.

And if everyone thinks I do a shitty job, it's used against me. Why shouldn't it be? (This doesn't happen - but if it did, wouldn't it be relevant?)

Using the word "snitch" or "informing" makes it sound like a police state. That's where the us v them mentality is coming from - internally, your perceptions that management is out to get you.

But then again, I'm not in a union, I don't really believe in unions, and I'm not actually being exploited. If I worked in a wage-slave job, where I could be easily replaced, even if unfairly, I'd probably care a lot more about how I was being judged. Still though - feedback gathering is a necessary step, and you can only hope that the data is used by management in a way that is fair and open, and strictly business related.