New answers tagged company-culture
1
Specifically, two co-workers were shouting, not directed at anyone in the room, but at a general frustration for the boss not being there ever to listen and address their serious concerns.
I'm guessing this meeting is set up to address concerns about the workplace? But the bosses, or decision makers are never there? So the question of why these meetings ...
4
In most of the United States, employment is "at will". That means you can be fired for any reason, or no reason, at all (provided they're not illegal reasons).
So yes, you can be fired for acting out your anger (definitely).
And yes, acting out your anger can scare people. Especially if you're big, and/or are male, and/or are more than one person doing ...
5
In the mandatory safety training (videos with quizzes after) that we have to take as a large contractor at a federal agency, we are supposed to report to management if someone is showing anger.
In theory, that person is at a heightened risk of causing Workplace Violence. So that's one data point.
5
In US workplace culture, is expressing anger not acceptable?
Expressing anger as an emotion is really frowned upon, period. What does an expression of anger solve exactly? It just shows that you are a person that is okay with making people feel really uncomfortable or threatened when your emotions get the best of you. Expressing anger is akin to "Hey look, ...
14
Specifically, two co-workers were shouting, not directed at anyone in the room, but at a general frustration
In this situation yes, it would be unacceptable in any sane company. It's potential hysteria which is unpredictable and contagious.
23
Is expressing anger prohibited in the American workplace?
Even though it might not be explicitly prohibited, expressing anger violently (even if only verbally) is NOT welcome in any place. Not even inside one's family. Therefore, not even "in the American workplace".
The anger seemed reasonable. Specifically, two co-workers were shouting, not directed at ...
1
I think no one has addressed the below so far: people focus on "don't" (which I fully support) or focus on some coding practices.
If you cannot fully abolish unpaid overtime (as it comes from above), what can you do?
Can you provide flexible working hours? "Guys and gals, I know, we need to clock 80 hours a week, but in my team you can come and go when you ...
1
Responding to your first update:
On the other hand if it is Sunday but we are at office work overtime, how much time is acceptable to use social media?
On a Sunday? I would say at least eight hours is acceptable.
Though I would hope that they would get bored sooner than that!
To begin with, why don't you make weekend work more fun?
You all have to ...
2
Answering this bit specifically:
sometimes I observe that my team-members don't work as focused as they should because we all know we need to work overtime again
What's probably happening here is that they've realised that they're not just in the office until a few bugs are fixed, but that they're stuck there for however many hours senior management has ...
5
Culture Problem
I think Karl Bielefeldt's answer is the best one, but I would like to state it even more forcefully: you have a culture problem, and it has nothing to do with China. Your boss wants bugs in your software fixed? Awesome!!! There are countless times in my career when I wanted to prioritize bug fixing, but management wanted more feature ...
30
Your job as a team lead / manager is to shield those in your team from the rubbish that comes from above so that they're productive.
You need to find out WHY they're having to work overtime. Are they being generally unproductive, or are the timelines unrealistic?
If they're unrealistic, then you need to take steps to make them realistic... Get the team ...
3
Are you using a formal process? I'm guessing from the contextual clues and your other question that you are a) building software and b) in China. 'a' is relevant, 'b' may not be, but keep in mind I'm coming from a United States/Canada perspective and there may be cultural/learned behaviors that affect the viability of my suggestions or require adapting them. ...
6
There are other ways to increase productivity on bug fixes than just working longer. I would solicit ideas from your team about that and give them time to implement their ideas. Empowerment goes a long way toward morale. For some ideas:
Improve testing and get tests to run before every merge.
Refactoring of problematic code.
Prioritize your bugs so the ...
59
The way your employer treats people benefits nobody. They might get unpaid overtime from their staff but that is likely to result in poor morale, low quality work and a high turnover of staff (along with the cost/time required to train replacements).
In the long term, I think you need to push to change your employer's mindset. They are unlikely to ...
-15
How can I manage my members to maintain a reasonable productivity when my employer doesn't treat employees well?
The last half of the question is irrelevant. If employees are not being productive, discipline them since other approaches have not worked out. If you aren't prepared to discipline then you're failing in your role.
Take a guess at who is the ...
183
A wiser man than me said “You can make people stay in the office for 80 hours a week, but you can’t make them work more than 40 hours a week.”
That’s the problem you are running into, and there’s nothing you can do.
People come to the office because you pay them. They work because they want to. And you know why these people have no motivation to work.
1
Bad working conditions will take a toll on your employees - it doesn't matter who is to blame for them.
The best you can do is convince management that unpaid overtime is counter-productive and the rate of which they're pulling the 'occasional bit of overtime' as per what is likely in your employees' contracts might be illegal (jurisdiction dependant).
...
Top 50 recent answers are included
