Comment by mejutoco
8 hours ago
> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior
Regarding dog training, one can use a placeholder for the reward. This is useful, for example, if you want to reward a dolphin jumping through a hula, because you will not be able to give the reward at that moment, but for example, you can say "yes!" or use a clicker at that moment, and give the reward later, and it will be clear what caused it.
For anyone training any animal, I recommend the book: Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor (not affiliated in any way)
Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior. Likewise, a manager is not going to associate a slight towards an employee with an increase in absenteeism or lower productivity that happens days and weeks later.
Note that GP is comparing the _managers_ motivation to a dog’s motivation, not the worker. It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).
>It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).
It's delayed because the employee fears further retribution still. You need some distance between yourself and the bloodthirsty dog before you can even hope to reduce your productivity, or you'll be mauled quite enthusiastically. By delaying it for days or weeks, by being out of sight when it happens, there is plausible deniability that can let them survive the attacks.
Managers do this to themselves, they punish people who would give them the quick feedback loop.
The point is that /anyone/ is being compared to a dog, that the whole relationship is being compared as such. It's demeaning and is pretty much a slight, ironically enough (albeit directed towards the manager in this occasion)
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Leadership, authority, command, etc. have many forms that don't necessarily match up with what is effective or how people would like to be treated as a subordinate. Assuming that managers know better than to be assholes to their employees (or vice-versa) is a huge and very wrong assumption. Social skills also benefit from training and practice like anything else. Many people have never seen or experienced professional and competent management, so they have no example to follow or model to emulate.
Having a documented effect and effect size puts this in terms that can change manager behavior, even a somewhat callous one, because they can see how it affects their own professional goals.
Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.
Well, to many it seemed that an obvious cause-and-effect fact that should have come from empathy and introspection--that workers are just like you and I don't like being slighted--and didn't need to be written about.
Yet when of the top comments used dog training to explain manager-worker relations--something that empathy and introspection could tell you was a bit off (would you feel slighted if I make our interactions analogous to an owner and dog?)--it may show, yes, such does need to be spelt out these days.
I recall the University of Manchester was teaching university students empathy.
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I respect my managers less than I respect dogs.
Given that many organizations literally refer to their employees as “Resource Units” literally abstracting away their humanity I’m going to say… yes. We are at that point (and have been for quite some time).
There are few things that make me irrationally seethe like being called a resource. I understand why they do it, I even accept that I'm nothing more than a resource to them, but it really isn't a big ask for them to refer to us as humans when speaking directly to us.
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People are animals like any other. That’s not a slight. Managers respond to incentives much like dogs do too, and so do execs, and board members, and every human.
The top-level comment was being ironic. To explain the joke, the employees are withholding the reward of hard work from the employer because the employer behaved badly (by slighting them in some way).
I have an example of this that happened to me:
I received a referral bonus and where the company payroll made an error and accidentally gave me a higher bonus per the level of employee my referral reward was (they set it to the bonus level for a VP and she was a Sr. Director). So unbeknownst to me they gave me $5000 extra in my bonus that should have been only $3000, not $8k. Accounting figured this out next tax season, so then they informed me the would be clawing their error overpayment back had, which apparently is legal. Thus the $5k was taken out of my next paycheck. Their error was not my fault!
I was really annoyed and basically stopped going above and beyond for that company the rest of the year. :-/
It just seemed very petty and reactionary of them for something that was their error originally. This messed up my budget and suddenly having $5k less 9 months later that I hadn't anticipated was a bit of an unforeseen financial hardship. Also she had been my 5th referral to date that they'd hired!!
The whole thing was very demoralizing.
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Indeed, they're not animals--we don't want them demanding hay https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2002-08-05
> Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation?
Never met a manager in your life, I take it?
I think you responded to the wrong post. I did not suggest or made any of these comparisons or comments. I simply recommended a book about training dogs or other animals, and the clicker method.
I thought this was more about training your manager...
This comment comes across as written by someone who hasn't seen a toxic work environment.
Sociopaths often make up an unusually large percentage of the upper layers of management. They won't hesitate to step on people to get ahead, and use the typical conflict aversion of regular people to their advantage- causing drama and fights, wearing others down, and eventually getting their way because most people just want their pay cheque, not to go into battle constantly.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
> Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation?
American culture is unfortunately permeated with examples, and habits, and expectations around punishing the behaviors you'd want to see. I see subtle things like that all the time. So while I doubt anyone who stopped to actually think about the concrete implications of their behavior, more specifically their unconscious habits; wouldn't be able to describe how insulting people, or really, how discouraging people is likely to have a negative outcome. The catch being, most people don't stop to consider anything. Thoes who do, are exceptionally rare.
As an example, someone posted a comment providing context, and encouraging people to be curious and grow their skill set with techniques that will help them with dogs, (and yes, these do translate to humans as well.)
Which invited a negative comment from you attacking people who aren't perfect every single moment of every single day, who might benefit from a reminder that how they treat others matters. Also indirectly attacking the person you replied to.
(See what I mean about the culture of punishing the behavior, you want to see? Or did you intend to discourage curiosity?)
> Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog. Just because humans are also, in addition to those able to do a lot more, and learn in an astronomically larger set of ways, doesn't exclude the techniques that work best with dogs. You forget this at your own peril. I.e. if the way you behave wouldn't encourage the behavior you want from a dog well, it sure as hell wont encourage the behavior from a human. All humans, including you, are not that special, get over yourself. rhetorically speaking
> You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog.
Depending on the context, this can traumatize a human though. This idea has been the basis for both gay conversion therapy and applied behavior analysis. The latter I have had the misfortune to directly experience myself.
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Probably, which is unfortunate. I have personally seen a VP be shocked that morale tanked after a large layoff. I think he said “you would think they would be happy they still have jobs”. Lots of sociopaths in the C-Suite.
Technically I believe the dog is the manager in this metaphor.
The length of time between behaviour and reward/punishment is too great. So to train your manager you need to go home straight away.
I thought it was interesting. Going through something like this myself right now, I learned that I don't lose motivation to do the work. I gain a motivation to cut the person out of the picture.
We definitely do. How else are the LLMs that are going to replace managers will learn that? /s
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what heuristic are you using to reach this broad conclusion? what do you propose could be done to alleviate the issue you perceive?
Thank You
I suppose the employee-getting-revenge-on-manager equivalent would be playing some loud, annoying sound immediately after the slight, and then engaging in absenteeism and cutting work early later on.
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I mean, that works too. Unless the resulting concussion, brain damage, or death means they don't make the association with their slight.