Slacker Manager

The Slacker Equation

by Bren on December 9th, 2005

Reader Mike sent me the following transcript of an email thread he had
with a friend (both nuclear engineers). It’s so good, I had to share
(with Mike’s permission, of course). Basically, they’ve come to the
conclusion that they seek to maximize other people’s perception of them, while minimizing their effort.

After reading their exchange, I told Mike that I don’t think in equations, but that I’ve always framed the idea this way: if I’m doing work that I enjoy, I’ll optimize it even while I’m (inevitably) dropping the ball elsewhere. The hard part to this is finding work that you like doing. Also, in many offices, developing a specialized skill that others don’t have can enhance this effect. If you become an Excel wizard, or beef up your SQL chops, you can do stuff in short order that most people will assume took hours if not days.

Happy reading….

Mike:
I saw a dead fox on the side of the road today, and I thought of you.

Marc:
why exactly do dead foxes make you think of me?

Mike:
well, I saw a dead fox, and I thought how it would be funny if that dead fox made me think of someone, and then I wondered who I would like to tell that the dead fox made me think of them, and then I thought you would enjoy it.  so the dead fox made me think of you.

Marc:
i did enjoy it and passed it along to my coworkers, who laughed at both of us for having the relationship that we obviously have.

Mike:
I am not at work today.  I hurt my back yesterday, and I only went in for an hour today.

a new line of questioning:
are you generally considered by others at your work to be an above average performer?

Marc:
i think i am considered an above average performer… i think with regards to this it is as much perception as it is actuality…  like how nuclear engineering is "hard".

Mike:
Yes, I think I am also an above average performer.  Do you think that you are capable of doing a better job?

Marc:
always.  don’t you?  i find that it goes in cycles.  sometimes i’m just treading water, and other times, i’m creating all kinds of good work.

Mike:
I agree.  Now, why is it that we are considered above average performers, but we could do better?  I see three possibilities:

1. We throw in enough good stuff, and seem eager enough to do a good job, that our slacking is not noticed.
2. We are way above average, and even our slacking is above average.
3. We aren’t slacking as much as we think we are.

What do you think?

Marc:
i think its a combination of the three.  if i had to correlate constants, it would go something like this:

Reason = C1R1+C2R2+C3R3
where Ci= a constant with the property SUMi(Ci)=1

R1="We throw in enough…"
R2="We are way above…"
R3="We aren’t slack…."

in my opinion,
C1=.7
C2=.1
C3=.2

Mike:
good thinking with equations.  I think we are getting somewhere.  more equations:
Vi equals the value of Ri to other people’s perception, and
Ei equals the relative effort of performing Ri, and
please note that I have changed Ci from a constant to a variable.
PERCEPTION = C1*R1*V1 + C2*R2*V2 + C3*R3*V3
EFFORT = E1*C1 + E2*C2 + E3*C3

I would say that we are good at maximizing PERCEPTION while minimizing EFFORT.  The question is, why are we good at this, and why can’t others do it as well as we can?  Do people not realize that this is a sort of game?

Marc:
I think that you are precisely right by saying that it is a sort of game, and people don’t realize that.  i would say that most people are missing the details of optimizing one of the two; there are those that put a good deal of effort out but do not understand the existence of the variable "perception"; then there are those who either don’t know or don’t care about effort and attempt to make up for it with perception.

just so you know, we can identify the following relationship based on what you have given below:

that if Ci=Vi*Ri then

Perception=Effort

can we learn anything from this relationship?

Mike:
I’m not sure I agree.  This is what I have gathered though:

if PERCEPTION = EFFORT

then Ei = Ri*Vi

this would be the case where you are accurately being recognized for your efforts.  I think that this is the worst that people should settle for achieving; any less and you are wasting effort.

did you have a typo?

Marc:
yes, please forgive my typo.  but my typo did lead me to not deduce what you have below.

i think you could say that someone who allows PERCEPTION=EFFORT can take the moral high ground…

who in the nuclear department had PERCEPTION=EFFORT?

Mike:
I do not know about the nuclear engineering department.  were you thinking of someone in particular?  I think near the end of my time in nuclear engineering I was "found out" and my perception was approaching effort, which you know was low.

a perceiver for whom PERCEPTION = EFFORT is someone who really pays attention

Is there anything else we can learn from this discussion?

Marc:
no, i wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular; i wanted to try to make sure i understood the equality by having a concrete example. 

haha.  so you’re saying that perception was dropping rapidly at the end of your tenure?  i think we were in the same boat there.

i think as usual, we have learned nothing of importance.  well done.

Mike:
although we might not have learned anything new, I think we have brought into greater clarity and quantified something which we already knew.

why don’t other people understand these truths?

since we understand how to play the game does that mean that we will be better judges of the game?  are we better evaluators of other’s efforts?  I would say yes.  I think I know when someone is just coasting and when someone is actually contributing something meaningful.

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