2 1GT Monday September 7 2020 | the times

times

A

nyone else running

about like a loon

trying to fit

everything in before

we go back into

lockdown, local,

pulsed or otherwise?

And I’m not just

talking about Botox appointments.

Oh, no. After two weeks’ solid

culture’n’groomin’ I have emerged into

my “it’s now or never” social phase,

forcing myself on anyone I have ever

crossed paths with for fear that we

won’t have the option again until June.

Within the dim recesses of my brain,

the Eat Out to Help Out campaign

has morphed into an imperative

to go out and live it up,

as if I am a good-time-

girl Vera Lynn,

keeping up Britain’s

Blitz spirit.

Alas, as those

with actual

muscles

complain of

lockdown

atrophy, so

I have lost

social condition.

Where once

I was a sleek

racehorse galloping

through my nights on

the tiles, now I am a

raddled pit pony haunted by

the spectre of the glue factory.

I simply don’t have the social

stamina, mental strength or agility,

with even the most minor rhetorical

exchange appearing too much by way

of focus and multitask. “How are

you?” someone will demand. God, how

am I? Who am I? How long has

passed since I was forced to account

for myself: weeks, months, aeons?

“Can you turn the music down?”

I begged at the fashionable hotspot

Kitty Fisher’s the other evening.

“There’s just too much by way of

stimulation, what with sitting up

straight while wielding a knife and

fork.” “Of course,” Oz, its charming

owner, said sympathetically. “We’re

getting that a lot.”

Next morning I was stricken by

inertia, in the manner of some

teenager who has spent the weekend

snogging up a storm only to emerge

with glandular fever. My throat

But never pay bonuses

People are most creative when they

have a big enough salary to remove

some of the stress from home. But

people are less creative when they

don’t know whether or not they’ll get

paid extra. It is best to have salaries

a little higher than necessary, to give

a raise before an employee asks for

it, to bump up a salary before that

employee starts looking for another

job, in order to attract and retain the

best talent on the market year after

year. It costs a lot more to lose people

and to recruit replacements than to

overpay a little in the first place.

Don’t limit holidays

Until 2003 we allocated vacation and

tracked days off, just like every other

company I knew. Netflix was following

the pack. Each employee received a

specific number of days off per year

depending on seniority.

Then a suggestion from an

employee led us to make a change.

He pointed out the following:

We are all working online some

weekends, responding to emails at

odd hours, taking off an afternoon for

personal time. We don’t track hours

worked per day or week. Why are we

tracking days of vacation per year?

There was no answer. An employee

could be working from 9am to 5pm or

from 5am to 9pm That’s a 100 per cent

variation, yet no one monitored it. So

why should I care if that employee

Hire the best,

As his company

signs a deal with

the Sussexes, CEO

Reed Hastings

gives his tips for

success. Be afraid

I

n the first few years of Netflix,

we were growing fast and

needed to hire more software

engineers. We focused on

finding the top performers in

the market. In Silicon Valley,

many of them worked for

Google, Apple and Facebook,

and they were being paid a lot. I knew

we didn’t have the cash to lure them

away in any numbers.

But, as an engineer, I was familiar

with a concept that has been

understood in software since 1968,

referred to as the “rock-star principle”.

The rock-star principle is rooted in a

famous study that took place in a

basement in Santa Monica. At 6.30am

nine trainee programmers were led

into a room with dozens of computers.

Each of them was handed a manila

envelope explaining a series of coding

and debugging tasks they would need

to complete to their best ability in

the next 120 minutes. Millions of

keystrokes have since been devoted to

discussing the results on the internet.

The researchers expected to find

that the best of the nine programmers

would outperform his average

counterpart by a factor of two

or three. But of the group of

nine, all of whom were at least

adequate programmers, the best far

outperformed the worst. The best guy

was 20 times faster at coding, 25 times

faster at debugging, and ten times

faster at program execution than the

programmer with the lowest marks.

I knew I had a choice. I could

hire 10 to 25 average engineers or

I could hire one “rock star” and pay

significantly more than what I’d pay

the others, if necessary.

Most of our posts rely on the

employee’s ability to innovate and

execute creatively. In all creative

roles, the best is easily ten times better

than average. We decided that for

all creative jobs we would pay one

incredible employee at the top of her

personal market, instead of using that

same money to hire a dozen or more

adequate performers. This would

result in a lean workforce. We’d be

relying on one tremendous person

to do the work of many. But we’d

pay tremendously.

I found having a lean workforce

has side advantages. Managing people

well takes a lot of effort. Managing

mediocre-performing employees is

harder and more time consuming. By

keeping our organisation small, each

manager has fewer people to manage

and can therefore do a better job at it.

When those teams are exclusively

made up of exceptional-performing

employees, the managers do better,

the employees do better, and the

entire team works better — and faster.

It costs more to

lose people than

to overpay a little

in the first place

The thing

about dog

owners

Cat owners fall into five

categories, research

has discovered, from

“conscientious

caretakers” (policing

their killing of

songbirds) to “freedom

defenders” (allowing

them to savage

everything, local

children included).

There are “concerned

protectors”, paranoid

about their charges

coming a cropper;

“tolerant guardians”

who learn to live with

their felines hunting;

and “laissez-faire

landlords” who barely

remember that they

boast such a beast.

There may be five

ways to own a cat, but

there is only one way

to own a dog — it

owns you. My beautiful

blue whippet became

still more domineering

during lockdown,

whining tremulously

for kisses and refusing

to let us urinate

without a snout in

the door.

“What does she

want?” demanded my

boyfriend the other day,

as she quivered

neurotically. “That

thing where you tickle

her ear while holding

one paw,” I informed

him. She sleeps

between my legs

(reader, please insert

joke about the extent to

which my life has

moved on here).

Kevin Maher is away

My nail bar

has closed.

Tragedy

tragedy leaving our

community bereft. Very

few of us have our hair

done every week any

longer — more’s the

pity. However, many

will indulge in a

manicure, or the

odd massage, or

a quick whisking

away of the old

pants moustache.

I will miss “my lady”,

the quietly composed

Paulina, more than I

can say, her approval

won nail by nail, and

all the more cherished

for it. She, her mate

Monica and I would

put the world to rights,

safe in the conviction of

our supreme collective

rectitude. Hell, I’ll

even miss the salon’s

maniacally extrovert

owner, Bee, who never

had a thought she

didn’t bellow out loud.

I loved every last bit

of that place, from its

dusty lacquers to the

little statues strewn

with bits of food, left

out to whichever god

would have them.

In other breaking news,

my local nail bar has

had to shut down, a

small-scale human

hurts, my voice is reedy, my head is

throbbing. It feels as if the very

marrow of my bones has been

extracted — and I don’t even drink

any more.

As for how my attempts to live it

large manifest to others, there would

appear to be a distinct dearth of

charm and charisma. For one thing,

I can’t get the tone right, treating a

night at the local as the occasion

for a one-woman cabaret involving

jazz hands and encores. The

perimenopausal princess in the corner,

clad in ballgown and cocktail hat,

crooning the lyrics to Willkommen?

Yes, it is me. Think: less manic pixie

dream girl, more What Ever

Happened to Baby Jane?

My conviction that

all about me should

also carpe noctem

has rendered

me a control

freak, micro-

managing

every last

second for

maximum

kapow.

“Are you

enjoying that?

Do you need

another drink?

How’s your sex life?

Where shall we go

after? What do you think of

the Titians/Selling Sunset/“WAP”/the

return of the cardigan/geopolitics?

Emotions, had an emotion recently?”

I greeted my companion the other

night, who managed to refrain from

saying: “This is meant to be

pleasurable, you intolerable cow.”

The Covid era’s overgrown Violet

Elizabeth Bott, I want all the food, all

the experiences, all the sensations

I can fit into this meagre interlude. I

keep thinking of the book, later a film,

Awakenings, in which Oliver Sacks

re-animated patients stricken by

sleeping sickness. (Now there was a

truly terrifying epidemic.)

My doctor father would point out

that their recoveries were short-lived:

a couple of ecstatic weeks before

succumbing to paranoia, tics and

regression, overcome by impending

doom. See where I’m going here?

Meanwhile, catch me tonight, hoofin’

it up on a table near you.

I’d like to be out every

night, but somehow I’ve

lost my social stamina

Hannah Betts

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