Missed Deadlines Lead People To Judge Work More Harshly, Study Says (theguardian.com) 81
A new study reveals that late work is judged more negatively than on-time submissions, even if delays are minimal or pre-communicated. "The findings suggest that, while you might be tempted to take the maximum allotted time to put the finishing touches to a report, submission or piece of work, the extra effort might not be appreciated by colleagues if it comes at the expense of punctual delivery," reports The Guardian. From the report: The study surveyed thousands of people in the US and UK, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and others whose jobs included an element of evaluating others. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles. But first, they were told it was either submitted early, on deadline or late. "Late" work was consistently rated as worse in quality than when people were told the same work was completed early or on time. The difference was equivalent to including an objective shortcoming such as not meeting a word count.
A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future. "Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn't help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was," said Maglio, who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University.
Those who eagerly submit work early should be advised that this does not appear to earn a boost in opinion, according to the report in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It also didn't matter how late the work was submitted, with one day or one week delays viewed just as negatively -- and that remained the case if the employee gave their manager advance warning. The latest study suggests that it is this inability to plan realistically that is frowned on, with factors beyond an employee's control, such as jury duty, not viewed as negatively. "If the reason why you missed the deadline was beyond your control, you as the employee should let your manager know," said Maglio. "That seems to be one of the few instances in which people cut you a break."
A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future. "Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn't help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was," said Maglio, who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University.
Those who eagerly submit work early should be advised that this does not appear to earn a boost in opinion, according to the report in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It also didn't matter how late the work was submitted, with one day or one week delays viewed just as negatively -- and that remained the case if the employee gave their manager advance warning. The latest study suggests that it is this inability to plan realistically that is frowned on, with factors beyond an employee's control, such as jury duty, not viewed as negatively. "If the reason why you missed the deadline was beyond your control, you as the employee should let your manager know," said Maglio. "That seems to be one of the few instances in which people cut you a break."
Seems counterproductive. (Score:2)
Equate that to showing up late to work...... (Score:1)
Sounds about right (Score:4, Interesting)
As a teacher, when grading assignments: if everyone did the job in ten days and you had an extra day, then you had 10% more time, so I expect 10% better work. Otherwise how is it fair to everyone who delivered on time? With caveats of course, for extraordinary circumstances. But in my experience the students who asked for delays were often not the ones who had the hardest circumstances.
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I get your point but that's not how I look at it. I have no interest in teaching obedience, I really think it's about fairness. First of all, let me say that in the overwhelming majority of cases, my students have handed their work on time (or shortly enough after the deadline that I don't care). I've had, rarely, students ask for special treatment in a consistent manner. These demanding students have also cheated and plagiarised, including plagiarising the work of fellow students in the same class, then co
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As a non-teacher I agree with your fairness point. I would even be more strict and just give a fail to everyone who has not submitted on time. I would obviously give individual deadlines to students who have a special need for extra time. I would even extend a week into a year, but there would still be a deadline. If someone fails to submit on time, because their house burned on the last day, I would give them a fail. Luck is also a skill and they would be graded according to it.
But, not sure if it is illeg
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Really hoping this is satire, but who can tell in 2024.
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I really think it's about fairness
Define "fairness."
Is it fair that some students have to work 6 hours every night, late into the night, to try to pay their bills while other students' parents pay for everything and they sit around playing "Call of Duty" 6 hours a night? Is it fair that student athletes get 1-on-1 tutoring and academic support whenever they want, while everyone else has to try to find their own tutors or wait in line for a long time at some kind of shared tutoring service?
Look, I agree all students need to be held accou
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It's fair if you take context into account, which I strived for (I am not teaching any more). For example "I have to work every night" is a valid reason to get special treatment in my book. Of course it's also important to make sure that the students feel safe and confident enough to bring up their circumstances if necessary. What I was referring to above was students who had it easier than most other students, didn't do the thing on time, cheated, lied, and then complained about it. I maintain that rewardi
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obedience is a negative spin. Helping people practice and internalize some concept of planning and delivering on a schedule is valuable for any coordinated activity on society.
Like, delivering the wedding or birthday cake the day after the event would get one significantly less than 90% credit. :-)
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and you probably know what the majority of people in both camps just crammed and did the assignment in one day so it's just a matter of motivation or "time management" rather than the amount of work put into the assignment.
A natural sense of fairness (Score:2)
If you missed the deadline, it means you had more time to do the same work than the others, so to be fair, your work should be judged to a higher standard than the others. Because anyone who had done work with a deadline knows that missing the deadline is almost always caused by oneself delaying or putting off doing the work, rather than some real external factors.
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No.
Missing the deadline usually means only one thing: the deadline was unreasonable early. The timeframe to make the work was simply to short.
And that is why we do not work with deadlines in agile projects.
We have a stack pf work. Divide it into chunks and deliver a sprint every 2, 3 or 6 weeks. For every sprint we plan how much work we think we can put into it. Every sprint end we know how good we are at estimating. Forecasting from our sprint performance we get a good idea how many more sprints we need to
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What a load of tosh. It must be nice up in your ivory tower, but in the real world, there are deadlines that cannot be moved. In Agile development, you either adjust the deadline or you adjust the scope, or you fail or shouldn't have bid on the project in the first place.
Work invariably grows to fill the time available. Even then, some people are going to be late, perhaps because they're incapable of planning or managing their time. That even applies for short sprint long time frames where engineers hav
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What a load of tosh. It must be nice up in your ivory tower, but in the real world, there are deadlines that cannot be moved.
Not certain why you had to drop to AC, but you are 100 percent correct.
and when marketing has an deadline that is not rea (Score:2)
and when marketing has an deadline that is not real you get rushed software that is patched later.
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Deadlines change all the time. Some "stake holder" (who seems to think productivity is a vampire) moves the goalposts, a key person is hit by a bus, another team for whatever reason can't come up with the pre-requisite piece, etc.
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Context was not agile development. "Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles".
By being late you're fucking up everyone else's schedule. Late one day? That's one less day your manager has to read, understand and integrate that report in their report to their boss.
Often being late means the entire report has no value. The moment has passed.
This, indeed. Everything I do is on a hard stop deadline. Miss the deadline, you failed.
This makes me wonder - is this some sort of GenZ thing, where deadlines are just suggestions? Where missing a deadline is everyone else's fault? I mean the very title of this reeks of trying to normalize late work. Heaven forfend that the project wants the PR kickoff to happen during the Super Bowl, but getting the ad copy was just too stressful. https://fortune.com/2024/11/07... [fortune.com] And https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]
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And then shit happens, people sweep things under the rug, and if it's really bad enough to notice, they read the fine print on the contract.
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yes except in the real world; where customers are promised completion dates. Contracts for things like finances have terms that have dates. Materials need to be ordered and workers need to be able to do the labor so they can get paid and don't go on to other jobs. There are quasi artificial considerations like, we need this done in the current tax year because it is deductible.
Deadlines exist, and often have expensive consequences when they are not met. Other then needing stuff in early enough to grade it
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Yeah, and we know they do not work.
So?
What is your point?
The lowest bidder gets the contract. And he will never meet the deadline.
He has to pay a contract penalty - in theory.
But in praxis he points to many "unclear requirements", needs and gets extra money and extra time.
Look at all those delayed construction projects. The lowest bidder always knew: the deadline is impossible in relation to the workforce and the money. But he did not care, as he knew how to game the customer.
As I said, assignments in schoo
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I think what the replies seem to be missing is that, often, deadlines are set without any real basis for the estimate. And rather than the truth becoming apparent very late in the project, instead, by watching and checking small chunks along the way, the real pace can be seen and the truth about whether it's going to be complete on time or not can be known.
People are like, in the business world there's a deadline so deal with it... well, measuring the pace in small chunks is dealing with it.
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No. Missing the deadline usually means only one thing: the deadline was unreasonable early. The timeframe to make the work was simply to short.
And that is why we do not work with deadlines in agile projects.
In my line of work, the project happens when it happens, and if you don't hit the deadline, you fail, and no need to submit late work.
This might seem odd and exceedingly stressful for many here. But not everything in life and the working world has tolerance for the at least you did your best concept.
You work around the failure, and then analyze what went wrong. Sometimes it is a workload issue, sometimes a personnel issue. In my present, I was called on to replace a personnel issue, replacing a perso
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And that is why we do not work with deadlines in agile projects.
Lol.
Agile is just deadlines more often.
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Missing the deadline usually means only one thing: the deadline was unreasonable early.
LOL. You write a lot of rubbish but this really takes the cake. There are literally countless reasons to miss a deadline and only one of them has to do with a deadline being too early.
And that is why we do not work with deadlines in agile projects.
Agile... everything about you has just started making sense.
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"Divide it into chunks and deliver a sprint every 2, 3 or 6 weeks. For every sprint we plan how much work we think we can put into it. Every sprint end we know how good we are at estimating. Forecasting from our sprint performance we get a good idea how many more sprints we need to finish the work."
Those are deadlines. You have deadlines.
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Missing the deadline usually means only one thing: the deadline was unreasonable early.
No, not necessarily. It can also be the case that the person prioritized other things and therefore did not spend adequate time on the project to meet the deadline. Whether those prioritization decisions were reasonable or unreasonable largely determines whether the deadline was unreasonably early or not.
Re:A natural sense of fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
But you get the same negative reaction to situations where there wasn't a true deadline, just an estimate of how long the work would take, and even if the reason for missing the estimate is that the requirements changed three times after the estimate was made.
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That's such a limited view of the situation. There is an expression, "If you want something to get done, give it to the busiest worker." That happens all the time and leads to them being late on some of their deliverables. I call bullshit on their statement of "A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future." That may be true if the evaluator didn't know the individuals and
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Not necessarily. Consider, one person turns in a decent paper on-time. It's all they had to work on that week. Another has to take care of his younger siblings after a parent unexpectedly goes to the hospital and is only one day late in spite of it. Their paper is also decent./
I would rate the performance for the on-time paper in that case as OK and the day late paper as stellar.
It affects others (Score:2)
Just to pile on what others have said, if you're late submitting your work, it affects others. If you're part of a planning group, your late submission could (and probably does) mean you've delayed the project. Or worse, your lateness causes the company to lose the bid for the project. Maybe your lateness causes a delay in the launch of a product. Maybe there's a delay in putting out a fix for some defect. There are a multitude of issues with submitting work late, a few of which could endanger people's
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Yep. I relate to this 100%
Personally, I hate the stress of a looming deadline so I prefer to finish things as quickly as possible so that I can sit back and be stress free.
I am always running ahead of schedule on all my projects. I just get things done because it makes everyone happy.
I am also one of those people who panics when I am late and will try to arrive an hour early if left to my own desires.
One of the biggest points of contention in my marriage is my wife's lack of a sense of urgency (from my poin
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Just to pile on what others have said, if you're late submitting your work, it affects others. If you're part of a planning group, your late submission could (and probably does) mean you've delayed the project. Or worse, your lateness causes the company to lose the bid for the project. Maybe your lateness causes a delay in the launch of a product. Maybe there's a delay in putting out a fix for some defect. There are a multitude of issues with submitting work late, a few of which could endanger people's lives (depending on your line of work).
As I noted in a previous post, there are some field like my previous work, where the research was to show if something could be done or not. Before that gets muddied up in the conversation, that's a different thing, and people are still working hard.
If someone doesn't understand what the big deal is with submitting work late, you can tell them they shouldn't have an issue with their food order being delivered late. If it arrives a few hours after they order it, no big deal.
Doggonit - you might have made the first perfect analogy! It is a remarkably modern phenomenon that seems to be attempting to normalize not even worrying about simple things like when we are supposed to have the work finished. Poor people upset because their wo
Douglas Adams (Score:3)
Douglas Adams said it best: 'I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.'
The comments in this thread just show the zeitgeist. Results don't matter any more, only appearances do.
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Douglas Adam's was not working in an office with other people. He was an independent contractor/author who didn't get paid until his book was done. No one else was impacted by it.
"Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles" is clearly a business environment where being late can severely impact other people and fuck up critical business deals.
For example, your business proposal was only a day late, just
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Maybe look up something about Douglas Adams before correcting others. Hint: BBC. And not the BBC you usually look up late at night. Not that it surprises me with your comment that quality or accuracy of your work us not really your thing. I'm sure you are really punctual though.
In the study, nothing is mentioned to these people about consequences of missing the deadline. And neither are they asked to judge it. Not every missed deadline has crushing effects on the company. However doing poor or mediocre work
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Ok I looked up DA and your sex fantasies. Now what?
Adults don't need to be told explicit consequences for being late or missing deadlines. It's even right there in the word DEADline.
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Are you implying that Douglas Adams is dead because of missing deadlines?
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In the study, nothing is mentioned to these people about consequences of missing the deadline. And neither are they asked to judge it. Not every missed deadline has crushing effects on the company. However doing poor or mediocre work (on time or not) does.
What it tells us in no uncertain terms with no ambiguity is that if you miss deadlines, they are not important to you.
Good luck with that 'tude.
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Are you wishing Douglas Adams good luck? I have some news for you mate.
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Are you wishing Douglas Adams good luck? I have some news for you mate.
Why no, I don't care about him at all.
But that's a weird interpretation.
My point is that if people are whining about how their missed deadlines are judged, then boo-freaking hoo. It's complaining that people don't realize their utter failure was actually awesome, top notch work. No it isn't, it is weapons grade fail.
Just like the guy I replaced who wasn't terribly efficient, and him getting his work in at the last minute - at very best - if it is a bridge too far to meet deadlines, there are people
Re: Douglas Adams (Score:1)
You're banging on a single line about the punctuality imperative, with zero acknowledgement that that is not the only context.
Sure, sometimes deadlines are there because your task is part of a sequence.
Other times it's not, and accuracy and quality are more important.
Also, your talk about Douglas Adams reveals that you don't know shit about shit.
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Thanks for filling me in on DA. That was informative.
My entire everything about this is strictly on topic to the article and the study it discusses. If you want to discuss something tangential, that's cool.
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You're banging on a single line about the punctuality imperative, with zero acknowledgement that that is not the only context.
Sure, sometimes deadlines are there because your task is part of a sequence.
Other times it's not, and accuracy and quality are more important.
I read you as saying that having your part of a project done on time is irrelevant, and we must use nuance, and expect that even if you loser a contract because your project was late, at least you did your best.
The working world is not the same world as grade school, and we don't get trophies for late work.
I would stay up late and get up early to make certain my work was on time, and accurate and high quality.
Would you hire a workforce that wasn't worried about deadlines? Or got booboo feelings tha
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"Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles" is clearly a business environment where being late can severely impact other people and fuck up critical business deals.
For example, your business proposal was only a day late, just one day after the meeting with the client. Why do you think you got fired for fucking up the deal and embarrassing everyone else in your company?
Good enough is better than not being there.
And then they are surprised Pikachu faced that the company who did get the proposal on time is the company that gets the contract.
Why? because that companies proposal was on time. If your company can't get it on time for a proposal, they probably won't get the project done on time either.
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This quote, and the top level article it is attached to, describes perfectly why at 54 I'm stuck at $60-$65/hr contracting.
Just overestimate everything (Score:3)
This is a well known phenomena. It just leads to people overestimating everything and to ignoring urgent requests when they come in. And it leads to strained relationships and wasted resources when people don't value something for what it is.
Reality is that sometimes it is better to be late and you, your boss, your team, and your customers need to be able to know when those times are and when they aren't.
Releasing a product with too many defects is a good example. Releasing on time is much worse than being late depending on the defects.
A contract that is poorly written can be a terrible mistake.
Plenty of real life examples of things that take longer than you thought. Doesn't mean that punctuality and timeliness are important, but we need people to be taught why it is important and when it is less important.
Re: Just overestimate everything (Score:2)
Good point. Those do seem to be mostly things that should have production schedules that are more predictable. "Art" is a bit less predictable but still if you are being commissioned for art that should be on schedule. Also business proposals could need to be adjusted due to outside factors, but I think the point is well made that the examples are all valid things that should be delivered on promised schedule.
I was responding to the generalization and some of the comments though and my point remains. Som
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> I was responding to the generalization and some of the comments though and my point remains. Some things should be delivered on time and some things should be delivered when they are of sufficient quality.
I fully agree with you on this. There absolutely are things that need to be perfect. I don't want to drive across the bridge that was delivered on time to "good enough" standards. I want my bridge perfect and late. When my car got side swiped, the lady at the body shop told me they do great work b
Re: Just overestimate everything (Score:2)
Golden gate bridge is a good example for exactly that. (Also a bit of a counter-example). It was a race to build it faster and on time and they skipped galvanizing the steel so they needed to paint it more often instead. Which is why it is the color it is. They made a trade. Not necessarily in the taxpayers interest, but it sort of worked out. Assuming maintenance costs can be supported it wasn't a trade for safety, but the bridge builder really didn't care about that.
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Speaking of SF area bridges...
When they rebuilt the bay bridge they apparently used a form of steel for the main vertical structures that isn't as highly resistent to salt water as it was supposed to be. Because they wanted to hit a date, the powers that be in government signed off anyway and indemnified the construction companies. Assuming the articles I read at the time are correct (I'm not a civil engineer), that section of the bridge is good for about 50 years until the salt damage weakens the steel e
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Weren't there a whole host of problems with that contract?
https://www.sacbee.com/news/in... [sacbee.com]
"The span opened last September after years of concerns about the quality of its welds, foundations, anchor bolts and steel tendons that support its skyway viaduct. Testing, evaluation and repair of some of those items continue as traffic flows over the structure that connects Oakland to Yerba Buena Island in the San Francisco Bay.
Chinese weld defects
Jim Merrill, formerly a top manager with MacTec Engineering and Cons
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Thanks, I didn't know all that other stuff was going on, too. It's a real shit show of a bridge.
Either way what should have been a 100+ year bridge ... isn't. The future gets to pay for our government's stupidity. Typical.
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Unimportant | Urgent, Unimportant
You should know what quadrant every task you working on falls into. If you don't you probably should have some sit downs with your manager or clients etc, so can understand what their priorities are which things are urgent because of considerations you are not aware of and you might not be, there are things like I have grant money that must be used this year but company policy prohibits me from putting more than 50% down on undeliver
Bad research (Score:2)
Does not make them wait for the submission. Not double blind.
You may as well say "this work was done by a criminal, judge it".
People depend on you (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has a deadline for a project, that deadline exists for a reason. You may not know the reason, but it's there.
By delaying, you are then impacting others downstream from progressing on whatever the next step was supposed to be with the output you were responsible for.
Time is what kills companies.
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I don't get how someone moderated this funny. This is an exactly correct point about the purpose and value of deadlines.
Deadlines are coordination points. They're how you avoid people being 100% occupied one day and 0% occupied the next.
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For those who are setting the deadlines and evaluating the work, we need to consider some surrounding issues. This is especially true if a normally reliable employee misses a deadline.
+-- Was the deadline imposed or agreed upon? If it was imposed, was it appropriate?
+-- Did the scope of work change after the deadline was set?
+-- Was the time required to complete the work known or knowable? Work with cutting edge technology may require more flexible time frames.
+-- If the task involves third parties, did
Re: People depend on you (Score:2)
None of what you posted there has anything at all to do with the discussion.
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Anyone who has a deadline for a project, that deadline exists for a reason. You may not know the reason, but it's there.
By delaying, you are then impacting others downstream from progressing on whatever the next step was supposed to be with the output you were responsible for.
Time is what kills companies.
Another thing that kills companies is releasing sub-standard products because they rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline.
Not all deadlines are created equal, some are there simply because management needs an expected completion date, and some exist because the project is a critical path on a major project.
Part of the job of management is knowing the progress of projects under their supervision, and when a deadline is slipping knowing the consequences of that slippage.
Disrespect and Discipline. (Score:2)
Its not just the lack of punctuality in reports people don’t like. I fear it’s more the utter disrespect conveyed with people being late in many other aspects as well. Being “socially late” being abused or misinterpreted as acceptable most all the time. The concept of “ghosting” being found everywhere. People are fed up with the unprofessionalism.
Respect deadlines. Especially your own. If you don’t respect your own deadlines, you won’t respect anyone el
Perfect or schedule? (Score:2)
As my technical writing professor said decades ago, "Sometimes it must be perfect, sometimes it must be done by Thursday". That's part of knowing the audience. Prying the relative importance between schedule and correctness out of Management isn't always easy though. A Gantt chart is a big help, how many others are waiting on you?
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My managers over time have strongly preferred a prompt and succinct deliverable over a agonized and perfected one.
A quick "hey boss, here is my first draft of what you asked for. Please provide some feedback. I might have miscounted the neutrons in section 3, but it's within 5%, is that good enough? The proposed budget and schedule are solid though."
Your success with this depends on having a manager willing to engage in revisions and analyze your drafts. Are you in an organization that embraces iteration
Did the obvious suddenly become less obvious? (Score:2)
Because he lets them (Score:3)
He asked his stand-mate why the orchestra played so far behind the conductor. The stand-mate replied, "because he lets them."
If you want people to meet deadlines, be a good leader and create systems that support on-time completion. Make sure people understand which deadlines are important. Make sure they have the resources they need to meet deadlines. Make sure there are redundancies in case life happens and people get sick or get hit by a bus.
Really? WHOSE deadlines? (Score:2)
You mean the ones that come from upper management, that are insanely unrealistic (if they're even possible), and who tell those below them "whatever it takes"?
And then use the impossibility of making those deadlines a reason for mediocre/bad annual reviews?
And yeah, not that you're reading this, but I'm talking about you, Dick Notebeart, once head of Ameritech.
First Post! (Score:2)
p.s. Sorry if I got it posted a bit late.
more evidenc (Score:2)
More evidence of white supremacist ideology. Deadlines? We don't need no stinkin' deadlines!
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (Score:2)
mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee