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How To Not Fetch and Still Be A Good Dog?
6footblondwhiteguy asks: "Having just finished a major system design review at work, I have collected many of what I call GFAR (Go Fetch a Rock). These are pointless, time-wasting actions, proposed by the clueless executives invited to these reviews... e.g. 'This other project is using SUN servers, see if you can use theirs'. I instantly know the answer to each of the GFAR's: (not in this lifetime, no way, or sometime after the sun burns out). So, how do you avoid your boss's boss's boss's newest bright idea without either highlighting it's futility or arguing its merit in a public forum? Surely the Slashdot community has some wise architects that have strategies for deflecting these actions. I suspect the window of avoidance to be about one minute (before it's written down)."
- Amount of extra work needed multiplied with normal hourly rate.
- Reduced earnings caused by project delay
- ...whatever else that will add to the total cost.
Tell the PHBs how much more their smart solution will cost in actual currency (dollars, kroner, euros...).Then they'll understand.
My opinion? See above.
I would agree with this in most cases. Management have (or should have) more info. They should, as Jon says, explain their thinking, and give your views a good hearing. If this happens, follow Jon's advice.
But it can happen that you are working for an idiot. It happened to me once in my career. In that case there is only one thing to do. GET OUT. If your manager is an incurable idiot, you will *never* be happy working there, and staying will only make you miserable. But give him/her plenty of rope to hang him/herself; a real idiot will soon show up unambiguously. If the idiocy is not tranparently obvious, then maybe it isn't idiocy.
(My idiot manager had a PROM brain. On day two, after looking over the job I was to do, I gave him a sketch of how I intended to attack the problem. On day about five, I found out that wasn't the right way - but it was too late; his proms were burned. For the next six months I had to shoehorn every weekly progress report into the headings from that initial handwaving guess at a solution.)
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I used to receive a lot of these kinds of tasks, until I learned that if I spent a small amount of time before the review anticipating these questions I could defect them before they got any momentum. So the secret is to:
1) Spend some time learning about what others are doing in your company/group/whatever.
2) Anticipate the questions that you're likely to be asked regarding synergy, re-use, etc.
3) Have the answer waiting in your back pocket (or better yet, in your presentation back-up material).
In a few cases, during this pre-work you may even discover a better way to do something, and you can make it part of your proposal. And if you're clever, you might even find a way to make the bosses think that it was their idea! And then you're a hero for making them look good.
go to his house, strike an axe on his skull, burn down his house with his corpose and everthing else inside and piss on the ashes?
...or just talk to him with your rationale?
:)
Man, sometime I really don't know which option is the best.
This is one of those life tests, and you should not fail.
When some clueless executive suggests something, the correct response is *always* to respond taking them seriously. IF what they suggest doesn't make sense, explain why. You don't have to go into detail, for instance: "We can't run IIS on our Linux servers because Microsoft doesn't support Linux for IIS, however Apache does the job well and is proven technology. This route saves us about $250,000 in annual license fees."
Geeks have a tendency to get huffy. Or worse, to pretend like its legitimate and put it on the "will investigate" list hoping it will just be dropped. Doing that will only make you look bad when you don't provide the results of the investigation later.
IF what you have is a PHB (as opposed to merely a non-geek executive) then you MUST respond, or you will eventually be out of a job. IF you let PHBs tell you that you HAVE to install IIS on linux, then the gauntlet is thrown-- either you stand up to them right then and there, or they make you their bitch.
There are some managers with the stupid idea that you have to be strong and force people to comply with your wishes when it seems like they don't want to, so if they don't want to install IIS on linux, then by golly you better make them, or they will never respect you! And unfortunately, sometimes these managers pick absurd things to get huffy over. But you have to respond immediately pointing out the fallacy of the idea.
IF they disagree with you, then you should understand their issue-- likely they are considering something other than technology-- like they got a great deal on sun boxes and it sure helped that other project. This is always in your best interest-- because if you blow them off and ignore thier issues, then you will not get support later when the time comes. IF you stand up to them and tell them why some idea won't work, then you may well get a variation of the idea back in response that DOES. That that variation will likely accomplish some goal you know nothing about but is directly related to your job security.
At my last job (I'm freelance now) the engineers groused constantly about management and marketing. They acted as if everyone who wasn't an engineer was an idiot. They didn't know how good they had it-- at that company executive management and marketing actually listened to what engineers said, rather than undermining them, but still you heard nothing but bitching from the engineers. Everything was a fight, and thus, nothing worked-- cause they were fighting amongst themselves as well.
The definition of "Competent" for an executive is not being able to recompile a linux kernel. IF you want to go far, you will learn to bridge that gap and figure out how to meet the issues he's concerned about, even if he fails to phrase them in the engineering-correct way. Most executives really are competant - and that includes marketing guys-- you just have to add their value to yours, not fight it. And you have to understand what they really are bringing to the table.
Occasionally you get a PHB that's really just out to make your life miserable, but even then, answering the questions on the spot makes his job harder. A competent executive will respect and appreciate the quick answers.
It might even make the meeting worthwhile.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I find I am almost always in a position where I have more to do than I'll ever finish. Sometimes, someone comes up with an idea that doesn't make sense but they're in a position to push for it to happen anyway. At that point I don't argue about whether it should happen, but rather say, "Okay, I'll add it to my list of things to do", and always find other things that are higher priority until the submittor forgets they ever asked for it. If the submittor keeps asking about it and you're their direct report, this won't work, and you'll need to take care of it. But hey, that's what they're paying you to do, right?
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Politely explain to the boss why it won't work. You don't do anyone a favor by letting management ignorance slide.
Excellent points. I agree that those are almost exactly the things I look for in a good manager. There's a lot of politics in my current position. So much that it was pissing me off so much that I was ready to quit. But the new manager does an incredible job of sheilding us from bull-shit. We just have to be sure to make him aware of the BS as soon as we run into it. When it comes time to get stuff we want, we have to sell it to him well enough so that he believes in it and he can sell it to his management.
The most frustrating thing in a job is not being given the chance to do your job well. It doesn't make any sense for management to be an obstacle to you doing your job, but I've seen a lot of it.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I think youve missed the guys point. Its not his manager thats giving him pointless tasks, its other managers higher up in the organisation or other departments pushing him about.
In this case his manager should be able to deflect much of this, but sometimes the other department has a mandate to send him running for that rock.
I get this from our Alpha Testers. Usually things are fine: they find a defect, we fix it. But occasionally they get a real bee in their bonnet over some trivial thing, often because they confuse their personnal opinion with a properly run useability test. Something like capitalisation in error messages becomes the weeks hot topic, and you get lumbered changing something that was never broken.
So:
Do make sure your manager is aware of what you are doing, and make sure he is aware how pointless the task is. Then it wont go badly in your review if you do a slapdash job of it.
Do try and understand why someone has pushed this work your way. In one case I got shafted because a tester needed to impress his boss with his assertivness. They were just protecting their job and picked me cos they knew they could explain things in the tea room later. Sometimes salesmen need a stupid feature added cos a customer is just testing the companies willingness to respond to change requests.
Do avoid idiots. If you are in a meeting with a total documentation freak, just stay silent. Never visit someone you know likes to generate work. If you see them in the corridor, dive into the nearest office and ask if you can borrow a stapler, or be on the way to attend an emergency.
Do be aware of any issues like this comming your way. Then you can not be there when it arrives, and maybe someone else will have to pick it up. Or you can already have done it if you get enough warning.
Dont be rude. Many companies operate a policy of 'eliminate the assholes' so try not to be one of them. Politely point out how this will make things difficult for you, how it will cause the schedule to slip, how it will destabilise the product, etc, but never directly accuse someone of making your life difficult unless you are prepared to get another job.
Dont avoid doing stuff. Cos you get paid to do the work whether its pointless or not.
Do make sure that what you do doesnt adversly affect product quality. You dont want to be the guy who created the Word Macro Virus vulnerability cos some idiot wanted to embed a programming language in a wordprocessor document.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
> You are both human beings and completely equal in every respect. You simply need to tell him, "Look, I realize you are trying to be helpful, but you have neither the expertise nor the the technical knowledge to make any design descisions on this product. If you really feel a great need to be helpful, then argue for raises for your engineering staff at the next board meeting..."
ROTFLUntilTearsStreamFromMyEyes!!!
I am actually pleased that you've only worked for companies with good people such that you can have this attitude and mean it, but I'm so sorry, there are other types, and they can make life very miserable and/or your job at said company very short-term.
"Equal in every respect"?!? OK, Who's doing the hiring/paying/firing and who was hired/paid/WillGetFired for being such a clueless employee?