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Implementing the Bureaucratic Black Arts?
bildungsroman_yorick asks: "Many unlucky workers in their careers have encountered the bureaucracy, the careerism, the project death march and the office politics that hold people back from performing to high standards of work. In some office environments that I've encountered half a supervisors workload involves giving your workers room to operate and protecting them from the bureaucracy and politics. I have come to realise that it's the natural way of business culture to behave this way and the only way I can let my workers be productive is to be one step ahead of the politics, even if that means breaking the rules. So what I'd like to ask some of the more savvier Slashdot denizen: What are some of the bureaucratic black arts that you've performed in your workplace to work around the office politics and get your work done on time and to a high standard?"
(Totally kidding!!)
Make sure your TPS reports are ALWAYS late.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
An "ask slashdot" that I actually will want to read.
Never thought this day would come.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
A few things that have helped me:
1) Honesty works better with technical folks; sugarcoating works better with business folks.
2) Reverse (1) for those concerned about financials or with titles beginning with 'C' - CFOs and COOs like honesty.
3) If your organization has more than 3 divisions, make sure that no employee is less than 5 levels away from the top - too many levels makes communication impossible
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
so long as you can tell which way the (metaphorical) wind is blowing and you're sure that you are right, just get on and do it!
Otherwise keep your CV handy
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I worked 21 years for my company. I was good at what I did. I was also unconventional. I worked my way to the highest position in the technical ranks. My salary was out of band (never asked for that, btw) because of my accomplishments. I received the highest technical achievement award possible from my company. I wrote an application that saved (hard dollars) my company 10's of millions of dollars, and kept them out of legal hot water. That program is still being used today and is a core technology there.
A year ago I was told in an effort to "cut costs", it was time for me to go. Done. Finito.
Whatever you do, take care of yourself. My (admittedly anecdotal) experience says there are no friends out there. There is no reason to strive for excellence based on your company's desires. Turns out that doesn't matter.
Make yourself happy. Set your own standards.
The business world is a fucked place, and if you ever try to make sense of it, you're pumping oxygen needlessly to those brain cells.
I think for me the crime in all of this was I used to want to do as much for my company as possible. There was hardly an evening on my way home at night I wasn't thinking of ways to make my company a better company. And, I was pretty good at contributing to that. I'm still good at what I do, but I don't think I'll ever have an ounce of good will for a company. Bottom line, companies evolve to where people who like and want power become the ones running the show, and generally speaking they are fucktards whose acumen is inversely proportional to their salary.
It is better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
Act first, the paperwork will follow.
Timecards reflect essential truth, if not literal truth of when work is done.
Delegate to those with better bureaucratic kung-fu.
ShoutingMan.com
I have found that sleeping with the bosses. If the boss is ugly sleeping with him or her makes it even easier for me to give my workers room to do their jobs as my boss is extremely grateful for the screw. It helps if you know how to have really good sex.
No, honestly though. Knowledge is power, in many different ways. And there is a correct way to implement this in an office (or school, for those of you still embroiled in it) environment.
1) Volunteer.
Yes, yes. We all know that nobody likes extra work. However, you'd be surprised how many simple little things one can get through this-- like, for instance, one can acquire extra passwords and keys, because they were needed for whatever job, and the person giving them out figures that you might be needed again. Useful.
2) Subvert.
It is often hard (it sure is for me) to remember that power structures need not be crashed *through*. If you can afford the time-- and it usually isn't much, even when you're working under deadline-- you might try simply wedging underneath whatever structure it is. For instance, instead of simply stating that you're the boss, they have to do your will (even though it may well be true), come up with the most roundabout way of doing something, that doesn't involve them. Next time, you can use a less roundabout way... shortly, those higher up, and those lower down, from you will know you so well, you can implement solutions (of whatever nature) more effectively than anyone, and the people who you didn't like dealing with, are shoved off to the margins. Helps to shed a crocodile tear as they are pink slipped (if you're in the workplace) or merely go smoke pot, discontent with their newfound uselessness.
3) Bash.
Of course, once in a while, things that have to be done, have to be done *now*. And that is the appropriate time to simply tell people to get the heck out of your way. But the most important thing is to keep track of how *often* you're doing this. Apply the first two provisions generously, and you can *maybe* get away with this once a month. Not as generously, and it might have to be once a year, if you don't want people to hate you. What's important here is not the *actual* proportion of times you use this technique, but the *perceived* frequency. And the latter is nearly always higher than the former.
Of course, if all these techniques are too complex, well, then, I wish you luck, as you'll need it. But careful application of these ideas can lead to... great rewards.
Never rely on undocumented verbal agreements. If you are in a meeting where a verbal agreement is reached, ALWAYS send an e-mail (or paper memo) documenting what was agreed upon. Keeping an unassailable 'paper trail' regarding projects, policies and decisions can protect you against the all-too-common managers who like to lie in order to shift blame when something goes wrong.
Break the rules. Break the law. 110, 220, whatever it takes.
Click here or here.
sun tzus art of war.
first the meeting room, AND THEN THE WORLD. D:
seriously though, i think that little book has every minute detail of how to work effectively and powerfuly every imagined.
I'm a IT contractor who does a lot of work for one of the world's largest banks, and the level of bureaucracy at this particular organisation is larger than any other organisation I've ever worked for - generally reasonably intentioned (they have the philosophy that more hoops & red tape makes abuse of the system harder), but in practice they end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Most work that actually goes on in the bank ends up being a function of who you know and what you know rather than successful use of the system; many projects are delayed for months and years as a result of this (simply acquiring IP addresses for servers can take weeks - weeks where a project may have half a dozen contractors all sitting around at $lots a day!). There are very basic organisational changes that could be made which would solve this - such as the fact that every day, dozens of identical 2U servers from a large vendor are purchased for projects and support; in spite of this, every project is expected to organise this themself, and wait months whilst parts and machines are delivered (again, with contractors sitting around). And yet there's no central purchaser who buys servers (gets a volume discount!!) and then sells these on to the projects with a 2-3 day wait (instead of months).
The same applies to parts; memory, disks, or even patch cables - there's no centralisation and everyone's expected to buy their own.
One project I recently worked on ordered some (very common) equipment required to install their servers in a datacenter last year, and only had it delivered a few weeks ago - if it weren't for the favour the project manager called in with another department (giving him leftover equipment last year), the entire project team would've been sitting waiting the whole time.
This is representative of what truly makes the organisation tick - favours; virtually nothing gets done without it being as a personal favour (in an organisation where having IP addresses assigned or having a server racked can take weeks) from one party to another.
It is easier to get forgiven than to get permission!
Click here or here.
Blackjack and hookers.
See the Tao of Programming. Specifically, book 6 (Management) and book 7 (Corporate Wisdom).
"... only way I can let my workers be productive is to be one step ahead of the politics, even if that means breaking the rules."
Cool! They should base a TV show around you. "... a project manager who gets results - even if that means breaking the rules". Cut a scene of you being breated by beauracratic boss, you giving back snide comments and slamming something on the desk.
Maybe you could solve crime in your spare time?
The Career Programmer should have been called "The Guerilla Programmer". It explains vital topics like how to get a spec from people who don't want to give you one.
I wont say where I worked, but the politics got so bad that I had to cut and run.
I was commonly heard saying "Why are you pulling this politico stuff on me? You are lying to me again. I can prove it with this. Im just trying to get things to work, now let me do my job."
They really dont like that. The office bosses conspired to get me fired. I found proof of that also.
They fired me anyways, and the lawyer said to fuckit. So fuckit. I got a huge payoff when leaving, and they seemed happy to have me go.
The company has tanked since my departure.
Everyone is disposable and in the revolving door of upper managment at most companies, noone with any power is going to recognize YOUR accomplishments past the next board meeting.
Having loyalty to your employer is laudible but generally misplaced. Your primary loyalty should be to yourself. Generally that means working hard and looking out for the company in that this generally results in raises and promotions for you in the long run. However, you can never forget that at the end of the day, you are just a cog in the company wheel and in terms of upper managment, one cog is as good as another.
As long as you don't lose sight of this perspective, you'll do fine. But, as soon as you start seeing yourself as the 'guy that saved the company millions of dollars' you are heading down the wrong road. Corporate memories are very short these days--they have absolutely NO loyalty to you, even if you single handedly have kept the company afloat for the last 21 years.
Don't be known as a gossip, but make sure the right people hear the right things at the oh so convenient, right time. Mix truth with fiction. Mention you 'heard' someone say something without sommiting to a name. Use scenarios. Find someone to discuss such things so that they might be overheard.
Someone hates these cans.
Replaced the OS on my desktop with a more useful one. (goodbye, solaris)
Implemented a VPN so I could work from home (twice, both "outbound" connectors - that is, they connected out from the company so as to defeat the company NAT/Firewall).
Set up bugzilla instead of using their homebrew bug tracker (later adapted by the company).
Set up a mailing list server to handle mailing lists (mailman, I think - on an unsupported OS on a "grey box" machine that had fallen off IT's tracker list).
Dropped my ssh public key in various root or admin accounts that I was given "one shot access to - here's the password that we'll change after you log in".
Set up an http proxy tunnel so that my group could surf via tunneled ssh through my home proxy (because the company proxy server would crash for half a day at a time, and I need online javadoc, thanks).
Note that most of these things are not needed most of the time - I usually work for companies that have their shit together. But there are times when I need to get stuff done.
To my future employers who find this posting (that I have decided not to post anon): treat me honestly and respectfully, and I'll do the same with you! I need VPN access, and I need a good bug tracker, and I need a mailing list server. None of that is unreasonable. If you don't provide it, though, I will. If you don't let me, I will anyway.
No one likes a complainer. No one likes the negative guy.
Be positive. Suggest good things. Don't get your panties in a bunch if things don't go your way.
Remember that everyone has an opinion and it's quite possible to be equally valid to your's. And that's what politics is: managing people and everyone's desires to some degree of consensus.
If I find something coming my way that I see is a waste of time, but is enthusiastically endorsed by upper management, I "run it by legal," where it dies a slow, horrible death. This trick has served me, and my guys, well by allowing us to do what we do instead of getting caught up in some brain-dead management fad.
I've found the people at the very top are either very good people (stay there if they are) or *very* bad people (brush up your CV if you find that). Find some way to connect with them. Any way. Get a channel open. Then use it as little as possible for business. But make sure everyone know you have it. People will get out of your way and bend more easily to your will if they simply believe you can turn to the top and expose them at any moment.
Once you have that, follow the doctor/google idea: do no harm. That will make you people love you. Reasonable people will always understand you making business decisions if you show you're out to do them no harm and that you have some power to lend them (from the first point) and, finally, if you tell them what you're doing.
In Germany, at the start of major industrial thinking, they did an experiment. They called in all the workers, and told them that some scientists would be playing with things at the factory and that there would be changes. Then they called them in and said that they would be raising the temperature at work - then productivity went up. To be sure, they called everyone in and told them they would be lowering the temp. They lowered it, and productivity went up. "Odd," they thought. This went on and on with them calling meetings, making changes and having productivity go up. Finally they started interviewing the workers at length about why they were working harder and why they felt they were being more effective. They all said they liked how they felt the company kept them informed of all the plans...
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
make friends with someone who has authority, then present the business case: x, y, and z are hurting your group's efficiency and are costing $$$ in lost productivity and morale. suggest at least one (preferrably two to three) courses of action which can lead to a positive outcome for as many people as possible. said person might champion your cause (probably taking all the kudos, but your problem is solved at least), or they might do nothing. or they might do something in between — it's a hard call. my point is you don't deal with the burocrats, you deal with their keepers. this will need to be done delicately mind you, burocrats despise nothing more than the impression that their power is being usurped.
The pigs: WHITE DEVILS! Allies with Jew neighbor need be shot all now! Take justice in the streets my niggas! Say NO to Little Angels by Raphael, and say Wee-bak-nan-go-boo-ga-min-clock-clook to Black Little Angels by Tyrophael.
Black Jesus kicks ass on whitebread Jesus. Buy now, for only 9,95 and get a free servins yall of Motha Fucka 'n' Aunt Jemimas CHITLIN MAPLE SYRRUP GRITTS CASAROLE!
Your post also disputes the belief of some Slashdotters that only the incompetent get laid off, so they are safe (does any Slashdotter believe that he/she is anything less than a star performer?)
There should be a required course at universities that warns students of the dangers of becoming too committed to your job. I can just imagine the howl that would shortly ensue from the corporate community if such a policy were put in place.
Putting a curse on the CIO sometimes helps.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
One useful idea comes from George Orwell: "If you keep the little rules, you can break the big ones." I've found that you can often get away with circumventing procedures, &c. by simply being quiet about it and pretending to be conscientious.
A related idea is quiet networking. I hate networking with a passion, which is one reason why I didn't last in the corporate world. But I did find it useful sometimes to be friendly with people in other departments. If you need to do an end-run around some asinine procedure or political roadblock, it helps to be able to call up your buddy in Payables (or HR, or wherever) and discreetly get the thing done. (NB: this also means you'll be incurring debts, so it's important to be willing to return a favor now and then.) So for low-level cube-dwellers, such as I was, the idea is to learn who can help you, and be nice to them. If you're a supervisor (which it sounds like you are), you may need to learn the network of each of your subordinates.
2) Your company outsourced its network to a giant "consulting" company. Remember that that "consulting" company has a lot of highly trained professional sales staff to take YOUR boss golfing, and so your boss will always believe what their consultants say rather than what you say.
3) Because your boss is hidden away in an office listening to lies from the consultants, you know far more about your job and what needs to get done than your boss, but NEVER let the boss know this! They will hold it against you and make your life a living hell.
4) The company is a monkey tree. To understand this metaphor, imagine a tree covered with monkeys, all hanging on and looking up. The senior monkeys on top look down and all they see is smiling faces. The junior monkeys on the bottom look up and all they see is...
(posted anonymously for obvious reasons...)
In five thousand years the Chinese have managed to master the bureaucracy. A young country, like USA, only 200+ years old has a lot to learn from the Chinese.
Most European countries, although much younger than China, are much older than the US and know much more about bureaucracy
long live the proletariat! baaah...
Never mind what is best for the company.
They don't give shit #1 about you or your staff.
Make sure that you and your staff remember to have a life outside of work. It is generally a lot easier to get a new job than a new family, or new friends.
Make sure that you and your staff are always growing new, marketable skills. Don't get you or your staff stuck in a technical dead end. Always be thinking about and preparing for the next gig.
Ultimately, remember that working enables lifestyle, not the other way around. Companies and their management will work you and your staff to death to line their own pockets at your expense if you will let them.
Live for yourself, not for someone else's business.
Obviously, this all goes out the window if you are self employed.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
If things have reached an impasse where management makes it difficult to get real work done, then it's time to escape and start your own lean, mean startup company. You can gather your technical folk in the Wifi enabled coffee shop down the street and do your plotting there. Of course after about 5 years your lean, mean startup will be just about as bureaucratic as the company you left... when that happens you must restart the cycle. And so it continues endlessly.
Seriously, depending on what kind of work you're doing it's never been easier (and less expensive) to start your own venture. There's so many great open source tools available these days and hardware is pretty cheap. The only problem is getting that income stream going... you'll probably have to live on ramen for a few months.
Holy cow, this is a hot button for me. Re-orgs are a way of life where I work. The directive of an effective manager to his/her developers is "Speed and course." Don't allow the developers to be distracted by upper management churn.
Don't think you can take the high road and have your career survive. If someone's playing dirty, don't try to overlook it, deal with it.
When dealing with a boss with a case of NIH, try to make your ideas sound like they were your boss's ideas. Until you replace your boss.
Perceptions count for a lot. Manage perceptions.
When dealing with management, be insincere. Tell them what they want to hear. If you have to 'fudge' numbers or gloss over messy details, do it. Don't get sentimental about facts and truth and honesty. If your project is virtually done, don't say it's virtually done, tell them it's done. If a sudden problem arises, don't lose your cool. Gather the facts until you know what the true nature of the problem is before reporting about it. Your job is to deliver results, make sure you don't bring bad news unless you really, really have to.
If another group is reducing your effectiveness for reasons of overlapping turf, jealousy, history, whatever, try make an accomodation with them, even if it's temporary. (Keep your friends close, your enemies closer). Watch out for the agendas of underlings. If you have a politically motivated person working for you, get them gone.
Maintain the avenues of communications. Don't allow someone to bypass you in either direction. If someone bypassed you with their idea, either take charge of the project, or end the project.
Use dog psychology when dealing with people; reward good behavior, punish bad behavior, be consistent.
Dog psychology; there is an Alpha, be the alpha or chaos will follow.
Maintain perspective. You may love the work and the project, but to the CEO and his direct reports, you're a liability. Be prepared to move on and leave the work and project behind.
Life is an adventure.
Best regards.
On our Program Engineering class we were told that when a coder group becomes over 4 person in size, it will need one person dedicated to its bureaucratic needs. ie. handle interoperating with other such sub-groups, handle general paperwork etc.
Even then, at most 60% of workers time (of that 4) will be real work, not interoperation with other members and subgroups.
I'd say that's pretty good estimate. When I did my work in a team of 1-2, I coded or actively worked on a solution 90% of time, when team size grew more and more time was 'wasted' communicating. (Communication also paid off as some solutions we came together to were way better than what was my first estimation of correct action).
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
While they're ticking boxes and pushing punctuation about, you can get the project done. All you really need do is make sure that the only possible outcome of their deliberations is the solution you have built. That may sound like a gamble, but given that the paperwork vortex is, in effect, infinite, it can be engineered to produce any particular project you have in mind.
The only awkwardness I encounter is when people realise that I've allowed them three months to approve the project plans for a three-month project, but that's fine. They're always happy to make it a six-month project retrospectively. Looks better on a resume, after all.
Other departments should depend on you, but that should not cost too much work.
This simply to get a certain form of "currency" to use in negotiations with other departments.
Really, I've worked for Liberals and Conservatives, and I've found Conservatives just what to make money, Liberals want to control you and have power over you.
I've been hired by conservatives who knew I was gay but didn't give a damn because they knew I did good work. But several times as soon as my Liberal boss found out, I was 'let go' or demoted within the week (with signs that I would soon be let go as they could justify it). It's always funny when you're given a big raise and told how great you are, and the day after they learn about your BF you're suddenly a terrible employee and they need to get rid of you!
lie, and lie again.
5^3 != 5*10^3 .LT. 200+
125 != 5E3
125 != 5000
BTW
125
"No, honestly though. Knowledge is power, in many different ways."
And that's one to grow on. Yo Joe!
The worst places I saw office politics were Cisco and Juniper. I mean they do it so well its almost unnoticable. I found that just not caring and moving forward with the occasional reference to dilbert to squash things.. Its funny what happens.. they have this mail room guy with a cart and a CB radio attached to it with someone screaming "Gilbert, Gilbert Where are you?". That cart is used for other purposes when they need to remotely send a message. I even saw the IT guys at juniper purpose tell me they are going to put one of my servers in a "Better Place" and hack into it and crash it.. as if it was an accomplishment when they have admin access. Also at cisco the guys in the cubes next to me were making my machine crash with stupid kiddies scripts or something. I would have to disconnect my machine from the network when I left and setup filtering and a firewall. Some developers would almost refuse to develop the most important parts of the project and code very slowly on the key parts so they can make more money on their contracts. I swear some people purposely coded bad code for job security. Then the fuqing lab managers kept having me move my rack mounted servers to the point of where I kept getting better and better locations and was pissing them off. Or here one I've seen twice, so I immediately saw it coming but no one believed me. Cisco threatened to buy another prodcut to replace our project in order to motivate us to finish it faster (of course they were lying). I really pissed them off by finding some open source on sourceforge referenced by the "competitor" on source forge and patched it together with our code and it was sweet. When management found out about it the open source immediately disappeard from source forge including the link and they asked me to stop developing the solution. They seem deathtly afraid of open source and were coming up with every excuse to not use it. I even installed linux and connected it to the network and it was blocked of and it was constantly emailing me about how theres a virus in the machine I connect and it was just a vanilla fedora installation. They are also deathly afraid of linux and every attempt i made was squashed with some bullshit story. Many more stories where that came from. I'm out of the corporate world man.
Supporting a world where all software is honestly open source and greed free by opening the source to M$ Windoze and giving it for free and banning all binary distributions of Linux so only those who can compile the kernel using drivers they wrote for the Windoze dependent hardware they purchased can use Linux until they open source hardware somehow.
c0d3r
Success in a big organization has a lot to do with making friends with not just high level people (obvious), but also with people that manage paperwork for a living. Most of them are used to having people scream at them and give them a hard time. They build up a programmer-like cynicism since so many dismiss their contributions. *BE NICE TO THEM*
Taking care of them, writing them nice emails, taking 5 minutes out of your day to say "how are you doing?" is worth more than you can ever imagine. When I need anything out of the system, I now have "go to" folks that will help me navigate the system, exploit details that are not commonly known, and even bend the rules a bit.
When I cash in a favor I make sure and replenish the deed by dropping off donuts for the team, contributing to birthday gift funds, etc. Believe it or not, most of these folks are actually nice people that are trying to navigate the same mess you are. Be nice to them and you'll get far "in the system".
With respect to what another poster said about protect yourself -- that's true no matter how big or little the company. Make sure you take care of yourself. A good relationship with all the staff is a good way to accomplish that.
The Egyptians? The Chinese? The Sumerians?
Anyway,it is very old,as old as money, the state or the agriculture.
The probable succession of events is the following. The discovery of agriculture made it possible to accumulate food and other goods and as a result the golden, anarchist (stateless), egalitarian age of mankind was over, the root of all evil in society, the private property was invented, followed other evils, inequality and exploitation. In order to enforce these evil things, the state and the bureaucracy were invented.
You picked the wrong day to post this question. The people reading today are the geeks et al. that gave up on office politics long ago and/or never cared to begin with.
I suspect the good answers will come on Monday. The people that will give you the right answers only read slashdot at work...
Anyway - In his bosses office...
"God damn you McManager, I've got head office on my back and they want your ass. You've got 24 hours to solve the case and finish the project or I'm taking your badge and your gun. Now get the hell out of my office!."
For inspiration, see R. T. Fishall's (pseudonym for Sir Patrick Moore) 1981 book Bureucrats: How to annoy them. The dedication in the book says: To all bureucrats and Civil Servants, everywhere. If this book makes your lives even the tiniest bit more difficult, it will have been well worth writing. :-)
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Gentlemen
They say that revenge is a dish best served cold.
Yours in jest
Ed
For the Attention of the Accounts Department
As an aid to workflow the following procedure will become effective as of Monday morning (20th March 2001).
From now on all requests for I.T. work in the accounts department have to be in submitted in triplicate on a new form, RFW1 (Request For Work V1) and signed by:
1) The person requiring the work
2) The Head of Accounts
3) The I.T. Director
4) The Financial or Managing Director
Work CANNOT take place until paperwork has been received in the I.T. department with all signatures in place.
One copy of the job sheet will be retained by the accounts department, one by the I.T. department and the third copy will be held in storage, just in case we need it. All applications for work done should be written clearly in copperplate handwriting (NOT typed) using a quill pen and black ink. Job sheets submitted in any other style of handwriting will not be accepted.
Requests for work should include the reason for the work, the cost centre(s) involved, serial numbers of all equipment requiring attention, colour of equipment, the exact location of the equipment in latitude and longtitude, any unusual smells that may be present and include a full estimate of time (rounded off to the nearest tenth of a second) and materials (estimates to the nearest penny will be acceptable). Where a desktop PC requires attention a full list of all files held on the hard disk should be printed out before the machine is touched.
If any parts are required then the accounts department are responsible for ordering them once I.T. give a specification. Any incorrect parts ordered or received will result in the job going to the back of the queue until other work has been dealt with.
Jobs will be dealt with on a strictly 'first come first served' basis between the hours of 0900 to 1200 & 1300 to 1700. Members of staff who require repair work should be present at all times whilst work is carried out.
Protective Personal Equipment (PPE) should be provided by the accounts department before work is carried out including overalls, hard hat and goggles. A clear working area of six feet six inches (two metres) should be available around any equipment requiring attention.
If any further materials are required to return the equipment to operation then work will cease until the entire paperwork has been submitted again, this time with the correct figures. If time other than that authorised is required then a TAA1 (Time Authorisation Authority V1) form should be filled out (using the usual copperplate handwriting but this time in green ink). Both items of paperwork MUST be signed by the members of Roberts Group management above.
On completion of the work the I.T. department will require the equipment to be soak tested for a minimum of 48 (forty eight) hours. As this represents a security risk the person requesting the work should be present throughout. Costs of sleeping bags and flasks of hot tea should be claimed on expenses through the usual channels.
The equipment will then be flash tested to four hundred volts to ensure safety.
Once soak testing has been completed to the satisfaction of I.T. department staff a Certificate of Conformity (in triplicate) will be issued. This should be signed by the following people before the equipment is brought back into service:
1) The person requiring the work
2) The Head of Accounts
3) The I.T. Director
4) The Financial or Managing Director
5) The member of I.T. staff carrying out the work
The users copy of the certificate should be displayed in a prominent position on the desk of the person using the equipment, with one copy returned to file (just in case) and the third copy collated with the original order requiring the work. If we are unable to collate a certificate of conformity with a properly formatted work order then the equipment that has been worke
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Make the bureaucracy work for you.
ALWAYS follow procedure; ALWAYS ask permission; ALWAYS insist on required specifications. Live it. Embrace it.
This will have two results:
1. Your boss (and your boss's boss) will love you for being the only one in the whole goddamn company who seems to give a crap about all those "standard practices" his committee worked so hard on.
2. Any project your team is working on is doomed.
3. Those who didn't follow procedures will be blamed. Your diligent activity will be very visible, as there will be a long history of e-mails in which you "communicating" about the project to show how serious you were about "staying on top of it." Meanwhile, since your fellow engineers toiled away at actual work, completely invisibly to management, while you were browsing slashdot and slowly enjoying your coffee, most of the heat will fall on them. Specifically...
4. There will be a huge meeting about improving procedures to make the company more efficient. Techies will be required to log their time in 7-second intervals, updating the log once per half-hour. Every code comment will have to be copied to a Word document, printed, and filed alphabetically by project manager name. Version control will be applied to every 12-line VB script. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth... and you will sigh with resignation that this is how it must be, secretly delighted that you can continue to game the system and draw a huge salary while never actually doing anything that ever makes any money for your Dark Overlords.
Posted anonymously, because I'm logging this time as "special projects - methodology." (Woo-hoo, working on a Saturday! I must really be hard-core about my job!!!)
Chises civilization has been going on for several thousand years - although I thought the number was closer to 4000 years, and not 5k.
..........FULL STOP.
I cannot stand the games you must play as a middle manager. For me, there is much more satisfaction in a senior technical role. For those who want the aggravation of management, the most important hint is to recognise who in the organisation can get things done (usually one or two individuals and often not the most senior) and make certain you are friends, however unpleasant he/she may be. That arsehole in accounting who has the ear of the CFO can save you a lot of grief and is well worth some beers and evenings of asinine conversation.
"What are some of the bureaucratic black arts that you've performed in your workplace to work around the office politics and get your work done on time and to a high standard?" .50 caliber automated sentry guns.
Recognise firstly that you're probably considering the Anglo-American model of business, and then realise the world outside the US and UK is a big place.
If a different model of business would you suspect serve you better, move.
This isn't the snide "if you don't like it ship out" remark, it's a genuine suggestion that you might prefer a different model of business. I know it comes as a shock to many American and Brits when they realise that their model of business isn't the way all countries do business.
I got fed-up with the bullshit that surrounded working in London so I moved to Spain. In a few years I'll probably check out France or Italy... I'm not talking about a young mans bus mans holiday either, I'm 36 and an experienced programmer/developer.
This also isn't to suggest other countries are better or worse... there's advantages and disadvantages to any model. Simply there are differences, and a variety of expressed values in business.
The upside also is that trying such a move is actually quite low risk. For most people (not all I'd admit), trying work in a different country can only enhance their CV even should the person decide the experiment is a failure.
If you are interested in trying it out... find a place abroad where lots of your nationality holiday... that has a "resort" presence, and preferably where plenty of your nationality are buying property. Chances are there's a fair few local property management companies that have a really hard time getting hold of good developers. Start learning the local language, and if you do decide you want to stay you can start integrating yourself more into the local business.
American and British programmers have a good reputation abroad.... Well actually I know British programmers do, and my assumption is American programmers would too.
From a lot of what people are expressing here as how they'd prefer to do things in business.... learn German. The German model of business fits a lot of what people are describing. Or if you fancy something less extreme, get a job in London which is just starting an upturn at the moment. The business there will be the Anglo-American model you're familiar with just slightly less extreme.
The world's a big place and you have a lot of choices.
Well, I work for the government, so for me it is required reading/watching. Yes Minister is a TV series from the early 1980's from the BBC. It shows all the politics in a Brittish governement department. It shows you how to deal with critical reports, Freedom of Information Act requests, failing projects etc.
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I usually ignore the politics, but that caused trouble at one company. My best luck has been with small companies where politics in less of an issue.
The largest company I ever worked for was right out of college. I didn't understand the politics and just concentrated on doing my job. Oddly enough, politics was never much of a problem there.
The one thing that most helped me there was when I was walking down the hall one day, happy after fixing a problem that had been bugging me for a couple of days. I ran into the two hatchetmen for the company, one of whom was my boss.
My boss asked me what I was up to and I told him how I had fixed the problem that had kept me busy the previous two or three days. His next question caught me by surprise when he asked "Who was at fault?"
I asked him what he meant and he restated the question as "Who created the problem in the first place?" So I answered that it was me and a bit of what caused the problem. (After 25 years, I really don't remember what it was about.)
A couple of years later, my boss reminded me of that and told me that accepting responsibility for the problem instead of trying to shift the blame raised their estimates of me more than anything else I could have done. According to him, 99% of the people in the company would have tried to shift the blame elsewhere and the two of them found it refreshing to get an honest answer.
I think the Chinese historians claim that their civilisation is the oldest on Earth, close to 5000 years while the scientists from the rest of the world claim the Sumer and Egypt were older.
Similarly, I think the Japanese claim that their state is 2500 old while historians from other coutries argue that it is only 2000 years old.
It seems that the Asian people like to 'inflate' the historical figures.
I walk around and look over everyone's shoulder. If they're composing an email, I tell them what words to write. If they're in a spreadsheet, I tell them what formula to enter. If they're in some other engineering application, I tell them what button to push. If they're building something, I tell them what wires to connect. If someone else has asked them to do something, I make sure they pass their response through me first. If they've done anything without my input, I tell them they've done it wrong.
[snaps out of it]
Oh wait. That's what MY manager does.
Sigh. I can't think of a better lesson on how NOT to manage than the one I'm subjected to every day. Micro doesn't even begin to describe my manager's management style.
Especially red issues. Ensure they are on every status report. Ensure you get written (email) confirmation for everything (requirements, etc). Keep project plans up to date and ensure any scope creep is reflected in the timeline and the timeline (project plan) is sent to the people who care (those funding the project). If another manager you have to work with is stupid, those higher up usually figure that out on their own without your intervention (backstabbing here only makes you look bad) provided you follow the previous steps. True, this is all CYA rather than playing to win, but that's life in corporate america.
Oh, right. Because at your job you're a big shot. You're making a difference.
His point was not that we should all be mindless sheep. His point was the same point I see at least a half-dozen +5 posters making, which is that your company is never going to be loyal to you past the next round of layoffs and that you should have a life outside your job, because that's the important thing.
Breakfast served all day!
Selective Enforcement; Gay sex web sites at work? No problem if it's someone who is nice. But if they're a department head fighting for a piece of your budget, no mercy. Selective enforcement is similar to flying by the book.
Selective Infection: Not saying I'd deliberately infect someone's machine with a virus but if virus updates just happened to be late getting to the butthead department, well that's just a darn shame, isn't it? And, oh look, they infected everyone else in their department. Hey, it looks like one of them was visiting gay sex web sites on his work machine! You bastard!
I find that works particularly well working with the financial departments. You scratch my budget, I'll make sure you're always at the top of the priority list. But painful budget cuts...owww, tisk-tisk. You know tisk-tisk is really BAD. Someone cut all your linked spreadsheets? Oh, my, that sounds bad. Must be a permissions issue. Those can take a long time to track down, too bad you cut my staff as we don't have a lot of people to spare right now.
You can do even more fun things if you run their phone system. One of the people I used to work for shut off all the phones at the security office, except the emergency lines, because he got a speeding ticket. Couple phone calls and the ticket went away and the phones mysteriously started working again.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One of my employees called me a "shitblocker" because I was so good at keeping the crap away from the team. However, I had another employee who just saw too much of the bad stuff, and it got to him. So I'm not posting as someone who has done a universally good job at this. Having made my disclaimer, here are few things I've done.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
This is also an example of the Hawthorn(e?) effect. Basically, the novelty of the new environment is boosting productivity. Keep the novelty fresh, and you can ride it forever.
As long as you can walk away from your jobs at will, the politics don't matter. Go make friends with the management of your two biggest competitors. Leave work early to go play golf with them. Be indispensable at the office. The gossip might be about you but the politics will vanish.
We are all just people.
The term "human resources" says it all. People are there to be used in business, once they are no longer of use ( or perceived to be of use ) they are cut loose.
Anything else is just a fantasy.
I will pitch extra in...for my own fulfillment and reasons. I will not expect gratitude from a company beyond a point and there are sacrifices I will not make, knowing at some point it will not be reciprocated.
Be prepared for some diplomacy though. There may people who do not like to be bypassed.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Seastead this.
Being clever and quick with the Latin can score you extra bonus points in some offices. Or at least differentiate you from the "my bad" crowd.
For all ya'll out there in the my-bad crowd without at Latin dictionary close at hand, "mea culpa" very nearly translates to "my bad" -- hell it even sounds cool in substitution.
Okay. I'll shut up now.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
If you enjoy tech stories of things gone well or things gone wrong, try "Category Stories" at c2.com:
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?CategoryStories
Click on the big title at the top for a list of subjects that often contain such stories. (Warning, c2 wiki is kind of a long and winding road and not for those seeking instant gratification.)
Table-ized A.I.
Honestly that is truly a shame and is why I have such an issue with the corporate world. That drive, dedication, and loyalty is rarely found in an employee. Companies that do have that type of person generally just exploit them for what they can, then throw them out. Now the individual will never produce that type of work because they know better.
I was in a similar position three weeks ago. I busted my ass, reduced costs, and saved their ass on a number of occasions. I knew exactly what was going to happen the minute they opened a new facility down in rulral Georgia to save money for them and the customer. They had to hire four people to replace me at twice the cost. Mind you they were quite incompetent and didn't have the cranial capacity to do any part of my job.
My job being moved to East Bumblefuck GA coupled with the number of times I was lied to left me feeling that the company had no loyalty towards me. Therefore I had a contingency plan. I utilized my superiors in such a way that when I left, every positive change, policy, proceedure, shell script, and an extreme knowledge of the company's infrastructure left with me and they had no one else to blame but themselves. When the shit hit the fan after I left, the phrases "don't say I didn't warn you" and "this is a extremly bad idea" echoed through their heads.
I can't say you would have been able to do the same, especially with the system that they're using. I just feel that it's a shame the world lost a very didcated individual with a high work ethic. I suspect you've learned from your experience and the phrase "never again" holds special meening in your heart.
of the bureaucratic mind. Most "paper pushers" want to make the right thing happen. Really. The system of checks and balances is there to prevent The Wrong thing from happening. Bet if you cultivate your bureaucat, you might find shortcuts galore, an allied person to make that paper trail much easier to work with and stomach. Remember, for every person that can produce, there is one more that can actually leave a document trail. Such people are useful. Don't waste your time and theres' on silly office politics. put it to better use.
This is progress?
The 48 Laws of Power
by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers
http://www.tech.purdue.edu/Cgt/Courses/cgt411/cove y/48_laws_of_power.htm
Law 1
Never Outshine the Master
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite - inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
Law 2
Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
Law 3
Conceal your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.
Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
Law 5
So Much Depends on Reputation - Guard it with your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
Law 6
Court Attention at all Cost
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.
Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
Law 8
Make other People come to you - use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains - then attack. You hold the cards.
Law 9
Win through your Actions, Never through Argument
Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
Law 10
Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
You can die from someone else's misery - emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are onl
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Covert Network Operations
I used to work for a company that had insane policies on maintenance windows, like 15 minutes a month, even if it involved no downtime. The majority of the job was spent in meetings all day long with people who knew nothing about technology coming up with ideas and plans to implement different things. Consequently, everything at that place got done very half-assed.
Then, the only other good IT guy there and I came up with a plan, we called it Covert Network Operations. Basically, we modelled the ideal environment and came up with a plan to convert the current infrastructure over to it. Then, once or twice a month at like 3am, we'd sneak into the office and do our thing (installing and replacing routers/switches, making config changes, recabling, etc). Because of all the political BS at that place, we accompilished in just a few months what would otherwise have taken years, and the environment is way more stable now. And, we never made any serious impact on the operation of the network.
What we did probably would have gotten us fired, but in the end, the company is much better off. But, we weren't any better off since we didn't get any recognition for doing the work since it was on the downlow. Bottom line is, companies need to listen to their smart people and learn to take risks instead of letting people who know nothing about technology hide under their desks.
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Perhaps I should explain that I am a late comer to geekdom. I spend most of my youth and younger years in a completly different jobfield. I was a baker and you can imagine that in your average family bakery there is little room for office politics. Hell when you are already there and the family slowly wakes up above you and comes down to the bakery itself in their various morning attire to get bread and stuff it kinda tears down the walls of management.
So IT came as a bit of a culture shock to me. Lines of communication were alien to me.
Nonetheless there was this whole internet bubble effect that even before the boom itself meant that anyone who had a brain could be hired and trained as a developer. I have a brain and have become a reasonable programmer. I am not brilliant, I will never develop the next killer app but I have setup several quality apps that have proven their worth.
After initial training I was put to detached to a dutch temp agency company that also owned a teaching institute. Some person smarter then me had decided that these two companies needed a new application to do their work in, the temp agency one to keep track of jobs and temps, the teaching institute to schedule classes and students. For some reason that I think goes against the basic off all IT development (keep it simple) these two entirely seperate activities were to be done in one application.
This obvious leads to trouble as it means if one is down for maintance, the other is too. That is if you ever get it developed in the first place.
The development did not go smoothly but that was the task of another company. You all probably know them, giganctic IT companies that are famous for never deliviring on time or on budget but that always get the next project because they so totally screwed up the last one that any manager that dares to suggest that they are crap will be undermining every other managers position.
It was a fixed price deal. Another INSTANT problem alert because this means that the longer the project is delayed the less profit the development company is going to make until finally they are only going to make a loss on it. So they cut top staff and replace them by idiots reasoning perhaps that if they are not going to make profit they might as well try to make it a learning experience.
So two+ years and the software is in a state that you could barely call alpha.
The situation is this, you have the customer who I shall Temp Agency A and Teaching Institure B. They have so little to do with each other that people from B are not at the site of A. Makes communication REAL easy. Further more company A is so uptodate that the internet is restricted to one solitary computer unconnected to the rest of the network.
Big Development company C has pulled people who made the original design (wich while basically flawed had some intresting ideas) and even taken back development from the site of A. They are now losing money on the deal and so really want to now deliver and see any more work to be a new contract item. This means that every bug fix is instead classified as a feature request.
Now enter the tiny company I work for,.they got several people already there doing some unrelated development, doing a rollout of some new desktops (NT4 yeah this is back when dinosaurs walked the earth young ones) AND doing testing of the new application.
The testing was being run by one of my seniours with the actual testers made up out of girls from the actual temp agency's, these girls would prove to be angels descended from heaven later on.
I am brought in with just basic training and a little experience maintaining an existing app for another cusomter. Basically I am a green but smart developer and a complete virgin to the office enviroment. My job? To convert the data from the two existing applications to the new application.
I now encounter the following problems:
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In five thousand years the Chinese have managed to master the bureaucracy. A young country, like USA, only 200+ years old has a lot to learn from the Chinese.
Pardon my French, but if they mastered it, then it wouldn't *be* "bureaucracy". I don't hear too many who actually deal with the Chinese government(s) claim it is a model for all. If an organization wants to learn from their mistakes, they have to listen. Listening is not something fostered in Chinese governence. After all, look how much they dig censorship of criticism.
Table-ized A.I.
* Keep the hacker types close to you, and shield them from managment, they are the best allies you can have in terms of actually achvinig something.
* Be friendly with the IT guys, and with personal assistants, they know everything that goes on.
* if its not signed by managment it does not exist.
* beware of sales people, they have alot of muscle in many companies, and are very skilled liars.
* minimize papaerwork, its a drag, and nobody reads that shit anyway.
* watch out for midlevel managment, they want to prove they are king shit, and will behind your back.
* always remember that the company is not you, dont buy into corporate peptalks and moral boosters, have your own clear agenda.
* critical: talk to women as women, and to men as men. differences in communication between sexes are crucial in serious office survival.
I'm sorry, until you fill out form RB-stroke-C-Z-stroke-nine-O-seven-stroke-X there's nothing to do for you.
The easiest way to work through the bureacracy in any office environment is to feed people. If a greedy middle-manager likes free lunches, take him to lunch. If someone in purchasing likes sweets, bring in cookies. Keep a large, well-stocked bowl of candy in your office and people will always be dropping by to grab some candy and maybe gossip. Convince management that there need to be regular free pizza lunches. Memorize everyone's favorite Starbucks drinks, and bring drinks to the imporant people now and then.
I've done everything on that list and I've had people do them all to me. I've also seen people take food to wild extremes; at one employer someone in HR used fudged numbers to convince management that it would cost less money skip a yearly company picnic in favor of bi-weekly parties with endless quanities of food and booze - which included purchasing a corporate frozen Margarita machine - and it made him a hero. Food is the ultimate grease in the wheels of the corporate machine, and those who learn how to use it will have a much easier time bending rules and calling in favors than those who don't. If you aren't buying people off with snacks, it's time to start.
Also, manage laterally. Whenever possible, cultivate good relationships with managers who are at your level in the hierarchy. At many organizations, top level managers like to play off the subordinate managers against each other. If you can establish solid quid pro quo relationships with your peers, if top management tries to screw with you, they'll be more likely to help you out in some fashion, even if it is not direct.
Cozying up to the boss, as some people have suggested, is not really a good idea imho. Bosses, like mid-level managers, come and go. It's better to have a reputation for doing good work and being easy to work with, than for toadying up to the boss. Many times when a management change happens, the first thing the new boss does is clear the deck of people who are seen as partisan.
Remember that politics of any kind is not about implementing a system and staying with it religiously. Your tactics will have to shift as circumstances dictate. Don't be too rigid, but always remember that you have to face yourself in the mirror. If you get too enmeshed in playing the game, you may wind up being one of the very people you don't want to be.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Hehe, forgot about the CIO...
My [techie] manager used to say that he could solve ALL our company's problems with one bullet.
Damn I thought that was going to be funny, its just sad. If I were a criminal psychologist I would have given the authors 100% in the narcissistic psychopath profile. I guess the list is a poorly presented joke. Trust me, no matter how much you gain in life you don't want to be _that_ sort of person. People like that often end up burried in a woods somewhere and strangely nobody, not even their relatives, care.
I can only give you that info if you file a Guidance Request Invoice Packet (Expanded), form 229-A, in triplicate.
No GRIPE, no info. That's been policy since last November. You should know that.
Oh, and don't use the old version of the GRIPE 229-A, use the new version. Ask your secretary which is which... I don't have time to tell you.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
If you want to beat them by the book, then you gotta know the book... or... you must learn the rules (their rules) in order to break them properly. I've noticed that having all my 'i's dotted and my 't's crossed usually sends middle management into fits. Additionally, I've learned to look very, very busy, no matter what's going on. Reason? Every Tom, Dick & Harry in our place has a PC at home and all of them want my advice (please help me - I've got pop-ups!). This may not help with management, but it helps with the yokels who shouldn't be operating a toaster, much less a PC.
I recently moved from a position as a coder to a team lead. We are always busy. There is always more work than we can possibly accomplish. However, everyone wants someting from from us constantly. I've found some ways to deal with this situation, here they are:
:)
- Don't take shit
Although everyone wants something from you, not everyone really needs something. If you are suspicious that work is being pawned off on you, don't do it. Let it smolder for a while. Let them ask again. Often times if you don't reply, they will just do it. As much as 20% of the crap that I get handed disappears this way.
- Escalate
Conversley, if you ask someone for something and they don't respond in some way within 24 hours and you really aren't pawning work off, don't hesitate to escalate the situation. People try to be too nice. Sometimes someone has 50 things on their plate and they are afraid to go to their superior and ask what is the highest priority. If you go to their superior first, you are.
- Document, Document, Document
I can't tell you how important it is to document your exchanges with other teams. Perfer email. When you do talk, document the conversation and the action items for everyone involved. Try to include dates. When the date comes up, call them. Review these constantly.
- Communicate Proactively
The people you work for want to know you are doing something. Tell them what you are doing and when you expect to be done daily. If anything slips, let them know immedietly. Don't hesitate. Give so much information that they will not ever want to call you and ask. It's amazing how much trouble you can save by doing this.
Yes, it really is that simple. This is how work gets done in organizations that are overburdened with 'politics'.
If you are properly connected you will find your projects fly. ( and your career while you are there ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I work as a sales rep for an insurance company, all of our information on the different insurance we sell is kept in a product binder in our cubes. All of the products require age, gender tobacco status and coverage amounts to generate a basic quote. A lot of our customer would get upset at the wait time it took for us to flip through the binder to get them the quotes on the policies that would be best for them. So i asked if i could create a tool that would take the basic information needed and quote all relevant policies. I got met with blank stares like i was crazy. So i built it, using FreeBSD (cuz' it's dying;) and Apache, MySQL, and PHP and i run it out of my home on a cheesy cable connection. It's not pretty but it's user friendly and works (as long as the power company isn't busy replacing the [power lines in my neighborhood {grumble grumble}). So i told a few co-workers about it to see if they like it, well they told a few more and they told a few more, next thing is everyone has quit using their binders and now only use my calculating tool. It is livid and has call for my firing on more than one occasion, Management is upset, but the improvement in our "numbers" has be so much so they are afraid if i go so will the new tool and so will the improved response rates we have been getting. So now they are beginning to talk to me to see what it would take to make a company "blessed" application, and unfortunately for them i refuse to learn asp, .net or any proprietary MS product, besides what i have now works and I'm not about to fix it if it ain't broke. IT is having kittens over this because they don't know or understand anything else but MS. My response has been "evolve or die, our financial dept. scream at people to diversify, why shouldn't IT" I have been waiting about a month now since that last comment. The best thing is the new CEO has been firing upper management for saying "We can't do it that way because we've never done like that before." So i think It is scared if they say to me we cannot use open sources because we never have or we do not know how, and they are trying to come up with arguments as to why MS would be better and i think they are failing to do so. Oh well time will tell. Moral is, i saw a clear path to improvement and when i tired the proper channels without using any geek speak i was still met with blank stares ( i think mostly due to the fact they figured if it could be done it would have been done already, and besides what does this sales guy know about computers ) and so i took a gamble and built it anyway just to prove a point, and now i am partially responsible for increased productivity across the department.
Here are a few tactics I have used quite often in the past couple of years with high success.
~~Brain Overload~~
The act of explaining something in a logical or chronological order with a hyper focus on detail with techy words so that the listening individuals brain goes into overload and dumps everything that was just said. It must be said fast, but not so fast that the listen party cannot assimilate the first 20-30 words. This tactic is similar to the BOFH's Dummy Mode in that it may allow the listening party to accept anything you say afterward as truth. Also it weeds out the slightly smarter people who may notice the pure and utter BS coming from your mouth that is involved with the Dummy Mode tactic.
Pros:
- May make the listening party get off your back and let you get back to work and do what is truly important.
- May make you look quite smart and adapt at what you're doing while building the understanding amongst everyone that you're a hard worker and have an intimate knowledge of your job and it's functions
- May allow you to utilize the Steering the Conversation tactic
- Generally causes the other party to get slightly frustrated and/or regret every asking the damn question. Eves dropers, usually in a cubical environment who have no choice but to listen, will find your seemingly effortless win over the higher-up humorous and may cause them to think more highly of you.
Cons:
- There is the rare case that an individual is immune to this. Most higher ups are completely ignorant to anything technical, however not all are. Those that are technical and have a high attention to detail will probably be immune to this tactic. I met one individual that wised up and only listened for key words and phrases and ignored the rest, thus his brain didn't overload. Therefore, always speak the truth or something that plausible that you can back up if he calls your bluff.
~~Steering the Conversation~~
The act of steering the conversation away from the original question to another topic that focuses on your needs such as inadequate equipment and bandwidth. This can help make the person sympathetic and/or provide as an excuse of why their imposed dead-line is not being met.
Pros:
- Makes you look smart and a hard worker
- May bring sympathy to your situation
- May cause the individual to loose focus on what they want and focus on what you want or some other topic that you brought up or comes to their mind
Cons:
- Individuals that are stubborn, have a large fire under their ass, medicated ADD, or medicated ADHD that are hyper-focused on their issue will probably be immune to this
- Some individuals are smart enough to see right through your tactics
~~Always Busy~~
The act of producing an atmosphere that you're one of the hardest workers at the company. If you're already busting your butt, slowly delegate responsibilities out to other individuals. Don't maximize your windows when you're not really busy; put them all over the damn place. Clutter up your screen and Task Bar with windows. A good way to do this is to have everything you could possibly need running and never close down anything when you're done with it. Also, having more than one instance of something like multiple browser windows or e-mail messages helps. Additionally, having more than one monitor helps with this.
If someone comes to your cube, make them wait a few seconds. Tell them to give you a minute while you "finish" or "come to a stopping point." Mumble things while looking hyper-focused. Pre write a batch script that waits 30 seconds before doing a net send to your computer with some kind of error message; execute the script as you divert your attention to them. When it pops up, let it catch your attention and be interested in it. You can use this as an excuse to get to their "urgent" problem later. Also, use this as an opportunity to bitch about the pathetic 768MB of RAM in your system and show that you're using 2.5GB of the swap file (virtual memory).
If you're
In a place large enough to support rich company infighting and politicing, you'll have to make some. Think of this as one part parlimentary coalition building, two parts personality cult. You need an effective coalition to show results, and you need to make sure you're teamed with the winning side of any given fight.
Some places you'll get fired as an amoral asshole for doing things that are expected parts of proving your value other places.
This should be fundamental, but if you can't keep your people productive, you'll be out on your ear eventually.
By whatever means you can. Well placed kindness and help, genuinely forming friendships (to a point), making them dependent on you, etc. If you're in a weak position, offering loyalty to an exec can work, but make sure they're a winner. Frequently, this ends up with you following them to other firms when they aren't, and nobody bats 1000. Make sure you can handle that if you go this route.
If they don't, you're doomed sooner or later. 'nuff said.
I forget what 8 was for.
Folks, they're called "people skills". Q: How do you tell the extroverted engineer? A: He looks at OTHER people's shoes when he talks.
I wurk for Long Island Sanitation Service. I pick up trash. I talk trash. It's been said that I smell like trash. I have even been know to eat trash. I never have trouble with office politics. I smile at homeless and frown at the rich people. When I walk by their tables in a restaurant, I fart. Then they blame each other. I belch on the phone and take dumps in other people's toilets. Life is good. I drive fast in the slow lane and drive slow in the fast lane. I turn on my blinker for no apparent reason. I eat lots of beans on Saturday so that when I go to sleep in church I can punctuate my snoring with loud farts. You can come work with me. I will never create a hostile work environment (assuming you don't interpret physical violence as hostility).
I particularly enjoy rubbing your noses in my towering intellect. On a personal note, I am an avid mustard enthusiast.
Here's a better article about the Hawthorne effecto rne.html
/ features/BNP__Features__Item/0,6493,98914,00.html
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/hawth
You'll have to do your own checking but the story is consistent with what I remember. Not in Germany at all, and there was a lot more to it than just the big brother effect.
About the old Western Electric Hawthorne plant - it was in Cicero, IL, which is now just outside of Chicago, but when it was built, it was the prairie. It closed down about 20 years ago and most of it is demolished.
http://www.assemblymag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation
they fire you.
If you haven't noticed (or studied your history at all), the Chinese had this little thing called a "cultural revolution" where pretty much all remnants of their past culture and history were very much erased and hidden from their population.
My university's registrar office has a native American who cannot be fired because of an affirmative action policy. Whenever some technically-against-the-rules but reasonable request comes up, she'll handle it, because everyone knows she can't be fired. She's saved my ass many a time so far.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Definitely true, and this often leads to miscommunication. My company started a major new project recently, and at the first technical meeting on it the senior VP responsible went over the details and specifications and gushed about how easy this was going to be. We engineers are of course already familiar with the technical details, and are aware that this is in fact going to be an extremely difficult project that may or may not succeed. If it succeeds, it will be by a great deal of hard work and not a little inspiration. The VP's 'easy' comment just demoralized us. The sad thing is, I think he was actually trying to motivate us. The business people just think differently than the engineers. I would much rather be working on something challenging, and I certainly don't want the boss thinking a challenging project is easy, because then we have to fight for resources and when the project succeeds we don't get the credit we deserve.
Back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, when I was the senior systems administrator for an office of over a hundred people (in four distinct groups if memory serves), my team (the IT group) decided to start using Bugzilla to track support issues for the deskside support of things and for our own internal issues and tasks. I spent a few days setting things up, getting my director's support for the project, and even preparing a presentation on the benefits of using it along with a quick "howto" for the office staff.
... my re-skinned Bugzilla installation.
:)
Big mistake. The other three groups' directors, without exception, started complaining loudly about the sudden appearance of an issue tracking system they hadn't been consulted about. It became a parade of the rediculous -- they actually brought in Peoplesoft, with a $100,000+ quote, to offer up their portal+issue tracking system. My solution was already in place and was already working (we showed how much it improved things in our team) but the other directors *still* wanted to "review other offerings" even if rolling one out meant disrupting productivity. Very Dilbert-like.
I had support from all the "users" (the "little people") in the office -- absolutely universal; people either liked it, or didn't care but liked *me* enough to support my solution. I participated in all the presentations by competing vendors, asking intelligent (but embarrassing for them) questions. I shot down every argument the directors offered up (because they were rediculous -- typical open-source bashing like "the name is stupid" and "well it's free so it must suck").
I'm convinced that to this day half the problem was the name. The other half of the problem was one director in particular, who always hated it when her group became more productive because of something *I* did versus something *she* came up with.
After a month of dealing with the bullshit, I finally got fed up and hatched a different idea. I briefly went over it with the boss, who cackled with glee at the idea, and went to work. This was all before Bugzilla was easily skinnable and themable; it took a few days to do it, but when I was done, it was successful:
I went through Bugzilla's code and removed all instances of the word "Bugzilla" and of the word "Bug," replacing the name with something more "in-house" sounding and replacing "bug" with "issue." I redesigned the main query page (because it was fugly back then), and gave the whole damned thing a nice, pleasant blue-ish theme with our company logo prominently featured on every page.
The directors never seemed to notice it was odd that I mysteriously and very suddenly quit backing Bugzilla, seemingly caving to their campaign to make "my" choice politically impossible to implement. When I said "you know what? You're right, let's forget about Bugzilla. I put up something different anyway for my team; you can use that to submit issues to us now, and you can use it for your own purposes if you want," they all smiled smugly and immediately started using
Others here have said this more succinctly, but I thought an example would help illustrate the point. No matter what your position (I had a lot of responsibility and decision-making power in that position), when you begin to encounter resistance from someone else in a position of greater power (or multiple someones), if you can convince them that your idea was really *their* idea, suddenly you'll find them supporting it and even helping to smack down others who resist the change. Enemies are helpful sometimes
Read my stuff.
He was looking for ways around the problem of office politics, not a beginers guide participating in them--and half your suggestions are just that. Specifically:
- Don't lie. It will always bite you in the end.
- Don't try to manipulate people. That just starts an arms race that ends in madness.
- Don't think in terms of Alphas and all that crap. Figgure out what your goals are and focus on them. Unless "being the alpha" is your goal, in which case you shook seek help.
--MarkusQThis just happened where I work - one VP, who does not get IT at all, blocked the purchase of some software that would save weeks worth of time. The President of IT backed this because "so few people use the tool, there is no support here for it, and what if $LONESUPPORTPERSON gets hit by a bus and dies?"
$PROBLEMSOLVER figured $SOFTWARETOOL was worth its' weight in time saved and purchased and installed it anyway on three workstations used by some high-level financial managers whose time was worth a LOT. Got them addicted to it.
Now, I just found out about $SOFTWARETOOL, got it installed, and since I work for abovementioned VP, I got the quizzical look, but since HIS BOSS had been sold on the $SOFTWARETOOL by my explanation and testing of it for our group, VP can't say jack. I even arranged for VP to hear about the purchase from someone besides me, so I couldn't be blamed for "going over his head".
As an aside, my coworkers, when they saw $DRUDGEWORK levels drop, were very happy with me for getting $SPROBLEMSOLVERs attention.
Briefly, start solving the problems of the best and brightest and most senior in your organization. We all know what flows downhill, but sometimes it doesn't have to be on you, but on the stupid people.
Click here.
In Soviet Russia, Bureaucracy Implements YOU!
...outside of work. It makes it easier to stay positive, be healthy and be productive while AT work. I've also found that staying committed to what I'm doing, rather than being attached to it helps. By that I mean, if I'm working on a project and the goal is XYZ - and some political crap happens, or some block gets in my way - I look at how to get around the block to do XYZ, rather than stay blocked.
People recognize commitment. And being positive.
"Pessimism robs ordinary people of their power."
The cry of the criminal is that morals are just things that the people on high write in books to keep them down, and the only thing that separates them from those in power is just that they got there first.
It never occurs to them that morals are things that you develop by using sound judgement and enable people to get ahead.
So this guy starts doing unauthorized activities in your servers, not with malicious purposes, but just to do the job he was hired for in a more efficient way. Meanwhile your job is to keep the servers running and secure, so people as this guy may do their job effectively while the company assets and goodwill are safe from malicious interests.
Your concern is that that this guy compromised your servers security, and I agree with you, he shouldn't. But he shouldn't had felt the need to do so, because it was your job to provide him with a productive enviroment. I know you have to balance his needs with your security responsibilities, but if this guy could install a VPN and SSH keys without you noticing, he didn't compromise security, because there was no security there to start with. How can you claim your servers where secure if you were not auditing them and you couldn't notice these activities in a timely way? If that was the case you were not doing either of your jobs, because you did not provide a productive enviroment, nor you had a secure one. So this guy went outside his circle of responsabilites and stepped in yours just to do his job, and he felt the need to do that, and was able to, because you weren't doing yours.
In other words:
- Remember, the sysadmin area has a support role in the company. You keep the servers running so other people can keep making products that will be sold for money, and that money will pay your salary too. If you want to keep the money flowing , provide a productive environment for the producers. If you become a roadblock, you will be a liability to your company.
- There is no security without auditing. If someone does something unauthorized in your servers, you should know it inmediatly and you should have the necessary systems in place to be able to notice it. It could be an irresponsible developer, but it could be an outsider trying to harm your company, and you won't be able to deal with him a month later with amonestations or "you're fired" threats.
Fh
Ps: Hiro, I don't know you or your company, maybe you are doing your job flawlessly, and I hope you agree with the principles I tried to put across in this post.
30. Violence
Powerful men are well advised not to use violence,
For violence has a habit of returning;
Thorns and weeds grow wherever an army goes,
And lean years follow a great war.
A general is well advised
To achieve nothing more than his orders:
Not to take advantage of his victory.
Nor to glory, boast or pride himself;
To do what is dictated by necessity,
But not by choice.
For even the strongest force will weaken with time,
And then its violence will return, and kill it.
31. Armies
Armies are tools of violence;
They cause men to hate and fear.
The sage will not join them.
His purpose is creation;
Their purpose is destruction.
Weapons are tools of violence,
Not of the sage;
He uses them only when there is no choice,
And then calmly, and with tact,
For he finds no beauty in them.
Whoever finds beauty in weapons
Delights in the slaughter of men;
And who delights in slaughter
Cannot content himself with peace.
So slaughters must be mourned
And conquest celebrated with a funeral.
[Chinese text]|[Go To Top]
http://www.chinapage.com/gnl.html
The beautiful thing about standards is that the better they are, the better they make the lives of those who live by them. If your standards are good, then you want others to have them, and be better off as well. furthermore, if you see others having a good time, look into their standards. They may have soemthing you lack.
On the other hand, if you aren't having a good time, you'd better look for someone having a good time and learn from them quick.
Two keys that I've found:
/gently/ ("You might want to talk to [boss] about that; he's got me on some really important projects, and you might decide that you'd want me working on them after all.") Failing that, make sure that your boss is kept aware that you've been reappropriated so that (s)he knows why you're not working on the work that (s)he expects you to do.
First, make sure that you're clear on what you're doing, and why. You should always be able to explain why what you're working on is important and why you have prioritized it the way you have. Keep records of how you spend your time. When you're up for review, this is critical for justifying your raise/continued employment. Similarly, when someone is complaining about how you're not solving their problem, you need to be able to point to all the other higher-priority problems in front of theirs. Periodically review what you're doing with your boss to make sure that it's what (s)he thinks you're supposed to be doing.
Second, never lose sight of the chain of command and responsibility. Your boss is the one who's responsible for what you do or fail to do -- that why (s)he is the one who gets to tell you what you're doing. Resist any attempts at the creation of "dotted lines" (i.e, situations where you're answerable to more than one person); failing that, make sure that you document who allowed the dotted line to be created. If anyone tries to get you to do something that's not already covered by what you're supposed to be doing, have them talk to your boss and get his/her approval -- you are your boss's resource, no one else's. If someone higher up in the chain wants you to do something, push back
I'd advise not to use the black arts. Using black magic will affect negatively on your karma. I mean do you really want this to be the answer to the question:
What did I do in my pervious life to deserve this?
Don't rent yourself to a corporation.
Reading the posts here is amazing. Why would you think that spending 50% of your time on counterproductive deception and bullshit is a reasonable tradeoff?
Why spend at least half your waking hours being treated like a child, or, worse, a wageslave?
For what? At the end of the day, is the cost-benefit balance really worth it?
Work for yourself. Work for a small company where people care about each other. Work on an Open Source project--spend the time you would spend battling bureaucracy finding funding so you can do it full-time. Work for a non-profit doing some good for the world--certainly the skills you have are in desperate demand where they make the most difference. Work as a consultant - corporations will give you much less crap if you come in from the outside and they are paying for your time--and you'll probably work half the hours and make the same net, at least.
If what you are doing doesn't make a difference, why do it? We all have finite lifespans on this Earth - why waste half of them on bullshit? I just don't understand. I left corporate America twenty years ago and never looked back. I read these posts and just shake my head.
It's not just a waste of your time. It is the root of our political problems, too. Corporations train us for passivity and helplessness. They train us to compromise. Like frogs in slowly heated water, they train us to adjust, to adapt, to think that warm crap is an airbed.
It is this kind of passive aquiescence to useless authority and wasted powergames that makes for passive citizens who put up with governments that are just as useless and wasteful. We don't blink at corrupt, greedy politicians looking out for their own, because we spend most of our productive energy working for corporations led by corrupt, greedy executives.
And folks think an MBA is a good qualification for political leader, and the marketplace is a good model for government.... No wonder we're in the mess we're in!
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Thought is free. - Shakespeare [The Tempest]
. . . so your first move is to learn that company's system.
I've worked for companies where taking responsibility for mistakes was a death knell, but I worked for another where being the company scapegoat allowed me to advance very quickly--because upper management knew who I was and that I got things done.
One boss wanted everything cleared through him; another was happy to give me projects and leave me alone to do them. One company was very strict with policies and procedures; my current employer couldn't care less about how I get things done.
The best piece I can give is not to sell out. You can always find another job--but you have to be able to live with yourself.
I did have one job where I walked away after learning about serious companywide fraud that I was expected to perpetuate. I've never regretted it.
They'll get my encryption algorithm when they pry it from my cold, dead hard drive.
Is your experience and advice a cultural perspective that applies primarily to American companies? Do you know if people in similar positions have similar experiences in other cultures?
I'm amazed to read of the experiences of advanced technical people in Fortune 500 companies and how it parallels the experiences of technical people in the former Soviet Union. Especially some of the more extreme examples documented in The Gulag Archepello (no spell checker on this PC sorry).
It sometimes seems that after the Berlin Wall fell, the USA and USSR switched political administration systems. The American corporations all went Stalinist and the Soviet Appartchiks all went entrepenerial. If this is so then the corporations will start to become massively inefficient due massive distrust in the middle ranks and refusal to work in the trenches.
Anyway, thanks for posting the account of your experiences.
You mipsselled "his oats is grass"
I was the highest ranking technical person at a foutune 100 company. I got there by being very good at what I did and being able to anticipate what would be needed before it was. But it still took a lot of tricks that I learned along the way: 1. It is better to ask for forgiveness than permission. It is still better to ask for neither. 2. When telling your boss or anyone senior to you that they are wrong or headed in a bad direction, humor is a great asset. 3. Be flexible. Think like a jazz musician - improvise as needed instead of just playing what's on the page. 4. If he's such an idiot, how come he's your boss? 5. Hire good people but pay more attention to their character than their tech chops. In the long run, people who can work together and admit that a co-worker, or boss, has a better idea are valuable. Ditto for people who can (nicely) speak up when you (boss) are about to do something wrong. 6. Remember it's just business. 7. Keep a close group of friends who are roughly peers. There don't have to be many of them, but you should use them to test things. Also be a friend to others in the same way. 8. You will get enough glory and compensation. It helps a lot to let your team members take credit. Even for stuff you do. One of the wierdest things I learned early was that it is very hard to give an idea to someone. Their natural impulse is to think you're up to something or you want something. Cultivate the skill to give someone an ideas without them realizing that you're doing it. Your reward is to hear your idea coming from them weeks later as if it were their own. When this happens be among the first to acknowledge the success of your subject. Never, never, to anyone except your friends in 5, reveal that you were responsible. After a while people who oount will figure out what you are up to and it will increase their respect and evaluation of you. The last thing was told to me by one of the best bosses I ever had -- If you want to know how much a corporation will value you regardless of your contributions, get a bucket of water, put your arm in and pull it out. The hole you leave will be about the same size as the impact you will leave after you're gone.
Best way to "reallocate company resources": late at night, when nobody is looking. Ever notice how the last guy to leave at night never seems to have a lack of hardware?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Be honest and transparent. You might not always get what you want, but you will earn peoples trust and respect (at least the ones you are interested in). Playing games might get you what you want in the short term, but in the long term it is very counterproductive.
I'd suggest the 48 laws of power. I forget the author(s), but I ordered it from amazon. it's possibly the best book I've ever read.
even the magic 8 ball has an opinion on email clients: Outlook not so good.
"The combination of the two events changed my attitudes about business. I want the cash now. I won't do anything for future promises. And I realize I can be laid off without notice at any time- even if the company is doing well until the second that happens."
Funny how that clashes with all the "do it for the love, not the money" advice dispensed around here.
"The only way you can trust the president of the company is if you ARE the president of the company- and even then I'm not sure."
Sleeping with the bosses secretary, are you?
I once spent a year of unproductive meetings, politics and ego, learning how the organization functioned. Then, getting laid off removed most barriers to progress. No managers meant no meetings. Lacking a place in the org chart made it much easier to cross departmental boundaries, maintain informal lines of communication, and acquire needed help and resources. Our project's existential ambiguity protected us from outside interference.
The most effective way to deal with office politics is to leave. You cannot change people. How much less an organization composed of many people?
dortmann31415@yahoo.com
Find your own black belt corporate operator. Preferably one that is not only good, but enjoys the political shenanighans, *and* can be clued up. Then place him or her between you and the people you want to be protected from.
Then make your work life revolve around making that person understand what you do. Make them understand the problems and be totally honest. Make them know when you are working your nuts off and why. Move on if they don't do the same for you.
I have such a symbiotic relationship. I make his life easy, and he makes mine easy. I do the tech and manage my developers. He does the project management nitty gritty and deals with the proverbial marketing department. There is no bullshit between us.
Recipe for a happy working life as a technologist.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
i find that being polite and sincere works fine. then again, everytime someone pisses me off, i go back to my cubicle and update my resume and send it to one of my company's competitors HR office.
You obviously have an attitude problem. It is either your way or no way.
I don't see why anybody that knows how you behave should take at face value your offer to be nice. You obviously will keeep the promise only as long and as far as it suits you.
I hope the day your cavalier attitude catches with you (which it will) you are grown up enough to stand and take repsonsibility for your exploits.
What a lack of professionalism.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Any company with at least a modicum of technical expertise will discover who is dishing this vengeful IT carpet bombing.
Your ass would be out of the door faster than you can say "Art of War".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is just a fucking job, not the planning of the Normandy Invassion.... Jeeez.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Because you maybe want to keep your job?
Try that with a judge the day you have to explain why you did not follow your auditorial or security duties.
In a post ENRON era the approach above is stupid and suicidal.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Having a mortgage to pay?
A family to feed?
A whore to buy crack for?
Reasons are many, the reality is that you can't always opt out.
You should if you can, but sometimes that is not a realistic option.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Some warning signs I heard before being transferred to the new location was the info that "Everyone we've ever sent out there has left us. Please don't leave us." Hmm. The customer at that location was difficult. One of the customer's cronies couldn't do a job, and blamed one of my coworkers, an excellent employee. The customer instantly asked our management to fire my coworker-- not "work things out", not even "warn" or "discipline" him, just fire the guy.
It didn't get better. Don't wait around in hopes it will. People don't change.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I agree with you 100%. My last job changed me forever in the same way. I worked many days on end, being in the office at 7am (with an 1.5+ hour one-way commute) and frequently taking a car service home at 11pm or later.
What happened? First, I started getting burned out, and found that the effort I was putting in was not only not being recognized, it was actually being actively denied by my manager, who continually insisted that I wasn't "putting in 100%". This to say nothing of the peach of a mood I was continually in with my family.
All the time I was being promised that, if the project were successful, "the year-end bonus would make it all worth it". But when I figured that I was almost working two weeks per week, plus commute time, the bonus would need to be nearly the same amount of my yearly salary to even allow me to break even on my time worked, and so, so be "worth it", it would need to exceed my yearly base by a substantial amount. Otherwise, I'd just be being paid for my time, or less.
Bonuses are very seldom worth the time. Yeah, they're nice, but show me the money now. Why? Bonuses don't always come. They're not only contingent on your own performance, but on the whim of your boss and his boss. I've been told many times that it would be 'worth it' at the end of the year, worked like crazy, and found that management has a different definition of "worth it" than I do.
Through hard experiences, I've found that:
1) Get over yourself. Never consider yourself irreplacable to a company.
2) Your boss will, at some point, probably play you for a pawn for his own purposes. Expect it, don't take it personally. If you're smart, you'll play along, and he just might help you out in return.
3) Don't expect him to help you out in return.
4) Don't fight management. Don't be the hero. Don't be the guy who's gonna change the insanity. I've tried this, and it just made me enemies with people who have vested interest in things staying the way they are. Go along, get experience, quit and go somewhere else. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
5) Set limits to the amount of work you are willing to do, make those limits known to your boss, and stick to them except for under emergency conditions.
Numbers 3 and 4 are the biggies. Play it cool, maintain your quality of life at all costs. There are more jobs out there, and losing the one you have isn't the end of the world. In fact, I make it a policy never to work anywhere for more than 3 years.
Eh - enough rambling from me. Just my random thoughts. Hope it helps.
These are laws of power. Please, when you write replies of disbelief, keep this in mind. Mmmmkay?
You obviously have an attitude problem. It is either your way or no way.
...I hope the day your cavalier attitude catches with you (which it will) you are grown up enough to stand and take repsonsibility for your exploits.
...
Yeah, I'm given a job to do and I expect tools. Call me crazy.
I hope that it doesn't, as I hope to never work for a company that f'd up again. It's been years and years since I've needed to do that kind of thing.
But you'd better believe that I'd take full responsibility.
What a lack of professionalism.
When something goes wrong: Apologise early, apologise often.
Cover-ups never, ever work and sincere apologies make it hard for people to beat up on you. This only works if you do it early tho.
That sounds like pretty much what they did to several buddies of mine. But nowadays that's pretty much what all companies do to their employees.
If you end up in a position where you have to "prove" that you're in the right, you've already lost the game.
True, but that's not what it's for. The paper trail is essential because you can use it tactfully to avoid the problem.
There are very few situations where you should be telling anyone they're "wrong" in the first place -- just clear up confusion for the good of the company. You should be using the paper trail all along the way, bringing it in *before* you put someone in a position where they might lie (or "forget") to get out of something, make their own job easier, cover their ass, etc.. The very fact that you always get email confirmation changes the dynamic, first of all. You could even give them credit for an idea, even if you thought of it -- that helps stop them backing out later. The trick is you have to *avoid* the situation where they'll lie about it, because then they'll lose face if they have to suddenly reverse. It's often already already too late.
Even when they say something completely opposite, don't contradict them (and accusing them of lying is the last thing you want to do!). Instead, become confused. Then give them more than the benefit of the doubt -- maybe they did forget what had been decided 2 weeks ago. Bring in the paper trail as you ask them to help you sort out what should be done. If they persist, ask for help explaining to the powers that be (or subordinates) why "we" are changing this now -- for instance, what specifically has changed in the situation that merits the change in course.
Always stay polite and logical, never get mad or impatient (or sarcastic - that's the end if you let that creep in), and just become confused when they aren't making logical sense. Confirm that you are working for the same goals, etc. as needed (even if this may be less than evident...). OF COURSE you trust them in every way, but you have to understand these decisions because a change now may have a serious impact on your project, and/or you have to explain them to your subordinates, etc. etc. -- have this line worked out beforehand.
Even worse case, if you suppose they've already told the "new" decision to other higher-ups, the paper trail (in a private conversation) shows who screwed up, and you can immediately offering to help them fix it. Of course, you're implying that *they* have to fix it, because they screwed up, but you're right there to offer support and suggest ways to explain the reversal. "Oh, you already told Dan we do that? Damn -- well, don't worry about it, we can fix this. Of course there's no room in the project schedule, it's impossible -- maybe you can just say you were looking at an old schedule? We did have that big cushion in the schedule from last month before we..." Etc. You're on their side, but it's their problem, not yours. Don't budge, ignore pressure, just be patient and logical.
This isn't rocket science (though often anti-instinctual), but it's amazingly effective... and you can get what you need/want while often *gaining* respect, instead of making enemies.
The real thing to keep in mind is that it is business. As a computer geek, I got axed from a company I dearly loved when the tech bubble went boom. The three founders had a helluva time that day, with the speech saying they had to let go about 33% of the work force. I knew I was done before I got the call - just finished a successful project, not sure what would be coming next, not a newbie (low salary) or a subject matter expert (high guru of some key business area). Just a mid level developer - fairly costly, can be replaced (ish, somewhat) by a cheaper developer with a bit of 'masterly oversight' from one of the SMEs. So, a bunch of us in the mid-rank took it on the chin.
But you know what? It was unexpected. But I'd set aside money when times were good. Contingency planning. Keep at least 3 months, and preferably 6 months, salary in an account you don't touch. That way you've got a cushion and that equates to freedom. It also equates to contingency safety and reduces panic when business downturns as it sometimes does.
The guys that started the company didn't want to let anyone go - they'd carried some of us for a few weeks and that cost them. They had a brutal time, since most of us were friends and the company had a pretty tight relationship with employees. If I told you how tight, most of you might be a bit green with envy.
But business (ie work not being landed and previously landed work being dried up due to the tech crash gutting some large US telecom firms) of consulting just went bust. You can't pay people with no money coming in. So you have to cut. It hurts. But you have to.
But for me, I took it with aplomb. Some folks left crying - no cushion, overbought houses or SUVs, families, lost of worry about a new job. I had little worry (I'm competent and a hard worker and had the aforementioned cushion). So I tried to reassure my disturbed boss. I think he appreciated that. I shook his hand and walked out head up. Sad for people, but knowing it wasn't about who I was - it was about business.
So, what happened? I've been in and out four or five times now (to the tune of about 24-26 months work) since then on contracts. I'm a contractor now. They give me fairly regular work. Their use of contractors minimizes the chance that they'll be forced to hack off so many people in a market dip. They're smarter now. But, at the same time, they're a great employer still. And the fact I was competent, hard working, a team player while I was there, and took the layoff with the right perception contributed to let them think I'd be a good guy for future work - I wasn't bitter and I had enough insight to know how business works. That has parleyed into a lot of good work.
So I guess, I'd say prepare. Get aside money for a rainy day. Think twice about overbuying homes or big SUVs or expensive sportscars. Save a goodly big cushion. Keep skills current even if you do it at your expense and on your time. And if crap happens, don't burn bridges. Every bridge you don't burn is one more opportunity for a future relationship. Sometimes business is just business - for too long many of us have thought that there's some sort of life path through companies. That's not the business cycle in many cases. But instead of griping about it (we didn't gripe when tech was sizzling and we were getting yearly double digit raises and signing bonuses and stock options), adapt. Plan ahead. And expect to spend some time out of work. Set aside the cash, realize this is part of business. And don't take it personally.
In my experience, this has paid off in peace of mind and further work.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Not work for Soviet Russia
You're absolutely right. That's great advice for a sheep.
This is a handly little pattern, I used it successfully at Apple Computers in a battle over whether a project would go in the box or not. I encountered extreme opposition to my project until I thanked the oppositiion publicy and placed their names in the about box as "contributors", the opposition tried up magikally.
Not long ago, I graduated from university with a CS degree and work as a developer in a Fortune 50 firm you have undoubtedly heard of (it is perhaps *the* best-respected business in its industry). In the short time I've been there, here are some of the things I've learned about corporate bureaucracy:
* Be honest, but not necessarily open and forthcoming, depending on the type of person and relationship to you. As Abe Lincoln once said, "you can fool some people all of the time, or you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Sooner or later, inconsistencies in your story will develop, people will catch on, and you'll have trust issues because of it.
That said, an earlier post made a good comment about technical vs. business people. I work with technical people all day, and they do appreciate the facts, unfiltered. Business people, in my limited experience, want to live in la-la land thinking that everything is just fine in the business. Usually, they also pay your salary, and if you want them to continue doing so, you'd best continue telling them that which lets them live in la-la land.
* A good manager handles your non-technical needs. You should not have to obtain software; that is your manager's job upon your request and his/her approval. You should not have to make the case for security approvals; that is their job upon your statement of need to your manager. You should not have to deal with business/financial people; that is your manager's job (or the job of *his* manager).
* Follow procedure. No matter how much bureaucracy sucks, going outside the bounds of bureaucracy is typically a fireable offense. Do as the company policy states, and when the money-men ask you why you're so inefficient, you can justify every one of your actions with policy they had set at the time of your action.
* Keep a factual, unbiased logbook/audit trail of bureaucracy. In the event that somebody with an incentive to reduce bureaucracy comes along, they may appreciate examples of bureaucracy and ideas for its reduction. Plus, it helps you to keep your facts straight when remembering how you followed procedure.
* The bureaucracy in your company is still not as bad as it is in your healthcare company.
* Most corporate bureaucracy is the result of government regulation. Sarbanes-Oxeley in particular has bureaucratized the financial sector like you would not believe! So let's not be *too* quick to blame it entirely on the business.
* Keep the ball in everybody else's court. Always make sure that you've done your due-diligence in responding to peoples' emails and that nobody is waiting on your decisions. That way, you can go into weekly status-update meetings and blame "the other guy" for being slow and wasteful, not you.
* Never underestimate the ability of the bureaucracy to surveill you; be paranoid. Always assume you have no privacy, assume that everything you say will be remembered or caught on a hidden microphone, and everything you write will be stored in offsite backups forever, and that all of this will be audited someday, either by the company or by the government. Always assume the boss knows exactly when you clock-in and clock-out. Assume that the toilets have sensors in the pipes to detect a variety of performance-reducing drugs, e.g. alcohol, marijuana, etc., and that there are tiny spy cameras in the bathrooms monitoring you. Always assume the company has an NSA-grade data-mining system solely for the purpose of combing the Internet looking for information written about the company -- proprietary information leaked by an insider, negative commentary, legally-damaging information, etc..
* Perceptions matter. See the clocking in/out issue previously: it doesn't matter that you're on salary; being salaried has absolutely *nothing* to do with setting your own hours, contrary to business idealists' belief and its original intent. Being salaried has everything to do with ensuring that t
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
it must really, really suck to work for the man. i feel for everyone with a +5 post on this thread.
Just do what you want to do. Beg for forgiveness later. You were only trying to help. Better than letting the beauracracy hold you back. . .
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
"What are some of the bureaucratic black arts that you've performed in your workplace to work around the office politics and get your work done on time and to a high standard?"
IMHO, bureaucratic black arts is about setting high standards on business profitability, which, most of the time, means getting paid as much as possible and *not* getting the job done (to have the customer's project sold another time to another person, eventually). Finding ways to blame the customer itself is of uttmost importance for this.