Do Nice Engineers Finish Last In Tough Times?

jammag writes "As the wave of pink slips is starting to resemble Robespierre and his guillotine, the maneuvering among tech professionals to hang on to their job is getting ugly. IT Management describes the inter-office competition between the manager of a server farm and the supervisor of networks and security. One was nice, giving his team members credit, taking responsibility when something went wrong. The other was a backstabber who spent plenty of time sucking up to the management. As the inevitable cuts came, who do you think hung on to their job?"

Comments

In the words of Malcolm Forbes...

[janeuner]

Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

Re:In the words of Malcolm Forbes...

[soundguy]

Forbes was an idiot then, in a world of 6.5 billion people, there are at leas 6500 one-in-a-million geniuses out there,

And statistically less than 300 of them live in the US. Toss out those who are too young, old, lazy, socially inept, ill, incarcerated, or comatose to hold down a job and you probably have about 7 employable one-in-a-million geniuses in the US, and you can be pretty sure that they already have jobs.

Re:Only the Meanest Engineers Survive Out There!

[Xoron101]

I worked for a small company, which lived and died by the monthly sales numbers. I worked there for over 7 years and had survived over 5 major layoffs. (one of those included my direct report, leaving me the only IT person to support about 90 users, 20-30 being traveling sales guys who worked from their home offices, never coming to the office).

The top boss was nutjob, constantly yelling at his people, belittling them and generally being an idiot. He was given a copy of the Jack Welch (the former CEO of GE) and in that book he talks about ranking his employees, and getting rid of the bottom 10% every year (the deadwood).

So of course around this time, sales went in the toilet, and there had to be layoffs. After 10+% of the employees were let go (which sucked for me the IT guy, because I knew it was coming and who they would be before it happened, but that's another story). The survivors were called to a Town Hall meeting to discuss the layoffs. Everything was going well with the Boss's speech. You know, crap like cut off the arm to save the patient. With less people we're all going to row harder to get to the finish line. Then the jaw dropper:

"I'm going to rank all of you, and post that list in the lunch room. You had better find someone above you on that list, get on their shoulders and push them down (using a motion like he's drowning someone in a pool)." We all were dumbfounded.

The first thing that went through my mind was: who's tires can I slash so they don't make it to work on time :)

I finally smartened up and got out of there.

Re:What?

[mrchaotica]

"Engineer" predates locomotives. The first "engineers" were military engineers, who made siege engines. The second "engineers" were civil engineers (to distinguish them from the military ones); they built buildings. Other sorts of "engineers" came later.