Was it legal in California? I did mention this to the lawyers but they seemed to think it wasn't workable becuase it mattered where I actually did the work, not where I lived.
Well, it's the lawyers who mostly say, "Sorry, not possible, bye bye." But I can't believe that it would really be THIS difficult to do a little telecommuting. Lawyers, even good ones, don't always have all the answers, so I was trying to see if anyone else had a similar situation and knew the "secret" to making it happen.
Yeah, that doesn't seem to work, because as far as the labor office is concerned, I'm still doing the same work for the same company, but now without benifits... so supposedly they'll sue on my behalf, even against my will, for those benifits.
Currently, the only thing confirmed to move faster than the speed of light (confirmed via the "alan aspect" experiments, if you want to google it), is the spin on a pair of electrons.
Not even close. There are TONS of things faster than light. The focal point on a pair of fast-closing scissors, shadows across the moon, etc. Here, imagine this, you are point a super powerful laser at the moon and you move your laser in an arc. Now, from your perspective, the laser dot on the moon moves from one side to the other side in a fraction of a second. The dot tranveled faster than the speed of light!
But you cannot tranfer information that way. Things can and do go faster than the speed of light, but information cannot.
Your theory works in theory, in practice there are some situations like this:
Me: Okay, now right-click on the "Internet Foo" icon... user: right click? Me: click with the button on the right side of the mouse. It should pop up a menu.
user clicks with left side
user: Ok, the menu didn't pop up it just highlighted. Me: That's the left side of the mouse, sir, please use the right side, which is the opposite of the side you used. A Menu will pop up.
user clicks with left side
user: Ok, the menu didn't pop up it stayed highlighted. Should I double click it now? Me: No, don't do that. Please try to use the right side of the mouse, do you know left from right?
user double clicks with left side
user: Ok, I double clicked it. Now it's opening. Me: No, SIR, You should not have double clicked it. user: But, you said to double left click it! Me: No, I explicitly said NOT to double left click it. Ok, let's close down the application and try this again from the top.
user powers cycles his computer
user: Ok, I rebooted. Me: Why did you just reboot? user: You just said to close down the computer and reboot! Me: No sir, I said to close the application, not the computer. Now sir, please, do not push any buttons until I tell you to, ok? If you just go ahead and press things before I say so, you will just make this process longer. Do you understand?
long pause
Me: Sir?
long pause
Me: Sir? Are you there? user: You just said not to say anything unless you said I could, so I wasn't saying anything, is this a test question now? Me: Sigh, ok, now, let me explain again... user, interrupting: Ok, it just came back up, so I double clicked it again like you said and it's not working. Me: Erp. user: Ok, so that didn't work, I'm rebooting again. How many times does this usually take?
Sure you can feel all high and mighty when hanging up on guy that dumped butter in his floppy drive to remove a disk, OR you could walk the guy through the process of cleaning the system up, installing a new floppy drive and getting his system fixed, OR assit him in finding a reputable local repair shop in the area to fix it for him.
You'd be amazed how difficult this is to do while he's calling you an idiot for not being able to stop the FBI from using the internet to spy on the adult books that he's got in his basement. Don't give me that, of course the FBI or CIA or RIAA or whoever can use the internet to do that, just look at all the porn emails I've being sent by AOL Instant Messenger, how do you explain that, huh? Don't give me any of this crap about spam or other luncheon meats, or whatever you just said, just use your modem to suck up the butter out of the drive for me and make the computer work. No, I'm not going to get any stupid paper towels and windex, that'll hurt the computer! Where the hell is you manager, I'm going to tell him that you tried to make me break my computer! Yes, is this the manager? Well, this jerk made me pour butter into my computer and now it's ruined, fire his ass and send me a new computer now!
So, combine this with adaptive camouflage and you've got yourself an invisible secret lair from which to lauch evil plans. Super villiany is finally feasible, and just in time for Arnold to win the Governorship to do battle with, sweet!
Imagine if that boss had just explained to you the reasons why he was using that equiptment in a clear and rational way. Poof, problem solved, you wouldn't have been pestering him any more...
It's not his job. Simple as that.
It is exactly his job to give the information that the employees need. By you logic, the engineers shouldn't discuss technical considerations with thier managers, since it's not the manager's job to deal with those issues... But without full and open communication, the company is doomed. If your manager's reason for not upgrading the equiptment is purly a financial one, it's possible that you know somone that could upgrade them cheap. By not explaining that to you, he just cost his company productivity.
He could have explained. Then I might have countered, and he'd have to counter. Kind of like what you're doing now -- you just can't accept that the person in charge is in charge. Since you haven't been in management, you haven't seen it from that side. I gave an example, earlier, of one of my first epxeriences in management, as a teenager, directing and producing a 2 hour production that aired on local cable. Notice that I point out that I started in management with your inexperienced ideas -- that it was the job of the manager to explain his/her decisions to everyone. I found out rather quickly it doesn't work that way. Usually there's too much to do. While I don't like employees who blindly follow orders, I've found that (unless I have time to be wasted), I don't have the time to continually explain my decisions to people I'm paying to do their job.
You must only deal with unskilled workers.
I've found, from experience, that those who keep giving unsolicited advice don't stop at giving the advice. From my experience working in residential treatment, I've learned to look at underlying motives -- why is a person really doing something?
In this case, bottom line: control. And, in this case, I have it, you don't. And you just can't stand that, so you have to keep coming back and telling me what to do.
If it's an issue of control to you, then you aren't running your business correctly. If I were your employee, you wouldn't be paying to control me, you would be paying for my knowledge and expertise. If you want to turn it into some mind game, I'll take my expertise elsewhere, and your comany will suffer for it.
But until you are willing to put it on the line and manage something where YOU make the decisions and YOU take the heat, don't tell others how to do it.
As I have said many times before, just because I don't like the inanity and busy work of management does not mean that I am incapable. I don't have to be the owner of a company to have a stake in it's success. You are not the only person who suffers if your company fails.
I've seen both ends. From your admission and re-direction of topic, it appears you haven't, and are definately stuck in an "I'm right, and everyone should listen to me." I'm saying when someone starts and runs a business, what happens are their decisions. They can hire you and pay you, but, in the end, it's their decision. You seem to have missed that point over and over and would like to continue to talk about poor management. What's your issue? You don't like the way I run my business -- that's clear.
I'm trying, fruitlessly, to educate you, so that you DON'T fail. The more business that fail, the worse the economy becomes. You seemed determined to fail, and I don't like that. You are jepordizing the livelyhood of your employees, and that is dangerous and wrong.
If you'll excuse me, I'm out of this discussion. Bottom line: In my business, I make the decisions and they're my responsibility.
Then take responsibility for real. If you are going to not do your best to make your company successful then set up a 401k for each of your employees so that when your business does fail, you won't have just screwed over dozens of people.
And I would never allow anything in my company to be structured so any one person is that vital to the business. In my eyes, it'd be poor management.
It seems unlikely that you and your ego will have to worry about working for me, then, will you?
Of course not, that's not the point, I doubt you even do any multi-million dollar banking transactions, let alone write the software for it. The point is, you are advocating hiding information from your employees that they need to know. You justify it by saying that it isn't thier job to know, since all the responsibility of the company rests on your shoulders. That is a recipie for failure in a any company.
Unless you are making the promise to pay your employees a six months severance package if you fail, then you are asking them to give you a lot of trust. I can't see anywhere where you say that trust is justified. You don't even respect them enough to tell them why you make your decisions, so how can they trust you? If you think that you are the only one with something to lose if your company goes under, you are wrong.
What's more, you breed contempt for yourself. Any employees working in a company where they are treated like robots and not people is will not be willing to show a great deal of loyalty. If your competitor is willing to give your employees more respect, then the best people you have will leave you for them. If employees have no loyalty, they won't mind letting that bug slip unnoticed that will most defintly cause the system to fail at a critical moment.
There is no success scenario with that logic. Worst case, you get a little minor inconvenienced when an employee asks you to take two minutes out of your day to explain something. Best case, your employee will see the fatal flaw in your plan and save you millions.
Maybe you are willing to risk millions to save yourself from a little inconvenience, but that is no way to run a business.
There was one small business I worked for where I was continually telling the boss about the problems with equipment and why we should be using something else and what was wrong with the current system.
And thank YOU for making my point for ME. Imagine if that boss had just explained to you the reasons why he was using that equiptment in a clear and rational way. Poof, problem solved, you wouldn't have been pestering him any more... If it was a good reason. If it's a bad reason, then why is he doing it? It would have taken hin two minutes to run down the list of reasons he has, and that would be the end of it. Instead he decides to waste hours of cumulative time ove rteh next few years by constantly ignoring what you say. Doesn't sound particularly competent to me.
Often the employees are critizing the management's decisions without knowing the whole story -- and it is not the job of management to justify or explain everything to their employees.
Yes, often companies go out of business because of incompetent management with the inability to communicate well, what's your point again?
Maybe I have a better understanding of it than you are willing to believe. You seem to have the feeling that you are the bottom line. Not true. Never. The person/people who are running the company are. It is their choice to listen or not listen to your advice.
If I decide to walk out of your office before a job is done, your business will fail, simple as that. You would not have hired me unless you *absolutly* needed me, because I'm far too expensive to be hired for trivial work. I think that sounds fairly bottom line to me.
As I said in another comment, it always amazes me that the people that give me the most advice on running a business are the ones who have never run one. And 99% of the time, they're people who have never worked in management at all. I keep wondering why, if they have so much wisdom, they're the ones working for others, instead of using their vast wisdom to run that perfect company they say they know how to run.
I don't run a company because I have no desire to, not becuase I am incapable. To me it sounds like a terribly dull and uninspiring job with very little reward. The job I do now it entertaining and easy for me, and I still make a great deal of money, probably more than 90% of the small business owners out there. Why would I take on a challenge that would be less interesting, require more work, and with less reward? Sure there is the infintessimal chance I would become the next Bill Gates, but I can live very happily without that. In fact, considering the hassle of having too much money, I probably would be even happier where I am now.
I have turned down more management positions than I care to count, not becuase I was somehow afraid I wouldn't be able to handle it, but because I find management positions to insipid and unchallenging.
The moral: Those who can, do. Those who think they can, don't, but cannot accept that, so they work for those who do and continually tell them why they're doing it wrong.
Indeed, are you an engineer? Can you do my job? No? Then stop telling me how to do it. You give me what information I tell you that I need, even if you don't understand why I am asking you for it. You answer my questions about the direction of the company when I ask them. That is all part of my job, and if you are not willing to give me the information I request, then you are trying to tell me how to do my job without the experience to understand how my job works.
No, I won't listen to your advice. I pay you to follow my instructions, not vice versa. I'm much more lenient than most bosses, but if you try that, you're likely to be out of a job whether the company goes down or not.
Suppose I decide I'm tired of running the company and decide to close it or sell it to the highest bidder. Closing it will eliminate your job. Suppose I know the buyer plans on elminating your position. The decision I make still directly effects you. Does that mean it's your responsibility to advise me? Absolutely NOT! You may want to advise me. You may want to tell me, or even beg me, to do what you think I should, but it's not your responsibility to tell the boss what to do.
You misunderstand how the relationship works when you have very higly skilled employees. Maybe you only work with minimum wage unskilled workers? I don't know. But this kind of additude would send me right out the door, and that you be a very bad thing for you.
When I am hired to work at some company, I am hired because I am the best in my field. The best. You will not be paying me a high six figure salary because you want to tell me what to do. You'll be paying me six figures becuase you know that I will be able to do things that others can NOT do, and you will give me any and all information that I require to do my job. If you decide that you don't want to work under those terms, fine, I'm gone, good luck.
If I decide that I don't want to work for your company anymore, unless you are a multi-billion dollar conglometate, that descision will most likely end your company right there. You will only be willing to pay my very high salary if you truly believe that I am the only one capable of performing the task that needs to be done. Without me, you will be unable to complete your product, it's that simple.
For every "Ensign Jones" you have run into, there is a "Pointy Haired Boss" out there. If you are willing to run your company into the ground because of your own hubris, then that is what you are.
I will pay out 10 to 1 odds upon end of the universe that it ends in a different fashion they they propose. Please send me any amount of money and if I am wrong I will immediately pay out all winners upon destruction of everything.
That also means it is MY responsibility. Not yours, not the coders', not my lawyers', not my accountant's, but MINE. While I may delegate decisions and functions, it's up to me. Which means I take the heat and the rewards.
WRONG! If I work in your company, and you are about to make a mistake that is going to cause it to go under, I am out of a job in a very hard job market. Are you going to continue to pay me once your company goes under? Are you maing that promise? If not, then you'll listen to my advice becuase the decisions you make DIRECTLY affect me.
find that happening in offices all the time. In my company, the employees do not need to know why I make a decision. The point is it's my business, I'm in charge, and it's my job to keep the business running.
And this is why you are guaranteed to fail. Observe:
When I hire a coder, his/her job is to write code -- and possibly to give advice (when asked for) on overall computer systems.
Without an overall picture of the entire system, I will write you code that exactly fits the requirements that you give me. Now you are not an engineer, so the requirements that you give will WILL be flawed in some serious way. You may see the big "business" picture, but I see the big "engineering" picture. I know, quick example, that when you implements a Voice XML system that interfaces with Telera, you can't reuse ANY of the code for TellMe becuase, while they both claim to follow the "standard" they can be as much as 70% different.
Now, if you just give me the requirements that say, build me a Voice XML system that interfaces with TellMe, I'll go and do it.. but if I don't know that you'll also be interested in integrating with Telera in six months, my code will be absolutly unscalabe and in six months you'll be paying TWICE the money and time to get it done.
From your CEO's or board of directors' point of view, you've just cost the company twice the money by trying to micromanage and control your employees. If you are hiring the best employees for the job, then you have to let them do thier job, which means that they need information about the entire scope of the project. By hiding that information from them, you are only hurting yourself, and the company.
From a Board of Director's point of view, a manager like you describer does not seem to grasp thier role in the company and what thier TRUE responsibilities are.
The problem lies in poor management, not in the Indian coders, etc.
No, this time the fault lay squarely on the Indian coders. They would lie and say that some component was working and passed the tests and fufilled the requirements and design we gave them. We'd believe them, but when we got around to actually reviewing that code, it turned out that not only could it not pass the tests, but that even if it COULD compile (which it could not) it wasn't even fufilling any of the requirements (not even in the same ball park... imagine the analogy of asking for a accounting system and getting back a Flash debugger, not even close to what we asked for). And even if it WERE fufilling the requirements, the code that was written was so poorly designed and implemented that it was absolutly unmaintainable.
Once we had gotten far enough along on the project, and finally saw through the number fudging, slight of hand and bold faced lies, we had already spent too much money and gone too far down the path to turn around and do it right.
And do you know what your recourse is at that point? Not a damn thing. Sure, you could try and sue them in India, but we didn't have the money to do that and still keep alive long enough to look for more funding. Not that it mattered anyway, since we never got the extra funding...
But, lesson learned, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. You can't cut costs down to nothing and still have the same quality.
(Cost of paying someone overseas + overhead costs of remote management + costs related to misunderstandings/errors + inconvenience) is still less than (Cost of paying you to sit in your underwear and "work" for 2 hours a day in between slashdot postings)
Tell that to my last company when thier flagship product came back from India as code that didn't compile, tests that could not have conceivably worked even if they did compile, and all in only twice the amount of time budgeted for the entire project... Ah, but you can't they've gone under precicely becuase of that catastrophy. The didn't expect the Indian programmers to be a panacea, but they did bet the farm on them at least completeting the job.
Just becuase you are shipping off code to India doesn't mean you will be getting the quality you can get in the US when you actually pay people what they are worth.
Indeed, it does work. A group of myself and five friend once were able to generate and sustain a continuous "wave" at an Astros game for over an hour simply by never "petering out". Sometimes the wave would die out and only we were left, but eventually, after we started standing up at regular intervals and doing a tiny 5-person wave, the wave would start up again. It went like this on and off probably more than 100 times.
Slashdot Mirror
Was it legal in California? I did mention this to the lawyers but they seemed to think it wasn't workable becuase it mattered where I actually did the work, not where I lived.
Well, it's the lawyers who mostly say, "Sorry, not possible, bye bye." But I can't believe that it would really be THIS difficult to do a little telecommuting. Lawyers, even good ones, don't always have all the answers, so I was trying to see if anyone else had a similar situation and knew the "secret" to making it happen.
Yeah, that doesn't seem to work, because as far as the labor office is concerned, I'm still doing the same work for the same company, but now without benifits... so supposedly they'll sue on my behalf, even against my will, for those benifits.
That's all well and good, but will it have the strength of five go-rillas?
That doesn't leave any space for nose picking or paste eating, I'm assuming these will go in beta 2?
http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/q192.html
Currently, the only thing confirmed to move faster than the speed of light (confirmed via the "alan aspect" experiments, if you want to google it), is the spin on a pair of electrons.
Not even close. There are TONS of things faster than light. The focal point on a pair of fast-closing scissors, shadows across the moon, etc. Here, imagine this, you are point a super powerful laser at the moon and you move your laser in an arc. Now, from your perspective, the laser dot on the moon moves from one side to the other side in a fraction of a second. The dot tranveled faster than the speed of light!
But you cannot tranfer information that way. Things can and do go faster than the speed of light, but information cannot.
Your theory works in theory, in practice there are some situations like this:
Me: Okay, now right-click on the "Internet Foo" icon...
user: right click?
Me: click with the button on the right side of the mouse. It should pop up a menu.
user clicks with left side
user: Ok, the menu didn't pop up it just highlighted.
Me: That's the left side of the mouse, sir, please use the right side, which is the opposite of the side you used. A Menu will pop up.
user clicks with left side
user: Ok, the menu didn't pop up it stayed highlighted. Should I double click it now?
Me: No, don't do that. Please try to use the right side of the mouse, do you know left from right?
user double clicks with left side
user: Ok, I double clicked it. Now it's opening.
Me: No, SIR, You should not have double clicked it.
user: But, you said to double left click it!
Me: No, I explicitly said NOT to double left click it. Ok, let's close down the application and try this again from the top.
user powers cycles his computer
user: Ok, I rebooted.
Me: Why did you just reboot?
user: You just said to close down the computer and reboot!
Me: No sir, I said to close the application, not the computer. Now sir, please, do not push any buttons until I tell you to, ok? If you just go ahead and press things before I say so, you will just make this process longer. Do you understand?
long pause
Me: Sir?
long pause
Me: Sir? Are you there?
user: You just said not to say anything unless you said I could, so I wasn't saying anything, is this a test question now?
Me: Sigh, ok, now, let me explain again...
user, interrupting: Ok, it just came back up, so I double clicked it again like you said and it's not working.
Me: Erp.
user: Ok, so that didn't work, I'm rebooting again. How many times does this usually take?
Sure you can feel all high and mighty when hanging up on guy that dumped butter in his floppy drive to remove a disk, OR you could walk the guy through the process of cleaning the system up, installing a new floppy drive and getting his system fixed, OR assit him in finding a reputable local repair shop in the area to fix it for him.
You'd be amazed how difficult this is to do while he's calling you an idiot for not being able to stop the FBI from using the internet to spy on the adult books that he's got in his basement. Don't give me that, of course the FBI or CIA or RIAA or whoever can use the internet to do that, just look at all the porn emails I've being sent by AOL Instant Messenger, how do you explain that, huh? Don't give me any of this crap about spam or other luncheon meats, or whatever you just said, just use your modem to suck up the butter out of the drive for me and make the computer work. No, I'm not going to get any stupid paper towels and windex, that'll hurt the computer! Where the hell is you manager, I'm going to tell him that you tried to make me break my computer! Yes, is this the manager? Well, this jerk made me pour butter into my computer and now it's ruined, fire his ass and send me a new computer now!
So, combine this with adaptive camouflage and you've got yourself an invisible secret lair from which to lauch evil plans. Super villiany is finally feasible, and just in time for Arnold to win the Governorship to do battle with, sweet!
Would you buy a car because you liked how it handled in a game?
No, but I'd buy a space ship.
Imagine if that boss had just explained to you the reasons why he was using that equiptment in a clear and rational way. Poof, problem solved, you wouldn't have been pestering him any more...
It's not his job. Simple as that.
It is exactly his job to give the information that the employees need. By you logic, the engineers shouldn't discuss technical considerations with thier managers, since it's not the manager's job to deal with those issues... But without full and open communication, the company is doomed. If your manager's reason for not upgrading the equiptment is purly a financial one, it's possible that you know somone that could upgrade them cheap. By not explaining that to you, he just cost his company productivity.
He could have explained. Then I might have countered, and he'd have to counter. Kind of like what you're doing now -- you just can't accept that the person in charge is in charge. Since you haven't been in management, you haven't seen it from that side. I gave an example, earlier, of one of my first epxeriences in management, as a teenager, directing and producing a 2 hour production that aired on local cable. Notice that I point out that I started in management with your inexperienced ideas -- that it was the job of the manager to explain his/her decisions to everyone. I found out rather quickly it doesn't work that way. Usually there's too much to do. While I don't like employees who blindly follow orders, I've found that (unless I have time to be wasted), I don't have the time to continually explain my decisions to people I'm paying to do their job.
You must only deal with unskilled workers.
I've found, from experience, that those who keep giving unsolicited advice don't stop at giving the advice. From my experience working in residential treatment, I've learned to look at underlying motives -- why is a person really doing something?
In this case, bottom line: control. And, in this case, I have it, you don't. And you just can't stand that, so you have to keep coming back and telling me what to do.
If it's an issue of control to you, then you aren't running your business correctly. If I were your employee, you wouldn't be paying to control me, you would be paying for my knowledge and expertise. If you want to turn it into some mind game, I'll take my expertise elsewhere, and your comany will suffer for it.
But until you are willing to put it on the line and manage something where YOU make the decisions and YOU take the heat, don't tell others how to do it.
As I have said many times before, just because I don't like the inanity and busy work of management does not mean that I am incapable. I don't have to be the owner of a company to have a stake in it's success. You are not the only person who suffers if your company fails.
I've seen both ends. From your admission and re-direction of topic, it appears you haven't, and are definately stuck in an "I'm right, and everyone should listen to me." I'm saying when someone starts and runs a business, what happens are their decisions. They can hire you and pay you, but, in the end, it's their decision. You seem to have missed that point over and over and would like to continue to talk about poor management. What's your issue? You don't like the way I run my business -- that's clear.
I'm trying, fruitlessly, to educate you, so that you DON'T fail. The more business that fail, the worse the economy becomes. You seemed determined to fail, and I don't like that. You are jepordizing the livelyhood of your employees, and that is dangerous and wrong.
If you'll excuse me, I'm out of this discussion. Bottom line: In my business, I make the decisions and they're my responsibility.
Then take responsibility for real. If you are going to not do your best to make your company successful then set up a 401k for each of your employees so that when your business does fail, you won't have just screwed over dozens of people.
And I would never allow anything in my company to be structured so any one person is that vital to the business. In my eyes, it'd be poor management.
It seems unlikely that you and your ego will have to worry about working for me, then, will you?
Of course not, that's not the point, I doubt you even do any multi-million dollar banking transactions, let alone write the software for it. The point is, you are advocating hiding information from your employees that they need to know. You justify it by saying that it isn't thier job to know, since all the responsibility of the company rests on your shoulders. That is a recipie for failure in a any company.
Unless you are making the promise to pay your employees a six months severance package if you fail, then you are asking them to give you a lot of trust. I can't see anywhere where you say that trust is justified. You don't even respect them enough to tell them why you make your decisions, so how can they trust you? If you think that you are the only one with something to lose if your company goes under, you are wrong.
What's more, you breed contempt for yourself. Any employees working in a company where they are treated like robots and not people is will not be willing to show a great deal of loyalty. If your competitor is willing to give your employees more respect, then the best people you have will leave you for them. If employees have no loyalty, they won't mind letting that bug slip unnoticed that will most defintly cause the system to fail at a critical moment.
There is no success scenario with that logic. Worst case, you get a little minor inconvenienced when an employee asks you to take two minutes out of your day to explain something. Best case, your employee will see the fatal flaw in your plan and save you millions.
Maybe you are willing to risk millions to save yourself from a little inconvenience, but that is no way to run a business.
There was one small business I worked for where I was continually telling the boss about the problems with equipment and why we should be using something else and what was wrong with the current system.
And thank YOU for making my point for ME. Imagine if that boss had just explained to you the reasons why he was using that equiptment in a clear and rational way. Poof, problem solved, you wouldn't have been pestering him any more... If it was a good reason. If it's a bad reason, then why is he doing it? It would have taken hin two minutes to run down the list of reasons he has, and that would be the end of it. Instead he decides to waste hours of cumulative time ove rteh next few years by constantly ignoring what you say. Doesn't sound particularly competent to me.
Often the employees are critizing the management's decisions without knowing the whole story -- and it is not the job of management to justify or explain everything to their employees.
Yes, often companies go out of business because of incompetent management with the inability to communicate well, what's your point again?
Maybe I have a better understanding of it than you are willing to believe. You seem to have the feeling that you are the bottom line. Not true. Never. The person/people who are running the company are. It is their choice to listen or not listen to your advice.
If I decide to walk out of your office before a job is done, your business will fail, simple as that. You would not have hired me unless you *absolutly* needed me, because I'm far too expensive to be hired for trivial work. I think that sounds fairly bottom line to me.
As I said in another comment, it always amazes me that the people that give me the most advice on running a business are the ones who have never run one. And 99% of the time, they're people who have never worked in management at all. I keep wondering why, if they have so much wisdom, they're the ones working for others, instead of using their vast wisdom to run that perfect company they say they know how to run.
I don't run a company because I have no desire to, not becuase I am incapable. To me it sounds like a terribly dull and uninspiring job with very little reward. The job I do now it entertaining and easy for me, and I still make a great deal of money, probably more than 90% of the small business owners out there. Why would I take on a challenge that would be less interesting, require more work, and with less reward? Sure there is the infintessimal chance I would become the next Bill Gates, but I can live very happily without that. In fact, considering the hassle of having too much money, I probably would be even happier where I am now.
I have turned down more management positions than I care to count, not becuase I was somehow afraid I wouldn't be able to handle it, but because I find management positions to insipid and unchallenging.
The moral: Those who can, do. Those who think they can, don't, but cannot accept that, so they work for those who do and continually tell them why they're doing it wrong.
Indeed, are you an engineer? Can you do my job? No? Then stop telling me how to do it. You give me what information I tell you that I need, even if you don't understand why I am asking you for it. You answer my questions about the direction of the company when I ask them. That is all part of my job, and if you are not willing to give me the information I request, then you are trying to tell me how to do my job without the experience to understand how my job works.
No, I won't listen to your advice. I pay you to follow my instructions, not vice versa. I'm much more lenient than most bosses, but if you try that, you're likely to be out of a job whether the company goes down or not.
Suppose I decide I'm tired of running the company and decide to close it or sell it to the highest bidder. Closing it will eliminate your job. Suppose I know the buyer plans on elminating your position. The decision I make still directly effects you. Does that mean it's your responsibility to advise me? Absolutely NOT! You may want to advise me. You may want to tell me, or even beg me, to do what you think I should, but it's not your responsibility to tell the boss what to do.
You misunderstand how the relationship works when you have very higly skilled employees. Maybe you only work with minimum wage unskilled workers? I don't know. But this kind of additude would send me right out the door, and that you be a very bad thing for you.
When I am hired to work at some company, I am hired because I am the best in my field. The best. You will not be paying me a high six figure salary because you want to tell me what to do. You'll be paying me six figures becuase you know that I will be able to do things that others can NOT do, and you will give me any and all information that I require to do my job. If you decide that you don't want to work under those terms, fine, I'm gone, good luck.
If I decide that I don't want to work for your company anymore, unless you are a multi-billion dollar conglometate, that descision will most likely end your company right there. You will only be willing to pay my very high salary if you truly believe that I am the only one capable of performing the task that needs to be done. Without me, you will be unable to complete your product, it's that simple.
For every "Ensign Jones" you have run into, there is a "Pointy Haired Boss" out there. If you are willing to run your company into the ground because of your own hubris, then that is what you are.
I will pay out 10 to 1 odds upon end of the universe that it ends in a different fashion they they propose. Please send me any amount of money and if I am wrong I will immediately pay out all winners upon destruction of everything.
I wrote you a check... post-dated.
That also means it is MY responsibility. Not yours, not the coders', not my lawyers', not my accountant's, but MINE. While I may delegate decisions and functions, it's up to me. Which means I take the heat and the rewards.
WRONG! If I work in your company, and you are about to make a mistake that is going to cause it to go under, I am out of a job in a very hard job market. Are you going to continue to pay me once your company goes under? Are you maing that promise? If not, then you'll listen to my advice becuase the decisions you make DIRECTLY affect me.
find that happening in offices all the time. In my company, the employees do not need to know why I make a decision. The point is it's my business, I'm in charge, and it's my job to keep the business running.
And this is why you are guaranteed to fail. Observe:
When I hire a coder, his/her job is to write code -- and possibly to give advice (when asked for) on overall computer systems.
Without an overall picture of the entire system, I will write you code that exactly fits the requirements that you give me. Now you are not an engineer, so the requirements that you give will WILL be flawed in some serious way. You may see the big "business" picture, but I see the big "engineering" picture. I know, quick example, that when you implements a Voice XML system that interfaces with Telera, you can't reuse ANY of the code for TellMe becuase, while they both claim to follow the "standard" they can be as much as 70% different.
Now, if you just give me the requirements that say, build me a Voice XML system that interfaces with TellMe, I'll go and do it.. but if I don't know that you'll also be interested in integrating with Telera in six months, my code will be absolutly unscalabe and in six months you'll be paying TWICE the money and time to get it done.
From your CEO's or board of directors' point of view, you've just cost the company twice the money by trying to micromanage and control your employees. If you are hiring the best employees for the job, then you have to let them do thier job, which means that they need information about the entire scope of the project. By hiding that information from them, you are only hurting yourself, and the company.
From a Board of Director's point of view, a manager like you describer does not seem to grasp thier role in the company and what thier TRUE responsibilities are.
You might as well try to argue that slander is theft.
You've stolen my line... YOU THIEF!
The problem lies in poor management, not in the Indian coders, etc.
No, this time the fault lay squarely on the Indian coders. They would lie and say that some component was working and passed the tests and fufilled the requirements and design we gave them. We'd believe them, but when we got around to actually reviewing that code, it turned out that not only could it not pass the tests, but that even if it COULD compile (which it could not) it wasn't even fufilling any of the requirements (not even in the same ball park... imagine the analogy of asking for a accounting system and getting back a Flash debugger, not even close to what we asked for). And even if it WERE fufilling the requirements, the code that was written was so poorly designed and implemented that it was absolutly unmaintainable.
Once we had gotten far enough along on the project, and finally saw through the number fudging, slight of hand and bold faced lies, we had already spent too much money and gone too far down the path to turn around and do it right.
And do you know what your recourse is at that point? Not a damn thing. Sure, you could try and sue them in India, but we didn't have the money to do that and still keep alive long enough to look for more funding. Not that it mattered anyway, since we never got the extra funding...
But, lesson learned, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. You can't cut costs down to nothing and still have the same quality.
(Cost of paying someone overseas + overhead costs of remote management + costs related to misunderstandings/errors + inconvenience) is still less than (Cost of paying you to sit in your underwear and "work" for 2 hours a day in between slashdot postings)
Tell that to my last company when thier flagship product came back from India as code that didn't compile, tests that could not have conceivably worked even if they did compile, and all in only twice the amount of time budgeted for the entire project... Ah, but you can't they've gone under precicely becuase of that catastrophy. The didn't expect the Indian programmers to be a panacea, but they did bet the farm on them at least completeting the job.
Just becuase you are shipping off code to India doesn't mean you will be getting the quality you can get in the US when you actually pay people what they are worth.
"It was the best of times... It was the BLURST OF TIMES?!?! Stupid monkey!"
Indeed, it does work. A group of myself and five friend once were able to generate and sustain a continuous "wave" at an Astros game for over an hour simply by never "petering out". Sometimes the wave would die out and only we were left, but eventually, after we started standing up at regular intervals and doing a tiny 5-person wave, the wave would start up again. It went like this on and off probably more than 100 times.