I’ve resigned from my job. So far in my 10 year career, I’ve worked in two countries (AU and US), for many kinds of organizations: federal, state and city government, private non-profits, universities, giant multinational corporations… and none of them WORKED. None of them had the appropriate policies and procedures in place to let me do my job (relatively) unencumbered. Whether it was constant restructuring, lack of sufficient resources, poor internal communication, rampant nepotism, lack of focus, lack of leadership… they were all, in various ways, shitty places to work.
So I’m feeling a bit jaded. Does anyone have stories of their favourite workplaces, which actually WORK? Where you can contribute, and not have to push and push for necessary change? Where resources were available in a timely fashion? (It doesn’t usually take 3 months of daily phone calls to hire a new staff member, does it?!)
Placate me, please! Or is this dissatisfaction just part of the human condition?
In my experience, factories are effective. The work is straightforward, usually, everybody is visible so you can’t hide someplace and be lazy, and the output is easy to measure. Everything has a number to it. Everybody knows what they’re supposed to do.
Decision making is higher up the chain. If something goes wrong with decisions, like bad production scheduling, hiring practices, or employee relations, things can go bad in a big way. I’ve never seen that first hand. All of the factories I’ve worked in ran quite well, so far as I could see. I didn’t have very good visibility of the overall process from the production floor, though.
I work in tech support for a local bank. We support customers trying to access the website. One of the first things I noticed was the total lack of bureaucracy, which the small size of the company (and our laid-back culture) enables. My boss is an AVP who is only 2 levels away from the CEO. That means I’m only 3 levels away from the CEO. Our team only has 6 people on it. My boss personally is in regular contact with our web host and other vendors–requesting minor usability changes, running reports, changing the way statements display, bugfixing, whatever. This does unfortunately mean our website is more prone to change and less reliable in terms of uptime than one at a multinational bank. But it also means I have a say in real change.
As a real-life example, a month ago I anticipated a bug when we were changing to offsite hosting. This meant changing the URL of the website. Nobody thought to implement a redirect. We started getting lots of calls from customers requiring a cache reset to access the webpage because their browser was still trying to access the old (now dead) link. So I came up with a workaround that for some reason nobody else thought of (just a simple redirect from the old one to the new one). Not sure why nobody else anticipated the problem, it’s pretty common and a pretty simple solution. Just an oversight I suppose. But it’s nice to know they listen to suggestions, even though I’m the new guy. And I got commended for thinking outside of the box.
So I’d recommend trying to find work with a smaller company lacking in middle management, and a boss who isn’t a douche. You’ll be amazed how much shit you can get done–I know I was. I came here from the most bureaucratic ridiculous shitty insurance company with at least 12 levels of middle-management between frontline grunts and the CEO. Where’s the vomit smiley when you need it?
By your own admission you’ve worked in two countries and in six different segments in a ten year period of time. I worked for 40 years and only worked in 2 fields and only 4 different employers. I also had a couple part time jobs but they were in the same field.
How do I say this in a nice way? Maybe you’re too picky?
You’ve been around too many government offices, and huge corporations
Any small company is pretty efficient. Most of my life, I’ve worked with companies composed of only 5 or 6 employees. One boss, maybe a secretary, and 2 or 3 people to do the work for the client.
In most cases, the client wanted (and received) the product which he was paying for— within a day or 2.
Whether it’s an insurance agency, an accounting firm, a lawyers office, or an engineering company.
A client would call and ask for an insurance policy issued, a payroll calculated, a contract written, or a water pump designed. Often the work would be finished a few hours later, and paid for at the same time.
It’s funny how efficient things can be–when the money goes directly to the boss.
I work in a hospital. They have to work kind of by definition. There’s always room for inefficiencies and problems, but things must work out or you are royally fucked.
I spent the past 25 years working with a large truck leasing corporation. Our particular branch had won top dog awards more than any other branch in all the important categories. Our company as a whole was at the top of the heap when it came to industry standards. I ran the shop and by all accounts should have been proud of our performance but the truth is I felt we were weak in all but a few areas and could have at least achieved a 25% increase in overall performance. As is common in industries that require some level of skill and experience a disproportionate amount of work and responsibility would fall on the same people all the time. I think we just do our best then at the end of the day forget about it.
That works up to a point. If the boss is trying to control every little procedure as his business grows to 100 or 200 employees, inefficiency grows and eventually returns to rivaling the most bureaucratic government office.
