The other part is that big companies often have multiple parts. And some of the parts are working well and generating money, and other parts are failing and losing money. But even the working parts have failing parts, and even the failing parts have working parts. And sometimes it’s obvious what parts are making or losing money, but other times it’s not obvious.
That guy who all he does is go around talking to people might be a guy who does no work and wastes everyone else’s time, or he might be the key employee who makes everyone else’s job possible. Which one is he? How can you tell? You’d have to ask his boss and his coworkers. But would they tell the truth?
It’s true that if your company makes and sells products, then the key people are the sales guys. You can measure how well they do. But they have to sell products that people want. Or maybe a better way to put it is that it’s a lot easier to sell people on useful products than it is to straight-up rip them off Glengarry Glen Ross style. So maybe don’t fire everyone in your company except the sales team? The janitor might not be generating any revenue for the company, but if you fire him who’s going to keep the goddam bathroom clean?
Thought this may be appropriate to the thread.
So Mrs. Cad told HR about all of the bullying she’s had to endure and she knew she was in trouble when the HR rep told to to make sure she was doing her job 110%. The HR rep reported the conversation to her boss so he fired her. Since she’s no longer an employee she cannot file an ethics complaint through legal after HR blew her off to let the company know how she was treated as a woman.
I told her to file the ethics complaint multiple times over the last 6 weeks to gain some sort of protection against retribution but there was always a reason to do it later.
My point was, she went to HR. Ethics complaint or no, going to HR (at all, ever, unless you outrank the head of HR) is simply painting a target on your own forehead.
Part of it is the 80-20 rule - 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. Trouble is, some of the 20% of the work is mission-critical. I can’t remember who it was who said that half his advertising budget was wasted, but he didn’t know which half. Same with employees.
And it isn’t always the same people. For the last month or so, I was part of the 20% coding my little fingers to the bone. Now I am almost done with my end, and I am twiddling my thumbs because the guys on the other side have barely begun. Is it their fault? Heck no - the specs have been changing faster than Kim Kardashian’s undershorts.
When I rebuild the test cases and we start another of those doggone Agile sprints, I will be busy again. :shrugs:
In large companies it might take a Huge Fuckup for the corporate/regional authorities to notice anything wrong with a single workplace. The head cheese at my workplace was “allowed to leave” recently after months of: 30+ hours of overtime per employee per week in one department; managers quitting; a big increase in on-the-job injuries; constant technical failures; increased theft. Hell, the one competent manager that was hired quit because the management structure was such a mess.
Before the Huge Fuckup most people knew that the head cheese was an incompetent suck-up who hired and promoted other incompetent suck-ups. That didn’t matter because the lower echelon of management and workers generally knew their business. Then the Huge Fuckup happened and all the little problems could no longer be worked around. Then the corporate overlords noticed a problem.
I don’t buy that. I see a lot of mangers (men and women) who are successful and work and many who are not. I believe a lot of women managers ARE too aggressive because they think that’s how men manage. I’ve very rarely had a male manager scream at me for no reason or for something completely inane that I probably would have no idea I was supposed to do anyway. But I have experienced a fair number of female managers acting crazy for no reason, presumably because they think they need to be “tough”.
The fact is, whether you “like” your manager is irrelevant. However, they should always treat everyone professionally and with respect.
That’s not always the case. A few jobs ago at a Fortune 500, I went to HR and reported by boss (as VP) because she was abusive to me and my staff. She “retired” a few months later.
But I also told our HR rep that I was not interested in “sitting down to work things out with her” because I assume that she would just say whatever you want to hear. The purpose of this meeting is that it has now been reported to you and you have a record of it because my next conversation is with an attorney. And given I ran technology strategy for the company’s legal department, I know quite a few of them.
But yeah, people generally don’t know what HR is or does. They don’t “run the company”. They mostly do benefits and hiring/firing and keep employee records.
Ethics complaint go through legal not HR. She was also a victim of climate shift. When she was hired the climate of her work was such that any evidence of a manager bullying an employee or evidence of retribution would have cost the manager their job and HR was in charge of enforcing that so if this had happened three years ago then she did the right thing. Now they just don’t care how abusive management is.
Or it goes the exact opposite, like when the Mothership ordered the factory where I worked to fire the last ten people hired.
One was the new lab manager; another one was me and I wasn’t even in the factory any more; a third was my replacement; six were the replacements for the six maintenance guys who were about to retire*. Yeah Mz. HR lady, we’re sure firing those guys is totally the thing to do!
Total amount of people in Maintenance not counting the trainees: 7 plus the manager. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
Many places distinguish between “is an asshole who does nothing but jerk off at work (himself or others)” and “tries but can’t do more”. The people I’ve known from the first group were part of a circlejerk which might cover part or the entirety of the company’s upper management; the second ones included for example a warehouse guy who couldn’t read but who could follow simple instructions, do any kind of lifting and would play “peon” to anybody else so long as the job had been assigned by his supervisor.
I’ve had one female manager (circlejerk), at least five male managers (circlejerkers) and one other male manager (almost got punted into the next country) do that to me.
Thanks for the responses. This was very useful. I wish I could discuss this more but a series of unfortunate events has transpired to temporarily limit my access to the internet.
I think this is correct. Organizations aren’t thinking at the “what is Harry doing” level. It’s all layers of abstracted org charts and budgets and whatnot.
For the big program I’m consulting on I manage two projects. Most of my time is paper pushing and filling out paperwork for a large PMO structure.
I’ve never had the privilege of working for a small business where management cared about their employees. I have always worked for franchises of large corporations or schools. Retail and service jobs are miserable because corporations hand down decisions from their ivory towers that are utterly divorced from the reality of working on the sales floor.
Teaching is very political, and if you don’t find someone in administration to support you, don’t expect to move up the pay scale very far. Competency is not as important as who likes you.
Maybe the hypothesis that they retain the incompetents is overstated, and the ones they retain are merely adequate.
If this restatement of your hypothetical is a valid description of what actually goes on, it carries an implication that an established business does not need to excel in order to remain competitive, or at least viable; they can roll along on “good enough,” the motivational wisdom of Mrs. Fields notwithstanding.
