Sort of. The company is moving in a new direction where basically they are trying to automate and standardize everything. So we’ve implemented a whole bunch more process and management layers. I’m now one of those layers. The problem, IMHO is that niether our product, our culture nor the size of the company justifies that yet. But our current model isn’t profitable so this is what they are trying.
And yes, our HR director is full of shit. We now have this rigid org chart but she doesn’t want it circulated because she “doesn’t want to give the impression of a hierarchy”. Well it IS a hierarchy now. So what’s the point of pretending it isn’t?
There’s a lot revealed in the first part of your post, but I’ll just address this part.
China, unions, tax code, civil lawsuits, drugs, education, NAFTA, war, oil, and terrorism, among many other things have been blamed for problems in American economic growth. But none of them, or even all of them combined, have been as harmful to the US economy as HR departments.
Yeah, that’s pretty ridiculous. You can have a friendly dictatorship, but unless there’s a strong union, or unless it’s a worker-owned collective, the workplace is a dictatorship, and let’s not pretend otherwise. The dictatorship doesn’t need to be extra-oppressive, though. You can tell people straight up: “Yes, I’m your boss, and ultimately your employment here rests on convincing me you’re a good employee. Here’s how to convince me of that. If you do that, then I’ll do my damnedest to make this workplace a place you’re happy to come to. If you don’t, but I think you’re trying, then I’ll do my damnedest to work with you to improve your efforts. And if I don’t think you’re trying, then I’ll tell you my impression and give you a very short period of time to convince me that you are trying; if I don’t change my mind, then I’ll release you from your contract.”
You seem to think that a work culture “should” be some particular way. But in reality, each company can allow that culture to be whatever they want. It’s an optimization problem and you don’t even seem to be aware of that fact.
When I worked at a small software company, we had a beer machine, we played games, we screwed around - and we kicked ass. The owner was the biggest “child” in the group and one of the smartest people I’ve met. We were successful, we had fun and retained smart productive developers better than our competitors.
The nature of their job (as described by a previous poster) as well as the limited supply of people that excel at this work (supply and demand).
Every person is different, you do realize that, right?
When I’m working on something big, complex and fun, I would rather work for very long hours for a decent stretch of time and then take a complete break instead of working 8 to 5. Working 8 to 5 is such a short amount of time that it’s tough to keep starting and stopping all of the mental processes related to the project.
Had to be sure this was coming from you (several times). You’ve always been total Mr. Corporate Line in all things in the past, so I’m confused by the entire post.
HR may be content to leave them alone, but they’re not culpable for what happens on the team. You are. They may well not be too worried about YOUR problem here (or they’re just incompetent), but I expect you know well enough that you’re the guy paid to deal with and worry about their performance and actions. One complaint (or a series in rapid succession) about “inappropriate” activities and it’s your head on the block not theirs.
You’ve got a team headed in one direction, you need them to go in another. You’re the guy paid to steer. Of course people will complain when you make them change direction. It’s Human Nature.
Dude, you fucking turned me on a dime a couple of months ago. You can do this.
Just don’t be too much of a humorless dick about it, right?
Yup. That’s what I thought. The president / upper management team had a great idea, and thought that they if they recreated the worst ideas of the dotcom bubble, then it would work this time.
They now sort of understand they’ve got to make changes, but they are sure exactly what needs to be changes and so they’re hoping you can do it, but they’re not supporting you or owning up to the employees that things need to be done differently.
Been there, done that.
Do your best, softly but firmly, and keep your resume up to day. Don’t forget to keep networking and hope it works out better for you than it did for me.
I work for a large tech company. We do just about every “bad” thing complained about in this thread. We are somehow capable of taking each other and our work as seriously as a heart attack. And we kick ass at what we do like nobody’s business.
I used to work for a small company that was awesome, and then we got bought. The new owners decided to replace our nursery culture with a more formal one. All of the talent quickly fled, and they were left with the dregs. You absolutely can treat tech people like accountants, as long as you’re happy having only people who aren’t good enough to get a job somewhere that no one cares what pants you’re wearing (or, well, if you’re even wearing them).
But, msmith’s company is not kicking ass. They aren’t profitable. Drinking beer and playing games at work while wearing a Star Trek uniform while the company makes money hand over fist - no one sensible cares and people will point to the casual culture and say “look how much this improves our creativity and productivity.” Do it while the company isn’t profitable, and management will decide the same behavior is a distraction.
Given an unprofitable company, it isn’t unlikely that eventually the firm will be laying people off. Now, I hope and believe that msmith is sensible enough to lay off the lower producers first, but he may have to decide between good people. But what impression do you want your boss to have about your work day in a less than profitable company - “when I’m bored I play Magic the Gathering” or “when I’m bored I read books on database design and information architecture?” And when you go to a new company which may have a more formal culture - because this one goes under regardless of its culture (which isn’t unlikely), do you want to have the habits of a casual culture or those of a formalized one? Or you may be so talented as a coder that it won’t make any difference if the timing of the demise of this one hits with another spike in unemployment because you have recruiters pounding on your door and you can easily get a job while interviewing while not wearing pants and asking if the group you are joining has a WoW guild and if the firewall is open for raiding.
And if you are, godspeed…and maybe the company msmith’s company appears to be turning into, with its standardization and processes, isn’t going to be a place you want to be much longer anyway. For that matter, if it isn’t profitable, it really isn’t a place anyone wants to be much longer.
There’s your problem right there - you need to hire of a couple of art fags to bridge the gap to the nerds for you.
But seriously - have you tried just leveling with them yet? Meaning, explaining the business reasons behind the change in management tone?
Early on, I made the mistake of trying to insulate my staff from the whims of upper management, and it spoiled the hell out of them. They couldn’t understand why I insisted we buy (say) IBM instead of letting them build out servers from whitebox parts while hand compiling drivers on their own, or why I’d occasionally bring in vendor consultants for initial basic training on new stuff instead of letting them learn on their own through trial and error.
They’d bitch and moan incessantly about how I was wasting money, or not respecting their intelligence or creativity or whatever, when in reality, I was just doing my best to translate all of the hot-air business bullshit (and non-bullshit) by which my own performance was judged into purely technical performance requirements for my staff.
I had to become less of a translator, and more of a couples counselor. If you get my drift.
The company culture stuff is all a bullshit distraction. All that matters is that the product is correct, and on time. That is why creative types are usually salaried or commission rather than hourly. Smart management uses a very light touch with that talent because they are usually self motivated to do the work excellently without the whip. Smart management also separates them from the consumer if there is a massive cultural divided between the two groups. They do this with an intermediary, a manager or spokesman. HR in this case knows where it’s bread is buttered and doesn’t want a massive exodus of talent. Msmith, just go ask the problem guy what could be done to help alleviate his workload. Give him a day or two to reply if he needs it and then see if what he comes back with is feasible. Tell him you are there to help him out, focus on the person not the product. They all *know *the product has to go out and be right.
There is a third component…cost. If the company isn’t profitable, but they are paying people to play Dominion at work, they will see their labor costs as too high. Now, we may realize that those people are at work for fifteen hours, only four of which are spent not working, and that forcing them to work while at work may mean shorter days, but that becomes a more manageable labor cost and scheduling situation. You might be able to get some of those guys to take one for the team and pull fifteen hour days of working, cutting your labor costs by a third. And we may realize that the talent is the first to leave, but the company isnt profitable, the talent should be looking for other opportunities already regardless.
There is your disconnect. Talent doesn’t give a shit about profitability, labor costs, or other pointy-headed boss stuff. Talent does ideas, concepts, creativity, and high demand/ extremely low supply work. Talent cares about free mountain dew and access to expensive equipment it needs to make cool things. The fact that this is done for a company for profit is really second fiddle if it is even on the radar at all. Talent would do that work for free anyway because it enjoys doing that particular activity. Money is a sort of evil and annoying necessity that is required to keep talent doing what it wants to do.
This is a common problem in businesses that start as creative powerhouses and grow large enough to necessitate a corporate style structure to adequately serve it’s market. The talent sees the management as necessary, but boring, stuffy, foolish, conformist, anal micromanagers who really need to loosen up a little and the management views the talent as juvenile, spoiled, arrogant, slackers who don’t understand the realities of the world. In a way, they are both right, and dead wrong. The very things that make a person a good organizer handicap them from the fluidity that creative talent needs to be effective. Likewise, that same fluidity and lack of infrastructure that fosters creative development handicaps a person from being effective in day to day interactions with suppliers and clients.
You really can’t apply a cost benefit assessment to creative types though because the creativity is not a quantifiable property. That is why smart management deals with that dept by setting goal oriented, contract or salary based structures and keeping hands off as much as possible.
Yet if you don’t apply a cost benefit analysis to it, you can’t pay them, or wont be able to for long Your paycheck comes from somewhere, money does not fall from the sky for most companies. Those pointed haired bosses have to think of labor as an expense, or their project doesn’t get funded and those software developers don’t have jobs. A good boss of the non pointed hair type protects you from it as much as they can, but it IS there, and a good staff will recognize it and not put their boss in a non supportable position.
I used to work in advertising. In that business you have very creative people…and they bill hourly. And it works. Granted, someone who only wishes to write poetry or produce art makes a lousy copywriter or graphic designer, but there are plenty of people willing to sell their souls and bill eight hour days. Now, granted, treat your talent badly and they discover that they can profitably freelance…but then they become responsible for their billable hours.
“Talent”? The guys on my staff are getting paid to build data feeds using SQL. They aren’t Academy Award nominated actors. We have people who I’d describe as “talent” but they are disconnected from customer interactions. They are the product developers and mathematicians who design our software and it’s algorithms.
In fact, the general direction of my company is apply some Henry Ford style automation and that would require less “talent” from these guys. Although that actually begs the question of a much larger, long-term career development issue.
Here are, IMO, the relevant questions, and I don’t know that you’ve answered them (if you have, my apologies).
Do they put in a solid day’s work?
Are they producing a satisfactory quantity of code?
Is anyone besides you bothered by their antics?
If you required them to wear less casual clothing, would that increase the quantity of the work done in your office?
If you ended the off-task activities they’re currently engaged in, would that increase the quantity of work done in your office?
The ideal answers, of course, are
yes
yes
no
no
no
If the questions aren’t answered that way, then figure out how to fix it. And when you fix it, tie your solution directly to the problem (“I believe that folks are getting too involved in the card games, so we’re going to limit those games from now on such that they should only be played during your breaks”), so that it doesn’t come across as a byproduct of your disdain and contempt for their subculture.
And even Academy Award winning actors have to be able to perform on cue when the camera and lights and sound are ready. You don’t get to say “I’m really not in the mood today” if you want to stay in the business.
What makes geeks so much different than writers or actors that they feel they don’t need to be held to a professional standard?
I have a friend who is a published novelist. He works for no one but himself. But he is disciplined. He does not hang on the Internet or go grocery shopping or hang with friends until he gets his daily word quota in. Some days the words flow and he is done by noon. And some days he is still struggling at six pm. Granted, he can write wearing no pants, but he gets dressed every day, it’s part of the discipline. Wearing no pants encourages him not to view his work as a job…and then he doesn’t do it. Now, why is writing SQL queries different?
The question isn’t why writing SQL queries is different from writing fiction, the question is WHETHER these SQL writers are different from your novelist friend. He needs that structure in order to produce a sufficient quantity of work. Do these SQL authors?
If they do, then by all means their manager should supply it. If they don’t, then barring some other reason for supplying it, he shouldn’t.
The other difference, of course, is that your friend places these limits on himself. They’re not going to lower his morale or alienate him from his work, causing him to seek a different boss. They’re limits he knows he needs. He presumably doesn’t place unnecessary limits on himself (e.g., he doesn’t require himself to work in a cubicle, if he knows that’s not what he needs). A manager imposing limits on employees runs the danger of placing unnecessary limits on the employees and thereby lowering their morale or encouraging them to go work for someone else.
I think you got my example reversed. I assume you’d rather have 100 lines of perfect code than 20. (Of course those 100 lines are not doing something that could be done equally well in 10!)