Frank Zappa called this type of business choice “The Really Big Stupid.” It’s where you lay off the R&D division because it makes for a great quarterly bottom line.
Windows 11 reminds me of the whole Windows 8 fiasco. Some executive thought everyone must use a tablet like he did and based the new design on that.
I have to deal with this as well, some phish emails that look really good. The last few I have received show my manager’s name and are about a recent topic. The only clue was the return email wasn’t his. I pretty much over report any emails as Phish now.
My own rant is about reorgs. I’m sure we have all gone through it. Last October, my company’s end of year, we had a big reorg. I still don’t know why. I’m still not sure what it was supposed to improve. I got a new manager, and we get along fortunately, but other than that, nothing in my day to day changed.
One thing it might have been done to improve is that we are a “small” company (< $1B annual revenue) and are looking to increase that. Duh. We got a tech survey done on how to improve things. Great! I’m all for that! They also realized that we need to have a base product that we offer, instead of every one of our ~75 clients being custom made or updated, to make it easier on us to update, test, or train new people. Yet the annual goals don’t include anything related to this.
We are supposed to be agile but I have found out recently that agile is no longer sold as agile. Several YT videos ranted about agile. Some older people who like agile responded saying that agile is now sold to execs in a way that doesn’t promote agile processes but it’s a way for the company to say it’s agile. It doesn’t help that we bill clients for changes, so have to give estimates. That means we point things based on our hours, which we shouldn’t do. I found out they still pad things with hours anyway, so it’s meaningless.
Speaking of meaningless, goals. I hate goal setting. Last year’s goals included the company’s value statements. (Do we treat each other well? Do we support each other?) I thought that was great until I found out that all five of the company goals were only worth ten percent of our goals. The other ninety percent were still typical goals with a lot of wiggle room for how my manager feels about me.
Finally, career path. I’m a QA analyst 2, out of 4 plus a QA Lead role. I would expect that climbing up the numbers of that path would be objective lists. Nope. It’s a popularity contest. Further, the way it was explained made it sound like there would be only certain times where a promotion was available and that all of us QAs would be competing for it. WTF??
Surprisingly, given my rants, I do like where I work and want to stay there. It’s just annoying at times. Part of this is because in my overall career, the longest I was at a place was five years. Otherwise, I have been at most places for three years. I have learned the hard way that loyalty is a one way street. That might be different here, which is why I like it, but I will see. (I have only been here two years.)
Thanks for reading and sharing!
Or, like disbanding your pandemic response team because they’re just sitting around doing nothing and what are we paying them for anyway?
Your work had a pandamic response team? Wow - that’s commitment for sure! At my job there was a single administrator saying ’ Wear a mask and stay home if you’re sick.’
This may be the first time I’ve heard someone complaining about the lack of project managers. Most of the time, I hear complaints about them (I’ve done the same).
I do understand their value - but I find that, to a larger extent than in many roles, a good PM is invaluable but an average or below one is a disaster.
Hear, hear!
The good certainly are vastly outnumbered, but they make up for it by being really good.
I think @Shoeless was referring to Trump shitcanning the US’s pandemic response team because they had trained under Obama’s team. They were insufficiently loyal.
Exactly. Not my workplace, the entire country - because the president at the time was a cheapskate who didn’t want to be paying people for apparently doing nothing. It was just another example of bottom-line short-sightedness.
(Plus of course the Obama thing.)
Not my story, but was told to me by a guy on ski lift the other day.
He is a VP (or some such) at a place that thinks of itself as a “Mom and Pop” company. He joined 15 or so years ago when their annual sales were $200 million. Growth has been great, and now their sales are $1.5 billion.
He has had no luck trying to convince the owners and higher ups that the biggest block to continued growth is the size of their HR department. It’s the same size now as it was when they were a $500 million company, and they simply can’t recruit and process new people fast enough to fulfill demand. All because a “Mom and Pop” company doesn’t need a big HR department.
I don’t know what exactly the company does, but it seems like the people he was trying to hire were skilled, professional positions, not just warm bodies.
My company’s Document Control department pretty much consists of two people. One of them left just after lunch today to go on multi-week medical leave. Within about an hour and a half, the remaining employee was screaming. I’m not entirely sure if she was joking.
This is gonna be fun.
Them: We’re comfortable testing that in production.
Us: We’re going to need that in a digitally signed email, a digitally signed PDF, and a witnessed and notarized hardcopy delivered by registered courier.
Sooo… work is having an ‘Avoiding Bias Training’. Has to be in person with groups of 20-70 people.
I’m 50-80 percent deaf depending on the frequency. I cannot hear anything in a meeting room with a bunch of others.
This training is required by HR. Ok. Give me a .pdf or something. I can’t go.
No response from them. Boss got involved too. I can’t go. No point in it. No response from HR.
So when HR complains that I did not take the training, I will refer them to the emails they did not respond to, and perhaps the ADA.
It’s very funny that this training is about avoiding bias. And the email HR sent even said they make exceptions for people that can’t come to the meeting because the person is too busy.
One guy lives 1000 miles away, I doubt very much that he is coming.
It’s aggravating that I need to keep this on my radar.
I assume that you have medical documentation of your hearing limitations. Request a reasonable accommodation for your disability, and suggest that a pdf of the training works for you. That’s an easy, almost effortless, thing for them to provide.
Of course, they could provide the pdf AND still require in person attendance. At that point, you may mention that your therapy for your balance issues requires you to take off and put on your pants every 15 minutes.
Yeah, I have the audiologic report right here. Everyone in my department anyway knows I’m hard of hearing.
Since I have not gotten a response for my email request perhaps HR is hard of reading.
I did suggest just a .pdf. The ironic thing is this training is called ‘Avoiding Bias’. Umm… HELLO. Did you guys take this training.
it seems your request fell on deaf ears
Our Deputy Director came and asked me if I knew anything about some meeting today with some group. Nope.
He thought it had something to do with sensors and could I come to the meeting in case there were questions about what we do. Sure.
In the meeting it turns out this group is doing a demonstration project and the Executive Director volunteered me to work with them on this project. WTF?
I wasn’t invited to the meeting, didn’t know anything about it, and now I’m in charge??
All I can promise is that no one will be happy by the end of this.
I will say you keep mentioning it’s about avoiding bias, but you aren’t representative of all hard of hearing people. Most Deaf people do not like being excluded from events because they can’t hear. They want something in place so they can fully participate. So maybe HR is thinking of ways to accomplish that, so they are inclusive rather than excluding someone due to disability.
Maybe try a different tact with HR from that point of view.
Oh, I can be included. Just put it on a Teams stream and I can CC it (we do this with other meetings for those of us that work from home). Easy peasy. Or just a .pdf.
In the last 3 weeks I’ve gone to two lunches with family. Six people each time. Restaurants. My Wife and I plan out the seating so that I’m pretty much in the middle, and she sits next to me as an interpreter if I’m not getting it. And everyone knows that I’m hard of hearing.
I compensate, I know it’s my problem.
It’s difficult for me, but I get through.
HR has not responded to me or my boss (email is buried by now I’m sure). Whatever, this is now their problem. A simple fix with a .pdf or Teams meeting (which we do all the time).
One fellow works remote 1000 miles away. He’s not coming.
The way my old workplace “functioned” is that I’d say “I can’t be part of those meetings unless A and B are provided.” Then nothing would happen, I’d skip the meetings, and…
…this is the really cool part, and the reason I loved my job…
… no one would ever say anything about it. To this day, I don’t know if anyone even noticed that I’d skipped out.
(Except the time they called my name to come up and receive my 25-Year Service Award… even though I’d only been there 17 years at that point.)
Last time I went to one of those, there was one other there on stage with me. 25 years. She wanted to sing Paul Simons ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ at the last minute. I declined. I can’t carry a tune, or remember the words at a moments notice.
She was joking I guess. But when the two of us where together, alone on stage, instead of shaking her hand, I did the Groucho Marx thing by offering her my knee.
Nobody got it.
It didn’t take all these years to get this crazy though. I started out that way.