So I work for a defense contractor; you know, one of those companies whose executives are regularly investigated for improprieties invoving government contracts. I don’t really like my job, which is not to say that I would ever condone sabotage, release proprietory information, or otherwise do anything illegal or unethical, but I do try to do the best I can at the task at hand in a generally futile effort to be admired for competence, if not brilliance.
As of last Friday, however, find it nearly impossible to take it seriously anymore. The roots go further back–way back to the six other companies I’ve worked for in the last nine years, all of which have either gone insolvent, or closed divisions, or sent work overseas–but it cumulates in the presentation at the end of last week. I’m working on this little project; it’s not a big thing, just a modification to some existing equipment for a program office of a certain branch of the Defense Department. There’s a simple solution for this, which would be cheap, straightforward, and virutally painless…but no, we have decided to pick the option that is most complex for reasons best left unstated.
So, we have to present the results of our studies to the customer. Mind you, we don’t just do this once, or a couple of times; we do it frequently; and every time we do it, the process requires a minimum of two weeks of making slides, screengrabbing images, creating dummy assemblies that are of no eventual engineering value, and putting it all together into massive, somnolescence-inducing PowerPoint presentations which then have to be internally reviewed several times before every cook has thrown in a sufficient amount of sodium chloride to make concrete blocks float. The result is an inintelligable, unpresentable, unmanageable mess…and is absolutely required by our company policy standards. Better yet (on this program) we have these reviews scheduled on a roughly monthly basis, which means we spend about half our time presenting what we did with the other half of our time, not considering that we all have other projects to work on as well. Indeed, if we spend one quarter of our time actually working on the project it is a good month.
And, as you can imagine, guidance (except for criticism in internal reviews) is minimal, and the project lead is both inexperienced and manifestly unsuited for management or executive decision making, leaving us in a quagmire where no needed task is assigned until it is already clear that it should have been done weeks ago. Add to this the complete lack of support for any improvements/upgrades/basic maintainence on our engineering tools infrastructure and an obsequiously oblivious attitude toward actual complications or lack of skills/talent/experience in tackling the challenges imposed and the result is a low likelyhood of success (or as I prefer to put it “eminent reality-induced catastrophic failure”) for any given project, giving yet another shriveled up project to add to the withered vine of my CV.
Sadly, the focus isn’t even on making the project work; it’s on making a good presentation (lots of slides, more slides, more images, can’t we get graphic arts to use more colors?) and using up the customer’s budget. For the part of the customer, their career success is not defined by how well or many projects come to fruition but rather how well they keep to their budgets, neither overspending or having any money left over. Although lip service is paid to the importance of making projects work, the reality is that accountability is more related to staying under the radar and preventing any project from getting to the point where failure would be a big black mark, just waiting for the point at which the project will be cancelled for budgetary reasons.
If I cared, I’d be angry, upset, despondant. Instead, I just laugh with careless mirth, sport an ambivilent attitude, and wonder what more it is going to take me to move on and attempt to find some career or endeavor in which I can apsire to success rather than strive for invisibility. In a mediocracy, success is just a target painted on one’s back. Heck, if I cared enough, I’d try to put some more humor or at least vitriol into this Pitting, but it just isn’t worth it. sigh
Stranger
