Reading this thread makes me glad I am working for a rather small company and directly for the owner, who is a rather decent sort of guy.
Heh. An asinine management strategy would have been a huge step up at that company. They didn’t have a management strategy at all.
My comment shouldn’t be construed as a slam on management consultants in general. Surely there are some good firms out there promoting good programs. My wife is a professional project manager, and her regular success in uncharted territory proves to me that principled, structured management is possible in almost any situation.
My comments were more a criticism of (that particular) company mismanagement. We’d have consultants come in who had literally no idea what we did. Our group worked in finance and customs. Many of these consultants would ask us to do things that were clearly stupid and often illegal. This was stuff that even first month interns would know was wrong. Even after Sarbanes Oxley we’d have consultants come in who were dangerously ignorant of the law. So the first few weeks to months would be spent educating the consultants. That would be ok if we were talking about a long term commitment to a proven program. But invariably, and often inexplicably, the consultants would just disappear, and the program would be abandoned. Then a few months later another group would come in, often asking us to do things the exact opposite of the previous consultants’ plan. I could go on because it is far more complicated than that. We’d have consultants working against each other, consultants hired by managers who knew nothing about them to work in groups the managers knew nothing about. Etc, ad nauseum.
An old boss of mine had been fired as a youth pastor (like: “get out now, we’ll send your stuff”) after he said he wasn’t going along with unethical things the senior pastor was doing, including pirating software. He had to go to the labor board to get his final pay, and instead it turned into a large prosecution of the church for all his unpaid overtime. He never even knew he had it coming, and I still don’t understand it, as it was a salaried job, but they said all those beach trips and lockins with kids were hours spent working, and he was to be paid overtime.
So the jerkitude of the pastor cost the church way, way more than anyone had expected, by about $20K, IIRC.
And I’ll throw in school administrators who care more about whether the Expected School Learning Results are posted on the wall, or whether the roll was turned in on their schedule rather than if kids are learning and are not resenting coming to school. But the math teacher we have who (many kids have told me) barely teaches, hates reteaching, and gives silent stares to questions seems to be golden because he never challenges the admin and fills out forms well or something.
You just blew my mind. People put up with this? What kind of environment is this? In a teaching environment (“we’re all college educated professionals, you bet”), it wouldn’t go over at all. It’s beyond my imagining.
Thanks, msmith537. Just coming out of my holiday coma, and finding threads, and thanking folk.
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Same Mifflin of Dunder Mifflin?
I believe pretty much any horror story I hear about working at Wal-Mart. I would live under a bridge before working there again, and I didn’t have it all that bad compared to some stuff I’ve heard. One day? Ha! It’s the grind over time that is soul-killing. (I wonder how much of the chanting they did was just to impress her. One good thing about the store I was at, we almost never did that crap. I find it creepy as hell anyway.)
Isn’t that a very common practice in Japan?
No. Not for most companies I know of these days.
United Breaks Guitars (but not Gibson!)
What did she say about it?
It’s a toss-up between Pacific Bell and Bank of America.
I really can’t do either justice, so a quick note:
Scott Adams was once employed by Pac Bell. Yes, Dilbert is based on that shop.
And… not only did virtually everyone know his cubicle number, they actually took pride in being that screwed up.
Imagine this: you are a manager. It says so on your business card. You have no staff, will never have a single Arthur Anderson kid to call your own. You have a “project”, and your importance is tied to how long and expensive your project is.
The result is exactly what you’d expect - meetings upon meetings - I was a contractor - my jpb was to attend meetings so the staff might get something done. Why not just ignore meetings? They actually take attendance. My favorite meeting was 35 people in a room for over an hour. Being read a status report.
BofA was actually rational by comparison - my favoite job was to go through the code and tell the USERS what the numbers on these reports were. Right - these reports had been produced for 10+ years, and nobody knew what they were looking at. Yes, I did ask the obvious - it turns out that if those silly reports were as much as an hour late, the IT manager’s phone would ring.
For those ancient enough - one project was to use IMS/DB aka DL/I (which is NOT pronounced dee el eye!). I suggested that we might want to put together some DLT0 jobs for the shiney new database. The manager actually asked the poor system pgmr assigned if he thought they might have some use for them (he mentioned I had suggested this, but he didn’t know if I could be trusted) the poor fellow and I just looked at each other, then he said "yes, you might find it useful…).
DLT0 is the only utility that can load such a database. Yes, tthat just MIGHT be handy doofus…/
I think it’s a case of managing expectations. For lower-level employees, it’s not like they’re expecting Aeron chairs and foosball tables and company-sponsored masssages and mentoring chats with the CEO. They’re expecting to be treated like crap for an hourly wage, and that’s what they get.
And for senior management, they’re expecting to work on interesting cutting-edge projects for a pretty good salary, but have to put up with a HQ in the middle of nowhere, less than zero corporate bling, and an employer that’s hated in a few small circles. And by God, that’s what they get.
Who’s going to be dissatisfied?
When you get a new job, you should write to the local newspaper about these three items (at least). And copy the local health board.
A friend of mine interned for Bank of New York when he was in business school. He used to joke “the last time these people received any guidance from management it was ‘Everyone stop what you are doing until I get back from my meeting with this Burr fellow!’.”
Wow, HP! During the 80’s while in college, a poll was taken locally on who was on the top 10 list and bottom 10 list as a choice of employment. IBM (surprise!) was Number 1 on both lists, but HP was always Number 2 in the former–never in the latter.
I marked the day that the test equipment division was renamed “Agilent,” as the day music died at HP. I bet David is waiting in the afterlife with a pitchfork…
Target has a new, subtle strategy that is good for investors, and sucks for employees.
At the local store, you get a great insurance package and vacation and benefits if you are full time. It was a great job a few years ago.
OK, so economy has tanked, plus they have overbuilt stores in this area.
Their trick?
Employee hours are being cut dramatically - from 5 - 6 days a week to 1 or 2!
Yet, they continue to hire NEW employees, to ensure nobody is getting enough hours to remain full time.
By April of this year, it is doubtful anyone will have enough hours to be full time, so essentially they have cut all insurance and benefits, as now everyone will only be part time.
In addition, by allowing an employee to work 1 day per week until they quit (lots of single mothers who can’t afford to work there anymore) - and thus, by quitting instead of getting fired, they are not eligible for unemployment. Ergo - Target doesn’t have to make any extra payments towards unemployment benefits either, as they never fire anybody.
Employees who have worked there for years are getting screwed, and forced to quit and look for other work - but on paper, Target looks golden - they never fire anyone and “look, we have great benefits for full-time employees!” of which there are none anymore.
UPS almost killed me. I worked their one Christmas rush and it was awful. No talking allowed, just sort and load packages and memorize all the routes. A supervisor standing over you at all times. If you get behind you get reprimanded on the spot. Pure slave labor.