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[nenjin]

Wow man. How many people in your company? For our company of less than 25 people, I sorta get where you're coming from. More work than hands to be done. I was starting to hate my boss something fierce for a while, because he kept hiring interns and fuck off sales people for our newest product that carries a significantly smaller chunk of our revenue than our core business, which was starting to suffer from way too much shit going to support and only two people to handle the work load. If they'd hired someone new specifically to manage a department of 2 to 3 people, I'd have fuckin' lost it on someone. Not even the indignity of being managed. Just the sheer waste of a position like that, with the money that we have and what salaries already cost the business. (Our CEO likes to have a big financial transparency report at the start of every year.) You basically don't get to work here without some basic trouble shooting and tech skills unless you're a salesperson or an intern. Even my immediate manager knows some basic querying and databasing, and all he does is manage customers and business relationships pretty much.

But they finally hired a new tech general tech support (sorta, she's already being specialized into the new product) and we seemed to have reached a point of stability because the calls and crises are way down. So now I can actually focus on problems instead of trying to juggle mundane tech problems along with stuff like cross-continental server migrations at the same time.

Anyways. One problem manager in a company that small can be a death sentence. Our managers are always very quick to take our side in most things (internally), and if they'll throw anyone under the bus in front of customers, it will be the whole company before it's an individual. We know we have to keep our customers happy and manage expectations. We also know that most of our customers are cheap motherfuckers with zero tolerance for software problems, and that a large portion of them understand zero of the tech in the background that makes their business work. It figures our two most successful customers are ones with their own internal IT staffs, and our least successful ones are those who try to rely on us for 100% of their tech needs.

[SalmonGod]

It's not a small company.  Hundreds of offices around the world.  Moderate size for the freight forwarding industry, but very quickly growing.  And internally advertising that it plans to double in size in 4 years (revenue, not people).

The number of people working on U.S. imports alone for just this account is I think 16.  But we have easily over 100 shipments in process at any given time, and insanely extensive processes for every single one.  And if anything about a shipment goes wrong, a person can easily get sucked into spending their entire day on just that one problem, and this happens very frequently because an international shipment passes through so many hands.  There are at least a dozen different companies that will handle a shipment at some point in the process of importing, and any one of them can screw up some small detail that leads to problems... and that's not counting the factor of U.S. Customs, who operates with impunity and will jerk us around and hold stuff up just because they feel like it.  Most of our time is spent documenting who from where said what and when, so that when something goes wrong, we have can lay out a detailed timeline and manage accountability.

[Vilanat]

Our management meeting is a process where we discuss data stuff, there's a bit of drama sometimes between various department managers (usually, the sales manager and the H.R manager who are both outgoing persons) and the C.E.O give some orders and listen to advice, but usually stick to his own opinion regardless of our opinion. The fun/funny thing is that when we go out of the meeting, we managers just do a post meeting, 10 minutes standing meeting without the C.E.O or some of the other managers who simply like to hear themselves talk and never contribute anything useful, where we actually discuss, plan and execute the important bits. we also have 5 minutes daily standing meetings to catch up and see how everything is being executed. If you're in management, those daily 5 minutes standing meetings are far more useful and important than the long boring bigger weekly meetings and i can't recommend them enough.

I've thought about it... but this account is horrible to work for.  They're a very demanding and ungracious customer.  There are a few nice people, but in general they all suck at their jobs and then pass the blame on to you when their fuck ups catch up with them.  It's not my fault if I can't make miracles happen to rescue them from their own supply chain management, but they do everything they can do hold us accountable as if it is.  And our station manager only amplified the effect of their attitude.

Plus, you can get your ass sued for using your company resources like that.

[RedKing]

The Peter Principle is the natural consequence of the idea that people are only as valuable as the work that they do.  Want to reward someone for being an exceptional ditch digger?  You can only reward a ditch digger so much, before the only way you can reward them further is by making them something else.

Although fascinatingly, I used to run into the opposite problem. I was so good at what I did (tech support) that I couldn't be promoted out of it, because I was far too valuable in the position I had. I was basically told that verbatim one time in a performance review. Which depressed the living hell out of me, because all I wanted was out.

The only way I got out was when my position went away entirely, and they figured "oh what the hell, let's see how he can do at this other job that he's never done. Besides, we can call it a lateral transfer and not raise his pay." And then I proceeded to manage the fuck out of some projects and they're all like "Not bad, you can stay."

I can haz pay raise commensurate with my position?

lolnope, u get 50 cent raise

RAEGFACE



Also, the whole thing about "Somebody made a mistake. This must never occur again, so from now on all X must be reviewed and approved first" is a common problem in business, and one of the leading causes of inefficiency in my opinion. It generates extra work (submitting X for review, and then having to review X) which isn't generating extra revenue, slows things down, and generally is a pain in the ass to everyone involved. It also turns the reviewers into gatekeepers, which the more megalomaniacal of them will rule like tiny fiefdoms. And if you have a truly incompetent reviewer, the results can be mind-boggling.

When I was with BATF, all new software requests had to be approved by a reviewer. This lady was not technical, didn't give two shits about anything, and had enough tenure that firing her would have taken an act of Congress. Requests would sit in her queue for months without her even looking at them. At some point, I found out that she reviewed the requests, not chronologically as any sane person would, but alphabetically by the name of the software package. So Adobe Acrobat requests tended to get through in a few days, but software towards the end of the alphabet was likely to NEVER get approved. At one point, we had a change in our desk manager, and since the request tickets were entered by the HelpDesk (on behalf of the agents who called in), she told us to delete all requests because they were no longer valid. I protested to my manager that this made absolutely no logical sense and was going to cause a HUGE problem. He agreed but said "Whaddya gonna do? Just document it and comply." So I took screenshots of all the requests (~200 or so), and her emails with the request to delete and the insane justification thereof.

Sure enough, a regional SAC (Special Agent in Charge) called in for an update on a crucial piece of ballistics software and was told the request had been deleted. Then HE went ballistic. Whole thing blew up, this bitch tried to throw us under the bus (as I knew she would), and I produced all the screenshots and emails indicating what had actually happened. I felt triumphant.....then a few months later, I learned that NOTHING came of it. She wasn't fired, she wasn't demoted, her gatekeeper role wasn't taken away, just business as usual. And that's when I decided fuck civil service.


(Sorry, that was all kind of a tangent from the topic of meetings, but sorta on-topic of business practices that drive sane people insane)

[hector13]

Our meetings are mostly fine. We get a terrible video from head office which is filmed like a bad breakfast morning show. We all jeer at it and make snide remarks. My department management mostly "forgets" to show us it.

We've a new team leader where I work (like a deputy department manager). The guy keeps telling people to do things that make no sense.

Latest example: Everyone asks what we're all doing tonight. He says the usual and we get on with it. A couple of hours later he calls everyone over and says he has a new plan and lays it out for us. Someone points out that he hasn't put anyone on fresh foods and he replies that James will do it. We point out that James is off sick and he replies "but he did it last week".

Before that he came and told me he needed me to do something else, but to finish everything on the aisle I was working on first, and to leave anything I don't finish on a cage somewhere in the warehouse where it'll be obvious for working later. I asked for clarification on me leaving some unworked and he said for me not to, but to make sure I left a cage for anything I left unworked.

He had a go at me last week for taking too long when I was well within the time he set me for the job. He also did the same with two other members of the team.

Recently he started to realise that everyone dislikes working for him as nobody will do overtime on the nights he works.

This is on top of our store manager being very contrary. One day he complains about things not being like X, the next he complains that is is like X and demands to know why we did something so stupid. If his football team loses he also lets it out on everyone.

Do you work at Sainsburys, by any chance?

[SalmonGod]

I truly sympathize with your story, Redking.  Long-standing critical problems that drag down an organization and drive everyone in that organization to depression, but never have any chance of getting resolved because they're caused by people with authority or people favored by those with authority is a huge gripe of mine.  Workers need to have more power to say "NO THIS SHIT IS WRONG AND IT'S MAKING EVERYONE'S LIFE HELL."  But the only way we can do that is by collective decision to walk the fuck out.

Speaking of which, I spent two hours today in the dragon's cave.  Longer than anyone else.  I think it's because I'm much more diplomatic and perspective-oriented than everyone else.  Of course, she argued with me at first, before I'd been able to paint a full picture for her of what was going on and how it all fit together... but by the time we were done, I could really see lights turning on in her head and her demeanor turning much more humble.  She also gave me a 3% raise.  I can't help but feel sorry for her, seeing it really sink in how much she's fucked up and just how sour the workplace has become under her watch.  Still going to rock those interviews tomorrow.  Her 3% is nothing compared to how high I know I can safely value myself to new prospective employers.

My favorite part was when we were talking about e-mails.  She takes an extreme stance on e-mails.  Her opinion is that there is no excuse for an e-mail going unanswered for a day ever.  All e-mails should be answered within an hour at most, and what she really expects is 15 minutes.  Everyone has argued with her about the feasibility of this expectation.  She'll tell you "it should only take a couple minutes to respond to an e-mail!"  We respond "Everything we do only takes a couple minutes, but when you multiply it by the volume of small tasks we face, it's impossible!"  She would always scoff and roll her eyes, and say something to the effect of "Well I'm your boss and that's what I expect of you, so you need to figure it out."

So today before she called me in, I made sure I could drop some numbers for her, and laid it out.  "The company started using gmail about two years ago, right?  If you go into my team's group e-mail account and click on 'All Mail' you will see that it has over 100,000 e-mails on record for just that time period.  Do the math.  That's not including the thousands we have deleted to prevent our inbox from overfilling, and not including everyone's personal company e-mail.  For a team of 4 people to keep up with, while getting actual work done?"  Her response was a genuine "holy shit" and there was no more contest on that point for the rest of the discussion.

[Vattic]

Do you work at Sainsburys, by any chance?

Think it's against company policy to badmouth the place by name online .

[hector13]

Do you work at Sainsburys, by any chance?

Think it's against company policy to badmouth the place by name online .

Oh aye, all that "this is how you behave on social media" nonsense.

I don't think that includes Bay12, unless they know your IP address and other online identity indicators. I don't work for them any more anyway, and I have no intention of pursuing employment with them in the near-, medium- or distant-future. Awful experience heh.

[Vattic]

I was being silly really. My work and social life are pretty much completely separate.

[Bouchart]

Do I even need to tell you all what I think about meetings?

[MaximumZero]

I hope your avatar says it all, Wally.

[Bouchart]

I used to work for a manufacturing company as a clerk/analyst.  In my last year there the meetings would make me physically ill.  Many of them gave me bad headaches, they were that aggravating.

[timferius]

Once a month we all get dragged upstairs so our manager can spend an hour going through metrics we mostly don't care about. "And see here, last month we scored a 85%, but the goal is 89%, so we need to bump up that 4% by year end." Wark wark wark. We don't even get baked goods for those meetings. My JHSC meetings can be a bit dry (I know WAY TOO MUCh about coal tar now), but they bake us fresh muffins from the cafeteria.

[MaximumZero]

Today we found out that our district is in the 99th percentile for the entire company. Cue DM crowing and tooting his own horn, like he had something to do with the boom fueled largely by the holidays, the post-holiday rush (everyone has to spend their gift cards!), and tax returns. Note: I live in a poor, barely functional industrial area. The whole district is that way. Ergo: Tax time is essentially a second holiday season.

[SalmonGod]

Slide into ruin continues.

My boss is putting on such a show of being nice that it's sort of stepford creepy territory.  But that's just an odd... and sort of sad note.

Operations Manager (Tier 3 of 4 in command structure within the office, and honestly a pretty cool guy) put out a note late last week about how we need to be more timely about inputting some little bit of data into our files, because that data feeds directly into yet another report the customer is demanding we routinely generate. 

So as he was walking by our group, I called out to him "You do realize that if you want us to keep up with all these little details tagged onto our core work, that we're going to need more people, right?"

He actually stopped and engaged us on this... and what it amounted to was that he was aware of this, but he needed hard data to demonstrate our need for more staff.  The only data he had to present to the regional executive responsible for authorizing new hires is our overtime numbers, and his response to that was (paraphrasing the spirit of the message here) that we need to prove the reason for all this overtime isn't inefficient processes or laziness.  He wants time studies on all the processes that go into our work.  A breakdown of everything that goes into what we do - every process broken out and itemized with an average daily volume range and the amount of time needed to complete each task measured with a stop watch.

Disregarding how unbelievably unrealistic it is to be able to put something together that will represent the highly chaotic nature of our work and the absurdity of asking us to do detailed research in addition to our overwhelming workload... the general response was justified indignation.  Of the 4 people that make the core of our 6-person team, we have all worked previous jobs and left them for exactly this reason -- because they were slowly squeezing us to death with a steady increase in micro-managing and rules all founded on a very obvious suspicion of our character.  Because we were all but told to our faces that we can't be trusted to do our work.  That we can't be treated like responsible adults.

So the person who, in my opinion, is the most important central pillar of the team has received an offer and will be putting her notice in this week.  I do not want to still be here when she's gone.  Her and I were the only two people at this point who kept the core workload operating, because everyone else has been mostly dedicated to special side-projects... like filling out massive and horribly disorganized daily reports, reiterating the same information to the same people that ask us these questions through e-mail all day.

I don't even know what to say anymore.  I just want to watch it all crash and burn, like it really deserves to... but I want to do it from a distance.