How To Demoralize Employees: A DIY Guide for Terrible Companies
-
>HardwareGeek said:
Ugh. Here vacant cubes are more-or-less up for grabs, unless [...]Of course they are: that's one step removed from hoteling. Do they do that there?
I had to look up what that is. No, we have our own cubes with our own work and personal clutter (some much more than others). There are people who spend a lot of their time in labs, but I'm pretty sure they all have their own cubes, too.
I just meant that if you have a reason to sit somewhere other than your normal cube (say, you need to work with someone on the other side of the building for a few hours or a day or two) and there's a vacant cube that's convenient, nobody's going to be upset if you make use of it.
-
Man, I know that feel. Back in Poland, we had a good coffee machine - you'd pour in beans, and you could actually fill a mug if you so wanted. Here it's a (thanks Gods, free) vending machine spewing instant crap in teeny-tiny cups, and the one time I tried the "brewed coffee" option, I got a cup of water with a few bits of ground coffee floating in it. Not just "bad coffee", but literally a cup of dirty water.
We used to have the first kind. I don't drink coffee, but people really liked it. Then they changed it for the latter kind because the latter is somehow more professional and does crappy coffee, but can also do crappy milk, crappy instant chocolate, crappy instant chocolate with crappy milk and crappy instant chocolate with crappy milk and crappy coffee. And is somehow louder.
-
Our main office has flexible work spaces (where every desk is up-for-grasp every morning). I believe in practice there's a lot of "These are our flex-spots and you can't sit here" going on, but I wouldn't know since I'm over in a branch office.
We've got some flex spots too, but we've got more desks than employees, nobody interested in standing on each other's toes, and I've got a personal desk in a team office anyway.
-
Of course they are: that's one step removed from hoteling. Do they do that there?
We have hot-desking where I work, which Wikipedia advises me is a slightly different thing to hotelling. I'd say 90% of the hot desks are occupied by the same people day-in-day-out and, after about a month of email reminders about clearing the desk at the end of the day, no-one seems to care any more. Apparently people like to sit in the same desk each day - who knew?
-
That just shows you can't stop progress.
-
Our main office has flexible work spaces (where every desk is up-for-grasp every morning). I believe in practice there's a lot of "These are our flex-spots and you can't sit here" going on, but I wouldn't know since I'm over in a branch office.
The "every desk for grabs" thing is just absolutely horrible. I would refuse a job at a place like that on principle. And I'd tell HR that, too.
Maybe that works for some people. I would guess artistic types might not mind as much? I dunno. Frankly, I can't see any reason for "no assigned seating" other than a desire to keep morale down. Do you not have assigned phone extensions, or does everyone carry their own phone around, or do you have to sign in somehow to the phone at the desk you've selected each morning?
Gahh. This is even more the worst than MikeTheLiar.
-
Give me the number of your HR department. I wanna call them up and ask why they hate their employees so much.
-
Phones with signin. That and a monitor are everything that's permanently present - everything else you have to bring in yourself. Working at home is strongly encouraged, in which case you can use the softphone or get a ipphone-for-home procured.
I don't know details as I am never in that office. I'm in a branch office from an acquisition. We've got IP phones, but everyone just keeps them logged in, and also keeps keyboards, mice, docking stations, and everything else on their desks.
-
Phones with signin. That and a monitor are everything that's permanently present - everything else you have to bring in yourself. Working at home is strongly encouraged, in which case you can use the softphone or get a ipphone-for-home procured.
Very much like my current office. Except my phone doesn't fucking work, breaks the Internet connection every twenty minutes while it's at it, and everybody uses mobiles anyway.
-
I have my own desk in one of the three little offices in the building. There's four of us in it, most of the building is open plan.
Our IP phones are rubbish. Mine's been in my desk drawer for about 18 months, I just use my Blackberry instead when I'm in the office.
-
@RTapeLoadingError said:
We have hot-desking where I work
Give me the number of your HR department. I wanna call them up and ask why they hate their employees so much.
To be fair to our HR department there is some method to this arrangement. Our office is split into two logical parts and the bit I'm in provides outsourced IT to another organisation. We have more people than desks so the idea was that some people would be expected to be in site at the client and some in our office. Working from home, while a theoretical possibility, has been a non-starter except in emergencies.
Who worked where was meant to be individually managed. This didn't really pan out as people* are creatures of habit... setting off the same time, arriving the same time, sitting in the same place, leaving at the same time. As a result we had some people who were happy to be at the client site full time and the rest at the office.
Again, we had a couple of months of emails remind us to mix it up but it never really happened.
-
To be fair to our HR department
No! Bad HR derpartment (not a typo.) This screams "we can't be bothered to pay for enough square footage for everyone, so you can enter the Thunderdome every day.
Working in an office is bad enough already. Working for a company that thinks so little of its employees is beyond the pale.
I mean, people bitch about EA and the long hours, but this...this is just awful.
-
Our Corporate IT HQ moved into a bigger building because they were out of space. The new building had so much extra space they let salescritters borrow a floor on a temporary basis while the original IT building was rennovated for sales.
2 years later...
The salescritter floor is 25% full and they will not give up so much as a single desk. The original IT building is no longer an asset.The IT floors are overcrowded to the point of absurdity. I know of a group that has one desk between 5 employees. They each rotate one day in the office each week. Contractors? They sit at the 'contractor trough' - which is a row of chairs up against the low filing cabinets in front of the windows. That's right. Filing cabinets. Not desks. Can't put your legs underneath, so you end up with some terrible improvised posture.
Conference rooms? On any given day they're mostly given over to use as office space for visitors (but because conference rooms are so overbooked, you have to move your 'office' every few hours to avoid secretarial wrath).
Despite this, the parking lot is only about 1/3rd full. I honestly don't get it.
-
Conference rooms
I impliemented Exchange's nice room booking feature and everyone uses it... exect for the execs.
The net result is that that you have a room booked with catering ordered and you get chucked out halfway though a meeting and have to either move your guests to your office or the canteen, yep that looks professional
-
You shouldn't grumble to the execs, but rather their secretaries…
-
So the one task I'd "completed" since I started here a month ago, it got all the way through the QA process and all the approvals and rubber-stamps and was due to go into production next week--
Turns out I need to redo it because someone changed a setting in Prod and the script is no longer correct.
That's a good way to demoralize employees.
-
Then they changed it for the latter kind because the latter is somehow more professional and does crappy coffee, but can also do crappy milk, crappy instant chocolate, crappy instant chocolate with crappy milk and crappy instant chocolate with crappy milk and crappy coffee.
That's what we had at Intel. Except they weren't free. $0.25 IIRC, so cheaper than most such machines, but not free.
-
Sounds like a problem with the process, if it can't handle concurrent changes to the same areas of code.
-
It's a "queue" in the system I was moving records into. The business owner changed which queue should receive the messages, which means we need to retest with the new queue GUID on all the other environments before we can deploy.
Queue.
-
Turns out I need to redo it because someone changed a setting in Prod and the script is no longer correct.
Had similar happen to me.
Wrote code for an electronic lock that created a random factory reset code, programmed the lock, then saved that with serial number to a database for that model. Literally about 100 locks into production, the then-President of the company got a hold of the lock, decided the model number was wrong (no I'm not kidding), so we had to change it. And start over with the serial numbers. I remember being there as soon as he walked away, our VP of Engineering started with: "Who The F--- brought HIM in here about this?"
Ah well, rewrite the (albeit short) code, create a new database, tool a new model number stamp...
-
it got all the way through the QA process and all the approvals and rubber-stamps and was due to go into production next week
Ah, rubber stamps. The way to hold a process for ages without actually double-checking anything.
A week ago, I got a task - the webservice, which was supposed to return data by categories, always returns the data for the same category, no matter what you pass in. Turns out, the problem was in the stored procedure - basically, someone hardcoded
WHERE CategoryId = 42instead of using the parameter. A remnant of some testing, or something.Where the fun starts, is that even though it was the dev environment, we weren't allowed to just fix the bug - instead, we send an email to the DB team, wait a few days, get an official reply that "A hardcoded value of 42 has been replaced with a parameter reference on database server XXX", and close the issue.
Today, I get a memo that the webservice still isn't working right. "Wasn't that fixed a few days before"? Well, it was - in the dev environment. Actually making it into production, on the other hand...
So, in short, it takes over a week to go through the process of fixing something up - and yet some dimwit actually managed to push the hardcoded testing value through dev environment, production environment, and one more server that I have no idea what it does.
Apparently not QA, though.
-
Ah, rubber stamps. The way to hold a process for ages without actually double-checking anything.
A week ago, I got a task - the webservice, which was supposed to return data by categories, always returns the data for the same category, no matter what you pass in. Turns out, the problem was in the stored procedure - basically, someone hardcoded
WHERE CategoryId = 42instead of using the parameter. A remnant of some testing, or something.Where the fun starts, is that even though it was the dev environment, we weren't allowed to just fix the bug - instead, we send an email to the DB team, wait a few days, get an official reply that "A hardcoded value of 42 has been replaced with a parameter reference on database server XXX", and close the issue.
Today, I get a memo that the webservice still isn't working right. "Wasn't that fixed a few days before"? Well, it was - in the dev environment. Actually making it into production, on the other hand...
So, in short, it takes over a week to go through the process of fixing something up - and yet some dimwit actually managed to push the hardcoded testing value through dev environment, production environment, and one more server that I have no idea what it does.
Apparently not QA, though.
This is where a strict separation of duties comes in handy.
You find the issue, it's in the database. You're not a DBA, so it gets sent to the DBA team (by a project/product manager, who approves the fix). The DBA team fixes it, and submits it to QA. QA approves it (may also need user testing, I'll include it in this category), and sends it to the config/release/deployment/whatever team. Then it goes to production.
Whereas at my company...
I find an issue. I submit it. It gets approved a year later, then assigned to me, regardless of my role. I put it in dev. I'm happy with it. I put it in test, QA approves. I then am responsible for putting it in production.
shudder
-
Whereas at my company...
I find an issue. I submit it. It gets approved a year later, then assigned to me, regardless of my role. I put it in dev. I'm happy with it. I put it in test, QA approves. I then am responsible for putting it in production.
shudder
That's almost professional.
At my company...
I find an issue and submit it. I approve time to work on it, or (in some cases) my boss (the CIO) does. I put it in dev and test it. Fix looks good, and I'm happy with it. There is no "test environment." I then push it to production.
Excuse me, I need to go vomit.
-
Interesting email exchange:
Jack Smith: "I am doing the change management approval for your ticket but the release work item is not in the proper state. Please fix."
Me: "What state is the 'proper' one?"
Jack Smith: "You should set it to 'CM Committee Endorsed'"
Me: "But it's not yet endorsed. The only options I have are, 'Incomplete', 'Failed', 'Superseded by Newer Build', 'Ready for Test'. None of those communicate, 'this is ready for the Change Management Committee to look at'."
Jack Smith: "We use 'CM Committee Endorsed' for that, when it's actually endorsed we change it to 'Ready for Production'."
Me: "But 'Ready for Production' isn't an option."
Jack Smith: "It is once someone in Change Management sets the 'approved' flag, we have a customization in TFS that changes the available options when that happens."
Me: "So you customized the SHIT out of TFS, but you didn't fucking rename 'CM Committee Endorsed' to something sane, like 'Awaiting CM Committee Review'!?"
And no you pedantic dickweed assholes, I don't really send emails like this while at work. The above is a dramatization.
And BTW, the pattern, "you did it wrong, and I'll tell you you did it wrong, and I'll cause you to miss your deadlines because you did it wrong, but I sure as fuck won't tell you how to do it right or just fix it for you and add a nice explanatory note" attitude is RAMPANT here.
-
And BTW, the pattern, "you did it wrong, and I'll tell you you did it wrong, and I'll cause you to miss your deadlines because you did it wrong, but I sure as fuck won't tell you how to do it right or just fix it for you and add a nice explanatory note" attitude is RAMPANT here.
This. It's what I see as an artifact of someone who only knows policy, bureaucracy, and petty politics, and has a mind too feeble to gain any conceptual understanding of their broader universe. For bonus WTF points, add in policies that change by the minute and/or are not accessible to you (what do you mean, I can't read the policy!?).
Filed under: At least my job isn't that sort of WTF.
-
That's almost professional.
At my company...
I find an issue and submit it. I approve time to work on it, or (in some cases) my boss (the CIO) does. I put it in dev and test it. Fix looks good, and I'm happy with it. There is no "test environment." I then push it to production.
Excuse me, I need to go vomit.
Just got assigned a dev ticket (feature, not bug). Specs? The request I put in. No review or anything.
Also, most of our apps are internal. A few are client-facing. One of them has a change in testing right now. Yellow screen of death. We're good with usability.
-
Just like the new time tracking software we use here. There are about a dozen categories for time off, including Sick, Floating Holiday, and PTO. None of those are valid. We have to use Holiday, Sick_COMP_INITS, etc. But those other categories are still available, it just shows an error when you try to submit using them.
-
And BTW, the pattern, "you did it wrong, and I'll tell you you did it wrong, and I'll cause you to miss your deadlines because you did it wrong, but I sure as fuck won't tell you how to do it right or just fix it for you and add a nice explanatory note" attitude is RAMPANT here.
Never working for a big company. No. No no no no. Not worth it. For all the money in the world.
-
It's not the size that's the problem, but the line-of-business and the culture.
This is an insurance company, so apparently everybody's terrified of lawyers. So CYA is a hundred times more "important" to them than producing quality work.
However, I've worked for similar-sized web marketing companies, and never had any of the issues I'm facing now.
-
However, I've worked for similar-sized web marketing companies, and never had any of the issues I'm facing now.
If you worked at a university, you'd have a chance of every sort of attitude cropping up. Sometimes they're desperately risk averse to the point of spending all their time introducing loads of risk by refusing to ever actually take a decision, but other times they're vastly lax (“Edit it in production! Now! I need this working instantly so I can write a paper about it! No, it doesn't need to work; it just needs to look like it works.”)
If you can find a good boss to filter out the BS from above, universities are nice places to work. You get to meet some very smart people. (And some students too. Oh well…)
-
I have a meeting to form a committee to determine if we can meet a particular date for this new project--
The date is release planning.
A meeting to form a committee to determine if we can plan a release.
"Don't quote me regulations! I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation's in. WE KEPT IT GRAY."
-
Liking because there isn't an option to lend you a flamethrower over TCP/IP.
-
I have a meeting to form a committee to determine if we can meet a particular date for this new project--
The date is release planning.
A meeting to form a committee to determine if we can plan a release.
"Don't quote me regulations! I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation's in. WE KEPT IT GRAY."
Haven't these folks heard of the idea of a calendaring function in their email?
Also: double-booked conference rooms are a WTF.
-
And BTW, the pattern, "you did it wrong, and I'll tell you you did it wrong, and I'll cause you to miss your deadlines because you did it wrong, but I sure as fuck won't tell you how to do it right or just fix it for you and add a nice explanatory note" attitude is RAMPANT here.
Snort. I've dealt with people like that. Unless that wasn't in the conversation, you didn't actually ask him what the right thing was.
People like this will keep telling you "oh, that's not right" all day long. Don't waste your time trial-and-erroring.
I see you asked what the proper state is, but then you gave a list of states that didn't include what he told you to use. Don't say "none of these communicate XXX", say "I don't have that option, which of the ones I have (list here) should I use?"
-
Snort. I've dealt with people like that. Unless that wasn't in the conversation, you didn't actually ask him what the right thing was.
Me: "What state is the 'proper' one?"
-
Me: "What state is the 'proper' one?"
Badge request: didn't read what he's replying to.
I see you asked what the proper state is, but then you gave a list of states that didn't include what he told you to use. Don't say "none of these communicate XXX", say "I don't have that option, which of the ones I have (list here) should I use?"
-
I'm not really trying to bust on you here. I'm pointing out that dealing with this kind of person is like nailing jello, or pushing on a water-filled balloon.
You want a solid answer from them, you hedge the question with enough qualifiers that they can't give you a shit answer.
I used to work at a place where I got told one day about I guy I would have to work with. "Oh, Bob's a short timer. He doesn't hate people or anything, but he won't make any effort that would require initiative on his part." Ask the guy, "hey, Bob, can you process this ticket for me?" He'll say "yes." Ten minutes later, you realize that the didn't do it, and you have to say "hey, Bob, please process this ticket for me." See the difference? I asked him if he could, the first time, and he said he could. I didn't actually ask him to do it though, so he didn't.
Another classic example, slightly different form. Residence Life in college: we'll give you your class schedule when you give us a form from the Bursar's office showing your tuition bill is paid. Bursar's: we can't give you a bill receipt without your class schedule. Most people ragefaced over this. Since I had been told it happened, I went back to Res Life and said "can I speak to the Dean?" To the Dean, I explained th sitch. He went down to Bursar's office with me and told them to give me the receipt.
Moral: Never give them a way to weasel out.
-
...is like nailing jello...
Moral: Never give them a way to weasel out.QFT. Plus a nail gun is useful too…
-
-
Yeah, but then you're the bad guy.
I've never had an issue with "being the bad guy". Fuck 'em if they can't do their job.
-
I've never had an issue with "being the bad guy". Fuck 'em if they can't do their job.
No, I mean't "you're the bad guy" as in "the one the cops will blame when they're called."
-
only if there are witnesses
-
Also: double-booked conference rooms are a WTF.
If so, they're one of the most widespread. Some people just believe that booking systems are for lesser mortals.
-
So Friday at 4:30 PM, I find out the QA guy wasn't even testing the right thing, that the database schema is demented, and therefore my code which was all staged to go out Tuesday does not work. I don't know if I can take this. I honestly don't.
My boss came by to remind me to put in my timecard, and it was all I could do to hold my tongue. I might just have a meeting with him Tuesday, but I already know nothing can/will change.
This job is shit. My life is shit. Remember that depression thread? Yeah. Feeling it.
-
I think I can honestly say that getting laid off from my last job ruined my professional life. But at least in consolation I found out that Windows phone 8.1 includes Swype.
-
I figured, hey I have lots of savings, instead of just taking the next full-time position that comes around why don't I do some contracting. Famous last words. But goddamned, if I had known this job was going to be this awful, I should have taking a full time with the first contract I did... that company was run by idiots, but at least when I was there I could accomplish things, I had some ownership in the process.
Oh and I just realize I haven't paid my healthcare insurance for September yet, because in addition to everything else wrong with this contract, it's short-term enough that there's no benefits and so I have to pay it myself and goddamned I hate life right now.
And it's really great to find out a self-promoting blowhard like Jeff Atwood who couldn't write a quality piece of software to save his life has millions of dollars. You know the biggest impediment to being successful in the US right now? Not being a fucking self-obsessed sociopath. That's the real glass ceiling.
-
And guess what the change is? It's just a SQL query to move 2850 records from one "queue" in the database to another. It's taken me so long to go through this QA process that I could have just fucking done it through the UI by now. Easily. And I'm not talking calendar-hours, I'm talking man-hours.
If I had access to the production UI, which of course I do not.
So what are my big plans for this holiday weekend! Well my friends are all at PAX and I don't got tickets, so I guess sit and home and drink and feel like shit because my job sucks. Maybe make whiny posts to this forum too.
-
And guess what the change is? It's just a SQL query to move 2850 records from one "queue" in the database to another. It's taken me so long to go through this QA process that I could have just fucking done it through the UI by now. Easily. And I'm not talking calendar-hours, I'm talking man-hours.
If I had access to the production UI, which of course I do not.
If you're not on the production side of things, why would you care about those specific 2850 records? I'd have thought you'd be more involved in establishing how that class of record would get moved automatically in the future, because having a developer doing operations is fantastically fucked up. (Doubly so when they've not got access to prod.)
Mind you, you did mention upthread how fucked up your place is. Best of luck finding somewhere else.
-
You need a hobby project. Doesn't even have to be programming. Just something to make you feel productive.
-
Badge request: didn't read what he's replying to.
No. Too much work involved on my part.
I'm pointing out that dealing with this kind of person is like nailing jello
