Quarterly yammerings

It’s that time again—end of a quarter when we get cascading messages of hope and prosperity from our executives on high. For those of you who haven’t experienced this before, allow me enlighten you: First there’s a message from god (aka, the CEO) telling us the state of the company. Then comes a message from demi-god (or the eVP, aka executive vice president) giving us the spin of the state of the company for our business unit. And lastly, there’s a message from a mini-god (our VP) telling us the impacts for our division.

We all sift through these emails looking for clues—will there be layoffs, if so when and how many? Will we get [another] pay cut? Will we be reorganized? You get the drift. After the stream of coordinated messages, comes the cadence of All Hands meetings. Where did that “All Hands” terminology come from? As in, all hands on deck? Are we pirates? Cruise ship pursers? I’m not sure. Anyway, we all gather together and get uplifting, well scripted messages about what all this means for us.

Sometimes something interesting is revealed in these meetings, most of the time we watch them to see if we can tease out executive politics—such as, is the VP of Product Management vying with the VP of Business Development for the eVP’s favor? Is the CTO sleeping with the VP of Marketing? That kind of vital stuff.

This week, our VP excitedly told us that even though revenues were down (furrowed brow and frown), profits were up (BIG smile). We sat in the audience pasting a matching smile on our faces while thinking, isn’t that a reflection of cost cutting? And weren’t those cost cutting measures essentially our pay cut? So doesn’t that mean that the company turned a profit, giving shareholders a return on their investment (aka cash in their pockets), by taking money out of our pockets? Call me crazy pals, but I think it does.

Some brave soul asked about this. S/he submitted the question electronically, so I have no idea if s/he is still employed with the company. The question was phrased very politely: this pay cut is hurting, is there any sign that once revenues upturn our full pay will be reinstated? I must say, I thought the VP was a bit annoyed by the question.

He started his answer by saying this action was beyond his control (Apparently, it was god’s decision. And god called the pay cut a “salary correction” in his state of the company address, so we know where he stands.), but he could guarantee that when the company did turn around it would reward those who worked hard to make that happen. He also said that the company would not keep all the profits in that case, he was sure it would give some back to us to fund further R&D and budget increases. In other words, so that we could make more profit for the company.

Since when, buddies, is giving people back what you took from them “rewarding” them? And if I read all this correctly, he told us to sit down, work harder, and we’d be rewarded later by being asked to work even harder than that. Oh, and if we’re lucky enough or high enough in the food chain for our contributions to be recognized, we might get a little reward.

There was an article this week in a technology trade rag stating that a certain profitable company was closing production in a small European country, and moving the work to India. The prime minister of the European country called the action “disgusting”—saying that the citizens of his country had worked hard to help the company make money and now the company was abandoning them. Would anyone in power in this country even raise this issue? I think not. I heard someone say recently that capitalism was a good engine but it was not a good foundation for a culture.

What do you think?