Leaving in Droves

As anyone who’s been within 20 feet of me in the last six months knows, my company instituted a paycut in February. Trickle down—execs got bigger cut on salary only leaving their huge bonuses untouched, blah blah blah. Guess what? Now that some say the economy is picking up, people are starting to leave for greener pastures. Surprised? Neither am I.

But man! the steps this company will go through to dance around the most important issue on the table. Get this: they do a quarterly employee survey to gauge workers’ attitudes. Hello, that disconnected from reality that you can’t figure out on your own that people get pissed when you take their salary away? Not surprisingly, in March the survey showed that workers were not all that happy. By putting two and two together, the smart folks at my company determined that people were going to leave in droves the second they could. What do you think they did about it? Reinstitute the legally agreed-upon rates of pay?

Nope: they did what all big companies do, they formed a committee and named it Community Cares. Kids, working in high tech is so ridiculous that I don’t even have to look for things to ridicule. [Reminds me of Jon Stewart begging people not to vote for W in 2004; said his job would be hard again if the other guy won.]

Every few weeks we get notices from the Community Cares committee, telling us all the great things they’re doing to make our jobs better. My individual group formed a – yep, you got it, they formed a sub-committee—to find ways to improve employee satisfaction. I’m screaming inside “Give me my money back!” like the teeny tiny woman in her teeny tiny house [did you guys ever read that kids’ book? One of my favorites growing up]. The sub-committee’s bright idea was to subject us to a dreadful 2-hour presentation by HR covering the online tools we must use. Boosted my morale and job satisfaction, you betcha!

What is it with the corporate gods? Do they get together behind closed boardroom doors chuckling cynically at what they’ve done? Or are they really clueless?

What do you think?

Top ten brown nosing comments

Brown nosing isn’t my forte, but I’ve worked with some of the best over the years. Here’s a sample of what I’ve heard.

10. You look great in that color.

9. Did you think of that yourself?

8. I’ll work on this at lunchtime.

7. You were an animal in that meeting.

6. I sure do have a lot to learn from you.

5. Can I offload some projects from you?

4. Brilliant!

3. Want me to run out to get you some lunch?

2. How are your kids/dogs/cats anyway?

1. No, no, it’s okay if you put your name on my report. It’s as if you wrote it anyway.

Love to hear any you guys might have.

The Free World vs Engineers

What is with software engineers anyway? Have they been sent directly to the planet, bypassing the usual stops along the road of life that bring the rest of us humility, compassion, and the ability to take direction? Buckle up, kids! I’m on a rampage.

Say you’re the marketing executive whose JOB it is to come up with a product strategy. Imagine that you spend weeks creating a killer product requirements document after doing things like meeting with customers, talking to analysts, analyzing research data, only to have that document CAST ASIDE by an engineer who FELT LIKE doing something else. Can you stand it?

If you’re in the tech world, you know this happens all the time. You know that when the rest of us are meeting to plot product execution and develop roadmaps, those stinking engineers are in the BREAK ROOM playing PING PONG. And you know that some months later, when a product is released that has NOTHING TO DO with the product strategy you recommended, a product who’s functionality that the doc people can only guess at, a product that the QA people can’t imagine how to test, you KNOW that if you call a meeting with the engineers responsible, you KNOW they won’t show. Hell no! Especially not if it’s before 11am because they won’t be in yet—having stayed up till 4am playing online Dungeons and Dragons with their virtual friends in China.

You also know that when customers receive this piece of crap they’ll never disrupt their data centers to install it. Analysts and press will be stumped. Product revenue will go down, which in turn will make the stock tank and piss off the shareholders. The CEO will look to her staff saying, “The f*ck?” Her staff will look to their staffs, and so on down the line until the buck stops at your office. After all, it was YOUR JOB to write the product strategy.

I know you engineers out there have loaded your slingshots, but go ahead, I can take it.

What do you think?

Word of the week winner

So maybe it's not actually going to be the word of the week. Word of the fortnight? Word of the whenever I feel like it? We'll go with that.

In any case, the word of the week was: Persnickety, which means "overly particular about details or trifles; fastidious, punctilious." Here are the runners up and ultimate winner:

• The fabulous Sandy's entry was timely and cute, just like she is: "I was quite persnickety about how the car should be packed for camping. Every time kevin added an item I would pull it out and put it somewhere else."
  
  
• Janette had a wicked good entry as well: "Despite the throbbing pain in her wrist, the photographer kept clicking the mouse to suit her persnickety standards."
  
  
• But Ricardo stole the show with his entry, which exposed the British version of the word in such a witty way: "Per Snickety's instructions, the mechanics were persnickety in their inspection of the American's truck and pernickety in their examination of the Brit's lorry."

I'm so proud to call you kids my friends. Watch for the next word of the something or other contest. Feel free to add a comment below using the word in a sentence....

Top Ten List

I've been thinking of lists lately. Not much of a list maker myself, but there are several that swirl around in my head and mostly surface on a Monday. Here's one:

Top ten things *not* to say when your boss gives you a new project:

10. This looks hard.
9. Why can't *you* do it?
8. I'm too busy.
7. This seems like a waste of time.
6. This seems stupid.
5. I'm too strategic for this kind of project.
4. I'm too tactical for this kind of project.
3. This shouldn't take me much time.
2. Oh, good, I haven't had much to do lately.
1. This looks easy.

Have any to add?

Marketing These Tough Times

Have you noticed how we’re being advertized to these days? Just the other night, Archie and I were watching TV and on came a commercial for some cheap restaurant saying essentially: you don’t have much money these days so come try our $5 meals. I’m sorry, that’s just sad. Corporate marketing is all over These Tough Times, too. There’s one profitable company I know that’s taken to promoting that “this economy is going to separate the winners from the losers.” How offensive is that?

I believe that most large corporations have been opportunistically increasing their own wealth over the past six to nine months and hiding those actions under a cloak of economic hardship. I’m not saying that the economy doesn’t suck, but I am saying that perhaps our economic engines could batten down the hatches some, hold on to their workforces, and see what happens rather than shedding jobs willy nilly while simultaneously increasing share price for their stockholders. And I think our government should hold these Titans of Commerce accountable for the worsening of the economy that they’re causing by adding to the ranks of the unemployed.

Even as I type these words, I see collective eyes rolling up into collective sockets. Oh, Mary, don’t be so naïve. Next you’ll be talking about Society with a capital S and wearing love beads. But really, pals, isn’t a culture, especially a thriving, sophisticated culture like we Americans like to think we have, about more than Social Darwinism? Call me a pinko commie if you like but it really doesn’t seem extreme to me at all to ask our business community to extend some compassion to their workers. To perhaps hold off on expectations of constant increased profitability and growth while our economy rights itself. Instead we have impatient, greedy corporations taking from the poor to give to the rich [remember my pay cut and the company’s uptick in profitability?] and laying people off without conscience. All the while telling each other that they’re the strong ones; those jobless folks were too weak to make it anyhow.

Kids, perhaps I should get off my soap box and wipe the spittle from the corners of my mouth.

What do you think?

Random time

I'm having trouble getting started today, pals. Perhaps all this Independence Day talk has gotten to me and I suddenly think I have the independence to follow my whims whenever and where ever I choose. In truth, I'm feeling somewhat ripped off that I only got one stinking day off for the 4th of July. I've grown a sense of entitlement about these things -- long weekends should be at least four days long. And I should never have to work on Mondays.

In any event, found an interesting tidbit in a newsletter this morning. Seems that an event will take place later this week, something that happens once and only once over the course of history. Shortly after noon on July 8, comes the moment that can be called 12:34:56 7/8/9. Is your skin tingling with excitement, too?

In a couple of years we'll have 11:11:11 11/11/11.

Can you tell that I'm so not in the mood for Monday morning?

What do you think?

Social Media Maven

I’ve launched a Facebook page all of my own and I want you to join me! Look to the right, follow the link, become my Facebook friend.

My plans for the page include sharing pithy quotes that I come across in my literary meanderings as well as hosting a weekly contest. What’s that, you say, a contest? Yes! I’m going to share a word of the week and invite my friends to include the word in a sentence in the comment section.

I’ll then use highly subjective guidelines [essentially whatever makes me laugh or think the most—depending on my mood, you getting the highly subject part?] to select a “winner” [in truth, you’re all winners and you know that]. The winner will have opportunity to provide a guest post right here on marythetechworker.blogspot. Can you imagine?! Joining your friend Mary in the limelight center stage? Think of the fame and accolades that’ll come your way.

You can, of course, decline the opportunity to guest post and simply bask in the glory of being a winner.

What do you think?

Generation Gap Research

Given our recent conversations on marriage equality and kids in the workplace, I thought I’d share results from a Pew Social and Demographic Trends that I came across. Turns out that researchers at Pew are reporting the largest generation gap since 1968. Apparently we disagree “increasingly on social values ranging from religion to relationships.” Almost 80% of those interviewed thought “there is a major difference in point of view of younger people and older people today.” That’s the highest spread since 1969, “when about 74% reported major differences” and “just 60% in 1979 saw a generation gap.” Ah, the 70s! We were so much calmer then. Must have been all that big hair and gel.

Relevant to our discussion on marriage equality, the report shows that younger people have greater tolerance on “cultural issues such as gay marriage and interracial relationships.”

I thought this was interesting:

“[T]he generation gap in 2009 seems to be more tepid in nature than it was in the 1960s,… Today, it’s more of a general outlook, a different point of view, a general set of moral values.” A kinder, gentler generation gap?

And this:

“While more than half of those under 65 think they will experience memory loss when they are older, only one-quarter of people 65 and older say they do so.” Um, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unkind, but er, couldn’t they have FORGOTTEN that they’ve experienced memory loss? I mean, isn’t that the POINT about memory loss? Never mind.

And not surprisingly:

“Americans differ on when old age begins. On average, they say 68. People under age 30 believe it begins at 60, while those 65 and older push the threshold to 74.” Duh! You don’t hear 20 somethings saying 20 is the new 10, do you? But have you talked to a 40 something who doesn’t claim that 40 is the new 30?

And lastly:

“Of all those surveyed, most said they wanted to live to 89.” I don’t have such a precise goal, do you?

What do you think?

There's a poll over there!

Kids, look right. See the poll right next to this post? Click whichever button most closely represents how you feel about the tone of this blog. Come on! I know you're here, and I can't believe only three of you have an opinion about my opinions. So vote! I won't know who said what, so don't worry about that.

Vote as many times as you want, I don't care. Think of it as the Liberals Revenge! Pretend it's November 2000 and you're in Florida, or Ohio [or was that Pennsylvania?] in 2004. Vote once, vote often, just vote!