A friend sent this link to a horror story development environment at Microsoft. It was a story about the development of the Vista shutdown menu:
Here’s a quote:
So that nets us a conservative estimate of 24 people involved in this feature. Also each team of 8 was separated by 6 layers of management from the leads, so let's add them in too, giving us 24 + (6 * 3) + 1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. Twenty-four of them were connected sorta closely to the code, and of those twenty four there were exactly zero with final say in how the feature worked. Somewhere in those other 19 was somebody who did have final say but who that was I have no idea since when I left the team -- after a year -- there was still no decision about exactly how this feature would work.
I’ve been experiencing similar issues on my current contract… I won’t name any names…
For example they have this webapp that automates the process of development telling testing that the current release is ready for testing. Today, a new Senior Business Systems Analyst sent an email asking everyone (broadcast of course) if everything was ready because she had her email all written and just needed to click send to tell QA everything was ready… I responded that we’d already sent the request via webapp… she responded that… (some other manager)“requested I send a “Prod like” release notes for all releases.”
Translation: She wants to arrogate the right to determine when builds are ready to go. Instead of the development team working with testers there needs to be yet another layer of managing. My team, for example, has 4 developers and 4 managers (a conservative estimate). How do big corps get this way?
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
3 Comments
LOL! I don’t work for that big of a corporation, but I’m considered a worker-bee, then I have a manager…who only manages me, and then there’s the director, who only directs / manages me and the manager.
In actuality, we’re 3 different pieces to the same puzzle. I do a lot of the programming, number-crunching, techinical grunt-work (IE: making the computer do the work), my manager acts as a goal-tender, keeping folks from coming directly to me with stupid requests or politics, and the director acts as a spotter/fire-manager, sitting in on meetings about future work, and telling them what we might be able to help with, and what they’ll have to fix themselves. My manager started out as a team lead over me and another person, but got promoted because (seriously) she deserved to get paid more for what she did, and in order to justify paying her more, they had to make her a manager. The other worker bee left, which left me, but we didn’t miss the person, because my computer wizardry was doing their work anyways.
All in all, it’s not a bad working arrangement. But, I get the short end of the stick. Because I’m just considered a worker-bee, I’m paid hourly, and don’t get paid as much as my manager or director, who are both salary and earn more than me. But, due to my automation, I do the work of 5 people in less time then our systems would usually allow (because I bypass interfaces and work directly with back-end data). So, in a way, I’m punished for being so productive, because I can get a 2 week project done in 2 days, then sit around twiddling my thumbs the rest of the time, getting bored and going home early, shorting my hours. I’m having a hard time justifying why I still work there. But the reason I do is because the layers of management above me do what they’re supposed to do, leave me alone and make others leave me alone so I can get REAL WORK DONE!
Oh, with all that said…my point is…
The corporate mentality isn’t to pay you dependant on how much work you do. It’s based on what managerial level you are, that equalling how many people you tend, and how many layers of middle-management you have to over-see to get things done.
And thus, it’s inherently flawed. If a manager really wanted to play the system to get paid the most, they’d hire a lot of lackluster performers to do mediocre work slowly. Then, they could justify hiring sub-managers and team leads for groups, which they create, because obviously you’ll need to break folks into groups so they can “specialize” in their area of mediocrity. So, by hiring B, C & D people, you’ve just turned yourself into a really important looking person, managing lots of people and sub-manager and sub-teams. Wow! The genius part of this is that the whole reporting/number-crunching is usually so fuzzy and untrackable, that you can pretty much make up numbers to show whatever kind of progress you want. (Seriuosly, one time at WorldCom, working for a dept that was built under this premise, the director just asked me “draw me a chart with a line that kinda goes like this” (waves hand in air a little). That was his executive meeting report chart! I kid you not!
Now, you get 1 “A” manager who only hires other “A” people, and he hires 3 “A” people to work for him, and they’re cranking out the same work-load as that other guy’s whole department. Plus, they can report on it all in an effective manner. But, because he’s only managing 3 people, he’s not as high of a pay grade.
Only at companies where quality and amount of work is measured accurately will real comparisons show up, and the “A” manager will get promoted / paid more for what they’re doing then the “B,C,D” manager, who simply bloats the system with unecessary overhead. But, companies like that first and fore-most need to have good number reporting. But, since it’s usually left up to each department, it usually isn’t very good.
Companies that try to use a “hit team” mentality are usually trying to focus on this…IE: having highly specialized “A” people teams doing work. But, the idea is there, but the execution is not, so they end up with these squabbling teams where no one has decision-making authority (because no one wants to be accountable). So, you get “do’ers” who are frustrated, because they’re stuck in this network of a bunch of CYA’er (Cover Your Ass’ers) that only want to get enough done to make it look like they’re working, but don’t want to get anything too important done, unless someone else accountable (blame-able) has told them too.
It’s annoying. You’ll find most jobs like that. Only about 20% of jobs you work will have a really worthy purpose, people that aren’t afraid to make decisions and get things done, and be held accountable for it. I guess that’s why I keep working where I work, ever though I’m underpaid for what I do. (It’s the perks that make it worthwhile)
yup that about sums it up!
well put, thanks for commenting!
Post a Comment