Scantlings

I work at a PDBC (Pretty Damn Big Company). I like PDBCs. There's a lot of opportunity. In fact, maybe too much.

9 mos ago I took a job that was not clearly defined. I was a little nervous about it. However, it was in a division (energy trading) that I really want to be a part of. The initial description was simply 'Senior Software Engineer'.

On the day I started, my manager called me into her office and told me she was leaving that position and going to a different division.
The guy who was doing most of the knowledge transfer was going to be gone back to India in a week.
The addtional new guy we were getting had visa problems and wasn't going to show up for a week.
One of the lead contract developers on the team left for a 5 week vacation.
One other developer left for a 2 week vacation.
That left me and one other guy to run the place.

That was in March

Since then, I somehow magically got promoted to be the development team supervisor. Suddently I found myself in charge of 5 guys and 10 years of 'technical debt' in an environment that has pretty much zero tolerence for any delays.

"No problem," I thought to myself. Getting into this type of role at this company is a pretty big deal and could pave the way for some major advancement. Yes, I'm talking about climbing the coporate ladder. And I'm ok with that.

But the last 7 months have been seriously draining. Particularly the last 2 months. I have been working very hard to summon order from the chaos that is here. I've been implementing methodologies that are foreign to the culture and that has resulted in a lot of friction between me and my boss. We are trying hard to create a more disciplined approach to our work intake which makes our customers (the business) accountable for the things they request. But, since we are also monitoring our capacity and intake, we have to push back and manage our requests in our backlog. The business hates that since they have been so used to development taking on everything they ask. It wasn't uncommon for a trader to come up and tap their favorite developer on the shoulder and ask them to do something. I put an end to that. I am now the gatekeeper, and no one is allowed to touch my developers.

That means I have placed myself in the direct line-of-sight of pretty much the whole devision. In their minds, I am the bottleneck to everything happening here. Nevermind the fact that our 'organic' architecture, harvested over the past 10 years, is nearly impossible to support, I'm the one to blame for it all.

The truth is, I don't mind. We are making progress with this approach and the business is actually seeing results much more quickly than they have in the past.

What I do mind is the complete lack of trust my manager has in me. Today was very close to the last straw. It was a field trip day for my 7 y.o. I promised her that I would attend this field trip (at the U of M Raptor Center) with her and I was really looking forward to it. Half way through I received an e-mail with my manager freaking out that I wasn't at my desk (yes, I had already notified her I would be gone for the morning). We were having some major issues that were impacting the business. But, my guys, plus 2 support guys and even some guys from Geneva were already on it. I would not have made it all better by having my ass planted in my chair. I was in touch with my guys and the business and within minutes the problem was taken care of.

Over the last month the screws have just been getting more and more tight without any sort of acknowledgement of the good work we are doing. After many pleasing visions in my imagination of me telling them to shove it, my wife (who has been a manager for the last 20 years) summed it up nicely:

Usually the lead/manager takes the heat until things get better...

She's a good woman. Basically, I just need to HTFU

Rick, you have summed up why I have to be the owner of a SLC (small little company).

That plus SWMBO's observation that I am "unemployable."

Rick,

I'm with Kim on this - and have spent a lot of time in RTC (Really Tiny Companies) as a result. That said, one really useful technique is publishing data. If there's a problem caused by folks re-directing your people away from important stuff and onto their personal projects, a simple chart of what folks are assigned to, and documentation on every time they're interrupted and by whom might do the trick. Even the CEO of a RBC (Really Big Company) will modify his behavior if he sees the results in black-n-white; and especially if everyone else in the company realizes precisely why they aren't getting their really important stuff is because one idiot is misdirecting the IT resources.

It sounds like your doing IT for a financial services company, and those folks are the most spoiled and self-interested folks I know of (I used to be one, so I know). They don't really give a S**T who else gets burned as long as they get their project done. That's primarily because of the way they (we in the old days) are compensated. There is almost no incentive for the entire firm to succeed and gigantic financial incentives for each individual contributor to maximize their own short term gains. As a result, they quite reasonably have the attitude of "F**K those guys, do my project first!" In this environment, even publishing why the important stuff is being delayed may not help, the misbehaving children don't really care.

BV

I have worked for SLC including several RTC with an emplyee of one

Here's what I like about my PDBC

• Camaradarie - The guys on my team are stellar. Top notch. I almost feel like I'm in battle with them. There's a camaradarie I haven't felt when I've worked for SLC.
• Objectivity - yeah, that's a weird one. In the SLCs I've worked for, it's too much like a family. I have a family. If I need that sort of scrutiny and subjectivity I know where to go for it.
• Opportunity - the only one doing well in a SLC (usually) is the Big Cheese. There are some Medium Cheeses between you and him who are just waiting for the Big Cheese to move on. Opportunities are slim
• Health Care - my company is big enough to protect me from Obamasnare. I don't have a lot of health issues anyway and they compensate me for healthy lifestyle.

Don't get me wrong, if I knew I could succeed at a small company, I'd be there. I've tried my hand at running a business and I went down in flames every time. I suck at it. I want to do the work, not watch others do it.

That said, the interesting thing about what I'm doing now is that I might just be gaining the skills I need to NOT suck at running a business.

Who knows, I have some things in the works. Maybe in 6 mos I could be singing a different tune.

And BV, you are spot on about documentation. Communication has always been a challenge for me. Not because I can't but because I usually have a hard time figuring out who the right people are to communicate to. That would be one of the downsides of PDBC. A lot of buraucracy.

Kim, this situation is nothing new to me. It seems I always end up in the hot seat and I've been wondering if I am 'unemployable'

Oh, man. That sounds terrible, the manager part. We all do what we have to do, though. I have no experience working in that kind of environment, but maybe she'll come to realize what a solid citizen you are and start to leave you the hell alone.

You are experiencing something similar to my last job (and employer). I spent my life working, mostly in management, for large corporations and experienced the deterioration of their culture and HR practices from being the best type of work environment to the contemptible level they are currently at. Now they will chew you up, suck the life out of you for as little cost to them as possible and when you are spent, they will spit you out without a word or a look back. You are simply an HR unit to them, of no more significance than a photocopier - all the trendy talk about "team building" and "employee engagement" to the contrary. The worst of all are the ones who call their staff "associates" or "partners" or similar.

Unlike in the distant past (pre-late 80's) you will seldom, if ever get any thanks, recognition or rewards. At best they will drive you into clinical depression, at worst they will kill you from stress & overwork.

The ONLY thing that matters to them now is the next quarterly financial results. Customers get the minimum consideration required to keep them from leaving in droves, staff get zero consideration and the shareholders get everything. Today, a visionary corporate leader is one who can see as far as the end of the fiscal year.

My heartfelt recommendation to you, after nearly 40 years experience, is not to HTFU but GTFO (get the fuck out).

Listen to Beau & Kim and get a job with a smaller or non-corporate employer.

Rick,

I don't have a lot of data about what you're really dealing with. But on the general topic of which companies suck, which suck-less, and which are really good... it depends on who's running the place and setting the tone. I know it sounds trite, but the person leading the organization really does set the tone for what happens all the way down to the "bottom" of the organization.

(BTW, Colonel Davis used to draw his org-chart upside down. At the top were the customers, the next layer down was populated with everyone who talked to and took care of a customer, and the next layer down were the folks who supported them, etc.... at the very bottom of Colonel Davis' org chart was the CEO and below him/her was the Board of Directors. Whenever he'd show this chart he'd display it with an arrow running along the right side from "Nearly Useless" at the bottom to "The Most Important" at the top. The Colonel had his values right, the customers were the reason everyone had a job and the further you were from the customer, the less "status" you should have.)

Now, back to the person who is really at the bottom of Colonel Davis' org chart, the CEO or President. If that person is someone how really "gets it" then that person will deeply want to know what's going on. They'll stick their nose into things, ask questions, measure stuff, examine who's doing what to whom, because if they're worth a shit they'll know that their grossly oversized paycheck depends directly on the productivity of their people and the ability of those people to take really good care of the folks at the top of the Colonel's org chart, the customers. If the person leading the team doesn't "get it", then you'll have big problems and getting out may be the right answer. But, long before you bug out of what might be a good situation, it's worth figuring out how to communicate what's going on to the person who cares most, the poor bastard running the place. That's why I recommended publishing some data. You might be surprised at how far a document that shows who's really getting what done will be transmitted and re-tranmitted. I've always thought that publishing data is a lot like turn on the light in the kitchen in the middle of the night - the cockroaches really run for cover when the light goes on.

I've no idea what company it is your working for, but there is probably someone who's personal bonus is tied to the performance of the entire team. That's the person who needs to fix this; the person who needs to see your data on why things are broken. Sure, some general managers or VPs that are too stupid to do what's good for them and their team. But generally, that's not actually the case. The sort of rip/burn/cut/slash that some organizations are subjected to is often the direct result of completely irrational goal setting and expectations, or the result of a relatively recent purchase of the organization by an organization that is highly focused on the short term and may have layered far too much debt on the company. Debt to financial buyers of companies is like cocaine to horses, a little bit and everything looks fast, hot, quick, and profitable; but layer on too much debt and just like a coke-head the company starts to twitch, jerk and act irrationally just to get another fix.

There's no way to tell, from what you've told us, what sort of situation your company finds itself in. Many financial services companies are having great difficulty dealing with the current equity and bond markets, and many keep their traders on a plan that is almost entirely based upon their short term performance. That will almost always lead to the traders doing whatever they need to nail a quick trade, after all it's what they're paid to do. It doesn't make them very interested in other people's problems or any sort of long term benefit to the company.

Good luck to ya,

Beau

I would echo the comments above. I've spent most of my career working for a huge beast of an healthcare MNC, that actually had a decent culture - very much a manager/leader as a servant type of culture. I learned a lot, met a lot of smart, decent people and spent most of my time in Asia fixing broken companies, or companies that had strayed too far from the corporate fold. Some of these businesses had gotten really big and entrenched before they were called in.

But all the silly things you mention started to drag on me, and the learning curve flattened out. The game changed too; the political component kept increasing with each move until I was really unhappy. I made a change two years ago to something completely different - it was leave or become a lifer. Now I'm working on my 1 in whatever shot and I really enjoy it. Who knows? We might even achieve something.

You say, "Usually the lead/manager takes the heat until things get better..." I guess my answer would be, sometimes or maybe. I've seen too many good managers do the right thing for the business and get burned because they were perceived as the problem, even though they were raising and fixing pre-existing issues or doing necessary changes to get the business running properly again.

I won't say GTFO because I have no idea of any financial obligations you might have, but at least give it a hard think.

Beau's comments reflect the way it SHOULD be and the way it USED to be but not the way it IS anymore except in rare cases. Now the CEO's of corporations have an average tenure of 18 months. Their only interest is in sucking as much money out for themselves as possible in that period. To achieve this they maximize short term returns at the expense of nearly everything else.

The easiest way to do that is to cut staffing costs - every $ saved there goes directly to the bottom line - no investment required, no waiting for the revenue to follow, no nuthin - just immediate gratification for which they get rewarded but which has a negative long term effect on the company in most cases.

Just look at the M&A industry - that tells you how well it's working.

Something to think about - corporations exactly fit the definition of psychopath.

kimbottles wrote:Rick, you have summed up why I have to be the owner of a SLC (small little company).

That plus SWMBO's observation that I am "unemployable."

There seems to be a lot of this in these parts. I couldn't hold down a job with any decent company so I had to start my own.

In term of HTFU, my old climbing partner came to town this weekend and stayed with us, we were reminiscing about the time I was about 50' up a steep climb, I'd pulled the crux but was tiring, I called for him to "take", take up slack so I could hang from the rope and rest without finishing or "flashing" the climb (5.12b), he replied, "nah, you've got some left, pull down you pussy" and gave me about 2 yards of slack, meaning a big whipper if I came off. THAT inspired me. Remains my only 12.b flash.

Well, I am certain that things have changed some geographies and some industries. Indeed, I interact with some companies that certainly caused things to become extremely short term and entirely this quarter's profit focused.

But I also personally know of companies that are doing just fine today where it really does work the way I've described it. I wish there were more of the "good" sort of companies, more on this later. I used to be personally involved in trying to insure that the companies my firm worked with were run by CEOs who were motivated in exactly the right way to build long-term value. You can't build long-term value without the best possible team, and you don't get a good team by running a chain-saw through the organization to meet a single quarter's financial goal. Also, over the long haul (My old firm has been in business for over 55 years.) we have found that the long-term focus is the ONLY way to build substantial value. Sure, there are other approaches that can yield higher returns over a relatively short period (2 to 5 years), but if you're going to be in business for decades you simply can't behave like that. Your past catches up with you.

Now, why there aren't more "good" companies who are in it for the long haul. In my opinion, at the root of the problem is actually the low cost of borrowing money we're now enjoying. Many of us relish the idea of a home mortgage or an auto loan that is inexpensive; but when it costs almost nothing to borrow the money to buy a company a lot of folks who aren't in it for the long-haul will use that low-cost debt to buy things they really neither understand nor know how to run.

In the situation where investors who are uninformed or inexperienced in a specific industry get in "cheap" with a lot of borrowed money and a low "down payment" (their own money), their strategy is often based upon taking the actions they do understand cut aggressively, yield short term profits, and generate excess cash. That excess cash is often sent back out to the investors in the form of dividends to such an extent that the "investors" really have no investment left in the company, they've taken all their money out. Effectively, they've repaid themselves their "down payment" and don't have any of their skin left in the game. Then, because the company (not the investors) are providing the collateral on the loan and are actually the entity that has borrowed the money, if anything bad happens (like bankruptcy) the lenders can only go after the company and not the investors.

This has allowed a number of investor groups to be set up who simply cycle through company after company, reducing their own financial exposure as quickly as possible, and once they've made their target return just playing out the rest of the deal to optimize their up-side. This is, of course, an extremely ruthless and cruel way to treat the folks who depend upon the company either for employment or for the products or services that the company delivers. But, so long as the lenders are willing to loan money at absurdly low interest rates with very little "down payment" (so to speak), there will be sharks willing to take them for a ride.

This pattern is beginning to come to an end. I know of a number of "deals" recently where the lenders have refused to be left holding the bag and turned down the deal; also a number of CEOs won't go anywhere near these deals now that they've learned the pattern. This is, in part, because interest rates are slowly climbing again, and also because the lenders are figuring out that they've been taking all the risk for a return of a couple of percent. In the mean time, the "investors" are receiving a 2% management fee on the money they're investing and a 20% share of the profits. In comparison, the management team is typically getting a salary that looks large, but their stock options often turn out to be worthless as the lenders capture all the real assets to get their loans paid back and the stock price plunges. Effectively, the investors have stripped all the excess assets out of the company. This radical difference between the financial incentives of the Management, the Investors and the Lenders is unsustainable and is changing slowly. I think this phase will end in a couple of years once interest rates are allowed to climb to something approximating the inflation rate.

Beau, I sure hope you're right - we obviously agree on how it SHOULD be and what it takes for a healthy economy.

The one flaw I see in your low interest rate theory is that the current situation has been going on since back in the 80's - that's 30 years and how many market cycles? 3 major market crashes for sure. It does indeed cycle up & down but it seems to be a sort of negative feedback loop, spiraling downwards. The widening gap between rich & everyone else and the increasing concentration of wealth are visible symptoms of it.

Even 2008 didn't smarten them up.

Frankly I don't think anything but legislation (communism!! liberalism!! leftist evil!!) will put a stop to it since, at bottom, it is driven by individual greed. Limits on CEO compensation, inbred and/or interlocking directorships and so forth will be the only thing that will restore some sanity IMHO.

And that ain't going to happen, at least not in the States.

Well, maybe.... You see it was a LOT worse in the late 1800s and got better for a time (if we're talking about the difference between the income for the top 1% vs everyone else). It then got really bad around 1900 to 1930. I fear that we have come to believe that "normal" is the way the US was just after world war 2, from about 1950 to 1970, which really isn't accurate. During those two to three decades the US was really a very different place.

First, we had NO economic competition. The US and Canada had the only industrialized economies that weren't seriously damaged or destroyed in world war 2.

Second, we finally had the effects of a progressive income tax, which flattened a lot more billionaires that you might think.

Third, the business community hadn't figured out how to respond to thing 1 and thing 2 above. They have now.

From the point of view of moving back to the way things were in the 50s, 60s and 70s, I don' think that will happen anytime soon. For the same reason we now have 5 J-class sloops on the starting line (more than ever before even when they were the AC boats) we are reverting to a economic distribution that is much more like the 1890 to 1930 period than like the period in which you and I grew up.

Let's face it Leyland Stanford and his pals weren't called the "robber barons" because they were nice guys who believed in economic equality.

I'm not sure how you keep extremely capable and ambitious people from collecting all the assets. It clearly didn't work in communist Russia or China, the wealth concentration is much higher than it is in the US. I do think the progressive income tax (or perhaps a asset tax) is a good idea, as is some sort of flat percentage tax on death (like 50%) without any exceptions or loopholes. However, as long as you allow an elected organization with the demonstrated self-interest, low-morals, and stupidity of the US Congress to set the tax law, I have little hope we'll ever actually address this problem.

I fear we're back to H'ingTFU and either becoming one of the 1% or accepting that one needs to find a nice version of a 1%er to work for.

The US investor class cuts across political lines and is growing. Cuts to middle class entitlements (Medicare) and the incipient retirement crisis will increase the pressure on savings to find stable investments. Educate Josephine 401(k) about her stake in market regulation and the long-term inadvisability of owning entities managed by banditti or which trade in toxic garbage and maybe she will exert the political and share price pressures to bring things into quasi-balance.

Sorry about the double posting above, I hit quote when I meant to hit edit.... ah me.... writing in the wee hours...

OM, yes, there can be some very real pressure put on the Bandidos in business by shareholders. But that assumes that someone can become an "owner" of stock as opposed to a debtor. Sadly, the same low interest rates that have encourage a lot of buy-out bad-behaiour with company executives and private equity firms have also encouraged a lot of individuals to live a lifestyle that can only be supported by perpetually increasing debt. I have very few friends who pay cash; almost all use debt to fund everything from their home, through their cars, right down to fundamental living expenses. Sadly, as debtors, people don't have much leverage in our society.

I do believe that the foundation of the problem is related to the amazing benefits that the US enjoys by being "The Currency" for the world. Think about the benefits in terms of the billions of dollars that are printed and sent offshore to provide liquidity to the globe, the US will never see those piece of paper return. That means that we've basically printed money, exchanged it for some other real asset (like cars, cocaine, yachts, other people's money, gold, diamonds) and those folks never come back to get their assets back. Just the "loss" of bills in circulation around the globe is in the billions. That is effectively a "gift" to the American people that helps prop up our lifestyle - we print paper and exchange it for stuff and the folks with the paper loose it or wear it out. Pretty weird isn't it.

Then there's the benefit of being able to borrow money from others at interest rates that are significantly below any competing interest rate. This "spread" on interest rates means that the US can finance its debt at a fraction of the cost of countries like Spain and Greece. That advantage is used to allow the US Gov to finance deficits that are much bigger than anyone else could support. Today in the NY Times there is a graph from the IMF that shows the deficit spending rate for the US having declined from about 14% of GPD in 2009 down to about 7% today, it's projected to get as low as 4.5% by 2014. The deficit in Greece has been and will be almost the same, indeed Greece will have a lower deficit spending rate than the US by 2014. Why is Greece a fiscal mess and the US not? Because the US has higher productivity and gets to borrow at about half the rate (or less).

The advantage of being "The Currency" for the globe is massive and one of the reasons that a lot of clear thinking people in every political party nearly had apoplexy when some Congressmen claimed it wouldn't matter if we defaulted on our debt. Fortunately, the adults in the Congress fixed the problem, but even the whiff of default has already cost the US billions in increased interest expense.

Back to being "Owners" vs "Debtors". The real cure, in my opinion, if for Americans to accept that since the early 1990s we have real competition for labor and the products that labor produces; and we're not doing all that well at competing in many sectors. None of us grew up in an era of real competition. There wasn't any serious competition during the 50s and 60s and it only started to come on strong in the 80s and 90s. There are two ways that the US citizen can remain competitive in a global economy: work for less money or become more productive. We're really REALLY good at that last one, with productivity gains that vastly outstrip any other country. We're really bad at working for less. To avoid facing the fact that we're probably going to be doing both (working for less and becoming more productive) we have been borrowing a lot of money personally for a long time. By becoming "debtors" rather then "owners" we are giving away our power to tell anyone what to do, especially those who run companies. CEOs listen very very carefully to what their shareholders tell them and respond instantly to their compensation plan. By leaving the ownership of most companies in the hands of pension funds and the 1%, we've lost our ability to have much influence at all. Sure, that influence was always indirect through mutual funds or some other intermediary, but back when individuals had net positive asset positions and invested in things like mutual funds there was a lot more responsiveness to what folks wanted done.

There is a much longer discussion we could have about how most Americans believe they "need" walk in closets, three cars, private bedrooms and bathrooms, a jet ski, yacht, ski cabin, etc.... Sadly, few Americans realize that by burdening themselves with debt (much of it extremely expensive credit card debt at up to 25% interest) to purchase toys and other things they don't really need, they are eroding whatever power they might hope to have to climb out of this mess.

I'll stop now, you guys obviously banged into a topic I've spent most of my adult life thinking about and working on, so I've spouted off far too much for a friendly sailing forum. sorry to drone on and on, but as that wonderfully insightful philosopher Pogo once said: "We have found the enemy, and it is us!"

Beau, I agree completely, but the US middle class is in for an epochal shitscare, as today's indebted reach the end of their working days--retire is hardly the word for what many can expect--perhaps coincident with reductions in entitlements. I see the next generation assimilating a big lesson about saving and likely demanding a more stable environment in which to do it.

Of course, the timescale on this is in decades.

The solution is actually quite simple - reduce or eliminate human greed.

Done!

Wait a minute, it's not working.

I agree with eliminating greed, but how do you do it?

Just to clarify, that was me just blowing off steam.

The truth is, I love the company I work for. This particular manager is new to the company and I do think she feels she has something to prove. On a personal level, she and I get along great. I support her efforts to kick ass and take names. No one has been doing that around here and that's why we have the problems we have.

The division I work in is energy trading. We do physical trading (you would have no electricity if we didn't do our job ) and financial derivative of that. The traders themselves are not a problem. In fact, the trading function isn't really a problem either, other than the fact that they've been allowed to be rogue for the past decade. The biggest challenge has been the fact that we are now organized where there hasn't really been any organization and it's exposed a lot of the holes that have opened up due to bad practices in the past. I just happen to be the guy who keeps falling into them.

Most of this I brought on myself. My communication skills have never been the best. Not that I can't articulate well, but I seem to always misjudge the amount of articulation (usually too much) and to whom I direct it (usually the wrong people). Timing is also critical and because I sometimes get too deep into the sheep dip, I lose track of time...going home before getting in touch with that person I told I would get in touch with before the end of the day.

I try to look at it as a learning experience. I put myself in these uncomfortable positions because I feel it helps me grow.

But dayum, there's only so many kicks in the balls I can handle...

JoeP wrote:Done!

Wait a minute, it's not working.

I agree with eliminating greed, but how do you do it?

Can't be done.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vscG3k91s58[/youtube]

Soñadora wrote: We do physical trading (you would have no electricity if we didn't do our job ) .

I have a Honda Diesel 12 KW generator. You meant we would have no "Commercial Electricity" if you guys did not do your job.......

kimbottles wrote:

Soñadora wrote: We do physical trading (you would have no electricity if we didn't do our job ) .

I have a Honda Diesel 12 KW generator. You meant we would have no "Commercial Electricity" if you guys did not do your job.......

To hell with Beau's storage locker. You're much closer.

Ish wrote:

kimbottles wrote:

Soñadora wrote: We do physical trading (you would have no electricity if we didn't do our job ) .

I have a Honda Diesel 12 KW generator. You meant we would have no "Commercial Electricity" if you guys did not do your job.......

To hell with Beau's storage locker. You're much closer.

its heavy.......

hopefully, you get my tongue-in-cheekiness around all this.

I'm a skeptic, and that'll never change

Sorry, pal. All that dental floss is not going back in the tube.

How does one get dental fliss in or out of a tube?

Zircon encrusted tweezers.

Rob McAlpine wrote:Zircon encrusted tweezers.

Dental floss tycoons are ruining this great country of ours.

well, yeah...the cat's out of the bag, the muffin's out of the pan, the, the...stuff is out of the thing.

I'm still bitchy, but I'm not a hater. Maybe I don't like the players, but I still dig the game.

But that thing about 'greed' is what I was referring to. I'm no Gordon Gecko but I will admit to working hard so I can have what I need/want for me and mine. If i have enough left over to share, I do. But that's a pretty rare occurrence in these parts.

You obviously understand the difference between desire and greed Greed is simply an excessive amount of desire. That's what Gekko just didn't get.