About common sense and company management
We all know that with the growth of an organization, management decisions usually become more and more suboptimal, moving further away from common sense. This is due to the general law of complex hierarchical systems in which management is not elected, but appointed (as a result, people who are worse than the appointing manager are appointed).
All this is understandable, but why leadership in large organizations often makes not just non-optimal, but absurd decisions? Why not be guided by well, at least common sense?
Under the cut are a few examples from the work history of anold experienced programmer.
It all started in the distant eighties, with the famous Soviet bureaucracy, when in a large defense "box" where I was assigned to a novice programmer, everyone was forced to write individual Komsomol production plans. Plans were for a year, for three and for five. That is, all programmers and other workers (far from scientists with the freedom to choose research), who are members of the Komsomol (which is 99% of all under 45 years old, except for the party members), were obliged to invent, write, discuss and accept these plans themselves. At the annual Komsomol meeting, these plans were compared with real achievements and the mark “fulfilled” or “no” was made. Well, this is in theory, but in practice it was an annual week of idiocy, when every engineer, puzzled from despair and despair, sucked out of his finger something that would not be too abstract, like “work well”, and not too concretely, so that Do not screw up at the monitoring stage. And most importantly, no one except the authorities had a clue what our department’s plans really were, and therefore I couldn’t write anything intelligibly about my participation in these unknown plans. Moreover, even if he had a complete understanding of these general plans of the department, how could the engineer know what part and in what volume (in what language, on what platform, etc.) the leadership would charge him?
')
In general, everyone understood what a crazy event it was, but, alas, it was necessary to obey the authorities. And when “WOW, GLASNOST '!” Began (even before “WOW, PERESTROYKA!”), At the very first Komsomol meeting, to the complete dismay of the department’s leadership present, we unanimously and almost ecstatic vote we canceled these damn individual plans (democracy, damn it! We were scary to think then - and we chose our bosses by voting!). And what was my surprise and almost shock when, in the burnt-out coins of the Burzhuin West, I was faced with exactly the same nonsense — in almost all large firms, all programmers are forced to write annual plans to themselves. Notice - not to express wishes ("I would like to study and apply the Rock somewhere" or "something in serialization code is in our curve, we should specifically re-factor it, and even rewrite it"), but write concrete plans. Which then it will be necessary to carry out and report on this to the management - despite the fact that the management will of course give you your plans. I basically do not understand how to make plans from the bottom up, if the work is always assigned from top to bottom. Not to mention the fact that the programmer knows neither the dates, nor the budget, nor the secret orders of top management, nor anything else that may affect the annual plan. And it would be fine if the plans were first drawn up from the bottom up, and then on the basis of them, the work from top to bottom would be distributed in the same way. But no, everybody writes plans for themselves in a single impulse, hands them over to the leadership (sometimes from the third time), then both parties for these plans are hammered together for a year, a year they live by different, real plans, and after a year the leadership suddenly remembers these papers on an event called performance review and threateningly asked: “why did you not make one invention and did not file an application for three patents, as written in your plan? And ?? ”By the way, about patents and inventions, I do not exaggerate, but about that later. As a result, we have the same headache week, when you are drafted with a new plan, and the criteria for it are exactly the same as you were in the Scoop era - unsubscribe with something minimally specific so that you can easily “show” that you allegedly did it (or it is difficult to prove the opposite) and so that the bosses didn’t bother too abstract and hazy plan. Well, with the Komsomol-Burzhuinsky plans figured out, now on.
Working in the then very well-known Canadian company and completely tired of picking on the terrible old code of the project of our group, I transferred to another branch of the company that began to make Java Office. The plans were no less than “trampling into the dirt of Microsoft”. Java is a new fashionable language that has just gained momentum and popularity (we wrote on the Java 1.02 version). In general, I fell for it. On the very first day, the boss of the entire branch of the Java Office, and this is a hundred or more people, showed me a prototype of the Office. That is, a greatly reduced version without many modules and functionality. He double clicked on the Office icon and I began to look carefully. I watched, watched, but nothing happened. Having perfectly understood my questioning glance, the head said, slightly embarrassed: “This is how he starts so slowly. And then everything will go faster. ”So we sat for two minutes and only then the desktop appeared, the main window of the Office. To say that I was in shock is to say nothing. Then, having already started working with Java, I realized how raw and slow the platform is, and in order to achieve the Office functionality from Microsoft, I had to tinker with such a monster that he would hardly have tossed on the Pentiums at that time. And no improvement from the language in the foreseeable future was expected. It became quite obvious to me that the whole project would go to the basket, and I lost all interest in it, although I honestly did my part of the work. And when, after a year of work on the project, it was canceled, I experienced almost malicious malevolence - well, I was right! Although how it would be possible to be wrong, I can not imagine. Didn’t the department head see this? Saw. Then why waste time and resources until it became clear even to the cleaners that nothing would come of it? Moreover, the name of the company was put on the map, because the president and the PR people at all corners had been broadcasting for almost a year, rubbing their hands that “everything is about to work like we’ll use Microsoft's nose in the morning!”
Then there was no less crazy and no less a big project about creating a corporate videophone (set on the table for each employee). There it was not clear beforehand who would buy such a system and why, even if we could do it. And we even did some kind of alpha version, although it demanded a very fast internal network from the buyer. But for some unknown reason, there was no one willing to pay for a crookedly working videophone for 300 bucks per workplace. Somehow everyone decided that they would manage with a regular phone. And even now, in the age of fast Internet and the omnipresent skype and analogs, do you often use video calls to discuss cases with employees inside the same building?
There was another crazy project at the time - to make a Windows client-server emulator, such as Unix-like X-Windows, and sell it to corporations so that they would save a lot of attendants on thin clients, small cheap computers for employees. Theoretically, the project had some real meaning, but in reality it was necessary to emulate several thousand Windows API functions on the server, including all known and unknown bugs and features, and transfer them from server to client and back, not to mention load on the corporate network from all of this. That is, the effort and time for the project clearly exceeded the plans and the project was also abandoned, which was clear to me from the very beginning. At the same time, for all that, the company had a couple of awesome major projects that brought non-profitable profits and were the undisputed market leaders. But the authorities squandered their forces, time and resources for a whole bunch of extremely dubious (to be expressed softly) projects. As a result, those main and cool products of the company for several years almost disappeared from the market and the company has long gone into the first roles in the software business.
In the Singapore office of one of the largest international banks, on the floor of programmers (!), A large poster hung on the wall with two white gentlemen standing in unforced poses on a golf course, holding clubs against the background of beautiful clubs for clubs and discussing something fun. The signature was: “Work hard. . We'll take care of the rest »Translation:" shipche work, boys, negros, the sun is still high! And we, the authorities, will take care of you, our breadwinners, for golf by the sweat of your face. ” At the same time, 99% of Indians from programmers rented apartments for several people, or even for several families, because of the small salaries. That is, I have never seen such an arrogant and frank banter, even a direct mockery of my own employees. Imagine the mood with which these Indians were programming.
On the floor of the programmers there were two printers, at opposite ends of a huge long hall. In fact, there was more, but others have not worked for a long time and have even been forgotten about them. But these two worked properly and people often printed out pieces of code or documents to work / think / read at home or in transport. And then somehow in the printer near me ran out of powder in the cassette. I, as expected, filed an application to replace the cassette in our coolest intrabank automatic document management and record keeping system. A month has passed, I began to somehow find out why the printer is still not working. It turned out that I submitted an application to the chief of my boss (there were 100-150 people working under him, and only 500 in Singapore), and he went on vacation the day before, and no one but him could manage such an important strategic element for Bank, as one black cassette for the printer, and the system apparently did not know how to hand over these powers. Almost a month passed, but the cassette was not changed. Then I again began to dig, understand and found out that the head of my boss had come from vacation for a long time, but even he could not approve the replacement of the tape, and could only put his electronic signature on the application and send it to another big boss ... to India! And that dog did not say anything. Just forgot, I guess. I even found out his name and wrote him a reminder letter, then after a week the printer finally started working. I was very curious, who invented such a system in the bank, that in order to change the unfortunate cassette in the printer, such a long chain was required, and yes even with the approval of the high authorities in India, which had no connection with Singapore. As a result, a trivial operation, which should take 15-20 minutes, took more than 2 months.
Working in Singapore in a very well-known, large and old IT-company (not so long ago it turned 100 years old and all personal computers were named after her), I was surprised to learn (although it would be time to get used to the delirium of the ruling bureaucracy) Programmers are forced to file patent applications. Of course, all applications were submitted on behalf of the company and the owner of the patents was the company, and the author actually got a “big thank you”, and it seems like a very small premium if there were more than three patents in a year. That is, on the same individual plan for the year (where without him!) Everyone had to write down: “to apply for so many patents”. And I had this job: 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to fix other people's bugs in someone else's code (the total code in the product is slightly less than a million lines). And how, tell me, in such a work should I invent, invent something and apply for a patent for this something? And even if you just worked on a new version of our product? How can you come up with something really new, not yet invented, according to plan? Well it's not even oil paintings to write there or schlager compose. There really need to think. And at the end of the year the head: “let’s write it down: didn’t fulfill the plan item on patents”. Well, not nonsense? And the plans of the project leaders were the height of verbiage (as if they were studying at the Higher School of the CPSU!): To improve ... to deepen ... to provide ... a further increase ... general development ... and so on.
And by the way, about the work in this company ...
When I entered this company, they did not specify in which group I would work. And it turned out that I became the first and for a long time the only programmer in the newly created special support group of the third level. That is, the whole large product was developed by a development team, whose desktops were standing nearby, but it was up to me to deal with real product errors that came in as complaints from corporate customers. Whatan evil management genius at the very top of the company’s management came up with this, I don’t know, but according to their “ingenious” idea, our group, like all other such groups in the company, had to unload the development team for its own development and free it from the uncertainty of the identification process and bug fixes. And all this supposedly should have led to a better prediction of product development. I think it is even clear to the hedgehog how much it is all wrong, ridiculous and turned upside down. But since the decision was made somewhere at the very top (and the top is really high - in the company of several hundred thousand people), then everyone took it under the visor and rushed together to carry out.
In the same largest firm, the motto for a long time was (or is it still there?) "Smart is smart, smart is ...", it seems like it makes everything smart - from the stool, through firms and cities, to the entire Planet. And smart, it means optimal and adaptive, and all that is through the widespread use of various sources of information about the object, including sensors, and of computers, of course. The coolest and most intelligent. So, in the office of this cool company that makes everything smart, it was very cold. Most had a warm sweater or sweater at work. And in the conference rooms there was generally a specific Dubak. Even jackets did not help. Yes, and the coffee cooled down very quickly. All this despite the fact that the street was +30 all year round. It turns out that the company was unable to make its own office minimally smart and was spending a lot of money on the unnecessary work of air conditioners, not to mention losses due to frequent employee colds and low productivity because of clearly uncomfortable conditions, not to mention harm employee health. Therefore, every time it was just ridiculous for me to read on large modern screens along the walls of the lobby that “we will do everything smart for you!”
Let's come back about 12 years ago. I got a shock right up to a mild nervous breakdown when, in 1998, a rather large American company bought our small (60 people) Canadian startup. In connection with the purchase and the new branded big politics, the authorities decided to hold a super important single global meeting around the world. In the "live broadcast" at one time. We were lucky because our time zone was two hours apart from the American headquarters, but other units around the world were not lucky - some had to come to work at night or in the early morning, etc. Two weeks before the meeting, several plastic pieces were put on the table for each of some simple puzzles such as “assemble, if you can.” And almost every day there were letters from the headquarters that “damn it guys, you can’t even imagine what an important meeting we will have! it will change everything, just everything in our company! ”. The people were already waiting for this meeting with a concrete fear, feeling that half of them could easily be dismissed here or even close some branches altogether. And then came the day and the hour, everyone was told to take with them a puzzle in a disassembled form (which each had long gathered for two minutes) and walk from the conference room. They phoned to the headquarters, turned on the loudspeaker and everyone began to listen to the speech of the president of the company. For 5 minutes he was saying something completely abstract, like “Radical changes! .. we must work in a new way!”, Etc. Like, warmed up and prepared us for the main part. Finally, he said: “And now the most important thing. Let everyone take a long dark brown puzzle piece. ” All in complete disarray and total silence took into the hands of this Circuits. The main boss continued: “This means that we are one in spirit!” Then there was a couple of minutes about the Spirit of Unity. Then: “Put a white part on it, so that it fits into the groove. All laid? Did everyone enter? ”(In response to the hall, sluggish,“ Yes, yes ... ”)“ That's how we will make the same and the only right decisions in difficult situations! All as one! ”The Boss was talking about this for a couple more minutes ... In that spirit, in about 15 minutes we had assembled the entire puzzle in five parts. The last words of the Great Revelation were something like: “The whole company! In unison! Like one fist! I believe in you! We can do it! We will do it! ”To complete the picture completely, all that was needed was to get up, shout“ Hurray! ”And sing“ The Union of Indestructible Republics of the Free ”three times ... Well, or take pills and go to chambers if it happened in a mental hospital. From the meeting, everyone came out very silent and very depressed. I was, as I wrote above, just in shock and in a state of mild nervous breakdown. Among the general silent stream of people, I asked almost in a whisper of my colleague, a young Canadian: “I’m not sure that I understood everything correctly. More precisely, it seems I understood all the words, but did not understand a damn thing what he wanted to say and what it all meant. And you? ”He shook his head and replied:“ I didn't understand a damn thing either. And I am sure that no one understood anything. What do they want from us? ”In general, everyone else was also shocked. Only everyone was shocked by the futile attempts to understand what it all meant, and I was shocked by how crazy the Soviet, as I then thought, the bureaucracy could win in one single firm in the West. And most likely, the case was trivially simple: the company's management hired some superfashionable and super-expensive firm to “optimize business processes, improve productivity, raise the spirit in the team, improve the quality of work” andother turbidity of other important elements of the workflow. The result of throwing away a few (probably) millions of dollars and the work of these fashionable "specialists for further improvement" was the global puzzle meeting. Which, by the way, was forgotten in a couple of days and never (understood? Never!) Was remembered anymore - neither in our small Canadian branch, nor in the central American.
Eh, there could be much more to tell about the ubiquitous common sense dissension in large companies, but already so many letters. And in spite of everything, the eternal question remains: why, well, why do it in such an idiotic way? Or: why recruit such managers who are so stupidly in charge? Or: who does not sleep in the night deaf? Well, what was the usual answer echo, that's another story ...
Update. For dessert: some funny self-names from international banks.
Apparently, bankers just love to splurge, and to let them as cheap as possible. I can’t explain anything else why the senior programmer is almost everywhere called Assistant Vise President (assistant / deputy vice president), and the head of a small group of 2-5 people is Vise President (vice president). Immediately the picture is presented, how in some strip club such a “vice-president of the bank” gives his business card to a girl she likes in response to the question “who do you work with?” Hoping to hear “wow, you're cool!” And that he answer casually like this: “yes, we are turning around little by little ... well, you call me somehow ... closer to the weekend, baby. Have fun. " Ugh, damn it. :)
And banks like to call their development offices "centers of excellence" (center of excellence). What for?? The employee of the personnel department is a “manager for the acquisition of talents” ... In general, you can continue for a long time. So why these cheap Ponte? Strongly reminiscent of the huge and high wear "shoulders" of American football players. Well, then the game of millions of ordinary citizens, and then the banks ... Eh. Not serious somehow. And childish. :)
All this is understandable, but why leadership in large organizations often makes not just non-optimal, but absurd decisions? Why not be guided by well, at least common sense?
Under the cut are a few examples from the work history of an
Komsomol-Burzhuin plans
It all started in the distant eighties, with the famous Soviet bureaucracy, when in a large defense "box" where I was assigned to a novice programmer, everyone was forced to write individual Komsomol production plans. Plans were for a year, for three and for five. That is, all programmers and other workers (far from scientists with the freedom to choose research), who are members of the Komsomol (which is 99% of all under 45 years old, except for the party members), were obliged to invent, write, discuss and accept these plans themselves. At the annual Komsomol meeting, these plans were compared with real achievements and the mark “fulfilled” or “no” was made. Well, this is in theory, but in practice it was an annual week of idiocy, when every engineer, puzzled from despair and despair, sucked out of his finger something that would not be too abstract, like “work well”, and not too concretely, so that Do not screw up at the monitoring stage. And most importantly, no one except the authorities had a clue what our department’s plans really were, and therefore I couldn’t write anything intelligibly about my participation in these unknown plans. Moreover, even if he had a complete understanding of these general plans of the department, how could the engineer know what part and in what volume (in what language, on what platform, etc.) the leadership would charge him?
')
In general, everyone understood what a crazy event it was, but, alas, it was necessary to obey the authorities. And when “WOW, GLASNOST '!” Began (even before “WOW, PERESTROYKA!”), At the very first Komsomol meeting, to the complete dismay of the department’s leadership present, we unanimously and almost ecstatic vote we canceled these damn individual plans (democracy, damn it! We were scary to think then - and we chose our bosses by voting!). And what was my surprise and almost shock when, in the burnt-out coins of the Burzhuin West, I was faced with exactly the same nonsense — in almost all large firms, all programmers are forced to write annual plans to themselves. Notice - not to express wishes ("I would like to study and apply the Rock somewhere" or "something in serialization code is in our curve, we should specifically re-factor it, and even rewrite it"), but write concrete plans. Which then it will be necessary to carry out and report on this to the management - despite the fact that the management will of course give you your plans. I basically do not understand how to make plans from the bottom up, if the work is always assigned from top to bottom. Not to mention the fact that the programmer knows neither the dates, nor the budget, nor the secret orders of top management, nor anything else that may affect the annual plan. And it would be fine if the plans were first drawn up from the bottom up, and then on the basis of them, the work from top to bottom would be distributed in the same way. But no, everybody writes plans for themselves in a single impulse, hands them over to the leadership (sometimes from the third time), then both parties for these plans are hammered together for a year, a year they live by different, real plans, and after a year the leadership suddenly remembers these papers on an event called performance review and threateningly asked: “why did you not make one invention and did not file an application for three patents, as written in your plan? And ?? ”By the way, about patents and inventions, I do not exaggerate, but about that later. As a result, we have the same headache week, when you are drafted with a new plan, and the criteria for it are exactly the same as you were in the Scoop era - unsubscribe with something minimally specific so that you can easily “show” that you allegedly did it (or it is difficult to prove the opposite) and so that the bosses didn’t bother too abstract and hazy plan. Well, with the Komsomol-Burzhuinsky plans figured out, now on.
About choosing global projects and directions
Working in the then very well-known Canadian company and completely tired of picking on the terrible old code of the project of our group, I transferred to another branch of the company that began to make Java Office. The plans were no less than “trampling into the dirt of Microsoft”. Java is a new fashionable language that has just gained momentum and popularity (we wrote on the Java 1.02 version). In general, I fell for it. On the very first day, the boss of the entire branch of the Java Office, and this is a hundred or more people, showed me a prototype of the Office. That is, a greatly reduced version without many modules and functionality. He double clicked on the Office icon and I began to look carefully. I watched, watched, but nothing happened. Having perfectly understood my questioning glance, the head said, slightly embarrassed: “This is how he starts so slowly. And then everything will go faster. ”So we sat for two minutes and only then the desktop appeared, the main window of the Office. To say that I was in shock is to say nothing. Then, having already started working with Java, I realized how raw and slow the platform is, and in order to achieve the Office functionality from Microsoft, I had to tinker with such a monster that he would hardly have tossed on the Pentiums at that time. And no improvement from the language in the foreseeable future was expected. It became quite obvious to me that the whole project would go to the basket, and I lost all interest in it, although I honestly did my part of the work. And when, after a year of work on the project, it was canceled, I experienced almost malicious malevolence - well, I was right! Although how it would be possible to be wrong, I can not imagine. Didn’t the department head see this? Saw. Then why waste time and resources until it became clear even to the cleaners that nothing would come of it? Moreover, the name of the company was put on the map, because the president and the PR people at all corners had been broadcasting for almost a year, rubbing their hands that “everything is about to work like we’ll use Microsoft's nose in the morning!”
Then there was no less crazy and no less a big project about creating a corporate videophone (set on the table for each employee). There it was not clear beforehand who would buy such a system and why, even if we could do it. And we even did some kind of alpha version, although it demanded a very fast internal network from the buyer. But for some unknown reason, there was no one willing to pay for a crookedly working videophone for 300 bucks per workplace. Somehow everyone decided that they would manage with a regular phone. And even now, in the age of fast Internet and the omnipresent skype and analogs, do you often use video calls to discuss cases with employees inside the same building?
There was another crazy project at the time - to make a Windows client-server emulator, such as Unix-like X-Windows, and sell it to corporations so that they would save a lot of attendants on thin clients, small cheap computers for employees. Theoretically, the project had some real meaning, but in reality it was necessary to emulate several thousand Windows API functions on the server, including all known and unknown bugs and features, and transfer them from server to client and back, not to mention load on the corporate network from all of this. That is, the effort and time for the project clearly exceeded the plans and the project was also abandoned, which was clear to me from the very beginning. At the same time, for all that, the company had a couple of awesome major projects that brought non-profitable profits and were the undisputed market leaders. But the authorities squandered their forces, time and resources for a whole bunch of extremely dubious (to be expressed softly) projects. As a result, those main and cool products of the company for several years almost disappeared from the market and the company has long gone into the first roles in the software business.
About the production process
In the Singapore office of one of the largest international banks, on the floor of programmers (!), A large poster hung on the wall with two white gentlemen standing in unforced poses on a golf course, holding clubs against the background of beautiful clubs for clubs and discussing something fun. The signature was: “Work hard. . We'll take care of the rest »Translation:" shipche work, boys, negros, the sun is still high! And we, the authorities, will take care of you, our breadwinners, for golf by the sweat of your face. ” At the same time, 99% of Indians from programmers rented apartments for several people, or even for several families, because of the small salaries. That is, I have never seen such an arrogant and frank banter, even a direct mockery of my own employees. Imagine the mood with which these Indians were programming.
On the floor of the programmers there were two printers, at opposite ends of a huge long hall. In fact, there was more, but others have not worked for a long time and have even been forgotten about them. But these two worked properly and people often printed out pieces of code or documents to work / think / read at home or in transport. And then somehow in the printer near me ran out of powder in the cassette. I, as expected, filed an application to replace the cassette in our coolest intrabank automatic document management and record keeping system. A month has passed, I began to somehow find out why the printer is still not working. It turned out that I submitted an application to the chief of my boss (there were 100-150 people working under him, and only 500 in Singapore), and he went on vacation the day before, and no one but him could manage such an important strategic element for Bank, as one black cassette for the printer, and the system apparently did not know how to hand over these powers. Almost a month passed, but the cassette was not changed. Then I again began to dig, understand and found out that the head of my boss had come from vacation for a long time, but even he could not approve the replacement of the tape, and could only put his electronic signature on the application and send it to another big boss ... to India! And that dog did not say anything. Just forgot, I guess. I even found out his name and wrote him a reminder letter, then after a week the printer finally started working. I was very curious, who invented such a system in the bank, that in order to change the unfortunate cassette in the printer, such a long chain was required, and yes even with the approval of the high authorities in India, which had no connection with Singapore. As a result, a trivial operation, which should take 15-20 minutes, took more than 2 months.
About patents
Working in Singapore in a very well-known, large and old IT-company (not so long ago it turned 100 years old and all personal computers were named after her), I was surprised to learn (although it would be time to get used to the delirium of the ruling bureaucracy) Programmers are forced to file patent applications. Of course, all applications were submitted on behalf of the company and the owner of the patents was the company, and the author actually got a “big thank you”, and it seems like a very small premium if there were more than three patents in a year. That is, on the same individual plan for the year (where without him!) Everyone had to write down: “to apply for so many patents”. And I had this job: 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to fix other people's bugs in someone else's code (the total code in the product is slightly less than a million lines). And how, tell me, in such a work should I invent, invent something and apply for a patent for this something? And even if you just worked on a new version of our product? How can you come up with something really new, not yet invented, according to plan? Well it's not even oil paintings to write there or schlager compose. There really need to think. And at the end of the year the head: “let’s write it down: didn’t fulfill the plan item on patents”. Well, not nonsense? And the plans of the project leaders were the height of verbiage (as if they were studying at the Higher School of the CPSU!): To improve ... to deepen ... to provide ... a further increase ... general development ... and so on.
And by the way, about the work in this company ...
Dedicated third level support team
When I entered this company, they did not specify in which group I would work. And it turned out that I became the first and for a long time the only programmer in the newly created special support group of the third level. That is, the whole large product was developed by a development team, whose desktops were standing nearby, but it was up to me to deal with real product errors that came in as complaints from corporate customers. What
miscellanea
In the same largest firm, the motto for a long time was (or is it still there?) "Smart is smart, smart is ...", it seems like it makes everything smart - from the stool, through firms and cities, to the entire Planet. And smart, it means optimal and adaptive, and all that is through the widespread use of various sources of information about the object, including sensors, and of computers, of course. The coolest and most intelligent. So, in the office of this cool company that makes everything smart, it was very cold. Most had a warm sweater or sweater at work. And in the conference rooms there was generally a specific Dubak. Even jackets did not help. Yes, and the coffee cooled down very quickly. All this despite the fact that the street was +30 all year round. It turns out that the company was unable to make its own office minimally smart and was spending a lot of money on the unnecessary work of air conditioners, not to mention losses due to frequent employee colds and low productivity because of clearly uncomfortable conditions, not to mention harm employee health. Therefore, every time it was just ridiculous for me to read on large modern screens along the walls of the lobby that “we will do everything smart for you!”
Let's come back about 12 years ago. I got a shock right up to a mild nervous breakdown when, in 1998, a rather large American company bought our small (60 people) Canadian startup. In connection with the purchase and the new branded big politics, the authorities decided to hold a super important single global meeting around the world. In the "live broadcast" at one time. We were lucky because our time zone was two hours apart from the American headquarters, but other units around the world were not lucky - some had to come to work at night or in the early morning, etc. Two weeks before the meeting, several plastic pieces were put on the table for each of some simple puzzles such as “assemble, if you can.” And almost every day there were letters from the headquarters that “damn it guys, you can’t even imagine what an important meeting we will have! it will change everything, just everything in our company! ”. The people were already waiting for this meeting with a concrete fear, feeling that half of them could easily be dismissed here or even close some branches altogether. And then came the day and the hour, everyone was told to take with them a puzzle in a disassembled form (which each had long gathered for two minutes) and walk from the conference room. They phoned to the headquarters, turned on the loudspeaker and everyone began to listen to the speech of the president of the company. For 5 minutes he was saying something completely abstract, like “Radical changes! .. we must work in a new way!”, Etc. Like, warmed up and prepared us for the main part. Finally, he said: “And now the most important thing. Let everyone take a long dark brown puzzle piece. ” All in complete disarray and total silence took into the hands of this Circuits. The main boss continued: “This means that we are one in spirit!” Then there was a couple of minutes about the Spirit of Unity. Then: “Put a white part on it, so that it fits into the groove. All laid? Did everyone enter? ”(In response to the hall, sluggish,“ Yes, yes ... ”)“ That's how we will make the same and the only right decisions in difficult situations! All as one! ”The Boss was talking about this for a couple more minutes ... In that spirit, in about 15 minutes we had assembled the entire puzzle in five parts. The last words of the Great Revelation were something like: “The whole company! In unison! Like one fist! I believe in you! We can do it! We will do it! ”To complete the picture completely, all that was needed was to get up, shout“ Hurray! ”And sing“ The Union of Indestructible Republics of the Free ”three times ... Well, or take pills and go to chambers if it happened in a mental hospital. From the meeting, everyone came out very silent and very depressed. I was, as I wrote above, just in shock and in a state of mild nervous breakdown. Among the general silent stream of people, I asked almost in a whisper of my colleague, a young Canadian: “I’m not sure that I understood everything correctly. More precisely, it seems I understood all the words, but did not understand a damn thing what he wanted to say and what it all meant. And you? ”He shook his head and replied:“ I didn't understand a damn thing either. And I am sure that no one understood anything. What do they want from us? ”In general, everyone else was also shocked. Only everyone was shocked by the futile attempts to understand what it all meant, and I was shocked by how crazy the Soviet, as I then thought, the bureaucracy could win in one single firm in the West. And most likely, the case was trivially simple: the company's management hired some superfashionable and super-expensive firm to “optimize business processes, improve productivity, raise the spirit in the team, improve the quality of work” and
Eh, there could be much more to tell about the ubiquitous common sense dissension in large companies, but already so many letters. And in spite of everything, the eternal question remains: why, well, why do it in such an idiotic way? Or: why recruit such managers who are so stupidly in charge? Or: who does not sleep in the night deaf? Well, what was the usual answer echo, that's another story ...
Update. For dessert: some funny self-names from international banks.
Apparently, bankers just love to splurge, and to let them as cheap as possible. I can’t explain anything else why the senior programmer is almost everywhere called Assistant Vise President (assistant / deputy vice president), and the head of a small group of 2-5 people is Vise President (vice president). Immediately the picture is presented, how in some strip club such a “vice-president of the bank” gives his business card to a girl she likes in response to the question “who do you work with?” Hoping to hear “wow, you're cool!” And that he answer casually like this: “yes, we are turning around little by little ... well, you call me somehow ... closer to the weekend, baby. Have fun. " Ugh, damn it. :)
And banks like to call their development offices "centers of excellence" (center of excellence). What for?? The employee of the personnel department is a “manager for the acquisition of talents” ... In general, you can continue for a long time. So why these cheap Ponte? Strongly reminiscent of the huge and high wear "shoulders" of American football players. Well, then the game of millions of ordinary citizens, and then the banks ... Eh. Not serious somehow. And childish. :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/225093/
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