Catch Me If You Can. Manager Version

Are you a programmer. I am an effective manager. Well, you think so. Maybe you will even write an article about me, pick up a bunch of advantages - the topic is fertile. In the article, you must put the word "effective" in quotes.



I no longer work in your company. I decided to tell you how it really was. Soon this story will tell you something that upsets me very much, but it will be better if you learn everything from me.



You were probably surprised when you attended a cross-interview. I'm not from your village, in general, with her in no way. But he came and got a job as a CIO, even after passing a small competition. It was easy, because The Executive MBA diploma from Harvard Business School is magical. The girls from the personnel department did not even dare to make a copy of it - they asked me to do it myself.

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I turn to the main thing. The owner sent me to your plant. As you probably know, he moved to Moscow long ago, significantly expanded the structure of his assets, diversified, and now he looks at life a little differently. Including your plant and its directors.



I will not rephrase, just quote what he said to me: “I just want to disperse all this swamp”. I did a lot of anti-crisis management, preparing enterprises for sale, strategic changes, business valuation, and I understand it well. But always I propose to understand first. It does not happen that every single employee is a swamp.



The fish rots from the head. The phrase is so beaten that it is not consciously perceived. I will say differently: the head of the enterprise creates an environment for himself. If the enterprise has rotten management, it is only because the director has rotten out. If an enterprise is in charge of collective responsibility, it is only because the director is not in charge of management, but simply goes with the flow, squeezing the maximum benefit from the owner until he is expelled.



And the environment below the top management simply mimics, adapts to the top. Down there, fine, intelligent, educated people can work, but they will sit, as you say, with tongue in the ass, afraid to say a word. They will simply adapt to the environment and imitate exactly the activity that is expected of them. The environment is stifling them, does not allow them to develop, to realize themselves, to achieve results that can be proud of.



Especially if we are talking about a factory in a small town. There is no other work, especially for narrow specialists. Believe me, I have seen many such enterprises. You know what the rules are followed by their leaders when determining the level of staff salaries: to pay so much that they do not die of hunger, but they could not save for the move.



Director begins to feel like a king - and not only the plant, but the entire city. If he is also the owner, then in general - write is gone. The power over the people, their families, their future is so stupefying that the director simply stops thinking about business development. That is exactly what happened to your director.



I came to determine the scale and structure of the problem. Understand the motives, goals and results of as many employees as possible. Secretly, of course. You know yourself - if I had reported on the purpose of my visit, I wouldn’t have gotten out of the covered meadow, the director’s personal hunting farm, saunas with blood-with-milk-girls, would have walked through the floors of sparkling workshops washed with shampoo, and watched fascinating presentations about brilliant strategic development plans.



I needed a reality. The ideal position for her understanding is the CIO. There is access and understanding of the information system - i.e. almost all data on economic activities are invited to large meetings; it is not necessary to spend time approaching top managers.



You may wonder why I am telling you all this. Because I immediately liked you.



I said at the cross, that in the past - a programmer. I beg your pardon, I deceived you. I am still a programmer, this is my hobby. I don’t know a better way to realize the need to change the reality inherent in each person. No music, literature, computer games, building a house can not be compared with free, creative programming, when you do what you want, for yourself, without a task, terms, requirements and metrics.



I watched your code. I remember how you smirked, giving me full rights to the system, considering it a managerial idiot. And I needed all the code and all the data. And you did not disappoint me.



More precisely, you are not the present, but you are the past. When you came to this plant with burning eyes, a desire to change the world, write cool code, solve business problems. I even found your comment from many years ago, in which you expressed your own programming strategy: “to do so that the boys would not be ashamed to show.”



And your decisions of the first years were just that. You apparently did not dare to show them to anyone, but everything is still ahead. Your abstract tools for solving typical business problems, optimized for speed, ready for any changes in the subject of the task, customizable with just one mouse - this is really not a shame for the boys to show.



But the code is visible and your degradation. Not professional, no - I am sure, you are still capable of creating crazy solutions. You degraded like a man. You, like everyone else, mimicted the environment. In the environment no one needs your decisions. More precisely, no one needs exactly such solutions - any problem solvers will fit. And you took the path of least resistance.



You just started going to work. Leave the development environment with modified code open so that an asterisk appears. You showed me a module with an applied solution of SLAU. I had to pretend that I did not understand what it was. I did not tell you that the SLAE solution has already been implemented in the platform that you use for development. I haven't used it for a long time, but I know about it.



Then you tried to heal me, that the acceleration of the cost calculation is necessary for the accounting department and the problem lies in the convergence of the SLAE solution algorithm. Don't do that again, please. Okay, I, loyal to you, smiled stupidly and left. Any decent specialist will tell you that the problem is in the number of equations that is generated not by the algorithm, but by data. In this case, the idiotic distribution of costs, the favorite “everything for everything” rural method. When maintaining custom accounting is, I'm sorry, ass.



I tried to shake you, to return the thirst for free programming. For this, I am on my knee, in the evening, pile up the task management system on your platform. I deliberately made her squalid, uncomfortable and clumsy. For you to experience such a strong professional aversion that you could not hold back and correct it. I know that the task management system of the IT department at the plant is the most free area for creativity when it is created by the IT department itself, for itself, without setting the task from the outside.



But you did not succumb. He gave me an Italian strike, in full accordance with the image of a village programmer, who was scratching his hairy belly, constantly crawling out from under a dirty T-shirt.



There was a thought to realize what you dreamed of when you were young - to show your code to boys. Actually, I showed. There are a lot of friends - and in the companies-integrators, and freelancers, and IT directors, former programmers. I’ll tell you right away that it’s really not a shame to show your code. When they sent me the conclusions, I felt pride for you, as for my own child.



And I sent you your friend Seryoga. I knew that you would just drink some coffee, porzhte and no review will not work. I checked not you, but Seryoga. Unfortunately, not only the environment at work spoils you, but also your professional contacts. Seryoga is the same flabby, covered with a bloom of shit, having lost faith in himself, resigned to reality and already, in his heart, for a long time who has not considered himself a programmer for felt boots.



I got in touch with Lyokha, your friend, who moved to Moscow. Lyokha could not come. Lyokha is bad. In the village, he considered himself a full member of your Great Three, the navel of the Earth, the coolest programmer, but the reality and challenges of the big city showed that he is wrong. They did not take him to decent places, so he simply stuck at a similar plant in the glorious city of Sergiev Posad.



Unfortunately, you did not escape the role of the Savior. This is often the case with factory programmers. Remember, I came running, white as chalk, and said that I put in the accounting? It was hard for me, but I managed to pretend that I was terribly afraid of a fine of 20% of the proceeds, if the accounting department did not pass the income tax.



I don’t know if you know or not, but bookkeeping uses a method called “artificial time trouble”. Yes, you automated their work. Yes, you taught them everything. Yes, they will do fine without you. But do not want.



During the quarter, when there is free time on the wagon, and all errors can be corrected, so that they are perfectly prepared by the time of closing, they work like lazy seals. They make the necessary minimum without worrying at all about analytics, cost structure, correct figures and adequate balances.



And when the term is running out, include a panicky fool. Yes, we understand that we could have done everything before. Yes, we understand that they are to blame. Yes, we understand that now we can do everything ourselves. But you, the programmer, make it faster and better. "This is your program." And we have a time trouble, time is running out, the fate of the enterprise hangs in the balance, it’s necessary to save. And who does not want to save? Programmer. He is a nit. He does not care about the fate of the enterprise. Uses a crisis situation to realize their own ambitions.



Here you appear, Savior. As Vysotsky sang, "the gloom was angry, but it was going." Clenching your teeth, swearing and bothering accounting, sit down and work for them. Keep me seven, do not interfere under my feet, right now the chef will work. Without ceasing to whine that they can do everything themselves.



And when the crisis subsides, you no longer stutter about it. Although you could carry out systematic work, insist on timely and high-quality accounting - I know you can do it. But this is not beneficial for you - the role of the Savior will be lost. Unfortunately, you confirmed that you like this approach.



When you came for a pay rise, I was yulil and dodging, trying with all my might to make you understand that you shouldn’t do it now. I saw your grin, and I guess you thought. That I do not have the power, that I am shaking for my career, that I am trying to win the respect of the director and top managers, that I wanted to shit on you. And you left.



I really hoped you could suffer a little. But you probably decided to show me who the fish are and who the toad is. You went to the director, and he threw you a twenty. Without explanation, without results, without goals, without analyzing the market, without understanding your work. Just took and threw.



Such a royal approach to salaries, as I wrote above, is one of the first places in the list of claims of the owner to the director. You know, how much is he paying his friend, the production manager? Salary at the level of the Moscow top management. And how much does the chief accountant get involved in the corruption scheme for conducting virtual costs from technical organizations? Why is it that the people who actually create the product, engineers, workers, and craftsmen cannot afford to buy a used foreign car on credit?



I tried to return, revive, update your competence in systems thinking, when I offered you to evaluate the feasibility of the project. I know how important this competence is for a factory programmer. You, alas, refused. Plus - he hid from me that he had already done such a project, and you have the source code. I did not immediately find out about it - only when I began to look at the code under the first closed tasks, and I found it in previous versions of the modules with an elementary global search.



In working with users, I wanted you, as before, to start asking the question "why?". You have long ceased to ask him. I came to different departments, asked what they needed to automate, they carried some sort of nonsense, I pretended that I didn't understand a damn thing, and sent you. And you came and just recorded their Wishlist. It is necessary, it is not necessary, it will be useful, it will not be - you are no longer interested in this. Just added the next bricks to the inverted cone, which is the enterprise information system.



In general, I did not succeed. One month was not enough for me to climb into your soul and pull out a programmer from there to the light of day. I did the rest of the work well. The list for dismissal is made. Unfortunately, you are in it too.



The director, chief accountant, financial director will be quietly merged. They have no options - there is a criminal case. Friends, girlfriends, mistresses and relatives of the director, of course, also leave. The anti-crisis team will arrive. Who these people are - I don’t know, the team is chosen by the owner. There is a suspicion that it will be "effective."



But I am an optimist. I still believe in you. Now, when you lose your job, you will face difficulties. There is a possibility that they will not take you to work in your city, because of the scandal. He will not advertise, but the word-of-mouth radio will work perfectly well. The owner wants it. To the top of the company tasted all the fruits, but did not fall behind the bars.



Come to Moscow. In my company. I will find a good place for you. I will help with the move. Read this text in an hour, and then - in a day. So without emotion. Understand what I'm trying to tell you.



Remember how you were. After all, not so many years have passed. Revive in memory that energy, an irrepressible thirst for the new, the desire to be the best, to write code that the boys are not ashamed to show. I need you that way.



Waiting for your answer.