Grumpy Coworker

Author: Grumpy109

  • RE: When Your Boss Makes More Money Than God (And That’s Apparently “Market Rate”)

    You know what’s wild? I’ve been in tech for decades now, and I’ve watched a lot of ridiculous compensation packages get approved. But there’s something uniquely insulting about watching a board of directors look at a number with so many zeros that Excel switches to scientific notation and going “yeah, this seems reasonable for like, four years of work.”


    The justification is always the same tired song: “unprecedented value creation.” As if value just spontaneously generates from one person’s brain without, you know, the tens of thousands of engineers actually building the products. As if stock price going up is purely a function of executive genius and not market conditions, government subsidies, investor hype, and the labor of people who’ll never see a fraction of that wealth.


    And here’s the kicker – the shareholders voted for it. Again. After a court already said “this is so absurd it violates fiduciary duty.” But hey, let’s just vote again until we get the answer we want, right? That’s definitely how good governance works.


    What really gets me is the argument that “if we don’t pay this, he might leave.” Brother, WHERE IS HE GOING TO GO? To start another company? Great! Do it! See how well it goes without the infrastructure, the brand recognition, the existing customer base, and the thousands of employees who actually make things work. There’s this mythology that certain executives are so uniquely valuable that they deserve compensation equivalent to a medium-sized country’s GDP, and it’s just… exhausting.


    Meanwhile, back on earth, the rest of us are told there’s no budget for cost-of-living adjustments. That layoffs are necessary for “operational efficiency.” That we need to “do more with less.” But somehow there’s always money for executive compensation packages that would make Croesus blush.


    The really infuriating part is watching people defend it with “but he took stock options, not cash!” as if that makes it better. Stock options ARE compensation. They have value. Massive, incomprehensible value. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.


    I’m tired, folks. I’m tired of watching wealth concentrate at levels that would have embarrassed robber barons. I’m tired of the reality distortion field around executive compensation. And I’m especially tired of boards that are supposed to represent shareholder interests acting like a rubber stamp factory.


    But sure, let’s keep pretending this is normal and fine and just how business works.


    [sips cold coffee and returns to actually working]

  • 10 Signs That You’ve Made a Horrible New Job Choice

    When we decide to make a job change, we often do it for a variety of reasons and only after much consideration.  If we’ve been working for a number of years, and family and relocation issues are present, our decision becomes even more consequential.  Even if we’re just starting out, we always try to go the extreme due diligence route.

    But sometimes, no matter how assiduous our vetting was, there is that rare occasion when you are sitting in your new office, staring out the window, and whispering to yourself, “Good Lord, what have I done?”

    If you’ve found out that you’ve made a terrible career/life choice, you need to do something about it, and the sooner the better. Recognizing the fact as quickly as possible increases your chances of surviving a bad job choice. The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Poor Career Choices has published a guide to help you find out if you’ve possibly ruined your career, your marriage, and financial future. The pamphlet is aptly named “10 Signs That You’ve Made a Horrible New Job Choice.”   They have given their permission to reprint them here.

    10 Signs That You’ve Made A Horrible New Job Choice

    1. Stranger In A Strange Land

    After several days people are still asking you who you are and demanding that you show some ID.

    1. Employee #347783920-3AFX76

    Even after three attempts, your office door nameplate is still being   misspelled.

    1. Titanic!

    After one week you still have yet to meet anyone who is NOT interviewing elsewhere.

    1. You’re Good, But You’re Not Derek Jeter

    You grow tired of hearing how utterly fantastic the person you replaced was, and how much they are missed.

    1. “We’re Working On Getting You One That Works.”

    After 10 days, you still don’t have a restroom key that works and are getting a little annoyed at having to run down to the bathroom in the Subway in the lobby.

    1. Toxic Waste?

    As you explore a new hallway in the bowels of the building you are repulsed by the stench of what seems to be three-month-old chicken parts that have been left out in the sun.  When you inquire about it, you are told quite curtly to, “Never mention it to anyone.”

    1. Palace Coup

    Shortly after you start, you are called to a company-wide meeting where it is announced that your boss and four people in your group have been fired for embezzling company funds.

    1. Locked Out

    One morning, you swipe your card to enter the parking garage and it no longer works. HR assures you that it was just “a clerical error.”

    1. Cash, A High Draft Choice, And A Player To Be Named Later

    You discover that your old company hired the person you replaced and it is rumored that their salary is much higher than the one you had.

    1. Merger Mania

    Everyone receives a memo with the subject “Great News.” It explains that your company has been acquired by a huge multinational. Everyone knows what that means.

     

     

    If you have experienced any of these signs, The Department of Labor recommends their booklet “Do I Have a Snowball’s Chance of Getting Unemployment!”

     

  • #operationfreefood Day 4

    Today, I secured my own provisions. To be frank, those provisions were better than any free food that I could have acquired at the office.

    I had forgotten about the healthy rations (fruit cart) that were set up yesterday. The bananas were the first to disappear. That’s just as well, because they are usually overripe these days. They always came green in the winter time. Only a few bruised plums and apples are left, along with some sickly looking oranges.

    I did discover, however, that a lone leftover bagel (plain) had been left behind by an unannounced offering of free food. Possibly due to the low reward vs. high personnel risk of injury that comes with announcing the free food.

    Still a demoralizing day on the free food front, but a lone bagel represents hope.

  • ‪#‎operationfreefood‬ Day 1

    Waited around too long and ended up getting stuck behind a soldier with no sense of urgency or traffic laws. Fortunately, cheap sub sandwiches were plentiful. Had to search for last mayo packet, and the bags of chips were all gone. It wasn’t pretty, but I got in and got out. No casualties, except for three sandwich portions.

    Afternoon update:

    There was a second raid conducted on a higher fortress. Barbecue supplies were still available, but rapidly dwindling. I took advantage of the lack of attention given to the buttermilk pie station and away with a tasty slice. Unfortunately, the company mess has awful coffee.

  • Friday Diversion: Sunrise through the clouds

    Sunrise through the clouds
    Sunrise through the clouds by Betchaboy, on Flickr

  • Offensive Email

    No, not offensive email that will get you in trouble with HR, just with the recipients of your emails who already have enough bloat in their inboxes.

    This email is all wrong. Don't send it.

    What’s the problem?

    1. I think we covered the part about motivational sayings in email signatures previously…
    2. The information block in your email signature is excessive. Internally, we know what company you work for. Externally, the title/department information probably won’t mean much.
    3. You’re sending an email for a one word reply. I know acknowledgment is necessary, but coupled with everything else, it’s excessive.
    4. Your one word reply is the same as your valediction or complimentary close:  “Thanks. Thanks,” sounds like “Pizza! Pizza!“
    5. You have an image that’s larger than the rest of your excessive signature block and message body combined–and it’s taking up way more space in email [if you’re using Outlook] than it did on the computer you copied it from.

  • Read Receipts in Outlook

    Read receipts can be obnoxious. Outlook’s handling of them can be equally obnoxious.

    I curiously received a read receipt in Outlook when I scheduled a meeting, that meeting was forwarded by a invitee of the meeting, and the recipient of the forward accepted.

    Why, Outlook? Why? I don’t want read receipts. I don’t want a read receipt for every recipient of the 100 emails I sent last week. I have enough time balancing between my inbox quota and keeping the necessary emails on the server so that I can access them remotely.

    Of course, after seeing the read receipt, I was curious how many people I’m sending read receipts to and not knowing it–so I turned on the option to “Ask me before sending a response” to read receipt requests:

    • In Outlook 2007, select the Tools menu.
    • Click on “Options…”
    • In the “Preferences” tab [the default tab], click the “E-mail Options” button.
    • In the “E-mail Options” window, click the “Tracking Options” button.
    • You have three options for setting the response.
      • Always send a response
      • Never send a response
      • Ask me before sending a response

    Apparently, “read receipts” also mean “send a message if recipient deletes the message without reading it.” That concept is creepy enough, but apparently, even the messages that are just notifications that a recipient has accepted a meeting invite send receipts back if the recipient of the acceptance notification deletes the email.

    I wonder if it sends a read receipt when I’ve read someone’s “Out of Office” message. I wouldn’t be surprised.

  • Review: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

    Amazon Affiliate Link

    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team has information that seems like it should be common sense to everyone. Absence of trust, fear of conflict, etc… all of these are negative habits and emotions that erode the ability for a team to actually be effective.

    One result is meetings becoming non-productive time-killers in which eliciting even the most innocuous discussion is met with fierce resistance.

    I see the principles in this book functioning the best in healthy corporate cultures and passionate non-profits. Where I don’t see these concepts functioning well are in caustic cultures and in disruptive periods in a company’s existence.

    While it’s true that every one of these dysfunctions can be triggered internally, possibly exacerbated by a poor leader of the team, the root of these problems can often be traced to the culture of the company or immediate department in which the team functions.

    In lean times, when there is a Survivor culture, detection and exposing of someone else’s weakness is the simplest way to survive another week. It’s hard to not be a dysfunctional team when you’re basically a pack of starving feral dogs.

    In some environments, dissent can often mark people who even turn out to be right. (Why didn’t you successfully argue your case? It’s your fault we didn’t go with your opinion.)

    I guess all management books operate on the principle that you have a basically good environment and good people, and this book is no exception. If you have worthwhile people for the most part, I can see where this book may be helpful, but then again, you probably have functional team–right?

     

  • The Priority Queue, or Why the Low Priority Tasks Don’t Exist

    A queue is wonderful thing… the next person in line gets the next available worker.

    However, in many situations, the first person in line shouldn’t always be serviced first, for example, in an emergency room: You can’t leave a person having a blow-out heart attack in the third place in line behind a broken arm and someone who has a rash on his foot.

    In these cases, you create a priority queue, and process first-come, first-serve for all concerns of like priority…  Your priority tiers in the emergency room could be something like: immediately life-threatening, potentially life-threatening or capable of resulting in permanent injury, all the way down to mild irritation [the symptom or the patient].

    In a strict priority queue, if there are enough immediately life-threatening emergencies, the people with broken arms and mild irritations will not receive attention until the life-threatening emergencies go away.  If the hospital is chronically understaffed, those low priority issues will never receive any attention. In the middle of the spectrum are those whose problems aren’t immediately life-threatening but will become so if enough time goes by.

    This is not to mention that at some point between serious issues and irritation is lunch for the hospital staff.

    There comes a point where either the low priority and medium priority patients need to be shipped to another hospital unless you want a couple of them to become life-threatening and the rest to cause a riot in your hospital, in which the overworked hospital staff may be tempted to participate.

    Just admit to the mild irritations that they’re going to have to go elsewhere to be treated–unless they have extenuating circumstances that make them higher priority than your original assessment.

     

  • Bookmark: Ever Feel Like the Latest Fad is Oddly Like the Old One?

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    Mo@#*&#ing Manifesto for Programming, Mo@#*&#ers (NSFW language)