Sinecure

I randomly came across a word the other day that accurately describes management at the Shitshow.

Sinecure - (noun) 1. A position or office that requires little or no work but provides a salary.

Flunktional Managers are a prime example. Their #1 responsibility is to manage the career development of their engineers. Since they only talk to their engineers about twice a year -- and even then its rush, rush, rush to meet the performance review/goal setting deadlines, it's safe to say they don't push much effort into this. In fact, it's safe to say flunktional managers only put in about two weeks of work per year for managing employee career development - one week to "set employee goals"and one week for "performance review" --- 2 weeks total for all engineers.

This "work" simply consists of chasing down engineers and reminding them to go into the system and set their own goals before the deadline - from a list of company approved goals, most of which are mandatory for everyone. They will even meet with you, but only if you request to have a meeting. Later in the year, when the performance review dealine is coming up, there is a rush to complete those. Managers speak to the Lead and IPT Lead, ask if they remember anything about what the engineers did that year (which they don't), then go back to their desk Copy/Pasting performance evaluations from one employee to another, or the Copy/Pasting the same performance review from last year, with such outdated phrases as "Jack is one of our top young guys and should be prepared for a leadership role" despite Jack having worked at the Shitshow for 10yrs and having two kids already. Finally, they meet with you for 10min to tell you that you've been doing well, attempt to give you hope for actual career development next year, and ask you to sign the performance review document.Then its back to the golf course.

But the granddaddy of all sinecures is the Flunktional-Manager-Manager (the functional manager...of the flunctional managers). The Flunktional-Manager-Manager essentially has the same responsibility as the functional managers, except that rather than having to "manage" 30-50 employees, he has to manage....5 employees ! ... (the flunktional managers). This useless position was created as a result of past program growth where too many management positions were created but never eliminated (see "An Abundance of Dunces" post). And it never will be, not until he gets promoted.

Because the position in charge of my career development is a do-nothing job, I throw rocks.