A flunktional manager did something the other day that is a perfect example of how the network drives get clogged up with data (See the post Folders, Folder, Folders) But first, a little background...
A few months ago, I had gotten so frustrated with one of the bureaucratic processes that I decided to sit down and write a simple "How-To" guide for the other engineers. My flunktional manager had me place it in the "Process" folder in one of the network drives, the new official location of the document. The link got sent out to the rest of my team and it quickly became a quick reference guide for anyone having to deal with this painful bureaucratic process.
Before you knew it, word got around to the other teams that this handy guide existed. So last week, I get a rare visit from a flunktional manager from another group. He came by to ask about my reference guide because he wanted to send it out to his team. I told him it's in the "Process" folder on the network drive, and that I would email the link to him, which I did.
About an hour later, he sends an email to his team with a link to my "How-To" reference guide. The only problem is...it's a different link. Rather than forward my email, he actually went through the trouble of creating a new folder in a completely different location and saved a copy of my "How-To" guide in that folder. So now we have two identical documents in two separate folders. And for what? To confuse people? What if we need to update the document or it becomes obsolete? Someone's gotta track down all those clones and fix them. Of course, that will never happen. We'll just keep around every copy forever. Hopefully the one you find will be the latest. Doubtful though.
Because filling up the network drives with useless duplicates is second nature to managers, I throw rocks.
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