Easy as if you never worked here

As mentioned in one of the previous posts (The Perks of Knowing an Engineer), the careers website is pretty much useless in referring someone else for a position in your company. But how good is it at finding yourself a job?

After all, the corporate line at the Shitshow is that it is better to retain an employee than to lose an employee. You'll know this to be true if you ever tell them you're leaving, because they're never happy about it. The company doesn't want you to leave after they put all that time and money into developing you into an asset. So they came up with some creative measures to keep you around.

The first line of defense are the flunktional managers. They're supposed to help you reach your career goals by working with you to develop a career plan. As we all know, flunktional managers don't do this because your career goals and their career goals are in opposition. You want to expand your skill-set by changing positions; they want to keep you in the same position forever so they don't have to find someone new to replace you.

The second line of defense to retain employees is the trusty Careers website. It has all of the open job positions in the company, and you, as a current employee, have the inside track. Right? Wrong.

1. There aren't really any special job postings for internal employees. While you have to log in to get on it, this internal website is exactly the same as the external one.
2. A hiring manager is better off hiring someone from outside the company so he is not accused of "cherrypicking" from another manager's team. Who wants to create a rift between managers, or even entire departments?
3. Financial rewards are given to employees when candidates are hired on their referral, but only when candidates come from outside the company. So by hiring an internal rec, you just gave up 1,000 bucks that could have gone to your buddy co-worker.
4. If you're trying to change careers into a different field, then why would some hiring manager, that doesn't even know you, hire you? He'd rather hire someone with experience. He doesn't give a damn about some corporate goal. He just cares about his own team.

So I tested it out. First, I applied for those prestigious career-changer job postings: Business Development, Finance, Marketing, etc. Next, I applied for a bunch of engineering jobs that I was adequately qualified for. Then, I applied for several engineering positions that I was over-qualified for. Finally, I applied for a janitor job posting I ran across in the Facilities category. In total, I must have applied for about 20 internal job applications. Can you guess how many job offers I got? Or how many interviews I got? Or how many call-backs I got? Or even an lousy email telling me that someone even looked at my resume? Zero! Exactly zero.

Because I can't even get offered a janitor position at the Shitshow, I throw rocks.

Queen Perfume – II

So Queen Perfume changed her scent!  It’s no longer a grab you buy the nose and stick a sharp object in it, it’s more like knock you in the nose with a blunt object.  It truly reminds me of concentrated potpourri gone bad.    

I first noticed the scent when I walked into an elevator Queen Perfume had ridden in before me. At first I was unsure of what the scent was until I followed it to Queen Perfume’s office.  Sure enough, she was sitting in her office talking on the phone to a family member missing a meeting she should be in.

Because the scent has changed but the flunk is still there, I throw rocks.

Mandatory Training - IV

Finally, one of my thrown rocks get’s a response!  Unfortunately it pretty much just bounced back towards me.  I got a nasty-gram from a bean counter.  His sole job appears to be to check who is charging what on overhead then tell them not to or to make sure the charges are approved.  This is about the 3rd or 4th email I’ve received from this person.

I got the nasty-gram because when I charged for the mandatory training (see: Mandatory Training, Mandatory Training – II, Mandatory Training – III) I charged that time as overtime.  I guess I forgot that I threw such a big rock.  Overhead is one thing, but overhead on overtime is a double whammy as far as fluktional managers are concerned.

You might be wondering why I charger overtime, the short story is I was doing Queen Perfume’s job, on top of my own job, and had already completed my work hours for the work period when I was finally able to make time to do the mandatory training.

Because someone's sole job is to check overhead charging, I throw rocks.

The Decaying Workforce

During the cold war, aerospace was a rapidly growing industry. There was alot of innovation and many different companies competing for talent: Douglas, Hughes, Rockwell, TRW, North American, etc. In addition, many of these companies were based in sunny California. It wasn't the worst industry to work for. In fact, as late as 1990 there were 1.1 million people working in aerospace. But then things took a down turn. The tech-boom began. The cold war ended, thus funding for aerospace ended. For the first time in ninety years, the industry was shrinking. Many companies didn't survive, and were gobbled up by the Shitshows - Boeing/LockheedMartin/NorthropGrumman/Raytheon. By 2007, there were only 630,000 aerospace workers.

In their college recruiting efforts, I remember these aerospace companies trying to spin this gloomy history into a message of hope. The message was that the aerospace workforce was graying (getting older) and that there will be alot of opportunity for young engineers who enter this industry in the coming decade. To a naive young kid, it made sense. Of course, now that I have been in this industry for several years, I see what a load of bullshit that really was. While it is true that the aerospace industry needs young engineers, there is absolutely no opportunity for them. Zero.

The engineering workforce many have shrunk, but I'm pretty sure management did not, because there are no opportunities for advancement. There are too many managers as it is. Aerospace was hiring again because of 1) war and the increase in post-9/11 defense spending 2) aerospace conglomerates lobbied the right politicians, and 3) existing managers simply needed to increase their power status by hiring more minions to work under them.

While the aerospace companies claimed they needed young talent, they really needed more subordinates. You see unlike the software or entertainment industry, a talented young aerospace engineer won't get promoted to a position of leadership for several years or even decades, simply because he is too young. It doesn't matter that he may be smarter, more eager, or shows more initiative than all the other Bob's out there. There is a hierarchy based on years of experience because management doesn't recognize talent. They just assume all engineers are the same. And talent that is not utilized goes wasted, so that by the time an engineer is promoted, it is because he has decayed enough to fit the mold of a useless manager. And so the wheel turns.

By warning young engineers that they have no future in aerospace, I throw rocks.

Throwing Rocks from Beyond the Shitshow

Since, I am no longer employed at the Shitshow, I have had to think of new and creative ways to throw rocks at the company. After all, I need to warn impressionable young engineers about the danger of working for a Shitshow as well as do everything within my power to expose the true colors of the Shitshow. One way that I have found I can throw rocks is to refuse to do business with companies associated with the Shitshow. I was inspired by Gandhi since this is the way he drove the British empire out of India. Let me give you a quick history lesson. Gandhi knew that the most efficient way to drive the British out of India was to starve them economically. He encouraged all Indian citizens to make their own clothes, grow their own food, etc. instead of buying British made products. Eventually, it became too expensive for the British to maintain their empire in India and they withdrew their imperialism from the country. Gandhi won.

So let me give you an example of how I am a modern day Gandhi. I was choosing a television company and I know that DirecTV on occasion does business with the Shitshow so I chose Dish Network. Maybe if the Shitshow is starved enough of business, they will eventually clean up their mess and run their company like a for-profit business instead of a welfare office.

Because many companies regularly engage in business with the Shitshow and help perpetuate the Shitshow cycle, I throw rocks with my pocketbook.

Wiki, wiki, wiki

Inspired by the successful experiment in crowd sourcing displayed by Wikipedia, flunktional management started pushing a flunktional wiki.  Apparently writing processes and detailed instructions for every aspect of work isn’t enough so they needed to start the wiki.  And they love it!

While the concept of the idea is good, as with all things at the Shitshow the execution is laughable.   Turns out the only people that have time too actually post things on the wiki are new hires!  That’s right, new hires are populating the wiki with knowledge on how to do things and why things are done certain ways.  Yes, these are the same new hires writing processes (see Process, Process, Process) and partaking in CAB items (see Corrective Action Board).

Now to add a twist to the wiki, flunktional managers grade their minions on how many post they make each year and this grade gets folded into the annual raise.  Just to make sure it’s clear, you are graded on quantity not quality.

Here are some examples of great wiki post / pages / updates:

Personal background including family pictures
Resumes
News articles
Comments on other peoples family pictures
A daily working status of a small team of new hires who love the wiki
People asking people if they want to grab lunch
Links to processes (posted by the same new hire that wrote the process)
Links to links on the internal home website
Directions on how to use the copy machine
Links to the wiki page with the directions on how to use the copy machine

As you can see all of this is real value added.  Every now and then someone does actually post good information. However, due to the approach flunktional managers decided to take of “throwing everything up on the Wiki at first then organizing it later” it’s next to impossible to find the good information.

Because I’m forced to post on a wiki only the Shitshow could be proud of, I throw rocks.

Survey Time - II

Just when I didn’t think things could get better I received an email about the upcoming employee survey.  Actually I’ve received 3 emails so far on the same subject.  The email contained two attachments.  The first attachment contained a preview of the questions we would soon have an opportunity to answer online.  The second attachment was directions and definitions that you need to understand in order to fill out the survey correctly!  

An outsider might guess that this is just a common courtesy.  Wrong.  Last year so many people filled out the survey incorrectly as a result of three issues:

1. No one understands who there boss really is (see The Real Matrix and Matrix Management Model)
2. There are so many Bob-like figures at the Shitshow that they are able to skew the data as a result of not being able to understand the question and how to answer them
3. There are Bob-like figures writing the survey in the first place

Because I get multiple emails about how to correctly take the employee survey and because directions even need to be sent out in the first place, I throw rocks.