Patent Recognition

One of the things the Shitshow likes to brag about is patents.  Often times you'll here the flunktional managers and zookeepers brag about how many patents their department was awarded this year and how these accomplishments help distinguish this Shitshow from other Shitshows.   Well guess what?  99.99% of these patents are a complete waste of money.  How could this be?  Let me explain. 

When an engineer submits a patent that finally gets awarded, the engineer receives a nice little monetary bonus.  The bonus isn’t anything to write home about but if you add up 3 or 4 of these each year it makes for some nice spending cash.  Their flunktional manager also gets accolades for helping promote the technical advancement in their function.  Seems like a win-win doesn’t it?  This is where you’d be wrong. 

In order to work on these patents the mad scientists (I mean engineers) have to try to find funding for it on a project.  Thus they’ll hold out and only work on a program if they have the opportunity to advance their patent.  The thing is, the patent usually doesn’t add anything useful to the program because the patent is just a patent for patent sakes and the accompanied cash award.  In fact, sometime the overall design the program ends up with is less than it should be in order to support the work of a patent. 

In the background the flunktional manager helps push the program to pursue the patent because it gives one of their people a program charge number, the primary goal of a flunktional manager.  Since the program actually needs the engineers support they basically have to fund a useless patent.  And since the money isn’t the flunktional manager’s money, he could care less. 

The flunktional manager will refute this argument and claim that patent work has to be done partially on the engineers own time.  Again, this sounds good in theory but no one works for free and the time of patent work vs. work really needed gets blurred and all charged to the program. 

Because patent recognition is just a pattern of waste, I throw rocks.  

It's for a Good Cause

Every now and then, the Shitshow has to take on some charitable cause to maintain its image. Sure, it’s a phony attempt to make the community think the faceless Shitshow has a heart but at least something good comes out of it. But the Shitshow likes to take a little more credit than they should. You see, while the Shitshow makes some tax deductible grants, they also like to pressure employees to donate their own hard earned money – so that the Shitshow can take credit for those contributions too.

Last month, there was a drive to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness. It was essentially a T-shirt campaign, with all proceeds going to charity. Participation is usually pretty low because employees don’t like the fact that the Shitshow takes all the credit. So this year, Program Management decided to give the IPT Leads an incentive: whichever IPT Lead’s team bought the most shirts, that IPT Lead would be exempt from having to do his “monthly metrics report.” Now apparently the “monthly metrics report” is such a grueling task that each IPT got very motivated to get their team to buy as many of these shirts as they could. One IPT Lead was so desperate to win, that he decided to take drastic measures.

One morning, he sent a sneaky meeting notice to his entire team with the description “staffing” to be held at lunchtime. Now anyone that has worked in aerospace knows that if the word “staffing” ever comes up, it means there will be an announcement about an upcoming layoff. Needless to say, everyone was in full attendance at the meeting, eager to learn about the layoff.

When they got there, they were given the “good news” that there was no upcoming layoff. It was all a trick to ensure everyone showed up at the meeting – so the IPT Lead could encourage them to all buy T-shirts for charity. As you can imagine, people were pissed. The IPT Lead defended himself with the cliché phrase: “Oh c’mon. It’s all for a good cause”. But many engineers on the team really thought there was going to be a layoff. In fact, many of them sent out resumes the second they heard about the “staffing” meeting. They were at it all morning.

There were so many complaints to management about it that the IPT Lead was forced to send out an apology. He even decided to buy everyone in his team a T-shirt out of his own pocket. It probably saved him his job.

But he won the contest! I hope it was worth it.

Because management does dumb things like this, I throw rocks.

Dress Code

When college hires first start, they are starry eyed and full of hope.  You can see it in their faces and you can see it in the way they dress – slacks, dress shirt, and perhaps even a vest.  After all, during the interview process everyone that interviewed them was dressed this way.  What they didn’t realize is that the people interviewing them were new hires (see Hiring Process)

The truth is, the longer people have been at the Shitshow the worse they dress unless you make management.  Flunktional managers dress in a company polo shirt and dockers while program managers dress in a blue dress shirts and brown dockers.  Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but these are mostly people who haven’t yet realized it doesn’t matter.

Don’t get me wrong, some senior engineers still wear vests to work but it’s to cover up stained and wrinkled shirts.  It’s not uncommon to see t-shirts with holes in them, 5’oclock shadows at 9am, and hair that hasn’t seen a comb or brush in days. 

Because if Mr. Blackwell visited the Shitshow his list would be infinite, I throw rocks.

Mandatory Overtime - II

As mentioned in the previous post titled "Mandatory Overtime", the Shitshow would abuse the paid overtime policy by implementing mandatory overtime on a regular basis. Most engineers just complied. However, some of us have a life and don't need the extra $80 per week for another 10hrs of my life. We actually tried getting out of mandatory overtime by getting our assignments finished on time.

The problem was that it didn't matter if you finished on or ahead of schedule; everybody was expected to work overtime. The logic being that if you finished your assignment early, you could pick up someone else's slack by taking on their assignment. That's quite an incentive to be smart and efficient, isn't it? Not really, but on a short term basis it's not an unreasonable thing to ask from your engineers either.

The problem was that, over a several year period, they would implement mandatory overtime every other month, sometimes more! It got to be the norm. After a while, some of us refused to do it since it was becoming evident that the mandatory overtime policy was being driven by politics rather than policy. Uh-oh: troublemakers. You can bet that such disregard for mandatory overtime policy came up on a few performance reviews.

On the other hand, many people did work overtime – and they put in ALOT of hours over the years. They were glad to do so, even when they had nothing to do, because it gave them a bigger paycheck every week. And the dollars added up. They added up so much that the company finally declared that people were abusing the abusive policy.

So what did the company do? They got rid of the paid overtime policy. Thanks management! Way to screw up a policy that was once a benefit of working here. Oh and by the way… Any chance that those of us that refused to work the unnecessary overtime will get an apology on our performance review this year?

Because the Shitshow can abuse a good overtime policy to the point of its extinction, I throw rocks.

Throwing Rocks by Helping Out

Every now and then I end up with a free company shirt.  For some reason the Shitshow thinks this is a real moral booster.  I used to wear these shirts with pride or save them for my Dad who would wear them with pride.  That was back in the days when I was starry eyed and actually thought I had a career path at the Shitshow. 

Now days I throw rocks!  I immediately give any free shirt I receive away to charities that provide clothing to the homeless.  While I haven’t seen it yet, it will make my day the day I see some bum begging for money and picking cans from the trash wearing a Shitshow company shirt. 

For all you fellow rock throwers I encourage you to do the same!  Any Shitshow clothing you have or end up getting give it away to the homeless.  Throwing rocks, while helping others, and getting a tax write off.  It’s a win-win-win situation. 

Because together we can help clothe the homeless, I throw rocks.  

Mandatory Overtime - I

One of the little perks of working in aerospace is that aerospace companies often pay overtime to salaried employees. Though they don't pay time and a half (which is a requirement by law for hourly employees), they do pay your hourly rate, which is still better than most companies who pay nothing. So if you work 50 hrs, you get paid for 50hrs rather than for 40hrs.

Nice right? Well, sort of. As most things at the Shitshow, they have to screw it up somehow - so they abuse the policy. Since we pay people for each hour they work, management has no problem mandating that everyone is expected to work 50-60hr work weeks. The reason for implementing such mandates is the claim that "we" are behind schedule. Of course, it's never the case that everyone is behind schedule; some people are, some people aren't. Nevertheless, managers often want everyone to work overtime. Because you see, there is also another reason for mandatory overtime: empire preservation.

As mentioned in previous posts, every manager's goal is to grow his empire ( i.e. the number of people working under him). Other managers are constantly trying to steal those people away to build their own empires. So mandatory overtime policies become an empire preservation strategy, a tactic to prevent other managers from snatching people from your team. When another manager comes looking for more heads, your manager can now say: "Sorry, I need every guy I got. As you can see, I got them all working overtime, so I really can't afford to lose anybody." Who can argue that?

Because my life is used as a pawn in management's chess game, I throw rocks.

Halloween

Ever wonder what Halloween parties are like at various companies?  I got a report from my friend at a non-Shitshow company, sit back and enjoy the comparisons.

At non-Shitshow companies:
Friends and family are welcome to attend the company wide Halloween costume party with special activities for the little ones.  With offerings like free food, free ice cream, carnival games, "circus performers," and a more!  It’s a real moral booster.   Workers actually dress up and fun is had by all!

At the Shitshow:
You get an email reminder the week of Halloween stating you can't wear mask or paint your face and that costumes are generally discouraged due to safety concerns.  On good years the cafeteria will have a free jack-o-lantern cookie and/or a slice pumpkin pie (left over pie is saved for the day before Thanksgiving).  At a facility of 1000’s of employees you can count on one hand the number of people who dress up and you don’t need any fingers to count the number of people who have fun.

Because the Shitshow is a fun sucking vampire, I throw rocks.