Timing is Everything

Aerospace is a cyclical industry that is dependent on new government contracts. A new contract comes around when the US government expresses a need for a new military plane, space shuttle, satellite, etc. That’s when all the major defense contractors (the Shitshows) submit their bids to win the contract. If your Shitshow just so happens to be the winner (biggest liar), then you have the beginnings of a new program that is sure to last several years. So today I offer another invaluable lesson to all the budding engineers, again, so that they do not make the same mistakes I have made in my career.

Lesson #23: Timing is Everything – Career growth is entirely dependent on when you join a new program.

Here’s the rundown. If you join a new program in the honeymoon period (first 1-2 years), then your future is bright. You were one of the first engineers hired onto a program that is projected to grow rapidly in the next few years due to the increased scope of work. Naturally, with an increase in workforce must come an increase in management, especially at bureaucracies like the Shitshow (see post titled “An Abundance of Dunces”) Who better to promote to these leadership/management positions than the guys who have been there the longest? (Sure, one could make the argument that perhaps promoting someone based on their unique skill set and hard work should be a factor. But this is the Shitshow; nobody has time to think about that when you can just sort everyone in a spreadsheet by “Date of Hire”)

Most of the hiring on the program happens just after the honeymoon period. This is when they hire all the work monkeys. If you got hired after the honeymoon, you got duped. At your interview, they probably told you there was lots of work and that the program is still growing. They probably told you that the older engineers will soon be retiring, and there will be many opportunities for promotion (See post titled “The Decaying Workforce”). Once again, nothing could be further from the truth.

The only people that get promoted after the honeymoon period are those that already have a foot on the ladder. In the coming years, there will be only be a few more opportunities and you can be assured that they will be given only to those people already within the current leadership (Most senior engineer to Lead, Lead to IPT Lead, IPT Lead to Functional Manager, Functional Manager to Program Manager, and so on). Things that don’t factor into the equation at all are: unique skills, hard work, drive, or initiative. In fact, showing off any of those traits at this point in the program only makes you look like a sucker. Save your energy and wait for the next new program.

Because I'd have more opportunties for advancement working at McDonald’s, I throw rocks.

Take That Personality Down

Given that our new cubical farm is the greenest place at the Shitshow (see A Tale of Two Cities - II) it’s become a showcase for visiting flunky executives. Luckily it’s just a rocks throw away from the new executive suite.

Today we were all forced to take down any personal items we used to give our "cells" a personal touch. People were forced to remove such things as football and basketball team flags, any comic strip postings tacked to the cubical walls and best of all any plants. That’s right! Plants have no place in the greenest building at the Shitshow.

Because prisoners have more decorating options, I throw rocks.

Customer Relations and Parking

As mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities – II, previously unused storage space was converted into a mass cubical farm. Hundreds and hundreds of flunkies were moved in. One little problem, only 20 new parking spaces were added.

The Shitshow justification? All the newly moved people can use the near by parking structure which is only a 5 minute walk. The only problem with that idea was that the parking structure was pretty much already over flowing (another company uses that parking structure as well as flunkies that were previously moved to another unused Shitshow storage space).

The icing on the cake is that of the 20 newly added spaces, the Customer Relations group has 8 of those spaces reserved. That’s right, even though any customer who works with the Shitshow usually doesn’t come back and the Shitshow has only had a hand full of new customers in the last 10 years the Customer Relations group is treated like royalty. In fact, customers have left half way through projects, others sue us while they are customers, and still others will seek a new company to work with even if they just want an exact copy of what we delivered last time. And yet the privileged few in the Customer Relations group get preferential parking at the new building.

Because the Shitshow rewards continued failure with primo parking spots, along with all our former customers I throw rocks.

All Men Are Created Equal?

Somehow, somewhere, years ago some corporate executive decided that everyone (including management) should be addressed by their first name at huge corporations like the Shitshow ('Bill' rather than 'Mr. Smith'). I never liked that because it's just a phony attempt to give the perception that we are all equal, when nothing could be further from the truth. Upper management is so far removed from the everyday engineer that we might as well call them "Mas'er". You see, my manager "Bill" never invited me to his house or to go golfing. He only invites other managers. Hell, "Bill" hasn't even invited me to lunch and barely acknowledges me with a nod when we pass in the hallway.

It's even worse with corporate executives. We're supposed to call them by their first name also, in the chance they might take a surprise tour of our cubicles one day to "boost morale". Your no-good flunktional manager is sure to be standing right by him when this happens, with his nose firmly up the executive's ass.

"Bob, I'd like you to meet Jim, our sector president."
"Hi Jim," you have to reply.

"Hi Jim ?" The guy makes millions of dollars a year, flies the corporate jet, and drives a Bentley, yet I'm supposed to call him "Jim". It's ridiculous. He could crush me with one memo, and I'm just gonna call him Jimbo? Luckily, I probably won't ever see him again, so I won't have to call him anything.

Because I'd rather call my bosses Mas'er than their real names, I throw rocks.

A Tale of Two Cities - II

As mentioned in the post titled “A Tale of Two Cities” the executives recently moved into a brand new building. Part of that move was the renovation of unused space to turn it into cubical farms (see Time To Brag).

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out the outcome. The executive building is actually pretty nice with granite and marble everywhere. It even comes with a gated parking lot of the executives. The executive floor is full of mahogany, cherry wood, big screen televisions, and leather conference chairs. It even comes staffed with it’s own security guard to make sure people have their badges and a receptionist to welcome people to the building. It truly is fitting for the flunky executives who lead the company into a sea of red.

On the other hand the cubical farm leaves much to be desired. In a move to be the “greenest building” at the Shitshow very few overhead lights were installed, instead they installed a couple of skylights. This idea was so well executed about 1 in every 10 cubes falls in a dark void because the skylights are too small and too far apart. To continue with the greenness, air conditioning and heater ducts were placed in the floor. In theory this makes sense, place the cool/warm air near the people instead of having to try to blow it 20 feet down to the people (the new City Center in Vegas uses this strategy brilliantly) but as you can guess the Shitshow did it Bob style. There was no thought on where the cubicles would be placed in relation to the floor plan and the embedded air ducts. Needless to say some people have constant cold air blowing directly on the feet while others don’t have any air at all. The last brilliantly executed green strategy was to allow more natural light in through 10 foot tall windows on one side of the building. What the Shitshow didn’t account for was the reflection off the neighboring building. Any cubical on the wall of windows in unusable in the afternoon from the the glare and heat being reflected into the cubicles. Lastly, in an effort to save money by not having to staff high school drop outs and grandmas as security guards (see Shitshow Insecurity) the building is fitted with a badge-reading motorized turnstile door. Of course the door rejects half the people who start walking through it. This causes a huge backup of people trying to get in and out of the building. In fact, one person had to walk half a city block to another door because he kept getting rejected by the door. Despite all these flaws, the building is highly celebrated amongst the Shitshow managers as a cost saving and green success.

Because the executives are lavished to no end while the minions are forced to work in a building (assuming we can get through the door) that the Shitshow could only be proud of, I throw rocks.

Gone Phishing

The other day, a manager at the Shitshow received an phishing email. For those of you who don’t know, a phishing email is an email requesting personal information that appears legitimate but is actually sent from a cyberhacker. I have to say this email was good. It looked exactly like the real emails that the IT department regularly sends us.

What is even more shocking is that we actually have a manager competent enough to have caught it. The manager asked our IT department if the email was real, and they quickly told him it was a fake. This is where the cleverness ends. The manager then decides to forward the email (with the suspicious link in it) to all the other managers and tells them “Don’t click on this link”. Then those managers blindly forward that email to every one of their engineers, with the dangerous link still in it. They didn’t even bother taking it out, or a perform a simple “Cut/Paste As Text” operation. They just left the dangerous element in there.

That’s akin to sending everyone a virus and then telling them “Hey! Here’s a virus, but don’t click on it” Of course, when busy engineers get several dozen emails a day, they’re too tired to read any of them thoroughly. Chances are someone is going to click on the link accidentally – a link they would have never gotten in the first place had their managers not blindly forwarded it in the first place.

Because management doesn’t know how to modify an email that they forward, I throw rocks.

It's just a matter of time

Last year I worked on a huge project, many hours or overtime were spent cleaning up other peoples problems in order to deliver the best product possible to the customer. Years of previous work were riding on this portion of the project. It was a hard time but we got through it and after weeding out all the bob figures early on, we actually had a great team.

9 months later the Shitshow finally gets their act together to give awards out just for this project. Really, 9 months later? In 9 months:

A non Shitshow company could have designed, developed and brought to market new products.
A human live could have gone through the entire gestation cycle and been born.
College students could finish 25% of their education.
Heck, it only took an additional 3 months to construct the original Disneyland

Because the simple task or printing out certificates and ordering lunch takes 9 months, I throw rocks