Charting the Course

Every now and then I get asked by someone how they can tell if a company is a Shitshow.  While there are many rules of thumb one can use to determine this the one I usually explain to them is that the level of Shitshowness is proportional to the square of the percentage of revenue received from the DoD. While there are plenty of Shitshows for companies that don’t receive DoD contracts, for the ones that do this works remarkably well.  

Take a look below.

Because a simple chart ala Demetri Martin can sum up an entire industry, I throw rocks.  

Showcase Building

Unlike companies that show forward thinking when planning out a campus, the Shitshow’s campus is made up of a hodgepodge or random buildings.  With the exception to the newly built executive office suit, most of the buildings saw their prime during the 1950’s and have never been renovated after their primes. 

However, the Shitshow has recently decided that one of the buildings that often times has customers and executives visiting should be treated as a “showcase” building.   The first step was plastering over the dilapidated brick structure.  The second step was to replace the spotted and stained carpet with new industrial grey carpet.  The third step was to remove the cubical walls erected in the 1970’s with new cubical walls.  The fourth step was to remove the 1950’s steel furniture with Formica work surfaces with new plastic molded modular cubical furniture. 

For awhile this seemed to satisfy the requirements for a “showcase” building, but a couple months later some executive realized that they forgot to put in a lobby / lounge for distinguished guest to wait in while the rest of their party to arrived.   Long and behold the Shitshow added a lounge.  But of course the lounge addition was executed in pure Shitshow style.

To furnish the lounge the Shitshow took a couple discarded couches, tables, and chairs from storage and d them in the only open area near the front of the building.  Not a bad start until you realize the couches, chairs and tables all and face the copier/printer/fax machine that half the people in the building use.  That’s right, as these VIPs wait in the lounge they get to stare at the printer while flunkies galore walk through the waiting area to pick up print outs and try to fix jammed printers. 

Because the showcase building only showcases why we call it the Shitshow, I throw rocks.  

Fire Alarm Drill - III

So the other day the fire alarm went off again and everybody had to evacuate the building. Like the boy who cried wolf, nobody takes the fire alarm seriously anymore because it happens too often and it’s always a false alarm. This evacuation has to have been the slowest yet, as it probably took ten minutes to get the entire building cleared. Part of the problem was simply the timing of the fire alarm: it was close to the end of the day so many people began wrapping up what they were doing, saving all their work, filling out their time cards, and shutting down their computers. This can take a good amount of time, especially if you’re working on some big files.

Since everyone regards it as a false alarm, they take their time walking out too. The stairway was so crowded and slow moving that you could rest between each step. It makes you wonder if the panic of a real fire would speed things up or make them worse. In addition, the majority of this cattle herd forgot about the emergency exit doors and just headed out the long way past the main exit. Then we all stood in the parking lot and waited for the firemen to show up, inspect the building, and tell us everything’s okay..which it always is. Nobody knows whether the fire alarm going off was accidental or an intentional fire drill because the planned fire drills aren’t told to us in advance anyway, even though they should be.

But my all time favorite thing about the fire alarms is the blatant preference given to company procedure over the safety of our employees. As miserably slow as our evacuations already are, we have been directed to clean up our desks before evacuating “to not leave any proprietary information out where others can see it.” Can you believe it? There may be a raging fire ablaze on our roof, but we better keep our work hidden from those nosy firemen! Or maybe the Human Torch will come in looking for secrets?

Because the crap on my desk is more important than my life, I throw rocks.

Dear Jacko

Every now and then a current student from my alma mater reaches out to me hoping to make a connection and land a job at the Shitshow.  The other day I received an email from a misguided sole asking me about my experience at the Shitshow and the opportunities for an MBA.  

This is was my response:

There aren’t many opportunities for MBAs at the Shitshow.  The Shitshow is an engineering company and thus the value of an MBA is not really appreciated at most parts of the company.  If you need proof, use MBA as a keyword and search the Shitshow career website to see how many job postings have MBA as a requirement or even a desired skill.  If you’re lucky you’ll find 2 or 3 if you search all openings around the world.  On the flip side, go to any large corporation within the entertainment industry and do the same search, you’ll find pages and pages of opportunities. 

That said, if you are interested in interested in the Shitshow, the Shitshow does offer aan opportunity where an MBA is listed as a desired (not required) skill.  You can read about my experience with that program here.   

Feel free to contact me if you need any more information. 

Because I care about other people's career path and I don't want them to end up like me, I throw rocks.  

King Kong and his Dog

Every now and then I need to ask good old King Kong a work related question.  As you can imagine I try to avoid these situations, but every now and then it just needs to happen.  About a week ago one of these moments came up.   Of course I went down the line of communication forms that required the least amount of actual contact. 

First I tried sending him an email, no response after a day of waiting.   The next day I called his office, and left a message.  Still no response after a day so I tried calling his cell phone and it immediately went to voice mail.  I finally went walking around his office area to see if I could track him down. 

When over in the gorilla mist sanctuary, I asked the Zookeeper if he had seen King Kong, immediately the Zookeeper looked very concerned.  In a very somber voice he told me that Kong was out for the week.  I asked him if everything was alright.  The Zookeeper responded “Kong’s dog died the over the weekend.”

At first I felt sorry for Kong but then I thought about the situation.  A grown man, who throws chairs at people, punches holes in walls, belittles employees during meetings, and uses year end performance reviews to yell at his staff, needed to take an entire week off to mourn his dog.

Because even the little kid from Old Yeller didn’t need a week of mourning to get over his dog that got rabies after fighting off a pack of wild boar to save the kid’s life, I throw rocks.   

Business Development and the value of an MBA – II

As described in Business Development and the value of an MBA, the Shitshow places no value on an MBA.  

Case in point: 

In what had to be a momentary lack of good judgment, I recently signed up for executive sponsor, on your own time, MBA engagement program. 

I guess someone in HR finally realized that most people who have the Shitshow pay to get their MBA leave as soon as they can onto greener pastures.  The Shitshow’s solution was to create a program where minions who recently received their MBA or were in the process of earning it were invited to tackle various strategic problems within the Shitshow.  I signed up for the new business integration problem with 5 other minions. 

After a lot of work the team came up with a pretty solid plan that could actually position the Shitshow into a winning situation.  For a moment I was actually proud, but as usual the reality of the Shitshow quickly sunk in when I received an email from the star member of the team stating that he had just been laid off. 

Just to make sure you got the story straight.  The Shitshow paid for this guy to get his MBA (a $75,000 dollar investment). Then the Shitshow had him working on his own time on a plan to strategically position the Shitshow in a multi-million dollar market.  And then while putting the finishing touches on the plan, the Shitshow decided to lay him off.   I guess it should still be rewarding to this guy that the Shitshow decided to move forward with the recommendations made by the team. 

Because million dollar plans are met with pink slips, I throw rocks.  

Power Outage

Last week, there was a power outage at work. Everybody was working, when suddenly the power went off and everything we were working on got lost. Nobody knew how long the power outage would last, so we all just hung around and waited because in this modern age you really can’t do anything without your computer. People began to wonder if management might let everyone go home early. It seemed reasonable, considering it was already Friday afternoon and no one was certain when the power would come back on. Of course, most Shitshow veterans knew that would never happen, but it was fun to talk about nonetheless.

After about an hour of waiting, the power suddenly came back on. A universal sigh of disappointment swept the floor. All the little groups of people chit-chatting about the possibility of going home early were broken up. We all went back to doing what we were doing before the power went out, many of us still daydreaming of what we would have done had we gotten out early. Most of us had to completely start over what we were working on because the power outage had erased any progress we had made that morning before having a chance to save our work. Suffice to say, it sucks to lose your work before saving. But what sucks even more is losing your work and have someone kick you in the nuts, which is exactly what the Shitshow did.

Shortly after the power came back on, we started receiving emails from management about time charging. The first email came from our Flunktional manager stating that management is asking employees to make up the lost time, or take vacation for the lost hour of work (Riiiiight…)The second email came from Corporate Management and was a lot more reasonable - employees were directed to charge to the ‘Indirect Budget’ rather than making up the time or taking vacation. Finally, some sanity!!! (Wait…wait….) Then the third and final email came from our Functional Management again. It told us to “ignore the corporate email” and that employees are still expected to make up the lost time or take vacation because “Indirect Budget is low this year”.

As if asking us to take vacation for a power outage isn’t ridiculous enough, claiming that this year’s ‘Indirect Budget’ is low is just insulting. First of all, it’s January. How could this year’s Indirect Budget already be low? Second of all, everyone knows that the only reason the ‘Indirect Budget’ would be low is because management made cuts to it so that they can get a bigger bonus for keeping costs down (see Bonuses for Sabotage) And they did this AFTER Corporate Management told us we could charge to the ‘Indirect Budget’!

Because my own personal management is greedier than the corporate fat cats, I throw rocks.