Lines of Communication

This being more than a decade into a new century you'd think we'd have our jet packs and flying cars already. Or more importantly perhaps, weren't we all supposed to be working from home by now?

 

Telecommuting was supposed to be the future. And I see why corporate America doesn't switch over to that model (both for good and bad reasons). But one of the many drawbacks of working in an office together has to be the tendency to share news and information via word of mouth. This is good for informal chatter or tentative things you can't commit to official writing yet. But it also allows the important folks to procrastinate on making decisions. They can verbally tell a subordinate to go in one direction, and not have to take blame for switching course a few weeks or days or hours later.

 

It also means there's a plethora of emails that go unanswered. Both because people are slacking and not responding, but also because the official response that can be done in email becomes a lot more serious. It's the new memo or fax of today and while it doesn't always have to be formalized you know that, like what goes out on the internet, it will be there forever. Your words will be around and you will have to commit to what you wrote about or write a retraction email, the great shame giver.

 

But in my case it means waiting for direction and not getting it because once it's in writing it goes. And the higher ups may have their reasons for delaying, but it can be frustrating when you're dealing with an internal or external customer that expects an answer and you have to tell them your superiors are just sitting around ruminating on it rather than sending a quick yay or nay via email.

Fool me once

Everytime I think I don't have to look for a new job and actually have a future at MegaCorp the brutal truth swings around and smacks me in the face. It's like the know exactly how to reel me in every so often to make me feel like I could stay here, just often enough to keep me from focusing as much as I should on the outside job search. At what point do you try more aggressive methods? Is it worth mentioning my unhappiness and pay disparity or is that going to piss them off to the point of me losing my job? I mean, I've mentioned it, but how in their faces do I have to be to get some traction. Or is it pointless to bargain with fools.

Design Fridays: Starbucks Logo

The picture above shows the ever changing face of a Starbucks cup of coffee. Now there's even a new logo and they are dropping the words. What do you think? I like the efforts to make the logo more simple, but I don't think the Starbucks mermaid has enough strength in brand symbol recognition to stand on its own. And coffee is such a nice word, evoking such wonderful mental images and emotions for us addicts, removing the word seems almost sad.

 

So +1 for simplicity but -1 for promoting the brand. Any other thoughts on this, what does everyone else think?

Information Hoarding

As a globalized society we generally accept that more information shared is better. And even in Corporate America where there's a proprietary angle involved, and so the invidual would never get credit for the work/research anyways, I've noticed people tend to keep things to themselves. Information that helps along a project or contacts that would get something done quicker. I've seen people hold on to crucial information until the meeting where they can give it up to a high level person. Or demand that they be the point of contact for an outside source at all times, no matter how inefficient that is.

Lower level engineers are generally expected to cross train and share all their progress and results up the ladder. But I keep seeing mid-level people hang on to these updates until they think it will give them the most benefit. A manager will hear it directly from them rather than through the supervisor who might have actually been responsible for the whole project parameters. Then I've seen senior people refuse to delegate. They can have a whole army of engineers under them but keep insisting on being the beginning and the end of every task. And that slows things down, and is bad for the project, but obviously people think it's good for their self interest.

I think young/mid-level engineers are afraid of not getting credit for their work. As well as maybe not realizing how much of the credit is really allowed to their predecessors on the task or their leads and supervisors. And I think more experienced engineers are afraid of becoming irrelevant. But I'm not sure what kind of cajoling, comforting or mind games you'd have to play to convince people to act otherwise. Some people do so naturally of course, but I'm not sure how you'd convince themselves to act counter to what they see as their own self interest for the sake of a project. I suppose it's the fault of the higher level person who allows it to continue and allows the lower level to bypass hir manager or doesn't force the senior person to delegate. But then, I think they too benefit from being the choice contact in these situations, so how would you change their incentive?

Save the failwhales

I love how banks and utility companies ask you to get your statements via email instead of paper so that you can "go green" or "save paper."

 

Then when you pay the bill it tells you "please print this receipt for your records."