New Work Order
This post's success depends on whether my pen doesn't give up the ghost before teh end due to how frigging cold it is. I don't believe how cold it is in Athens! And yes, I write these posts on the bus in pen and ink like the neanderthal that I am.
Man I despise management! How is it that somebody with a half-arsed degree in business and management suddenly becomes qualified to be a leader in the field of software engineering, organic chemistry or any other field for that matter. I wouldn't say they were qualified to collect my belly button fluff, let alone organise a team of people to do it. I am currently in my first 'real' job after graduating and I already hate the blind organisation that companies adopt for no apparent reason. I bet if you asked any of the senior management or CEOs for the reasons why the company is organised the way it is, they will finish eating their banana, scratch their head and splutter "Cos s'way s'always bin dun, innit?" just before they beat their chests and call security and have you stoned to death for daring to ask a sensible question.
These people are not omnipotent gods and are prone to the same human condition that everyone suffers from: Stupidity. Stupidity for not thinking for themselves and stupidity for not questioning the norms. Now the solution to this company organisation problem (especially for people like myself who have a pathological dislike for authority) is to remove all hierarchies and job labels.
I will defend the removal of labels first since it is the easiest one to argue. If you are hired by a company as a technical writer and then start asking you to perform QA and analysis tasks (because the QA and analysts suck) then you become bitter and pissed off because a) QA is boring. b) The 'real' analysts get paid double you do. So get ride of the job title and hire people for their skills and for what they can offer. This way the workforce is a lot more flexible and people will general gravitate to what they are good at and therefore to what they like.
Now for the removal of hierarchy I will give you a bit of background that made me realise that this revolution needs to begin. For my final year of my degree the head of department herded the students (there are no other ways to get students to go anywhere...have you ever tried to herd cats? Same difference) into a dusty room above a cafeteria a and filled with bits of PCs and half chewed manuals for Perl. He then announced that this was our new company and that all the final year students were running it for the rest of the year. Immediately the fantasies of world domination took their grip and we started to plan our uranium enrichment programs and oil prospecting only to realise we would be producing software. Now this company did not have any other influences on it apart from the students and thus we were not allowed to have any form of hierarchy; we were all at the same level. Far from becoming chaos this produced an excelent work force. Within a week the students had found their niches based on their strengths and weaknesses. No one told them what to do except for the knowledge of our common goal, have fun and develop software. Since I have the attention span of a cat in a squeaky toy factory I gravitated away from the programming and to the marketing and consultancy team whose job it was to get the contracts, do some analysis and delegate to the developer teams. Because the other team members were there for the same reasons I was we formed an excelent group with focus and vision without the shackles of worrying about who we need to answer to or whether we were working outside of our job descriptions. It was the most free working environment I have ever experienced. And this went for all the members of the company. Everyone had a great time and worked their fingers to the bone because it was fun!
So any CEOs or managers reading this, you know what to do: scrap job labels and hierarchies and make working enjoyable. Although I know you won't because you are afraid you will lose control and the masses will come and steal your Mercedes, burn your white-picket-fence house down and pee on your collection of silk ties.
Man I despise management! How is it that somebody with a half-arsed degree in business and management suddenly becomes qualified to be a leader in the field of software engineering, organic chemistry or any other field for that matter. I wouldn't say they were qualified to collect my belly button fluff, let alone organise a team of people to do it. I am currently in my first 'real' job after graduating and I already hate the blind organisation that companies adopt for no apparent reason. I bet if you asked any of the senior management or CEOs for the reasons why the company is organised the way it is, they will finish eating their banana, scratch their head and splutter "Cos s'way s'always bin dun, innit?" just before they beat their chests and call security and have you stoned to death for daring to ask a sensible question.
These people are not omnipotent gods and are prone to the same human condition that everyone suffers from: Stupidity. Stupidity for not thinking for themselves and stupidity for not questioning the norms. Now the solution to this company organisation problem (especially for people like myself who have a pathological dislike for authority) is to remove all hierarchies and job labels.
I will defend the removal of labels first since it is the easiest one to argue. If you are hired by a company as a technical writer and then start asking you to perform QA and analysis tasks (because the QA and analysts suck) then you become bitter and pissed off because a) QA is boring. b) The 'real' analysts get paid double you do. So get ride of the job title and hire people for their skills and for what they can offer. This way the workforce is a lot more flexible and people will general gravitate to what they are good at and therefore to what they like.
Now for the removal of hierarchy I will give you a bit of background that made me realise that this revolution needs to begin. For my final year of my degree the head of department herded the students (there are no other ways to get students to go anywhere...have you ever tried to herd cats? Same difference) into a dusty room above a cafeteria a and filled with bits of PCs and half chewed manuals for Perl. He then announced that this was our new company and that all the final year students were running it for the rest of the year. Immediately the fantasies of world domination took their grip and we started to plan our uranium enrichment programs and oil prospecting only to realise we would be producing software. Now this company did not have any other influences on it apart from the students and thus we were not allowed to have any form of hierarchy; we were all at the same level. Far from becoming chaos this produced an excelent work force. Within a week the students had found their niches based on their strengths and weaknesses. No one told them what to do except for the knowledge of our common goal, have fun and develop software. Since I have the attention span of a cat in a squeaky toy factory I gravitated away from the programming and to the marketing and consultancy team whose job it was to get the contracts, do some analysis and delegate to the developer teams. Because the other team members were there for the same reasons I was we formed an excelent group with focus and vision without the shackles of worrying about who we need to answer to or whether we were working outside of our job descriptions. It was the most free working environment I have ever experienced. And this went for all the members of the company. Everyone had a great time and worked their fingers to the bone because it was fun!
So any CEOs or managers reading this, you know what to do: scrap job labels and hierarchies and make working enjoyable. Although I know you won't because you are afraid you will lose control and the masses will come and steal your Mercedes, burn your white-picket-fence house down and pee on your collection of silk ties.
posted by Nathan at 10:05 am
3 Comments:
Check out http://www.guru-international.com/gray_monk/archives/2005_01.php
Scroll down until you find "Where have all the "techies" gone?
Yep, that article pretty much sums it up (although in a more literate way than mine). I'm glad it isn't only me who feels this way about how things are organised. Now what are we going to do about it? Short of kidnapping all managers and setting them to work as crash test dummies, I would suggest that anyone who feels strongly enough about this issue should get out there and get their own business. This way those disillusioned employees can really start to make a difference by changing the culture from within. Anyway, that's what I am going to do.
Now all I have to do is think of a decent marketable product...
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