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What the he$$ is it with companies and management deciding that MORE meetings mean better productivity?
Over the past couple of years (with the new CEO of the corp I no longer support), there has been a deliberate push to put as much as possible at the company headquarters. They rationalize this with improving efficiency but never look at the metrics. Corporate IT is trying to get it's act together, but it's f'ing hopeless. I asked for a simple Windows Server VM. Request went no where. Inquiring into my request, a WEEK'S worth of research was done, and my request was closed. Apparently, cloning a virtual machine (which is ctlC/V operation) is a project not a request.
So, I created a project. A week passes... nothing. I inquire. Oh, we need to have a meeting. "Really, why?" "We need to discuss your requirements." "It's in the project. Clone the existing VM and move it into the new environment." "Why do you want to do that?" "You really would not understand..." At this point, I bailed out of the conversation. 3 meetings and 6 months later I have a virtual machine. 
So, part of my exit strategy is pulling my development stuff into virtual machines. It's a bit of work, I think I'm there, but the VMs represent about .5TB of files. No way I can move that over VPN, so I go into the office... And the file server is full. Got to love corporate IT and their lack of monitoring. So, I open a support ticket. "Please increase the size of the VIRTUAL SoftwareDevelopment folder by 2TB." Crickets. Then the ticket was assigned.. then it was escalated. I'm sure IT will want to have a meeting, but my credentials expired at 11:59pm yesterday, so I no longer have access.
 happy days
Corporate IT spent 10s of millions of dollars on a new more flexible approach such that they never get anything done.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I feel your pain. Our IT department is forced to behave the same way due to understaffing.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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reminds me a joke. big ship with 1 leader and 16 people rowing. Thought they would get better productivity out of the rowers by having another manger. So they replace 2 people with 1 manager. Wow they thought. The ship is lighter and we are going faster. and we have to have less food.
more is better right? so they do it again and repeat until they have 8 managers and 2 rowers and don't understand why they are going backwards. So they shoot the people rowing and blame them.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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I could deal with understaffing - I get that. But a few years ago, the company ramped up on UI "designers" that maximized artwork and have not hired a s/w person to do any implementation what so ever.
It's not that they cannot do it - they won't. Since I no longer have credentials, f*** it.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I understand what you're going thru -- though I guess few others do, because I've posted similar stories & most people will not discuss this type of thing. I guess they are too shell-shocked from the idiocracy around them, not sure.
I worked at a large bank -- hundreds of branches.
We had a successive list of VPs of IT. Each one coming in for about 1 year & then leaving.
At one point we had a VP of IT who came through the hallways (cubicles) who had heard a rumor that some dev was reading the newspaper during work hours.
However, he had one guy's 1st name and another guy's last name put together to create a non-existent person. We had a Frank Fuller & a Joe Johnson (fake names) and he came through the hallways yelling, "Where's Frank Johnson, because I"m going to fire him today."
Nothing happened and this VP of IT was gone long before Frank or Joe.
Next genius VP of IT came through and his great idea to motivate and inspire was to install signs over the cubicles (into the tile ceiling).
The signs each had one word like: Inspired, Encouraged, etc.
The one I can never get out of my mind though is the one that said: Boundarylessness 
But, it was only months later and the VP of IT was gone but the signs stayed. I guess they were too lazy to take them down again.
All during these years there was little actual IT work to do. You might have a 3 month project for the entire year. Of course, everyone reported as "busy".
At one point, there was a power struggle between two guys who wanted to manage our little Software Dev group within IT. They fought politically for over a year. During that time I was put on a project that only took 6 weeks and was eventually shelved anyways.
And, to top that off, my manager told me: "I was hoping that project would fail."
"Why is that", I asked.
"Well, we think that group that you worked for is irrelevent and we wanted to prove it by them failing on that project."
Uh, I thought we all worked for the same company?!!
I've worked in IT for over 33 years now and there have been numerous companies just like that.
Most of the Dev time is spent "waiting on the Genius Managers to figure out what they are going to do."
One time I was sitting at work, reading yet another tech book online and my coworker I had worked with at the time for over 3 years came over and said, "i'm so bored I'm sitting over there watching family guy videos and going out of my mind. You're reading another tech book aren't you?!!!"
In reality, most companies are so frightfully mis-managed by the dumbest of people, who just yammer away about nothing and are completely ineffectual. However, they are quite good at lying to the bosses just above them (playing the role of sycophant). And so it goes on.
But, I"m sure I'm the only one who has experienced this. 
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You terrify me. 
I was into my new manager slot about a year or so, and I had this hard a$$ I hired <-- note *I* hired him. Ray - I'm looking at you. This guy pissed me off to no end, like my MIL. Why? Because we had the same attitude, perspective, etc. We had a customer down, high profile yada yada. VP walks by to ask how it's going. I stroll out to Ray's cubicle and ask. This mf turns around and says in a loud voice "if you useless ****s would go away, I'll fix it. Leave me the f*** alone."
To my credit, I did not say anything nor did the VP. I learned a valuable lesson that day.
But your stories of IT. Sigh...
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: You terrify me. 
I'm not sure why. I am literally telling the stories that occurred while I sat and watched. Nothing more.
charlieg wrote: This mf turns around and says in a loud voice "if you useless ****s would go away, I'll fix it. Leave me the f*** alone."
I'm really not that way. I would never say such things to boss'.
I just recognize all political games and the inconsistencies of bosses. That's it.
I know that nothing I say will ever change a company so I don't fight it.
When things get bad enoug, I simply vote with my feet & leave the company.
You've made me pause to consider if it possible that I come off that way though.
I'll add a couple more nuggets about that large bank:
1. They attempted to re-write their entire Loan Origination system. One of the VPs of IT said in a speech when we started, "3 other large banks have all tried this and crashed & burned. We will be the first bank to succeed!"
2. They spent $75 Million over a 3 year period (contractors, contractors, contractors)
3. They finally gave up when branches said they hated it all and they never used a line of code written for the new system.
During that time I had a contractor manager.
I had to go to him to ask questions (reporting chain required) & asked him about a HR thing (insurance, etc)
He said, "I don't know what your company does. Why don't you go ask someone who knows that? Im a contractor."
That same Contractor manager would report status: "We have so much work we are drowning."
On a project of 100 contractors and 3 of us FTE (Full Time) us FTEs all looked at each other bec we were sitting around doing nothing.
Contractor manager was bringing on more contractors to do "work". He received $1200 bonus for each tech hire. He brought on 10 contractors in one year. I'll let you do the math.
This was on the $75 million project.
Try telling this to upper management. "There's a reporting chain, report it to your manager."
But I'm the angry one?
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Just tongue in cheek. To Ray's credit, I think he had been asked the same question 4 times in 20 minutes.... he had a temper.
One day he was especially intense and grouchy and it was coming across to everyone he was working with.... one male coworker told him, "Ray, you need to get a hooker." The female employees that heard this spit their tea and coffee everywhere.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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raddevus wrote: One time I was sitting at work, reading yet another tech book online and my coworker I had worked with at the time for over 3 years came over and said, "i'm so bored I'm sitting over there watching family guy videos and going out of my mind. You're reading another tech book aren't you?!!!"
I was on a 7 month contract for a public utility. I completed the work in 6 weeks.
Since I had 5.5 months left on the contract, I asked the client manager for more work. He gave me an assignment each Monday, which I completed sometime between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. I discovered quickly that asking for more work was frowned upon. It was years later before clueless me understood I was making people look bad.
This occurred right after VB4 was released, so I spent my free time researching the Windows API, reading the MS New Groups, and creating classes to address common things that were difficult in VB, such as reading/writing INI files. [Those classes worked later in VB5 and VB6, and were used as a model for creating some classes in C#.]
I was urged to apply for an internal position (I was a contractor) but I declined, and went on to yet another contract. It was ok to visit there for a short while, but no way I wanted a permanent position.
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BryanFazekas wrote: I discovered quickly that asking for more work was frowned upon. It was years later before clueless me understood I was making people look bad.
Yes! So true. Few people will admit this (or maybe even understand it). Managers look bad when you don't have something to do -- and well they should because they are the ones who are supposed to be planning what work is done.
BryanFazekas wrote: so I spent my free time researching the Windows API, reading the MS New Groups, and creating classes to address common things that were difficult in VB, such as reading/writing INI files
That's what I've always done. Just learn, grow, etc. Get ready for the next thing. 
Back in 1999 I was working a QA job, but there was a long lull in work.
I decided to learn JavaScript. This was back in the days of HTML Frames.
My skip-level manager came to me and was commiserating about the web product that had an intermittent bug. Sometimes the JavaScript would run right and other times it would fail for some reason.
I told him I was learning JS & I'd look at it to see.
Because I had been learning I noticed the Dev was loading JS scripts to do things in certain frames at certain times.
However, I'd just read that you cannot depend upon the order of frames loading.
THis was the cause of the intermittent bug.
I told my manager and he was ecstatic -- I was QA getting paid 1/4 what the dev was and I found the dev's issue. All bec I was "wasting time learning JS". 
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This right here. And adding to Charlie's original note, there's people who think their entire job is to have meetings and never actually accomplish anything.
raddevus wrote: In reality, most companies are so frightfully mis-managed by the dumbest of people, who just yammer away about nothing and are completely ineffectual. However, they are quite good at lying to the bosses just above them (playing the role of sycophant). And so it goes on.
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charlieg wrote: Corporate IT spent 10s of millions of dollars on a new more flexible approach such that they never get anything done.
...but the meeting minutes looked faaaaabulous.
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(not excusing red tape)
Sometimes companies try different management approaches and it kind of goes way too much into a direction before they need to scale back.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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sure. but when the goal is "have we documented everything" vs did we fix the elephanting problem or request? Stuck on stupid. And the money marches on.
Don't get me wrong. The people at the top make the money because well it's just the way it works. What saddens me is the very experienced people rolling with the plan while the Titanic sinks.
For the record, this company tossed a senior vp under the bus because he was passionate and would not play along with their bs. Worked for the company since he was 18. Board hired some useless turd. Stock down $40.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I spent 1 year at a large company and went crazy waiting for work and then approvals when I did do said work.This is why I only work for small companies (less than 100 people but preferable 25 ish people). When you hardly have enough revenue to pay the people that are there, everybody has to work and do multiple things. You learn more when there is nobody else to do the work. When a company gets to big, I'll move on to somebody that actually needs me.
Hogan
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Agree - please start your own company.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: meetings
Old saying -
Meetings where the minutes are kept, but hours are lost.
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Management. The fact that an entire stratification of a business does not contribute to the company's bottom-line in a meaningful way leads to this. They have to validate their existence so they invent a bunch of bs to waste time and make it seem like they're contributing (see: PIPs, Scrum, most meetings, micromanagement*, requests, etc).
*: Seriously, how does no one understand that if someone is hovering over you 7 hours of the day, that means THEY aren't doing anything productive?
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Jon McKee wrote: They have to validate their existence so they invent a bunch of bs to waste time and make it seem like they're contributing
Very good analysis & summary of the situation at many companies.
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raddevus wrote: Very good analysis & summary of the situation at many companies all levels of government
FTFY.
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We agree on far more than you might think. 
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LMAO
I know plenty of people who work for the government. As such, I try not to generalize and respect those people.
But some of them make it extremely hard.
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I'm a solo developer in a small company. I wfh and they let me do what I want as long as the plates keep spinning.
I still get caught up in long, boring conference calls/teams meetings though at least once or twice a week just for torture. If that's not enough, I have a retired, narcissistic, bil who calls every day at 4:20PM out of boredom (he thinks it's funny)...and because he says that I need to take a break. It's like I stop work for the day and put out the sign. 'The Doctor is In'
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Welcome to retirement, sit back relax and enjoy not having managers and user to pester you!
I had exactly the opposite experience with my last (14 year) contract with a bank in Singapore. Senior person was an ex coder who was a workaholic and had prodigious knowledge of the industry. His protégé was a junior support tech when I started and ended up running the department. They were of the opinion that if you did not have 3 projects on the go you were under utilised. Both were brilliant to work for.
Mind you some of the meetings would bore the tits off a cow, if there were more that 6 attendees I left as it would be a waste of time.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Those who can, do. (or leave)
Those who can't, become managers.
Look at Boeing..... more managers than engineers. That's why stuff comes falling out of the sky.
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