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Do Nice Engineers Finish Last In Tough Times?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jan 19, 2009 04:19 PM
from the nice-guys-always-finish-last dept.
from the nice-guys-always-finish-last dept.
jammag writes "As the wave of pink slips is starting to resemble Robespierre and his guillotine, the maneuvering among tech professionals to hang on to their job is getting ugly. IT Management describes the inter-office competition between the manager of a server farm and the supervisor of networks and security. One was nice, giving his team members credit, taking responsibility when something went wrong. The other was a backstabber who spent plenty of time sucking up to the management. As the inevitable cuts came, who do you think hung on to their job?"
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Only the Meanest Engineers Survive Out There! (Score:5, Funny)
Do Nice Engineers Finish Last In Tough Times?
Why, just the other day, a coworker was in contention for a promotion that was going to a younger engineer. My coworker found the specs to the younger engineer's car online and determined the precise rate it would have to leak coolant to completely drain the reserve tank precisely when he was leaving home to make an important customer meeting the next morning. I saw him on a crawl board attaching the regulator and a valve system in the parking lot and sure enough it overheated at precisely the right time so our customer just sat their waiting.
It's a calculate-or-be-calculated world out there!
Re:Only the Meanest Engineers Survive Out There! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Un huh. (Score:5, Funny)
whoosh
Parent
No, Seriously! (Score:5, Funny)
Aside from the fact that your post is a load of horseshit, I suppose that you didn't step up to the plate by telling management what you witnessed.
And, incidentally, once the youngster took his car to the shop to be repaired, the tampering would have been discovered, and your fictional coworker would have been thrown in jail (hmm just where did this after market valve and regulator come from anyway?). In most states tampering with an automobile is a felony.
Alright alright, I need to come clean ... I embellished on this story a little bit. Here's the truth:
I was going to tell my boss but when I walked in, the coworker I was ratting out was on his knees with a mouthful of my boss and I think he said, "Oh hai!" I didn't stick around to clarify, I just left.
And it wasn't a car, it was a hovercraft. And it wasn't a regulator & valve, it was a detonator & C4. And he wasn't late for a meeting, he died. And don't worry about the law, Virginia isn't a state it's a commonwealth.
I feel almost relieved to get that off my chest and to come clean with you. I think I answered all your questions truthfully and fairly. Hopefully, together you and I can keep the internet a sound unbiased source of nothing but the unadulterated truth and historic account of everything.
You've helped me help myself. I love you.
Parent
Re:No, Seriously! (Score:5, Informative)
Best response to someone who didn't get the first joke ever. You, sir, win two full internets (excluding porn).
Parent
Re:No, Seriously! (Score:5, Funny)
And it wasn't a car, it was a hovercraft.
So it's you, with your blowing up of the prototypes that are keeping the flying car from never being released?! And you know, if you just want to make your coworker miss a meeting and get fired instead of you, it would be much more cunning (and fun) to fill it with eels, and watch him trying to explain it to his clients and superior...
Parent
Re:Un huh. (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of working on a radiator (or the built-in valve) I'll give some backing to the "horseshit" claim made by gatkinso.
Modern radiators (anything say in the last 20 years) have a drain valve that is removable. There are two generally accepted methods of removal.
1. any respected radiator shop will replace this valve by first desoldering the old valve and soldering in a new one.
2. any inexperienced, but enthusiastic first-timer will attempt to use the 'righty-tighty/lefty-loosey' paradigm and break it off. This method requires a trip to the previously mentioned 'respected radiator shop'
Otherwise, it would need to be installed inline of either radiator hose. That leads to other problems when the target is a newer vehicle with form-fitting hoses. A hose section would need to be cut for the 'valve' to be installed in-line. The major problem with this is that the radiator will drain to the level of the cut requiring the cooling system to be re-filled and air removed from the system. These tasks cannot be performed on a crawler as the vehicle has to be running to remove the air and the hood has to be opened to fill the radiator.
Flamebait for calling BS, or in this case HS? I think you got a raw deal dude. I agree with your post but lack moderator points to do-the-right-thing (TM) and mod you up.
Parent
Re:Only the Meanest Engineers Survive Out There! (Score:5, Insightful)
that doesn't seem very wise.
i mean, why would you hire someone who puts their own self-interests ahead of the good of the company? if the guy had sabotaged a competitor in order to land a large order or contract for the company, then maybe you could justify hiring them on the basis that their ruthless actions actually served the organization. but this guy sabotaged a co-worker to make him miss an important meeting with a customer. he has basically just hurt the company to make himself look good. how would such an employee benefit the company other than to undermine the company's meritocracy and drive away other honest & hard-working employees.
being a douchebag or a sociopath is hardly a virtue. usually such scumbags sleaze their way to the top of an organization by way of deception & manipulation. but only a really incompetent manager would deliberately seek out employees with such qualities. generally, people who actually have talent & ability don't need to stab their co-workers in the back or be manipulative to secure their own position or rise through the ranks in a healthy organization.
Parent
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hot tip: not every tech professional is an "engineer," the least of which being IT professionals and "network engineers." What a diluted title.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a mechanical engineer by degree, and this has nothing to do with "engineers". Nor is this crap limited to just "engineers". This type of favoritism from brown-nosing happens in just about every line of work.
Parent
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately true. As for the question at the end of the article, if I was Karen I'd rather spend ~2000 hours a year with a friendly person than an asshole, and I'm sure the engineers and techs would feel the same way. I'd have fired Doug and kept Stuart. Of course it's well known that women like assholes, so I guess it's no surprise Doug won her affection.
(ducks a spitball)
Parent
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
P.S.
I ran into this at work. I was given a completely unrealistic goal to create a schematic in ONE week, for a project that I knew nothing about. I worked 80 hours in that single week, missed the deadline (no surprise), was threatened by my boss "If you can't do the job, I'll find somebody else who can" to which I replied, "Okay." He suddenly backed down because he didn't have anybody else, and I completed the schematic.
Long story short, I got the job done in 1.5 weeks, but the management still wanted to blame someone, so my boss took a "me first" attitude like the Doug in the article. He told everyone I was a lousy engineer and bad-mouthed him (false, HE badmouthed me), and that it was my fault the schematic did not get done in one week's time. (The fault lies with whichever idiot created the schedule, not the engineer). Anyway I got laid off on January 5. The asshole boss got to keep his job, and I, the guy thrown into a project with only one week's notice, got axed.
Yeah. Being a nice guy at work, like dating, often means you finish last. You gotta be an ass if you want to score.
Parent
In the words of Malcolm Forbes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In the words of Malcolm Forbes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Forbes was an idiot then, in a world of 6.5 billion people, there are at leas 6500 one-in-a-million geniuses out there, and ever since the banks fucked up and gave us a deflationary economy, demand for the products of people with ability has gone down 90% [blogspot.com].
So no, ability has not only caught up with the demand, but has in fact passed it by at the speed of light.
Parent
Re:In the words of Malcolm Forbes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Forbes was an idiot then, in a world of 6.5 billion people, there are at leas 6500 one-in-a-million geniuses out there,
And statistically less than 300 of them live in the US. Toss out those who are too young, old, lazy, socially inept, ill, incarcerated, or comatose to hold down a job and you probably have about 7 employable one-in-a-million geniuses in the US, and you can be pretty sure that they already have jobs.
Parent
Re:In the words of Malcolm Forbes... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:In the words of Malcolm Forbes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
If the management above is unable to see which of the two in the example is worth keeping, perhaps it's not the best place to work anyway, as it looks like politics makes up more of the workload than engineering. I'm reasonably sure that engineers are engineers because they DO NOT want to be politicians.
Of course, there is always the fix the coolant leakage rate solution, mix that with the faked IP and filesharing solution and things get entertaining while you are passing out your resume.
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with parent, if the management is good enough, they should follow well enough to know who really deserve a promotion and who is just doing enough to have enough time to ask for a promotion 10 times a week...
Sadly, there is very few employers who can do that... so the good guy will probably lose his job, and the asshole will get a promotion for stealing someone else's hard work...
Parent
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
The jackass may have won that round and the promotion, but in a lot of cases, as soon as the ass gets to a position where he can't set others up for failure or take credit, that's when payback happens... that, or they end up a manager and nobody in a company notices.
Your assessment sounds optimistic to me. In my experience, the higher up the org chart that bottom-feeders rise, the easier it is for them to do the blame-and-credit game. Because the higher up you are, the less hands-on you're expected to be, right? You are all but mandated to delegate responsibility, and that automatically puts someone in line to take the hits for you. And unfortunately these situations often take a long time to get sorted out, because the real problem is usually someone even higher up that has enough conniving/nepotistic/irrational faith in the bottom-feeder to be blind to the problem.
Parent
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Funny)
Then both you and the grandparent are idiots who have never heard the phrase "any port in a storm".
"Any port in a storm" applies to ships at sea, because a ship can only be one place at a time. An employee stuck in a metaphorical storm off the metaphorical horn of Africa, on the other hand, has the luxury of finding out whether there's a storm off Lisbon too, and if there isn't, the employee can miraculously teleport there rather than sailing on through the storm.
My God, that was a stretched analogy.
Parent
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
If the management above is unable to see which of the two in the example is worth keeping, perhaps it's not the best place to work anyway, as it looks like politics makes up more of the workload than engineering. I'm reasonably sure that engineers are engineers because they DO NOT want to be politicians.
Define "worth keeping". I don't recall the article saying that Doug was inept, just that he was a ruthless jerk. His "backstabbing" was pretty insightful, IMO, and for Kelly, keeping him around was probably the right choice given the economic climate.
Granted, that doesn't make the company the best place if you value touchy-feely more than breaking even -- especially if you are the type to infect the company network with viruses you introduce via your thumb drives and want a manager who will wipe your backside.
There is being "nice" and there is being an ineffective pushover. Hard to be Worlds Best Boss when you are out on your ass.
Parent
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
What you guys are missing is that Kelly is the one that should have been fired. She chose to keep the guy who in a month will be trying to get her job, and fired the guy that had underlings who followed him out the door even in a bad economy (ie actually liked coming to work). On top of that, her decision was based on emotions ('too nice') instead of results.
That's pretty much a terrible decision any way you look at it.
Parent
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but what you say is naive. Unless the origanization is a technical one for which the chairman of the board and CEO are both technical people, there will always be some level where a technical person is managed by a non-technical person who has a limited at best understanding of what the techies do. If there isn't someone at the technical group who performs the task of ensuring that the non-techie overlords understand what is going on and who is doing a good job, then the non-techies eventually tend to start to think the techies aren't doing anything and hate them.
When the techies are infighting, things are bad. If it happens once, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the organization and know when someone is backstabbing you (This isn't so hard if you have a good relationship with management, usually they'll tell you) and go to management to demonstrate why what they're saying is false and get *them* fired. If it's happening regularly, you're in a dysfunctional organization and you should be looking for a new job.
I have been an IT manager, and I speak from experience when I say that this sort of problem is particularly bad for IT organizations. People tend to hate IT because when things are going right they don't perceive that IT is doing anything (even if IT is working their behinds off to keep things going right) so usually they only notice IT when things go wrong, so of course they blame the problem (whatever it is) on IT, regardless of what caused it. This gives IT the image of being a bunch of lazy do-nothings who aren't doing their job of making everything work. So, IT has to work extra-hard to make it very clear to management on a regular basis that they are working hard and being responsive to company needs and being successful at solving problems.
As annoying as it is, good help desk software or CRM software can go a long way for this, by being able to provide statistics and documentation to show non-techie overlords that IT is working hard and being responsive.
A decent IT manager is a current or former techie with excellent language skills who is able to mediate between business people with needs and technical people who can fulfill needs. They should be able to listen to business people describe business requirements and translate those into technical requirements for technical solutions. They should also be able to direct or monitor technical work performed by technical workers and describe it in business terms to business people so they understand that progress is being made and their needs are being taken seriously. They should also be able to recognize when mediation is needed so they can perform these services to help facilitate interaction between technical and non-technical staff.
A bad IT manager doesn't understand anything about technology and probably thinks that such understanding is not required to manage technical people. They don't understand that IT work is a creative profession which isn't always strictly quantifiable, and believe that the IT staff can be managed entirely based on statistical metrics of performance. If your IT manager's previous experience is in retail, or they use the phrase "I have a degree in management", run screaming. (A decent manager of any type will never find it necessary to mention their MBA, because they know that attempting to intimidate employees is the worst possible way to get them to do anything.)
Parent
Re:You might want to think about something here (Score:5, Insightful)
Then plan to be able to live for 6 months without a job and without losing your house if needed. Then you will have the option to leave if 'current job' only gets 'pretty bad'. If not, then plan to die working your arse off for somebody else without hope and fear every bump in the stock market.
Unfortunately this is a real predicament for a lot of people in the industry, neh the world. Demonstrates how capitalism is not that far removed from slavery for a large proportion of people. Indeed this ruthless efficiency of working every "cog" in the machine to death is considered an end goal of a successful pure capitalist society.
Cheer up. At least suicide is a way to get out of the machine.
Parent
Jobs Aren't About Education, Skill, or Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
They're about networking, social skills, and shameless self-promotion.
People like me, and I suspect most geeks on slashdot, want to be judged on our merits, but the fact is in most cases we won't be. So yes, nice engineers do finish last.
Re:Jobs Aren't About Education, Skill, or Experien (Score:5, Insightful)
They're about networking, social skills, and shameless self-promotion.
Couldn't have said it any better. It's not about being nice or an asshole, it's about making sure people know who you are and that you're valuable. People aren't going to fire Steve who wrote that great app "Steve's Manage Utility" that helped out a lot, but they will fire that one guy what's-his-name who no one ever sees because he's always at his desk quietly working.
Parent
Re:Jobs Aren't About Education, Skill, or Experien (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, in most jobs, they're both important. There's two lessons that the "smart kids" generally have to learn later in their lives (some have to figure it out in college, some get by a little longer). One is that unlike in grade school, smarts along won't put you in the upper echelon. You have to work hard, and you have to network. It's a big world, and no matter how smart you are, there's a guy out there who's at least as is talented as you and harder working. And there's a guy out there who's at least as smart as you and better at networking.
The point is that(especially in rough economic times) there's often more than enough smarts available to fill the demand. Being technically competent is certainly important, but unless you're in some very rare position where no one else is equally competent (or convincingly close), you've got some equally competent competition out there. Taking the time to develop some social and political business skills is not a wasteful investment in yourself.
Parent
Re:Jobs Aren't About Education, Skill, or Experien (Score:5, Informative)
Networking is an important skill. This is because you are essentially dealing with people no matter what your job is. The addage that "It's not what you know but who you know." is true. There is no escaping it. You can be the bee's knees on a subject, but if you don't make the right connections, then you won't be able to pick up the next job when the time comes up.
Being good at your job is important now. Being able to network is important when moving on.
For example. I worked my way up from answering phones to being in charge of a 2000 seat campus by a combination of learning new skills from a range of experienced techs. Then (due in part to the smooth running of the site, and due to having made friends with the regional manager) I was asked to monitor the health of the regions equipment. Now I was in charge of 500 switches, 50 routers and 80 servers. Monitoring their general wellbeing. I was able to get the jump on around 50% of errors by watching anomalies before they became a problem. Something that takes reasonable technical skill. (Yes, any charlie can read a log, but reading 80 of them daily and filtering for weird stuff takes some perl.)
Then sweeping changes occurred to that technical team and most of the operation was to be outsourced, my job included. I could have stayed on as a contractor working on the same system, but due to my networking skills, was able to use this to land a promotion. I am now working on a network 10 times the original size doing really cool stuff.
The moral of the story is tech out the wazoo will only get you so far. Networking is a skill that will get you further.
Parent
Work is overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't make as much money, true, but if you satisfy the above conditions you'll probably make enough to afford food and a roof. You'll be able to sleep in every day, go to the gym, work on personal projects, go out on dates, and much more! It's not like you're being lazy or anything -- "the economy" is a very acceptable excuse for not having a job, at least until the economy goes back into full swing.
Re:Work is overrated (Score:5, Informative)
And those days will come, and soon. No jobs. Not even flipping burgers, not for the older engineers. Much better to get a stupid malleable kid for that, as it limits the amount of talk-back to the no-stripe franchise manager.
Parent
I have no reason to change my ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
hung on to their job? (Score:5, Funny)
The cute receptionist?
False Premise and question (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the whole premise of the question is false. The question being asked is whether nice guys who share credit and accept responsibility will get axed in favor of mean guys who steal credit and ID scapegoats.
I actually RTFA (I know, a /. blasphemy) and I don't think that is a valid question. According to the article, the reason "Doug" got the job and "Staurt" the nice guy got fired is that Doug went to their boss and made a case for why it would be better for the boss and the company to retain him instead of Stuart. Now his reasoning was flawed, but Stuart never made such a case. He just assumed that he got fired because he was the nice guy.
Being a nice guy (sharing credit, accepting responsibility) and valuable employee (recognizing your manager's needs and supporting them, being politically aware and astute) are not mutually exclusive.
What Stuart should have done is said "that I am well respected by my team, I keep a mature and professional attitude when mistakes are made (not like Doug who yells at his team). In this uncertain time after layoffs are announced, the remaining people will be nervous and perhaps looking to leave on their own terms. Kelly, I'll make sure that the remaining team stays on target, and achieves all goals, so you look good. Doug said that I cannot make the tough decisions, but look, I've come to you with cogent and well reasoned reasons to layoff the required people in my team, as you requested. I can make the tough decisions, but in a way that keeps the remaining team morale up and productive."
Now Stuart may have actually said that, but TFA doesn't say so. Instead we're left to assume that he just figured as a nice guy he lost his job.
Nice or mean doesn't have much to do with it, being politically aware and understanding office dynamics is everything.
Being a backstabber doesn't work. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course you can always find an anecdotal counterexample, but the one time I decided I wanted to get someone out of a management position that was interfering with my job, it wound up backfiring hugely (the situation was *worse* after I succeeded) and on a personal level it's something I regret to this day.
On the other hand, every time I've come into a job situation and behaved with honesty and integrity, it's worked out well for me. And I get to sleep at night.
So take your pick.
In the Long Run (Score:5, Insightful)
Submitter should remember... (Score:5, Funny)
The plural of anecdote is bullshit.
Stupid summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary makes it out to be a choice between the evil, cold-blooded manager (Doug) and the warm, fatherly teamleader (Steve). As much as we all like to see the black-white picture, I'm frankly sick with it -- do we need to have Slashdot become the Cosmo Girl for Nerds?
With a clear suppressor and an underdog, this can also be painted another way.
Kelly is the manager of the above two here. She was in a very tight spot and felt very alone, with noone to rely on. When asked for employee ratings, Steve unresponsively turned his back to her, just following orders. However, when Doug came along, he offered a listening ear and offered suggestions of his own. He showed that he could think along, offer support as well as make tough decisions -- just the person she needed.
*yawn* See how boring this black-and-white stuff gets?
Unspecified definition of "nice" (Score:5, Insightful)
The less common usage is well beyond mere courtesy and is more like an act of love. This is a person who has kindness and compassion for its own sake because cultivating these is pure joy. When you have this, there is no concern for outcomes or results because you realize that all of us are equal and must come to our own understanding at our own pace and in the fullness of our own time. There is no need to control and there is no need for this type of loving-kindness to be reciprocated. Reciprocated or not, the mere expression of it is pure joy and it is complete in and of itself. Everything is filled to the brim with nothing missing and there is no need to get upset (and thus cause suffering over) the non-ideal. It is the truly pure motive, in that even the exquisite joy of it is not done for the sake of experiencing joy. This is the type of person who finds possibilities and opportunities where there are none; the one for whom all actions and all speech are expressions of an ultimately simple and self-evident Truth. With this understanding, you feel that you yourself are not doing or saying anything. It is more like you find or observe yourself saying or doing this-and-that and it happens to be the best thing you could have said or done at the time, certainly far better than the result of any kind of deductive process. An engineer or anyone else who has this need not worry about things like tough times because he or she is free of the slavery that makes someone a victim of circumstance.
The only thing that is regrettable, or something like regrettable, is that most people live their entire lives without ever knowing the difference. It is not so complicated that most people cannot understand it. It is so incredibly utterly simple that most people overlook it out of a belief that they themselves should be doing something or seeking something or becoming something.
While Stuart sounds cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
...telling his boss that mistakes that his employees made were his mistakes was not very smart.
Atleast that is how I read his actions.
Stuart should have been 100% honest. Lying to his bosses about who screwed up didn't help anyone in the end.
Well, it helped Doug.
Not saying throw the employee under the bus. Be cool, be honest, and tell it like it is.
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Reading that simile was like marinating a walnut in talcum powder.
Nice Guys Finish first in the end (Score:5, Insightful)
So in the example, the nice guy gets fired and that back stabber gets promoted.
Well, 5 years down the road, the backstabber is also fired, while the "nice guy" found a job through one of his former coworkers who thought he was amazing and good to work with (the guy was good but also made him look better!) The backstabber, can't find work, and has no references.
Being nice or moral isn't generally filled with short term benefits (which is why it's contrasted with greedy!), but in the long term can yield very good results.
Re:When do nice engineers finish last? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lower management might contain a few ex-engineers that actually do have a clue. The levels above that generally consist of business types that wouldn't know a hammer from a saw if their lives depended on it. However, those guys make the targets, the rules and the policy. And lower management has to carry them out, without question. They are spat on from above and spat on from below, they really can't win.
Don't blame lower management, blame the real culprits: MBA types.
Parent
Re:It's a fact of life... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hunh. That must explain why I'm living on the streets instead of in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Oh, wait! No! I am living in the nice house. And I didn't stab anybody in the back to get it. Nor, for that matter, is my business acumen the reason I'm in the nice house - in fact, it's basically just good fortune.
I'm not saying that there's no value in hard work, or in any of the other things we do on the job. But I'm sufficiently ancient at this point to have seen a lot of comings and goings, and the fact is that prosperity and [insert name of business tactic here] are largely orthogonal. If you don't have any talent, sure, maybe being an asshole is your only hope. Or maybe you should just go do what you really want to do and stop screwing around in a job you aren't suited for.
Parent
Re:It's a fact of life... (Score:5, Insightful)
In essence, nice guys win if they ostracize assholes and learn to hold a grudge. If you're an asshole, you better be really good at it, because you're going to run out of suckers really quick. It's nice to know that ethical behavior is actually a sound strategy.
Parent
Re:Garbage rises (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the ruthless rather than the liar tends to rise in capitalism. Which doesn't mean that a decent, competent company can't do well, but they can be threatened by the ruthless company. Usually the demise of a good company at the hands of a ruthless company comes about through government collusion. For example, Ruthless Inc. spends the time and money to bribe lawmakers to legislate that Ruthless Inc's software is the new standard for official government widgets. Now DecentCorp's DiscoWidget app has no buyers. Ruthless Inc. buys the dregs of DecentCorp and sends the former employees to the salt mines.
Capitalism gets a bad rap, but sometimes that bad rap is more the direct result of centralized government's intervention rather than lack thereof. Sometimes not--witness Madoff's hedge fund.
Parent
Re:Garbage rises (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the ruthless rather than the liar tends to rise in capitalism. Which doesn't mean that a decent, competent company can't do well, but they can be threatened by the ruthless company. Usually the demise of a good company at the hands of a ruthless company comes about through government collusion. For example, Ruthless Inc. spends the time and money to bribe other firms and standards bodies to require Ruthless Inc's software as the new standard for given widgets. Now DecentCorp's DiscoWidget app has no buyers unless DecentCorp licences from Ruthless In.. Ruthless Inc. buys the dregs of DecentCorp and sends the former employees to the salt mines.
Capitalism gets a bad rap, but sometimes that bad rap is more the direct result of centralized government's intervention rather than lack thereof.
Of course, government intervention is only incidental, and is not required for this sort of maneuvering at all. (thus some fixes I made to your original scenario)
For every government intervention which leads to problems like this, There are equal or greater evils to be had from lack of government intervention.
Smart regulation is the proper answer.
Parent
Re:If that's how they lay off people at your job.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Having been on a few sinking ships, I haven't found that to be the case. What I've seen, oddly, is the opposite. People get nicer once the realize there's no future in it for anyone. At that point, it becomes about who remembers you and how, and whether they can get you into wherever they land next.
At a certain point, it just becomes collecting your paycheck until its your turn. No point in being a dick about it.
Parent
Until they want babies (Score:5, Insightful)
Same deal with employment. If your company/IT department think like a singles bar looking for one night stands and will screw over each other and customers for a quick buck then being nice means nothing and you need to out-asshole the others to get ahead.
If, instead, your company/IT department are there to build long-term relationships, satisfying service and repeat business, then being nice is very important.
Parent