Implementing the Bureaucratic Black Arts? 376
bildungsroman_yorick asks: "Many unlucky workers in their careers have encountered the bureaucracy, the careerism, the project death march and the office politics that hold people back from performing to high standards of work. In some office environments that I've encountered half a supervisors workload involves giving your workers room to operate and protecting them from the bureaucracy and politics. I have come to realise that it's the natural way of business culture to behave this way and the only way I can let my workers be productive is to be one step ahead of the politics, even if that means breaking the rules. So what I'd like to ask some of the more savvier Slashdot denizen: What are some of the bureaucratic black arts that you've performed in your workplace to work around the office politics and get your work done on time and to a high standard?"
Bank (Score:3, Interesting)
Most work that actually goes on in the bank ends up being a function of who you know and what you know rather than successful use of the system; many projects are delayed for months and years as a result of this (simply acquiring IP addresses for servers can take weeks - weeks where a project may have half a dozen contractors all sitting around at $lots a day!). There are very basic organisational changes that could be made which would solve this - such as the fact that every day, dozens of identical 2U servers from a large vendor are purchased for projects and support; in spite of this, every project is expected to organise this themself, and wait months whilst parts and machines are delivered (again, with contractors sitting around). And yet there's no central purchaser who buys servers (gets a volume discount!!) and then sells these on to the projects with a 2-3 day wait (instead of months).
The same applies to parts; memory, disks, or even patch cables - there's no centralisation and everyone's expected to buy their own.
One project I recently worked on ordered some (very common) equipment required to install their servers in a datacenter last year, and only had it delivered a few weeks ago - if it weren't for the favour the project manager called in with another department (giving him leftover equipment last year), the entire project team would've been sitting waiting the whole time.
This is representative of what truly makes the organisation tick - favours; virtually nothing gets done without it being as a personal favour (in an organisation where having IP addresses assigned or having a server racked can take weeks) from one party to another.
Books that help (Score:5, Interesting)
The Career Programmer [barnesandnoble.com] should have been called "The Guerilla Programmer". It explains vital topics like how to get a spec from people who don't want to give you one.
It was the politics that made me leave. (Score:1, Interesting)
I was commonly heard saying "Why are you pulling this politico stuff on me? You are lying to me again. I can prove it with this. Im just trying to get things to work, now let me do my job."
They really dont like that. The office bosses conspired to get me fired. I found proof of that also.
They fired me anyways, and the lawyer said to fuckit. So fuckit. I got a huge payoff when leaving, and they seemed happy to have me go.
The company has tanked since my departure.
Re:It takes some practice (Score:1, Interesting)
This is true in my experience. The study published yesterday showing that liars have a 26% excess of white matter in their brains confirms what I have known my whole life. Liars are basically less intelligent people. When dealing with the pathalogical liars that account for the majority of 'business people' you are best off actually lying to them a little bit and quite obviously. Then they will include you in their 'trust' circle as one of them. Technical people, the 'aspergers' types with a balance favoring grey matter (which actually does the cognition, white matter is merely cognitive 'glue') are treated with fear and suspicion by MBA 'business types'. And I think you are correct that accountants and fiscal officers tend to fall more into the geek psychology bracket, they place a higher value on truth.
My needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Implemented a VPN so I could work from home (twice, both "outbound" connectors - that is, they connected out from the company so as to defeat the company NAT/Firewall).
Set up bugzilla instead of using their homebrew bug tracker (later adapted by the company).
Set up a mailing list server to handle mailing lists (mailman, I think - on an unsupported OS on a "grey box" machine that had fallen off IT's tracker list).
Dropped my ssh public key in various root or admin accounts that I was given "one shot access to - here's the password that we'll change after you log in".
Set up an http proxy tunnel so that my group could surf via tunneled ssh through my home proxy (because the company proxy server would crash for half a day at a time, and I need online javadoc, thanks).
Note that most of these things are not needed most of the time - I usually work for companies that have their shit together. But there are times when I need to get stuff done.
To my future employers who find this posting (that I have decided not to post anon): treat me honestly and respectfully, and I'll do the same with you! I need VPN access, and I need a good bug tracker, and I need a mailing list server. None of that is unreasonable. If you don't provide it, though, I will. If you don't let me, I will anyway.
connect to the top (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you have that, follow the doctor/google idea: do no harm. That will make you people love you. Reasonable people will always understand you making business decisions if you show you're out to do them no harm and that you have some power to lend them (from the first point) and, finally, if you tell them what you're doing.
In Germany, at the start of major industrial thinking, they did an experiment. They called in all the workers, and told them that some scientists would be playing with things at the factory and that there would be changes. Then they called them in and said that they would be raising the temperature at work - then productivity went up. To be sure, they called everyone in and told them they would be lowering the temp. They lowered it, and productivity went up. "Odd," they thought. This went on and on with them calling meetings, making changes and having productivity go up. Finally they started interviewing the workers at length about why they were working harder and why they felt they were being more effective. They all said they liked how they felt the company kept them informed of all the plans...
The Art of War (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't think you can take the high road and have your career survive. If someone's playing dirty, don't try to overlook it, deal with it.
When dealing with a boss with a case of NIH, try to make your ideas sound like they were your boss's ideas. Until you replace your boss.
Perceptions count for a lot. Manage perceptions.
When dealing with management, be insincere. Tell them what they want to hear. If you have to 'fudge' numbers or gloss over messy details, do it. Don't get sentimental about facts and truth and honesty. If your project is virtually done, don't say it's virtually done, tell them it's done. If a sudden problem arises, don't lose your cool. Gather the facts until you know what the true nature of the problem is before reporting about it. Your job is to deliver results, make sure you don't bring bad news unless you really, really have to.
If another group is reducing your effectiveness for reasons of overlapping turf, jealousy, history, whatever, try make an accomodation with them, even if it's temporary. (Keep your friends close, your enemies closer). Watch out for the agendas of underlings. If you have a politically motivated person working for you, get them gone.
Maintain the avenues of communications. Don't allow someone to bypass you in either direction. If someone bypassed you with their idea, either take charge of the project, or end the project.
Use dog psychology when dealing with people; reward good behavior, punish bad behavior, be consistent.
Dog psychology; there is an Alpha, be the alpha or chaos will follow.
Maintain perspective. You may love the work and the project, but to the CEO and his direct reports, you're a liability. Be prepared to move on and leave the work and project behind.
Life is an adventure.
1:4 Rule (Score:3, Interesting)
On our Program Engineering class we were told that when a coder group becomes over 4 person in size, it will need one person dedicated to its bureaucratic needs. ie. handle interoperating with other such sub-groups, handle general paperwork etc.
Even then, at most 60% of workers time (of that 4) will be real work, not interoperation with other members and subgroups.
I'd say that's pretty good estimate. When I did my work in a team of 1-2, I coded or actively worked on a solution 90% of time, when team size grew more and more time was 'wasted' communicating. (Communication also paid off as some solutions we came together to were way better than what was my first estimation of correct action).
Some hints from somone who hates management (Score:3, Interesting)
Anglo-American business, not all business. (Score:3, Interesting)
If a different model of business would you suspect serve you better, move.
This isn't the snide "if you don't like it ship out" remark, it's a genuine suggestion that you might prefer a different model of business. I know it comes as a shock to many American and Brits when they realise that their model of business isn't the way all countries do business.
I got fed-up with the bullshit that surrounded working in London so I moved to Spain. In a few years I'll probably check out France or Italy... I'm not talking about a young mans bus mans holiday either, I'm 36 and an experienced programmer/developer.
This also isn't to suggest other countries are better or worse... there's advantages and disadvantages to any model. Simply there are differences, and a variety of expressed values in business.
The upside also is that trying such a move is actually quite low risk. For most people (not all I'd admit), trying work in a different country can only enhance their CV even should the person decide the experiment is a failure.
If you are interested in trying it out... find a place abroad where lots of your nationality holiday... that has a "resort" presence, and preferably where plenty of your nationality are buying property. Chances are there's a fair few local property management companies that have a really hard time getting hold of good developers. Start learning the local language, and if you do decide you want to stay you can start integrating yourself more into the local business.
American and British programmers have a good reputation abroad.... Well actually I know British programmers do, and my assumption is American programmers would too.
From a lot of what people are expressing here as how they'd prefer to do things in business.... learn German. The German model of business fits a lot of what people are describing. Or if you fancy something less extreme, get a job in London which is just starting an upturn at the moment. The business there will be the Anglo-American model you're familiar with just slightly less extreme.
The world's a big place and you have a lot of choices.
I usually ignore the politics (Score:5, Interesting)
The largest company I ever worked for was right out of college. I didn't understand the politics and just concentrated on doing my job. Oddly enough, politics was never much of a problem there.
The one thing that most helped me there was when I was walking down the hall one day, happy after fixing a problem that had been bugging me for a couple of days. I ran into the two hatchetmen for the company, one of whom was my boss.
My boss asked me what I was up to and I told him how I had fixed the problem that had kept me busy the previous two or three days. His next question caught me by surprise when he asked "Who was at fault?"
I asked him what he meant and he restated the question as "Who created the problem in the first place?" So I answered that it was me and a bit of what caused the problem. (After 25 years, I really don't remember what it was about.)
A couple of years later, my boss reminded me of that and told me that accepting responsibility for the problem instead of trying to shift the blame raised their estimates of me more than anything else I could have done. According to him, 99% of the people in the company would have tried to shift the blame elsewhere and the two of them found it refreshing to get an honest answer.
I keep close tabs on my subordinates (Score:1, Interesting)
[snaps out of it]
Oh wait. That's what MY manager does.
Sigh. I can't think of a better lesson on how NOT to manage than the one I'm subjected to every day. Micro doesn't even begin to describe my manager's management style.
Re:Dale Carnegie (Score:3, Interesting)
If we are suggesting advice from dead Americans, don't forget Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin had the habit of doing at least one task publicly -- for example, sending himself to pick up supplies, instead of using an employee. He tried to cultivate an image of being a hard worker.
Franklin seemed to think that not only did you have to be a hard worker, but others needed to know you were a hard worker, to be successful.
This is for IT workers (Score:3, Interesting)
Selective Enforcement; Gay sex web sites at work? No problem if it's someone who is nice. But if they're a department head fighting for a piece of your budget, no mercy. Selective enforcement is similar to flying by the book.
Selective Infection: Not saying I'd deliberately infect someone's machine with a virus but if virus updates just happened to be late getting to the butthead department, well that's just a darn shame, isn't it? And, oh look, they infected everyone else in their department. Hey, it looks like one of them was visiting gay sex web sites on his work machine! You bastard!
I find that works particularly well working with the financial departments. You scratch my budget, I'll make sure you're always at the top of the priority list. But painful budget cuts...owww, tisk-tisk. You know tisk-tisk is really BAD. Someone cut all your linked spreadsheets? Oh, my, that sounds bad. Must be a permissions issue. Those can take a long time to track down, too bad you cut my staff as we don't have a lot of people to spare right now.
You can do even more fun things if you run their phone system. One of the people I used to work for shut off all the phones at the security office, except the emergency lines, because he got a speeding ticket. Couple phone calls and the ticket went away and the phones mysteriously started working again.
Re:The Art of War (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of great suggestions, though I disagree with this one. I came into mid-level management at a company a few years, mentoring under a COO/CTO who had learned how to play the Fortune 500 political game rather well. My first six months were consistent with my normal alpha-male approach to things, and nearly got my ass fired.
I learned there is a great deal of co-opting, passive strategy that needs to be played, and often the foolish alpha male is the one who ends up giving Project Tar Baby a big hug. Instead, show you're an excellent listener to the other department heads (nod, take diligent notes, and then behind the scenes you can slaughter their absurd ideas with carefully constructed, politically correct rejections, if need be) and you'll prevail. Let other departments come to you in this respect and you end up being the decision maker. Instead of coming across as obstinant, you can employ a wealth of "objective feasibility issues" to bury absurd requests.
One of my favorite methods for handling worthless busy-work requests from service departments was what we called the YES* approach. The technique relied on the "cost center funding" challenge some departments will encounter (a cost center is a part of a company, like the human resources department, that does not generate revenue but instead generates costs. It is there in a service role to support those that produce the revenue and usually has much less political clout because it doesn't pay the bills, but rather helps spend the money).
For instance, when I'd get some unfunded mandate from HR like a new training requirement, or employee review process where HR wanted my managers to fill out weekly management reports on each employee to be used by HR for some unexplained reason (probably to put in their file cabinet and demonstrate they were actually doing something more than surf websites all day - we had our own review system that worked fine), I'd evaluate the time required of a manager, multiply it times the costing rate and the total number of affected managers, and come up with an annual financial impact. Then I'd send a financing memo back to the HR lackey who sent the mandate telling them we were excited about the program and would only need the CFO's authorization to transfer the referenced amount of money into our budget to cover the costs of administering it. I buried a pathetic revised employment contract that demanded my guys assign all their off-work inventions (including open source work) to the company for a dollar consideration in the same manner. "Great idea guys. It'll take $20,000 for legal to assist is in evaluating the impact of this contract. Please go get the budget transfer authorization from the CFO for me and we'll get right on it."
In case you're not familiar with what happens next, the poor HR staffer (who works for a cost center, mind you), has to decide whether to go piss off the chief financial officer to spend even more money chasing unproductive ends. The CFO is usually a tight-assed person and doesn't throw money around without good justification, At a minimum, he's going to have a pile of busy work the HR lackey will have to complete just so he'll spend the time to review the proposal. Since these cost center people almost never actually plan their mandates out, they don't have the documentation necessary to cover the funding and the "mandate" dies an anonymous death.
Here you're not seen as opposing anybody's efforts - if anything, you play up the enthusiasm for their proposal. I should also note that this doesn't work very well when the requesting party is a profit center you're supposed to be supporting and can demonstrate direct linkage to revenue generation and their request. Opposing these kind of requests is dangerous - the CFO (and other top management) will regard you as an obstacle to that revenue dollar they expect.
The other major recommendation I'd have for young alphas up there who're moving
Re:The Art of War (Score:3, Interesting)
Where I work we have a saying that things happen not because of processes, but despite of them. Getting things done means having and using a network, having contacts, getting and disseminating information.
48 Laws of Power by Robert Green (Score:5, Interesting)
by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers
http://www.tech.purdue.edu/Cgt/Courses/cgt411/cove y/48_laws_of_power.htm [purdue.edu]
Law 1
Never Outshine the Master
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite - inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
Law 2
Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
Law 3
Conceal your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.
Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
Law 5
So Much Depends on Reputation - Guard it with your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
Law 6
Court Attention at all Cost
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.
Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
Law 8
Make other People come to you - use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains - then attack. You hold the cards.
Law 9
Win through your Actions, Never through Argument
Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
Law 10
Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
You can die from someone else's misery - emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are onl
Ah office politics (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps I should explain that I am a late comer to geekdom. I spend most of my youth and younger years in a completly different jobfield. I was a baker and you can imagine that in your average family bakery there is little room for office politics. Hell when you are already there and the family slowly wakes up above you and comes down to the bakery itself in their various morning attire to get bread and stuff it kinda tears down the walls of management.
So IT came as a bit of a culture shock to me. Lines of communication were alien to me.
Nonetheless there was this whole internet bubble effect that even before the boom itself meant that anyone who had a brain could be hired and trained as a developer. I have a brain and have become a reasonable programmer. I am not brilliant, I will never develop the next killer app but I have setup several quality apps that have proven their worth.
After initial training I was put to detached to a dutch temp agency company that also owned a teaching institute. Some person smarter then me had decided that these two companies needed a new application to do their work in, the temp agency one to keep track of jobs and temps, the teaching institute to schedule classes and students. For some reason that I think goes against the basic off all IT development (keep it simple) these two entirely seperate activities were to be done in one application.
This obvious leads to trouble as it means if one is down for maintance, the other is too. That is if you ever get it developed in the first place.
The development did not go smoothly but that was the task of another company. You all probably know them, giganctic IT companies that are famous for never deliviring on time or on budget but that always get the next project because they so totally screwed up the last one that any manager that dares to suggest that they are crap will be undermining every other managers position.
It was a fixed price deal. Another INSTANT problem alert because this means that the longer the project is delayed the less profit the development company is going to make until finally they are only going to make a loss on it. So they cut top staff and replace them by idiots reasoning perhaps that if they are not going to make profit they might as well try to make it a learning experience.
So two+ years and the software is in a state that you could barely call alpha.
The situation is this, you have the customer who I shall Temp Agency A and Teaching Institure B. They have so little to do with each other that people from B are not at the site of A. Makes communication REAL easy. Further more company A is so uptodate that the internet is restricted to one solitary computer unconnected to the rest of the network.
Big Development company C has pulled people who made the original design (wich while basically flawed had some intresting ideas) and even taken back development from the site of A. They are now losing money on the deal and so really want to now deliver and see any more work to be a new contract item. This means that every bug fix is instead classified as a feature request.
Now enter the tiny company I work for,.they got several people already there doing some unrelated development, doing a rollout of some new desktops (NT4 yeah this is back when dinosaurs walked the earth young ones) AND doing testing of the new application.
The testing was being run by one of my seniours with the actual testers made up out of girls from the actual temp agency's, these girls would prove to be angels descended from heaven later on.
I am brought in with just basic training and a little experience maintaining an existing app for another cusomter. Basically I am a green but smart developer and a complete virgin to the office enviroment. My job? To convert the data from the two existing applications to the new application.
I now encounter the following problems:
Re:don't even bother -- there is no solution (Score:5, Interesting)
The combination of the two events changed my attitudes about business. I want the cash now. I won't do anything for future promises. And I realize I can be laid off without notice at any time- even if the company is doing well until the second that happens.
The only way you can trust the president of the company is if you ARE the president of the company- and even then I'm not sure.
Re:Dale Carnegie (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all very well to say "Be positive", but a lot of the time, the best thing to do is to stop doing whatever it is that you're doing. Inaction is often better than action, because there's normally a large selection of actions that will make things worse, and the handful that will make things better are costly, so you can't do them often because your resources are limited. So the right answer often is "What you are doing is bad. Stop it". And no amount of saying "Be positive" is going to change that.
Honesty vs sugarcoating (Score:1, Interesting)
Definitely true, and this often leads to miscommunication. My company started a major new project recently, and at the first technical meeting on it the senior VP responsible went over the details and specifications and gushed about how easy this was going to be. We engineers are of course already familiar with the technical details, and are aware that this is in fact going to be an extremely difficult project that may or may not succeed. If it succeeds, it will be by a great deal of hard work and not a little inspiration. The VP's 'easy' comment just demoralized us. The sad thing is, I think he was actually trying to motivate us. The business people just think differently than the engineers. I would much rather be working on something challenging, and I certainly don't want the boss thinking a challenging project is easy, because then we have to fight for resources and when the project succeeds we don't get the credit we deserve.
Re:The Art of War (Score:4, Interesting)
Great post! Definitely one to keep in mind when dealing with other departments. I am currently working in the QA department. We are a new department in our division of the company which was set up to meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. We are currently fighting the battles that I.T. traditionally fought, the worst one being sales people promising products to clients on a certain date without consulting the developers.
In the past, this ended up causing I.T. to work overtime and weekends to get a product developed on time. Because of the lack of time, most testing beyond unit testing was skipped, and the product was put into production with fingers crossed. Any problems were fixed on the fly.
We have been trying to change this culture without much success -- until the last few months. Our ally has turned out to be our parent corporation -- they have sent in auditors to review the process. They have the clout to force changes that will improve the process, and we (QA) don't have to step on any toes to get it done. The best part is that we were programming before moving to QA, we have been able to get I.T. to buy into the QA process. It is nice to work with I.T. people who care about what they write.
Is this cultural? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm amazed to read of the experiences of advanced technical people in Fortune 500 companies and how it parallels the experiences of technical people in the former Soviet Union. Especially some of the more extreme examples documented in The Gulag Archepello (no spell checker on this PC sorry).
It sometimes seems that after the Berlin Wall fell, the USA and USSR switched political administration systems. The American corporations all went Stalinist and the Soviet Appartchiks all went entrepenerial. If this is so then the corporations will start to become massively inefficient due massive distrust in the middle ranks and refusal to work in the trenches.
Anyway, thanks for posting the account of your experiences.
Re:There is no spoon (er gold watch) (Score:3, Interesting)
Tzu-kung asked, "Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not Reciprocity such a word?"
Analects XV: 23 (Legge tr.)
Re:The Art of War (Score:3, Interesting)
SUN TZU is a great reading when going to the cubicle battle, and you will find lots of insights ...
You know, I wonder if Machiavelli or his contemporaries were even aware of Sun Tzu.