The UnSub

For those who know me, some may view me as unforgiving, harsh and critical. I never regret what I’d said to some of these people whom I worked with. This post is not an entry of self-justification, it is a reminder to most of us who are very comfortable with mediocrity.

The root of mediocrity…
I wrote a brash email to my manager over the issue of time-sheet. Despite my futile attempts to better at office diplomacy, I have to do something about such wide-spread stupidity. We hardly stop and as why, or challenge certain assumptions.

The fundamental problem:

The naive association of quality/productivity with time

Yes, I understand time is money but what triggered me to write all these was this statement (paraphrased): “Each of you must work 40.5 hr/week, otherwise you will be seen as not productive”.

Unfortunately, by making people behave like punch-card workers does not make it any better, regardless of project or product-base development. Mediocrity is encouraged and reinforced by such management practices. With such a system, people will be conditioned to see the value of their work measured in units of time alone.

The most obvious sign of failures of such a system is increase in the time of development-cycles. Why? Because most people will give themselves more time! Suppose you complete sooner and better, then you will be seen as NOT productive because your time-sheet shows that you are spending less time. So why bother to improve, might as well take your own time?

The cure…
This may look ridiculously simple but it is not easy:

1. Measure your work in terms of the benefits
I am not talking about benefiting yourself but others (customers and fellow-workers) in general. Quantifying benefits is much more motivating because it let’s you see something more than a task or job. When your company sells something, it is all about the benefits, no one gives much a damn about the zillion features without first seeing the benefits.

2. Create competitive advantages
Sales people think Benefits, Advantages then Features. Engineering on the other hand does the reverse: create features that translate to advantages and benefits. In fact, good engineers are predominately focus on handling failures, so don’t blame for being too negative, it is just part of the job. That being said, it doesn’t mean we can’t quantify in terms of advantages and benefits.

3. Do more with less time (and not the reverse)
This has to do with attitude which leads to wider skill-set and creativity. Even if you were a specialist, it doesn’t hurt to understand other roles (eg sales or support) so as to work better together. It is good to ask if there is a better way to do something, especially so if it is frequently done. Can we save time and do-away with stuff that has little value but time-consuming? Of course, that is true if one is able to discern what is valuable. If in doubt, read 2 and 3 again.

Closing note…
Yeah, I know it is not politically-correct or nice to talk-down others. I usually do not give a shit if I do not have to work with these people. But I have to say something because it is a matter of survival. If people choose to remain status quo and take more time, use silly NPV valuation approach based on man-days, then we will be out of business soon!

The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect : an interesting discussion of the struggles with information technology (IT) development in companies. It is an apt analogy and applies even at a larger scale, like a country’s brain drain, not just in the IT industry.

Talented people simply move on when they hit the limit of managements’ fuck-ups and stupidities. As time grows, these people have shorter tolerance. Those who remain generally have some forms of learned helplessness or are enjoying as part of the corporate incumbents. You are either leveraging or being leveraged. Sometimes, it is better to be talented at leveraging than be leveraged. Leveraging and manipulation is just a very fine line.

The unpolished talent who is wise, will take the opportunity to enjoy L.I.F.E for 1-3 years as one of the phases of his/her career. Learning In (a) Fucked-up Environment is just one of the many ironies of life. We need adversities to mold us. We need a fall due to arrogance before considering the humble pie. The list of ironies can go on..

In short, we grow when we get our of our comfort zones. If you are getting too comfortable, watch out. Yet another irony.

An excerpt from CNA’s “Empathy, diverse viewpoints needed in policy-making”

On hindsight, the LTA could have consulted “a little bit more, whether it’s the commuters or the taxi companies”, said Ms Tan, 32, a Public Service Commission overseas scholar. “That cannot pre-empt all the problems. Hopefully, that would help them get a better sense of what people actually want.”

Mr Lim, also a scholar, said empathy was a “critical” quality for a civil servant, particularly when it comes to policies impacting the needy. In fact, his wife, a lawyer who “is probably one of the biggest critics”, is his perfect sounding board for any policy ideas he has. “If I can’t defend it to her, there would be problems,” Mr Lim, 33, said in jest.

I guess the ability to empathize is not properly measured while selecting these scholars who may have high IQ and necessary “inter-personal” skills for interviews. Perhaps, these people (who are drivers) responsible for endorsing their under-researched policy are those who can never imagine what it is like to take a cab, and possibly been pissed by a taxi driver on the road at some point in time.

Honestly speaking, the outcomes and possibilities of enforcing such policy are not exactly rocket science and anyone with a decent amount of common sense can imagine what can happen. The lack of empathy shows that the system here works more with IQ than EQ. In any case, to make a taxi behave like a bus in the CBD is nothing ingenious or intelligent.

Some companies begin to see the power of collaborative sharing as with the Open-source movement. So they go on to introduce policies and setup mechanisms for their software engineers/programmers to share through Wikis and such.

I believe that such collaborative tools and sharing will benefit many people. Just as Web2.0 is an age of democratization of production tools for the people, I also see that the success of a cultural change within an organization lies with the people and heavily hinged on their willingness and ability.

People are intrinsically selfish. Unless there are tangible incentives, why bother to write and share? Even if someone bothers to write, will the rest bother to read?

You may have heard of Pareto’s 80/20 principle and even perhaps “he who knows the most, does most of the work”. So “smarter” people would rather stay low than be expose to such “risks”. It is a matter of “I want to do it” versus “I have to do it”. Getting people to conform to policies may not be the best idea especially when the crowd has relatively high IQ.

Writing is a skill. Programmers generally suck at documentation. A sense of repulse typically runs through their veins when it comes to explaining their wonderful implementation in a human language. A saying goes “I can do math doesn’t mean I can teach math”. Writing articles to convey certain technique, idea or technology clearly requires time and effort.

If typical programmers can document well, I won’t be reading that many crappy hand-over documents throughout my 3 different jobs. Unless you have that much time in your office writing Wikis, you are better off just pasting links to articles that are already written out there that are of certain quality.

Cultural change takes time and leadership. People may want to start small and easy by posting good articles found elsewhere in internal discussion boards or sharing useful RSS feeds and go on from there.

As more people participate and see the benefits of knowledge sharing, the likelihood of people willingly to exchange increases. As one read more good articles, they can internalize and appreciate such knowledge management, perhaps even be able to externalize their knowledge more effectively.

Such positive changes are part of the reasons why people stay with a company and hopefully it is experienced before people start embarking on another career change.