Re: Corporate Humour



On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, BMJ wrote:

Straydog wrote:

<snip>

Having worked in both environments, I can guarantee you that corporations are much worse.


There is a third environment: govt/military. And, I've been in all three. 

So have I.  Corporations are the worst.

In the govt/military, there are codes, laws, procedures, and
policies. If you know what you are doing, then in the military you have the Inspector General's office and let me tell you that all rank of officer fears the IG. This is not to say that cover-ups don't happen and rules are not bent. In the corporate environment, you have the whole range of crap from the
Enron/Andersen thing to petty crap where some overling can "change" the policy, use vague phrases in memos and letters, and then after whatever has happened, "change back" the policy and if the higher-ups back the guy up, then he gets away with it (eg. the name Al Dunlap comes to mind). In academia, the Machiavellian process has, as its image, the "chairman" (and I've heard that even female chairs will do lies, double-crosses, and backstabs. The chair just simply needs to intimidate the faculty. One example (true story, but I've seen the "infrastructure" in at least several places): new chair comes in, says new policy, policy is: any purchase of equipment or services costing more than $500 needs the approval of the chair. So...you need a new still for distilled water? You need to have Physical Plant install or move a 220 volt outlet for your centrifuge? And, you mouthed-off at the chair just a little too hard? Well, guess what, the chair just does not immediately "sign-off" on his approval of your request for approval. After a month. Maybe you ask the chair "Say, did you get my request for approval?" and the chair can answer in any Machiavellian way he wants: "No, I didn't, I'll look on my desk again"...another month goes by....another excuse....another month...meanwhile you need to get research done, manuscripts sent out, grant proposals submitted...

You get my drift? This would be much less likely in a corporate environment since all departments and all individuals are working on the same big "project". In academia, its a bunch of fiefdoms, within bigger fiefdoms, that are within even bigger fiefdoms (and if the chair doesn't get along with the dean? yeah, that happens, too).

And they don't exist in corporations? I worked in one place where the sales department thought they could dictate how engineering completed their designs without having a clue whether it was physically possible.

Well, when I was at Underwriters' Labs (mid '60s), and having talked with a number of commercial reps, that was the case: sales departments are the people who are closest to the customers (remember your customer-provider relationships) and the customer is the one that feeds your paycheck. Back then, I had that idea, too, that the S&Es should be calling the shots. But, from a practical point of view, if there is no market for X, then forget X. If there is a market for Y, and sales says "There is a market for Y" then the orders were passed on. Now, this does not preclude things like the iPod for which modern corporations use advertising and marketing to _create_ markets for their junk that nobody knew they wanted before it existed.

I once worked for an oil company where the plant operators acted like they were supreme deities in their facilities, regardless of company policy, government regulation, or shareholder interest. Unfortunately, the management let them get away with it and then wondered why thing such as environmental violations frequently occurred.

Everyone needs oil. And, within each organization, there will be some fiefdoms more powerful than others and you'd better figure that out or else they will find someone else who knows how to kowtow.

So, a chair can make
one of his faculty really grovel and treat the others OK so if the one guy complains to the dean (this I knew happened at two places I've been at) the dean says the guy is a troublemaker and/or talks with the chair (and next time around, the chair sharpens the axe [maybe moves your lab and office out to the trailor 20 miles off campus, gives you no more salary raises, and even more]).


But, in academia, one doesn't have the sense that an employer owns one and one's life.

They own your life if they can take your job away and tell you not to show up any more. Or, if they can make your job so miserable that it encourages you to quit so they don't have to fire you.

In industry, particularly in corporations, there's a tendency to
dictate every aspect of one's existence, almost to the point of deciding what will served for breakfast or the colour of one's socks. Company image is, and ever shall remain, supreme. People are treated as property to be bought, sold, and modified at will because a paycheque is seen as an agreement to purchase them, rather than payment for services rendered.

Well, I will acknowledge that one should not bite the hand that feeds one, but otherwise what you wrote above is a good summary of William Whyte's book "The Organization Man" which came out around the late '50s or early '60s (and, yes, I read it cover to cover). IBM was very much like a military organization with dress codes, behavior codes, process codes/regulations/policies/etc. Makes communism look like kindergarten except over there, they would just shoot you if you didn't shape up (sometimes they just shot people anyway [that was all put here to make our 'zack' happy]).

Frequently, I
encountered the attitude: "What's the matter? Don't we pay you enough?" 

That's old. The new (current) one is: "You can be replaced."

The other old one is: "If you want your paycheck this week, you'd better stop bellyaching and get back to work."
.

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