Re: Rugby engineering overrun gets worse

In article <670c41ed-a722-4d21-9939-48631c64fc51@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
s.com>, John B <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> scribeth thus
On 4 Jan, 13:26, The Good Doctor <docnews2...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's only a matter of time.  Madness, absolute madness.  But there's
no doubt that stupidly daft ideas create lots of work for the IT
nerds.  They are the scourge of British society, with their grossly
incompetent fingers poking into every single aspect of our lives, all
to be placed on two silver discs and lost in the fucking post.

(sorry)

I think you'll find that that particular scandal was specifically due
to the *non*-usage of "IT nerds" by middle-management idiots with no
technical skills who thought they had a better work-around.

Some might even claim that middle-management idiots with no technical
skills who believe they have a better work-around are a common link
between problems commonly observed within the rail industry and the IT
industry...



Heres a bit writ on another group which I reckon sums it up rather
well;(....



What people say in job adverts, spout in management meetings and
management training courses is a million miles removed from the way they
actually behave in the office.

A large corporation is a political power struggle, par excellence. How
any work gets done at all is beyond me, frankly.


When selling to middle management in large companies, the guiding
principles are these.

1/. Its not his money he is spending. He may have a budget, but that is
as far as it goes.

2/. If he doesn't spend his budget, it will be reduced next year,

3/. If he overspends his budget it will be less next year.

4/. What is best for the company that employs him is not even an issue
to be discussed.

5/. What counts is what is best for his CV and career in the next job he
has his eyes set on.

6/. He hasn't a clue what he needs: Fortunately neither do his bosses.

7/. He is in a terrible position of having to take a risk which may
damage his career, or take no risk at all, and fail to achieve his
imposed objectives.

8/. His objectives are seldom anything to do with the actual quality of
the service or products delivered. They will have been set as a
political compromise of wish list selection in a 'meeting' that didn't
really resolve or decide anything, and put into a huge document that he
has had to write/had written, which usually contradicts itself, and is
seldom comprehensible. Its been signed off by his boss, who is frankly
bored with the whole thing and only read the executive summary, which
contains all the right buzz phrases.

9/. The sale consists in providing enough spurious guarantees so that he
feels that his arse is at least covered with respect to total project
implosion. Plus enough project documentation to convince his boss that
he has in fact done his job properly. It also has to be at an impressive
price that stretches, but does not exceed the budget. Any less makes him
look like a insignificant manager, whose job could be done by anyone.
Any more means he is impecunious and cannot control a budget.

10/. Finally, when it all goes into meltdown, the project must be
structured and offloaded in such a way, that neither he, nor his boss,
get any brown stuff on their trousers. The neatest way to do this is to
complain that his department is over stressed and understaffed, which
turns the institutionalised incompetence into a plus: he may just get a
budget rise and run an even bigger department next year if his boss
feels a bit threatened too. However this runs the risk that the whole
department may get closed down. So a smart manager will have kept some
budget back to spend on an external consultant, whose job is to come in
and analyse the situation, and write a report that exonerates the people
employing him, and manages to place the blame squarely on the shoulders
of the most expendable staff members, or contractors. This is an art
form, and one I have had to do in my time.

11/. Finally the key to selling is to make sure that nothing legally
sueable was ever said in the contract, so that while its full of empty
promises, they are all conditioned by phrases that say things like 'best
efforts : there should be no assurances of a concrete nature anywhere in
it, to protect the vendors interests. I remember a wonderful time with
Cisco in the channel islands 'We can offer a 24 hour call-out service
anywhere in the British Isles" "On a winters day, with a gale blowing,
the ports closed and all aircraft grounded? Are you sure?" :-)

You will note that in none of the sequences of events here, has a simple
cost effective solution to a real world problem ever been discussed.
Frankly, who needs one? It may actually happen as a result of some keen
junior slipping a spec of quality past the bull***, in which case the
manager will take credit for at the worst, being sharp enough to employ
such a good 'team player'

BUT that guy will be watched like a hawk: he is obviously extremely
dangerous, and patently capable of taking the manager's job away from
him along with most of his staff and budget. Normally he will be
constructively dismissed shortly afterwards.

A real 'team player' is the guy who won't threaten your job, but will
correct your mistakes in a way that makes you look good, and probably
without you noticing it, and seldom even brings them to your attention
and is there to take the blame when things go wrong. Above all a good
team player never ever dulls your day with doses of reality. Corporate
life is all about perception, how you are perceived by others, how your
boss perceives you, how your CV and its implied value in the salary
stakes show..

Whether or not anything is actually achieved is a completely incidental
and usually accidental issue...

You only have top look at the whole mess of government as an employer to
see how true this all is.

--


Dear me, whoever wrote that must have looked inside my head at some
stage. Everything there is *exactly* right, and the reason I never got
on in the corporate rat-race. I have worked for large and small
companies, and just couldn't hack it in large companies where *no-one*
had the interests of their employer at heart, only what was good for
them and their CV. At least in small companies, there's nowhere for
anyone to hide, and everyone must pull their weight. One of my
colleagues once said that he never wanted to work for a company that was
large enough to have a Human Resources Department. Couldn't have put it
better myself.

**********************************************************************
--
Tony Sayer



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