Friday, May 27, 2022

Scammish: Employee Engagement Survey Anonymity / Confidentiality and Why I Rather Not

Every year or some companies are twice a year, I have to fill an employee engagement survey. Every time I fill it in I cringe in the information that I have to share. I have been on teams of 5-10.

I Can Tell With Some Uncertainty From the Results

Most bosses will share the results. From the different graphs, I can usually tell which data point is which person. It does require that I am a bit familiar with each person. The easy data points are the people who have issues/problems. But not any issues/problems, these are typically the people who really, really, really want to help the group. Because most people will just lie on the survey.

I Tried But...

I have randomly been extra truthful on the survey. I even filled out the open ended response on extra this to say.

I also have routine meetings with all my bosses. If they did not, I set up the meeting. So they should already know my positions on certain topics. 

Even Ideally... Surveys Are Totally Useless

5+ companies, multiple more bosses (due to reorgs), they all have the same results... nothing. I was part of one group that actually did try harder. Still all "improvements" barely last the one call discussing the results.

Sure the boss may appear excited for the change, animated, hoo rah rah, booya, etc, I have only seen one get past the meeting . That one time lasted maybe half a year (but COVID happened... so........)

Survey Answer Is Always Perfect or Near Perfect With One Exception

If you are not confident in your workplace and you just want to stay in the the status quo, the the answer is ALWAYS, ALWAYS the happy answer. If the question is negative, then the answer is the negative of that negative.

For example, do you hate your work? Answer is fully disagree.
For example, do you love your work? Answer is full agree.

ALWAYS

Why? Because everyone else is. And if you disagree, the boss will know. And most bosses will cut you because it is easier to deal with than dealing with the real problem.

What if you have a good relationship with your boss? Then the answer would naturally be the same anyways.

What if the question is on the corporate level? Still the happy answer.

Exception?

You really hate your job and you really want to tell the company about it. But why would you want to help at the end? The answer is still the same.

Unless you really, really want to screw over your boss and you plan on never leaving. Because that sore spot will forever stay on his employee engagement score. But likely, he'll identify you anyways and get you fired. Then his score will go up the next year and it'll look like he did something............

Sooooo...... for me, if I were to analyze the results... I would expect everyone to either say they are happy or lie that they are happy. Anything less is more of a sign to what I consider my real answer...

REAL ANSWER for company if possible

Hire or promote good managers if you want to improve. Train managers? I have not seen a single manager ever change the way they manage their team. It seems to be a natural soft skill that people either have or don't have. Jerk managers will continue to be jerk managers. They may pretend for a short period of time. I am even tempted to say that even if you incentive the preferred behavior (if that is even possible), I think they still wouldn't change (or change back). Even for mediocre managers, lazy managers, hands-on managers, etc.

Maybe, maybe.... change the incentives on how teams should work. The biggest problem I see even for good managers is that the "real" demand is to deliver quickly with good enough QA that defects can go undetected. "Real" because the demand that managers deal with is usually different than what their managers say the demands are.

For example, lvl2 manager will say the demand is to upgrade the system to the next system but in reality is stressing lvl1 manager to manage current fires which is not related to upgrade. Lvl3 manager is telling lvl2 to modernize but escalating fires to lvl2. This is my dubiousness on modifying the incentives.

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

RANT: Why Scrum / Agile Does NOT Work for non-IT companies

My brain is just hurting right now. I can no longer take just how dumb people are in general. It just boggles my mind how little people just use their brains. And this is why I believe agile just cannot work in non-IT companies.

How to Make Agile Work

Just say you are doing agile. Use agile terminology. Use words like scrum, daily stand-up, retrospective / post mortem, acceptance criteria, etc. Say it with confidence, no one really knows what they mean. And those who do, just speak louder and interrupt them.

Breakdown three month waterfall processes into two week waterfall processes (but call them sprints). You cannot do a TRUE sprint because the other teams are not dedicating to the who agile process. If you need to show delivery, say that QA is taking too long. Deliver quickly with terrible quality. Make sure to blame others for the problems. Worst-case say there was too much scope creep.

Do daily stand-up call, a daily call that is supposed to be 15 minutes as 30 minutes. Don't worry what that means, just say it is a short status call. It is never short nor a status call. It will always go over 30 minutes because there is always someone who does not know how to summarize their status.

Want to be a scrum master? Just say you are one. No need for certification nor all the testing and training. Everyone I worked with who had one are absolutely clueless. Sure some try, but no one really understands. Why because none of them are engineers of any sort. They are just PMs that couldn't make it to be a PM. Or worse, they are engineers or analysts that couldn't make it.

If you want to do something your way, you HAVE to "act" dumber (or be yourself whichever is dumber) than the other person. There is no logic or reason that can persuade the other person especially if the person is actually smart. What persuades a logical person from even trying is to make them think that you are too dumb to be reasoned with. They may say something like "that will save you on step" and you should respond "I want to add a useless comment" but don't say useless... because you have to show the managers that you are doing something even if that something is nothing but you cannot say nothing... so nothing is something. Or, just agree but continue working as if you never had that conversation.

Even if you have the power to persuade people and get them to understand the process, DO NOT DO IT. You are just going to inflate the director's ego. He was just guessing stuff but now that he saw that it works, he will assume that it was all him and will take all credit. And because you were probably the biggest trouble-maker by making people complain that you are forcing them to do stuff, you'll likely get laid-off for being the most unproductive person.

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Work Life: Programmer vs Developer vs Engineer (Software / Non-Tech World) IMO

Outside of the tech companies, they are essentially the same thing. For companies that have a tech side but is wholly managed by the business side, majority of the managers and much less HR have absolutely no idea what the differences are.

The company will use whatever title to make the person happy. If the company does well and expand, then they will use whatever title that person had last. Even if the company merges with another both companies had no idea and basically use dice to decide which titles to use. 

In all my experience of a very small percentage of companies either directly or indirectly, this has always been the case. Even the titles of levels or jr/sr are quite arbitrary. Some companies have rules but most are based on years. Although they claim experience but there are too many contraries to the rule. To me, they appear to just use it to leverage the employees.

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Work Life: Dealing with Anti-Change Hypocrites

In almost all large corporations, there always seem to be someone that is against any sort of change in practice. I add "in practice" because none of them will openly admit that they are against change. One of the reasons is that they are usually the loudest person about how horrible things are now and that is why they are always behind.

And it is this last point that I believe is the crux of all their "lies" and hypocrisies. They are able to use it as a crutch to continue business as usual because to them this is "retirement work". They only say there so many other factors that are impacting their "low performance".

The reason it is difficult to deal with these people especially with management that do not understand the nuance of human relationships. Things like "lies", "retirement work", and "low performance" are difficult to identify. Interestingly, these people seem to be the most productive in the most obvious of metrics, appearing to be the busiest body.

But there are many red flags that can be used to identify the situation. One of these is "this is how we have always done it" but may not be in these words. This can also be "impossible to regression test", "the new process does cannot handle of these exceptions", or "not enough resources to manage current process and new process". They appear busy because they are just doing repetitive tasks that appear complicate. 

A harder flag to identify is that they avoid building a solution that will address the majority of the problems. They are always the first against standards or general processes. Whenever someone new joins and asks why can't we build a simple solution, that person will face a long list of reasons why it cannot be.

Which leads to another flag. If someone actually sat down to identify these claims, one would find most of these are anecdotal. And in most cases, the simpler solution would even address the claim. One of the favorites used is that they do not have enough resources. The reason they do not have resources is because they do not use standard. To them, additional resources would be needed but management would not give them more resources.

One reason is because they have already thrown them more resources in hopes to address the problem. But because the process does not scale, the problems continue to grow. By the time management realizes this, they are not able to appropriate additional resources. And for some reason in majority of the cases, managers are not able to just say no to incoming requests and prioritize the work so that they can reduce the workload.

Summary

There is little that can be done to change the behavior of the anti-change coworker (usually a manager). These people are difficult to deal with and takes risk to manage.

The easiest method is open the eyes of the next level manager. But it cannot be any manager, the manager needs to be someone that is able to enforce the policy change. Most managers are doormats in that they will either collapse from the list of "problems" or all bark with no bite.

Personally, I am fortunate to be in a role that typically has to funnel through me. So I make people's lives "miserable" so that they are encouraged to do the right thing. It is a lot like teaching kids to eat vegetables. And to be fully honest, this is only because I care to make things better. Otherwise, it is super easy for me to coast through my job too.

Monday, May 2, 2022

Scammish: Fake Christians

My issues with majority of the Christians that I have met are that they seem to be almost the worst kind of selfish people. They hide it in such subtle ways and rarely return any kindness. They pretend to be nice but they seemed very, very forced.

Fake Kindness or Pseudo-Kindness

If you do not like me, just ignore me. Don't go out of your way to have to greet me and ask questions you do not care about. Or just ask what the person's name is again. There is no need to prepend it with "I know we've met before, but I forgot your name... blah, blah, blah." The longer you go, the more you just seem to be a jerk because you do not care to remember if it really bothers you that much. So now you are just lying about something you do not even care to remember the first few times. I understand many people cannot remember, but most people do remember after the 5th or 10th time. Or just talk without knowing my name.

I know doing kindness should not expect anything in return, but Christians seem to be the worst at returning anything at all. And if it something that is returned, it usually has no consideration to the person receiving the gift. Giving a gospel verse to a non-Christian is not a return on kindness. Giving a gift that the recipient clearly does not use or cannot use is not a return on kindness. AND, I do not know if that is any worse than not even trying to be kind in return. Is maybe kindness only allowed to other Christians? Do Christians give each other gospel verses?

I have lost count on the number of times I have helped Christians that was out-of-my-way and never to hear from them again. Currently, I am pleasantly surprised to just get a genuine thank you. Mostly I just get the fakest thanks. I also do not know if it is worse to get a "I am the unluckiest person" thank you or a "so over the top" thank you. 

Don't ask for favors when you will not make any time to return the favor!! Just say you need help. Why do Fake Christians have a need to feel good about themselves? Do not promise things you do not plan to keep. Yes, there is the usual "plan the next event" that never happens. But if I invite you over, don't promise to invite us over if you never plan to. Sometimes I don't even think they even try. Here, I prefer you just give a stupid fake thank you and just leave. Don't say that you will return the favor. Don't tell me when I am free to go over. 

Why would I basically invite myself over? How about you invite me over and I tell you if I am free? Or? Ask when I am free? I will never bring this up on a whim (does anyone?). If I invite you over, I invite first then ask when you are available. If you tell me you are free and want to come over, I am going to think you (not a personal friend) are a bit creepy. 

And when we do plan something, don't say you are always free when you contradict it within minutes with "sorry, I have small group during that time" or mass or another church event or a church gathering and basically you end that you promise to let me know then never call... every single time. 

Summary

I know my experience is very anecdotal so I do give the benefit of the doubt to new people that I meet. I also reserve that it may be possible that my sample size may be too small. They are still currently one of the worst types of people I meet.