The Dysfunctional Workplace: Part 2

For those of you who read my earlier post, I'm sure you're probably thinking that almost everyone has a few complaints about their workplace. I'm sure you're right, but I honestly feel that my current company (let's call them CDE) is one of the worst.

With Labor Day just a few days away, I thought I would do a more detailed post about CDE. Without further ado...

On the surface, one would assume that CDE would be a fabulous place to work. CDE is located in sunny Southern California, in one of the nicest office complexes around; one gets exposed to the latest and greatest widgets and widget news in the widget obsessed culture that is Southern California; the pay is decent and the benefits are top notch - where else do you get 13 paid holidays a year along with the ability to earn 3 weeks of paid time off (PTO)?

Alas, that is where the positives end and the cons begin. Grab a seat, get your popcorn and soda, and be prepared for the inner workings of the most dysfunctional workplace ever!

Let's begin...in no particular order:

1. Can you say bloated? One of the only straight shooters in the company commented to me once that CDE could fire half it's employees and be no worse for wear. He is absolutely spot on. Seriously! There are people "working" at CDE that I have absolutely no clue as to what they do. These people add absolutely no value. While I admire Senior Management for not wanting to lay off people, CDE is in the business of making money. CDE should not be a charity. Get rid of the dead weight already.
   
   
2. There is absolutely no sense of urgency within the rank and file. Things get done when they get done. Internet companies typically release updates to their website every 3 to 6 weeks. At CDE it takes 3 to 6 months...and we're an agile/scrum shop to boot. There's seriously nothing agile about the company.
   
   
3. No one really cares if they do a good job or not. Since no one ever gets fired or laid off, why bother doing a good job? There are no serious repercussions for a job poorly done. Sure, you may get marginalized, but you are still employed and doing less than before for the same salary. No wonder no one ever leaves! Sometimes I wonder if I'm working in a union for a government agency.
   
   
4. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone has a say at CDE, but no one is truly responsible for anything. Worst yet, you may be given the responsibility to get things done, but you have no authority to get them done. I'm one of these "unlucky" individuals and I'm hating every fucking minute of my job.
   
   
5. Before working here, someone had told me that CDE does a lot of numbers crunching and places a lot of emphasis on the numbers. That's true when it applies to calculating widget prices within a given area or projecting the annual widget sales rate, but CDE has a serious problem with using numbers to run the business. What good is knowing your page views for the previous week when there are no revenue numbers associated with it? How does someone run a business when no one has a clue as to whether the company made any money yesterday or is making any money so far today? If one truly looked at the web statistics, it tells us that CDE's website has a serious abandonment/bounce rate issue, but yet the company doesn't undertake any project to address it. WTF! We spent money to acquire visitors to our website, but we let them go without monetizing them. Can someone please explain that to me?
   
   
6. At CDE, we're paid to take orders...we're not paid to think or be smart business people. You can have real world data and have tested something fabulous, but if a senior exec already has his mind made up on how something should be, get ready to throw out months of work to execute their exact whim.
   
   
7. If you are new to CDE, don't expect your fellow employees to come up with great new ideas to grow the business. Everyone is conditioned to do what they are told...and no more than that. Employees do the bare minimum. Anything that will cause extra work is frowned upon.
   
   
8. Don't even get me started on the number of times that management changes its mind. Management can be involved and have sat through months of meetings, but they'll change their minds at the last minute and we'll be starting all over again.
   
   
9. Politics, politics, politics. CDE is good at politics. Almost everything is politicized. I'd be hard pressed to name one thing that isn't politicized as all the powers that be are building their little fiefdoms and trying to wrest more and more under their control. Back handed slaps and comments to weaken your rivals, saying one thing to your face while doing something completely different to wreck your project are all part of the game here.
   
   
10. Can you say passive aggressive? Almost everyone at CDE is passive aggressive. No one ever says anything negative to your face. It always goes up the chain of command and back down to you in your formal review. I don't know about you, but if someone doesn't like my work or has issues with it, I expect them to come to me so we can address it. Going to my manager and not giving me the opportunity to ask questions to understand what the complaint is does no one any good. Are we still in grade school that you can't tell me what's wrong? I must have been mistaken to think that we're all professional, working adults. My bad!
    
    
11. CDE needs to stop lying to itself by thinking its a technology company. It clearly is not as the company has never learned to use the off-the-shelf technologies it has bought nor has it ever developed anything of value internally. Again, it takes CDE 3-6 months to release anything onto the website. Enough said!
    
    
12. For being an Internet company, CDE is deathly afraid of change. If something isn't final or completed, no one is going to touch it or work on it. Even the smallest changes, such as changing the color of a button or changing the button location, elicits a big groan from the Development organization. Since when does the Internet stand still for us to "perfect" everything? Isn't the whole point of an Internet company or website to change/adapt quickly and iterate over time to get better? I guess no one ever informed CDE of this!

If these cons amount to anything positive, it's that working at CDE allows for great work-life balance. As you can imagine, it's strictly a 9 to 6 job since no one really stays in the office past 6pm.

To recap for you:

CDE Pros: Great benefits, such as 3 weeks of PTO and lots of paid holidays. Good work life balance.

CDE Cons: Too many to list...and trying to call out just one or two would be a disservice. I don't want people to think that CDE is better than it actually is.

My Advice to Management: Run the company like a money making business with headcount that matches the revenue numbers. Stop running the business like a hole-in-the-wall taco stand. (Apologies as I just insulted taco stands!)