Get to work and realize I’ve been shanghaied into a weeklong planning session for the new {MAJOR IT INITIATIVE} (Actually, I’d been shanghaied a couple weeks ago, I’d just repressed the knowledge until this morning)
I skim it over what I can find out about this week and see how it only hits me tangentially at this point in time.
I push back on the project lead and get, “Well, you need to be ther Monday, but the rest of the week you can skip if you don’t want to be part of the decision making process.” Now the person who is leading this project is great. I will go to the ends of the Earth for her.
So I sit through the morning. At lunch she asks me what I’ve taken away so far and I honestly say, “Nothing a two page quick reference chart wouldn’t have told me.”
So she says how these sessions have been helpful to a lot of people to sit in and see what is going on.
I did not follow up with, “A lot of people are stupid.”
The afternoon came and went and there was nothing directly pertinent to me discussed. An entire day gone like that.
The rest of the week I will be available via IM for anything that directly affects me or my reports. Otherwise I am letting chips fall where they may.
I’ve been told that at Samsung HQ, staff only attend parts of meetings relevant to them. They can watch and listen to live feeds of meetings while doing other things, and if they feel they need to be involved they simply go off to the meeting and leave when their part is over. On the way to the meeting, of course, they can follow what is going on by phone.
I haven’t been to Samsung in Korea but in the UK their internal wireless and 3G (I imagine 4g by now) network is simply the fastest thing you’ve ever come across to give them the capacity to do this.
Why couldn’t we in the West do this? Is it the cultural assumption that when big gorilla wants the band around him everybody must drop everything and run?
I have a theory that as people evolve into management, they see “calling meetings” as a sign of “I am leader, follow me.”
This is aided by those meeting loving coworkers who attend every meeting they think they can get invited to.
And this particular project has so many people on it who may understand their piece of the pie and can’t see the big picture. Death by committee.
It reminds me of a convo I had with some IT folks at a sister company:
Other Tech: “So, how did you go about setting up your GPOs for Windows 10?”
Me: “blah,blah,blah and I looked at the new policies and turned on what made sense.”
OT: “But who decided what was relevant to be set? Did you hold a committee?”
Me: “No. I set it. I’ve tweaked a few things after site support mentioned some edge cases I hadn’t considered, but why waste time with a meeting to discuss the minutia that can be GPOs with a bunch of people who don’t understand them.”
My least-favourite variant is when the committee is formed, apparently with the express purpose of telling users they don’t know what they’re doing:
Committee: we’re holding a meeting to find out which apps you use!
Me: hey, thanks for the invite! Here’s a list of all the apps everyone on my team uses at least twice a week.
Committee: hahaha that’s so cute you don’t use those for your job.
Me: yes we do, here’s documented proof.
Committee: She brought proof! That’s adorable!
(It all got straightened out, but seriously, why “gather requirements” only to treat users so badly their manager pops by after to ask if they’re okay?)
The root cause for us was that… y’know those diagrams and examples people put in technical docs? People didn’t realise our team was making those. They assumed the client/the architect/somebody else made them. It wasn’t until a bunch of projects got delayed because we didn’t have Visio and other tools that word finally got around we were making the whole document, not just the headings and bullet points.
I see you’ve met my boss!
This is his first time being a boss!
He LOOOOOOVES meetings! As far as I can tell he tries to fill his calendar (and mine) with “stuff” from 8AM to 7PM. Its the sign of being a boss see! Being busy all the time!
He also loves sending me emails at 4AM because he now HAS to get up that early to “work” because he has no time for it during the day! Wheeeeeee!
So I come in at 9AM to literally dozens of emails and a calendar full of meetings.
Currently at 200 unread emails… been that way since January 1st. I may need to take a “sick day” just to get through them all cuz I can’t get that number to go down.
Long story short, some obvious troll posted this comment:
TJ_Jacobson23h
“This and your story is a blatant lie. Reddit users proved she lied about creating the app. She stole work from someone else. You and others like you are covering this fact up due to her being female. You are being dishonest. You know it, and we know it.”
Of course, that was met with lots of derision, including small dick memes and gifs, which prompted wysinwyg to start concern trolling over possibly hurting the poor little fee-fees of anyone with a less than impressive peen.
(“It’s body shaming!”)
To which a few members including myself told him ‘no’ emphatically; if they would threaten a child with rape and death, mocking their obvious insecurities about their masculinity is the least that they deserve.
Then he decided to make it personal by basically stating that I “need to learn how to do better.”
The condescending fuck.
When I pointed out that he had resorted to making it needlessly personal, he apologized and I refused to accept, telling him he’d exposed his own insecurity by trying to police other people’s comments.
Occasionally.
I’m still there because I’m stubborn as fuck; I refuse to let the trolls take over or be driven off by the bad faith bears.
My LG G3 phone died this weekend. Telefono Asado.
I am currently using one that looks like it was run over by a car. I am unsure of its stability, so I may be out of touch for a while.
The phone was my calendar, work, and lifeline. Until I can replace it, I’m severely hampered. Luckily, a friend is helping work on doing something about it.
If not, see you on the other side.
A good friend is offering help.
I suggested a crowdfunding effort, most likely a raffle, with art as a prize to hopefully earn enough to skip the phone issue and build the work-oriented computer I’ve always wanted to build.
He’s on board, but I’m waiting to hear his ideas.
ETA: The way I see it, I’ve been work-dependent on this phone for two years at least, and hardly ever use it away from home. A computer would benefit my work much more.
