By-The- Book Management
Someone added me on Linkedin today, so I logged in to accept and found myself reading a few of the “question” discussions. Someone had this great quote:
A good Manager does things right, while a good Leader does the right things
It got me thinking about the Evil Empire and the changes that happened since the takeover, as well as a few other companies I worked for in the past.
Meanwhile, back at the farm…
I go on holiday for a week and two more people hand in their notice at the place I just left. That’s 4 people leaving/resigning within the space of one month. It’s kinda funny. OK, it’s a lot funny. Once again I’m the first rat off the ship…
Corporate whore - no more!
That’s right! I have now cast off the shackles of corporate oppression and am 100% corp crap free!
Worked my last day yesterday. I’m sad to be leaving so many nice co-workers behind but not so sad to be ridding myself of the Evil Empire.
I already have my first freelance job lined up and I’m really excited for the change of industry and the new challenge. Bring it on!
Actually, it *is* personal
Do you remember Dr. Shipman ? He was a kindly old family doc who treated many rich, elderly women in the north of England. He was said to be a very good doctor and his patients all adored him. Unfortunately, he was also the world’s busiest serial killer who murdered around 400 of his patients, often faking their wills so he could inherit their money.
For his crimes, the good doctor went to prison, where he later committed suicide.
Was Dr. Shipman or a good person or a bad person?
- He killed 400 people - that’s bad.
- He treated many other patients without killing them - that’s good.
- He used to self-medicate - that’s bad.
- He was later in rehab, got “clean” and became a respected member of the community - that’s good.
So was he good or bad? Well, obviously he was bad, because he killed 400 people, but what if he had saved the lives of 400 people but only murdered one old woman for her money? Would he have been a good person then?
I chose this rather extreme example to highlight something I’ve noticed in the business world which always amazes me anew.
There is a tendency among business people to create an artificial separation between the “personal” world and the “business” world and allow (and tolerate) behaviour in one that would have been considered grossly unacceptable in the other. “It’s nothing personal” has become the perfext prefix to both underhand tactics and the criticism that follows them.
Corporate myths - busted!
Let’s face it: corporate jobs are crappy. Most intelligent people wouldn’t want to work in an environment like that unless the payback was really impressive. But just like any other pyramid scheme, the people at the top of corporations get massive pay cheques, while the people at the bottom of the food chain get shafted. We can’t all get the big bucks, right?
So how do you get masses of people to agree to work in a bad environment for crap pay? You train them like sheep. You create a whole work mythology and fool people into thinking this is the way things are and should be. Most people never stray far enough from the path to realise they’re being treated like slaves.
So what are those lies they sell us to make us do what they want?
Feeling better about leaving
I found out the other day how much my pay rise would have been had I waited until my next pay review before leaving. Frankly, “insulting” doesn’t even cover it. The Evil Empire apparently have their own ideas of what constitutes a fair pay rise across all their companies which seem to be practically on the wrong side of inflation. After tax, NI and my student loan repayments (bastards) I’d have enough left to buy an extra pair of cheap shoes a month. If that. Gone are the happy days of my bosses upping our pay to what they believed we deserved, which would have matched my pay to the price range jobs like mine are advertised at.
Breaking up is hard to do
Today, I told my boss I have decided to leave the company. I’ll most likely hand in my notice next week. It was a perfectly pleasant conversation. I said that my personal projects are beginning to be more demanding and full time work is no longer a viable option for me, unless I’m willing to spend yet another summer working 7 day weeks, which is not an experience I’d care to repeat after last time. I was sort of smirking to myself in my head remembering the recent Stuntdubl post about breaking up with bad clients. I didn’t mention the fact that this decision was a process that came about after my growing dissatisfaction of the direction the company has been going (i.e. from independently owned startup to corporate-owned “standard” company) drove me to go and interview at an agency and that it was only then, when I was offered the options of several interviews for jobs that were much better than mine that I decided I didn’t really want a full time job at all right now.
I was shocked to discover how much I was affected by the whole thing. I thought I would feel a lot more relieved but really I feel quite sad and not a little bit scared, as I have nothing lined up so far and am not going to be looking for a bit (and I am not very good with money). The way I reacted really reminded me of some break ups I’ve had when I knew things weren’t working and decided to get out before we started hating each other. I know it’s the right decision: I’ve been bored and depressed as of late and have been feeling grossly undervalued; I really need to go.
I’ve not even considered changing my mind, but it’s been a longish relationship and I don’t hate anyone enough there for this to be easy. That is the problem with amicable breakups.
The beatings will continue until company morale improves
The corporate world is a fickle mistress. One minute you’re living the high-life and the next you get knocked on the head with the iron fist.
When I first moved from doing customer service/moderating to my current role, my greatest worry was that I didn’t have enough to do. I’d been working as a moderator for a while and got used to having a set of tasks to complete as part of my daily routine. The job structure was very easy to understand: you start the day with a (large) number of posts, pictures, etc. to go through and your job for the day is done when there are no longer any of those left. Seeing as I was working on a big, popular site, that hardly ever happened within a work day.
When I changed over to doing marketing/SEO, I had very few quantifiable set tasks. When I finished those, I had to make up my own work. I spent some time doing research and learning no skills (it took a while to get my heard around the fact that this was acceptable business behaviour), some time working on my own stuff and a lot of time worrying about not having enough work (which I thought may mean I’d end up losing the job). Those were the days when link-buying was still pretty much the done thing, so I ended up spending whole days buying links from directories, because I felt that I had to fill my time somehow to justify my employment. It wasn’t until my first pay review, when I complained to my boss I was fed up of doing glorified data entry for a living, that I realised I didn’t have to do any of that. My boss explained to me that my new role cannot be measured by the quantity of the physical work that goes into it, but by the quality of the results that come out of it. I was encouraged to work flexible hours, to leave early if I’d finished my day’s work, rather than stay in the office and pretend I was working for the sake of it. I was even given a Blackberry so I could stay in touch with the office in case anything came up. I got a good pay rise, I got to learn a new trade and I felt valued. My boss was supposedly quoted as telling people (in my absence) that I could do work in an hour that would take most people 3 days to do.
Sadly, as the story goes, small company does well, small company sells to big company, things begin to slowly make their way south. Startups are often set up by people who themselves dislike authority and want to make some money and not have to work in a nasty, corporate environment. As a result, there’s none of that bollocksy “us and them” mentality in small companies. Directors and managers don’t force authority upon you unless you do something bad. There’s lots of nice touches that are meant to make the working environment more fun and the general atmosphere is relaxed, even when things are busy.That was then. This is now. Flexibility is not a quality favoured by our new insect overlords (let’s call them the Evil Empire for fun).