I’ve had a couple rants building up inside me and now, heading into the hopefully relaxing weekend, I’d like to divest myself of that baggage. Please feel free to both enjoy my rant and then cut loose below with your own rant… Sometimes it just feels good.
Rant #1: Rewarding Engineering teams (or other individuals or teams) for fixing things they broke in the first place. This happened recently at my favorite place of work, but it’s happened with my previous employer too and I’ve heard stories of this all over the tech sector and it probably goes beyond those circles as well.
This is the story of Team A and Team B. Team A and Team B are both tasked with developing a product to be released at roughly the same time. For whatever reason, when the first milestones come up, team A’s product does not work correctly. So badly they are deemed to be far behind their milestone. Team B’s product works as expected at this milestone. Team A has screwed the pooch (to use a technical term). Management panics. How do we fix this mess and still meet our deadline for release to the public? The answer? Provide incentives for our employees to work harder and make up for lost time. Offer free dinners for working late, free Ipods, cameras, vacation days, trips, etc to those that put in extra hours to fix the mess they made in the first place.
Team B? They get e-mail kudos for a job well done. And then quickly forgotten. I Guarantee the job that will be remembered and rewarded 6 months from now will be the heroic effort put in by Team A to fix the mess.
What have we learned kids?
Rant#2: People who use their speaker phone in a crowded office and don’t shut their door (or have no door). In our office there is this woman (for the lack of a more descriptive and insulting term) who has the luxury of one of the 3 actual offices (non-cubicle) with a door in our space. She also apparently has no use of her arms because I have yet to see her pick up the handset (or use a headset for that matter). EVERY phone call she takes or makes is done using the speaker phone. And she is not only a loud talker, but also apparently hard of hearing because her speaker volume is turned all the way up. Usually (8 out of 10 times) she closes her door. Which is good, but I can still hear her through the walls, AND she never seems to close the door until after she has made her annoying-ass greeting over the speaker phone.
beep beep boop beep beep beep boop
“HELLO?” Answers blaring… imagine someone answering a knock at the door with a bullhorn.
“HEY DUDE! WHAT’S SHAKIN?” Screeching office harpy.
“HEEEEY! WHAT’S HAPPENING? HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?”
“NOT MUCH MAN… HEY LET ME CLOSE MY DOOR”.
Too late you hoary noise-beast.
Your turn. I feel better already. I don’t know why. Nothing was resolved. But I can breathe deeper and I can put it all aside this weekend and possibly at least through Monday morning.
July 31, 2006 at 2:59 PM
Lesons learned
Rant #1: The squeaky wheel gets the most grease
Rant #2: The emptiest barrel makes the most noise
August 1, 2006 at 10:46 AM
I have a rant. It’s probably a generation thing but it bothers me when I’m listening to a band that’s putting down a real grove and then someone that obviously doesn’t know how to sing starts yelling into the microphone.
August 1, 2006 at 1:49 PM
I’ve often heard that said about Led Zepplin. How they were the greatest band ever if it weren’t for the screechy drivel that came out of Robert Plant’s mouth.
But I do know of what you speak. I associate that most with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Love their music. But their lyrics and singing are AWFUL.