Optimistic Obfuscation

Corporate World Rant

I just need to rant for a minute. I'm really getting pretty tired of what I see as the corporate world. Or maybe it is just my specific situation. There is just too much politics going around. It just seems that every little thing turns into a major fight. I could go into a lot of details about the specific fights that are going on around me and involving me and because of me and all of that. But I won't do that right now. Basically I just want to make a couple of observations that I think are universal. At least they are universal in my universe.

My first comment is this: the motivation to produce a good product (and by that I mean anything that it is your job to produce or do) does not come from the worker having pride in what they do or from thinking it is their duty to do their job well but rather the primary motivation for producing a good product is so that no one else sees you making a mistake. Letting someone else see you make a mistake seems to be the cardinal corporate sin. I guess this attitude is fostered by desire to be promoted and no one thinks that they are going to be promoted if they are the person that makes the mistakes. Because of this pathology the first response to a problem found is to look for a way to pin it on someone else. There is no desire to find the root of the problem and get it fixed. It is all about finding a way to make it look like someone else screwed up and making them fix it. Needless to say this is not the best way to get a job done, especially when you are working with large numbers of people. It might be fine if you were working alone and there was no one there to see your mistake and you could fix it before anyone else noticed, but when lots of people are working together and everyone is looking over the shoulder of everyone else you have a hard time getting anything done.

My second comment is related to my first. It just seems that all that anyone is concerned about it getting to the top of the corporate ladder. I guess it is just the human nature of greed that feeds this but it is really hard to deal with when you are just concerned about getting your job done and those that you are working with are just concerned about getting themselves noticed. I have been working on a web-driven database application that will be used by several different groups, with several different managers that have lots of employees that want to have themselves heard. Every time that I get together with concerned parties I end up having to fight with people that seem to be just offering suggestions because they want their manager to hear their voice and know that they have an opinion. (At least I hope that their suggestions are just that because if they are being serious then they are basically idiots because their suggestions are horrible. Ok, maybe that was a little harsh, but I'm in a bad mood).

I guess overall I'm just growing tired of being in an environment that fosters tension and greed. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood because it has been a particularly bad day for such things and I have a headache. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Sorry for the rant.