Sunday, January 02, 2011

Facts from the corporate world

I was just going through my old draft posts, which I never published. I found this post, which I wrote almost four and half years back. Not all facts have been valid in particular to me but I have observed them around me all the time. Some of them are valid only for IT industry.

Some of the facts are what I wrote 4 years back, the rest are additional ones.

1. It takes only one manager to convert a simple commonsensical technique into a management fad and destroy it from its roots.
2. It is ok to apply any technique without understanding concepts and theory behind it. (root-cause of previous point)
3. To survive in corporate world you must have very effective filters in terms of your ears. Only what you want to do should be listened.
4. It doesn't matter whether what you say is conceptually more correct, more logical and more commonsensical, boss is always right.
5. Normally the person immediately responsible for you (immediate boss) is the person who least understands what you are doing.
6. If you want to learn how not to use IT, IT companies themselves are the best examples.
7. Since IT people make more money than there equivalents in other Industry, they think they know more things and better than others, while the reality is exactly opposite.
8. The more you know about the domain in which you are doing work; worse will be your perceived performance, more chances that you will not be allowed to do right things, more chances that you will be removed from doing that work
9. Agreeing with your boss is considered as substitute for responsibility to take right decisions.
10. Talking is considered as substitute for knowing (actually I guess this has been applicable from hundreds of years, you must have heard the proverb 'empty vessels make most noise') and people who talk the most are the one who are given leadership roles - so you know... why on average leadership in corporate world is so horrible
11. If you want your organization to suck at something, make sure you make it part of the goals for the people in their appraisals and the corporate system will make sure that all the genuine efforts will suppressed and discouraged in favor of enormous volume of absolute mediocre and fake efforts made to meet the goals.
12. It is not necessary to understand problem in order to provide solution. (especially true in IT industry), you just have to sell the solution, using some buzz words, calling it latest technology, saying some other client used it (doesn't matter that client is repenting the decision) - No wonder, very high percentage of IT solutions are such gigantic failures.

Well, I just had a nice lunch and feeling sleepy, so I will stop with these for the time being. Anyone who happens to read this post (hmm.... ok, that can happen only by mistake), is welcome to add more facts in the comments.

6 comments:

Anand said...

a) Your boss always has an opinion about everything that you do and thinks that it is the best, whether he knows the field or not, he thinks he is right.

b) We have limited time in our lives, so we shouldnt waste time arguing (with our boss) - says the boss

c) Do something concrete means do something that your boss knows.

d) Do not talk in the air means what you said is not covered by the vast vocabulary your boss is aware of.

e) Keep your client interested means, keep sending silly mails to all with cc to boss telling them that you have not progressed as per their whims and desires.

f) Customization means you are staring at 10 years of your life being wasted to satisfy some nitwits view of your work.

g) PoC is an effort to inform someone in the bosses hierarchy that we wasted money to do something that was beyond the obvious.

h) Applied Research means doing things that your boss finds interesting, it is not necessarily the need of the industry.

i) Academic Research means writing in English those words and sentences that Julius caesar throws out, strudded with some borrowed pages of a great mathematician.

Anand said...

Funny, the comment that I had written is no longer available. Did you delete it????

nikone said...

For some reason blogger decided it was spam :) Restored it from spam

Anand said...

My name sounds like that... Maybe I should start using my gmail id from now on

Sagar said...

Hi Nikhil,

I have read some of the things you have written and really liked it. I would like to discuss something with you in private. Can you please email me at sagarjs@gmail.com so we can take the discussion ahead.

Thanks!
Sagar

Anand said...

Been sometime since you posted, how about writing something about your ex-boss....