Life Is Simple

If you ever tried to do any work with bad tools - you know what I mean. Obviously, if you are good at what you’re doing you can do it - tools or no tools. However, we’re not exactly on a deserted island where a man’s naked foot print inspire us to go on with our lives and work. We’re in the middle of (still) the center of the world, right across from the Charging Bull, so it must be pretty easy to get the tools of the trade? So you think, huh?

Put a software developer in the cubicle. Block almost all of his internet access, including developers’ forums, blogs, personal e-mail (where he may be subscribed to newsletters and newsgroups). Have him work on web application. Keep randomly block more web sites as the work progresses. Watch what happens.

Here, I’ll admit - I am neither the best nor the brightest star in the team. I constantly need to learn something new and re-address what others already know to be able to keep up with the team. Of course, I have some knowledge up my sleeve too, but in general - I know I have much to learn, I don’t mind learning and I enjoy it. I also know that 90% of my team have similar kind of catching up to do on a daily basis. Which we all cannot do, because finding an unblocked useful resource takes increasingly longer times - and we still need to get the job done.

So, what kind of bright management decision was to block access to all these resources? So that we would not spend time on personal pleasures? Or because management don’t trust us enough to let freely search the internet for the information we might need in our course of work? Or maybe because someone up the food chain all the answers to all the questions in the universe are in MSDN that is installed locally?

Couple of years ago I read an article about bank workers (and these were not the tellers - the regular office workers) who were only allowed 3 to 7 minutes of bathroom time per day, 2 minutes of walking to and from their workstations and two 15 minute lunch breaks. It was stated that efficiency increased to about 130% from the previous level. What the management usually fails to notice is that if you put a really muscled guy with a whip and a bat to force people to work, it may increase the efficiency to 200% and even 300%. But for a very short time.

Popularity: 3%

Big corporations are subject to much more scrutiny then an average guy. They are subjects to audits by IRS, environmental compliance, regulatory compliance and don’t even start on Sar-Box… In order to comply the company has to create a set of rules or policies and then enforce them. Sounds easy? Read on.

Most of regulations applicable to certain company are outlined in legalese. However, most managers, who responsible for creating and/or enforcing policies aren’t really fluent in that language. More often then not they are not fluent in some of the areas where regulation applies.

For example, if you average pointy-haired boss is overseeing an accounting department, what does he know about daily e-mail backup and retention policies? Probably very little. What could happen? He may restrict the size of the mailbox available to workers in order to prevent e-mailings of large attachments. He thinks (and you can’t really blaim him for this, for little does he know) that once your mailbox is small enough the attachments won’t fit. In reality, of course, what will happen is everyone will start using personal mail boxes thus creating a security whole as large as a Google.

Next step? By order of business all e-mail providers are blocked. No Hotmail, GMail or Yahoo for you. So what would those poor souls, who didn’t quit on this step do? They would start using public shares on the network, so that they can upload a document to a network drive that is accessible to that other department and just e-mail the link to it. If you are thinking that all company will undoubtedly watch out for termination lists and budget spreadsheets appear on a public share - you got that right.

By the time the management had gone in every way possible to restrict employees from successfully doing their work, about 75% of people would already resign. Therefore there’s a cage full of new monkeys and you have to deal with all the new issues right now.

So why all the pain? Why all the suffering? There are not many possible reasons behind it.

First - few are ruining it for a larger crowd. In any group there eventually will be someone who will try to bend the rules as far as he or she can. However, management and HR must deal with those people directly, not enforce stricter policies to everyone.

Second - as shown in example above - inability to comprehend or indifference to the “tools of the trade”. If you need to dig a mine there’s very little chance you can do it fast enough using just a shovel. It often comes hand-in-hand with the idea that employees are using company’s resources for personal benefit. However, if do not restrict people’s personal e-mail addresses they will not use your company’s mail servers to send out those huge funny e-mails.

Third - when company hired you - did they do all the screening, background checks and all the other intimidating tasks of figuring who you are? Oh, they’ve even sent you to take a drug test? Good. So why, after they hire you, they suddenly stop trusting you? Have all your phone conversation recorded, all your e-mails archived, all the web site you’ve visited - listed and submitted to your supervisor? That sudden lack of trust annoys most of people, so instead of concentrating on getting job done they spend their time figuring how to circumvent the system.

There will always be one or two rogue employees that will try to push it to the limit. They are usually not the top performers nor they are the best people around. However, with all the wall pushing around, with all the restricting and humiliating, they - most likely - be the ones who stay after all reorganizations. Questions is - do you really want these people to survive?

Popularity: 13%

More corporate humor: “…you will be given 5 minutes notice of the impending restart of your machine…”

Popularity: 22%