Workplace Idiots

'tsup Veeky Forums. i've recently started working as a part time developer, next to my university studies. Since I've started working in a corporate environment, I've noticed how useless most people actually are in this company.

We have some women who spend an entire day making a shitty powerpoint, then we have HR who never gets anything done, the other "developer" who's supposed to help me comes in whenever he wants, just sits at his desk, does NOTHING for 3 hours then goes home.

We also have one guy who calls himself "policy manager", and nobody really knows what he does, why he's here, or why the company still pays him a salary.

My question to you is, is every company like this, or is it just the one I'm working for?

To add to this: I firmly believe that we could fire half the people on the floor, and the firm's performance wouldn't change in the slightest.

...

There's some sort of idea out there, I forget the name but its essentially that there are three types of employees - sociopaths, clueless, and sloths.

sociopaths get shit done
clueless are too dumb to realize what is really going on, but they are just there to do low level stuff
sloths - do the bare minimum to get by

once a company loses their sociopaths and the top positions are replaced by clueless idiots, then its poised for disaster.

Many companies are like this, but not all.

A tip: Your future depends on the management. If they are good smart people they are gonna wise up to the idiots and kick them the fuck out. If the management is idiots then the idiocy is gonna continue and fucktards will even get promoted.

I would just keep my head down and get work done. MAKE SURE it's clear to people when you submit work that you did it, and lazy bums did not help you. But be nice to the fucktards, just be neutral. It's possible the management just likes the fucktards on a personal level and there is some politics at play here.

If you are a judgement oriented personality, this shit may piss you off enough to quit and work somewhere else. So maybe have the resume ready for other companies.

Yeah I do that, after I'm done working I show my boss the progress I made.

Anyway, I just needed a place to vent. It just pisses me off so much that these people are basically deadweight to the company, and in many cases they're paid more than me.

It's the 20/80 principle. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

When the business experiences hard times, those fuckwits will be kicked out first.

Depending on your area of expertise and the hierarchical structure of the firm this can actually be somewhat of an advantage.

Nobody is better placed than someone who knows the operational details of the business to take efficient managerial decisions. I'd try and make a case of everything that's wrong and find solutions before presenting it to my CEO. Get promoted to manager (even if its mean creating a layer of management that does not exist yet) or quit. Chances are you won't be welcome anymore if this does not work out so be prepared to lose your job.

It's this or shut up until you can't take it anymore and eventually quit imo.

There's definitely waste in big companies, so maybe you're right about the people you mentioned. But to be honest you sound like an inexperienced college kid who thinks laying bricks really well is the same thing as being able to build a house.

You get it less in startups

If your company is lean as fuck and money's tight, there's no reason to keep people who are obviously doing nothing

That Shit creeps in the bigger a company gets. I can only imagine how many useless people IBM or P&G would have

>When the business experiences hard times, those fuckwits will be kicked out first.

Actually believing that. In bloated corps (SP500), the fuckwits are the 99% of people there. Anybody with an ounce of ambition and ability already left.

>Anybody with an ounce of ambition and ability already left.

Where do they go?

it's the gervais principle

there is a simple method of management called performance management. It works on simple principles that come from the 1 minute manager book - the ultimate guide to manipulating people into what you want them to do and not being called an asshole for it.


I'm in retail management. You have 'go-ers' and 'slow-ers'. Go-ers are the ones that get shit done and make the job look as easy as it should be. Slow-ers are the ones you wouldnt trust to water a dead plant - their only purpose is to show up to work and provide body head so the alarm system doesnt set of the dead man sensor.

In all seriousness, the attitude stems from the basic rule WIIFM. Disengagement creates distain, distain affects productivity.

I could go on. But in my reality, if you didn't provide any type of return on investment for your wages/salary, i would be finding a way to push you out of my business. I would not hire a replacement - you were doing nothing to start with.

A lot of it also comes from "squirelling". Its what i call it.

Your department is given a budget for wages, cleaning, statitionary or widgets. You know that if you don't spend it, you will get less on the next review. So the departments bloat the fuck out of their wages so they will get the same or higher next time.

The same goes for when the departments are asked to reduce costs. First line to be affected is always wages. You see it most on news reports in Australia. Recently Woolworths announced they would dump a shit ton of employees - they were more than likely door knob polishers and staple counters that just existed for budget bloat.

Run lean, maintain the ability to operate at a 20% increase in sales and don't hire until its concrete.

>the other "developer" who's supposed to help me comes in whenever he wants, just sits at his desk, does NOTHING for 3 hours then goes home

This is the only one I'm iffy about.

Development is such a soul-killing job when you're mismanaged. I just don't even know where to start with how clusterfucked places I've worked have been. They demand experience, full stack knowledge, and people skills at interview time and then it's "you can't you can't you can't" on the job. Sometimes all you can do is come in, stare at your monitor for 8 hours, and go home.

So, I'm inclined to believe that as long as this other developer stays out of your way, who cares?

It's _far_ worse to have a useless unskilled duhveloper over your shoulder nitpicking your bracket placement...

I think you have it slightly wrong.

Clueless idiots aka useful idiots - Does the work
Sociopaths - Pretend to work, gets the clueless idiots to do the work for them while they take the credit
Sloths or (losers in the know) - see what is going on but is to lazy to give a shit about it. Does the bare minimum or nothing at all

show us a pic of the policy manager
he sounds like a legend

>is every company like this?
Not every but most and probably every one you'll ever work for. It's inevitable. Unless that company is constantly trimming the fat then this will always exist in the workplace.
It's a given - 80% will do 20% of the work and vice versa. I know everyone gets sick of 80/20 but it's so often true.
Lazy loser idiots are going to be there, usually in the spotlight and unproductive. They'll push their work (indirectly or directly) onto the people who actually give a shit and then those 20% will do 80% of the work.
It's like high school to them. Just a big social parade or a place to zone out and wait for the end. Bare minimum. Path of least resistance.
>they come to wait for a check
Consider it less competition for you if you plan to have a bigger life than that.

Lol, it's this older guy who acts like a guru in the company. He stares at his monitor VERY seriously, for 8 hours long. Sometimes he talks about re-inventing the company, and innovating, and how my computer program is gonna shift the paradigm.

Asked my boss what his actual job was, he told me "nobody really knows".

>It's _far_ worse to have a useless unskilled duhveloper over your shoulder nitpicking your bracket placement...

Oh, don't worry, we have that one too; that's the intern!

Smaller companies with room for growth. No some "startup" bullshit but a company that can actually pay 100k-160k for quality work plus bonuses, give benefits, let people drink at company parties, and their stock has a chance of quadrupaling in the decade. There's no fucking way IBM or Microsoft stock quadruples unless hyper inflation hits, but some healthcare company's stock worth $12 could be worth $48 in 10 years time if they corner a developing market.

Essentially, big companies (100,000 people) are good for medium workers and top level workers. Medium-high workers want smaller companies (4,000 people)

>IBM
We had 100,000 layoffs in the last 2 years, 25% of our workforce is gone. My entire team DevOps team is gone and all our developers (minus some offshoot products) are Pajeets now.

I'm up for questions if anyone wants to know what IBM life is like.

i heard it was pretty hierarchical and old school corporate, no way to get anything done without going through 7 layers of management, sexist & racist jokes being made regularly in meetings with execs, lack of reason to do anything besides try and slow the inevitable drop of the company's bottom line

Currently a sloth. Come in do some work and then browse the internet all day. I'd say I do about an hour of work each day. I'm pretty bored to be honest. Just using this job as a steppingstone I guess.

I'm the companies head of marketing, but it's such an old company the work I do can be done from home.

Mostly.

>hierarchical and old school corporate
Abso-fucking-lutely. In truth it's probably money laundering. Our current VP was a manager 3 years ago. He got to Director after 2 years and VP after 1 year. That's impossible. He was pushed like this because he knows someone, has blackmail, or is a front to get dirty money through a clean source.

>no way to get anything done without going through 7 layers of management
Correct. We tried to return a resource to the team (she knew everything, unfriendly female scientist stereotype, but old and for coding). She was moved to a different team, I told them we need her back because eventually something would break and I wouldn't know how to fix it. Manager said yes, Director said yes, VP said no. So the answer was no.

Why this wasn't a confirmed "yes" after the Manager said yes is still a question in my mind every day. The system has been broken for days now and I can't fix it (happened after a year), we're gonna lose 10mil/year because the VP didn't want to hire anyone but Pajeets.

>sexist & racist jokes being made regularly in meetings with execs
Absolutely false. They fear nothing more than political correctness; it can cost them their multi-million bonuses. Maybe at private parties, but never on company lines/grounds.

>lack of reason to do anything
Absolutely. It's all about updates now, the multi-million contracts come from marketing software a decade old. The new stuff doesn't sell.

Watson especially, it has no transparency so it doesn't explain how it comes to its conclusions. IBM thought that was clever, they can hide their methods just like they hide their source code. Except this also means Watson queries can be completely fucking wrong, misinterpret a request, and give false information with no chance to troubleshoot why (for the customer).

What are some ways I can transition from a sloth to a sociopath?

Im not clueless, and I have sociopath days when shit just adds up for me and I work like a nigger, but id say my brain defaults to a baseline sloth state.

I dont like it. Being a sociopath would be better for me and everyone else involved with me

I'm not gonna lie... I often wonder why IBMs actually marketing is so poor... Now i know why.. I don't blame you to be fair... As long as your getting paid and nobody notices your not doing shit then who gives a fuck

this. its not like you get anything for busting your ass in a giant corporation.

Its disgusting how true this comment is for most large firms

This is basically the story of my job, I work for a support company where basically all we do is work in a group home with mentally challenged people and make sure they don't put something on the stove and burn their house down lol. Basically the job would be stupidly easy except for the fact that management is never their to deal with issues when you need them, they will all be out taking a 4 hour lunch break and leave to go home around 230 3. We have this one guy who has basically done everything wrong a employee can do: consistantly shows up late, leaves sometimes over 1 hour early, does fuck all his entire shift, sits on his ipad all day.. He somehow has managed never to get fired. meanwhile anyone who actually does stuff like cook and clean for the clients, managment will harass the fuck out of and say stuff like you don't do you're job well enough.

I think it has to do with IBM being able to market themselves without the use of advertising. But for the most part, it's an easy gig.

Also interesting how large companies seem to hire employees to only fulfill a useless task, i.e.: hiring someone just to organize the employee events. Or hiring someone to maintain the facebook page that has maybe 500 likes.

If only that were true. In my experience your chances of being laid off are not related to productivity at all. Assuming this is setting yourself up for disappointment.

>does NOTHING for 3 hours then goes home.

ok, ive been in this situation.

is he like literally not getting anything done?
or does he work on a seperate project so you dont know?

I worked for a company that threatened to fire me if i didnt wake up to their email at 4am and fix problems.

for nearly a week straight i was up till 6am every night doing work.

then the fuckhead still wanted me to come work in the office.

so i would basically come in, take a nap, dick around on facebook and go back home till i got the next 4am email since my brain would be far too dead to actually do anything.

Event managers are great though.

Imagine a guy who just organised your social calendar, gave you fruits, cakes and chocolates and periodically convinced the boss to let you watch TV/play videogames in the offices to celebrate some shit.

I will never disparage an event manager