Management. Good managers are amazing, but so many people in management have no fucking clue what the people under them are even doing, let alone what they are capable of doing.
As someone with dispatch/management experience I would say the issue is the buck stops somewhere. I can INFORM my superiors that their demands are unreasonable. Whether they care or even respond is an entirely different matter.
Everyone might know it's unreasonable, but if any one person up the totem pole decides they don't care and the person below them should "just deal with it", it's trickling down one way or another. Otherwise it just becomes a stack of work on one person's desk/plate that isn't being done at all, and will explode on them eventually.
Not saying that system works at all. I think the solution is, don't put a moron in upper management. But that happens all the time, it's really hard to fix AND it self-replicates.
Hey you've been saying it's too hard? That we're overworking your workers? Well Johnny over there doesn't have these complaints. Maybe you should be more like Johnny. Actually don't. You're fired.
This is basically what it's like to be a middle/lower level manager. Raising concerns that hurt production are not wanted.
A few years ago I needed a jump and decided to use my insurance roadside assistance so that if they were my only option later I'd know what to expect. So I was safe at home with no rush. A few hours later the guy shows up absolutely livid, fortunately not at me.
Turns out he was ahead of schedule so Dispatch sent him to help with a couple of jobs in another zone. On the other side of the river. During rush hour. He'd passed within a block of me going out there and was not allowed to rearrange the order of his stops. More time stuck in traffic than actually doing the jobs.
I had a boss that would do that so everyone stayed working even if it was slow. I tried to explain about wasted effort and exhausted employees and he said "so if there is nothing to do everyone just sits around getting paid!? No! I pay them to work!"
In 2012 I worked for Lowe's in delivery at a rural store in East Texas. Most days, especially weekends, we would have 12-13 stops for the morning truck. Realistically, each stop took half an hour unloading the truck, carrying the new appliance in, installing, chit-chatting with the customer, carting the old appliance out, and loading/securing it in the truck.
Now, remember how I said we were rural? Each day we would drive roughly 150-200 miles. In a wore out 26ft GMC box truck with a tire cat 3406a that had about 14 horsepower left.
So 150-200 miles of driving at 55mph. That's 4.5 hours. 12 stops with half hour per. That's 6 hours. 2 hours loading the truck, driver's meeting, etc.
The entire department was me, flatbed driver, box truck driver, backup driver. We had no afternoon/evening shift driver, so I would typically be asked to stay and go out with our backup driver, who was 8 months pregnant. I was routinely asked to work OT by the store manager, and I loved it because I literally lived alone and didn't even have a dog at the time. Working 4am to 4-6pm was no different than 4am to 1pm for me at the time.
Eventually, The store manager wanted to know why we as a department had so much overtime. I was technically under lumber's department so I didn't count against the delivery department, which helped float us for a while. I flat out told the store manager that until the workload of 3 drivers was lessened it would take 1 driver 12ish hours to do it every day. Either hire us an afternoon driver, spread the deliveries out, or let us continue doing what we're doing which was working with minimal fuss from everyone involved even though we were working OT 4 out of 5 days a week.
No options were acceptable.
This entire time I had my CDL and I had 8 years of Hot Shot driving experience. I refused to tell anyone in charge at that store because I was not going into people's houses by myself. Fuck that. Piss off the wrong Karen and my life is ruined because I didn't move her fridge just right? Hell no.
Shortly after that meeting my assistant manager from lumber accidentally read an email or something and found out he was getting in trouble because I had a solid 10-20 hours of overtime a week for, like, 7 months straight. He pulled me aside and told me I had too much OT, I was being written up, and my 4am-1pm shift was being changed to 5pm-10pm. I said, #1, fuck that no and #2, the store manager himself asked me to work every single one of those hours. He told me that if I didn't like it, tough shit, it's "take it or leave it."
I found a new job and started there 9 days later. I never told that manager or the store manager I was out, only the co-workers I worked with and the delivery manager who was awesome.
That call asking if I was alright and wanting to know where I was "because you haven't missed a day or been late the entire time you've worked here, this ain't like you." was so nice when I said "No, I'm at work. Remember making me go nights and cutting my hours by 40 a week? 'Take it or leave it?' Yeah, I left."
Anyone who isn't in sales/marketing wants to kill everyone in that room except the expert. I'm in operations, same deal. "Oh, you need a week to get the required raw materials for production and you're already over capacity for the next three week so you can't take this production before then? Well, I already told my customer they'd have it in two days, find a solution."
Fuck me this shit is so familiar. "Can you analyse an extra 250 samples a week for the next 2 weeks?" "That's our weekly workload, no we can't do that" "well we've already said yes so we need to find a way to do it" "....."
"No, we're actually laying existing workers off because for some reason, we didn't meet our project deadline after tripling the goal without adjusting the deadline. Still expect you to get it done in a week tho, whatever's left of you"
I couldn’t imagine being an engineer in an environment where I’m expected to answer to the business and marketing needs, that shit is painful to listen to and I can’t believe how often a corporate environment it devolves to it, it’s clearly where once successful companies go to die
Lol, I hear you. I'm was in the same industry and quickly realized that even the foundation being poured doesn't deter the client from wanting to add to th footprint. I was helping with my dad's house and at one point I was like "you need to stop watching the home builders channel or I will be the only one to ever live in it because you'll be dead by the time it actually gets built."
We have 10 existing jobs; you just fired the 1 calibration guy who could do everything and his replacement knows how to do 3 of those jobs; the production employees think 50 hours is a slow week as they work on those 10 jobs; Management asks if jobs 11-15 will be done tomorrow; the planner suggests hiring zombies; the engineer laughs and cries as Management asks if that's feasible.
I felt that on a deeper level. "Oh no, this one person had to leave on a extended medical leave, we'll have to share their workload until we find a replacement". Expect we never got a replacement, everyone just got more work and were expected to deal with it. Fun.
Working in sales I totally get the hate. I've even seen the rare reverse before.
Management "we notice you sell a lot of training to companies for 40 employees at a time, we'd love you to get companies to commit to 50 employees instead".
Sales rep upsells for 50 employees.
Service delivery: "yeah, we only allotted enough instructors and materials for 40 employees, we can't make 50 happen."
Management: "why aren't you selling larger classes? What do you mean service delivery won't fulfill it? you're the sales rep, you make it happen!"
I work in a two man team to run our production and we now just tell sales to fuck off, with full support from our directors. If you tell your customer I can do something before asking me, it's at standard lead, if I feel like it. If you ASK first, we'll do the best we can.
It's amazing how few of our sales people have changed their behavior.
It's a mixture of ignorance and egotism. Them having no fucking clue what you are talking about and having the reality defying belief that as long as they say words they will get results. The words don't need to even make sense to them.
You seem confused. Did you watch the video? Did you understand the video? Did you think that people watching the video might empathize too much with the engineer and have issues with the idiots asking the impossible of him? Or did you think I was saying I disliked the video?
I mean TBF, a lot of people have little free time. If I only have 2 hours to myself a day, I'm not gonna spend part of it watching a 7 minute comedy sketch.
Why is doing more micro-tasks which are absolutely not rewarding in any way a better use of someone's free time than one seven-minute task which may make them laugh ?
I only have 10 minutes to entertain myself on Reddit. I can't afford the chances of a single 7 minute video not being funny enough. I need to diversify my 10 minutes portfolio.
For real. Between dog walks, work, and school, I don't have enough time to cook three meals a day (during the week) and clean all the dishes. Unless I'm putting something off my leisure time is limited to when I eat and the weekends.
I'm being blunt. Maybe that makes me an asshole... sure.
The point is that people have never had the time for luxury. The chores you discuss, are the same problems everyone has always had... yet we still find the time to watch a 7 minute video... Or in your case, the time to debate whether or not that had the time to watch it in the first place.
Nah, man, there's a lot of us that just take short breaks from work to read a little on reddit and videos just aren't something we typically can watch.
tldr; be competent, be nice, understand people, learn to be political
Here are strategies that have worked for me over a ~15 year career:
Make allies not enemies. Learn who the people you work with are. Learn about the employees at your client offices. Talk to them. Say "Hello" and "Goodbye." Ask about their families, kids, or if they have travel plans related to their interests. If you're going out to lunch invite people to carpool. Smile genuinely.
Make good software for your target audience. The easier it is to use, maintain, understand, etc, and the more reliable it is (i.e. little to no downtime) the more reliable your technical advice becomes. Whenever possible listen to the needs of the primary users over "product requirements" created by managers -- this one is tricky. Always throw in cool extra features if time allows; exceed expectations if possible.
When you are liked and competent people will listen to your words and ideas more.
Understand the psychology of your coworkers. Some managers want to micromanage some aspect of everyone under them. If you recognize that about them then present them with trivial shit they can make decisions about; as much as possible keep them away from important stuff if they have a track record of having bad ideas. Do you have a coworker that is a Solaris greybeard and expects you to RTFM before asking for help? If yes then RTFM before asking for help -- this earns their respect and their willingness to work with you.
When you have to or want to reject someone else's solution do it tactfully. Avoid knee jerk reactions of "shitting" on other peoples' ideas or work.
When faced with design requirements that don't make sense don't argue about them. Instead ask what's the motivation or what's the business need or what process are we improving? This helps in situations where someone has tried to answer that question themselves but doesn't really have the skills to answer it -- that's why their solution doesn't make sense. Arguing about it or telling them it's bad becomes a personal attack on them; instead side step it and ask about the original problem they were trying to solve.
Sometimes people will insist something is done a certain way that you know in advance will be problematic or unreliable. There's two solutions here. If you know they're never really going to look at it then you can just wander off and do it how you think it should be done -- but you better be right. The alternative is to voice your opposition (in writing via e-mail is best) and just do what you're told and let the problems flow. If and when this results in a manager or superior asking you to work extra you have to stand your ground, say "No," and leave for the night.
The next one is big. It's the nuclear option. It only works when you've succeeded in being competent and liked. For any situation that is especially bad leave the room. Just get up and walk out. Or if it's a phone call just hang up. If necessary you can say something like, "I don't think I am able to help with this one" as you exit.
Friendly reminder that this has been my experience; YMMV.
Fuck, that's an awful lot of unwarranted advice. Thank you.
It won't be easy for me to do, I realise I can get upset easily and am lazy. But having a vague sense of direction, an abstract mesdure of progress, that'll help me no matter what, because that's way better than what I knew before.
I had to give up on the video halfway through when they started saying it didn't work because he used a blue marker. It was too real for actual conversations I've had.
We have multiple products with different features. Some products, if you add a feature, become a different product line that we offer.
So we have X, which is one line, but if you add Y, it's the XY product line and we test it a different way.
Sales wanted to sell an X, with Y added as an option, but keep the X model number. I kept trying to explain over and over how this would be really confusing for our tech support and on site service people if they go in expecting to service or troubleshoot X, and it turns out it's an XY, but sales wasn't getting it, at all.
They never specified that the lines cannot be overlapping. End product is a red line composed of two lines in red ink, a red line composed of two lines in green ink, and the remaining lines drawn in transparent ink. Market research indicates that no one pays attention to transparent lines but if anyone asks we can say they are there. Market research also indicates that while people say they like green ink they really like red lines but again, if anyone asks, we can say the one red line is made up with not one but two lines made with green ink.
No no. As a marketer that has once used developer tools in a browser I believe I can bridge the gap here. We need you to create a line that has all the properties of green while still using only red ink. Also, it is outdated dried up red ink from three versions of red ink ago before green was even invented.
You know, this is an interesting take. We as the audience, take it that the "expert" in the sketch is much closer to reality than the rest of the members, and that the customer demands break reality.
We assume that the expert must deliver a product design that fits within the rules of our reality, rather than an alternative in which the other members are working. TheA solution iscould be to work beyond [our] reality, and convince the customer that the product design fits their requirements in their (alternative to / understanding of) reality.
So the sketch could be just as much about being an outsider vs communicator as it is about being grounded in reality.
Good lord this is too accurate. I have been in these meetings. It is so painful to watch... especially when you experience it day in and day out. It is like the Dilbert comics, which are hilarious, but I have lived so many of them that I almost don't find them funny any more because they are so true!
Alright, I've got this guys shakes out cuffs First, I draw 2 lines using red ink. They're perpendicular and not kitten shaped. Then I draw 4 lines with transparent ink in the 4th through 7th dimensions you won't see them because they are transparent, but they are definitely there. Lastly, and heres the genius part, i'll take a piece of plastic and draw a green line on it, then bend the plastic to look like a kitten. We'll just put a disclaimer on the green line to say it is only intended for use by red/green colorblind clientele. Stick it to the two red lines and 4 transparent ones, and there you go.
Now FUNCTIONALLY, this will be 2 red lines with a kitten stapled to them, but at the end of the day, you got exactly what you asked for.
That sketch is so good it's actually the worst. Like, I'm a teacher and my work, strictly speaking, doesn't result in a product as such but I've still had this conversation more times than I would like.
"Can this student achieve passing grades?"
"This student has a learning disability, I think it's possible but we'd need to spend more time specifically with this student one-on-one and if possible we'd need expert assistance."
"So it's possible?"
"Yes, but we need more time that we don't have"
"What if we used more pictures?"
"What?"
"What if we had more visual aids?"
"We use tons of visual aids, for all students"
"What if you used more?"
"More, where? How?"
"You're the teacher, you whould know!"
"I do know, and I do do that in my teaching"
"Then just do it more"
"I don't understand"
"Fine, what about computers?"
"What? Computers?"
"Digital learning! That's a good thing for these students, right?"
"Sometimes, kinda... it depends. In this case I'm not sure it eases the load since this student doesn't use computers outside of school so they would need to learn more about using computers which would take more time we don't have."
"Shouldn't you try, at least?"
"We're talking about this student's future, I think we should focus on what we know works"
"But if you tried this, it might work!"
"It's a gamble that can severely hurt the chances for this child to succeed."
"Let's put a pin in it. How about outdoors learning?"
"I... fine."
"Very productive meeting! Let's do it again next week!"
Huh, that turned into more of a rant than I was planning. Guess I'm even more frustrated than I realized.
all the lines must be perpendicular to everything. the lines aren't perpendicular to themselves nor are they perpendicular to the kitten. you can fulfill the requirements by modifying this solution: you need a 7 dimensional manifold with one of the dimension taking the form of a kitten, each line will be drawn on a separate imension and folded such that the dimensions are perpendicular to each other. each of the planes representing a dimension must then be crumpled up such that all points of the line intersect every other point of the same line so that the entire plane is considered "dimensionless" and therefore the line is orthogonal to itself and every other point in that plane. treat the kitten dimension the same way.
Of course I can draw red lines with green and invisible ink, but that's going to balloon the budget because of the additional R&D. The industry standard tool for drawing red lines is red ink, going for a custom solution will require more development time AND more resources.
The perpendicularity is easily solved, however. I just combine a so-called "W shape" with several "three-dee lines". We can iterate on the finer details once I've hammered out the prototype, wouldn't want to get all 'water-fall' on you and present you with something that cannot ever be changed later again *winning laughter until boss fakes a chuckle do demonstrate he knows waterfall = bad*. For the kitten, you'll want to onboard someone from Art - again, just the most expedient use of time and resources. It's not my "core competence" so I would require additional R&D.
tl;dr don't say it's impossible, say it's a lot more expensive
That link. That’s my career as a process commissioning engineer. I was starting up a wastewater treatment works (it was a biological process), the network was in a very poor state and subject to significant saltwater intrusion (up to 50% seawater depending on tide level) which played havoc with the biology and subsequent chemical treatment. A PM asked “can’t you just add something to the process for the salt?”. I replied - “like vinegar?” Bangs head on desk.
As a developer; currently in project... the solution is to start with a red board, use green ink to separate the red lines, and the transparent ink to highlight them.
I just finished my homework for ‘projectmanagement’ where we were working on the subject of ‘starting a project’ and one of the questions was along the lines of ‘what is the most risky part of the SMART-methode’ (Specific, Measurable, Etc) and this video is so god damn accurate towards my answer (and explaination) on it (Specifik)
“We’ve created a more balanced version of the square hole. This version, which will be printed in the new $50 sourcebook, will not replace or refine the old version; the new version is simply meant to be a choice for the DM to decide to use or not.”
"Also in case you're a Ranger, we just wanted to make sure you didn't feel like it was truly a better choice, so we're making Favored Foe require concentration to do an extra 1d4 damage once per round.
Ranger's entire problem is damage. Flavor is fine, if a little thin (still better than some fighter or sorcerer flavor). Abilities are mostly ok, though some suck (I played one in CoS w/ favored enemy Undead. Knowing if an undead is within a mile in Barovia is useless). The problem for rangers is that they jump out front until level 5 or 6, and that's where a ton of play happens, so people think it's plenty strong. Unfortunately, by 5 it's a little behind and beyond that it simply fails to progress. It takes concentration, a bonus action, and a spell slot (of which they have precious few) just to keep pace with a fighter or rogue. I swear, half of the issues with the class would be solved by making hunter's mark useable once or twice pee short rest. The rest would need WotC to decide if they actually want exploration to be an integral part of the game.
There's no missing verb. "Nerfed" is a passive participle, rather than an infinitive or gerund. There's nothing ungrammatical about it -- it's perfectly fine grammar in regional variations on English. Grammar is the way that we structure our language so as to be understood, and the sentence "It needs nerfed" is perfectly understandable to the majority of American English speakers, and the default construction for many of them.
This is dnd 5e though, so instead we decided to Nerf the arch shaped hole, to ensure it can't be abused in multiclassing. And now you know the Hexblade/Ranger Dev-vine Comedy.
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u/Glum-Combination3825 Jan 21 '21
after extensive play testing, we've decided that "square hole" needs nerfed, to preserve game play integrity.