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1 dashley 140 %$Header$
2    
3     \chapter{\cbmazerolongtitle{}}
4    
5     \label{cbma0}
6    
7     \beginchapterquote{``Being responsible sometimes means pissing people
8     off. Good leadership involves responsibility to the
9     welfare of the group, which means that some people
10     will get angry at your actions and decisons.
11     It's inevitable, if you're honorable. Trying to get
12     everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity:
13     you'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting
14     the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid
15     offering differential rewards based on differential
16     performance because some people might get upset.
17     Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices,
18     by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone
19     equally `nicely' regardless of their contributions,
20     you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind
21     up angering are the most creative and productive
22     people in the
23     \index{Powell, Colin}organization.''\footnote{General Powell's
24     presentation (\cite{bibref:d:powellleadershipprimer})
25     is an absolute goldmine of tremendous quotes. There were
26     many equally striking contenders for this spot (the opening quote
27     of the chapter about bad management).}}{General Colin Powell (Retired)
28     \cite{bibref:d:powellleadershipprimer}}
29    
30     \section{Introduction}
31     %Section Tag: INT
32     With the comic strip
33     \index{Dilbert@\emph{Dilbert}}\emph{Dilbert},
34     and several books, \index{Adams, Scott}Scott Adams made his fortune
35     anecdotally characterizing bad management. Certainly, in any
36     country, \index{bad management}bad management
37     is an abundant natural resource
38     and a shortage of bad management is not
39     on the horizon.
40    
41     We are less concerned with the humorous aspects of
42     bad management and more concerned with the practical
43     aspects. In this chapter, we offer opinion on the
44     following topics:
45    
46     \begin{itemize}
47     \item What \emph{is} bad management (i.e. what do we mean by
48     \emph{bad management}
49     and what characterizes bad management)?
50    
51     \item What do bad managers do?
52    
53     \item Which employees are most sensitive to bad management?
54    
55     \item In practical situations, how should one deal with bad
56     management?
57    
58     \item What are the best strategies for escaping unrewarding
59     work situations?
60     \end{itemize}
61    
62     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
63    
64     \section{Characteristics Of Bad Management}
65    
66    
67    
68    
69     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
70    
71     \section{How To Detect Bad Management During The Interview Process}
72    
73     The interview process is naturally an opportunity for a prospective
74     employer to form impressions of a prospective employee; but it is
75     also an opportunity for the prospective employee to form impressions
76     of the prospective employer. In this section, we supply some suggestions
77     about what to look for during an interview.
78    
79     \subsection{The Automobile Taillight Analogy}
80    
81     One of us (\index{Ashley, David T.}Dave Ashley, \cite{bibref:i:daveashley})
82     has an acquaintance who has described his method of evaluating
83     a used car (for purchase) as checking every electric light in the
84     vehicle to be sure that it works. The stated rationale is that if
85     all of the light bulbs in the vehicle are maintained, the probability
86     is high that other [major] vehicle maintenance has also been performed.
87     Similar reasoning \emph{may} (or may not!) apply to evaluating
88     a work environment.
89    
90     Stated more formally, it may be advantageous to find easily observable
91     indicators which correlate well with the quality of the work environment
92     at a company.
93    
94     We are not sure precisely what indicators should be used,\footnote{We welcome
95     suggestions here \ldots please e-mail us \ldots{}} but the two
96     strongest indicators that immediately come to mind are coding standards
97     and lessons learned.
98    
99     \begin{itemize}
100     \item \textbf{Coding Standards.}
101     During the interview process, it may be a good idea to inquire about
102     what coding standards are in place within the organization, to
103     ask to examine the standards, and also to inquire how the coding
104     standards are enforced (in some cases, tools such as QAC or
105     PC-LINT may automate this
106     process). The rationale for inquiring about coding standards
107     is that maintaining order in the primary workproduct of
108     software development---the code---is a fundamental goal.
109     An organization that has no coding standards in place probably
110     has other serious problems.
111     \item \textbf{Collection Of Lessons Learned.}
112     In any organization that produces embedded products, product failures
113     of one kind or another have probably occured. These may be cases
114     where a software defect has made its way into production, or even
115     software product build process failures where a software defect
116     was due to the build process or where a software load was not
117     reproducible from version control archives. A mature organization
118     would document and collect these failures, in order to feed them
119     back into the training (so that software developers don't make a
120     similar mistake again), into the process (if any changes in the process
121     would decisively prevent recurrence), and the tools (if the defect
122     is automatically detectable). During the interview process,
123     it may be prudent to inquire if product problems are documented
124     and fed back to prevent recurrence, and to inspect documentation
125     of past product problems. An organization that does not collect
126     product problems and try to prevent recurrence may have other
127     serious problems.
128     \end{itemize}
129    
130     \subsection{The \emph{What You See Is What You Get} Rule}
131    
132     During the interview process, any prospective employer will have a tendency
133     to misrepresent chronic problems as acute problems. As a general rule,
134     \textbf{problems of any type observed during the interview process are
135     \emph{chronic} in nature, no matter what claims are made by the employer.}
136    
137     An analogy involving overweight people may help to explain this point.\footnote{We
138     mean no disrespect or insensitivity towards people struggling to maintain a
139     healthy weight. However, the analogy is rather good, and for this reason
140     we would like to use it.} It is very common to meet an overweight person
141     who describes themselves as ``trying to lose weight'', i.e. being actively
142     on a diet. However, a study of overweight people who are ``trying to
143     lose weight'' would probably reveal that nearly all of them are struggling
144     with a chronic problem---nearly all were probably overweight five years
145     in the past and will be overweight five years in the future. For this reason,
146     when one meets an overweight person, it is a safe guess statistically that
147     the condition is chronic.
148    
149     Organizations are very similar to individuals in that patterns of behavior
150     are slow to change. Diets do not usually work. Individuals find ways---even
151     while on a diet---to consume ice cream and hamburgers. Organizations are
152     similar in that self-reform measures rarely succeed. Organizations, like
153     individuals, find ways to sabotage their own stated objectives.
154    
155     For this reason, any anomalies observed during the interview process are
156     almost certainly chronic rather than acute; no matter what claims
157     are made by interviewers.
158    
159    
160     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
161    
162     \section{The Employment ``Dating Game''}
163    
164    
165    
166     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
167    
168     \section{Authors And Acknowledgements}
169    
170    
171     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
172    
173    
174     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
175    
176    
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178    
179    
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181    
182    
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184    
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187    
188     \noindent\begin{figure}[!b]
189     \noindent\rule[-0.25in]{\textwidth}{1pt}
190     \begin{tiny}
191     \begin{verbatim}
192 dashley 275 $HeadURL$
193     $Revision$
194     $Date$
195     $Author$
196 dashley 140 \end{verbatim}
197     \end{tiny}
198     \noindent\rule[0.25in]{\textwidth}{1pt}
199     \end{figure}
200    
201     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
202     %
203     %End of file C_BMA0.TEX

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