%$Header: /home/dashley/cvsrep/e3ft_gpl01/e3ft_gpl01/dtaipubs/esrgubka/c_bma0/c_bma0.tex,v 1.4 2001/08/18 18:37:56 dtashley Exp $ \chapter{\cbmazerolongtitle{}} \label{cbma0} \beginchapterquote{``Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisons. It's inevitable, if you're honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally `nicely' regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the \index{Powell, Colin}organization.''\footnote{General Powell's presentation (\cite{bibref:d:powellleadershipprimer}) is an absolute goldmine of tremendous quotes. There were many equally striking contenders for this spot (the opening quote of the chapter about bad management).}}{General Colin Powell (Retired) \cite{bibref:d:powellleadershipprimer}} \section{Introduction} %Section Tag: INT With the comic strip \index{Dilbert@\emph{Dilbert}}\emph{Dilbert}, and several books, \index{Adams, Scott}Scott Adams made his fortune anecdotally characterizing bad management. Certainly, in any country, \index{bad management}bad management is an abundant natural resource and a shortage of bad management is not on the horizon. We are less concerned with the humorous aspects of bad management and more concerned with the practical aspects. In this chapter, we offer opinion on the following topics: \begin{itemize} \item What \emph{is} bad management (i.e. what do we mean by \emph{bad management} and what characterizes bad management)? \item What do bad managers do? \item Which employees are most sensitive to bad management? \item In practical situations, how should one deal with bad management? \item What are the best strategies for escaping unrewarding work situations? \end{itemize} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \section{Characteristics Of Bad Management} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \section{How To Detect Bad Management During The Interview Process} The interview process is naturally an opportunity for a prospective employer to form impressions of a prospective employee; but it is also an opportunity for the prospective employee to form impressions of the prospective employer. In this section, we supply some suggestions about what to look for during an interview. \subsection{The Automobile Taillight Analogy} One of us (\index{Ashley, David T.}Dave Ashley, \cite{bibref:i:daveashley}) has an acquaintance who has described his method of evaluating a used car (for purchase) as checking every electric light in the vehicle to be sure that it works. The stated rationale is that if all of the light bulbs in the vehicle are maintained, the probability is high that other [major] vehicle maintenance has also been performed. Similar reasoning \emph{may} (or may not!) apply to evaluating a work environment. Stated more formally, it may be advantageous to find easily observable indicators which correlate well with the quality of the work environment at a company. We are not sure precisely what indicators should be used,\footnote{We welcome suggestions here \ldots please e-mail us \ldots{}} but the two strongest indicators that immediately come to mind are coding standards and lessons learned. \begin{itemize} \item \textbf{Coding Standards.} During the interview process, it may be a good idea to inquire about what coding standards are in place within the organization, to ask to examine the standards, and also to inquire how the coding standards are enforced (in some cases, tools such as QAC or PC-LINT may automate this process). The rationale for inquiring about coding standards is that maintaining order in the primary workproduct of software development---the code---is a fundamental goal. An organization that has no coding standards in place probably has other serious problems. \item \textbf{Collection Of Lessons Learned.} In any organization that produces embedded products, product failures of one kind or another have probably occured. These may be cases where a software defect has made its way into production, or even software product build process failures where a software defect was due to the build process or where a software load was not reproducible from version control archives. A mature organization would document and collect these failures, in order to feed them back into the training (so that software developers don't make a similar mistake again), into the process (if any changes in the process would decisively prevent recurrence), and the tools (if the defect is automatically detectable). During the interview process, it may be prudent to inquire if product problems are documented and fed back to prevent recurrence, and to inspect documentation of past product problems. An organization that does not collect product problems and try to prevent recurrence may have other serious problems. \end{itemize} \subsection{The \emph{What You See Is What You Get} Rule} During the interview process, any prospective employer will have a tendency to misrepresent chronic problems as acute problems. As a general rule, \textbf{problems of any type observed during the interview process are \emph{chronic} in nature, no matter what claims are made by the employer.} An analogy involving overweight people may help to explain this point.\footnote{We mean no disrespect or insensitivity towards people struggling to maintain a healthy weight. However, the analogy is rather good, and for this reason we would like to use it.} It is very common to meet an overweight person who describes themselves as ``trying to lose weight'', i.e. being actively on a diet. However, a study of overweight people who are ``trying to lose weight'' would probably reveal that nearly all of them are struggling with a chronic problem---nearly all were probably overweight five years in the past and will be overweight five years in the future. For this reason, when one meets an overweight person, it is a safe guess statistically that the condition is chronic. Organizations are very similar to individuals in that patterns of behavior are slow to change. Diets do not usually work. Individuals find ways---even while on a diet---to consume ice cream and hamburgers. Organizations are similar in that self-reform measures rarely succeed. Organizations, like individuals, find ways to sabotage their own stated objectives. For this reason, any anomalies observed during the interview process are almost certainly chronic rather than acute; no matter what claims are made by interviewers. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \section{The Employment ``Dating Game''} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \section{Authors And Acknowledgements} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \noindent\begin{figure}[!b] \noindent\rule[-0.25in]{\textwidth}{1pt} \begin{tiny} \begin{verbatim} $RCSfile: c_bma0.tex,v $ $Source: /home/dashley/cvsrep/e3ft_gpl01/e3ft_gpl01/dtaipubs/esrgubka/c_bma0/c_bma0.tex,v $ $Revision: 1.4 $ $Author: dtashley $ $Date: 2001/08/18 18:37:56 $ \end{verbatim} \end{tiny} \noindent\rule[0.25in]{\textwidth}{1pt} \end{figure} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % $Log: c_bma0.tex,v $ % Revision 1.4 2001/08/18 18:37:56 dtashley % Preparation for v1.05 release. % % Revision 1.3 2001/07/06 23:46:55 dtashley % Edits. Addition of K-map diagrams to Boolean function chapter. % % Revision 1.2 2001/06/30 23:32:07 dtashley % End-of-month safety check-in. % % Revision 1.1.1.1 2001/06/19 21:26:28 dtashley % Initial import. % %End of file C_BMA0.TEX