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mike[_22_]

On 12/10/2012 6:14 PM, flipper wrote:
On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:36:26 -0800, (Dave Platt)
wrote:

In ,
Spehro wrote:

However, when I have a to deal
with a committee of clueless "suits" that want cheaper no matter what
it does to their quality, and then comes back a few months later and
tries to blame the engineers for the returns and failures, I tend to
call it a conspiracy. Lacking a better name for the process, I'll
continue to call it a conspiracy.

Bad management, not conspiracy.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity."

Agreed. "Shortsightedness" is another adjective for what's happening.

It's not quite the same thing as "stupidity", because (in cases like
this) the "suits" are specifically optimizing for a desired goal
(lower cost and higher sales, NOW), and are ignoring the longer-term
costs (returns, failures, loss of sales).

I understand your point but "shortsighted" seems a bit mild to me.

In a sense, it's a very
rational behavior pattern. If you don't plan on working for the same
company for at least 5-10 years, then it can make good sense to focus
only on your own short-term position.

To some extent, this "flows downhill" from the current Wall Street
financial system, in which companies' values depend very highly on
their short-term results (e.g. quarterly). In this environment,
"long-term" thinking means "next year" if you're lucky.

This also looks like a 'misunderstanding' to me. Surely there are
investors who try to hopscotch the market but most are looking for
continuing performance and quarterly reports are to detect 'trends'.

Since project
managers and VPs tend to receive financial incentives for achieving
short-term deliverable results, meeting tight schedules, and cutting
costs, there's a serious risk of a company "eating its seed corn".

This part, and the following, sounds like it came straight from a
management 'incentive program' training course whose basic theme could
be described as "be careful what you incentivise because that's the
behavior you will get." The one I attended had an example VP whose
bonus package was as you describe and the results were virtually the
same as you tell below.

The point was "this is a bad thing," which illustrates that 'the
company' doesn't really want that result so, as you point out at the
beginning, it's not a 'conspiracy' but a BIG MISTAKE.

I once had the displeasure of working for a company vice president who
gloried in this sort of short-term focus... "get the current product
out the door" was Job 1, and there really wasn't a Job 2. Bug-fixing,
work on product infrastructure, and any design and development work
which wasn't directly tied to a new feature was almost entirely
de-funded. He felt that the best way to achieve product goals was to
"hire a hundred code monkeys", throw it together, kick it out the
door, and then start over again.

Two or three years of this, and the product quality had taken a really
serious downturn, customers were unhappy, engineers were miserable,
and it was becoming very difficult to do any new development because
the existing product technology was buggy, brittle, and full of
short-term hacks.

The company developed one hell of an "engineering debt" during this
VP's reign, and it took years (and a lot of money) to recover after
the VP suddenly took a higher-status job at a competing company. I
felt more than a bit sorry for the competitor!

As we walked out of the meeting where we were informed that this
particular VP had suddenly resigned, one of my coworkers remarked "I
don't know about you, but I'm hearing an angelic choir singing right
now." I knew just how he felt!

There are a few things engineers stuck in this sort of "clueless suit"
situation can do: make your concerns known to higher management (in
writing if possible) in a professional and responsible manner, keep a
good "Pearl Harbor" file (a record of all such orders and
conversations), and keep your powder dry (look for other companies
which don't have quite such a corporate death-wish).

Hear, hear. In my experience it's often the case that 'bad management'
is the result of not getting good information back.

Don't think that's true. More than once I ran the problem up
the chain all the way to the company president.
I sat him down, showed him the industry trends, how what we were doing
missed the boat and proposed a slight plan alteration that would have
put is right in the center of the market. In all cases, I was told,
"if you won't do it, we'll find someone who will."
My answer in all cases was, "yes sir!"

In the last case, keeping up the illusion until after the IPO was
the primary consideration. I had the CEO going directly to my
staff and making changes. I was never told, but I sure got the
credit for all the problems it caused.
I sold my stock the day after the IPO blackout period at $19.
Guess that didn't go over too well...two months later, I was in the
unemployment line. They hired someone else to do what they wanted.
Stock is hovering around $2. Whodathunkit?