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mlooney

NP Tuesday, May 26, 2020

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1 hour ago, ijuin said:

The Pointy-Haired Boss is so incompetent that the only ways he could be keeping his job are either through sucking up to his boss, or nepotism/political connections. He's just not important enough in the company to keep his position without somehow benefiting those above him.

I have no idea how my boss or her boss kept their jobs at EDS.  Both were badly clue deficient.

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19 hours ago, ijuin said:

The Pointy-Haired Boss is so incompetent that the only ways he could be keeping his job are either through sucking up to his boss, or nepotism/political connections. He's just not important enough in the company to keep his position without somehow benefiting those above him.

Well, my support contract rolls over and gets picked up by various competing companies every several years. At one point, I was an employee of a big name you all know that I will not disclose. They have a highly inflated view of themselves, much like Dilbert's company. So much so, they are the only company I've seen get their contract terminated by our customer, in the 'you've been unresponsive enough that we are exercising our escape option' sense. The company was actually fired and replaced. They went from favored supplier to 'we won't do business with you again' in less than two years.

The bulk of us worker bees were not really affected, we just got a new label slapped on us, but the few folks that were 'real employees' of the firm sent in to manage us had to choose to stay on or to leave. They all kept their positions with the firm and crawled back into whatever hole they came from. It made sense, because they had seniority, year invested, and the firm had great pay and benefits. We were all glad to see them go.

The part of this megalith we interacted with did not have > a < pointy haired boss. The corporate culture was such that the entire staff they sent over was pointy haired bosses. My direct experience with three of them makes me want to never work for this company ever again; it's one of the three worst jobs I've ever had. One of them asked for a favor, I wrote her some code, never got a thank you, and listened to the boss one praise her for her job well done for the next year. One of the others plagiarized a decade of documentation, put his name on every page, and same thing, 'great documentation'. None of us got any credit.

They were not unskilled. (so maybe not exactly like the pointy haired boss). They excelled at patting each other on the back, and knew how to claim credit for stuff within their corporate culture. They had some skills writing memos and holding meetings, but as a technical company, I would not trust them to code their way out of a paper bag. Oh, Dilbert is sooo real.

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On 5/29/2020 at 8:58 AM, mlooney said:
On 5/29/2020 at 7:54 AM, ijuin said:

The Pointy-Haired Boss is so incompetent that the only ways he could be keeping his job are either through sucking up to his boss, or nepotism/political connections. He's just not important enough in the company to keep his position without somehow benefiting those above him.

I have no idea how my boss or her boss kept their jobs at EDS.  Both were badly clue deficient.

I know exactly how my boss is keeping his job. He OWNS the company.

(Also, for a manager, he seems relatively competent. Like, still not much technical skills, but the company still exists, so ...)
Advantage of small companies with flat management structure. There are disadvantages, of course. For several years, I WAS the IT department. Now we hired few more people. Well ... hired ... they work for company. I assume they are getting paid. I don't care if they are employees in legal sense. I'm not.

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17 hours ago, mlooney said:

So you are saying you worked for EDS then?  Before it went under of course.

I am specifically not saying, but the company I am referring to is generally highly regarded, still in business, and will continue for a long while on it's inertia. If not, I would be investing in shorting it's stock.

For a company to die off for real seems to require more than incompetence on a company-wide scale. Self image and will to continue must have something to do with it. These people were delusional and full of themselves. They really believed the world revolved around them.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I know exactly how my boss is keeping his job. He OWNS the company.

(Also, for a manager, he seems relatively competent. Like, still not much technical skills, but the company still exists, so ...)
Advantage of small companies with flat management structure. There are disadvantages, of course. For several years, I WAS the IT department. Now we hired few more people. Well ... hired ... they work for company. I assume they are getting paid. I don't care if they are employees in legal sense. I'm not.

Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss, by contrast, is a low-level manager in a large company. He specifically does NOT have enough importance to survive without the favor of those above him, so somebody must like him up there.

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6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, mlooney said:

So you are saying you worked for EDS then?  Before it went under of course.

I am specifically not saying, but the company I am referring to is generally highly regarded, still in business, and will continue for a long while on it's inertia. If not, I would be investing in shorting it's stock.

I have several options on that, but they tend to be telecom based companies.  Other than EDS I don't have a lot of experience dealing with main stream tech companies, so I'm not going to play 20 questions on who it was.

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:
On 5/29/2020 at 1:58 AM, mlooney said:

I have no idea how my boss or her boss kept their jobs at EDS.  Both were badly clue deficient.

I know exactly how my boss is keeping his job. He OWNS the company.

The last company I worked for had a pointy haired owner.   I've talked some about him here, but it's been a few years.

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2 hours ago, mlooney said:

... I'm not going to play 20 questions on who it was.

Oh. Well, good, I don't intend to disclose. I thought that was clear.

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27 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
2 hours ago, mlooney said:

I'm not going to play 20 questions on who it was.

Oh. Well, good, I don't intend to disclose. I thought that was clear.

Oh, it was, I was just saying that I'm not going to even try and figure out which company you were talking about.  Not only did you say you weren't going to tell, I really don't have the background anymore to make an intelligent guess as to which pointy haired company you are dealing with.

 

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14 hours ago, ijuin said:

Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss, by contrast, is a low-level manager in a large company. He specifically does NOT have enough importance to survive without the favor of those above him, so somebody must like him up there.

Considering Dilbert's company, it's possible he remains on his place BECAUSE he's no threat to those above him. Despite the fact that sometimes even he seems competent compared to them.
 

9 hours ago, mlooney said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I know exactly how my boss is keeping his job. He OWNS the company.

The last company I worked for had a pointy haired owner. 

Is the company still in business?
 

 

6 hours ago, mlooney said:
7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
9 hours ago, mlooney said:

I'm not going to play 20 questions on who it was.

Oh. Well, good, I don't intend to disclose. I thought that was clear.

Oh, it was, I was just saying that I'm not going to even try and figure out which company you were talking about.  Not only did you say you weren't going to tell, I really don't have the background anymore to make an intelligent guess as to which pointy haired company you are dealing with.

Would 20 questions be enough? Doesn't seem there is shortage of such companies.

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44 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Doesn't seem there is shortage of such companies.

That's the bit that started this. Dilbert is too close to home.

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