How NOT to motivate your staff 74

[chiph]

OK, this forum is dedicated to sharing ways to motivate your technical staff. I've decided it also needs a place to provide negative examples -- thus, this thread.

I'll start it off with:

- Have an HR director who spends most of his time locked behind his office door. Problems with your pay? Send an email, so that the IT staff can read it too!

- Offer free sodas, but don't assign anyone the responsibility of refilling the refrigerator/soda machine. Yummm! Nothing better than a warm soft drink first thing in the morning!

Chip H.

 

[cfalcone17]

Shrewd, Japes89, very shrewd!
The fact that not one of the 5 caved in is a remarkable occurrence....most people are weak in this area - easily swayed by the Darkside. I really hope they are able enough to face the slings and arrows of outrageous business practices as they band together as “force majeur.” By the report you give, I am sure they will do fine.
I once was in a position to leverage (verb transitive – first occurred in 1937) in this manner. The three of us banded together to stop or slow the inevitable by retaining the security and transport goods. Then, the “management” (really, a bunch of over-paid IT insultants) worked over the messaging engineer in a back room, using threats, promises and the like to steal the loot . This person caved in, gave these slithering reptiles what they wanted, and was still thrown out the door with the rest of us.
Great rewards, loyalty to barbarians thus gives us….
It was at that point I decided to join these Sith lords and work my fifth column magic backwards. I don’t know if it’s working, but at least my pay is steady and all my people are in good position right now.
Christopher *
We bring the mis-manage to MIS Management.

 

[dallasdino]

#1 Do not fire people without skills. Actually that is a reason to hire more people without skills. Why not hire your friends even if they do not exactly have the skills. Now with all these people we need to lower salaries. Of course the more poeple under the manager the better the building of the empire.

If there are so many people with skill out of work, and I know there is, why is it so many people just suck?

Have you ever asked a 10 year newly hired vetern to do something simple like copy a file and they look at you like a deer in headlights.

 

[chiph]

If there are so many people with skill out of work, and I know there is, why is it so many people just suck?

I have to agree.

I worked with a VB coder once (for about a week ) who spent 6 hours on this:

AddUser(FName, LName, Pwd)
Result = AddUser

I could see him out of the corner of my eye - he'd cover the monitor with fingerprints, tracing code. He'd work at it for a while, look like he was going to lean over and ask me why it wasn't working, but then go back to tracing. Eventually he asked me what was wrong: "Dude, you're calling a function, but not assigning the return value to anything. On the next line you'are assigning the return value, but not calling the function."

Nice guy, and all, but a product of the Dot-Com boom, where anyone who knew what HTML stood for could get a very well-paying job.

Chip H.

 

[mudskipper]

My favorite:

Management- "Why isn't [insert network based mission critical software here] working well?"
IT- "The equipement is very old, and it is not keeping up with the demands of the growing company. Let us spend some money on the hardware, and in 2 weeks all will be better."

So management decides to call in "experts" to review our system, as they were concerned that it was not being maintained correctly. Several thousand dollars later, the verdict is in. Upgrade the hardware. Oh, no--it gets better. After spending budget money on the consultants, there is no more money for the hardware. They actually ask the IT department to come up with another option to fix the problem! Merry Christmas
Mudskipper
___________________________________________________________________________________

Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[KornGeek]

At my last job (a couple of years ago, when startups still had hope), here was how they treated the IT/Ops team. If anyone from there reads this, I'm sure you know who I am (I was one of the newbies to the Ops world).

1) Assemble a team of varying skill levels (from newbie to demigod) and get them to work well together. Let them prove that they can accomplish the near-impossible in short periods of time given sufficient amounts of caffeine and beef.

2) Treat them like the black sheep of the company, and hide them from the customers. Everybody was happy with this arrangement. All was working well.

3) Bring in a high-level manager "George" who will pretend to manage them, while actually ignoring them completely. A leader will emerge from the group, and all will work well.

4) Bring in four of "George"'s friends to be their managers. Hire their friends from other companys, regardless of actual ability. (Note: One manager had tech skills, but not management skills. He was the best of the bunch.) Remove all authority from the existing hierarchy.

5) Arbitrarily divide the team into groups, and discourage cooperation between the groups. Complain when things no longer work.

6) Dismiss 2/3 of the people with skills because they actually are willing to voice their opinions openly. Promote the most inept.

7) Gape in amazement as the company crumbles around you.

8) Fire "George" and his buddies for their phenomenal failure.

I fortunately bailed out at the same time as step 6. I saw the direction the company was headed, and no longer enjoyed my work, so I left voluntarily. The "layoffs" hit when I was 1 week into my 2 weeks notice. They offered to let me leave as well, and still get paid my final week. It was a pleasant vacation.

All of this was in addition to other, more standard abuses. These included:
1) Tell the Ops team on Friday afternoon that they need to plan and build an entire data center before Monday morning.
2) Maintain a database of data center connections using Excel. Refuse to consider using an actual database.
3) Hold Ops responsible for maintaining this "database" and its accuracy, but let the entire company have write permissions to it, as well as unsupervised access to the physical connections. Take no action against people who make unauthorized changes.
4) Take no action against a bumbling HR exec who emails out a spreadsheet showing everybody's pay rates, but fire people over more trivial issues if they are less politically connected to the higher ups.

And the single most demoralizing thing:
Make it abundantly clear that each of the computers they are working with cost more than they earn in a year (close to double), and that some pieces of equipment cost more than the entire team earns in a year.

I miss the people I worked with, and a few of the managers there were incredible. However, the pleasant start-up was quickly becoming a small company with big company politics.

 

[chiph]

KornGeek -

A lot of that sounds familiar. A variation on the "salary spreadsheet" trick is to store salary & option info on a unsecured network share (HR didn't know they needed to do this).

"Hiring the friends" also rings a bell. I worked at a company that had 40 VPs, Directors, & Managers, who were supervising a total of 25 employees. A little top-heavy, eh?

Chip H.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Yeeeoowch!!

I also find that all too familiar, Korngeek.

This must be an industry-wide phenomenon instigated by the luddites as a way to bring down the geeks.

I'm not paranoid - I KNOW they're out to get me...

CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[smittytech]

OMG I love this thread!

Here are some of my personal favorites:

1) Always assume that your IT staff is after your job....even when they have repeatedly stated that they do not wish to pursue management...and they sincerely mean it.

2) Refuse training on the grounds that subordinates won't receive training on something until management has received the training. (Training that management has no desire or intention of EVER pursuing.)

3) Refuse training (like Server+) on the grounds that "Your job doesn't require it & it's expensive." Then call the tech support company, who we know bills by the hour, when there's an obvious problem with the server.

Gosh I feel better already......

 

[Rhys666]

And the entrant from the UK...

1) Send staff on a cheap 5 day training course
2) Ask staff to build Mission Critical, and legally required, system, and oh by the way the users will inform you of the specs, (Read: Make Up!), as you go along
3) Inform staff that they should just change the development as many times as the users change the specs
4) Inform staff that changing entire spec, and Business area providing it,(Read: The new Business area is more connected in the Business' power tree, and now wants the new toy as it looks like it could be good), 4 months into a project is a good thing
2) Inform staff that it is required they attend presentations over lunch by Help Desk, on the role of the Help Desk
3) Maintain that running, and maintaining, another mission critical application to run on on O/S 2 is the way forwards
4) Blame staff for all litter on site when site is used all day by Joe Public as a route between two housing estates
5) Be unable to put change in vending machines until after 17:00 so by 10:00 the next day when most people are in, there is none in any of them

6) Refuse flexi time to IT staff on the grounds that call centre staff don't have it but expect IT staff to provide 24hr a day support
7) Ban use of staffs own cars for Business trips, then make it impossible to get a pool car, then have a no e-mail day, then berate staff of increase in poor, or general lack of, communication

 

[Peahippo]

I find the best thing for demotivation (well, primarily its twin brother fatalism) is to volunteer your staff for as much work as possible. Continue upping the ante on those project metrics ... for instance, if you ordered and had installed 50 new circuit upgrades last month, then make damned sure you pound the table at the next conference call and demand 100 circuits this month. More! More! After all, you won't be doing the work. When your staff falls apart with half-done projects all over the place, the paperwork's a mess ... well, you can just call them incompetent ... at the same conference call in which you demand even more work. No time like today! Heck, there might be a buyout coming up, and you wouldn't want to be caught looking like you aren't growing by leaps and bounds, would you?

 

[theoxyde]

Honestly believe that

http://www.despair.com/demotivators/incompetence.html

is an effective management philosophy and practice it religiously.

 

[skotman]

and the number one way to ensure a VERY high turnover is to....

not pay your employees on time...an entire pay period sometimes where they can only get you the past due check and not the current one...you try working with someone who works 60 hour weeks, and goes home to an answer machine full of creditors.

Took 8 months for me to get out of there and now I'm making more, working less, except when we have large jobs going out.

Scott Heath

http://www.scottspad.com

AIM: orange7288

 

[smittytech]

Small company: 2 people in IT dept: Sys Admin & tech

1) Refuse server & network training (or any additional training) for the A+ certified tech 'cause "you don't really need it being the help-desk person and all..."

1a) State that tech will never receive training that the sys admin hasn't had first.

2) Assign additional server & network duties to the tech because the sys admin is opening own consulting business and is only in office 2 days per week.

3)Give tech a butt-chewin or low performance review because tech has made mistakes regarding server & network even though tech has repeatedly asked for additional instruction on the task(s) assigned and/or openly stated that they were not comfortable with the assigned task due to lack of knowledge, experience and/or instruction.

4) Continue to inform upper management that your tech is incompetant and continues to mess up even though thorough instruction was given.....

******************************************
"Life without chocolate is too terrible to contemplate!"

 

[phgirl]

Ways to NOT motivate your IT Staff:

Provide NO cross-training between staff members. Only train ONE person for specific functions. That way when someone calls in sick for the day, everyone is able to scramble around to correct and support those data-base functions that they are unfamiliar with. BONUS: You can deny time off or at least delay due to the expansive training that has to then be provided ASAP.

Reprimand the staff when they punch into the time clock 5-minutes early and screw up your 'budgeted payroll projections.' Nevermind that 1.) they are punctual with their attendance and 2.) available that morning for the freakish PBX/network failure that would have had all the organization's clinics off-line and appointments backed up if they had shown up at normal time. BONUS: say nothing to the co-worker who was 15-minutes late thus balancing out the early person's budget faux-pas.

Being the Manager, schedule yourself for multiple meetings, all day, all week long. Don't inform the staff that you will be away, make them guess where you are. Your staff is unaware of what YOU really do for your outrageous salary and also, you are truly unaware of what your selfless staff does for their minimumal wage by not being present. BONUS: When something does go off kilter, you can blame your staff for not keeping you aware - even though you were never around to be updated.

Sorry - must be time to vent....thanks for the forum.

 

[Sashanan]

Keep changing requirements and piling on new must-haves making the deadline less and less realistic, then when your IT guy announces having to miss a day for his grandmother's funeral, express your worry about said deadline. And completely forget to express condolences, naturally.


"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)

 

[spi200]

Hi

When the Share Price is under pressure because of the lack of confidence of Senior Management tell the emplyee's things are tight and offer NO pay rises, then next year when the sharemarket recovers and the share price doubles because your a take over target (not good Management) tell the employee's things are still tight and that htey are lucky they ahve a job as their are many IT people out of work.
Just wait till the IT market picks up.

David

 

[the4thb]

1. As with many of y'all training is definatly number on on the list, but have you ever had

2. Management say in a perfect world yes, but this is an operational environment, planning can't be done! and its always good to

3. Place one guy incharge of deciding how the infrastructure will be built, another guy to buy all the equipment and then hand it all off (without any specifications or your inputs) to you to install, configure and manage.

4. Or have you asked for $3.4k of software only to get a $12K server instead

Now I know many would say I'd take the $12K server but if you had a server you were performing CPR on to keep it running and just needed to get the 1600 users that point at that server pointing to the other new server you already had and the choice was migrate users automatically with a $3.4k solution or migrate them all manually by hand... you choose what would be your choice....

5. And hire them as Server support but don't hire client support so they have to do client support too, and of course be sure to pull them away from a server thats down to go replace a workstaion, then ask later why didn't you get that server back up....

6. oh and along with 4 above have the guy who purchases everything keep track of all the licensing issues (like if you have one or not) but make sure he keeps this information to himself and then have the other staff run around the site counting how many widgets you have so you can be sure you haven't used all the licenses

well, I'm sure I could keep going and going and going kinna like that bunny on TV but I'm sure you've all heard it before and hey we're all in it together so I'm sure we'll hear it again... but thanks for letting me vent I know it has sure helped me.... now I just hope my bosses don't read this thread cuz then I'd have to add a 7.

 

[Hawkins]

A friend of mine actually recieved this department wide 'motivational memo':
TO: BP and IT Department
DATE: 10/1/03

In a few weeks we will begin a new fiscal year, 2004. I hope to make some changes over the next couple of months that will tweak how we do business. I think they are positive changes, but time will tell. xxx and I will get more information out on these changes soon.
We have a great group of people in our departments (IT and BP). Our technical expertise is strong and continuously getting stronger. We have made tremendous inroads with the user community, in terms of how they view us. While the back-biting and irresponsible comments that are so prevalent in corporate life today are alive and well at xyz inc, I also hear many good comments about our people “going the distance”.
We continue to have one problem that doesn’t go away or seem to show any impetus toward improvement. So, let me do my annual reminder (and some).
1. Our work day (with few exceptions) begins at 8:00 AM. That means you should be at your work area beginning work not later than 8:00 AM. A few people NEVER make it in by 8:00 AM. Many (over 1/4 of the department), is late more than 25% of the time.
2. Lunch begins at 12:00 PM. Leaving at 11:55 may get you to the head of the line at the lunch counter, but it is not authorized.
3. Lunch ends at 1:00 PM. If you need a long lunch, let your supervisor know so that the time can be charged to your Personal time.
4. The work day ends at 5:00 PM. Again, leaving by 4:55 (or 4:56, 4:57, 4:58, or even 4:59) is not acceptable. You should be at your work area (hopefully working) until 5:00 PM. Everyone in our department has a computer. Utilize the system clock, if in doubt.
As professionals we are often asked to start early or work longer hours. It is the nature of the position and we do it well. Some just don’t seem to be able to get the easy stuff done (like getting to work on time). I doubt that anyone will lose their job for being late (no guarantee), but I think that it is important for everyone in the department to recognize that this minor failure taints much of the good work that we do.
I am monitoring attendance, more of a sampling than daily tracking, and will utilize this information when considering people for promotions and wage increases. Additionally, those people for whom I do reviews are aware that it shows up on their review.
We do a great job with the “BIG” stuff. Let’s use this year to clean up some of the “small” stuff.
Thanks,

 

[MasterRacker]

Yeah, that's petty but it's also life. The problem a manager has is that people in other departments see the comings and goings of the IT people and when they see people coming in late or leaving early, they feel slighted and in their minds the IT people are getting preferential treatment. These other people aren't there to see the nights and weekends that the IT people are working to balance out that flex time.

It's certainly a demotivator but what can you do about it? Sometimes you have to spend more time energy manipulating other people's opinion of you that actually getting work done.


Jeff
If your mind is too open your brains will fall out...

 

[ChrisHunt]

Love that memo Hawkins. Dunno what your friend did, but what I'd do is start working strictly by the clock. Heck if "4:56, 4:57, 4:58, or even 4:59 is not acceptable" then neither is 5:01, 5:02 or 5:03. Set my watch alarm to go off at 5pm and leave on the dot - ideally in the middle of some important but pointless meeting, if possible in mid sentence! If anyone complains, point to this memo and its stress on the vital importance of precise time keeping. Gosh how those share prices must tumble when a couple of techies get stuck in traffic on the way to work.

As a contractor I'm somewhat isolated from the idiocies of managers. Often they don't apply to me, when they do I can at least think "well, it's their company they're screwing up, not mine". Occasionally contractors are singled out for, ahem, special treatment. One client, who almost entirely on contractors to get their work done cos the (few) permies were too busy politicing - let's call them Android Consulting - decided that contractors shouldn't park in the staff car park right outside the office door, but another one on the other side of the (big) site. No probs. I just billed them for an extra 15 minutes a day walking to-and-fro time.




-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk