The only thing worse than fighting someone to try and help them is fighting someone to try and help them. – Moi
Some lessons arrive mighty late in life, but I reckon it’s good they arrive at all. Having spent damn near thirty years listening to everyone and their brother espouse the “grand merits” of doing as little as possible, letting people run off cliffs or into walls, and generally being as uncaring and unmotivated as possible – doing only just enough to continue drawing a paycheck – I have landed somewhere that evidences the reality of the above quote well enough to finally teach me how and why people wind up both pursuing and espousing aforesaid “grand merits”.
Mind you, I still do not think them grand merits whatever, but I am purely sick and tired of wearing myself out trying to halt inefficiencies and various train-wrecks of churn and rework in the face of people who, to a one and with ridiculous consistency, absolutely insist upon thinking that refusing all process, all structure, and all method can possibly bring other than more of the same.
You want to run a marathon with the cart in front of the horse? Go for it.
You want to spend weeks on a project only to find out at the last minute that you forgot something critical that upsets the entire apple cart and sends you all back to square one? Knock yourself out.
You want to pretend that you can possibly know all the elements and aspects of what must happen, what the legalities are, and what else is impacted by your choices without actually spending the time to investigate, track them, and nail them to the design board before proceeding? Hey, you enjoy that pretty, lollipop world…. you go, you!
Yes, this is me giving up. Mark your calendars and call the press, it is official:
I GIVE THE FUCK UP.
I have seen so much money and time so furiously and thoroughly wasted in the last two years that, in all frankness, had I that money myself, I could easily have rebuilt the entire enterprise with full automation.
From scratch.
(Oh, I forget, not only do they not consider cost avoidance as savings, they don’t understand that operating on pipe cleaners, half-built and under-powered systems actually IS NOT how the rest of the world does it. Nor do they “get it” that continuing to outsource business critical revenue streams and refusing to invest in legitimate architecture or foundational efforts such as Master Data Management, Service Oriented Architecture, and Business Process Management isn’t going to get them far enough ahead to short up the fucking MOUNT EVERST of technical debt, NOR will it grant them the space in which to breathe long enough or well enough to manage the majority of their business on more than fucking MS Excel spreadsheets.)
I have endured being told that I do not know how to communicate (!!); Sorry, honey, just because you don’t like what I am saying doesn’t mean you didn’t understand it or I didn’t communicate it just fine.
I have endured being second-guessed and undermined and countered in my area of over 23 years specialty (Why don’t you just imagine for a moment what or how that would go over were the shoes reversed. No, on second thought, don’t bother; the mere notion is laughable.) Oh, I’m sorry! I thought you hired me because you wanted me to FIX THIS FUCKING MESS, not figure out how to prop it up on popsicle sticks and cinderblocks every time “The Parent” looks at us so you can eek out just enough to launch the next “biggest savior” of a marketing campaign that neither your infrastructure nor your personnel can possibly support long enough to be a true success (4th, anyone? No? Color me UNsurprised).
I have put up with every body and their god damn brother freely admitting that I both know what I’m doing and am reasonable and logical in my efforts and pursuits and requests and then… as if we all live in some god damned circus house, blithely go and ignore every bit of it. Regularly. Consistently. Gleefully.
And you know what?
No. More.
I see very clearly now precisely why people wind up being like the mindset presented in the first paragraph of this post. I also see very clearly how and why those who cause it never quite “get” how and why their people wind up like this.
It is, in a word, idiocy. In a set of several words, it is managerial and visionary incompetence compounded by an egotisical insistence that personal preference or anecdotal experience is somehow more valuable or accurate than the entirety of global business history or any number of business intelligence or academic research pieces readily available that very, very clearly state the same damn things I’ve been screaming for almost two years.
I have never in all my fucking life seen people so happy to run around with their face and ears covered singing, “LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!” as if this is going to make big, bad reality magically transform into a glittery pony that will make all your fantasies come true.
If it weren’t so ridiculous and sad, I might actually laugh. As it stands, I sincerely wonder how it is that the place hasn’t run itself so far into the ground as to be roaming Shanghai.
Then I realize….. I know precisely why. If you’re paying attention, I bet you know it, too.
Well guess what? That little “snap” you heard somewhere in this post? That was the sound of a thread finally breaking.
Congratulations and thank you; I finally see the “grand merit” and the reason I have is because of you (and you know who you are).
Of course, I fully realize that having the audacity to express an opinion contrary to the delusional preference of “LA LA LA ALL IS WELL, WE KNOW EVERYTHING, YOU KNOW NOTHING!” is frowned upon and I also know that it is very likely that, regardless of this being my personal blog wherein I am clearly expressing my personal opinion, at least one person in a certain set of walls will make a point of retaliation.
Why wouldn’t they? It’s not like I haven’t been dealing with precisely that every since I told them I want no part of “architecture” if they weren’t willing to actually let me FIX THINGS.
It is, of course, my own stupidity that I actually turned down a job to stay. I was actually stupid enough to think they meant it when they said they valued my insight, my opinion, and my abilities.
Of course, I know now just how untrue that is…. that pretty little soap bubble was popped and then, every fleck of its being was run to ground and stomped in until nothing more of it could be seen.
And so, the quote that opened this post. Because, you see, I actually believed in all that bullshit about “striving for excellence” and “working together” and making fun while having fun.
Yeah, I know, what an idiot *I* was, eh?
Prudentia doctus.