Well Oiled Machine

Posted on 2009-10-22 by Trever

From: ceo@company.com
Date: October 1, 2009 9:00:14 AM MDT
To: all@company.com
Subject: Company named to Deloitte Fast 50

Hello Everyone,

Last night at the Deliotte Fast 50 Awards dinner, Fred and I accepted on behalf of the company the award for placement in Canada’s Fast 50 growing Technology companies. The link below provides more information about the award and our ranking. Congratulations to all you for being part of this achievement.

http://en.fast50.ca/winners/2009winners

Best regards,
[…]

As my friend Dave sez “Awards are normally the stunned rewarding the confused”

From: ceo@company.com
Date: October 20, 2009 10:46:42 AM MDT
To: calgary@company.com
Subject: General Employee Meeting

All Staff:

Unfortunately, this morning the company conducted a layoff of a number of employees for business driven reasons. There will be a general employee meeting tomorrow morning at 9:30AM in the boardroom to discuss the rational and the go forward plans for the company.

Best regards,
[…]

At the appropriate time, the sysadmin group disabled accounts for the dearly departed.

The next day they were re-enabling some accounts because management decided to un-fire some people.

Apparently management didn’t realize they were key to other ongoing projects, and didn’t solely work on the project that had been shut down.

Yes, that instills loyalty like you’ve never seen before.

Also says lots about management disconnect in even a tiny ~30 person shop.

Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

This entry was posted in General, Rant, System Administration, Work. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to Well Oiled Machine

  1. Michael Mayer says:
    2009-10-22 at 10:23 am

    And this is why I will never work at a small company again. I see enough of that kind of stupidity at some of my clients…

  2. Trever says:
    2009-10-22 at 11:11 am

    How does it compare though to the things that inspire the daily Dilbert?

  3. Tim says:
    2009-10-23 at 8:27 am

    Stupidity comes in all sizes and flavours–large companies/organizations do equally dumb things to kill morale. Even ones that win employer of the year awards 🙂

  4. Trever says:
    2009-10-23 at 8:53 am

    I’m convinced that the CEO in this case is more a figure head and that the COO, Operations Manager, and various bean counters are the core at-fault.

  5. Trever says:
    2009-12-22 at 9:52 am

    A little more background :

    Returned from two weeks vacation to inbox with 5000+ mesages. This place has to change.
    9:20 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

    Drafted general infrastructure update plan and statement that we are going down this road or I am taking a different fork elsewhere.
    9:20 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

    Late for the layoffs meeting. I don’t know where the meeting rooms are, certainly aren’t in the new office space. Oh well. Whatever.
    9:54 AM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

    Office empty. Front and back doors unlocked. I could make my way off with cartloads of notebooks. Morons.
    9:54 AM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

    Maybe I should just leave in case there’s gunplay later.
    9:55 AM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

    Turning accounts back on for the people management decided to un-fire. What a smoothly oiled machine we have here…
    1:39 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

    me: “Do you want to do X or Y with this account?”
    manager: Yes.
    me: no no no, you can’t answer like Kosh. It’s an Either/OR.
    1:42 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

    I’m looking for a new gig.

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