Article: 18663 of alt.peeves Message-ID: <3DFC80AC.8F23B72A@earthlink.net> From: Nathan Nagel Organization: Spotty, at best X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en]C-CCK-MCD (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.peeves Subject: Re: Mucking up a Wet Dream References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 38 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 13:15:34 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.58.35.138 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net 1039958134 65.58.35.138 (Sun, 15 Dec 2002 05:15:34 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 05:15:34 PST Path: news.meer.net!sea-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.frii.net!newsfeed.frii.net!140.99.99.194.MISMATCH!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: archive.mv.meer.net alt.peeves:18663 Peter Stickney wrote: > ObPeeve: Corporate's idea of a wise use of their funds is not to > shore up R&D, or to complete the facilities that they've been subbing > around with for 2 years, now. No, the best use of the investor's > money is to plunk down $160,000,000.00 US to have their name placed on a > Football Stadium. That money would have run our old facility for 8 > years. It wasn't until just a few years ago that someone explained this to me in words that I could understand, but once it sunk in, it explained a lot. Here's the gist: Engineers and other technical people are overhead. You should expect to be treated like shit. The people that can successfully interact with other people and convince others to do their will are the ones that will get paid the shitloads of money, because the skills that they posess are not so well understood, and can't be taught at a four year university. Therefore most management considers even the most exceptional engineers as replaceable and treats them as such. They can always get a kid right out of college to do what you do, if you ever get too unruly, right? The second, even sadder part of this epiphany is that in 99.44% of American businesses (and even at least one foreign one, which I happen to have the misfortune of working for now that the cool mom-n-pop that I started off with got acquired) do not care one rodent's rosy red rectum about product. They'd rather make $2 million selling plastic fake dog vomit than $1.9 million making the coolest gadget ever known to man. Looked at in this light, the stadium actually makes sense. I mean, you already have a product that people are buying, right? So no need for that pesky R&D, we'll just market the hell out of what we've got and we'll All Get Rich(tm) nate Peeve: the fact that the economy is so bad that I can't even get motivated to do what I know I should, that is shop a truckload of resumes around to everyone I've ever met. Article: 18686 of alt.peeves From: totototo+invadfp@mail.pacificcoast.invalid (Uncle Gargoyle) Newsgroups: alt.peeves Subject: Re: Mucking up a Wet Dream Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 19:38:36 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 47 Message-ID: <3dfcd884.225343049@news.newsguy.com> References: <3DFC80AC.8F23B72A@earthlink.net> Reply-To: totototo@mail.pacificcoast.net (Uncle Gargoyle) NNTP-Posting-Host: p-473.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/16.243 Path: news.meer.net!sea-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-east.nntpserver.com!nntpserver.com!border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!129.250.175.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews3 Xref: archive.mv.meer.net alt.peeves:18686 On Sun, 15 Dec 2002 13:15:34 GMT, Nathan Nagel wrote: > ...Engineers and other technical people are > overhead. You should expect to be treated like shit. The people that > can successfully interact with other people and convince others to do > their will are the ones that will get paid the shitloads of money, > because the skills that they posess are not so well understood, and > can't be taught at a four year university. Those unteachable skills are generally associated with a sociopathic personality, to a greater or lesser extent. Once the sociopaths take over control of any organization, that's the end of normal folks ever rising above the level of, as you put it so well, shit. Only sociopaths can successfully manipulate other sociopaths. > Therefore most management > considers even the most exceptional engineers as replaceable and treats > them as such. They can always get a kid right out of college to do what > you do, if you ever get too unruly, right? That's also the "MBA Mindset" which views all employees as fungible cost items. Need a complex web site designed? Don't have any real competents around? Find the stupidest piece of deadwood on the phone list, give him/her "Websites for Dummies" with no budget and a deadline two weeks away. After all, HTML is just ASCII text, isn't it? We used to have a "wellness program" where I worked. The idea was good, but the execution was laughably stupid. They had a stupid cunt of a superannuated secretary handling it, and she could only think in terms of touchy-feely new-age crap, all hugs and kisses. For a (private) joke, I offered her some recipes to publicize as part of the program, all stuff loaded with fats and sugars and nary a fresh vegetable or fruit to them -- and she thought they were just w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l. Well, okay, they *were* good recipes that produced pretty tasty results, but m'dear, this is a *wellness* program and you should be encouraging people to think twice about eating decadent, fat-laden goodies, not encouraging them! Sheesh. -- Uncle Gargoyle