The trilogy took me back in time 25 years to my first employer out of college. The look of revulsion on management faces when I suggested that absolutely everyone at the company should build at least one laser. That they should have some concept of why the fuck we were all there.
That's insane to me. Building a laser sounds pretty fun, although also very difficult. Way easier sell than mess with spreadsheets until number go up.
Wasn’t so hard. They’re a 3D puzzle that just so happens to emit beams that blind & set fires. I built a lot of them in many different styles. Alignment was finicky and fun. Soldering without destroying the PCB really messed with me but in the good way.
“We are doing science.” “Jason’s ON FIRE!” “For science.”
The person most angry at me for the very idea he should do manual labor: the CFO The most disgusted, utter revulsion at doing the labor that ultimately paid her paycheck: the head of HR
Ya know as someone who works for a semiconductor company I could not fathom a single executive ever considering operating a piece of equipment in one of our factories
Definitely wasn’t that way in when my mom was working in the fabs. Always the threat a director would try to Show Ya How It’s Dun, Texanly.
In 30 years, I've seen Plant Managers, Customer Service Reps, Project Engineers, and even the most dreaded accountants come out to run machines on occasion. But never EVER have I seen H.R. do it.
Why is this so unsurprising. I maintain a similar attitude to yours, as senior leadership I still routinely work in the day to day grind that my staff do, and it's invaluable to my ability to make good business decisions for the company.
Until I’m satisfied I sufficiently understand the work of people I’m supporting, I don’t feel I’m competent to be their safety guy.
A very reasonable position to take.
Full agree for the safety person perspective. I guess I don't really get why everyone needs to build a laser themselves if that's what the company makes, though? I work at a university, and there are plenty of people who do important stuff here who shouldn't teach a class or do research.
You may also be missing how much teaching happens outside of the classroom. Also that EVERYONE at the university needs to understand that education and the care for our students is the reason we are there.
Absolutely every person on a floor or in the stacks in a university library has taught students and sometimes professors. How to read a catalogue system, browse a shelf for related literature, work shelves when computers are down. Tricks for database queries. And on and on and on.
Staff are not there for the exorbitant pay and groupies. It’s for the love of the game.
And occasionally to yell at a student tossing a book over a railing to their buddy WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING. The kids razoring a chapter out of a 3-hour reserve textbook got WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM. The guy slicing plates out of 19th century stuff got a call to the real cops. Good old days, man.
Whoa now, you've been awfully quiet on there being groupies. Why have you never mentioned the groupies? I actually asked one day and you walked away.
The groupies, like the frogurt, are also cursed.
My first job they put us through a rotation of all the production lines as the idea was if you're going to be in a position to suggest and make changes you should know how and why things are done the way they currently are. Also to build relationships so you'd have friends to ask.
I always wish people *designing* stuff like cars & tractors had to do common maintenance before full production. Pull that battery drawer out and change those two units. Yes a stack of 4 hydraulic connections is pretty; get your fingers in there & connect/disconnect. Please give me room to work.
Damn right.
Related, the best mechanical bit about my old Hyundai Pony was how absolutely EASY it was to get to the oil filter.
I mean, I have AFAB farmer hands, not giant but also most definitely not delicate, and I’m scraped up from my new hydraulics. My dad would be CUSSING.
I come from the old school of every leak can be stopped by just screwing down the hose clamp so far you'll either produce diamonds or cold fusion.
The bean counters are the ones to be mad at, not the engineers. The engineers hate those designs, too, but are given constraints they MUST work within.
I am largely ignorant here. I'm just thinking of a lot of standard corporate roles like Receptionist or Accountant or whatnot where the role is going to be doing the same sort of things almost independent of what it is the organization actually does. Where they wouldn't be making those changes.
Fair. Depending on the upwards mobility today's accountant could be CFO in a while. Not important at the start but they should be more familiar at the end.
This also encourages internal promotion and succession planning. The CFO external hire MBA that knows numbers only is likely to feel or be perceived as adversarial.
Ditto what Mark said. I make decisions for the entire company's policies. If I don't intimately know what we do and why, then how can I make an informed and intelligent decision about our policies that impact what we do day to day?
And I definitely started at the bottom and worked my way up this specific ladder.
Even if the senior leadership doesn't do the work themselves (often a strikable offense in a union environment), having a presence in the lunchroom or the operating floor can be extremely potent. Hearing feedback from those who do the jobs that earn the revenue can be valuable information.
see this is kinda why I am down with the idea that *everyone* should do manual labour for at least a few months. these hoity-toity people annoy me no end.
I think everybody should have to spend a summer or two working crappy food service and retail jobs.
One of the most valuable things I learned from my crappy jobs was "ways I will never act if I'm ever a manager". Mostly by counterexample.
Ditto.
I would like the execs who harp about the Importance of Clean Restrooms to our retail company to come spend a busy weekend having to clean them (and the rest of the store) and see just how fast they reprioritize things.
If you aren’t willing to a clean a toilet, you don’t really care.
Yep. If every able-bodied white-collar in a corporation had to spend even a single work week on the "unskilled" jobs they sneer about, much less the central ones to the work that pays them., boy howdy I bet their tunes would be changed.
Operations dealing with engineers. Every engineer should spend 6-months in Ops to have an inkling of a grasp of how things work in the field v drawings/concepts. Remember one time when engineers went into a gallery to check out something and came rushing back up because suddenly a leaky check 1/3
Said okay will go down to deal and clean up. It was more about hoping they learned things happen, not a case of operations choosing to ignore something letting it get worse; we easily could’ve just done rounds, had that check arm blow out and not seen it until next rounds hrs later. 2/3
Some leaks, nowhere near a flow meter, are really hard to detect until someone happens upon them. Just lucked out they happened to be near by for another reason or would’ve had a much larger and slipperier mess to clean up when we next ventured to that location. Also see why rounds exist. 3/3
Ooo…another: eng/maint being all there’s already an isolation valve when ops requests a new one. Yeah sure there is: on the drawing…in the field it’s down 3 flights of stairs and 400’ along the gallery &around a corner from the place you need to work and turning it on/off is PIA especially 4th time.
My regular question of “how does X support the mission” comes rather forcibly to mind.
This has been a leadership principle that I've driven into the directors and managers under me - you have to spend at least 1 day every 6 months doing your direct report's job. Take tickets, write queries, make dashboards, etc. If you don't understand the work, and value of it, you can't manage it.
I have a principle when it comes to management (and other areas of life...) Never ask someone to do something if you aren't prepared to do it yourself.
I experienced the same at the start of my career. Managers had no idea how to accomplish our work. "We need more productivity out of you!" "Ok, how would you like it?" "Umm, just do it!" The look on those managers' faces as I surpassed them on the corporate ladder was sweet.