Ever work in a place that was insistent on just filling positions with a body?
If not, it is VERY frustrating. I am a “scientist” so am very definitely NOT trained in these areas. That said; I cannot understand why it is so complicated!!
Why does management think it is a good idea to put person A to work writing software because he/she was really good at painting walls (or replace with an infinite number of scenarios). It’s like all management is capable of hearing is the “really good at” part of that sentence. Well, if they were “really good at” that then they will be “really good at” this. WRONG!
The next best one is making person B a manager of <name a skill/trade> because he/she was good at that skill/trade. Do we not understand that different jobs require different skills? A typical software developer (for example) does NOT posses management skills just like a typical painter does not posses developer skills. Even more frustrating (to me at least) is the ignoring of the common knowledge that many of these positions attract people of certain personality types. Moving them across a line in the sand does NOT cause them to magically become a different person. Case in point; most really good developers are self-motivated, introverts, work alone (to a large extent), and are motivated by challenge/technology. Move that person to management and suddenly they need to be an extrovert, find no reward in what they are doing, are frustrated, and quickly move to another job. Gosh – hard to figure that one out – isn’t it??? Do we take really good welders away from construction projects and put them to work in the trade schools as teachers? OF COURSE NOT!
Any more gripes?? Sure – I’m on a roll!! Team A has 6 people on a project with a very tight timeline, everyone working at 100% capacity. Team B is behind on their project. The obvious solution? Take one or two people from Team A and move them to Team B. What does this accomplish? It slows Team B down as they now have to bring the new people up to speed and makes it impossible for Team A to meet their deadline. Great job management – you went from having one problem to two and wasted a whole lot of resources in the process.
Ugh… I’m sure this rant will continue at a future time.
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