If there’s one thing corporate employees love more than working long hours, it’s giving stupid names to simple concepts.
There’s a really long explanation involving lots of math, but I will give you the short version: Six Sigma is a methodology designed to eliminate defects and improve efficiency. The name “Six Sigma” comes from being six levels of standard deviation away from the mean of a process on a normal distribution graph. Boring, right? Basically Six Sigma means you’re operating at 99.9997% efficiency.
Like many other things in the corporate world, Six Sigma is full of pseudo-words (things that would be acronyms ..read more
Seriously. You want to know what I’m working on right now? The same thing I was working on five seconds ago when you last asked.
And when you ask again in another five seconds, I’ll probably still be working on the same thing.
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SWE is yet another corporate acronym that stands for “Satisfying Work Experience.” Your manager can’t just ask you “how do you like your job?” Instead, they have to ask you “How is your SWE?” (pronounced like “swee,” as if it were actually a real word).
At my first job, we had all been working ridiculous hours and weekends (as per usual), and one of the managers took a few members of my team into a conference room and asks us:
“You guys have all been working really hard. What can I do to improve your SWE?”
At this point, my friend and coworker ..read more
I want you to get rid of the idea that you have to work hard in order to get a good review. I have gotten my worst reviews ever when I was busting ass, working 12+ hour days, fixing code that no one else understood, turning in projects and closing out tasks left and right, making a ton of progress. And conversely, I have gotten my best reviews when I was hardly doing anything at all! In fact, at one job, I had only been there for 3 months and I literally hadn’t done anything yet, and my manager pulled ..read more
I have my own stuff to do. I have to go to the gym. I have to make dinner. I have to go to the grocery store. I have to take a look at my portfolio’s performance. I have to do dishes. I have to catch up on my reading. I have to balance my checkbook. I have to check my email. I have to surf the net. I have to play guitar. I have to watch TV. I have to relax. I have to go to bed.
I don’t want to listen to you complain about your job. I don’t ..read more
Have you ever been to a meeting that ended on time? I haven’t (not including meetings that I run). I should note that if you ever have the privilege of being in a meeting that I am holding, you will be kicked out when the meeting is scheduled to end, if not earlier, because being forced to stay in a meeting that is going longer than expected is the most annoying thing in the world.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t already overworked, but when you are already going to have to stay late, you don’t need to waste ..read more
I was talking to someone the other day who told me that her company doesn’t allow you to use sick days. If you call in sick, it is an unexcused absense, you get written up, and it goes on your record.
That means if you are in the hospital with food poisoning, or if you get in a car accident and are in the operating room having surgery to save your life, or at the orthodontist having your teeth pulled, you are going to be penalized by your employer.
She then went on to say that employees were given PTO (paid time ..read more
If you are in the job market, be extremely careful if a recruiter or member of HR tries to promote “free lunch” as part of a company’s benefits package. This is a warning sign that you may be about to sign on with a workhorse.
It sounds wonderful at first! “Oh!” you think, “how cool! I won’t have to bring a lunch and/or go out to lunch every day, which will be hugely convenient, and I won’t have to spend money on lunch, which means I’ll have more spending money to waste on frivolous, depreciating liabilities!”
But what you may be missing ..read more
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Nothing pisses me off more than having to stay late and work unpaid overtime (especially when it’s the result of poor decisions by company leadership), but the one thing I’ve never figured out is why everyone in the world doesn’t share that same opinion.
When the frequent announcement was made that we “need to stay late” to finish some project (an announcement that usually came around 4:45pm when you were starting to think about getting ready to go home), you might think that there would be heard a collective groan mixed with varying levels of profanity, but you would be ..read more
Want an easy way to find out who all the idiots are at your company? Make the following announcement:
Next Monday is Hawaiian Shirt Day!!!
Anyone who gets excited is an idiot. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt doesn’t change anything about your job. It’s like if I told you I was going to punch you in the nose, and you got upset, but then I told you I was going to let you wear a Hawaiian shirt while I punched you in the nose. Would that change anything? Would it make getting punched in the nose fun?
Seriously.
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You are here because corporate life sucks. You hate your job, you hate your work environment, and you probably hate your coworkers, too.
