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[Yes, that's a contradiction.]
There's been a bunch of emails going round from our managers recently.
Apparently we had "a really excellent month" where our profits "vastly
exceeded the budget".
Gee, could this be because this month they had the budget set absolutely
as low as the policy makers would allow?
You know, I think it might be...
So they set the budget as low as they could possibly get away with, and
we actually made a bit more money than that. Woo-friggin-hoo. What's
gonna happen next month, when we're not moving buildings and the budget
is expecting us to produce "real" numbers?
For that matter, the top-management plan is to increase profits by 20%.
I have yet to hear anything about *how* this is supposed to happen.
They've muttered something about "oh, uh, yeah, we're going to hire more
sales staff". But so far, I've yet to see anybody hired.
What I *have* seen is that virtually every week we have a new lab worker
starting here. So we're hiring huge numbers of lab staff, but from what
I hear, our lab is a bit quiet at the moment. And there's not much
future work showing up on the horizon either.
So... uh... WTF?
We already have far more lab staff than we have lab equipment. And we
already have the lab running at below capacity. Adding more staff seems
to me as illogical as adding more CPU cores to solve a I/O-bound
problem. It's likely to hinder, not help. (All these new people have to
be trained, which means somebody has to stop doing their real job to
train them.)
It's a mad, mad world...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> So they set the budget as low as they could possibly get away with, and we
> actually made a bit more money than that. Woo-friggin-hoo. What's gonna
> happen next month, when we're not moving buildings and the budget is
> expecting us to produce "real" numbers?
In my experience it is surprising how often you see quite senior people
paying so much attention to figures like that that are just "noise" in the
signal. Draw a proper graph of profit over time, then make your conclusions
based on the trend, not on some figure like "5.3% up on this time last
year".
> For that matter, the top-management plan is to increase profits by 20%. I
> have yet to hear anything about *how* this is supposed to happen. They've
> muttered something about "oh, uh, yeah, we're going to hire more sales
> staff". But so far, I've yet to see anybody hired.
Ditto here, when I first started the top guy told me how his plan was to
double the sales figures over a 5 year period. We're almost up to 5 years
now and actually are sales have gone down because other companies have come
in that are newer are more efficient than us. He doesn't seem to care about
taking time out to fix this (ie (re)training people and (re)organising
stuff), just plodding on as we are trying to win more business. He'll
probably be forced to do something when it's way too late.
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scott wrote:
> In my experience it is surprising how often you see quite senior people
> paying so much attention to figures like that that are just "noise" in
> the signal. Draw a proper graph of profit over time, then make your
> conclusions based on the trend, not on some figure like "5.3% up on this
> time last year".
I'm sure I've mentioned the guy at the top who keeps using financial
data from our project management system, despite are repeated attempts
to explain to him that the numbers are garbage. (As you may recall, it
adds USD and GBP together without conversion, yeilding lah-lah numbers.)
No matter how many times we carefully explain to him that these numbers
are meaningless, he *insists* on trying to extract meaning from them...
But then, this is the guy who takes 60 seconds and a couple of attempts
to string together a coherant sentence. You can almost *see* the
individual synaptic junctions firing in a desperate attempt to form a
coordinated pattern... that's what watching this guy talk is like.
How did somebody so stupid get to be at the top? Is it just because he
was there when the "company" was 3 students in their dad's guarage?
[NB. I'm not questioning that he was there - he definitely was - I'm
questioning whether that's the reason.]
> Ditto here, when I first started the top guy told me how his plan was to
> double the sales figures over a 5 year period. We're almost up to 5
> years now and actually are sales have gone down because other companies
> have come in that are newer are more efficient than us. He doesn't seem
> to care about taking time out to fix this (ie (re)training people and
> (re)organising stuff), just plodding on as we are trying to win more
> business. He'll probably be forced to do something when it's way too late.
Seems my company enjoys setting "aggressive targets". I'm not sure why.
Maybe because it's what management likes to hear? All I know is that
these people seem to think that just setting an "aggresive target" means
that something will actually *happen*. They don't seem to comprehend
that such a target requires a *plan* to make it happen...
E.g., "oh, hey, we're implementing a brand new computer system. How long
will that take? Gee, I don't know. When would we *like* it to be ready?
Hey, how about, um, the end of next month? OK, it's a firm date! Let's
go..."
In other words, pick a date out of thin air, and hope they can somehow
pull it off. Don't bother finding out how much work is or isn't involved
or anything, just pick a date and then try to hit it...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> So... uh... WTF? It's a mad, mad world...
Woah - stop the press! Apparently we have *finally* sold site #5!
We purchased site #5 about 7 years ago. Nobody knows why we purchased
it. It has never made a profit since we bought it. It's a building
that's about 8x bigger than we need.
Initially we used one floor ourselves and rented the other floors out to
other companies. After a few years this was deemed too profitable, so we
sold the building to somebody else and then rented it. (Yes, that's
correct. We had money coming in, so we changed it to having money going
out. WTF?)
Site #5 operates in a closely-related but none the less seperate
business area. (I.e., it doesn't so what all the other sites do and what
the company is "expert in".) Most of the spiralling losses the company
has made over the last few years are completely due to this one site.
(The other sites all either break even or make a modest profit, and then
this one site makes a several-million-dollar loss which kinda cancels
everything else out.)
Rather than find some new, even less effecient way to run site #5, it
seems we just sold it. Like, a few days ago.
I am astounded. The company actually did something right. Wow.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:39:02 +0200, scott wrote:
>> So they set the budget as low as they could possibly get away with, and
>> we actually made a bit more money than that. Woo-friggin-hoo. What's
>> gonna happen next month, when we're not moving buildings and the budget
>> is expecting us to produce "real" numbers?
>
> In my experience it is surprising how often you see quite senior people
> paying so much attention to figures like that that are just "noise" in
> the signal. Draw a proper graph of profit over time, then make your
> conclusions based on the trend, not on some figure like "5.3% up on this
> time last year".
I think both figures are useful - year over year (or quarter over
quarter) is something that "the street" looks at and affects stock
price. It's the beginning of building a trend - and if the analysts use
it as one indicator of a company's direction (from a profit standpoint),
it makes sense to be aware of it and know where you're going.
But the trend is also important - take Novell (since that's who I work
for I know it better than others); the trend has been described as
"pulling out of a dive" - 3 or 4 quarters ago, profitability had leveled
out from a decline; since then, subsequent quarters have seen increases.
When the Q3 announcement was made a couple weeks ago, the revenue was up
(and EPS was as well - as a result, AIUI) compared to Q3 of 2007. That
is a quick way of summarizing the trend over the last 3 quarters.
So looking at the snapshot of "compared to this time last year" gives a
general indication of the recent trend, but the overall analysis includes
the long-term trend as well. In Novell's case, this is a recent
turnaround after a few years of decline, so the Wall Street gurus are
taking a cautious approach with the stock, wanting to see if the growth
trend will continue.
>> For that matter, the top-management plan is to increase profits by 20%.
>> I have yet to hear anything about *how* this is supposed to happen.
>> They've muttered something about "oh, uh, yeah, we're going to hire
>> more sales staff". But so far, I've yet to see anybody hired.
>
> Ditto here, when I first started the top guy told me how his plan was to
> double the sales figures over a 5 year period. We're almost up to 5
> years now and actually are sales have gone down because other companies
> have come in that are newer are more efficient than us. He doesn't seem
> to care about taking time out to fix this (ie (re)training people and
> (re)organising stuff), just plodding on as we are trying to win more
> business. He'll probably be forced to do something when it's way too
> late.
I've recently learned that there often is more to the picture than what
we in the trenches see. I had a chat with my VP about a revenue trend
that I didn't understand, and she explained to me that the reason the
trend is the way it is has to do with offsetting lower revenues (as part
of a plan in the business to grow revenue - has to do with resellers vs.
direct sales = extending the reach often means lower revenues, so you
have to make up for it in volume), and the offsetting revenue wasn't
meeting its goals. Overall profitability is what those wizards on Wall
Street look at, so you can't just cut off one part of a revenue stream
without offsetting it in other areas.
I was surprised at how much more complexity there is to this finance
stuff than I thought.
Jim
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Invisible wrote:
>
> There's been a bunch of emails going round from our managers recently.
> Apparently we had "a really excellent month" where our profits "vastly
> exceeded the budget".
>
Do you think it's possible the management might actually be encouraging
you guys to work more efficiently? I'm not doubting that you
(personally) already try your best, but there are invariably some people
who just slack off, and to make matters worse, trump themselves up to be
something great. These people always seem to fool the management for
some reason...
Anyway, maybe management is taking the high road by making you feel as
if your current effort has made a difference, so as to get the same
performance out of you in the future. If that is the case, and this
latest fleet of e-mails does not work, they may try the low road. That
means scoldings and layoffs :(
Sam
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stbenge wrote:
> Do you think it's possible the management might actually be encouraging
> you guys to work more efficiently? I'm not doubting that you
> (personally) already try your best, but there are invariably some people
> who just slack off, and to make matters worse, trump themselves up to be
> something great. These people always seem to fool the management for
> some reason...
The irritating thing is that the people in our lab *do* work damned
hard. But our new manager seems to spent most of his time either not on
the premises, standing outside having a fag, telling people they need to
work harder, or surface Facebook. (I am NOT kidding about Facebook
either. Basically the only time he's in his office he has it open.)
The guy is not proving popular...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> The irritating thing is that the people in our lab *do* work damned
> hard. But our new manager seems to spent most of his time either not on
> the premises, standing outside having a fag, telling people they need to
> work harder, or surface Facebook. (I am NOT kidding about Facebook
> either. Basically the only time he's in his office he has it open.)
Nobody above watches him? He can do whatever he wants without
repercussions?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Nobody above watches him? He can do whatever he wants without
> repercussions?
Well the guy above him is his best buddy. And *he* is never here either.
(Not that it makes a difference - the guy is all talk and no brain...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:09:47 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>
>> Nobody above watches him? He can do whatever he wants without
>> repercussions?
>
> Well the guy above him is his best buddy. And *he* is never here either.
> (Not that it makes a difference - the guy is all talk and no brain...)
I've been in a similar situation - it's not easy to deal with.
Jim
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