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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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Invisible wrote:
> No matter how many times we carefully explain to him that these numbers
> are meaningless, he *insists* on trying to extract meaning from them...
I remember seeing a joke video where the financial accounting system was
called Maiasse or something. "I just pull numbers out of Maiasse!"
> 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?
Yes.
> In other words, pick a date out of thin air, and hope they can somehow
> pull it off.
"How about February 17th?"
"If you already had a date, why are you asking me?"
"Well, um..."
"How did you pick February 17th?"
"It's the customer's birthday."
I kid you not.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> correct. We had money coming in, so we changed it to having money going
> out. WTF?)
Tax write-offs, in the USA at least. You sell it to someone, lease it
back for more than it costs to run but less than it costs to run if you
count how much taxes you save.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Darren New wrote:
> "How about February 17th?"
> "If you already had a date, why are you asking me?"
> "Well, um..."
> "How did you pick February 17th?"
> "It's the customer's birthday."
>
> I kid you not.
Wow! Admitting that the date is arbitrary seems somehow even worse than
just using an arbitrary date...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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And lo on Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:25:39 +0100, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>
did spake, saying:
> Invisible wrote:
>> No matter how many times we carefully explain to him that these numbers
>> are meaningless, he *insists* on trying to extract meaning from them...
>
> I remember seeing a joke video where the financial accounting system was
> called Maiasse or something. "I just pull numbers out of Maiasse!"
Heh speed read I read that system as Malaise, which would be funny in a
different way.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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Invisible wrote:
> [Yes, that's a contradiction.]
>
> 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.
>
>
> It's a mad, mad world...
>
I have learned that either you trust management to make the right
decisions or you leave.
That doesn't mean that you are happy with the decisions or understand
them throughly. If the manager took the time to get you to understand
everything in a decision and agree with the decision - you might as well
be the manager.
It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
always second guess you and think you should do something different, but
they don't have the same perspective that you have.
I'm not excusing management behavior - there are plenty of jerks out
there - I know a few.
Just some fish food.
Tom
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> It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
> always second guess you and think you should do something different, but
> they don't have the same perspective that you have.
Most annoying when those "people" have superior rank to me and can
overrule my decisions... :-/
> Just some fish food.
Yeah.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
>> It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
>> always second guess you and think you should do something different,
>> but they don't have the same perspective that you have.
>
> Most annoying when those "people" have superior rank to me and can
> overrule my decisions... :-/
If they don't trust you to do your job, then maybe you need a new job.
Weren't you sending resumes out a while ago? What happened with those?
...Chambers
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Chambers wrote:
> If they don't trust you to do your job, then maybe you need a new job.
Maybe?
I think this one has already been proved multiple times over beyond any
semblence of doubt. ;-)
> Weren't you sending resumes out a while ago? What happened with those?
Once or twice a week, some random agency would send me an email, I call
them, they tell me about some job I'm not really interested in, they
promise to let me know what happens with it, they never contact me ever
again. After a while, I stopped getting emails. (Although I keep getting
repeated auto-generated messages telling me to go work for HMGCC.)
I did go to one interview. The agency told me they wanted a programmer,
but what the company actually wanted was a customer support advisor.
Needless to say, that's not something I ever want to do. Company was
astounded that I managed to write half a dozen trivial SQL statements,
and the interviewer appeared to be trying to invent a job on the spot so
he could hire me. Not sure I liked the look of the company, frankly, but
they seemed quite keen to employ me - although in the end no job was
actually offered.
I have since spoken to that particular agency on numerous occasions.
They keep promising to send me to more interviews, but nothing has ever
happened.
At this point, I have completely run out of ideas. I've paid for the
services of a professional careers advice consultant - we'll see if
anything useful comes of that.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> I think both figures are useful - year over year (or quarter over
> quarter) is something that "the street" looks at and affects stock
> price.
Exploiting "noise" in the profit signal to try and make money is fine,
but...
> It's the beginning of building a trend -
...how can you use just one or two points of data to decide that a *trend*
is starting?
> 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.
I don't think any real analysts look at solely the headline numbers to
decide what to do. They will look at the detailed result history to
determine if the trend is changing, they can't do that with just one or two
numbers.
For example, suppose your monthly profit fell from 104 last month to 90 this
month. Some people then go off on one based *solely* on these figures, they
send out emails to staff saying that profits have dropped by 13% and it's
been the biggest drop for over a year blah blah blah", they try to "correct"
whatever they think has gone wrong this month etc.
Then next month the profit is 107, they feel all good about themselves and
maybe get a pat on the back from their boss if he is equally stupid.
But, take a look at the monthly profit figures running up to the 104,90,107
incident:
38,64,45,67,50,50,76,66,66,77,70,76,81,73,91,82,80,73,76,93
The clever person will notice that on average profits seem to rising at 5
per month, and try to find the reasons for why this is and how to go about
increasing it. The stupid person wastes effort on trying to explain and
correct the change every month.
It's not just profits, but plenty of other things (like production volumes)
that suffer from people trying to analyse the noise.
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Invisible wrote:
>> It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
>> always second guess you and think you should do something different,
>> but they don't have the same perspective that you have.
>
> Most annoying when those "people" have superior rank to me and can
> overrule my decisions... :-/
>
But again, you don't know what all they need to consider when making
decisions.
What you might think as small and inconsequential can have repercussions
that a good manager needs to take care of. Sometimes the manager cannot
discuss them due to confidentiality issues or the like.
That said, I am not defending poor management.
I've worked with plenty of jerks.
All they cared about was how big their head was.
If I didn't implement exactly what *they* thought I should, it was wrong
and I killed the cat.
Don't work under someone like that.
Just remember this...
Think about how annoying it is to have co-workers second guess your
decisions (I'm not talking about management here).
I bet you appreciate feedback when you miss something. You actually
want that type of feedback - it helped you do a better job.
But those who disagree and grumble with your decisions are just annoying
and it hurts your relationship with them - both professionally and
personally - which hurts the company.
Now, how do you think a manager feels when you grumble about their
decisions.
Sometimes management makes a poor decision as a mistake - you do as
well. But it does not make you incompetent.
Later... Tom
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Tom Austin wrote:
> But again, you don't know what all they need to consider when making
> decisions.
>
> What you might think as small and inconsequential can have repercussions
> that a good manager needs to take care of. Sometimes the manager cannot
> discuss them due to confidentiality issues or the like.
It just annoys me when some manager says "we should do X". And I
carefully explain "X is a bad idea because of A, B, C, D, E and F". And
the manager says "...yeah, well, I don't think those are problems". I
mean, WTF can you say to that??
> That said, I am not defending poor management.
> Don't work under someone like that.
Heh. If only I had a choice... ;-)
> Now, how do you think a manager feels when you grumble about their
> decisions.
Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a dicision
is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no explaination,
just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a dicision
> is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no explaination,
> just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
You can always ask for an explanation. "Please teach me where in my
chain of reasoning I made a mistake? Is B really not a problem? It
sounds like C will lose us customers; how do we avoid that?" Things like
that. He might just not want to take time to explain it, so ask him for
the time. (Or, as has been said, he might just have his head up his butt.)
> Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
> necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
> who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
Again, "isn't that part of the legal requirements outlined in section
XYZ of the how-to-make-auditors-like-you manual?"
I mean, I'm sure you ask these questions, but in my experience,
persistence helps. Half the time the manager is being a dork, it's
because he isn't actually thinking about the problem, and making a
decision based on an off-the-cuff analysis.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:29:00 +0200, scott wrote:
>> I think both figures are useful - year over year (or quarter over
>> quarter) is something that "the street" looks at and affects stock
>> price.
>
> Exploiting "noise" in the profit signal to try and make money is fine,
> but...
>
>> It's the beginning of building a trend -
>
> ...how can you use just one or two points of data to decide that a
> *trend* is starting?
It's two points of data in an overall view of what the company does.
Only those two points of data isn't enough, you have to look at the
policies the company has implemented as well.
>> 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.
>
> I don't think any real analysts look at solely the headline numbers to
> decide what to do. They will look at the detailed result history to
> determine if the trend is changing, they can't do that with just one or
> two numbers.
Like I said, it's an indicator. There is more analysis that's done, of
course, when you talk about Wall Street analysts. But an improvement in
year-over-year (or quarter-over-quarter) is an indicator that something
good happened in the quarter or year. Then look at the trend over 5
years - 5 points or 20 points, take your pick - and that *is* a trend.
Another indicator is the difference between looking at GAAP vs. non-GAAP
numbers. non-GAAP is generally a better indicator (as I understand it)
because it reflects ordinary business and not extraordinary expenses for
reorganizations or other (hopefully) one-time expenses. So while a
company may show a loss from one quarter to the next, if you look at the
non-GAAP financials, you might see a trend of increased sales. That's a
good thing, regardless of the GAAP numbers which might include costs for
litigation, acquisitions, and the like.
> For example, suppose your monthly profit fell from 104 last month to 90
> this month. Some people then go off on one based *solely* on these
> figures, they send out emails to staff saying that profits have dropped
> by 13% and it's been the biggest drop for over a year blah blah blah",
> they try to "correct" whatever they think has gone wrong this month etc.
>
> Then next month the profit is 107, they feel all good about themselves
> and maybe get a pat on the back from their boss if he is equally stupid.
Monthly is too frequently, I think you'd find most analysts would agree
with that. Quarterly or annually are the numbers that I typically see
used.
> But, take a look at the monthly profit figures running up to the
> 104,90,107 incident:
>
> 38,64,45,67,50,50,76,66,66,77,70,76,81,73,91,82,80,73,76,93
>
> The clever person will notice that on average profits seem to rising at
> 5 per month, and try to find the reasons for why this is and how to go
> about increasing it. The stupid person wastes effort on trying to
> explain and correct the change every month.
>
> It's not just profits, but plenty of other things (like production
> volumes) that suffer from people trying to analyse the noise.
It largely depends on what you're trying to get out of the numbers. But
again, a monthly period is too short because of those variations. I
wouldn't decide a company was doing good because they had more sales on
July 3 than July 2. But I might decide a company was a good investment
if I saw their revenues increased in FY08 over FY07. Especially if the
FY07 revenues (or more appropriately, the non-GAAP profits) were over the
FY06 profits.
Jim
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:15:35 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> After a while, I stopped getting emails.
Don't wait, contact them back periodically (not daily, but every couple
of weeks to month) and just "check in" and see if anything new has turned
up. Persistence pays off - if you don't keep in touch with them, they'll
assume you're not looking.
Jim
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:39:11 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> It just annoys me when some manager says "we should do X". And I
> carefully explain "X is a bad idea because of A, B, C, D, E and F". And
> the manager says "...yeah, well, I don't think those are problems". I
> mean, WTF can you say to that??
"Why don't you see those issues as problems?"
Then point-by-point, explain why A is a problem, B is a problem, and so
on. Discuss these points with them, don't just give up because they said
"I don't think that's a problem".
For example, if you point out A is a regulatory problem and they say it's
not, ask them how they would explain that to a government auditor,
because that's part of your job, so you need to be able to explain it -
and if you can't, you'll send the auditor to him instead. Not as a
threat, but because management identified it as a non-issue and you don't
understand why, so you'll have to refer the auditor to someone who *does*
understand why.
Jim
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:24:01 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
>> necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
>> who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
>
> Again, "isn't that part of the legal requirements outlined in section
> XYZ of the how-to-make-auditors-like-you manual?"
And then again, you can always take the auditor to them after explaining
to the auditor "Tom here in my management chain doesn't see this as an
issue - perhaps he can explain why better than I can.". Then take the
auditor to see Tom.
Next time, Tom is more likely to give an explanation. Of course, he may
also get mad because Andy brought the auditor to him in the first place,
at which point it's appropriate to say "you didn't answer my questions
about this well enough that I could explain it to the auditor, so how
could I answer the auditor's questions? I can't just make something up."
Maybe Andy should get a job with the auditors instead. <eg>
Jim
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> And then again, you can always take the auditor to them after explaining
> to the auditor "Tom here in my management chain doesn't see this as an
> issue - perhaps he can explain why better than I can.". Then take the
> auditor to see Tom.
Not easy when Tom lives on a different continent in a different time
zone. :-P
Auditors are always singularly unimpressed by "well X told me to do it
this way". They expect *me* to realise that this isn't good enough and
*force* the other person to understand this.
> Maybe Andy should get a job with the auditors instead. <eg>
Muhuhuhu!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a
>> dicision is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no
>> explaination, just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
>
> You can always ask for an explanation.
Well we're not doing that at any other sites, so I don't think it's
necessary.
[Never mind that "other sites" have more than 1 member of IT staff...]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:10:42 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>> And then again, you can always take the auditor to them after
>> explaining to the auditor "Tom here in my management chain doesn't see
>> this as an issue - perhaps he can explain why better than I can.".
>> Then take the auditor to see Tom.
>
> Not easy when Tom lives on a different continent in a different time
> zone. :-P
That's what the phone is for. Or if it's the middle of the night (though
you have managed to call "Tom" in the middle of the night before), give
his number to the auditor along with the time zone offset.
> Auditors are always singularly unimpressed by "well X told me to do it
> this way". They expect *me* to realise that this isn't good enough and
> *force* the other person to understand this.
Auditors understand that often times the person they're talking to
doesn't have the authority to do things the way they want, and if the
orders are coming from above to do things in a way that's not compliant
with the regs, then that needs to be disclosed during the audit.
Otherwise it *is* your ass on the line. It's not about shifting blame,
it's about holding the decision makers responsible for their actions.
That's why audits happen.
>> Maybe Andy should get a job with the auditors instead. <eg>
>
> Muhuhuhu!
You laugh, but that might not be a bad option. You know the regs, you
know what should be done and how it should be done, and you know that it
isn't being done that way. You want your current management to listen to
you? Become *their* auditor.
BTW, you don't have to change jobs to do that. If making sure things are
done in compliance, then you put together a pre-audit audit that goes
over the checklist the auditors will, and do a "dry run". Ask the
questions of your management that the auditors are going to ask you.
Hold them accountable. Then take the results from your own internal
audit and compare to the results of the external audit, put them both in
a report, and send it up the chain and highlight the areas where the
audit result was what you predicted, and outline what needs to change in
order for things to become compliant.
I used to have to do license auditing when I was the customer - we had
auditors from Ernst & Young come in once a year to audit our license
usage for a couple products that I was responsible for. There were times
I was asked to "fudge" the numbers a bit because of a recent layoff (for
example); I did everything up front with the auditors, told them that we
had a layoff but our policy was to retain the user accounts in a disabled
state for 60 days, just in case the employee was rehired (as a means of
preserving their access to resources), but that the vast majority
wouldn't come back. We just couldn't predict which ones would be
rehired. Rather than hide those accounts from the audit, I asked for an
exception. And got it from the vendor.
The auditors commented every year that they appreciated our approach -
they were typically in and out in less than a day. Other customers they
had to spend 3 or 4 days trying to get the audit done, and it was like
pulling teeth. I always figured if I could facilitate the audit and make
it go smoothly, I could get the auditors out of our hair quickly, and I
was right. We never paid for users we weren't using, and everyone was
happy.
I know your audits aren't license audits, so things are a bit different,
but if you work to make it non-confrontational with the auditors, they'll
appreciate it and make your life easier, generally speaking.
Of course there are pricks in every field, and auditing is no different
in that respect.
Jim
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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:12:01 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> Well we're not doing that at any other sites, so I don't think it's
> necessary.
"Well, regulation 10.3.723 subsection b, paragraph 6 says it is required
when there's only one IT staffer at the site. Since I'm that person
here, we need to meet that requirement, unless there's an IT staff member
I'm not aware of here - and I don't think that's the case, because I'd
know. Either way, the auditors are going to be looking for compliance
with this regulation, so how do you suggest I answer their questions
about why we're not compliant?"
Jim
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>> Well we're not doing that at any other sites, so I don't think it's
>> necessary.
>
> "Well, regulation 10.3.723 subsection b, paragraph 6 says it is required
If only.
The regulations only say that backups have to be taken every day.
If I make too much of a fuss about it, the head IT people will probably
just nominate some random person and promote them to be a member of IT.
(Despite the fact they have no clue what they're doing.) And then I'll
have solved one medium problem and created a large problem...
This is always the worry - rather than do the simple and easy thing that
completely solves the problem, they always want to do something more
complicated that generates new problems. I really hate it!
Still, with a little unauthorised access to centralised systems, I was
able to sort this particular problem out without their help. "The"
sysadmin may be God, but when you have several of them things start to
get... interesting.
(Wasn't there a Pratchey book gooded "small gods" or something?)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:42:33 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> Well we're not doing that at any other sites, so I don't think it's
>>> necessary.
>>
>> "Well, regulation 10.3.723 subsection b, paragraph 6 says it is
>> required
>
> If only.
>
> The regulations only say that backups have to be taken every day.
>
> If I make too much of a fuss about it, the head IT people will probably
> just nominate some random person and promote them to be a member of IT.
> (Despite the fact they have no clue what they're doing.) And then I'll
> have solved one medium problem and created a large problem...
So then you step up pointing out the issue. Has the person been properly
trained? Do the regs require any specific training for the additional
person? What is the financial exposure to the company if the audit is
failed because of inadequate training, or if the backups fail and
critical data is lost?
> This is always the worry - rather than do the simple and easy thing that
> completely solves the problem, they always want to do something more
> complicated that generates new problems. I really hate it!
It's sometimes hard to do, but don't worry about what might be. You can
spend years thinking up worst-case "what if" scenarios and let that
prevent you from solving an immediate problem. Deal with the problems
you have, not with the problems that might be.
And on that note (and pardon the total non-sequitor here), I realise I
have to take my own advice here so I *can* get some sleep. (Without
getting into details, I learned about a potential really really bad
health issue today in my family, but there hasn't been a diagnosis yet,
but I've been worried absolutely sick about it all night = dealing with a
problem that *might* be, rather than waiting for a diagnosis to be made
by a qualified doctor. Yes, it's time I take my own advice on this one.)
> Still, with a little unauthorised access to centralised systems, I was
> able to sort this particular problem out without their help. "The"
> sysadmin may be God, but when you have several of them things start to
> get... interesting.
Yep, they do. Especially in a distributed environment. There are
certain operations that require centralised control. The trick is in
knowing which ones are.
Be careful about using unauthorised access, though - it can bite you in
the ass if things go wrong.
> (Wasn't there a Pratchey book gooded "small gods" or something?)
Might've been.
Jim
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Invisible wrote:
> It just annoys me when some manager says "we should do X". And I
> carefully explain "X is a bad idea because of A, B, C, D, E and F". And
> the manager says "...yeah, well, I don't think those are problems". I
> mean, WTF can you say to that??
>
> Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a dicision
> is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no explaination,
> just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
>
> Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
> necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
> who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
>
As I read the posts it occurred to me that there is another aspect of
the situation.
How are you perceived at being able to do your job?
This isn't about your actual capabilities, it is what you are able to
project to the manager.
If your manager sees you as young, immature, or unconfident, he may
dismiss your expert views.
If your manager sees you as smart and confidant your wildest suggestions
may be taken without question.
I know I struggle with this.
Tom
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Tom Austin wrote:
> How are you perceived at being able to do your job?
>
> This isn't about your actual capabilities, it is what you are able to
> project to the manager.
That's probably it, you know.
The current set of IT managers are less egocentric than their
predecessors, but still tend to ignore any outside input - I kind of
"I'm the expert, I know best" attitude. Who knows, maybe that's how they
got to be put at the top? Non-experts can't tell how good they "really"
are, only how confident they seem...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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