Workplace woes

Yet another email about my work-place woes……Yes, I understand that it means I have no other life. I know that is not healthy. I assure you, I am not validating my existence.

Believe me, someone did tell me that. Our new customer service engineer stopped by my office on his way out at 7pm. We exchanged the routine good nights and the usual joke about not seeing our families except on weekends. He asked whether I have kids, I replied in the negative. CS guy gives me a “I-knew-it” look and intoned “ It is always people like you (without kids) who work this hard…If you have no kids, then professional success is how you validate my existence. It is your way to justify yourself” . The only thing that stopped me from chucking the heavy stapler at the amateur shrink’s head was the fact that he did not have any kids as well. Besides, we found a capable service engineer after 7 long months; I did not look forward to answering any more customer service calls. But this mail is not about that….

Last week, the software team , consisting of Expert (the only one who knows coding), Moi (the one who knows everything but coding) and Newbie ( barely out of school, knows nothing about anything) and Tester (doesn’t know English, can you write code in Russian) released a new application. We didn’t want to work on this project at all…after all there were about 5 other software projects that were in the top priority, absolutely critical, needed in 3 months back stage. However our sales team, tired of selling crappy software and wonderful promises for the past year, were persistent. “We need this for the next installation”, they whined. Expert and Moi provided appropriate laughter track…” In the next 25 days?, Nice one!!

But the sales team was not to be put off , they got the VP-Sales involved, who in turn got the CEO involved who questioned us and were told in no uncertain terms “Fix the problem, give me a written plan by tomm”. IT would have been a good idea to ask the all important question “How?”, but saner heads prevailed. One of our R&D colleagues has developed a taste for corporate politics. He decided to share his wisdom with us, “You better do this, he said or the CEO will put a new manager above our heads to “manage” software, this will not be good for us. “Will he code, I wouldn’t mind another person who can work around here,” I asked hopefully. The wannabe-politician looked at me with an expression of pity, wonder and irritation. ( Really, it was on of those Kodak moments ). He painted a gruesome picture of a boss who will micromanage us, create impossible deadlines, reserve all the kudos, blame us for every missed deadline and create more and more paperwork. I was weak, I caved in, I couldn’t handle another *boss* and I certainly can’t handle more paperwork.

Through a super-human effort by Newbie and Expert coder and some minor help from me ( I deleted half the features from the design specifications, thank you very much!), we finished the product with a day to spare. Well, no days to spare if you include the software testing process. Tester learnt some more English words( “Does not work, Did not test, I don’t care ) Expert frowned at deployment without beta testing, you can’t diagnose breast cancer patients, on a software that has not been really tested. We cautioned the rest of the company: it is a new product, we designed, developed and tested this in 25 days all this work in addition to the daily maintenance and troubleshooting that we do for existing sites. The sales team very properly ignored us; they were calculating how to package this software for existing sites…Should we provide it as a freebie if you take our platinum service contract, or should we make everyone pay for this upgrade? Let us give it free to Dr. X, who can refer us to Dr. Y who will convince Dr. Z to buy the device. They work hard, these sales guys.

Anyway with much fan-fare and congratulatory emails from the rest of team, we launched the product in a hospital in California . Patients were scanned, docs sat down to read and wonderfully the system co-operated. Only 4 bugs surfaced, a couple of minor ones we could fix easily, a couple of major ones that may or may not be fixed. Software team is ecstatic…ready to party….only 4 bugs…damn we must be improving. But we did not count in the tempering influence of our Medical Director. MD fancies herself as a whistle-blower. She thinks it is part of her contract to report every malfunction, bug or anomaly to the CEO. In her defense, as a doc from big name hospital, she has only been on the other side, always seen obsequious sales people bow deeply and promise to fix all her problems. Now she is on the other side, docs ask her questions, she doesn’t understand, a software bug freaks her out, Medical degrees only take you so far..when medical school training ( I am a doc, therefore I am always correct ) works against customer oriented jobs ( Customer is always right, says the local bania )…it is a tough battle. She wants all problems fixed by tomorrow (with fries on the side, please!). She turns to the CEO for help…

CEO is bringing a new candidate for investment/company COO / whatever to the Rockville office. He knows the R&D team needs to be bribed so that we do not speak about previous management debacle. He is a smart guy, he knows placating us is more important at this point of time. He ignores the noble profession of whistle-blowers and asks her to work on “project with big name but little importance”. We are all suddenly under orders to :

•  Treat everyone with courtesy…(hahaha)

•  Alcoholic drinks are allowed only for corporate parties and on Friday happy hours( Thanks for telling us, we thought we weren’t allowed any)

•  Work hours are from 8 am to 5pm. ( California time hopefully!, apparently from middle level only the start hour has to be adhered to)

•  When in doubt, read rulebook

We are confused…why this message. Wannabe politican explains “ When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah , you think he really cared about the people, all we wanted to do was to send a message: to remind people he was there. I think he will be a great politician…white man with religious analogy for everything and no logic. Do you really need anything else as a qualification for the White house? I stop thinking about CEO and start to think about the huge task in front of me. Clean up my office….not fun. The wall in front of me has a huge hole when one of my colleagues kicked it. Topic of next debate: What to do with the hole in the wall.? “Put flowers in it, quips one guy, keep a table in front of it, chimes another. My suggestion finds favor with all…”Leave it as it, if the new COO asks, tell him we didn’t like the earlier guy, we tried to kick him but we missed.

Bring on the drinks, its Friday happy hour!!!