Harumph!
No idea how that particular "word" (sound?) is spelled, but it's definately one of those kind of days.
I was reading about the eight soldiers who are taking the Army to court over their stop loss and being prevented from mustering out. However the fine print when you sign a contract with our military stipulates "except in time of national emergency" and I've no doubt that this is what the military's lawyers are going to key on. I'm divided on the issue. On the one hand most of us who sign the contract know (or shortly learn) that basically the Army owns your soul and can do with it what they please. And the one sergeant named in the suit is 35 years old, a staff sergeant and has been around the block a time or two. So you would think he'd know what the real deal is. On the other hand it's become a tradition that the Army will screw you every chance they get and you should expect it. That's not necessarily a social or organizational trait that we as should encourage since it only contributes to the poor way we treat each other. We'll see what Andy (Mr. Law School) has to say about it tonight.
Well the word has finally come down that we're going to move from LSB to the Telecom Building.
People in our group (mostly before it became this group) have been punished because of things they posted in their blogs (First Amendment anyone?) so I need to be careful here. We'll see what happens, personally I don't see this as being that interesting so I doubt anyone will notice here.
First my theory about moves. Management is a beast such that the *work* it produces is difficult to see/visualize/identify. I know for a fact that when I was a leader in the Army we were most successful when we prevented the impediments our soldiers encounted when they tried to do the *real work*. However when a manager doesn't clearly know this, they may decide that something easily visible which appears to be "progress" and an "accomplishment" is necessary, shuffling people around fills the bill. Hell, Scott Adams has made a living drawing cartoons about this sort of thing.
So management will see moving people as a way to "produce work" on their part. In reality they are now impeding the flow of work since nothing is going to get done while people pack up their cubes and move it all around. A prime example of this was when the Open Systems team was dissolved. All of us were forced to move. I moved one cube north and two cubes west. About fifteen steps from where I was. Into a smaller cube of course. At the same time Brand managed to avoid this sort of idiocy by being out of town in training.
However this move may actually have some logic behind it. We're moving to the building where all our servers are housed. That makes sense. However we're also moving away from the Networking team whom we work with quite a bit. But all the other systems administrators on campus are also moving into that same building. And another part of this move is the Training group moving to a more central location on campus, so it will be easier for their customers/students to find them and more convenient to get to the classes they offer. But the programming team, whom we also work with, is moving into our spaces, so their no closer than they are now since they occupy the space we'll move into.
So overall there may be some good reasons for this move.
That doesn't make the job of moving any more pleasant.
I was reading about the eight soldiers who are taking the Army to court over their stop loss and being prevented from mustering out. However the fine print when you sign a contract with our military stipulates "except in time of national emergency" and I've no doubt that this is what the military's lawyers are going to key on. I'm divided on the issue. On the one hand most of us who sign the contract know (or shortly learn) that basically the Army owns your soul and can do with it what they please. And the one sergeant named in the suit is 35 years old, a staff sergeant and has been around the block a time or two. So you would think he'd know what the real deal is. On the other hand it's become a tradition that the Army will screw you every chance they get and you should expect it. That's not necessarily a social or organizational trait that we as should encourage since it only contributes to the poor way we treat each other. We'll see what Andy (Mr. Law School) has to say about it tonight.
Well the word has finally come down that we're going to move from LSB to the Telecom Building.
People in our group (mostly before it became this group) have been punished because of things they posted in their blogs (First Amendment anyone?) so I need to be careful here. We'll see what happens, personally I don't see this as being that interesting so I doubt anyone will notice here.
First my theory about moves. Management is a beast such that the *work* it produces is difficult to see/visualize/identify. I know for a fact that when I was a leader in the Army we were most successful when we prevented the impediments our soldiers encounted when they tried to do the *real work*. However when a manager doesn't clearly know this, they may decide that something easily visible which appears to be "progress" and an "accomplishment" is necessary, shuffling people around fills the bill. Hell, Scott Adams has made a living drawing cartoons about this sort of thing.
So management will see moving people as a way to "produce work" on their part. In reality they are now impeding the flow of work since nothing is going to get done while people pack up their cubes and move it all around. A prime example of this was when the Open Systems team was dissolved. All of us were forced to move. I moved one cube north and two cubes west. About fifteen steps from where I was. Into a smaller cube of course. At the same time Brand managed to avoid this sort of idiocy by being out of town in training.
However this move may actually have some logic behind it. We're moving to the building where all our servers are housed. That makes sense. However we're also moving away from the Networking team whom we work with quite a bit. But all the other systems administrators on campus are also moving into that same building. And another part of this move is the Training group moving to a more central location on campus, so it will be easier for their customers/students to find them and more convenient to get to the classes they offer. But the programming team, whom we also work with, is moving into our spaces, so their no closer than they are now since they occupy the space we'll move into.
So overall there may be some good reasons for this move.
That doesn't make the job of moving any more pleasant.
posted by banzai at 13:54
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home