Quoted post said:
That's ok if you're working on a factory line or something, but once
you're in a specialized field -- what's the point? If your manager can
do your job, what are you there for?
For a while we had a self directed work team. There had been massive
reorganization in our management. They did away with every second layer of
management. Productivity went up.
Quoted message said:I'd rather work for a company that supports its employees by
hiring/training managers who can actually manage people, and that
understands that just because you're very good at a particular job
doesn't mean you should be promoted to managing people. (This is a big
problem in IT -- engineers get promoted to management because they've
been there a long time and they're really good engineers. They are
rarely good managers, however, as this is a whole different skill set.)
Maybe my experience is jaded because I worked for the government, though it
looks like larger business works the same. It is about numbers. You have to
spend a lot of time and have a lot of meetings and try to make something out of
the numbers.
I worked in commercial vehicle inspections. We used to spend a lot of time
watching trucks go by and rolling over the scales looking for defects and
problem operators. We did 3-4 full inspections per day and out Out of Service
rate was over 75%. When we got a more right wing government with more wannabe
businessmen types running the show they wanted more inspections done. If we did
more inspections done in a day it meant that is cost less per inspections. We
objected on the basis that it took time to find the problem trucks and buses and
that more inspections without prescreeing for defects meant few trucks detained
and few charges. That was not a problem for them. I was told that if the out of
service rate didn't drop it would look like our program wasn't working.
We used to all have our own cruisers and would spend time looking for trucks
bypassing the scales. These guys took most of our cruisers off the road and
stuck most of the guys at the scales where the trucks came right to them. That
meant that the problem trucks were free to run the bypass routes without worry.
And of course they had to go out and hire a bunch of managers to oversee the day
to day operations and make sure everyone was doing X number of inspections per
day.
But by god we looked good on paper. We had did more inspections, had few defects
and cut costs.
