So, when I told my friend, the retired product-manager, this story (she had moved on to a corporate job before this incident, but said she had heard about it), she showed why she had been a decent manager. She asked "Why do you think that is? The eeek-a-mouse thing?" I said that I thought it was the corporate culture. You are not allowed to notice or report any problems unless you know how to fix it. Perhaps it's that if you don't know enough about it to know how to fix it, then you don't know enough about it to judge its importance, or to justify diverting resources to it. So you have to find out enough about it to know how to fix it before you know enough about it to report it. But that's an attempt to apply a logical explanation to something that defies logic. That may be how it started out, but it has been continued and ingrained beyond logic. It pervades all levels. You are simply not allowed to bring a problem without also bringing a solution. She said that the corporate culture had changed a lot in the past few years. She didn't think that was still true. I pointed out that I had just heard it from a current high-level employee. It's still there.
She then asked why, in my opinion, the managers back then didn't warn upper-level management about the looming problems with those releases. Well, it was the eeek-a-mouse thing - plus there was still a slim chance they'd make the schedules. If they didn't, they could all point the fingers of blame around the circle. And another bit of corporate culture - although the Company talks big about product quality being most important, or usability being critical, or customer service being our goal, or whatever, everything else will be sacrificed to the schedules. Always! All the pretty words go right out the window when the schedule is threatened. Compared to the release schedules, everything else is so much fluff. It is more important to put out a piece of crap on schedule (you can fix it with updates later) than to put out quality when it's ready.
It was kind of funny. She wanted desperately to deny that, to insist that quality was primary, but after some defensive blustering, she pointed out that the release schedules were dictated from above. That a product manager couldprotest that it would take at least 80,000 man-hours to do something, and the word would come down that even though you have 100 people available to work on it, thou shalt have it ready by ...600... hours away. Or else! She said that software schedules were set by hardware schedules. She didn't know why the hardware schedules were so inflexible. At this point, our conversation was interrupted by life. (Actually, death. The batteries in her phone died.)
I know why hardware schedules are inflexible. I'm surprised she didn't know, although she probably figured it out later. Hardware schedules are dictated by the marketing people. The hardware development people are under the same schedule pressure as the software people. Hardware heads will roll if the hardware isn't available when marketing says they need it, same as software heads will roll if the software support for the device isn't ready when hardware says they need it. It all comes down to the marketing people, the salesmen. The salesmen think it's more important to have the FIRST frazzmo out there than to have the BEST frazzmo later, because no one's going to replace a working frazzmo with another, even if it's supposed to be better. If it's a piece of crap, you can fix it later on the customer floor, but you've got to get it onto that floor, first! Get the contract signed!
I don't know if they're right or not. Seems like a consistent reputation for quality ought to figure in there somewhere. It certainly does for my personal purchases. But having spent some time in the field, working with the salesmen, I know that is how they think. It's not surprising that the Company started to run into big trouble when they began to cut back on customer service. It was the customer service that made good on the salesmen's overblown promises and their forced hardware/software schedules. Without on-site service, the lack of inherent quality became painfully obvious.
How does the gazillion-dollar salaried management allow this to happen? Snort! Salesmen think THEY are the ones who make money for the company. In their opinion, hardware folks are the deliverymen, software folks are the chambermaids, and customer service are the garbagemen. Upper management is all ex-salesmen. Salesmen who impressed other salesmen.
Of course, I'm speaking from the big-iron days. Maybe some things have changed. But I doubt it. Not after being told by a current employee who should know better that if I wasn't willing to step forward and do something myself, I shouldn't complain that it's not getting done.
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