3goblinsinanoffice

[3goblinsinanoffice]

Employees Aren't Stakeholders

Hey everyone, Manager Goblin here, and I’ve got another great topic that will really help the workers of the world understand corporate policy better.  I’ve recently seen a lot of workers upset by corporate decisions: people complaining about layoffs, packages being offered, work forces being slimmed for business agility, etc.  The workers keep saying things like “what about us?”, “this is callus!”, “the company made record profits, why am I being let go?”.  These statements and questions are so out of touch with reality that I’m struggling to keep a straight face.  I’ll explain why, but first we need to talk about stakeholders.

In this context, we’re not talking about actual stakes or holding them.  We’re talking about definition #3:

stakeholder: one who is involved in or affected by a course of action

I’m sure many of you deal with this definition in your jobs, maybe even daily.  There’s an issue that needs to be addressed or a decision that needs to be made, so you round up all the stakeholders.  For example, if a customer complains that the API isn’t working, you’re going to need representatives from Customer Success/Service/whateverstupidnameistheflavorthisweek, Engineering, maybe Sales, maybe Legal, maybe even the customer.  The list of people that must be gathered depends on the exact nature and severity of the issue(s).  Regardless, the point is to get all the needed voices together and make a plan that works for all of them.

High level corporate decisions are made the same way!  Management and Shareholders get together and collaborate.  The workers aren’t included because, and this might shock you, workers aren’t stakeholders in a company.  I can imagine a few of you are looking back at that definition and saying “no, workers are definitely affected by a course of action”.  That’s slightly obtuse thinking. 

For example, my neighbor isn’t a stakeholder in my backyard.  He claims that he is; that the constant detritus from my elderly oak trees are “pelting his roof with huge rotten branches” or that, in the fall, his lawn is “buried beneath an avalanche of leaves”, but he cannot be a stakeholder in my lawn.  There’s a fence.  He’s not invited to any BBQs.  His kids aren’t allowed to play on my property.  I refuse to return any of their disgusting, dirty toys that always wind up on my side of the fence.  Mr. Donovan is completely uninvolved or affected, and he needs to stop darkening my doorstep. 

It’s the same for corporate employees.  Think about it, have you ever benefited when the corporation for which you work did well?  Sure, you might get a bonus here and there, but is it a significant percentage of the bonuses given to management?  Is your bonus anything compared to the wealth increase of a major stockholder?  Of course not.  In the corporate environment, employees are more like tools.  This is why employees are called "employees"... or maybe, “human resources”. They're not called “stakeholders”.

So, quit wasting your time pretending you should be involved in these decisions.  You don’t want to be like Mr. Donovan, wasting all his time screaming about how “a little common sense goes a long way” when he’s got 30 trash bags of leaves that aren’t going to clear themselves.  If you wanted to make decisions, you would have gotten yourself a management position or inherited a fortune with which to invest in the company.  But you didn’t.  So, instead of making silly complaints, don’t you think polishing your resume would be a better use of your time?

Imagine being upset about decisions we make that don’t even affect you.  Imagine complaining when you don’t even have a job.  You just completed the most profitable year in company history, and instead of bragging about it to a hiring manager, you’re shouting about “corporate greed”.  Who’s lacking common sense now?

[3goblinsinanoffice]

Age and the Corporate Pyramid

Worker Gobbo has been searching for a new role. At first, I was upset to learn that he's a corporate traitor. This office is a family, and anyone who wants to leave our fluorescent paradise for reasons as petty as "personal development" is a black sheep, at best. Thankfully, I know that his job search is completely pointless. Let me explain why. First, consider this, the Corporate Pyramid:

As you can see, with the wisdom of age and lots of hard work, everyone eventually rises to the top of the Corporate Pyramid. It's just a matter of time and bootstrapping yourself before you're the CEO of a corporation! Unfortunately, we also need to pay attention to the Population Pyramid of your country. I'll be using the USA in this example, sourced from Wikipedia here.

Immediately, one notices that the Population Pyramid is distinctly less pyramid-shaped than the corporate pyramid. Let me overlay these two pyramids to illustrate the issue (and offset the Population Pyramid slightly to the right because the office is mainly for men, of course).

The problem is immediately apparent. Notice how much of the population falls outside the boundaries of the Corporate Pyramid. We simply have too many old people for the limited space in all of the corporate roles that actually matter. If you're 40 and you're not already an Executive, then you're in that blue or pink overflow blob. That means you're quantitatively proven to be unemployable! Women, thankfully, have more options (up to a certain age). We always need fresh babies. Notice how the Individual Contributors tier isn't filled! The US population of young people is unable to meet the demand of the labor force. We need to make more babies to fill in the lowest tier! Unfortunately, men in the unemployable segments and women of advanced age are known by the technical term "welfare queens", as coined by the late, great Ronald Wilson Reagan. These are people who contribute nothing too society; they can't have babies or hold jobs. Human waste, in other words. Worker Gobbo is an Individual Contributor in his late 20s! He should be Middle Management already and eyeballing Executive level roles. So, even though he's a traitor to our office family, I am comforted by the knowledge that he's unemployable. He is simply too old for all positions for which he's qualified. He will never leave us. (Unless there are layoffs, in which case, I hope he's ready for retirement at 28!)

-Manager Gobbo

[3goblinsinanoffice]

Applicant Tips

We're starting a new wave of hiring here at The Eternal Office!

I know many of our devote readers will be chomping at the bit to join the team, so I decided to quickly type up 3 tips that will help you with any application, even with other offices! So, without further ado other than this "without further ado" sentence which adds nothing but all content creators are contractually obligated to include, here are my top 3 tips for landing a job:

APPLY IMMEDIATELY

You should apply as quickly as possible after the job's initial posting. Of course, we will leave the listing open for several weeks or months. However, we're not leaving it open to give qualified applicants time to see that the job is available. No, we're simply trying to increase the number of applicants for our own metrics. Unfortunately, the pointless inflating of our numbers makes it impossible for a recruiter to effectively sort through them all. To handle this problem, we will pick an arbitrary cutoff date between 1 and 7 days after the job was posted. Any applications after that will be ignored. Additionally, all applicants that fall into the random window will be expected to remember their application like it was yesterday and one of the most important days of their lives, even though our first contact attempt will usually be over a month later. I always say: anyone who isn't refreshing our career site daily lacks the sycophantic devotion that all employees should have.

WRITE A COVER LETTER, MAYBE

I polled all of our hiring managers and recruiters and discovered this statistic: 50% will only hire applicants that include a cover letter, and the rest will only hire applicants that do not. Your decision is a coin toss! If it makes you feel better, 0% of those polled said they would ever read a cover letter. This means you have to consider carefully: do you want to waste your time writing a letter that will never be opened, just for a 50% chance that you'll even be considered? Or, would you rather waste no time for the same chance? However, most people don't like to waste their time. If you do this pointless activity and win the gamble, you could be part of a smaller applicant pool. Less competition does mean better odds of being hired. Consider the odds carefully and place your bet! We find that pointless games like this make the process more fun for everyone involved.

TAKE EVERY STEP SERIOUSLY, EVEN THE POINTLESS ONES

Our application process goes as follows:

Attach Resume

Attach Cover letter

Type your entire resume into a form

Answer 6 short essay questions

Record an asymmetrical interview video (note: rumors that this step is used to safely discriminate against protected classes are mostly unfounded)

Take home work sample

Work sample presentation to a panel

Interview with the hiring manager, who will decide which candidate they want to hire

Panel interview, where the hiring manager's boss will make a unilateral hiring decision without considering any data gathered during steps 1-8

That might sound like a huge waste of time for everyone involved, and that is because it is. The entire process is pointless, idiotic, and unnecessary, and that's the point! We only want to hire people that are so beaten down, so lacking in self-respect, that they will do anything we tell them to do. The whole thing is a cruel test. It's like talking about Pokemon or Moon Knight or Severance or some other nerdy crap for 3 hours on a first date. You don't really love it that much, but the right partner should willing to sit there and be tortured with a smile.

I hope these tips have been helpful, and I promise I'll be back with more soon. For now, get out there and jump through those hoops. Do what we say without question, and you just might find yourself joining the happiest work family on the planet!

-Manager Gobbo

[3goblinsinanoffice]

Cultural Competence Training 25/04/10

In today's training, I'd like to consider the following meme that was recently shared in the office Slack:

I'm told by Worker Gobbo that this is "an older meme, but it checks out, boss." I'm not sure what he means, but I guess I can understand how this is a little funny in a state of ignorance. Toto wrote an absolute banger of a song, and Australia is far away and "different". The "other" is always an easy target for jokes. However, this meme demonstrates an Eurocentric view point that is both culturally ignorant and offensive to our Australian friends. World maps with the north pole at the top and Europe in the center are leftovers from a shameful, imperialist past. Maps in Australia are oriented differently. Here's an example:

Obviously, Africa is still "down" in the Australian culture. And a little to the right. It's so important the stop and think for a moment before making jokes. Ask yourself, "is this joke funny outside of my ingrained white nationalist and imperialist worldview?" If the answer is no, then don't make the joke! This way, you'll avoid offending people from cultures other than your own. Thank you all for your time, Manager Gobbo

[3goblinsinanoffice]

Corporate has mandated that we listen to audio books on Tuesdays here in the eternal office. Worker Gobbo has seen the show and says this is the first book where the two are drastically different. He says he's not sure if he's going to like the new Belter and preacher characters as much as the show versions. "Drummer is the GOAT" he keeps murmuring to himself... whatever a drummer is. Anyway, I'm enamored with this book so far. We're only about a quarter of the way in, chapter 11. So far it's a welcome change of pace. It's a slow burn to start, which I have to guess is entirely intentional, much like my burn pun. There's a big mystery floating out past Uranus, and I think the goal is to increase anticipation as the disparate characters gather around it.

There are also many new characters to introduce. Book 2 gave us Draper and Avasarala, 2 view point characters but in one mostly shared story thread. So far, in this one there are 3 brand new view point characters in 3 different story threads. Developing characters as well as this series does takes time, on top of building anticipation for the mystery surrounding the ring, ghost Miller, and splattered slingshot pilots. Slow down is to be expected and even welcomed as the series' universe expands. -Administrative Gobbo