Boardroom Miscellaneous Thread

[cwbecker]

Oooooh, this should be fun. The PM who's supposed to be leading our SOX project just set up weekly status meetings thru the end of the year. The project end date is Dec 31st and suddenly they're all fired up. This is the same PM who hasn't sent a single update or held a single meeting since June 2024.
I've been regularly letting management know since July that I'm still waiting on 5-6 business leads to finish their steps before I can start my work. My part of the project is going to take an estimated 150 hrs. Needless to say, that isn't going to happen in the 14 remaining working days of this year.

I'm predicting a lot of yelling and finger pointing.

 

[Quarthinos]

14 * 8 is 112.. That's close enough, right?

 

[Vince-RA]

 

[cwbecker]

14 * 8 is 112.. That's close enough, right?

No problem boss, I'll just put all my day-to-day work on hold until January 2nd, including any P1 or P2 issues.

Thankfully my manager has already made it clear that "Lack of planning on their part doesn't constitute an emergency on IT's part", with full backing of our VP.

 

[Drizzt321]

Lucky, lucky you. And I hope you saved all those sent email messages going "waiting on ya'll and it'll take X hours of work" reminder emails. Print them out if you can. Always better to be able to toss down a stack of papers onto the table, makes a bigger impact.

 

[CUclimber]

Haven't posted in this thread in a while...

I'm not quite ready to fully show it off, but I've been working for the last 18 months or so to spin up a new company. It's a b2b service for the institutional investment and asset management world, and we're about to close our Angel/Friends & Family round of investments at around $2 million. We have a handful of friendly early-adopter clients being onboarded now and we're hoping for a broader launch early next year.

Crazy how much work can go into something like this though-- there have been a lot of late nights and weekends so far, and I'm only expecting that to increase.

 

[hanser]

Good luck and try to enjoy the ride!

And try to avoid sniffing your own farts while on the rollercoaster.

 

[spacekobra]

Siiighhh,

Every time I think I can hold out here and work on this project that's way above my paygrade they actively work to remind me that its not a great place to work. Why are you passive aggressively emailing on something you caused? Don't break process by emailing a guy privately asking for a change and then complain they didn't follow process at revision. That's just... baiting people to do their job poorly.

Boost resume or ditch?

Looking like ditch.

 

[wallinbl]

Director: There's a bug in X and we need it fixed by Monday. X is doing Y, which is incorrect.
Me: Here is your specification for X, indicating it should do Y. The specification is from 2020, and the last code change of any kind is from March 2020, so it's been consistent for over four years now.
Director: It's a bug, and it absolutely has to be fixed by Monday.
Me: It's been in production for four years, was accepted personally by you, and meets the written requirements provided by you. It is not in any way a "stop all other work emergency bug".
Director: I'm going to go to the CFO and let him know we'll pay employees incorrectly next week because you're refusing to fix the bug.
Me: While you're in there, tell him you've paid employees incorrectly for the last four years because that's exactly how you specified it to behave.
Director: I'm not going to tell him that. He'd be furious.
Me: Well, I've already briefed him on this whole thing, so he'll probably ask.

 

[hanser]

 

[w00key]

Me: Well, I've already briefed him on this whole thing, so he'll probably ask.

drops mic

 

[herko]

1. That’s freaking epic
2. Yikes

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Director: There's a bug in X and we need it fixed by Monday. X is doing Y, which is incorrect.
Me: Here is your specification for X, indicating it should do Y. The specification is from 2020, and the last code change of any kind is from March 2020, so it's been consistent for over four years now.
Director: It's a bug, and it absolutely has to be fixed by Monday.
Me: It's been in production for four years, was accepted personally by you, and meets the written requirements provided by you. It is not in any way a "stop all other work emergency bug".
Director: I'm going to go to the CFO and let him know we'll pay employees incorrectly next week because you're refusing to fix the bug.
Me: While you're in there, tell him you've paid employees incorrectly for the last four years because that's exactly how you specified it to behave.
Director: I'm not going to tell him that. He'd be furious.
Me: Well, I've already briefed him on this whole thing, so he'll probably ask.

Need updates!

 

[Drizzt321]

Need updates!

Not yet Monday

 

[SandyTech]

I'm just blown away that someone could get payroll wrong for four years and nobody noticed. Payroll is one of those things I watch like a hawk just because of the damage it can cause.

 

[herko]

I'm just blown away that someone could get payroll wrong for four years and nobody noticed. Payroll is one of those things I watch like a hawk just because of the damage it can cause.

Indeed. I'd like to know how wrong is wrong in this case. Is it, like, "we're rounding cents wrong," so the total difference can add up to ~$10 per person/year, or is it "we're miscounting hours" or "under-funding retirement plans," i.e. something that will make an actual difference in people's lives (and the company's liability/legal exposure.......)

Also, is the government going to fall on them like a ton of bricks?

 

[wallinbl]

I'm just blown away that someone could get payroll wrong for four years and nobody noticed. Payroll is one of those things I watch like a hawk just because of the damage it can cause.

It is overpaying a small fraction of employees in a few uncommon situations. His phrasing way over stated the impact. I looked into the impact yesterday afternoon. Costs the company about $15k/year on a payroll of $125MM. CEO and CFO are contemplating leaving it because fixing it would lower pay for the affected people and if that caused any turnover, it’s more expensive than the overpayment.

 

[Skoop]

It is overpaying a small fraction of employees in a few uncommon situations.

Do you think that any of them noticed?

Is it a population that would be inclined to report it if they did?

 

[wallinbl]

Indeed. I'd like to know how wrong is wrong in this case. Is it, like, "we're rounding cents wrong," so the total difference can add up to ~$10 per person/year, or is it "we're miscounting hours" or "under-funding retirement plans," i.e. something that will make an actual difference in people's lives (and the company's liability/legal exposure.......)

Also, is the government going to fall on them like a ton of bricks?

A lot of employees are paid the greater of their hourly wages or a more complex calculation related to their productivity. It was never specified that there is a distinction needed between earning codes that count towards overtime and hours that contribute into the other calculation. The earning codes affected occur for a dozen or so people a month (not always the same people), and when they do, depending on other factors in the calculation, they wind up with a calculated comp that is higher than it should be.

About a dozen people a year wind up getting an extra $1000 or so in pay.

 

[Drizzt321]

It is overpaying a small fraction of employees in a few uncommon situations. His phrasing way over stated the impact. I looked into the impact yesterday afternoon. Costs the company about $15k/year on a payroll of $125MM. CEO and CFO are contemplating leaving it because fixing it would lower pay for the affected people and if that caused any turnover, it’s more expensive than the overpayment.

Holy crap that's a rounding error. Of course needs to be reported up and considered. But hardly enough to make a huge stink about.

He's just afraid any blame is a terrible thing and trying to play office politics and shift anything over to you. Might also be afraid OTHER, worse mistakes, will come to light because of this that are his fault. Maybe he knows of them, maybe not and is just afraid.

 

[wallinbl]

Do you think that any of them noticed?

Is it a population that would be inclined to report it if they did?

There is almost no chance they know it was calculated incorrectly. There is a reasonable chance of them noticing that it doesn’t calculate that way next time, especially since the change is adverse to them. It’s likely worth the goodwill to leave it alone, or just account for it next time the whole comp structure changes.

 

[wallinbl]

He's just afraid any blame is a terrible thing and trying to play office politics and shift anything over to you. Might also be afraid OTHER, worse mistakes, will come to light because of this that are his fault. Maybe he knows of them, maybe not and is just afraid.

Blame avoidance is a weird thing. I learned long ago that it's much less headache, stress, and consequence to just own your mistakes and say what you're doing to rectify it, and if you work in a place where that's not acceptable, leave. "I did X because I believed it would bring about Y. It didn't, so I'm changing Z, which should improve it because W." "I missed X. It was an oversight, and it's [already taken care of | being taken care of]." "We knew we had that as technical debt and we'd have to address it at some point. We're at that point, so here's what we're doing about it."

Trying to hide mistakes is stressful. And, this CEO really doesn't care unless you just keep making the same mistakes. You keep making the same mistake, and you're definitely getting blasted.

 

[Drizzt321]

Blame avoidance is a weird thing. I learned long ago that it's much less headache, stress, and consequence to just own your mistakes and say what you're doing to rectify it, and if you work in a place where that's not acceptable, leave. "I did X because I believed it would bring about Y. It didn't, so I'm changing Z, which should improve it because W." "I missed X. It was an oversight, and it's [already taken care of | being taken care of]." "We knew we had that as technical debt and we'd have to address it at some point. We're at that point, so here's what we're doing about it."

Trying to hide mistakes is stressful. And, this CEO really doesn't care unless you just keep making the same mistakes. You keep making the same mistake, and you're definitely getting blasted.

That's a solid culture, nice.

This guy might just have mostly worked in the other kind of culture. Pass the blame and step over the bodies.

 

[blindbear]

Blame avoidance is a weird thing. I learned long ago that it's much less headache, stress, and consequence to just own your mistakes and say what you're doing to rectify it, and if you work in a place where that's not acceptable, leave. "I did X because I believed it would bring about Y. It didn't, so I'm changing Z, which should improve it because W." "I missed X. It was an oversight, and it's [already taken care of | being taken care of]." "We knew we had that as technical debt and we'd have to address it at some point. We're at that point, so here's what we're doing about it."

Trying to hide mistakes is stressful. And, this CEO really doesn't care unless you just keep making the same mistakes. You keep making the same mistake, and you're definitely getting blasted.

It is a culture thing. Work in quality operation of manufactory, assigned human blame is the first thing we taught not to done. You prevent people from coming forwards. Generally, if you have systematic problem, it is not a individual problem anyway. Ever though it is well understand in the industry, I still see leaders/companies fall into the trap of blame assigning.

 

[herko]

Blame avoidance is a weird thing. I learned long ago that it's much less headache, stress, and consequence to just own your mistakes and say what you're doing to rectify it, and if you work in a place where that's not acceptable, leave. "I did X because I believed it would bring about Y. It didn't, so I'm changing Z, which should improve it because W." "I missed X. It was an oversight, and it's [already taken care of | being taken care of]." "We knew we had that as technical debt and we'd have to address it at some point. We're at that point, so here's what we're doing about it."

Trying to hide mistakes is stressful. And, this CEO really doesn't care unless you just keep making the same mistakes. You keep making the same mistake, and you're definitely getting blasted.

So much this.

 

[Skoop]

Blame avoidance is a weird thing.

And it goes hand-in-hand with fear of failure. It may actually be another flavor of the same phenom.

 

[Shavano]

It is overpaying a small fraction of employees in a few uncommon situations. His phrasing way over stated the impact. I looked into the impact yesterday afternoon. Costs the company about $15k/year on a payroll of $125MM. CEO and CFO are contemplating leaving it because fixing it would lower pay for the affected people and if that caused any turnover, it’s more expensive than the overpayment.

Oh, that's the kind of mistake you really can't get in trouble for making unless you told the government you're paying them less than you really are, in which case you go hat in hand to the IRS and apologize and offer to pay the difference right now. Yeah, the solution you're considering is the hands down best way to handle it. Just notify the affected employees that you were accidentally paying them more than you thought and more than you had told them and you're going to make that their official salary as of now, thanks, and it will be the basis for your next COL increase (if your company does that).

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Not yet Monday

It's Monday!

 

[ramases]

I run a core technology replacement project for a client, where over multiple years existing product features are rearchitected and reimplemented in on the new platform.

We have a matrix of what customers use what features, and the new core has a customer-facing API translation layer (both inbound and outbound) to facilitate drop-in replacements. This allows us to switch over customers to the new platform iteratively as the new platform matures and gain features.

We recently hit two important milestones:

One, we had enabled two large, critical featuresets for a market that allowed us to switch over some large and important customers. One month later the entire transition only had one sev1 issue (a bit stupid, too. We hadn't counted on that a remote sftp by a downstream service provider would only give us single-digit kB/sec rates ...) and two sev2 issues (plus some smaller fry). All issues were detected and flagged by the platform's built-in monitoring and remedied before the customer noticed.

The part I am especially happy about is that none of the affected in-flight items had to be touched manually; once the root causes had been fixed they all got picked up and resumed by the automated retry and error recovery.

Two, there's one particular functionality that is 1) very important to some customers and needs to be handled with great care (I know of one government customer who relies on it to fulfill a constitutional mandate), and 2) will not be present as-is in the new platform. The new platform offers a similar functionality, but the business guarantees it offers in that use-case is slightly different.

I now have buy-in from all affected customers for the change. For gov customers this also required getting their legal and political sign-off on the change.

 

[SandyTech]

It's not shocking I guess, but another one of my customers was fussing about staff retention and refusing to look at their compensation packages during our catch up meeting.

Staff retention is hardly fucking magic people.

 

[Vince-RA]

Right - "no one wants to work" 1) at your shitty job 2) for your shitty pay 3) for you - or some combination thereof

 

[spacekobra]

My current employer did a wage study. The study found we were under median but above the lowest.

Their conclusion? That's fine then, we're in typical wages.

In the past 2 months, 4 people have left over money and I keep hearing them complain about how hard it is to backfill.

 

[ramases]

It's not shocking I guess, but another one of my customers was fussing about staff retention and refusing to look at their compensation packages during our catch up meeting.

If you want to see a real trainwreck, you need to see what'll happen if you put someone used to hospitality or retail labor relations on top of an engineering org.

--

I just learned that HR of client took a job description I gave them and that had a separation between requirements and desirables/nice-to-haves ... and published a job advert where both are mixed up with each other. All in one section, no distinction between either, completely different ordering instead of most important stuff first.

raisedeyebrow.gif

 

[SandyTech]

If you want to see a real trainwreck, you need to see what'll happen if you put someone used to hospitality or retail labor relations on top of an engineering org.

I'll take things that end badly for $1000 Alex.

 

[Drizzt321]

Sounds very amusing and horrifying from the outside. Is there a humorous train wreck article somewhere about it?

 

[Anacher]

It's not shocking I guess, but another one of my customers was fussing about staff retention and refusing to look at their compensation packages during our catch up meeting.

Staff retention is hardly fucking magic people.

I don't see what having sex with magic people has anything to do with staff retention. That's a weird job perk.

 

[SportivoA]

My current employer did a wage study. The study found we were under median but above the lowest.

Their conclusion? That's fine then, we're in typical wages.

In the past 2 months, 4 people have left over money and I keep hearing them complain about how hard it is to backfill.

Now they'll get to see what "median" versus "competitive" is. After the hit on productivity and time/labor required to hire anyone! Maybe making your field a bit greener (pun intended) would have helped in the first place when you know exactly what the grass is like, on average, elsewhere.

 

[SandyTech]

I don't see what having sex with magic people has anything to do with staff retention. That's a weird job perk.

It works wonders for employee retention, more people should try it.

 

[Scotttheking]

It works wonders for employee retention, more people should try it.

You are on of the (few) forum members for which one would not be surprised if this is literal.

 

[The Rock]

I feel like there should be a Florida Man joke here somewhere..

Onto business:
Job search is still ongoing but stalled for now due to the holidays. At this point, every application that I made was declined. Going to restart in early January.