Zhensheng just wanted to earn a good salary for his family. He had studied for many years and earned a doctorate in bioengineering. He was a loyal citizen and properly feared the state’s power. They asked him to join a bioengineering project and he put aside ethical concerns knowing he could not resist, sabotage, or…
Neither Career Nor Good Work
We were a bunch of savages gathering random parts collected haphazardly
rather than planning to craft greatness.
Escape From Misery
One of my duties is interviewing prospects for open positions. Rather then ask detailed technical questions, I assess their skills and personalities by getting them to talk and tell me their understanding of things as well as their responsibilities. In this conversational interview format I also try to sense their daily work environment, and why…
Certification Pretense
The manager walked into the room to announce the big push for a new certification the customer requested. Two dozen developers laughed uncomfortably, knowing what was to follow. The manager asked what developers thought of the certification and after a few rounds of tepid talk, someone spoke up honestly and broke the taboo. “It’s just…
Dying In The Office
Some truth is on display in the office, particularly in the unhealthy lifestyles of your prole coworkers. You hear their stories of drinking binges, entertainment binges, and utter neglect of physical activity they know is destroying them. There’s no way to hide the results on plain display to all. They are wheezing pictures of wrecked…
Filibuster Strategies
For most salaried jobs, no one at the company that is responsible for making evaluations has the ability to actually assess performance. When only appearance matters, crazy fakery flourishes. One project manager I worked with was famous for producing reams of documentation which he would send to the client for affirmation of the information therein….
Wasting Genius
The worst thing about being called a genius is the expectation of others. Once they identify you as a genius, they lustfully scheme how to keep you sitting in a cubicle while they charge a premium hourly rate they can take a fat percent of. Would any decent person ever consider sticking Einstein or Beethoven…
Get Fat
I listened to the lout from engineering offer his sage advice to a guy who was recently married. “My minister recently told us that newlyweds put on 5 to 10 pounds a year because of the married lifestyle.” That got me thinking. It wasn’t just stress, it was acting as though one’s life was over…
Poverty of Consumption
Otto must have been raised in poverty and even though he had separated from that, it was forever a key part of his soul from which he could not recover. He was a system administrator and made sure to tell everyone he met that he owned a BMW M3. Lots of people had nice cars…
Detached Salesmen
The salesman chases leads and uses his cunning to convert them into sales. Because his social skills are unusual compared to workers, they are given fairly free reign and little scrutiny so long as they bring in sales. Since they work for a commission, they utilize this flexibility to shift costs — and are cognizant…
Hazard Pay
IT work dwells in non-human abstractions. The problems being solved rarely consider human relevancy. Management tracks with metrics detached from quality. Policies keep workers in compliance yet fail to bring about good results. Removing humanity from daily life creates a challenging dynamic, like an astronaut transported into outer space far from family, home, and everything…
The Simulation Simplifies By Using NPCs
After listening to all the office chatter about the opinions of dull minds consuming shows, movies, and sports I tried it myself for months by repeating the same opinions as theirs about things I had never watched. They never realized I was a confederate! Every time I faked it they believed my pointless opinion was…