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Showing posts with the label OfficePolitics

IT#20 The Company Loyalty and The Corporate Anti-natural Selection

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March 29, 2024 Yesterday, I've got a warning that unless I use my Google Voice account for outgoing calls, my Google Voice number will be taken away. For outgoing calls. And so I won't be able to receive calls and SMSs… Please, hold with me for a moment to see what It really says about modern Google as a company. 12 years ago, when I joined Google, it was very hard to get into the company. In fact, it was harder than to get admitted into Harvard. The company employed the smartest people in the world and it was very proud of that. And so were googlers. With that came trust and loyalty. Tens of thousands engineers were watching confidential TGIFs worldwide with nearly no leaks. And there was enough confidential stuff there, but… no leaks.The company trusted employees. The employees trusted the company. The company was loyal to the employees. The employees were loyal to the company. Did I mention, it was 12 years ago? A quick Universal Evolution 101 Reminder A friend of mine was t...

IT#11 Winnie-the-Pooh climbs a corporate ladder

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  #ITManagement #Management #OfficePolitics #CorporateParasites #Humor This article is an illustration of what I was talking about in IT#5 devoted to corporate parasites. When I was a child I really loved the books about Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne. But now, after decades in the world of large corporations, they sound a little different for me… Let's read, for example, the chapter "Chapter VIII In Which Christopher Robin Leads An Expotition To The North Pole", where the Hundred Acre Wood is a corporation, Christopher Robin is a C-level exec, and Winnie-the-Pooh is an employee. In the first sentence we see that Pooh actively cared about maintaining friendly relationships with C-level execs and visibility with them: One fine day Pooh had stumped up to the top of the Forest to see if his friend Christopher Robin was interested in Bears at all . More than that, he was very receptive to non-verbal signals and demonstrated readiness to support the management plans whatever t...