Sign posted

That last part about recreational activity is the key. It's about keeping people working, not goofing off.

Days of Christmas

On the 12th day of Christmas, I gave to my employees:

12 new assigments
11 dinner phone calls
10 urgent e-mails
9 unpaid overtimes
8 broken programs
7 pointless code jobs
6 throbbing migraines
5 more meetings
4 skype voices calls
3 new web tasks
2 crashing servers
and a major pain in the ass!

Have a Happy Holiday. I'll be calling after Christmas dinner since I need something fixed immediately.

Do as I say

Because in the famous words of Gore Vidal: "There is no human problem which could not be solved f people would simply do as I advise." Truer words have never been spoken. Life would be so much better if people would just follow my orders.

Selfish Success

"To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve." -- Michael Jordan

Who am I to argue with the greatest basketball player of all time? I look out for numero uno first, and it's helped me succeed. The boss succeeds from taking, not giving.

Shocking news

After wading through the obscure scientific jargon, I managed to find this little gem of research. Electric brain stimulation improves people's math skills. I always thought there was something to electric shock therapy. One of my favorite ways of training specific behaviors is high voltage. Now it turns out that the very same electric training also improves brain function. Wonderful! Just tell me where to place the electrodes to make my workers more productive and competent.

Diamonds

Diamonds are formed under high pressure over long periods of time. If you want to turn your employees from lazy slackers (lumps of coal) into hard-working diamonds, you've got to apply sustained pressure. Constant pressuring with deadlines, heavy workloads, multiple daily progress reports, meetings questioning everything they're doing, etc. is what is needed. Hard work never killed anyone, except in Japan, but even that is debatable. The life of the PHB is tough; applying the pressure to mold your employees takes some effort.

Gene therapy for retards

If there is one thing I can't stand more that a lazy, non-productive employee, it would be a lazy, non-productive, liberal employee. My tolerance for incompetence is already pretty low, but combine it with liberal stupidity, and my blood pressure goes through the roof. People are already hardly working and soaking up a paycheck. Adding liberalism to the mix is bringing us one lose to a communistic dystopia where people don't do any work and soak up a paycheck.

Fortunately, scientists are good for something other than wasting money on crazy projects. They have discovered a liberal gene. We just need to develop the gene therapy and make treatments mandatory. Wouldn't it be fabulous to have a shot cure us of our left-wing woes?

Black Friday

You want to know why the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday? In my book, it's because no one is working. Instead they are out frittering away my time. Why the hell is no one in the office today? It's not a holiday!

Funny questions

I hear a lot of funny things come out of my employees' mouths. The sense of entitlement is just fabulously funny. Here are some of my favorites:

• Can I got to lunch now?
  You can go to lunch when you're goddamn done with your work.
• When can I get a raise?
  Jesus effin' Christ! You don't even come close to working enough to earn your current salary.
• Where's the break room?
  Break room?!? You think we have a break room? You already don't work. Why the hell do you need another room to not work in?
• Can I go home yet?
  No!
• When did you want that done?
  Yesterday, you moron!
• Can I get some help on ...?
  Why the hell do you think I hired you? You're paid to do my work for me. Do your effin' job, and quit trying to pass the buck.

Hard work and taste

Studies show that working hard makes food taste better. Making your employees work hard to earn their company to earn their lunch break just makes them savor their meal more. This holds true even with the less tasty food choices. What does this mean for the PHB? Well, it means you should force employees to work as much as possible for a company provided meal of bread and water. After all that hard work, they'll be savoring that bread and water like it's a feast for the gods. They'll actually be thankful for the bread and water. It's a win-win situation. You keep your employees working hard, and your lazy fat-ass employees start eating less and losing weight.

Jiggly Memory

One of the best perks of being the boss is that you don't have to know how to do anything. Remembering things or know how things work is the job of the employees. Your job as PHB is to steer the ship of grunt underlings. I've always been terrible about remembering things anyhow. The same pudge that makes me a casanova probably explains why I can't remember a damn thing.

Keeping employees around to remember things for you is par for the course. But what separates the elite PHB from the wannabe is the extra steps. You can't keep fat-ass employees around. They'll be just as forgetful as you. Work your employees long hours through mealtimes to keep them thin. If they're too busy working to eat, they'll never even have an opportunity to be an obese lard ass. It's a double win: you get extra work out of your employees and you keep their memories sharp for your benefit.

Fatty awesomeness

Big is beautiful, at least when it comes to this beer gut of mine. I've never been ashamed of hiding my extra frontal mass. Research now backs me up: Fat men are better lovers. I may not be a sexy beast by any stretch of the imagination, but I am most certainly a sex beast. Exercise and eating well to keep a thin physique are totally overrated. That pencil necked model ain't got nothing on this gut. And there's no way that thin punk is any better at screwing employees as I am.

What doesn't kill you...

You've heard the cliche before: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Those are wise words to live by. It turns out there is scientific evidence for the adage.

The saying is equally applicable as a workplace lesson as well as a life adage. If you make work too nice and easy for your employees, they go all soft and don't become strong, resilient employees. There has to be a constant challenge of workload, work hours, incongruous tasks, and untenable schedules. Life throws hard curveballs, so there's no reason work shouldn't either. I pile on as much work and difficult work as I can on to all my employees (while paying them as little as possible). Posing this challenge makes them stronger and better able to handle future tasks that come their way. I look at it as my benevolent way of training them.

Besides, if they can't hack it, you weed them out. You didn't need the weak-ass pansies anyhow.

Stomp

I'm usually not a fan of stomp, but this may be the best rendition of it I've seen in a long time:



I get a kick out of watching the video. If that stupid girl had been using her head, she would have been at work earning her paycheck instead of wasting time at political rallies.

Willpower: suck it up!

The myth that willpower is a limited resource has been busted. People's inability to stay focused on a task is the product of a weak will, not any inherent limit to the amount of work they can force themselves to do. I've known this all along. It's best to just force your employees to work long hours. Quitting time is artificially short. They can work much longer than 8 hour days. There's no reason not to have 16+ hour days. If my employees are too weak to keep themselves working for that long, then I can use my wellspring of willpower to keep them in line. There is a far deeper reserve of power to work than is usually tapped.

Monster Employees

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd post my thoughts of the different types of employees around the office:

Ghosts - This is what most of my employees are like. They are insubstantial and disappear at the first sign of work. If you set up cameras, there's never any direct evidence that they are around. When they're unwanted, they hang around while moaning and being a general pain in the ass.

Vampires - These employees are never around during the day. They are pale and sickly looking, yet have this air of entitlement. They seem to only come out when it's time to feed or when they need to suck up a paycheck.

Werewolves - They seem normal at first, but once a month on a full moon, they go postal. They wreak havoc on everything, and are generally not worth the trouble of having as an employee. Due to their monthly hissy fits, they're just as bad employees as most women.

Banshees - These employees don't accomplish anything other than make noise. They like to think they're doing so much by the amount of noise they're making, but the reality is that they aren't doing jack-squat. In fact, they just irritate the hell out of me with their incessant whining.

Headless Horseman - Another common employee in the office. These employees are so incompetent, it's like they don't even have a head on their shoulders. I suspect, that they are just walking around with a hollow gourd attached to their necks.

Witches - Needs no explanation. It's why I don't like to hire women.

Mummies - They're always bandaged and limping around like they're injured. It's an act. They're faking injury to get out of doing work, and are intentionally dragging their feet to draw out projects as long as possible. Unlike actual mummies, they only think that they are royalty and are entitled to benefits.

Zombies - Mindless, and brain-eating. That describes half of my workforce. Not only is there nothing going on between the ears, they have to suck the little brains from other too.

It pays to be stingy

Have you heard the story about the Economides, "America's Cheapest Family"? Theirs is a heartwarming story about how frugality allows them to thrive and live their dreams despite not having a huge income. Their story is real-life proof that you don't have to have a ton of money to have it all. I've known this all along. You don't need to pay your employees a high salary for them to live well. They just need to learn to live more economically on a lower salary. That's my American dream: a company full of economising low paid employees who aren't draining the company coffers. If the Economides can live off of a single $35K salary to support a family of seven, then there's absolutely no reason for salaries to grow beyond that. Without the kids, that salary would be like a king's ransom. So next time you have employees clamoring for a raise, just tell them the story of the Economides and tell them to get smarter with their finances.

The Peter Principle

According to wikipedia, the Peter Principle is the principle that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence". In other words, at some point an employee will be promoted to a job that they are not incapable of performing. In my experience, that happens a lot even on initial hiring. That's why it is best to have high employee turnover. You want to make sure you're constantly shedding the deadweight and bringing in new talent.

It's also an argument for never promoting anyone in your company. There's a reason for nepotism. Just appoint people you like as figureheads to the higher paying positions (but not too high paying, mind you. That would eat into your paycheck). If you promoted from the lower rank grunts, they'll more than likely be incompetent anyway. You could even promote randomly for improved efficiency. If you start with an assumption of incompetence, you'll be far better off in managing your company.

Another reason kids are bad

I'm not a fan of children. I like my employees to get as much work done as possible, and employees with families simply get less things done. But it turns out there are other reasons not to have kids. They suck the life out of you. By discouraging children, you not only improve productivity, but you also improve happiness. A good number of parents suffer from depression after having children.

Believe me when I say that delaying having children (or better yet, not having them at all) is better all around for the company. Employees are less distracted by parental obligations, and they are far less likely to get depressed without children.

T.E.A.M.

There's a phrase that "there's no 'I' in team." That may be true, but when it comes to being boss, there is certainly a me in team. The team revolves around me since I'm in charge. You know what else is in "team"? There's also meat in team, which is exactly what they employees are. They work at my pleasure, and are there to be chewed up. Consider that the next time you hear mamsy-pamsy team building talk.

Boosting Morale

There's nothing like a little morale booster for improved worker productivity. I find pep talks ineffective. Just force them to be happier and work more.

Tired City

Tired City

I'm normally not a fan of film since it's a time waster. But I found this animation to be heart-warming. The way the boss is constantly phoning the employee, working her through overtime hours, demanding immediate action on numerous tasks, and even stopping her from jumping off a building so she can finish more work. It's a beautiful illustration of how to crush your employees spirit so you can maximize the amount of work you get out of your workers. I know it's an idealized film, but I (and all pointy haired bosses) should aspire to be as slave-driving.

Mistakes

Mistakes are inevitable. To err is human. But to have your employees deal with your mistakes is to be the Man.

When you're boss, mistakes don't matter as much. You've got underlings to clean up the mess for you.

Control via exhaustion

Did you know that self control is an exhaustable resource? According to this article:

"Psychologists have discovered that self-control is an exhaustible resource. And I don’t mean self-control only in the sense of turning down cookies or alcohol, I mean a broader sense of self-supervision—any time you’re paying close attention to your actions..."

This is an argument for the hierarchical boss-employee organization. Self control is a limited resource. Once the employees' self-control is exhausted (which doesn't take long, believe me), the boss needs to exert his control over the underling worker. Sometimes you get an ornery employee who insists on controlling his own actions. That's when you resort to your PHB bag o' tricks. Just wear the troublesome employee down until they are exhausted into submission. Remove their self control via exhaustion, and you then have control.

A-hole

I used to be just a B-hole, but I've since upgraded my status. I'm now 100% certified A-hole. I take my inspiration from the inimitable Dennis Leary.

Parallel Processing

As a boss of a highly successful software company, I'm always looking for ways to improve efficiency and boost productivity. The idea of wasted idle time drives me nuts. There's nothing worse than having wasted down time or paying for employee time and realizing that you could have gotten more work out of them. One way to solve this problem is to utilize parallel processing. The basic idea is to do multiple things at once so that you get twice to three times as much done in the same amount of time. It's like doubling your value for free.

I make it a point to make sure that my employees are parallel processing so that I can get the maximum amount of work out of them. For example, I'll tell an employee to work on debugging some code while they write a TPS report. Modern computers are powerful enough that multiple applications can be running at the same time. There's no reason why my employees can't be doing tasks in parallel.

Another good example of parallel processing is having my team of developers simultaneously log into a central computer to work on our latest software project. I can oversee everyone on the same computer as design, coding, graphics, and web development are done concurrently on the same system. The parallel processing improves efficiency so we get more work done. It's a technical advantage in our company processes that gives us an advantage over our competition.

Carrot and Stick

Most companies use rewards to motivate their employees and boost performance. The better work the employee does, the more they are rewarded. Unfortunately, this model of boosting employee productivity only works in rote physical labor jobs. Anything involving the slightest bit of brainpower falls apart under this model. Incentivizing skileld brain labor actually reduces employee effectiveness. I see this in my own personal experience. The instant you pay more salary, the less efficient the work done.

The solution to maximizing worker productivity lies not in rewarding your employees. The responsible boss should be actively seeking to pay as little as possible in salary to minimize the incentive dumbing down effect. Motivation must come in a different form: tight deadlines, unreasonable demands, sharp criticisms, etc. If the carrot is such an ineffective tool, we must turn to the stick. Beat your employees down to mold them into efficient company machines.

Precrastination

Have you ever heard that procrastination is the best source of inspiration? Workers putting off work as long as possible drives every boss nuts. But on the other hand, workers tend to get a lot more done when the fire is lit with a looming deadline. Wouldn't it be great if you could harness the productivity power of a deadline every day? Well, it turns that there is a way to bring the deadline environment everyday. I call it precrastination. Workers will naturally leave tasks to be done at the last minute. I find that making deadlines everyday maintains some level of acceptable productivity. Lie about when something needs to be done. It just needs to be done ASAP all the time. That way, there's no chance for procrastination, and the fire is always lit.

I like beavers

I love beavers. The furry critters work wood like there's no tomorrow. They are so industrious that even if you were to undo their dams, they could have them rebuilt within 24 hours. I can't even get my employees to have our software rebuilt and working in 24 hours whenever I decide to rip it apart. To watch a beaver working is magical. It worth standing up and paying attention to a beaver in action.

I wish I had hire more beavers to work at the company instead of recalcitrant asses. My employees just plain suck at their jobs and don't put out nearly enough. I'd like nothing more than to bend them over and give them a severe beating. If there weren't labor laws, I wouldn't be wasting company seed money on those worthless bums. Next hiring round, I'll be on the lookout for good beavers.

Non-cooperation

Call me a pessimist, but I believe that people are inherently selfish and petty. There's no reason for me to go out of my way to do something that benefits someone else, and my underlings sure don't go out of their way to help out the company. According to recent research, humans will inherently screw each other over even if it's in their best interest to cooperate. With the conditions rigged so that maximal gain comes from cooperation, test subjects still didn't always cooperate. They still screwed over the other test subjects out of spite.

What does this tell us? Well, from the PHB point of view, it tells us that it makes no sense to develop a cooperative work environment because your employees will behave non-cooperatively anyhow. If you don't screw over your employees, they will inevitably screw you over. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Screw or be screwed.

Dare to piss people off

To be a successful pointy haired boss, you have to be willing to step on people, use your employees, and plain piss people off. It's just par for the course to be an effective leader.

"Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity." -- Colin Powell

The first thing you have to realize to be a successful pointy haired boss is that your employees don't have to like you. If you're trying to be on friendly terms with all your employees, you're not being an effective boss. You're letting your employees control your actions, which is not the way the boss-employee relationship is supposed to work. As boss, you have to call the shots. You employees are probably not going to like most of your decisions because it means they have to work. If your employees actively dislike you, it's a sign that you're being effective at getting their lazy butts into gear to get things done.

"If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative." -- Scott Boras

Remember that as a boss, you are a leader and leading from the front. The losers watching you from behind are jealous and will try to drag you down. Negativity is to be expected. You have to have supreme confidence that what you're doing is right in order to effectively boss your employees around. If they have negative feelings towards you, so be it. There's a reason that they are just worker grunts and you're the head honcho.

Staycation

Paid vacation time is probably one of stupidest ideas I've ever heard of. Why would a business ever want to pay its workers to take time off? Paying employees not to work is the equivalent of giving the money away for free. If a worker wants to take time off, they can clear a day or two with the boss. But that time off should be unpaid. The company is paying for their work, not their leisure.

But maybe a change of pace is a necessary evil every so often. I propose an alternative solution that's more palatable to me: a working stay-cation. I'll kindly let the employee work from home for their break. With modern tech, telecommuting is now completely feasible. The worker can just telecommute into work during the vacation. The employee gets some time away from the workplace, and the company doesn't have to pay for non-productive employee time. It's a win-win situation!

Work Sleep Work

Do you know what the number one productivity killer is? Well, other than inherent employee laziness and ineffectiveness? It's sleep. People have to spend nearly 8 hours a day just sleeping. That's nearly a third of life just flushed down the tubes doing a completely non-productive activity. If we could just eliminate sleep, so much more work would get done. But until science comes up with a way to eliminate sleep, there are ways to reduce sleep:

1. Caffeine. The drug of choice for battling off droopy eyelids. Coffee, tea, soda, Red Bull, etc. They all keep your workers wired and working longer.
2. Regular hours. Schedule regular work hours. A routine helps with reducing the amount of necessary sleep. Start the workday around 7 a.m. or so, and end it around 8-9 p.m. Keep this schedule strict.
3. Uncomfortable bed. If your beds are too comfortable, there's the temptation to stay in them. Remove the comforts, and less sleep is necessary. I make it company-wide policy to suggest lumpy mattresses, removing pillows, no comforters, and no climate controlled temperatures. That way, the workers will want to get out of bed as soon as possible.
4. Supervision. Nothing wakes up employees faster than the boss looming. I check up on my employees as often as possible (at least 3 times and hour is ideal) to make sure they're making progress and jolt them out of their slumber.
5. Company sleep quarters. If workers never have to leave company grounds, they can spend more time working. Let peer pressure reduce the amount of sleep and maximize the amount of work.
   

Free Labor 5: Contract Work

I often like to outsource work to contractors since outsourcing to foreign countries is often cheaper than hiring domestically or paying a programmer in house. It can be nearly 80% cheaper to outsource a job, especially if you make the programmer do work during a mandatory screening/training period before awarding the contract.

Another thing I do is make sure all contracts are either oral, or if a hard copy is requested, I make it as poorly worded as possible (the outsourced labor probably doesn't speak English that well anyhow, so this strategy works great!). Then while they're working and delivering the code, I keep insisting that they haven't completed the work to my satisfaction or the terms of our agreement. Since they have already put in so much effort, they want to get paid, so they bow into my demands. I can keep this up long enough to squeeze quite a bit of extra work out of the contract. The scheme is truly beautiful.

Free Labor 4: Concierge

Did you know concierges are there to do your bidding? They are paid to be at your beck and call, and their services are usually complimentary for you as a paying customer. You can take this to full advantage to get work done for you for gratis. Whenever I go to hotels, I always make the concierge handle my dinner reservations and random errands for me. This way I don't have to have a secretary. I can get by with concierges when I'm traveling, and just make my regular employees handle the secretarial tasks when I'm in the office.

You can also use your credit card concierge services to full advantage. Similar to a hotel concierge, you can assign your complimentary credit card concierge your random tasks and get them done completely free! I've been trying to find a concierge that does computer programming, flash, or educational lesson design. I know I'll hit jackpot one of these days when I nail a newly graduated comp sci student or education student. With the economy as poor as it is, I'm sure not all of the new graduates are going to be getting jobs in their field.

Free Labor 3: Tech Support

Another way that I get free work done for me is to use technical support. My software code frequently doesn't work and I try to get other people to fix it for me under the guise of being an problem with third party software. This is the way it works: call up technical support and complain loudly and persistently until you get a hold of an engineer to troubleshoot for you. Usually any phone support person has to be cordial (remember, the customer is always right!). If you are persistent enough, you can eventually browbeat the engineer into taking a look at your code, ostensibly to find out what is causing the problem with their software.

In the case of larger software companies, like Microsoft, they even have remote login capabilities to support their customers. You can get an engineer who will remotely log into your system to troubleshoot. While you have them logged in, you just have them take a look at your code and a few extra things. I've been able to have support personnel and engineers working for me for hours on end using this little trick. It works brilliantly for getting free work done.

Free Labor 2: Job Education

Continuing from the last post about free labor, I find another effective way for getting more bang for your buck from your employees is to assign them homework. And I don't just mean doing their work at home, which they should be doing anyway. Under the guise of keeping my employees educated, I make them learn new skills on their own time (and their own dime no less). For example, I hire a programmer and I'll tell them they need to learn html and flash to round out their development skills and make them a more effective employee of the company. But what I actually get is an employee who can double as my webmaster. And the beauty of it is that I can then start asking that employee to start doing the webmaster duties in addition to their programming duties without paying him any more.

Free labor: Training Period

I hate paying any more than absolutely necessary to hire help to get work done. I find that hired help requires so much training and supervision that I'm loathe to spend any money on such incompetent workers. Outside of using free interns, I've come up with a number of ways to extract more work from people for less money.

The first is using a lengthy unpaid training period. I actually assign a real work project during this "training period." During this ostensible training period, I'm effectively getting free labor out of the new hire. I even make completion of the training period (i.e. finishing the assigned project) a requirement for beginning paid work. It's a great way to both screen for employees that have any hope of working with me and getting work done for the company for free.

Schooled

It is not uncommon for students in China to begin their school day at 7:30 a.m. and not end until 9:30 p.m. That is in stark contrast to the comparatively lazy students in the U.S. where school begins at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 3:30 p.m. If we could implement the Chinese style school hours, think how much more training we could get our students through. They would be better prepared to enter the workforce and more competent. And they would already be used to the long hours needed for a corporate job. I like my employees to work a minimum of 12 hours a day. I find that is the minimum for a satisfactory amount of work to be done. I'd require even more if the lazy sloths didn't have silly things like bathroom breaks, food needs, and families to tend to. But if the 14 hour school day became standard, it would be easier for us bosses to ramp up the work hours.

Outside the box in 48 Hours

One thing that last led to my continued success as head honcho at my companies is my ability to think outside the box. I recently came across 48 Hour Magazine where the whole concept is to generate a professional quality magazine in a mere two days, from start to finished production. That's getting stuff done! I can't even get my own staff to get simple things done in that amount of time.

This sort of outside-the-box thinking rings with me. I take a different approach to developing my software products. I have my programmers develop all of our code in a proprietary language I invented. Conforming to industry standard programming languages was too constraining a box, so I stepped outside of it and made my own programming language that works for me. Rather than hire expensive degreed domestic programmers, I outsource all of our development to temporary foreign workers who do all the development work by remotely logging into our company servers. In this way, I can watch all the developers working on a common server and control everything from one central command console. I also save on equipment costs since I don't have to provide workstations for all the developers. That cost savings has been a real boon for me. Outsourcing the development work to many different foreign workers also serves to decentralize the knowledge and work. Since I've spread out the work between a number of different developers, company knowledge and experience is distributed among numerous developers so that there is no single point of failure.

Outside the box thinking is what makes my companies so agile and successful. I can't get my workers to throw together in 48 hours, though I often try to light the fire by setting regular deadlines. But I do other things to ensure that my diffuse company keeps moving forward.

Salary deferential

According to a recent survey, women still earn less than their male counterparts. In some cases, they earn significantly less. Now, crazy feminazi arguments aside, there are good reasons for women earning less. They can't work as hard as men because they have to do the cleaning, cooking, and child-raising. Why are you going to pay a woman more money when they can't spend as many hours working as a man?

But I am an open-minded, equal opportunist. Businesses do need to eventually realize that the gender disparity in salary is problematic. There's no reason the male employees should be earning more than the female employees. Coming from my years of experience running a tight ship at my own company, I can tell you that this is a prime opportunity for companies to use the rise of women in the workforce to their advantage. Women are providing competition for the men. We can use that as a way to drive the male salaries down and reduce the company overhead costs.

Vacation Days

According to a recent survey, 34 percent of Americans do not use all their vacation days. For a country proud of its Protestant work ethic, this figure is appalling. That means that 66 percent are taking more time off than everyone else. And what is it with employed workers taking vacation days? Those are days of no work and productivity, which is a royal waste if you ask me.

If you look at the number of vacation days broken down by country, you can see why I make it a point never to hire Europeans. They expect a month of vacation time. I can't afford to have my employees taking that much time off. It's no wonder they get nothing done across the pond. If they're constantly off frolicking on vacation, how are they being productive and getting things done? On the other hand, the Japanese don't usually use only about half of their vacation days. Better than the lazy Americans. I'd hire more Japanese workers if those silly Asians would just learn to speak better English.

Bunch of chimps

My employees' inability to get their assigned tasks done is a frequent source of frustration with me. I've often wondered whether a bunch of monkeys would be more productive than my sorry crew of workers. Well, it turns out that a bunch of monkeys might indeed be better than a human workforce. A study of chimpanzees shows that they have better memory skills than humans. My employees stare at me with glazed eyes when I ask them what they were supposed to do. I always thought that they were faking not remembering. Now I know it's that they are stupider than a monkey and really don't have any memory.

It turns out the chimpanzees are also good at using complex tools. I can't even get my employees to figure out how to use their computers. I mean, I'm paying them for their supposed expertise at software, and they can't even fix my printer, get my e-mail working, or get my company software projects up and running. Maybe I should send them back to visit their chimp ancestors and take some lessons on how to use tools to get stuff done.

The Look

Although looks have nothing to do with competence, research shows that apparently looks have a lot to do with how competent we are perceived to be. People who look competent are more likely to be perceived as competent and thus more likely to be in higher paying and higher responsibility positions. It's a good thing I'm so dead sexy. My good looks helped me rise to the top, because God knows it wasn't my brains.

Role models

I recently stumbled upon a page of veritable pointy hair pride role models: Dickipedia. The list reads like a "Who's who" of pointy hair awesomeness. Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Kim Jong-Il, Bill O'Reilly, Hugo Chavez, Anne Coulter, etc. These are all pointy hair high impact people. They are the movers and shakers. They had enough cajones to do something important enough to land them on Dickipedia. If the liberal commies hate you, you know you've made it. My hats are off to the members of the Dickipedia list. I'm working my way there. It'll be a proud day when I'm enough of a dick to be on Dickipedia.

PHB Survey

I found an excellent survey for determining your pointy haired bad-assedness. Here are the questions:

1. Have you ever publicly criticized an employee?

2. Do you take credit for your employees’ work?

3. Do your employees fear you?

4. Do you expect employees to do what you tell them without question?

5. Do you believe employees should know what to do without you telling them or providing guidelines?

6. Are you a yeller?

7. Do you demean employees as a form of punishment?

8. Do you play favorites?

9. Do you hate delegating?

10. Do you check everyone’s work?

Done with the quiz? Excellent. Here are my answers for comparison:

1. Of course. Public ridicule is a highly effective method of shaming employees into performing. I didn't study pyschology for nothing.

2. Why wouldn't I take credit? I'm paying them to do the work, so the work belongs to me! What a silly questions. Next!

3. If they don't, then they should. I'll have to ramp up my screaming boss routine to make sure.

4. Duh! That's what they're paid to do. I'm the boss because I'm supposed to give orders to the underlings. They are underlings because they're not smart enough to be boss. Asking questions just pisses me off and wastes time.

5. Yes. If they don't know what they are doing already, then they are incompetent. They should be fired ASAP.

6. HELL YES! I HAVE TROUBLE HEARING MYSELF, SO I MAKE SURE TO SPEAK UP AND MAKE SURE I CAN HEAR MYSELF AND THAT EVERYONE ELSE CAN HEAR ME. THAT WAY I CAN BE SURE EVERYONE HEARD MY INSTRUCTIONS.

7. See answer #1. I've learned from my psychology training that negative reinforcement can be an incredibly powerful tool for getting employees into action.

8. Finally, my "no" answer. I can't possibly play favorites when all of my employees are equally incompetent.

9. Absolutely not. I'm the boss. It's natural for me to delegate all the work.

10. Always! Like I mentioned above, all of my employees are #$%#% incompetent. I have to check to make sure that they did their assigned task exactly as instructed. Besides, if I didn't check, they would most likely just blow off the task. It's critical to check up on everyone's work several times throughout the day.

In memory of...

Days when there weren't silly productivity killing holidays. Back in my day, Memorial Day wasn't a day where people slacked off and grilled. It was just a regular day like any other. It was a day where you know... did work! How is firing up the grill, heading to the beach, and lazing about supposed to honor fallen soldiers? Those soldiers fell in battle so that our great capitalistic nation could continue thriving. The best thing we can do to honor their memory is to keep working. What makes this country great is supposed to be that Protestant work ethic to get things done.

Productivity

This is precisely how I feel about employee productivity.

Help yourself

"God helps those who help themselves."

As a devout Catholic boy, I believe those are words to live by. As boss, it's my responsibility to help myself. My employees are there to help me, and I am obligated to take full advantage of them. It says so in the Bible. My underlings are under my management because it is the natural order. They're too lazy to be anything except low level employees. As boss, I was the one who worked my way to the top and thus deserve to give orders to those who can't help themselves.

Good Boss, Bad Boss

Ever see the "good cop, bad cop" routine? One cop comes in to question the suspect, acts like a total hard-ass and roughs up the suspect a bit. Then, the next cop comes in and pretends to hold back his overzealous partner from throttling the suspect. It's really quite a brilliant routine. And it works exceedingly well in a company setting.

In my decades of running successful companies, I've used my psychology training to implement a "good boss, bad boss" style of management. You always want to extract the maximum amount of work from your inherently lazy employees, so you want to crack the whip most of the time. But don't crack the whip all the time. Even the smart slave driver needs to know when to back off so as not to take the slave out of commission. Every so often, pretend to be pleasant. Give your grunt workers a brief glimpse of light before bringing down the hammer. Back off just before crushing morale and spirits (good boss), but keep rapping their knuckles to get work done (bad boss). It's the fine balance between keeping your workers from becoming too uppity and not completely crushing them. When you find that balance, you can maximize the productivity you get from them.

We're jamming

The NTIA is evaluating technologies for jamming contraband cell phones in prisons. The first question that comes to my mind is why are the prisons so incompetent that they can't prevent a cell phone from being smuggled? Really, is it that hard to blast all prisoners and visitors with a huge electromagnetic pulse? Phone fried, prisoner colon fried, problem solved. If you're lucky, you might even be able to kill two birds with one stone. And why aren't the prisoners being monitored more closely? If I have to constantly monitor my employees to make sure they're actually working, I assume the prison warden needs to constantly watch the prisoners to make sure that they're not up to no good. The prison system is essentially a free source of incarcerated labor. The prisoners should be constantly working and thus under constant supervision. The incarceration system is borken if they can't even keep the prisoners busy enough to not have opportunities to use their contraband cell phones.

Even so, I'm curious as to what solutions will be presented. I can monitor company e-mail and company phones to prevent employees from wasting time and misusing company resources. But they still have those wretched cell phones. If I can just jam them, I could prevent those personal calls from interfering with the productivity. Maybe then I could get them to do some actual work.

Power of subtraction

Count your blessings. If you think you've got it bad, you can consider how things would be if you something didn't exist in your life. Consider the power of negative thinking to cheer up. For example, if you hadn't met your spouse or significant other, what would your life be like? Although that is perhaps a bad example. If you had enough time to meet a spouse, you're probably not working hard enough. But I digress. It's a thought experiment I like to partake in from time to time. What would my employees' lives be like without me? Judging by how little work they get done already, they'd probably just be miserable wasteful sloths. They need constant supervision to get their jobs done. My watchful eye is what ensures they get things done and maintain their productivity. That thought cheers me up immensely when I'm feeling down.

Panopticon Office

The panopticon was a brilliant idea conceived by Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The observer can observe everyone without the observed persons knowing if they are being watched. It's the perfect setup. Knowing that your company employees are probably slacking unless they are being watched, you need a system where you can watch all your employees without them necessarily knowing when you're watching--thus the company panopticon. The ideal setup is the worker offices being within view of the boss, who is shrouded by one way glass. Cameras throughout the office in a closed circuit monitoring system is also acceptable.

Greek Tragedy

I always thought that government employees were way overpaid. That's why they are all so lazy and inefficient. The latest news about Greek government employee salaries just reinforces that fact. Can you believe they get paid 14-months worth of salary for their European 10 months of work? Why in the world would you ever pay someone for time they aren't working? If you overpay, you can expect problems not just with the company finances but also with employee productivity. You get more out of your employees by underpaying them as much as possible. When they need that next paycheck, they are beholden to you. That's when you extract the most productivity out of your employees. If you pay them enough to be comfortable, then they slack off. It's simple psychology and economics.

Remote Monitoring

There was a recent uproar locally about the school district performing remote surveillance on its students. The sensationalists headlines include "Laptop took thousands of images" and the like. Big deal. So images and screen captures were taken for many students. It's not like the students were working on computers they owned. These were laptops issued by the school district. They have every right to monitor the students. The laptops were meant for productive work. These kids need to get used to the fact that there's no expectation of privacy in the working world when working for someone else or using someone else's equipment. As I noted in my guide to telecommuting, I expect to keep constant electronic tabs on all of my workers. Other corporate environments will be similar. These kids need to grow up and learn that this is how the world operates.

Boob Tube

Did you know the average American watches 153 hours of TV every month? That's about 5.1 hours a day, for those of you who are too lazy to use a calculator. That's absolutely insane. I don't see how anyone can waste that much time watching television when there's so much work to be done. If all my employees stopped watching TV and stayed at work during that time, they just might get the tasks I assign them done. 153 hours in a month is just about one full "regular" work week. Why no one has cut the cord to the TV to keep working is beyond me. That's 5.1 hours a day of non-productive time.

Cash Incentives

It turns out that handling cash, even it's not yours to keep, makes people better able to cope with pain. According to a recent university research study, subjects who handled money were more resilient to pain. I wouldn't say that this is ground-breaking research, but it does verify what I've known all along. People are motivated by money. This includes corporate employees. None of my lazy employees likes working, but the paycheck blunts their pain. Allowing them to occasionally handle a paycheck seems to keep them working long enough to get some small amount of work done. The trick is figuring out how long you can keep them going before you need to infuse some monetary damage control to prevent mass defection.

Myth of the 8-hour workday

The typical workday (which I was never a fan of to begin with) starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. Eight hours, five days a week seems like so little to ask when there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. Forty hours per week out of an available 168 total hours per week comes out to less than 25 percent! This is already an abysmally low percentage of time spent working, but it's only part of another insidious issue.

The mythical 8-hour day is just that: a myth. Most workers come nowhere close to working that many hours. Consider that there is an hour lunch break. Why you have to eat on company time and get paid for it is beyond me. Then, employees typically waste time with trips to the bathroom, water cooler, chatting with other employees, etc. That just takes away even more work time. If you're not keeping a vigilant eye on your workers, they could be doing as little as 2 hours of actual work a day, but you're still paying them for 8! That's just outrageous.

It's imperative for the PHB to keep his workers actually working and coming close to earning their pay. The best way to do this is to keep close tabs on what everyone is doing. If you can swing it, cut out the lunch break. Your workers can eat on their own time, before and after work. Finally, since you can't actually squeeze 8 hours of work in the allotted time, find ways to extend the workday as long as possible. If you can keep everyone in the office for 12 (better yet 16) hours a day, you might get your full 8 hours worth out of them.

Life overtaking work

According to recent survey results, parents are spending more time with their children than in past years. It's hard to believe. I can't believe parents are wasting time at home when they should be at work being productive. As I have noted before, children are a huge financial drain for both parents and the companies they work for. Spending more time with children just drains more productivity from the company. This whole work-life balance nonsense has swung much too far in the wrong direction.

Permanent Temporary

One of the good things that has come out of the recession is the increase is the number of "permanent temporary" workers. Some 20% of the workforce now is in this category. These workers have all the responsibilities of a full-time, permanent employee, but are actually only contract workers in their official capacity with a company. This is great for the company since they don't have to pay employment tax, pay into pensions, contribute to retirement funds, provide healthcare, or provide basically any job perks.

This is the only way I hire. Contract workers don't have the same rights as regular employees. You can pay them on an irregular schedule and start playing with their billable hours when it does come time to pay. And the decreased paperwork from not having to deal with any of the tax crap is great. They have to take care of all that nonsense. The only thing that could possibly be better is free interns working for you.

Children and work

Having children is pure disaster for companies. Sure, it seems like a neat idea, but young couples never consider the full implications of having children. Having children is one of the worst financial mistakes that can be made. They take a lot of resources to raise, they take away from productive work time, and drain the company of valuable manpower. Raising kids is an all around losing proposition.

This is one important thing to keep in mind when hiring. You want workers who will be able to put in a lot of time and work hard to earn your company money. If you find out that a potential employee plans on having children in the near future (particularly for potential female hires), you may want to consider moving on to the next candidate.

La Famiglia

One thing that drives me nuts is the constant chatter I hear about people trying to strike a balance between family and work life. For me, I don't see there being any need to strike a balance. The workplace is the home, and the company is the family. The boss is the patriarch who oversees the family. When you can look at things from this point of view, the conflict between home and work disappears.

This is the reason why companies need to hire either foreigners or single (unmarried) workers. Workers who are single don't have a home life to worry about, so they can devote themselves to working and advancing your company. Foreign workers tend to be willing to sacrifice most things--family included--to get ahead. I particularly like hiring the foreigners from poor, yet educated countries. They work hard, work long hours, and are usually a lot cheaper to pay than domestically trained workers.

Central Falls: a model for reform

Recently, Central Falls High School fired its entire faculty and staff due to atrocious test scores and graduation rates. I only wish that we could see more of this sort of action at more schools. In fact, I wish I could see this sort of decisive actions at more companies. Workers are on the whole a lazy lot. They are only around to soak up a pay check while pretending to do something productive. When they get unionized (like teachers), things only get worse. They want to get paid for doing basically nothing.

The mass firings at Central Falls is an opportunity to turn around its sorry underperformance due to its underworking teachers. Clearly hiring people interested only in their salaries is a mistake. I propose that we migrate the students to computer based instruction. Computers can work continuously, don't require a salary or benefits, and provide completely subjective metrics. Intelligent tutoring systems can ensure that every student learns the necessary material to complete their education. When we can remove the meddling, error-prone human teachers from the education process, we can finally progress to a subjective, results-driven education to train our children to become productive workers.

The sin of underwork

A recent study has shown that bored workers are at higher risk for disease. The science says it: boredom will kill you. Working is actually good for your health since it prevents the deadly boredom from setting in. I take it upon myself to make sure that all of my workers stay constantly busy. If they're constantly working, there's no worries about them suffering from the ill effects of boredom or developing any of the bad lifestyle habits associated with boredom.

Starting them younger

There seems to a debate on how young to start children in a formal school education.  I say the earlier the better.  Starting at 5 years of age is already too long of a delay.  We should start children as soon as they can handle solid foods.

The arguments for starting children in school later hold no water.  Spending more time at school than with family prepares children for the reality of working life.  The parents need to spend more time at work than with family, so there's no point in holding the children out of school for family life reasons.  Children become better socialized to the corporate social structure and disciplined into a hierarchy better the sooner they start school.  Acclimating them to this sort of social structure prepares them for working life sooner.  The sooner children start school, the sooner they can start learning skills that make them useful in the workforce.

Having the children in school earlier is also good for the parents.  With the children at home instead of school means that the parents can't be at work.  This is a serious drain on productivity.  The sooner we get children into schools, the sooner we get the parents back to full time productive work.

Modern Life

The fast pace of modern life has advanced society in many significant ways. Most of these changes have been great for business. Here are some of the realities of modern life that have made my life as pointy haired boss better:

1. People getting married later. When employees aren't distracted by something as silly as a family, they can spend more time getting work done.
2. Higher divorce rates. Again, without the distractions of a marital relationship and family, employees can better focus on the important things, like getting more work done.
3. Fewer community ties and friendships with neighbors. It's much better that interpersonal interactions be work related. When there are relationships to people outside of the workplace, those are more distractions that take away from on-the-job productivity.
4. Smartphones. I love my employees having these. That way I can e-mail and call them whenever I want something done. There's no reason I can't leverage their labor even if they're not in the office.
5. The demise of the sit down dinner. Having an employee say they couldn't talk because the family was having dinner annoyed me to no end. Now that we've come to our senses and started ignoring the inanity of listening to what junior did at school, all my employees now have no excuse for not answering my calls at home.
   
6. Fast food and prepackaged industrial foods. These have been a boon for my business. Having my employees waste so much time doing something as time-wasting as eating always annoyed me. With packaged and fast food, they can get their sustenance much more efficiently and get back to work.
7. Internet. The internet has made it possible for me to outsource most of my development to overseas workers, who are far cheaper than the overpaid domestic programmers. It's allowed me to lower my costs and solidified my control over my remaining domestic employees; since they now know that they are so easily replaceable by outsourced labor, they don't complain about the extra workload I give them.

Some people may long for the "good old days." I say that today is pretty good.

External Control vs. Self Control

Studies show that self-control comes in limited quantities.  People can exercise so much willpower before it's exhausted.  This can be a decidedly bad thing for the workplace.  Workers are constantly tempted to chat with their co-workers, show up late, leave early, take long lunches, surf the internet, call their buddies on the office phone, etc.  There are just too many distractions that the hordes of underlings apparently can't resist.  From my own experience, most of my employees have pathetic willpower.  I ask them to work a mere 10-12 hours (not even half the hours in a day!), and they never make it.  They always make excuses of being tired, hungry, and burned out and start wavering in their duties.

But just because employees have limited self-control doesn't mean they can't have external will forced upon them.  If you learn to micromanage effectively, you can prevent your underlings from partaking in the distractions and keep them focused on working.  Where worker self control is lacking, external control can be imposed.