Monday, August 30, 2010

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.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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.

Monday, August 16, 2010

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.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

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.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

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.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

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.

Joseph M. Scandura, incompetent moron, idiot, pompous, stupid, failure, asshole, arrogant, bullshit, micromanager of the year, technologically clueless, ignorant, condescending, senile, dementia

scandura@scandura.com
mailto:joescandura@comcast.net