"There's no 'I' in team." That's an important phrase that companies try to get across to their employees. Unfortunately, they usually go about it the wrong way. While there is no "I" in team, there is most certainly an "m" and an "e," which would be me, the head honcho. The team is there for my benefit.
You know what else is in "team"? "Meat" is also in team. It's what you get when team is spelled backwards. When the team isn't working for me, you're basically as good as dead meat. You're all fired when you're not part of the team working for me. Remember that next time you hear that team-building phrase.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Happy Führer Day!
One of my favorite holidays is happening soon: Führer Day. It's a day where I can be appreciated for the type of leadership I provide. Everyone at work salutes me properly with a proud chest and raised arm instead of just sitting hunched over. I don't know why I can't get people to salute me everyday. C'mon people, show some love for your fearless leader!
While I do appreciate being showered with gifts on this holiday, I do have a few suggestions to make it better. First of all, let me offer a few suggestions on gifts. You all can stop buying me tools this year. I appreciate the thought, but the gift is of limited use to me. Despite being known as "The Tool," I don't actually know how to use anything. Being handy in my book is keeping an underling nearby to do everything for me.
Also, the books are nice, but I have already received several copies of "Management for Dummies" and "The Idiot's Guide to Running a Company." Personally, I think the gifts are selfish ones. They are of no use to me. In the interest of educating my employees, I have put them for employee reading so everyone can understand how hard it is to do my job. So far, the books are just gathering dust, which only confirms my suspicions that all of my employees are illiterate or uninterested in furthering their own education.
I know I have been dropping hints that I could use a few more pink slips since I have been running low on them lately. You can really never have too many pink slips around since they come in so handy. However, I did not foresee that I would receive so many pink undergarments. It was not what I expected, but I have to say they are surprisingly comfortable and I have been wearing them more regularly.
Now, a gift I would certainly appreciate is a new shaver. I don't plan on paying you anytime soon, so I understand if you can't go out and buy me a new one. I'm ok with you just cleaning up your shaver and giving it to me. I need to keep my moustache properly trimmed so I can look sharp for our first customer.
With such dashing good looks, I'm sure to win us our first paying customer. In fact, just looking at my handsome image puts me in a good mood. I'm feeling generous today. You can have a half day off this Sunday. Check in around 9 a.m., and you can go home and have an hour or two of leisure around 9 p.m. Haha, I'm just kidding. You know there's no time off. I'm such a gas!
Friday, June 3, 2011
Dare to be different
Success comes to those who don't follow the herd. Followers never do anything but the average. That's fine if you want to be boring and just like everyone else. To stand out, you have to dare to be different. I've built up my company to a success by outside the box thinking and non-standard approaches. Here are a few examples:
Hub and Spoke Hierachy - The typical company is structured like an inverted tree with the boss at the top, varying level of managers at the branches, and the drones at the leaves. The problem with that approach is that underlings are delegated power and privileges. You never want to give any underling any sense of importance. I much prefer the hub and spoke organization scheme. The boss is in the center directly controlling all the nodes. That way no one develops a sense of importance and gets uppity. You have direct control over everyone at all times. This is also known as a "star" arrangement, which is fitting. You're the brains of the operation. Everyone else is just piddily satellites revolving around you.
Centralized Workflow - The trend these days is towards decentralization. Cloud computing, peer-to-peer gobbily-gook, distributed computing, etc. It's all bunk! It's the same theory as giving a bunch of monkey typewriters and expecting the collective to eventually bang out Shakespeare. It's much easier to control everyone when the workflow is centralized. I make everyone log into my computer where I can watch them working and give instructions on the fly. Who knows what everyone could be doing working on their own? Probably just wasting time on my dime. When everyone is under a watchful eye, they keep doing what they are told. Plus, there's the added benefit of not having heterogenous computing environments. When everyone has to work on the same system, they are all working on the same platform by default.
Internal Standards - "Industry standard" is just a nice-name for average piece of crap. Standard industry practices is another example mamby-pamby following the herd. That's why I ignore standard practices and implement company practices which make sense to me. Version control software? Unnecessary! It's a waste of time to install and who understands the cryptic crap the software does anyhow? It's much better to just manually make copies of the source tree with the date appended. Same thing with automated backups. I prefer having my employees manually make the backup at the end of every day. I feel more confident knowing that a human performed the task rather than it being an unknown automated task. GUI usability standards? Totally retarded if you ask me. If I think my design is usable, then that's the way it's going to be. Who the hell came up with the usability standards anyhow? Probably a bunch of desk jockeys who are only soaking up a paycheck with retarded suggestions. Project management software? Also a waste of time. Since everyone in my company is working on the same computer anyhow, they can all access the same Word document that I type out each day. Hell, even standard programming languages are a bad idea in my book. If an employee develops skills in an industry standard development environment under my tenure, that gives him a skill that he can take somewhere else. Well, I say not on my dime! We make sure to use proprietary internal development environments so that no useful software knowledge can ever be taken from the company and employees don't develop any useful skills that they can use at another competing company.
Turnover - Underlings come and go all the time. Some people yammer on about retaining talent and experience. Bull-honky! In a fast moving business, your employees are going to become stale and outdated quickly anyhow. You want high turnover to keep your talent pool fresh and to keep workers on hand who haven't burned out. The more people you have flowing through, the more you get done and the better your product. You have to take the borg approach: assimilate the talent, and then they no longer matter as an individual. They are just another drone. You've taken what they have to offer into the collective, so it no longer matters if they stay or go.
Hub and Spoke Hierachy - The typical company is structured like an inverted tree with the boss at the top, varying level of managers at the branches, and the drones at the leaves. The problem with that approach is that underlings are delegated power and privileges. You never want to give any underling any sense of importance. I much prefer the hub and spoke organization scheme. The boss is in the center directly controlling all the nodes. That way no one develops a sense of importance and gets uppity. You have direct control over everyone at all times. This is also known as a "star" arrangement, which is fitting. You're the brains of the operation. Everyone else is just piddily satellites revolving around you.
Centralized Workflow - The trend these days is towards decentralization. Cloud computing, peer-to-peer gobbily-gook, distributed computing, etc. It's all bunk! It's the same theory as giving a bunch of monkey typewriters and expecting the collective to eventually bang out Shakespeare. It's much easier to control everyone when the workflow is centralized. I make everyone log into my computer where I can watch them working and give instructions on the fly. Who knows what everyone could be doing working on their own? Probably just wasting time on my dime. When everyone is under a watchful eye, they keep doing what they are told. Plus, there's the added benefit of not having heterogenous computing environments. When everyone has to work on the same system, they are all working on the same platform by default.
Internal Standards - "Industry standard" is just a nice-name for average piece of crap. Standard industry practices is another example mamby-pamby following the herd. That's why I ignore standard practices and implement company practices which make sense to me. Version control software? Unnecessary! It's a waste of time to install and who understands the cryptic crap the software does anyhow? It's much better to just manually make copies of the source tree with the date appended. Same thing with automated backups. I prefer having my employees manually make the backup at the end of every day. I feel more confident knowing that a human performed the task rather than it being an unknown automated task. GUI usability standards? Totally retarded if you ask me. If I think my design is usable, then that's the way it's going to be. Who the hell came up with the usability standards anyhow? Probably a bunch of desk jockeys who are only soaking up a paycheck with retarded suggestions. Project management software? Also a waste of time. Since everyone in my company is working on the same computer anyhow, they can all access the same Word document that I type out each day. Hell, even standard programming languages are a bad idea in my book. If an employee develops skills in an industry standard development environment under my tenure, that gives him a skill that he can take somewhere else. Well, I say not on my dime! We make sure to use proprietary internal development environments so that no useful software knowledge can ever be taken from the company and employees don't develop any useful skills that they can use at another competing company.
Turnover - Underlings come and go all the time. Some people yammer on about retaining talent and experience. Bull-honky! In a fast moving business, your employees are going to become stale and outdated quickly anyhow. You want high turnover to keep your talent pool fresh and to keep workers on hand who haven't burned out. The more people you have flowing through, the more you get done and the better your product. You have to take the borg approach: assimilate the talent, and then they no longer matter as an individual. They are just another drone. You've taken what they have to offer into the collective, so it no longer matters if they stay or go.
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