Meaningless corporate bullshit

[Twit 2]

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

[Twit 2]

Hello sir, can you indicate my key performance?
Yes, with this special stick you can see I'm indicating it now.
Thank you. Will there be outcomes?
We all hope so. We have a rapid action plan.
Great, I'll get that data to you then.
Good. The appraisal has ended now.
Thank you. Thank you.

[SpiderChrist]

Just leaving the house to go and deal with bullshit like that now.

I'll report back on my major takeaways via a webinar, going forward, after we've talked about how poor mental health is a bad thing, yeah?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Volvo were at the synergy nonsense in 1987, this song was on a promotional album they made to celebrate their 60th anniversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeONOo3ZfMI

Then they got plundered by Ford and the remains sold to the Chinese. How's that for synergy?

[touchingcloth]

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

We do OKRs instead of KPIs.

I think there's been a rape up there.

[thugler]

Every university meeting is peppered with STRATEGY. STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES. STRATEGIC 'HIRES'.

Awful. No-one knows what it means and there is no question of checking for consistency.

This kind of thing. I don't even have the ability to play along anymore. I cannot hide my contempt.

[Thomas]

When I worked at a call centre, I loved anything that would get us away from the phones for a few minutes.

Pointless meeting? Yes mate. Morale-raising pizza? Eat it reallllly slowly. Protracted bollocking and mass-firing? Brilliant, I'll just make tea first.

[Sebastian Cobb]

This kind of thing. I don't even have the ability to play along anymore. I cannot hide my contempt.

WWBKD?

[dex]

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

This. When people seem to care more about metrics than the bigger picture and understanding why things are done/are not done in a certain way.

[Sebastian Cobb]

This. When people seem to care more about metrics than the bigger picture and understanding why things are done/are not done in a certain way.

I worked at one place where we had to fill in some bollocks form, but the main emails told us 'this is being used as a measure of the effectiveness of our internal communication processes'. Well telling us that isn't going to give you an accurate measure is it? Especially not when every vertical has a chain of command full of obsequious toads breathing down the necks of their subordinates in an effort to get noticed.

*shakes head in disgust*

[pancreas]

Someone tried to give me a 'KPI' a few months ago. I had to google what it stood for. They then got an email from me they didn't enjoy reading. I don't think that will happen again.

[sick as a pike]

Every so often I am employed at a generous day rate to write corporate bullshit, often for Chinese tech firms' IPOs.  Generally, I have no idea what it is they do, why it would be of interest to anyone or, really, what an IPO is.
I've come to realise that the 'communications agency' who employ me to do this also have no idea about any of it.
We are all puppets, dancing for money.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Someone tried to give me a 'KPI' a few months ago. I had to google what it stood for. They then got an email from me they didn't enjoy reading. I don't think that will happen again.

'dry roasted for me, cheers'

[Sebastian Cobb]

Every so often I am employed at a generous day rate to write corporate bullshit, often for Chinese tech firms' IPOs.  Generally, I have no idea what it is they do, why it would be of interest to anyone or, really, what an IPO is.
I've come to realise that the 'communications agency' who employ me to do this also have no idea about any of it.
We are all puppets, dancing for money.

I suspect this is why lots of people in the tech industry are contractors, it's not earning about double for forgoing holiday or sick pay, it's so you can just do your work and fuck off without pretending to subscribe to nonsensical vision and values.

[sovietrussia]

At this month's Brown Bag I baselined the outcomes that had been surfaced, adopting the appropriate cadence to service strategic objectives. We will now drive the detail into these artefacts ahead of getting professional help for my cluster b personality disorder.

[Sebastian Cobb]

At this month's Brown Bag I baselined the outcomes that had been surfaced, adopting the appropriate cadence to service strategic objectives. We will now drive the detail into these artefacts ahead of getting professional help for my cluster b personality disorder.

Moving forward, you can grab my low-hanging fruit.

[Icehaven]

I've had a couple of(very short lived) call centre jobs and they were just stuffed with shit like this. There seemed to be several layers of middle/line managers who's entire job was to inflict stupid objectives and schemes and career ladders and fuck knows what else dreamt up by someone on high to justify their existence. A few of them came down to the depths once when a new incentive scheme was being introduced and we all had to troop up the road to a hotel where they'd arranged a conference room so they could hold court. At one point we were all asked to close our eyes, actually close them, and imagine what the extra cash we could make (by hawking extras on customer's insurance policies) could do for us, for our families, for our children etc. They were talking about an extra £50 a month or so, and they themselves were on hundred grand salaries, the patronising cunts.

[Famous Mortimer]

For the reason that my place of work has too much money, everyone at my level (admin grunts) has been invited to two different food-based events on Valentines Day - a donut-based thing for the entire building at 9:30 and a pizza-based thing just for our department at 12. Plus, we don't have to listen to any corporate bollocks.

[dissolute ocelot]

Last year we had a meeting which begun with the professional trainers (paid actual money to be there) showing us a slide with 5 shapes and asking which shape we all were individually. After doing that for half an hour the trainer explained that it was just an icebreaker and didn't mean anything. The rest of the meeting was about tactics for preserving our mental health, or as it is apparently known "resilience".

[paruses]

Last year we had a meeting which begun with the professional trainers (paid actual money to be there) showing us a slide with 5 shapes and asking which shape we all were individually. After doing that for half an hour the trainer explained that it was just an icebreaker and didn't mean anything. The rest of the meeting was about tactics for preserving our mental health, or as it is apparently known "resilience".

That sounds very much like the US Marine Corps' approach of breaking you down to nothing first and then rebuilding you as they want you. Did you later on have a blanket party with the least popular team member and bars of soap wrapped in socks?

 

[paruses]

Has anyone else noticed the prevalence of having to "reach out to <insert person's name>" as if we're in the mafia and trying to broker a ceasefire in some turf war? As a Sopranos fan it pleases and angers me at the same time. If they want that kind of thing I am happy to walk up to their window at some traffic lights and fire a snub-nose .38 into their car. More than happy. 

[Captain Crunch]

Last year we had a meeting which begun with the professional trainers (paid actual money to be there) showing us a slide with 5 shapes and asking which shape we all were individually. After doing that for half an hour the trainer explained that it was just an icebreaker and didn't mean anything. The rest of the meeting was about tactics for preserving our mental health, or as it is apparently known "resilience".

I can beat you there; I went to a CPD session the other week where the presenter had 'rolled out' resilience training to his firm, only to find they had no idea what it was.  So, he rebranded the course 'Emotional Fitness' and now everyone's biting his arm off for a go.

Worse STILL is my firm where they are doing 'Resilience Campfires' which is the new and even more wanky word for workshop.

I really can't tell whether I'm having a midlife crisis or if the world of work really is just turning into a massive soft play centre with free bananas.  Some woman in a meeting even said "we want to Marie Kondo our policies here guys..." AND NO ONE PULLED HER UP!

[Ham Bap]

I work for an American company and I'm faced with this bullshit on a daily basis.
The sheer amount of meetings is ridiculous. Most if not all of them could be an email but in an email how could we hear how great everyone is so a fucking meeting it is.

Worse, some teams have a daily stand up meeting every single morning right in the middle of the office floor.
The fucking horror.

We also persist with 'offsite meetings' where it's just an extended 4 hour meeting for everyone to talk about how great they are.
Senior managers and up have offsite meetings where they take them to exotic hotels with massages and the like.
We have them in the office. The 'ice-breakers' are shite too where you can learn someone's favourite colour is white and they like watching *checks notes* movies.
That usually takes up an hour then they rush through the next 3 painful hours.

I'm taking a week off sick in a couple of weeks. I'm due a mental and physical break.

[seepage]

my last boss used to say "socialise" meaning 'communicate' e.g. "I will socialise the results tomorrow".

[Kryton]

This thread makes me angry.

[imitationleather]

my last boss used to say "socialise" meaning 'communicate' e.g. "I will socialise the results tomorrow".

Since this was in an office I am guessing at least 50% of the workforce must have been Sociololgy graduates outraged at the misuse of that term.

[Sebastian Cobb]

my last boss used to say "socialise" meaning 'communicate' e.g. "I will socialise the results tomorrow".

It's 'cascade' now grandad.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I work for an American company and I'm faced with this bullshit on a daily basis.
The sheer amount of meetings is ridiculous. Most if not all of them could be an email but in an email how could we hear how great everyone is so a fucking meeting it is.

Worse, some teams have a daily stand up meeting every single morning right in the middle of the office floor.
The fucking horror.

We also persist with 'offsite meetings' where it's just an extended 4 hour meeting for everyone to talk about how great they are.
Senior managers and up have offsite meetings where they take them to exotic hotels with massages and the like.
We have them in the office. The 'ice-breakers' are shite too where you can learn someone's favourite colour is white and they like watching *checks notes* movies.
That usually takes up an hour then they rush through the next 3 painful hours.

I'm taking a week off sick in a couple of weeks. I'm due a mental and physical break.

When CGI bought Logica they decided to merge both company's processes, which meant twice as much bureaucracy; my favorite part of that was the introduction of a mandatory employee satisfaction survey. What they didn't realise was the cultural differences between the way North Americans (start at 10/10 and knock points off if you have grievances) and Europeans tend to rate things (start low and add points if you're happy). The result of this was that we got a passive-aggressive bollocking for not being happy enough.

They were also obsessed with employee owning shares. To the point they expected everyone to. All the managers had it as a written target so I got contacted by random people from the top of the totem pole downwards begging me to take them because I was screwing up their potential bonus by not doing so. That was worth more to me than the paltry return you got by selling them each month.

[Famous Mortimer]

My old place gave out "shares" once, but I forget the real name of them. It was to head off industrial action (which worked, sadly) and they said "here are these shares which are better than a raise, because of all the money they'll be worth in a few years!" After reading the small print, I (and other people) warned how pointless it was, but it all fell on deaf ears.

About 3 or 4 years later, in the last paragraph of a newsletter, we got "by the way, after a long and careful process, we've decided that the value of those shares is zero."

[Kelvin]

Tedious work shite, or a meeting where you get compared to a dolphin. We need the idiots to come up with more pointless stuff like this, not less.