tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post3493910172755269115..comments2024-03-14T11:50:14.761-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: Is the Corporate Ladder Dehumanizing?Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-87686460538487094782008-05-09T23:56:00.000-04:002008-05-09T23:56:00.000-04:00Say a company makes rubber ducks. An earnest young...<I>Say a company makes rubber ducks. An earnest young man comes to work for them, and he starts in the factory, inspecting ducks as they come out of the molds and making sure that they are correctly formed. He does well, comes in on time, and is seen as a valuable employee. So after a year, his boss comes to our character and tells him, "You seem like a solid and promising employee. I'd like to see you learn more about the business and move up in the company. You should consider moving up to either running the molding and extruding machinery or overseeing the duck painting. Which interests you?"</I><BR/><BR/>Actually, Darwin, the ducks were made in China...<BR/><BR/>And I'm an academic, so I get to talk about "publish or perish" instead. That is, if I get a job.Literacy-chichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08925734773412633965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-37433833795646442172008-05-06T12:32:00.000-04:002008-05-06T12:32:00.000-04:00Good points Sarah and Steve. Certainly, I'd say t...Good points Sarah and Steve. <BR/><BR/>Certainly, I'd say that there are a number of types of career which do not lend themselves to moving up or moving about, because the nature of improvement there is centered around doing the same thing better, or simply continuing to provide a single much-needed thing.<BR/><BR/>Pressuring teachers to move into administration or engineers and programmers to move into management in order to get ahead strikes me as clearly wrong-headed. It represents a failure to understand that in many fields having many years of experience in your specific vocation is itself a huge advantage in allowing you to do better work with less effort. <BR/><BR/>So one of the reasons that I picked my duck example was to attempt to capture an example of a job (and it seems to me that there are plenty in that category) where a certain degree of dilligence is needed, but years of experience don't really change the quality of your work at all. In that case, you either become a permanent cog if you don't move on (and take up space that could otherwise go to someone who actually had an interest about learning about the company and moving up within it) or after a while you move on to something else in the company.<BR/><BR/>But I guess that I'm taking it as a given that for a lot of types of rolls in a lot of companies, it is essentially and expectation inherent in the job that once you learn this particular facet of the business really well, you'll move on and learn another one while making room for someone else to come in and fill your old place. Perhaps that's overly influenced both by the fact that I'm generally interested in how companies work, and so I like moving around every so often (and get bored once I've got my current role so well in line that it only takes half my attention) and also by the experience of having worked for a while at a very small company in which each person had his or her place and you were never, ever able to move on to anything else.Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-65042913704896929642008-05-06T09:22:00.000-04:002008-05-06T09:22:00.000-04:00I am with Zippy on this one. My own experience at...I am with Zippy on this one. <BR/><BR/>My own experience at several large companies over the past 2 decades, while admittedly anecdotal, is right in line with how he's described things.<BR/><BR/>I am actually presently in the midst of a job change for this very reason. <BR/><BR/>My previous managers were trying to force me to move into management (I’d been identified as ‘talented’), even though I'd clearly expressed no interest in such a move, and had explained that I did not find the work or supervisory aspect of the next levels appealing.<BR/><BR/>The biggest problem in reality is that the next level up for me requires that I must be willing to put the job first. I’ve both seen, and have had various managers over the years admit to me, that the next level is the beginning of being required to take on significantly more work and more hours.<BR/><BR/>They were unrelenting over a 9 month period, and it culminating in my having to leave a position that I’d invested tons of sweat and effort in, which I generally found very satisfying, in which I’d been key in making one of the companies largest systems successful, in which the company was making money off of me , etc., etc. all in order to avoid having significantly more work forced on me. <BR/><BR/>Maybe I am just lazy and don’t want to work hard? Possible, but since they had to replace me in my old position with three people to do the work I’d been doing (remember, they were trying to pile more on me, and to ‘develop’ me to be able to do even more later-after promotion), that doesn’t seem to fit the facts.<BR/><BR/>The productivity gains do come in part from more efficient processes, but they also come in large part by asking people to do more and more with less. That’s flat reality in corporate America today.<BR/><BR/>Again, this is all admittedly anecdotal, but I’ve seen it play out again, and again, and again, and again over the past 15+ years, across both mid sized and very large corporations, over two different geographic regions, and across two different industries. I’ve rarely seen anything different than what Zippy described.<BR/><BR/>And the problem is typically not in the place where your analogy indicates. The new employee is typically not the one dealing with this. The problem comes up in the middle of one’s career.<BR/><BR/>At the point when you do have some significant value to the company, but the company wants to ‘squeeze’ even more out of the person…and it can be dehumanizing.<BR/><BR/>Also with regard to the analogy you’ve given…it actually seems to me to illustrate Zippy’s point fairly well.<BR/><BR/>First, of course it’s not dehumanizing to ‘invite’ the young man to move up, to develop, to become more invested in the company. That’s quite a compliment. <BR/><BR/>But at the point where he expresses no interest in that, but is badgered nonetheless, and ultimately threatened with being fired (despite being a valuable employee) is when it becomes dehumanizing.<BR/><BR/>What the analogy admits at that point is that there never was an ‘invitation’ at the beginning…only the pretense of an invitation. <BR/><BR/>The employee never was going to have any choice in the matter. <BR/><BR/>I'd want to know at that point, had they made that very clear to him when they hired him? Did they even ask him about his long term plans in the interview. <BR/><BR/>If this concept is so important to them, I'd want to know what they did on their end during the hiring process to assess the fit of this individual with the company.<BR/><BR/><I>And yet, has the company really wronged him so very much, or is his manager rightly frustrated at the young man's complete lack of interest in becoming a more integral part of the company? </I><BR/><BR/>Why frustrated? That they have a solid, valuable employee? <BR/><BR/>What in the world should be frustrating about that? <BR/><BR/>Why MUST the person WANT to move up and be interested in the company in order to survive there? <BR/><BR/>That’s the whole point of this…that in much of corporate America, you have to WANT what the company wants you to want. <BR/><BR/>More often than not, you really have little choice. And again, at the point when you are compelled, it can be dehumanizing.<BR/><BR/><I>Is it perhaps a matter of the young man simply having selecting the wrong career?</I><BR/><BR/>Or of the company not having determined a proper fit or not having made clear its up or out policy during the hiring process, or a combination of all of the above? <BR/><BR/> <I>And honestly, wouldn't most of us rather have the boss who asks us to move up and learn more about the company (like the one in the example) than one who insists that we remain in one place and doesn't want us moving up?</I><BR/><BR/>Sure…as you’ve presented it…the choice is clear. I don’t want a boss who ‘insists’ I remain in one place. <BR/><BR/>And certainly I want one who ASKS me to move up and learn more. <BR/><BR/>But I also want a boss who can respect my choice not to do so if that’s what I decide. That's the part I think you might have left out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-52660412247768068882008-05-06T09:18:00.000-04:002008-05-06T09:18:00.000-04:00As an introverted poet, this post also hit home fo...As an introverted poet, this post also hit home for me. :) I am not at all enthusiastic about “climbing the corporate ladder.” But Darwin does have a point that it’s not really fair to your company to just stay in one place for too long. <BR/><BR/>I think Darwin hit the nail on the head when he said that our hypothetical duck inspector is maybe just in the wrong career. In the right career, you’ll be more excited about moving up and learning more. If you don’t want to learn more, you’re probably not doing something that interests you. <BR/><BR/>This can be a bit of a Catch-22, though, especially for men who have to support families, because they need to balance finding something that interests them with finding something that pays enough money. I’m a woman, so this isn’t as much of an issue for me, but even as a woman it’s frustrating being an arts-and-literature type in a world where almost everything that interests me doesn’t pay much. I finally found something I really like – graphic design – that pays decently. But being a science or business type would make things easier. <BR/><BR/>Adding another layer of frustration for me is the fact that I’m a working mother out of financial necessity, so “climbing the ladder” would mean more time away from my daughter. However, I really like graphic design and I do feel motivated to learn everything I can about it and become a better graphic designer, though as an introvert I’m not crazy about moving into management or anything like that. I guess I’m kind of like your friend the computer programmer. <BR/><BR/>I’m also very lucky that my company is very family-friendly, and there are other moms there who work part-time. My husband and I have been diligently working towards being able to afford to have me work part-time instead of full-time, at which point we’ll probably have another baby. I’d quit altogether if I could and be an SAHM, but that probably won’t be possible for awhile. Anyway, that’s kind of off-topic, but being a working mother does make one even more reluctant to climb the ladder. At least for me – some people seem to find it “fulfilling,” which I don’t really understand. I mean, I like my job, but I could quit tomorrow and not miss it too much.sdecorlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05239009196087907875noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-43529477794717705052008-05-05T21:43:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:43:00.000-04:00If you read a little more carefully, Zippy, I thin...<I>If you read a little more carefully, Zippy, I think you'll find that J. Christian was describing himself.</I><BR/><BR/>That is a possible, though not at all the most obvious, reading.<BR/><BR/><I>You of all people should know that companies do not valuate primarily as a result of increasing the capital value of their employees,...</I><BR/><BR/>Of course I never said that they did. Companies manage the equity value of <I>everything</I>, and employees are one piece of everything.<BR/><BR/>As for the rest, I post under a pseudonym for my own reasons, and (aside from the few folks who do know who I am in "real life") people are free to believe me, or not. When I contrast my real experience to introverts who would rather write blog treatises than move up, I am stating plain facts. <BR/><BR/>In point of fact I used to think very much like many of the obviously young and/or inexperienced people who have commented think -- indeed I was much worse, quite contemptuous of those who were unable to keep up with me; until I saw enough real people demoralized and destroyed by the very things we are discussing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-23986584468321552382008-05-05T21:19:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:19:00.000-04:00FWIW, my last corporate title was President and CE...<I>FWIW, my last corporate title was President and CEO. The one before that was Executive Vice President (I was also on the board of directors of that public company); and the one before that was also President and CEO.</I><BR/><BR/>If you read a little more carefully, Zippy, I think you'll find that J. Christian was describing himself.<BR/><BR/>Actually, it was your self-proclaimed titan-of-industry status that made the post ring so false for me. You of all people should know that companies do not valuate primarily as a result of increasing the capital value of their employees, and that said increases in productivity are more the result of better company processes than demanding that employees switch positions, have development plans, etc.<BR/><BR/>Finally, at least in my humble opinion, if you want to pull rank by experience you have to be willing not to be anonymous. Personally, I prefer my anonymity, so I avoid that tactic. But if you want to make the tactic yours, details are required. I don't particularly imagine you not to be honest, but the blogsphere is full of people who aren't, and so arguments from authority fall flat if unsubstantiated.Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-67195373128129873232008-05-05T21:13:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:13:00.000-04:00First off, Zippy is getting the economics wrong. H...<I>First off, Zippy is getting the economics wrong. Higher productivity doesn't necessarily mean working harder.</I><BR/><BR/>The point might be more telling if I had actually made that claim of necessity somewhere.<BR/><BR/><I>Part of the problem is that, if you're the type of introvert who'd rather write blog treatises, you're not going to be enthusiastic about most opportunities to "move up."</I><BR/><BR/>FWIW, my last corporate title was President and CEO. The one before that was Executive Vice President (I was also on the board of directors of that public company); and the one before that was also President and CEO. So the ad hominem might possibly rest on a bit of a misreading of me. Again, FWIW.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-51099235402491085012008-05-04T20:29:00.000-04:002008-05-04T20:29:00.000-04:00I'm pro-capitalism like I'm pro-democracy: both ar...I'm pro-capitalism like I'm pro-democracy: both are very imperfect but much better than the alternatives.TShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17118362963139092279noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-23954245124984907102008-05-02T17:08:00.000-04:002008-05-02T17:08:00.000-04:00"Employee development" can feel like a nuisance to..."Employee development" can feel like a nuisance to someone with an introverted or introspective personality. I know because that's my personality, too, and I always hated the annual development plan and performance review. I'd be more content to hone my expertise in an area until it was second nature and I could spend that mental dividend elsewhere (but probably not on Icelandic poetry. Sorry.)<BR/><BR/>Having said that, I think Darwin is right. First off, Zippy is getting the economics wrong. Higher productivity doesn't necessarily mean working harder. It's one way to increase productivity, but it's not the best way. And being given the chance to practice a broader range of skills pushes us introverts outside our comfort zone and actually helps our job prospects should we leave a company.<BR/><BR/>Part of the problem is that, if you're the type of introvert who'd rather write blog treatises, you're not going to be enthusiastic about most opportunities to "move up." The reason is that, apart from getting a broader sense of the mission of the business, it requires you go into the selling of the business. In my experience, that's true even of the most "un-capitalist" sectors as well. Even in government, academia, and nonprofits, moving up implies marketing and selling what it is your organization does. It involves managing and administering, too, which also means more social interaction -- another introvert bogeyman.<BR/><BR/>I was a management consultant for several years after college, and I enjoyed the analytical "grunt work" that went into it. But I couldn't expect to do that forever; eventually, someone needs to develop business and sell the organization to clients. I give my bosses credit for giving me gentle nudges here and there to get me out of my cubicle and into more challenging (for an introvert) work. Were they being dehumanizing, or were they trying to help me along in my career?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-64362840010286195562008-05-02T16:04:00.000-04:002008-05-02T16:04:00.000-04:00Personally I go more for 10th century Icelandic po...Personally I go more for 10th century Icelandic poetry than 18th, but I guess the general idea is the same...<BR/><BR/>It must be the time of year for development plans. I just had to start working on mine yesterday. Though really, I'm lucky, I guess, in that I find business itself rather interesting, so poking around into different aspects of it is actually something I enjoy.<BR/><BR/>I spent my first three years at a 20-person Jewish family owned business (a distributor of industrial chemicals) and then moved to Texas to work for a Fortune 100 technology company for the last four years, with a period of working on my own as a we designer in between. So I've tried a nibble from each plate in the career world and enjoyed each, though each can have massively downcasting elements as well. Which I suppose makes me one of those much derided "pro business" types.Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-80328290881520695542008-05-02T14:47:00.000-04:002008-05-02T14:47:00.000-04:00Very interesting post, and one that hits a bit too...Very interesting post, and one that hits a bit too close to home given my love for Icelandic poetry, or at least its metaphoric equivalent. <BR/><BR/>This is one of the best thing about blogging, seeing the differing perpectives about a topic as important as work - especially when differing is done so respectfully. <BR/><BR/>Thanks for the kind words on my blog btw. (I kept thinking I was heading for a "but....".) <BR/><BR/>True story: A month ago my boss said that we all needed development plans since they were being enforced now.<BR/><BR/>I said flippantly: "how about I read a classic novel? That's broadening. That's development." I told him I read far too much non-fiction and need more liberal arts in my reading diet.<BR/><BR/>Surprisingly (or not, because he started out as an English major in college) he enthusiastically agreed and we discussed which one to choose.<BR/><BR/>Well my boss had told a co-worker about my development plan and that co-worker ran and told my bosses' boss, and <I>that</I> boss pulled rank and said "no way is that going to fly". <BR/><BR/>Sigh. <BR/><BR/>Anyway, development can certainly be good for us. Still, I wonder how much ownership can you feel in a large corporation even as a manager? I recall a 50-something manager retirement telling me, "I wish I'd worked for a small company." Been at this large corporation 30 yrs. <BR/><BR/>Although, as you point out, your development was very helpful. And certainly I've had many changes in my job over the years that have kept me from burnout.TShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17118362963139092279noreply@blogger.com