Corporate Confidential

All The News That's Fit to . . . Get You Fired

Far from the hallowed, riotous, envied halls of employers like Google there exists a gray, dull land where most of us live out our work lives. In the more sterile—and far more common—outposts of corporate America you’re lucky if the break room features a functioning microwave, let alone gourmet meals.

In this land of gray cubicles, gray carpet, gray desks, and gray management, even small signs of life can be cause for dismissal, as one worker recently found out. What was her crime? She had a newspaper in her possession. And yes, this happened in America. In Colorado, in fact.

Fired for reading a newspaper

Her co-workers teased her about reading in “analog” format. But she was old-school enough that she still subscribed to the dead tree version of the Sunday New York Times. Not that she was even that old, in case you’re thinking this is an ageist thing. It was a habit. She liked to have something to hide behind on breaks or at lunch. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the physical version of the Sunday Times but it’s huge. In linear “analog” format it can take you all week just to pick your way through Travel and the Book Review.

One morning her boss stopped at her desk. This was odd in and of itself because he rarely talked to her. He stood there awkwardly for a minute making a pretense at small talk and than said:

“Um, uh, you know, if, um, can you not have the newspaper on your desk? It looks bad to my boss.”

Sure. She complied immediately. And then she wondered.

Looks bad to your boss that I care about what’s going on in the world? Looks bad to your boss that I keep up with current events? Looks bad to your boss that I . . . read?

Mind you, she wasn’t sitting back with her slippered feet up sipping a latte and reading for hours. She was not holding the paper. It was not open. The Times was simply there. On her desk. To the right of her keyboard. Just lying there not doing anything, along with her purse and her gloves and her car keys.

Bottom line: She couldn’t have the newspaper out in plain view. It looked bad. Somehow, in some unexplained way.

And then she was fired.

Meanwhile, just down the gray cubicle corridor, another co-worker had a veritable Elvis Presley shrine. Not outside of Graceland was there such an accumulation of Elvis photos and memorabilia. And her newspaper was a distraction?

Not long after she was shown the door she heard that the Elvis collector was fired too.

You spend—best case—nine hours a day at work. Best to leave anything interesting about you, anything non-work-related, anything that isn’t gray at the door.

Technical Interviews: How Not to Hire a Good Developer

I just had a technical interview so bad that at one point I stared out the window behind my interrogator at a small pond and prayed. I am not a religious person.

Why, with my 160 IQ and my degree and my twenty years of IT experience, do I still suck royally – I mean blow – at technical interviews? It’s as if every fact I’ve ever learned in my entire life flees my brain. It’s like an out of body experience; you could ask me why it’s important, when walking, to put one foot in front of the other repeatedly and I’d be the proverbial deer in the headlights.

 The thing is, I’m a good developer. I have a track record. I’ve had lots of quantifiable successes. And yet, none of that matters a damn in these kinds of technical interviews.

 One question was, what html tag would you put around a blah (blah being the specific object which my abject terror has erased from my memory banks.)

 This is one of those things I would look up if and when I needed it. If I used it a lot it would become memorable. Generally, since writing html from scratch is about as much fun as cleaning grout with a toothpick, I hack/adapt existing html for my purposes.

 I didn’t say any of that. I said I didn’t know.

 Next question! What’s the difference between these two Java operators:

 a equals(b)   or   a == b

 My answer, which in essence was right, didn’t fly: One is like initializing a variable, assigning a value, and the second is an actual operator performing evaluation.

 I was asked some kind of follow up to the effect of, but what’s the difference between them? To which I said, Huh? Gulped, and finally punted and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to answer that question.”

 And the interviewer was wrong. I came home and looked it up:

 “The equals() method of java.lang.Object acts the same as the == operator; that is, it tests for object identity rather than object equality.”

 Got that? One tests for object identity and the other equality. Which is what I said! (Although not in so many words, unfortunately.)

 Back in the mid-eighties when I was a youngster starting out I had an interview with an IT manager at Memorial Sloan Kettering in NY who asked me how many slots were in an IBM XT. Again, I had the Huh? reaction. I wanted to say one of several things: Who the hell cares? Why don’t you get off your lazy ass, walk around to the back of the computer and look? Is that really relevant to programming?

 Being very young and green and insecure I said none of those things. I didn’t get that job and I doubt I’ll get this one either.

 Back home, tail tucked firmly between legs, I ran a Google search: Intuitive reasoning versus rote memorization.

I was heartened to read that individuals who are good at intuitive reasoning are better learners than those who rely on rote memorization. In other words, the fact that I know where to find the “slots” on a computer and how to get the correct answer is more valuable – and practical – than trying to memorize specifications for every computer model I’m likely to encounter.

 The author used the analogy of drawing versus tracing:

 “Is tracing different from drawing? You bet. Tracing is mimicry -- we don't know why a line is there. We just start in one corner and work our way around.”

 e.g., The geek who can recite Java operators and html tags from memory most likely has no reasoning ability and doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.

“Math is similar: we ‘teach’ by tracing a student through the steps of a proof. We're walking the student along the drawing without showing the mindset that created the proof.”

 (This explains why I also sucked at geometry; I hated those stupid proofs. What was the point of mindlessly regurgitating work that had already been done hundreds of years previously? Who cared? No teacher ever told me why I should care.)

 “I've struggled how to reconcile rigor and intuition -- both have their role, but how do they fit? The drawing analogy captures my feelings:

     * Rigor (permanent inked lines) helps cement ideas after the intuitive pencil structure has been put into place

 Focusing on rigor prematurely creates fear and trepidation -- 'What if I'm wrong?', and encourages people to trace the inked results instead of learning how to experiment on their own.”

Bingo! I intuitively know what to do and then cement my ideas later with rigor. That’s it exactly. But how do I translate this to an interview in the corporate world, where I have tweny minutes (maybe) to impress someone with my technical prowess? I can’t say, “I just know what to do.” I can’t say, “I just know which operator to use but I can’t explain why.”

 Which leads to the final point in the article: Creation Vs. Understanding

 “What's the point of education: the results or understanding?”

It's seldom either-or: we want results and understanding. Unfortunately, we focus on results because they're easier to test (Can you plug X into these formulas and get the right answer?).

 And there you have it. Going through life, for me, is like looking down at the earth from 35,000 feet in an airplane. I see patterns, irregularities, structures. I want to make sense of it all. I want to know why.

 You know the old expression, those who can’t do, teach? I’m going to turn that on its head:

 Those who can’t do, test well.

If you want to read the whole article click here.

Never Go To the Men's Room with a CEO...and Other Bad CEO Behavior

A CEO stepping over an associate having a stroke and wondering why everyone isn’t coming to his meeting; the new AIG CEO going on vacation after one day at work; workplace suicides at an all time high – and this is just in the last few days.  I don’t know where to begin.

 

But I think I’ll start with the story that may become the title of my new book:  “Peeing on Other People’s Shoes.”

 

It will be, obviously, a chronicle of CEOs behaving badly.  True story.  Let’s change his name and call him Bob.  Bob was at a company function and at a certain point had to use the restroom.  As it so happens one of his employees, an engineer, wound up next to him at the urinals.  Men are so communal that way.  So Bob thought it would be a hoot to “miss” and peed on the engineer’s shoes.  The poor guy didn’t know what to do (other than make a beeline to Payless) and was momentarily struck moist and speechless.  This was his boss, after all.  And they’d all had a bit to drink.

 

Except wait, they hadn’t.  It turns out that the miscreant in this story is a Mormon and had imbibed nothing stronger than Sprite.  He couldn’t even blame alcohol for his bad behavior just a childish sense of humor.  If you can call it that.

 

In other news of the weird and humiliating – how would you like to find a dildo in your coffee at a company meeting?  Unfortunately, another true story.  This one perpetrated by Paul Pereira, former head of the Fraternal Dental Group, the Fraternal Travel Group, and the Fraternal Insurance Group, all of which were based on North Main Street in Fall River, Massachusetts.

 

According to a lawsuit filed by two of his former employees, Pereira called his staff into his office every Monday morning to regale them with descriptions of "his various alleged sexual exploits." During one such gathering a female employee left to take a call and returned to find that Pereira had slipped a dildo into her coffee.

 

Another time he asked a female employee if she’d like to see pictures of his “pet.”  The first two were indeed pictures of his dog.  The third was, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

 

I can name names because this case, unlike most, wound up in court.  You see, unlike our poor peed upon engineer these victims were women.  I never thought I’d say this but apparently there are times that it’s worse to be a man in the workplace.

 

"There's no requirement that people be treated well in the workplace," says Dahlia Rudavsky, a Boston employment attorney quoted in the article. "We tell people you can have a boss that yells and screams, throws things, and reduces people to tears. But unless he does that only to women or minorities, you likely don't have a case."  So sorry Bob targets.

 

Read the entire story here.

 

Now, as far as that new AIG guy…I think I’ll save that for tomorrow!

 

If you have tales of CEOs behaving badly I’d love to hear them.  Click on the email Susan link and make sure and tell me if it needs to be kept confidential or not.

Mis-Managing Company Leads to Shorter Sentence

I didn’t realize that it was pay-as-you go for federal jail time.  An appeals court has ordered a new sentence for ex-Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio saying his six-year sentence was too long.

 

That sentence was based on an alleged profit of $28 million.  Nacchio’s attorneys argued that the former CEO “is being punished for the price increase of Qwest stock from 1997.”  They claim his profit would have only been $1.8 million which would have capped his sentence at four years, three months.

 

I’m not sure why but I find this line of reasoning offensive.  I know that the legal system works this way – it isn’t “grand” theft, for example, until your stealing hits a certain monetary threshold.  But it just seems wrong.

 

Nacchio sold a large part of his Qwest shares in April-May 2001 – trades worth almost $39 million.  At that time Qwest was trading between $41.12 and $38.31.

 

Qwest stock then began a sharp decline (to say the least) in May 2001, falling from $38 to below $2 by August 2002. Nacchio resigned from Qwest in June 2002 amid the insider trading rumors

 

However, a three-judge panel at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver agreed with Nacchio’s lawyers last Friday that the $52 million figure was too high.  The Appeals Court wrote that Nacchio’s gain should have been calculated in a way that more accurately reflects “the proceeds related to his criminally culpable conduct.”

 

Nacchio’s sentencing calculations were based on net profit from his illegal insider trading.  That means the amount ill-gotten gains after taxes, brokerage, commission fees and  other direct costs of trading have been subtracted.

 

Prosecutors said Nacchio gained $44 million.  The court for sentencing purposes took the prosecutors' figure and subtracted $16 million for taxes.  Nacchio’s six-year sentence was therefore based on an alleged profit of $28 million and even that number turned out to be too high.

 

I’m sure Nacchio intended to make $52 million or more.  The fact that he didn’t was a direct result of his own poor management.  Bad judgment as a CEO resulted in less jail time because he didn’t profit from his illegal trades to the extent that he could have had Qwest been managed better.

 

I see.  If you do some illegal trading it only counts if you make lots of money from it.  The old saying is false, it’s not the principal of the thing.  A white-collar crime is a white-collar crime unless it makes you lots and lots of dimes.

Gag Me With a Proxy Statement

In the news this morning AIG is preparing to pay millions more in “bonuses” to several dozen top executives – after a round of payments a mere four months ago set off a furor.  They’re asking the government for permission in an attempt to shield themselves from additional public outrage.

AIG doesn’t actually need permission but since their current bailout tab stands at around $180 billion they feel that asking, “Mother, may I?” will give them some kind of credible cover.

An AIG official, speaking anonymously – it seems that these days no one is willing to go on record or accept accountability – said, “We want to feel comfortable with what we are doing.”

That is news.  When did these guys ever care about feeling comfortable, let alone being able to look at themselves in the mirror?

And why do these bonuses need to be paid?  Well, for one thing, they were promised a long time ago.

I see.  AIG doesn’t care about breaking promises to their shareholders or to the taxpaying public but oh, no, we can’t break a promise to our executives.  That would be wrong.

AIG explains this further in proxy statements filed last month, which I spent some time reading this morning.  It was hard to keep food down while I read.  They realize that “we need to confront the fact that many of our employees, perhaps the majority, knew that their long-term future with us was limited.”  Well, those with brains, anyway.  As a result they acknowledge the fear that “our key producers could perhaps be lured away.”

Aw darn.  That means they could lose the very people who caused their financial mess.

The proxy statement, which can be found here if you have the stomach for it, further states that: “Allowing departures to erode the strength of our businesses would have damaged our ability to repay taxpayers for their assistance.”

Um AIG?  I’m afraid I have bad news.  You have no strength.  Your strength has already “eroded.”

But AIG’s rationalizations for staying at the public feeding trough don’t acknowledge this.  In fact, attempting to follow their twisted logic is like following Alice down the rabbit hole:

Our only hope of repaying the taxpayers is by spending more of their money to retain the same “top talent” that got us into this mess in the first place so that we can have continuity and they can continue to do more of the same work and lose more money so that we can repay…no, wait, that can’t be right.  Let me try again.

We need to retain these people because it’s the only hope we have of ever repaying the taxpayers.  We’re sure they won’t make the same mistakes again and are, in fact, capable of changing their ways and doing things differently this time around.  Hiring new people, with new ideas, who would be cheaper than retaining the old guys just isn’t a good idea because – because why AIG?

No matter how I rephrase the AIG “logic” it just doesn’t make any sense or stink any less.

At Least He Said He Was Sorry

So they’ve sentenced Bernie to 150 years.  Although in actuality I doubt he has more than five or ten left in him, at least in jail.  Someone has broken it to him by now that they don’t serve Château Pétrus with the spam, right?  It seems like it would be a more fitting punishment to make him keep “working” and see that every cent he earned went towards paying back the people he robbed.  Not realistic, I know.

It’s just that at this point in his life he’s had his fun.  He’s had the trips, the houses, the parties, the fancy clothes and the fabulous wines.  He’s 71.  He’s lived the good life and what time is left for him to serve will be paid for with the public dime.  Why not make him do some honest work from now on and try to pay some of his debt back?

Maybe we could at least make him pay his way in prison?

So much has been said about Madoff that I don’t really have anything to add.  I just wonder how many more like him are out there, quietly scamming us out of our money.  We’d be deluding ourselves to believe Bernie is the only one.  His fraud empire was stellar, to be sure and maybe that’s one of the reasons he got caught.  He grew too big and got too bold.

Madoff’s lawyer stood up and said that the government seeking a sentence of 150 years was absurd. What’s absurd is Madoff saying he’s sorry and expecting anyone to believe him.  You’re sorry when you knock over a vase.  You’re sorry when you’re late for an appointment.  When you perpetrate massive, systematic, purposeful fraud for twenty years sorry just doesn’t cut it.

The judge countered by pointing out that no one – absolutely no one – had written anything supporting Madoff or attesting to his character.  Not even his wife who said in a statement that: “The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years.”

There was an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago bemoaning the fate of Ruth (“The Loneliest Woman in New York”) who apparently can’t even go for highlights at her regular salon anymore.  I tried but I had a very, very hard time feeling sorry for her.  OK, I didn’t try very hard.  Besides, how good does your hair have to look for visiting day?

A Raise is a Raise...Except When It's Not

A raise by any other name really does not smell as sweet.

 

Citigroup Inc. is increasing the base salaries of many employees -- reportedly by as much as 50 percent for some workers -- as it restructures their compensation amid government restrictions on bonuses, reports the Associated Press.

 

Adjusting the balance between “fixed and variable compensation” is the alleged goal of Citigroup’s new round of salary increases.  Corporate greed has gotten even more creative.

 

It seems only fair, since bonuses haven’t really been bonuses at all but more of a guaranteed payout completely unrelated to performance.

 

So let’s just give the badly performing execs hefty raises and call a spade a spade.

 

But wait, they’re not actually raises because bonuses are being lowered.  Huh?  According to an “anonymous person familiar with the matter” the changes would not affect the total amount of an employee’s compensation.  So it’s not a raise, per se.  But they would allow Citi to pay as well as they did in 2008 – and what a year that was! – while appearing to adhere to the government’s new bonus caps.

 

As one economist put it, this is merely a “change in the composition of total compensation.”

 

Let me see if I can follow this logic:  Base salaries should be at least equal to total 2008 compensation because they could never do any worse than that so we should never pay them any less.

 

Citi and the other banks say they need to do this if they want to hold on to their talented employees.  Yes, those same talented employees who caused the financial sector to implode taking down the rest of our economy with them.  I can certainly see why they want to retain that talent pool.

 

Citigroup has received $45 billion from the government. A portion of those funds will soon be converted to common stock, giving the government a 34 percent stake in the bank – and the right to scrutinize compensation.  So don’t call them bonuses call them a reformulated balance of compensation components.  Whatever you call it, it still stinks.

 

AIG: Absolutely Insane Gluttony

That must be what it stands for.

As usual, this morning my inbox held “Today’s Papers” from Slate Magazine and my driveway the New York Times, both leading with the story about AIG bonuses being paid out to the very executives responsible for trashing the economy.

 

I know this is going to sound terribly naïve, but shouldn’t bonuses be tied to performance? 

 

It seems AIG is “contractually obligated” to pay out $165 million in bonuses to 400 employees in its Financial Products division although AIG’s government-appointed chairman, Edward M. Liddy, expressed his disgust: “I do not like these arrangements and find it distasteful and difficult to recommend to you that we must proceed with them.”

 

No word from the previous chairman, who put the compensation program in place.

 

Ironically, there are AIG employees suffering, but they are those not working for Financial Products.  AIG is slashing bonuses -- but for people in other parts of the company who had no direct involvement with the derivatives.

 

A commenter on the NYT's website sums it up well: "This is so outrageous it is almost humorous."

Yeah, that’s one way to put it.

 

On the “bright” side, the top 25 executives at the Financial Products division have agreed to work for $1 for the rest of 2009.  Big of them.  If you gave me $165 million I would work for free for the rest of the year too!

 

I want either a true government takeover of AIG, or force them into bankruptcy proceedings. That way they can get out of their "contractual obligations" and we'll know where our money goes. Problem solved.

 

Historically a “bonus” was defined as:

 

• An additional payment (or other remuneration) to employees as a means of increasing output.
• A payment in addition to normal pay. Often related to performance and typically paid as a one-off lump sum.

New words enter the dictionary each year as they become commonly used.  I propose a new definition for the word bonus:

 

“A reward in direct proportion to the amount of damage, financial and otherwise, an employee inflicts both on his or her own employer as well as the world at large.”

 

Resources:

 

Gretchen Morgenson, who is one of my heroes, has written a great piece in the Times on this, entitled “At AIG, Good Luck Following the Money.”  One concern she highlights is the fact that there has been a lot of secrecy around the $50 billion funneled to AIG’s counterparties so far.  The government has resisted revealing these companies’ identities even though they are getting our money.  This is so Orwellian I don’t even know what to say.  Click here to read her article.

 

Sign a petition demanding transparency in the government bailout here.

It was the worst of times...

Things are the worst they've ever been. I'm out and about and checked the market (why?) on my iPhone. Down again. Still. Always.

I'm wondering - can it go into negative numbers? "The Dow hit -3,258 today on more negative news about the nonconomy."

I talked to the owner of a consulting company here in Salt Lake I'm teaming with and the news was all bad. "Companies are trying to reduce the numbers of contractors they have on staff," she told me.

Potential clients are cancelling projects, cancelling implementations and delaying upgrades - indefinitely. I get the feeling they'd cancel life itself if they could.

Sigh.

Corporate America, I miss you!

Just to show my support for the masses I decided to quit my cushy contract job.  No, that’s not really why I did it.  It’s far more complicated and rash than that.

 

But the bottom line is I am voluntarily unemployed at possibly the worst time to be unemployed since 1933.  I have a house that’s been on the market since April 1, 2008 that I’m not even living in because I’ve rented another place to live in with JT.   (Hint: One of the reasons I quit my contract gig.)  How smart am I?!

 

Unfortunately, my nature seems to be that when the going gets tough I hide under a rock.  Or, in my case, a pillow.  Although I did drag myself to a networking event last night, God help me. 

 

It turned out to be really cool, which was a pleasant surprise.  I met some interesting people and it jazzed me up for awhile.  Through talking to people I found myself looking at things from a different angle and coming up with ideas.  Probably why they have social networking events.  Who knew.  I will probably go back again next month assuming I’m not living in a Maytag appliance box under an overpass somewhere.  At least it will be spring soon.

 

I met this man last night who told me when he was unemployed in 1982 – which was as  bad as now, according to him – he still got up, showered and dressed by 8 as if he was going to work.  I thought those stories were urban myths!  Good for him, I guess, but I don’t do that.

 

I wonder if I have the wherewithal to make something happen.  To make cold calls and ask for informational interviews and set the alarm clock to dress for an imaginary job.

 

Pride goeth before a fall they say, or they used to say a really long time ago when people used words like “goeth.”  I’ve been kind of high and mighty snarking at the masses and at corporate America and now it looks like I’m in for some tasty crow.  Which will be good on a cold night in the big appliance box!