Category Archives: Working For Others

Electronic Arts has succeeded brilliantly in squeezing the most out of their talented workers. According to a livejournal post by an EA Spouse, her significant other is forced to work an 85 hour week with no overtime and no compensatory time.

Some of my earlier employers would be consumed with envy at the EA strategy. The best they ever managed was to get us to work 75 hours a week in times of dire need and they almost always gave us comp time and bonuses.

In fact, the only threat they ever used on us simple-minded engineers was to suggest that we would not get the next juicy assignment if we didn’t finish up the current assignment immediately.

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I’ve been asked to comment on a number of interesting issues and they all fall under the category of sending mixed messages at work.

What do I mean about a mixed message? That would be behavior or clothing, or an attitude that indicates that you are seeking a sexual partner, or converts for your religion, or MLM customers instead of doing the job you were hired for.

If you intend to be well compensated for your work, you should act professionally and focus on what you are there to do. That doesn’t mean that you need to be stiff or unfriendly, it means that you use your social graces to get your job done, not to hit on, or seduce other employees.

You dress in a manner that shows you are there for business. Today that include jeans or khakis, but the basic rule is to dress so that your clothes represent the businesslike norm of the company. If the president and managers wear tank tops, then you had better follow suit.

If your peers wear polo shirts or white shirts, you should consider doing likewise. Even among geeks, where fashion sense is almost non-existent, the mode of dress, although occasionally disheveled, usually reflects a common sense of purpose.

Women wear a variety of outfits in larger companies, from casual geekwear to power suits. The appropriate outfit communicates a businesslike attitude about work. Dressing like Paris Hilton conveys something else entirely.

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Nepotism is a kind of business insanity. It involves favoritism shown or patronage granted to relatives.

It is based on the unsupported idea that one’s relatives are automatically more qualified than anyone else and should be exempt from the policies that apply to everyone else.

If you work in this kind of environment, you need to have your head examined. No matter what management has promised you, you will not be welcome on Management Row and you will never be considered on your merits, because you are not “family”.

Rules that apply to you do not apply to “family” members. Mistakes that will get you fired, like making a judgement call that produces a bad result, will be glossed over when made by a family member.

Any advice you give that could correct or uncover a family member’s mistake will be viewed as an attack on the company. You are viewed as a second-class employee and any effort to upset the status quo will single you out as a trouble-maker to be disposed of.

After a while you will become very cautious and may become fearful that you might lose your job by unknowingly offending someone who is connected to the family. You have now started the slide toward becoming expendable.

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