The Perception of Competency

What I have noticed in this company is that people give the appearance of competency while not really knowing or understanding the fundamentals of what they’re doing. Since our last ‘real’ Engineer in Mobiles left to Dell, I have noticed a trend in what the other ‘Software Engineers’ as well as ‘Hardware Engineers’ actually do. It seems that they get by without any real responsibility for their actions simply because they are backed by the Management/Staff or are apart of a governing/powerful group within the company.

However, what I see from this unofficial hierarchy is the extension of racism and favoritism. The way this works is simple. Those in favor will be promoted over others regardless of knowledge or ability and the rest stagnate or fight over the scraps left that they think might position themselves into a position of power.

In reality, the job titles have little to do with what is really going on. They are simply for show and to show that they are just in a favored position.

I have been collecting evidence for a lawsuit and will continue to collect information in order to show my lawyer evidence of unfair treatment of employees/contractors. It saddens me how a few can spoil the bunch but in this case too many of the bunch either do not say anything about these injustices and/or actually feel that this is what should happen. Therefore my hand is forced to right these injustices myself.

Even company emails sent are very questionable in their materials (such are pictures or what the content may imply) and I will scrutinize them as well before handing them over for legal counsel.

Corporate America is a joke

 

I am constantly surprised by what I see in this place on a daily basis.  I thought lack of technical ability was a weakness here but I’m wrong.  I think the real deficit is due to plain stupidity.  I honestly believe these people bought their degrees rather than earned them.

If I was to put some of these guys against high school kids, I’d wager the high school kids would give them a run for their money.  To be honest, I am an average skilled worker.  Nothing special.  I know that no one is perfect but what I see is fellow degreed Engineers that have to be trained in their profession, rather than trained about internal processes.

However, this is my last post about this topic.  I long for the day to save enough money to start my own software company and leave this god forsaken place.

Hewlett Packard - The place where….shit sucks?

I guess my frustration with this place is beginning to get to me. I honestly think the management of this place is going to kill the company.

I’m not just talking about the executives.  I mean upper management, middle management, lower management, supervisors, staff and all other areas of ‘management’ personnel.

The level of bureaucracy and dumbing down of everything is absolutely ridiculous and pathetic.  My only hope out of being here is to just stay employed while I hone my skills on my hobbies at home.  There isn’t much this place can offer most people with half a brain and are self motivated after being here a few years.

I think the Corporations in Western countries are going to end up destroying civilization as a whole.  The level of creativity in this place sucks, the software…sucks, the vast majority of most of anything this place makes even in the hardware now sucks.

Since working here I have seen the most horrendous business practices, horrendous Engineering practices and pure absolute incompetence or a lack of intestinal fortitude overall to say anything about such practices, even by people with direct responsibility to challenge it.

I truly hope that another decent opportunity opens up for me.  I really want to get more into the Software Development side of things and make good products.

Dealing with incompetence in the Engineering field

 

Recently there has been a re-organization in my area of corporate America.  I have a new manager (a really down to earth guy and seems like a real good guy to work for), and a new contract Software Developer is coming in Monday.  However, I have to say that I do feel disappointed.  There are many others that I work with that I do like personally, but they do lack very much in the technical areas that they are supposed to be proficient in.

Since I’ve been working with this group I have had the glorious honor of watching someone with a Master’s Degree in Engineering come in and ask me the most basic of questions about his job (I actually trained him for a while) and was completely clueless until after months of supervision, he finally began to ‘get it.’

Another Engineer that showed up a month or two after I joined the group doesn’t know even the most basic of things but he somehow has been working within the company for a number of years.  This is very alarming to me.  Unless this Engineer has been sitting behind a desk doing nothing more than administrative work the entire time he’s been with the company (that is still not an excuse), there is no reason for him to be here.  A Software Engineer that doesn’t know anything about software.  And no, I’m not joking.

However, I find this to be typical in Corporate America and most especially in the areas of Engineering that I work in.  I would be more understanding if it was just that the Engineer was new to the internal process or something like that but it’s nothing like that at all.  They just don’t seem to know anything about the subject in general.  Granted, the MS Degreed Engineer had a bachelor’s in a similar area of study (Electrical Magnetism), his MS in Engineering should have done away with any question to his level of proficiency.

A co-worker that happened to join the group a few months after I joined is less educated and had a very big learning curve but at least he is showing progress.  The MS Degreed Engineer is getting better but the other Software Engineer really needs to take classes over again.  What is the most ridiculous of all of this is that the Software Engineer was supposed to be a President of some sort of club and some think that somehow validates his intellect.  I have nothing against the guy personally but I think that it wasn’t his ability that got him the job.

I also happen to work with a Network Administrator/Hardware Engineer that means well but is no better than the other Engineers.  Now, let’s be clear.  I’m not an expert of software or hardware and don’t expect anyone else to be but you’d have to actually see what I’m talking about to believe it.  This Hardware Engineer seems to somehow manage to lie about most things he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t appear to understand very much beyond what he sees in front of himself.  In other words, (I’ve learned this the hard way) if he tells you something about a particular piece of hardware or software, chances are you’d better research the information yourself.

After several years working for Corporate America, I feel that these people are able to hide behind the ridiculous cover of the Corporation in order to hide their obvious lack of ability.  To be honest, I have met many in the particular corporation I work for to be complete idiots.  A few years back I worked with an Engineer that couldn’t spell the country of Canada.  This guy worked in a position that dealt with international clients.  Good thing this guy never had to actually write anything to anyone other than his boss.

Over the years working here I have met plenty of really great people as well and I have nothing but the utmost respect for most of them.  However, this continuing trend that I see in the company I work for will continue to bother me.  I really do hope that this is a trend that ends sooner rather than later.

The Socio-Economic Structure we live in.

 

As a military Veteran with a degree in Engineering and another degree in Software Development, I’ve come across a lot of different personalities and people with varying extremes of points of view.  However, looking back at the people that I have worked with in the past, both in military and civilian environments, as well as the people I work with now I have noticed very similar patterns.

Largely, the people I have worked with in the past that were in supervisor positions (in the military or in civilian life) appeared to lack any real working knowledge about the job that was very technical in nature.  At the time, it didn’t seem like much of a deal because ‘if someone was senior they deserved respect’ and such.  Of course, now I have worked in the Engineering/Technical fields for quite some time and still see these very similar these happening.

The corporate and military systems (higher up) believe in a more closed system rather than open system of merit.  And more so, play at ‘favorites’ rather than talent, which is why many products that appear to be made by well established companies are really sub par.  The real deficit in many countries is the deficit of valuing real talent.  I see many that would rather tell someone that may influence their career perspectives what they want to hear rather than what should be done.

At first it may seem to be very obvious how it works, but after observing for a while it has become more insidious than first believed.  Knowledge, intelligence, and crucial information is hoarded and kept for those ‘deemed’ worthy of knowing but in reality there aren’t any officially recognizable factors at play.  It all comes down to favoritism and how exclusivity rules over every other factor.

Since I have worked in the military and in corporate America, I have watched  redundantly the weak govern the strong to its own peril.  There are so many ‘management’ or ‘staff’ personnel that benefit without much effort while everyone else is forced to play politics.  Of course, it seems almost morbidly humorous until you realize it really isn’t at all.

One could argue how truly unfair life is but it never was meant to be fair but as intelligent beings we should be able to see how ridiculous the power structures are and their influences on the world at large.  However, I believe with the addition of the internet the power can be put back into those that can create and produce versus those that just have money.

The old paradigm was good workers are good until they aren’t worth paying anymore.  The creative are good creators until they aren’t worth paying anymore.  Now, I think a new paradigm is going to happen within the next fifty years.  Those at the top of this nonsensical pyramid are not worth being at the top anymore since they don’t really have any unique value that anyone else is unable to acquire.