Dim-creep

Our boss at MegaCorp is not a Dim. Nowhere near it. He is, however, suffering from a severe case of Dim-creep.

A key part of inspiring confidence in others is showing it in yourself and your actions, and indeed in your subordinates and their actions. This is all basic, non-Dim stuff. In the Dimcloud we expect this level of thinking (or in fact, any thinking at all) to be notable by its absence. What smarts is when confirmed, PhD-level non-Dims forget their arse and undermine months of confident prediction, persuasion and planning with a single outburst of utter, blinking stupidity.

If one is designing a better aircraft, one does not tell potential passengers that they should only fly a third of their journey on it, just in case we made a mistake. Those passengers will likely decide not to fly at all, on the grounds that a lack of confidence from the designers might be an outwards indication of a lack of competence.

You either design an aircraft or you don't. You don't design an aircraft and then fill it with bits from the last aircraft, particularly when the last aircraft is known to be a little bit broken, and will definitely stop flying in a few months anyway.

Ceaseless prevarication and incurable indecisiveness are both Dim qualities, and it's desperately sad to see them so completely embodied in one of our immediate superiors. He'll earn his Dimlord stripes early at this rate.

Another great day in hell^WMegaCorp. The dim-watchers are still asking questions although this time, they're not asking the dims, rather they're speaking to us, the non-dims.
The latest request for information has come from a dimwatcher who appears to have no technical knowledge over and above some handy TLA's. Ordinarily this isn't a problem as the dims aren't too technically minded either, however, when this dimwatcher is wielding the "pass/fail" stick, I'd hope that he has even the slightest clue about what he's examining.
I'll paraphrase some of this dimwatchers questions. Let's imagine that we are people that make cars. The questions...

1. How do we get the car to travel along the road? Is it by slingshot? Or is it pushed by slaves? Is it an on-demand process?
2. How do we drive to other peoples places? Do they have cars too?
3. How do we know that other people aren't looking at our car?
4. How do we lock the doors of the car?
5, How many roads do we have?
6. How do we drive the car?

.. and so on.

If we extend this idea a little further, it's rather like having a guy who's played Doom deciding exactly whether the UK & US governments have done a good job in Iraq.

So now us non-dims are going to have to waste yet more time explaining basic & simple concepts to the dimwatcher. This further wastes our time and productivity takes yet another nosedive.

MegaCorp survival tips - #1 in a series

ClueBrick

Description:
A regular household brick; colour is unimportant.

Directions for use:
Apply directly to forehead with force and repeat, until passing out or sanity returns.

Notes:
Not to be confused with ClueStick - a ClueBrick is for self-administration only. Use of ClueBrick on others may lead to death.


_{Credit due to UserFriendly}

Stay away from the Koolaid

Dims are lovable but thick, and are apt to wander off and hurt themselves if not carefully guided. The thankless task of helping Dims to help themselves falls to the Dimherders.

Dimherders are simple folk. Often they are Dimclimbers in their spare time, but they only prosper in top-heavy Dimclouds, where leadership is something odd that happens somewhere else, and promotion is simply an acknowledgement of time served amongst the Dim population.

It's important not to confuse Dimherders with real-world shepherds. Better to compare them with the dog. A lot of barking but no biting; and no understanding of the sheep, the shepherd, the pen, the field, the farm, the anything.

A low-level understanding of the connection between the shepherd's sheep and shepherd's mint sauce is useful when Dimclimbing.

Exemplary amongst MegaCorp's Dimherders is Diana Koolaid. Popular with ol' Cumulo Nimbus, she commands a healthy disrepect from the non-Dims burdened by her services. Dimherders, like the 'climbers they idolise, succeed by fomenting dissention where none exists (belting their sheep with Clue Removal Sticks works well); by provoking angry debate where previously only productive discussion reigned; and by promoting themselves at the expense of the reputations, home-lives and sanity of their subordinates.

Koolaid excels in the use of the 'herder arsenal. Her sheep are cracking under the strain while she bumbles her way through one counterproductive argument after another. Meanwhile, the Dimclimbers above can only marvel at the scale of her productivity; being Dims themselves, the 'climbers are limited to measures of productivity such as meeting count or volume level; not by anything as radically useful as, say, problems solved, tickets closed or value provided to the company.

This means of self-aggrandisement can only exist in corporate or government bureaucracies. In the army, for instance, one does not typically gain promotion by shooting one's old soldiers; still less, by the shooting of soldiers belonging to a neighbouring battalion on whose survival one depends.

Still, one must admire Koolaid for rising so close to true Dimclimber status with so remarkably little talent, intelligence, wit, grace, subtlety, elegance, sophistication, courage or integrity. It takes a special kind of persistence to struggle on in the face of such an overwhelming lack of ability. God Bless MegaCorp!

Loud Suits

As you might (correctly) assume, MegaCorp is a large firm with a large IT group who do computer/geek stuff'for the 'business'.
The 'business' is a sort of club, where the Suits do their bidding and they're the ones that earn millions and millions of dollars (NB: geeks that make clever computer systems to enable the Suits to work don't 'make' money).
The Suits 'pay' the IT group via a bewildering & complex system of chargeback and subscriptions (well, something has got to keep the beancounters busy), so they consider themselves the owners of the IT group. That's "own" in the same way you might own a labrador or a pony.
The Suits frequently dictate, usually at short notice, that they MUST have WidgetX and they want it yesterday.
Of course, the non-Dims will go through a painful process of attempting to extract real facts from the Suits about WidgetX and how it might work with FlangeABC, but that's something I'll write about another day.

Remember that the Dims are afraid of the Suits. When a Suit unreasonably declares an arbitrary date for WidgetX to go live, they'll simply shout until they get an agreement from the Dims.
If the Suit doesn't get the date they want, they'll shout a bit louder. Then they'll "escalate" to another, slightly more 'important' Suit and the circle begins once more.
Eventually, either the next level of Suit will be growing his/her carbon footprint and so be unavailable to provide louder shouting, or, a Dim will cave-in and attempt to become a Dim-climber by appearing to be 'sensitive to needs of the business'.
Of course, the Dims are shackled by process and procedure put into place by the dimwatchers, the aim of which is to ensure that there is no 'risk' to the business.

The final irony and frustration is...

• after the non-Dims have worked around various technical issues with clever code
• after the Dims have jumped through the dimwatchers hoops
• the 'go live' is an unstoppable certainty

... the Suits will decide that they'd rather play golf/go on a jolly/something and the date will change resulting in lots of wasted effort, time, energy.

He who shouts loudest gets his own way, even if he is plain wrong.

Behold the Dimwatchers

The Dimwatchers are in. Others call them 'auditors'. They lack clarity.

Dimwatchers are often corrupted non-Dims. They once understood; now they do not. Also they look and act like walruses. Or so I imagine.

Dimclimber-in-chief Cumulo Nimbus is, as I write, engaged in crap-jousting with the Dimwatchers. It's actually rather impressive - a dreary, monotonous voice spouting improvised, meaningless rubbish without pause for notes, breath, or thought.

Occasionally there is a retaliatory salvo from the Dimwatchers. Oooh! A 'how can I get documentation from that?' rasps in from the gathered 'watchers. One can almost sense the approval of the rest of the pod - much high-fiving of the flippers, and playful clashing of tusks. The mute button hides their true nature.

No understanding of the subject matter is required, which is for the best since Cumolo has none. Anyway, noone is listening to ol' Cumulo anyway as we all know he's talking out of his Dimflap.

Relocation Relocation

MegaCorp owns a lot of office buildings - there are at least half a dozen I'm aware of in London alone so there are likely hundreds globally. One of their favourite games is to 're-stack' people. This process involved moving a bunch of people from one cube jungle to another. The vacated area is then often changed around a bit, and often people are moved back (although rarely the same people).
I've been lucky so far; in 6 years I'm 'only' on my fourth desk/cube.

The most recent move has been the most frustrating. My co-cubers and I (three in total) were moved within the same building from one floor to another. We duly packed our moving crates, as the process is the same whether you're moving a few feet or several miles.
Upon arrival after the weekend 'move', we discover that the desks for myself and my coroporatehorror co-author were transposed and some of my kit was missing. A few phone calls saw the PC moved and the missing kit arrive.
As our phones were also transposed, we requested that they be swapped over. Through a sharp intake of breath, I'm told "Oh we can't do that. You'll need to raise a request.". What? Because your migration crew made mistakes, I now have to go through the pain of raising a request, that ultimately results in our cost code being charged? You made a mistake and now I've got to pay for it in both time and dollar terms?

Second frustration - I requested three network points. I was duly supplied with three new pretty yellow CAT5 cables from underneath my desk. Only one is 'hot' and hooked up to a switch at the other end.

The third frustration relates to 'access'. As a MegaCorp employee I (am forced to) carry my ID badge. It gives me access through the front door, and after 6pm and before 8pm, opens internal doors. At least, it used to - I no longer have access to the floor to which I've been moved.

I should have realised that moving the right kit to the right place, getting it setup correctly and providing the right access was an all-too-complex for people who are paid to perform such relocations. As with so much in MegaCorp, you don't have to know what you're supposed to do for your job, and knowing nothing appears to be an advantage.

Invasion of the Dims

At MegaCorp we have a lot of dim people. That's to be expected. The shame is that not only do management support and encourage them; actually in many cases the Dilbert principle has applied en masse and a whole phalanx of Dims now infest middle management.

Dimness has acquired significant evolutionary pressure. Being a Dim has advantages at MegaCorp, and by recruiting more Dims and thus not being challenged in any way, a Dimclimber can increase your salary and raise your prospects of raising more Dim children. Who of course can come to work at MegaCorp at a later date, if all the jobs haven't been moved by then to third-world locations like Mexico and Barcelona.

Non-Dims have to raise their game. Dim-mimickry is essential, but luckily that's straightforward - simply turn up unprepared for the wrong meeting and fail to notice either mistake. Spout off at every opportunity, and only draw breath when you hear the chorus of beeps as everyone else disconnects to marvel at your most excellent Dimness. Other non-Dims may call you funny names; they just don't understand.

Dim-appeasing is also helpful in the short term. Simply preen the egos of Dims until they go away happy. Dims like to be groomed. This is recommended for non-Dims who don't like to rock the boat, but there is a significant risk that the non-Dim may acquire Dim characteristics over time.

Dim-baiting is not encouraged, however enjoyable.