Territorial backstabbers, yes men/women, status quo devotees...all living in silo'd cities and drinking Kool-Aid.
Am I missing the good somewhere in all of this?
11 replies (most recent on top)
Smith, Donovan and Stankey all have engineering degrees.... I'll leave it at that.
I've worked with incompetent folks who had graduate degrees from MIT and Yale, and I've worked with brilliant people who didn't finish high school. It is more about the person than the credential.
People without engineering degrees should NOT be managing engineers. An engineering degree should be a basic requirement. I have an engineering degree and a Masters in CS and my manager at AT&T had a GED. It was a disaster.
The last comment came from an ATomanager, no doubt!!
Leaders do not always need technology degree but it helps when you are leading a technical group. Wether you have one or not you need to have hands on skills in the area you are leading or enough knowledge in related fields which you could apply to your current area. Otherwise, you will be lost. I had a manager tell me that it is my job to train him. Really, I do not remeber asking my manager to train me for my area nor in my job description it never mentions that one of my responsibilities is to train my boss. And this is the result of managers/leaders who do not have any technical experience and bsed themselves in their current roles.
Degrees don't make a leader. Those that possess good leadership qualities should be in management and leadership positions. Minorities should not be key qualifier either. All minorities in lead and management positions in my organization. They were definitely not the most knowledgeable bunch
The last thing a leader needs is an engineering degree, I think most of the thought tech leaders today don't have them. But they should know HOW to lead. They have an high iQ and an EQ. And even be self examining enough to know when they've stayed too long and/or don't know enough to take an org to the next level.
I would start replacing Area managers and above, with people with actual engineering degrees, High school, & bachelor in Arts type , out the door
Omg this...all day. Backstabbing. I've even seen some crazy setups too with this go around of surplus. Can it wasn't so egregious it'd be tv twilight zone worthy. They really need to monitor some of the shennegans at the director level in np&e. And it's facilitated in this sdn transition. "Winning" at all costs. It's 1988 Wall Street all over again and it wouldn't fly at forward thinking tech company. As for the used car salesmen stuff, that's even sadder. That sort of mgt approach as permiated through most of np&e. Ive discovered all the slick fast double talking is how u keep ur job. Speak up, look out.
It is pretty bad everywhere. The back stabbing is not going to end just get worse. Most of the back stabbing that I see is coming from management against their employees. The Senior Trchnical Directors realize that they are clueless so the only way they can survive is hide and blame their people. Hoping this will help keep their jobs. Yesterday, I was listening to a replay with John Donavan and Randall. Randall was stating that the costs are going down, that he is glad that with all the instability in the world that AT&T is doing more business in US. Even though the growth rate is only 2% it is better than in other countries. He expects that the work force will shrink by 33% with the movement into SDN and cloud. He wants to do things even faster than before. Listening to him speak is like listening to a used car sales man. I do not know where he is getting the numbers. We are seeing costs going up and cash flow dripping.
Exactly why I took my severance and left. 20 years of service and 18 years of those were great, the last 2 years has been nothing but spiraling out of control. No loyalty,