Forecast: 212F, continued incompetence.

Note: people and organizations have been rendered as anagrams.

PHOENIX - For-profit education provider Allpour Goop Inc. said Wednesday that President Bairn Mullere resigned and stepped down from the company's board, effective immediately.
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Mullere, who has been with the company since 1987, was president of Allpour Goop, Inc. since early 2006. He was previously chief executive of the Phono Fixe University online campus. Allpour Goop did not disclose the reason for his departure.

I know the reason. Complete incompetence. Hopefully, a ripple effect will now wash away the rest of the greedy, talentless, overpaid egomaniacs who rose to power in Mullere's wake.

But where is Mullere going? Turns out it's Gonad Cranny University, with an aim to take them public. Perfect fit, too. Gonad Cranny University is one of the more notorious cesspits of nepotism and religious favoritism in Arizona. He'll fit right in.

The Infested Hive

Note: people and organizations have been rendered as anagrams.

In my corporate experiences over the last decade, I've discerned two basic types of "work environment." While some might accuse me of taking metaphors a bit too far, the imagery I'm about to employ has come to me via the medium of my dreams and, of course, my nightmares. I have processed my experiences through symbols, and I know them to be true (or at least valid in their metaphorical intent). I am not disgruntled, but I am horrified. I am filled with remorse that this is what our society has created, and that once great places of work have been turned into wage slavery camps.

I will state that I have been working in the graphic- and Web design realm for the last decade, and this is important in only one regard: I have never held a position of rank or power in these environments (e.g., I never managed other people). My role has largely been that of the expert, perpetually honing a skill; for me, work has always been about doing work, about being creative, as opposed to getting paid well to do nothing (e.g., managing other people).

That said, I'll begin with a description of the more positive of the two work environments. First up...

The Hive

While for some people this might conjure images out of the Alien films, or killer bees, I'm thinking more along the lines of honey bees. You know, our little friends who are responsible for a majority of the fruits and vegetables we eat. In the Hive work environment, individuals exhibit largely autonomous behavior, which is informed by notions of success or failure for the larger business. In this work environment, experts are allowed to be experts. Control over individuals is not essential, since control destroys productivity and the creative impulse. A tolerance for a lack of cohesion is what is important in a Hive. A Hive's shape can stretch and skew, bend and warp, yet the whole remains intact, functional.

I've worked in the Hive model before, and it is generally rewarding; stress levels rise and fall. Pressures increase and dissipate. People laugh. People complain. People form loose meta-hives to focus their collective skills to solve problems. None of it is rooted in cut-throat strategies or the themes of survival and competition. Is the Hive perfect? Perhaps not. Whole areas of the Hive can often be so out of touch with the central authority that they risk being cut off from the main, their worth forgotten in the wake of efficiency; however, individuality is often rewarded. A good Hive lets the workers themselves elevate its members. It is less about some abstract layer of management deciding someone has done a good job, and more about one's peers honoring the fact that you make their jobs easier. Admittedly, this is an idealized view of the Hive, but for the most part, it can and does exist. It's out there. Yet, similar to the plight of the honey bees, the Hive work environment seems to be in danger. Which brings me to the Hive's antithesis...

The Infestation

In this work environment, workers are parasites, attached to a money-dispensing host. Daily routine is based solely on the necessities of the environment: dishonesty and greed are the order of the day. Loyalties are bought via unwarranted promotions or secret wage increases. Relationships between people do not actually exist.

Am I exaggerating?

I watched in horror, a few years ago, as an Infestation consumed the Hive I worked in. I have written about this elsewhere, so I won't go into details, but the reality is this: the Infestation does not care about the individuals that make up the whole. The Infestation does not care about the host that it infests. The host, in fact, does not even know it is infested. Perhaps it is something the Infestation injects into the bloodstream of the company? A foul toxin of anesthetizing promises? The Infestation values contractors over full-time employees. The Infestation rewards incompetence because it is, itself, founded on incompetence. The individuals that comprise it are overpaid and lack talent. The Infestation gets things done by brute force. Throw a pile of twitching greedy organisms at a problem, and it either goes away or it gets solved.

A Scene from an Infestation

Every few weeks, the "Master Recruiter" from an IT staffing agency would show up, two dozen bagels in hand. He'd place the bagels on a shelf in one of the hallways. He'd give the sign, and an administrative assistant would send out an alert email: "Tom has brought bagels and cream cheese. They're in the usual spot."

I often made sure I was there before the announcement was made, if only to ensure a good vantage point. It was like watching wildlife from behind a blind.

A flood of people would soon appear. The Mass, I called it. My co-workers, silent; fifty people, shuffling into view. The only sounds were those of bagel packages and cream cheese being opened; plastic forks and knives clacking. No one spoke. No one laughed. Bagel obtained, they'd return to their cubes to put their sucking mouths back onto the Money Teat. Most of the Mass left empty-handed. The symbolism was powerful: play the game. Compete and you eat. There were only twenty-four bagels, recall. Twenty-six if the baker was happy. Twenty-six bagels for a floor of at least two hundred workers?

I witnessed this event many times over the last year, and I was always astonished by the dire faces and total lack of social interaction within the Mass. It was like watching exotic foreign fish being fed, trapped behind glass. Joyless and starved. Owned and observed. The only thing of value to the people who willingly participate in the Infestation is the blood of the corporation - the money. And the upsetting part is that the people that perpetuate this kind of work environment can't see it for what it truly is.

The Origin?

It saddens me that a company like Allpour Goop, Inc. would be unaware that the IT shop affixed to its underbelly is nothing more than a seething mass of greedy parasites, contradicting the very mission the company was founded upon. Do the Phono Fixe University students currently enrolled in the Information Technology program know what lies ahead of them? Or, chillingly, is the Phono Fixe University itself the problem? Has the for-profit education system spawned the monstrous mass that destroyed its once great IT shop? Is the Phono Fixe University partly responsible for the Infestation?

Las Plagas and Allpour Goop, Inc.

Note: people and organizations have been rendered as anagrams.

Las Plagas ("The Plagues" in Spanish) are a breed of parasitic organisms from the Resident Evil 4 survival horror video game. They are currently masquerading as CEO, CIO, directors, managers, usability experts and web designers at Allpour Goop, Inc.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As a shareholder (and as a former employee of more than six years), I find myself incapable of not commenting on the ripple effect of novice CEO Bairn Mullere's black/white “coaching style” of thought, and what it brought to those of us working down in the trenches (or, down on the hardwood, to use a metaphor he might understand).

I should clarify that there were once two distinct IT shops, each serving a different company. One served Allpour Goop, Inc. (the parent company of Phono Fixe University) and the other served the Phono Fixe University's spin-off Phono Fixe University Online (a separate company). It should also be noted that eventually PFU and PFU Online recombined and became the same company once more, which meant that the two IT shops were merged as well; the fact remained, however, that the division between these two IT shops was palpable. Their methods differed dramatically. In early 2006, the original Allpour IT shop was destroyed in a hostile takeover by the Online IT department, with the support of Bairn Mullere. Everyone in Allpour IT, from the CIO on down to the management layer, was removed and replaced; just prior to this reorganization, a barrage of promotions took place in Online IT. After the takeover, those of us who remained in the wreckage of Allpour IT were forced to align ourselves with new masters, many of whom had been our distant subordinates or peers only hours before.

The unethical specifics beyond this point are not truly important. What I would like to consider, therefore, is how the differences between these two IT groups first defined, and then redefined (for me, at least), the notion of "career" at Allpour Goop, Inc..

As a Web designer for Allpour Goop, Inc., I have two very distinct experiences of the management methods used in the two IT groups. I can summarize these experiences by using a single question, but rephrasing it to match the dominant outlook of each organization.

So imagine you're a dedicated employee; you've completed all manner of projects, received awards from various business units, and you're confident that there is room to grow within the company. Imagine that you actually care about your projects.

In the former Allpour IT (where I spent four years), the question asked of me during a performance evaluation was simple: "What have you done for us this past year?" And while it didn't always sound this way, or use these particular words, the question itself flows from the emphasis that Allpour IT placed on professional development for its employees. It placed the positive before the negative, and was aimed squarely at retention.

Post-takeover, in the new Allpour IT, the question became “What have you done for me lately?” This revised question flows from an emphasis on the negative, and is rooted in the concept of the performance-based work environment (e.g., a single negative trumps any and all positives). It's right off the sports page, and has nothing to do with careers or retention.

Notice how the language has changed, rooted in the carefree arrogance and self-obsession of the Incompetent ("what have you done for me"); this approach to the individual employee flows, to some degree, from Bairn Mullere's sports-centric view of the company as some sort of gigantic basketball game.

In my own experience, the “me” in the question was the inept manager or director (or in sporting terms, the team captain). In turn, managers and directors were asked the very same question by their superior, the puppet CIO (the assistant coach), who was then similarly queried by the CEO (the head coach).

Since I hate basketball, I'll use hockey (a far more interesting sport) to summarize what this means: as a player, I may have scored 2 goals and had three assists the game before last, but since I’m judged to only be as good as my last game, wherein I happened to have been held off the score sheet, the prior five point night counts for nothing; next game, I find myself at the end of the bench and given limited ice-time. When contract talks come around, I'm told I won't be getting a salary increase because of "gaps" in my on-ice performance.

Thus, in the new Allpour IT, full-time employees essentially became anathema to the system, since they can't be forced to work 70 hour weeks, and they are almost impossible to get rid of. They take vacations, they call in sick, and they have benefits! Each one of these is a negative. And all it takes, apparently, is a single negative, and your career is over.

The idea of having a “career” in the new Allpour IT is an impossibility. Which is why 98% of Allpour IT is now made up of contract employees. Contractors are easy to dump back to the minors (the staffing firms) when they don’t put in 16 hour days. Allpour IT, while coached by Bairn Mullere and his All-Star Team of Incompetents, has been transformed into a white-collar sweat-shop. For a company that often takes pride in affecting its customer's lives positively, the reality behind the key-carded doors of the company is in diametric opposition.

It's time to view the Incompetent at Allpour IT as what they truly are: parasites, destroying their host. The Las Plagas are among us. Bairn Mullere's coaching-oriented approach to management was dead on arrival in my view, and if you aspire to management, I hope you never resort to such a system. It shouldn't happen. Anywhere. Not even in Resident Evil.