Jacques

Jake desJardins

Job Description

As a Product Manager, you work in the fast-paced, Internet-driven industry with some of the smartest developers in the world. You eat, sleep, and dream about creating a better product for our customers. You personally have the opportunity to impact our customers’ experience because, as our products proceed through different versions and development lifecycles, you anticipate where customers are going to encounter confusion and you eliminate it. We have demanding customers who expect our product to be user friendly and nothing less than perfect. It is because of this expectation and your love for our product that you work harder than you ever have before.

If you want your paycheck: Your responsibilities to the customers (the people who pay us the big bucks) include:

                            Being the user advocate when developers are designing and developing products

                            Making sure that customer feedback is incorporated into the design of future product releases

                            Developing user-friendly tools and proactively seeking out changes that need to be made

                            Being a step ahead. You don’t want our customers to be confused about a feature of our product so you anticipate where confusion might occur and you prevent it.

                            Communicating expectations regarding product release dates to our customers.
Your responsibilities to your co-workers (the people pounding at your door) include:

                            Working closely with development teams to design and deliver products.

                            Developing realistic development plans and schedules and creating written product specifications and requirements.

                            Evaluating and prioritizing requests for product changes, enhancements, etc.

                            Determining objectives and test plans for any test involving clients.

                            Resolving issues and problems that will affect product success.

                            Developing strategic outlook in assigned technical area and keeping track of vendor roadmaps.

                            Working to resolve issues with current products and interacting with customers and prospects to determine requirements and facilitate sales opportunities.

                            Pushing the creative boundaries with the Graphic Designers to design and tweak products until they are perfect.
Important Skills and Characteristics:

                            An understanding of email and web technologies as well as interface design and user friendliness.

                            Being an analytical, detail-oriented, goal driven, aggressive professional.

                            Excellent knowledge of all products within our product families, as well as company policies and practices.

                            Experience with long-range and operational planning techniques.

                            Excellent communication and interpersonal skills which enable you to operate as a matrix manager in coordinating people and technical resources from multiple areas of the company.

                            Ability to operate efficiently under minimal supervision.

                            A Bachelor’s degree in business, sales, engineering, or marketing preferred.

                            4+ years of experience working in a technology, consulting environment, or in product development.
You’re going to do just fine here if:

                            You have an understanding of product management; you are technical; you can quickly educate yourself on our new products and services; you are organized; you can multi-task; and you know how to get your point across.

                            You understand and apply the concepts of simplicity in design and can incorporate them into our product and website.

                            You realize the importance of clean, simple, user interfaces.

                            You have experience creating user documents for different types of software and are knowledgeable of user terminology as well as common usability issues or complaints.

Let me add one other requirement, which I gleaned from the above text, event though it’s not explicity stated: 

And you will kiss our ass, and love it, even if we decide later on to fire you or ’downsize’ your sorry butt because we couldn’t make a profit, even after working you 100 hours a week.

Jake desJardins

A New Type of State-of-War

   Cybercrime has become a serious misnomer, insofar as the word subverts the real seriousness of the act, and its implications in a global security context.  The crime of hacking into computer systems, ten years ago, was considered exactly that:  a crime.  It resulted in a police investigation, maybe a few apprehensions, and imprisonment or a fine.  But cybercrime has now evolved to the point where governments probe the security of the very infrastructure of other countries;  where operatives, working on the behalf of a sponsor nation, attempt to penetrate and disable critical systems, such as a power grid,  a utility network or even a financial entity.  ‘Cybercrime’, taken in this context, is not a crime at all – it is war .  

            And this reality is exactly what the worlds’ leaders don’t want to face.  The idea that governments actively engage in attacks on another sovereign nation’s critical systems is the white glaring elephant in the room.  It is the risk realized, the fundamental lack of deterrence, the full engagement of weapons, without provocation, that makes the defense planners shudder and the diplomats squirm in their cozy corners.  For diplomacy has already failed;  shots have already been fired – not across the bow – but right into the hull.

            Granted, that ‘hull’ may merely be the network hub that controls the switching of train tracks along a major commuter line.  It may only make up a small part of a vast database storing proprietary records and passwords for a military entity.  It may be a mainframe at the Federal Reserve, or a Blackberry in someone’s pocket that just happens to have recently downloaded national security data. 

            Or, maybe that ‘hull’ is the networked interface to the coolant reactor controls, for a nuclear power plant. 

            In 2005 and 2007, Brazil was attacked by cyber-soldiers, bringing down its power grid, affecting millions of people and causing considerable monetary loss to an ore company.  And last year, someone unknown penetrated the U.S. military network, CENTRON, and monitored critical data traffic for several days.  The actual damage caused by this breach has not been fully assessed, but it is believed that the intruder used a memory stick to gain backdoor access.  (source: http://www.circleid.com/posts/60_minutes_cybersecurity_reality_of_sabotaging_critical_infrastructure/ )

            The current paradigm, to fight cyber attacks on critical infrastructure through a strategy of defensive and offensive cyber counterattacks, misses the whole point behind what is happening, on a regular basis:  someone, (or some sovereign entity), probes, penetrates, then attacks its target.  But the end result of this attack is not just to hack into a computer or network;  it is to disable, damage, or otherwise destroy a part of that country’s well-being.  And if a cyber attack can take out a nuclear reactor just as effectively as a missile or a paramilitary assault, wherein lays the distinction between a ‘cyber-war’ and a real war?  Or more concisely, does suffering a cyber-attack constitute a state of war between sovereign nations?   

            It is this very question that gets to the core of the issue of national defense.  The public policymakers, the world’s leaders, and the U.N., all must face the new reality about what establishes the limits of security for a sovereign entity.  The means and modes of unprovoked attacks have changed radically in the information/Internet age.  The expectation that physical intrusion and assault, by foreign operatives, is the only way to define a state of war is no longer up to date.  The threat exists to a nation, and the danger to a country and its people persists, equally as both a physical and cyber assault.  It’s time to stop ignoring this reality.

Jake desJardins

We don’t need a redistribution of wealth, in this particular time in our history?

Give me a break – the backbone of the American middle class is being broken. These are the people who have done everything ‘right’ during their lifetimes: multiple degrees, on-the-job training, saving for their retirement and kids’ college education, doing what the American ‘way’ says they should do.

It isn’t working. Government, (meaning, we the people), need to step in and provide a radical solution for this problem.

If it’s true, as many analysts and think tanks seem to suggest, that our economic/social structure is changing to the point where, frankly, there will never again be enough middle to upper class wage jobs to accomodate our population, then the answer to our woes will not reside in the usual ‘let the market do its thing’ diatribe.

Only so many people can become successful entrepeneurs; only so many can reinvent themselves sufficiently, that they will be able to support themselves and their families. Only so many unemployed or underemployed people will get back to where they should be; the remainder will conceive a social strata of underemployed, underutilized, and underappreciated, that will eventually become a part of the chronically lower class.

The radical answer to this growing reality is for government to answer the challenge, and to do it now. Or watch our nation sink to a level that would make our forefathers cringe with shame and despair.

Jake desJardins

Maybe you now know, whether you want to admit it or not, that’s it’s time to kiss ass.  Big time.  Without reservation.  Without shame.   With a sharp sense of survival.  

Well, that’s doable, man.  If you really have no scruples about it, (in other words, you’re the main source of financial support for the family, and the wife is threatening to leave if you lose the job, and the kids gotta have the next-generation surround-sound, opti-view, implanted-chip-in-the-brain virtual violence gaming experience for Christmas), then you can do it.  You can live;  the next door Cuber can die. 

Start with the morning routine.  Instead of grunting ‘Morning’ to the boss, look him in the eye, nod your head while wearing a smart smile, and say ‘Good morning, sir.  I’m ready for anything you can throw at me.  Let’s get started.’ 

Then hand him a big cup of expensive coffee, (not a cheapo styrofoam offering from out of the break room pot), pat him on the shoulder, then walk right on back to your cube as if you’re getting right into the work.  

But don’t sit down.   That’s the absolute worst thing you can do.  Stand up, so that he can see you as you pick up the phone and start making calls.  Now, the calls may only be to your wife, asking her to pick up a six-pack of light beer while she’s at the store, or to your doctor, scheduling that long-delayed prostate exam.  In either case, make it look like you’re directing something from your cube, not just sitting in front of the computer, gazing at vacation deals to Bali.  

But you probably want to try to make at least one real work call, and be loud and authoritative about it, so that the boss can hear.  That is, if you can think of a worthwhile call to make.  Maybe you can ring up that parts supplier and demand credit for the defective parts the company received awhile ago.  (Then hang up before the guy on the other end realizes you don’t know what you’re talking about). 

The next step in the daily butt smacking consists of posturing yourself strategically in the morning meeting.   Sit down in the front, next to the boss, with a stack of technical papers and a notebook and a few pens handy.  Take notes copiously.  Nod when he nods;  nod vigorously when he says something, even if it’s not particularly bright.   After the meeting, say something along the line of, “Excellent meeting.  We’re gonna get some action out of that one.”  And if he glances at you like you’re some sort of nitwit, add, “I’ll make sure it happens.”

Then make sure you do.  Or at least, find a subordinate or two to make it so. 

Before lunch, find at least three main issues that you can pretend to be on top of in an email, even if it’s responding to the girl who’s been out sick for a week who is asking a question about the big sales account and you can answer that it’s all been taken care of, especially if it sounds as if you took care of it.  And of course, make sure to .cc the boss. 

Get out those emails – not too many – but enough, with brief authoritative firepower in them that lets the big shot know that you are the man… 

That’s one of the best ways to ass kiss, without feeling like you’re ass kissing. 

After lunch, it’s time for the sophisticated methods.  The Machiavellian routine.  The tour-du-force of sycophantic slobbering.  The positioning for posterior posterity, where you can get the best derriere smacking for the buck.  

It’s time to backstab.  

Nothing brings you in better with the boss then to let him in on the little known fact that the deadbeat Cuber sitting right next to you has been badmouthing the company, and everyone in it, on a regular schedule.  And of course, this bad apple saves his most deadly salvo for the boss.  But how do you tactfully dispense with this information, (or as it were, misinformation), without appearing like the backstabbing SOB that you actually are, and have to be, out of sheer pragmatism? 

Well, again, a well-crafted email might do the trick.  Such as, “Dear Boss,  So-and-so finished the financial analysis and submitted it upstairs.  I reviewed it and it’s an outstanding piece of work.  However, I think he got a little upset with our auditing process, as he mentioned to me that…”   and then you segue into an underplayed description of how he couldn’t seem to let go of the fact that senior accounting is run by a bunch of fat-headed amateurs and the company promotes stiff-necked chicken-squawking bean counters and worships bluster-mouthed managers and generally allows incompetence and stupidity to rule.  

If this doesn’t get you a one on one with the boss, where you can then unload an arsenal of hyperbole and mistruths against the Cuber, then maybe it’s time to request a personal meeting.  And if you can get one of these, be sure to know exactly what to say, and how to say it, so that your ‘confidential information’ comes across as strictly up and up – meaning, you know and the boss knows that ‘something has to be done.’  (translated: ‘someone has to go’.) 

And finally, don’t underestimate the power of slipping the subtle word or phrase around the water cooler or out in the smoking area to anyone whom you know will feed information back to the boss.  Perception, as any career sophisticate knows, decides raises and promotions, continued employability and likeability, and overall success.  If you want someone to fail, get good at dropping the IEDs where they will do the best calculated damage. 

Now you might be saying, ‘This is not ethical at all.  I can’t plan on deliberately damaging the reputation of a co-worker.  It’s not right.’  

Well, if you’ve gotten this far in this piece, and you still want to learn more about how to become an effective ass-kisser, then ethics hasn’t got anything to do with it. 

On the other hand, if you’ve gotten this far and realize that ass-kissing and being unethical to survive and thrive in the workplace isn’t your thing, then don’t worry.  Because this piece is finished.   And so are you.

Jake desJardins

In the first case, the layoff occurred five months after I was hired. Executive management came to the conclusion that my site was not cost-effective and determined that off-shoring operations to China would fix the problems.

It did not. Three years later, the site in China also closed down. Project deliverables were not being met; business strategy dive-bombed. So now, workers in two countries were displaced, and the corporate leaders re-trenched in their Connecticut headquarters and broke out the cheaper Scotch and drank to failed endeavors gone wrong – but better times to come. (Yippee-ki-yayyyy!)

And the stock continues to tank.

I ask myself why the company hired me in the first place, if it knew that it was going to shutter U.S. operations? But I think it’s because, in all honesty, the better Scotch went to the heads of those responsible for keeping the business viable. The headiness of their position, their insulation from the reality of what was really going on at the operational level, kept them from making sound decisions. It kept them nestled in their security blankets, thumbs stuck in their mouths, comforted in the belief that ‘Mommy Free Market’ would prevail and they would remain safe and sound, profitable and cushy behind their cherry wood desks.

I sometimes like to entertain the delusion that I was hired to turn things around. But if that was true, why was I under the impression, as a former business customer, that the company didn’t need turning around? In retrospect, I realize that I simply backfilled a position for someone else, who was asked to go to another position, in order to try to turn around the problems in the new technology group. I was just an interim pawn in the chess game of Factory Operations Gone Bad. The cherry wood executives needed someone quickly to plug up the hole; I was their man.

I did not take it bitterly, at the time. In fact, morale had soured so badly and the stress levels had amped up so much at this particular place that everyone, including me, seemed to let out a sigh of relief when the mass layoff was announced. For some strange reason, Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out’  kept racing through my head.    

    I didn’t get the same feeling after the second layoff.  In fact, I had a sense of gloom, beforehand.  The build-up was silently understood, darkly expected, relentlessly anticipated.    It hung heavily throughout the plant;  it stunk like a rotting carcass among the workers across the site, as the inevitable approached.   It was the oppressive realization that this was the beginning of the end, for a lot of people.  (For exactly  33.37% of the workforce, as a matter of fact)   Who was going to get it? 

If you were a solid performer, meaning you demonstrated dependability, aptitude, a good working rapport with your peers, you were at risk.  If you had good skills but not quite enough expertise in specific areas, you were at risk.  If  you had put in several years of 60+ hour workweeks, including weekends and holidays, but you did not have seniority, you were at risk.

Generally, if you deserved to work but the employability algorithm cranked out a certain ranking, you were on the hit list.  

If you were a good worker, but not good enough, you were probably gone.

Some people are quite blasé about attributing the market as the cause of mass displacement, and that laid off workers should get over it.  I do not.  Market volatility and employment security may go hand in hand, but they are not merely incidental.  They are the products of errors in judgment, incompetency in leadership and lassitude in regulatory oversight. 

Or, as a project manager acquaintance of mine put it:  layoffs are essentially projects gone bad. 

The job hunt clubs and displacement services and career coaches and government boards tasked to address unemployment are members of the new project team that expects to resolve this problem.  But they are not the stakeholders.  The laid off –  the ones facing lack of healthcare for their families, inability to pay the mortgage and utilities, difficulty buying food and clothes, and the prospect of losing much or all of their long-term savings –   these are the ones relying upon the expertise, the care and consideration, and vested interest of those trying to get them back to work.

I for one hope that the new project, to get people back to work, succeeds.  I hope that the new project managers work the field and monitor the progress of the reemployment efforts – that they don’t hide behind cherry wood desks and sip good Scotch. 

And I do hope no one will blame me for being laid off and proudly pissed.

Jake desJardins

What is particularly revolting about this picture? 

I’m sure you’ve gathered that this is a very ugly, very large fish swimming with a basketball stuffed in its mouth.  But what really flips my entrails is that this fish, a flathead catfish, thrives by being the bottom feeder.   It  skulks about at the bottom of muddy rivers and stagnant, trash-infested pools and slurps up whatever it bumps into.

It takes whatever is in its immediate path and attempts to slurp it down without any sort of consideration about the consequences.  But of course, this dumb fat fish hasn’t the brains to understand consequences.   It only knows, in some deep primordial way, that in order to survive it must gorge and imbibe.  To keep on keeping on, it takes whatever it is presented with, without question.

I have to say, for quite a long time, I felt like that dumb fat fish lolling about in the cesspool of the workplace, compelled to swallow whatever crap was rammed down my mouth.

And I wonder, in demeaning myself so willingly, just so I could survive – so that I could bring home a paycheck and keep myself employed- how many others viewed me as no more than a bottom-feeder, biting off more than I could possibly swallow, shoving more on my plate than I was realistically capable of digesting.

To be frank, at the end of some workdays, I wanted to vomit. 

For a generation now, the careerists have been overworked and underpaid, all to the point of decreased job security, increased under and unemployability, and unfulfilled lives.   This reality has much less to do with wages, and more with the concept of control.  Indeed, the definition of class in our post-industrial, pseudo-technological society comes down to who really has control, and who does not.

Who is a bottom feeder, and who swims at the surface?

I don’t pretend to have ready answers for breaking the mold.   But that’s what it’s about:  recognizing, first of all, that you may be the silt-and-sludge devouring ‘careerist’ who has to break to the surface.   That may be as simple as getting up out of your cube more often and forcing yourself to talk with someone.  Or,  God forbid, requesting an informal one on one with your boss, assuming he (or she) is the type of person with whom you can have a productive discussion. (see the Bosses post category)

Or it may very well come down to walking away from your cube, your job, your career, even some or all aspects of your life.   I’m sure that some people would respond that we all have to make a living.  I would reply that gorging on the trash that is rammed down your gullet everyday is not a living -  it is a harsh imposition.

We owe it to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to society, to not become mindless bottom feeders. 

Thoughts anyone?

Jake desJardins

The Boss from Hell

I know.  At my last company, I spent almost two years contending with a real maniac.  He had a talent for raising blood pressure, just by being within a person’s visibility.  He insisted upon daily meetings that dragged on well beyond the working day, where he would do all the talking, (shouting, really), and jab his finger at his subordinates and cut them down, a piece of their ego at a time.    He was as close to experiencing Hitler as I’ll ever come. 

The measure of his effectiveness as a HellBoss was indicated in the rapid graying of hair and the intensity of water cooler and stairwell ranting among his employees.   The tragedy of his reign was in the fact that he, fairly or unfairly, outlasted those who either quit or got laid off.

He was protected, of that I am sure.   But that realization has allowed me to understand the mistake that I made in the first place, one that I hope readers of this colum will not make:  Understand the company culture.

Make no mistake about it;  when bosses from hell proliferate, it is because they have been allowed to do so.  And this condition could be from design, or it could be from sheer senior-level incompetence.  In either case, it is imperative upon the jobseeker to find out about the culture, before becoming a part of it.

If you don’t want to go to Hell,  don’t be tempted to take the wrong job.

I knew about  this particular company before I joined it.  And its culture of long work hours, demanding, unreasonable bosses, and systemic abuse towards lower echelon employees, was a part of its outside reputation.  I knew about all this.

And yet, I took the bait.  And spent a chunk of my life being miserable to myself and my family.  When I was laid off, my wife and I actually breathed a sigh of relief.  I had been cast out of Hell onto the plains of Purgatory, and although the netherworld of unemployment has its own degrees of stress and uncertainty, it is a period in which to digest what has happened, to reflect, to correct and re-invent. 

And to keep clear of the Boss from Hell. 

It is no coincidence that this particular company has a hard time making the grade as a Fortune 100  GreatWorkplace contender.  But that’s one of the areas to research, when trying to find a culture where employees truly are valued, respected, and treated fairly.   It’s likely that the company is successful, in more ways than just profitability. And it’s likely that HellBosses are in short supply. 

I’ve discussed a bit about how to avoid bad bosses.  But how do you deal with a bad boss in the first place?  How have others dealt with a Boss from Hell? 

Jake desJardins

I was miserable.  At the end of long day, I would look at my to-do list and see how many items had been checked off and consider how many items were still pending and realize that regardless of what I got accomplished, that list would not go away.  It would grow in inverse proportion to my efforts.  Like Sisyphus, I felt that no matter how much I pushed the boulder up the hill, I was condemned to watch it roll back down at the end of my day’s efforts, forcing me to start all over again.  Knowing that the next day, my sweat and misery would be rewarded the same way. 

Add to that the fact that I slaved for the Boss from Hell.   That’s a different category altogether.  But like Sisyphus again, the angry gods were constantly looking over my shoulder, berating and demeaning me, and making sure that I knew that my efforts would be entirely in vain. 

Many of us are screaming silently in our cubes. 

Normally, career coaching professionals would say that it doesn’t have to be this way.  I would ask instead:  does it have to be this way?   I think the real answer is problematic.  I think we all make choices, a series of choices – some logical, some not so logical – but all mistakenly predicated upon the idea that we can anticipate the future.  That destiny is within our grasp.

I would have liked to gaze into a crystal ball and seen the outcomes of the various choices that I have made in life.  Any given series would have led to, perhaps, a degree of happiness that I once experienced, long ago, when I was a child, without a care in the world.  Without the necessity of pushing the boulder up the hill, anticipating that sense of accomplishment that never comes…

But we don’t have the benefit of foresight.  We only have the universal prospect of our fallibility.  And that directs us to our life’s work, which can very well become enslavement. 

It’s necessary that we figure out, early on, how to change.  Not just in our careers, but in life.  We have to be our own life coaches, our own mentors.  And hope that our life’s trajectory takes us to a better place.

Jake desJardins

We don’t place a very high premium on daydreaming.  Our society looks down upon those who daydream, because daydreamers don’t do anything productive, at least as surface perception would have it.

And if anyone has sat down with a his or her boss for any length of time to discuss performance – that dreaded word that comes up during appraisal time and is on par with the Inquisition or Terminal Diagnosis – perception is everything.  Perception, more than productivity, makes or breaks career success.  Perception determines market worth, not necessarily day-to-day or week-to-week or month-to-month metrics. 

Metrics get lost in the massive exchange of data and information, the plodding Powerpoints and swing curves and histograms and Excel tables and charts and .pdf manuals.   Metrics look pretty at quarterly financial meetings and weekly management ‘gong shows’.  Sometimes, those charts and graphs blend colors with astounding lucidity and a glittering appeal to those who show an addict’s glazed-over fascination with sensory input. 

But real lasting pretty is the young fresh-faced office gal with the sleek legs who turns heads wherever she goes.  

 And powerful is pretty, as the ‘powersuit’ guy dashes between meetings and presents his all-so-powerful case to his all-so-important superiors, and everyone in their dingy little cubes peek over the top to see him dashing back and forth, power handshaking, power talking in a loud commanding voice, power strutting up and down the aisles, power walking to the on-site gym to power workout before going to his power lunch. 

Pretty is allure and power, and perception is immaculate.   Wherever there is the perception of the pretty and the powerful, there is success.

But for you and I, plain and unpretty, the perception has been sullied.  We sit in our cubes or stand on the floor of a factory or drive a truck or a cab, unknown and unperceived;  and therefore,  we remain addicts to our misery.

How do we reinvent ourselves?

Jake desJardins