Pari's Blog

I just couldn’t resist writing this story! This is a story about a company and the bias of the management towards one person E, at the expense of all others. It can also be treated as a satire as well. It has very common scenarios, but this one beats it all as it incorporates all possible issues one can imagine.

Disclaimer: any resemblance to real life characters is purely coincidental.

A, B, C, D, E are all mid-level engineers (all of whom just happen to be women, and are all peers on the same team). Q is a senior level engineer (male, and also on the same team). The rest are all male engineers at the same peer level as A-E. I will start the story with E, and will get straight to it.

E is one person who is seen by her peers (i.e. most of the technical staff who have worked with her closely) as having integrity issues (lies, denies, hides, blames), very undisciplined, always breaks the process, blames just about everything and everyone (i.e. everyone/everything becomes the issue, not her), very condescending, arrogant, easily irritable, and puts down anyone she doesn’t like (i.e. anyone seen as better than her), sub-junior coding skills, no engineering skills, not a team player, and needless to say no team lead skills. On a scale of 10 points, the technical competency of E would be 2-3 (10 being the best; and 5 being the bare minimum). Even claims of E’s productivity is fraudulent as her productivity is a result of the efforts of ten other folks cleaning up after her.

Only thing that E has going for her is that she is very hard working and always tries to be helpful (though unfortunately her help is seen more as an impediment than a help).

It is to be noted, that the senior most software engineer himself (we’ll call him Q), was treated well in this hypothetical company (because of his seniority and experience). Q eventually left the company out of futility – that when he bought up these issues (that most of the technical staff had about E) management swept it under the carpet and gave Q the cold shoulder. Q had to listen to endless complaints from everyone about E, and had spent tens of hours of talks with management. For the number of hours Q had spent with management, management remained silent about the issue – never following it up with Q, and never acting upon it.

Ironically, the management in this team, very consistently and methodically, treated one particular employee, E, very well, over employees A, B, C, and D. Management would abuse and insult others several times more harshly and frequently than they would E. To set the big picture, here are just a couple of examples of the biases and ironies:

1. “Don’t point fingers”: A, B, and C repeatedly brought up the point that management would come down hard on them if they dared express any issues they had with E (issues that were making them work extra hours, harder, and causing delays and frustrations in getting work done). Management frequently reprimanded them saying “don’t point fingers, don’t point fingers!”. Q found it surprising why management couldn’t see (or acknowledge) E as the problem, when A-C (and F, G, and H who have left the team) all had grievances only with E and no grievances with each other.
2. “Don’t compare”: Management shouts at Q saying “don’t compare, don’t compare!”. When things are being run fairly there is no need to compare. But when half the people on the team perceive a serious bias, then a study is warranted. Especially to those who think there is no bias, the only way to alleviate it is by comparison (unless there is a fear that comparison will expose the bias further). Not to mention, it is a fair comparison with a peer. The irony is management says “don’t compare, don’t compare”, but they compare. That too, by making an unfair comparison of another team member, A, with Q. Unfair comparison, as Q is far far more experienced and senior than A. For example, the manager tells Q, “you could have done this in just 2 days, but look A took 3 weeks!” It makes one wonder, why don’t they instead dare make a comparison of A with E? It is a fair comparison, as besides being a peer to A, E is being promoted as team lead and it is the bias towards E that is under scrutiny. The answer maybe that it will undeniably expose A as far better than E.
3. Justifications: Management makes everyone else as the issue, not E, by brash remarks like this:
   1. “E is so intelligent that it is not easy to understand her.” That is what management said to C when she brought up her issues with E. That is totally unfounded, as even first year developers find E’s work as unbelievably bad. Not to mention that most of C’s peers see her as more smarter, intelligent, and disciplined than E. So it is insulting to C. In contrast E’s code is so bad, undisciplined, and convoluted, that it is a maintenance nightmare wasting invaluable resources (people, and client time), that could otherwise be spent on providing more value add to the client.
   2. “E is going through a family crisis”. Management on more then a couple of occasions justified E’s buggy quality of work (that wastes everyone’s time) and E’s irritability because she had a family crisis. Nearly everyone on the team has personal and family problems. If it is impacting her work (and the team), then she should probably take a few days off or it is managements responsibility to reduce the scope of her work or give her more time. Stressing her out when she’s in a family crisis and expecting team members to take the brunt is not the way to manage a team. Once in a while is fine (team members are kind enough to volunteer that). It is like saying others have to sacrifice their family and health problems, slog overtime, fixing E’s problems, so that E can spend time with her family. That is being insensitive to others.
   3. “You should not take things personally.” When C brought up her issue about E, she is told that she is too sensitive and taking it too personally.
   4. “You need to learn to be a team player.” Again C is blamed, the irony is C is an excellent team player, it is E who isn’t.
   5. “She (E) is under a lot of pressure.” This is what C was told when she expressed E’s irritability (arrogance, lack of cooperation, blaming, etc). While E’s issues are justified by calmly saying she’s “under pressure”, the same benefit is never given to others. Instead management gives others only a fraction of the tolerance they give for E. A-D are reprimanded way more severely and frequently than E (they are hardly given the benefit of the doubt).
   6. “Issues are not just with E! everyone has issues about others also!” Maybe, but nowhere near the tens of hours every month spent by everyone expressing their issues with E.
   7. “These women”. It is unbelievable, that when Q expressed the tens of hours that A, B, and C (A-C are women) have complained to him about E, the manager flings his pencil down and exclaims, “these women!”. Not only is E not being considered the issue, but it is now generalized to “these women”.
4. Half the time: Half the time would be an understatement. Management would give less than half the time to others to get a work done (over what they would have given E). And if they missed their mark, they would receive a harsh reprimand. Meanwhile E can stretch it for months beyond her deadline before she receives any such reprimanding.
   1. Example 1: Management tells A to read a 300 page specification overnight but E is given months. On the other hand when E does it, it is lauded “oh the specification is so complex, she did tremendous task in figuring it out…”. How is it that the same specs is described as complex when E had to do it, but when A does it it becomes as simple as “oh she (A) should be able to read it overnight (along with ten other things she’s been asked to multi-task)?”
   2. Example 2: A new technology was mastered by A in two days on her own time. Whereas E is given 3 weeks – and that too, failed at the task. Because of E’s failure, A is denied of her visibility of her success (her success is even depicted as failure using word games).
   3. Example 3: On many occasions, E could not figure out another technology, whereas A struggled, figured it out, then it was taken away from A and given to E (and on two occasions E received an award for it). In cases where E did figure out the technology, she did a total undisciplined hack job (i.e. without fully understanding the concept at all), and still would be praised for it.
   4. Example 5: On more than one occasion, E could not figure out, understand, and implement a specification. So B and F were tasked to do it (in 1/5th of the time given to E). They worked weekends and late nights, doing in a matter of few days what E could not figure out over a few months – but credit went totally to E. Everyday E is attributed for it, in such a way as if “she” did it.
   5. Example 6: Between 2001-2005, B spent countless hours educating E. For the amount that B helped E, E never returned any gratitude in the form of humility. Instead she treats B condescendingly and beneath her. B decided to stop talking/helping E. But that was too late, E has abused the knowledge derived from B to keep B invisible and subservient. Making B even more unhappy. B has expressed that frustration to her trusted peers often.
5. Pepperoni or Sausage? – the illusion of choice: The manager asks A, pepperoni or sausage? It’s a hard choice for A as she’s a vegetarian, and is forced to choose between both which she doesn’t like. She says “sausage”. Manager says, “No, take pepperoni, pepperoni is good for you”. This goes back and forth the manager being increasingly assertive and forceful on the choice he has already made out for A. Finally, poor A yields, and says ok pepperoni, provided you give me broccoli (her real wish) next time. Manager says, “oh definitely, [I will take care of you like my sister, you don't have to worry about a thing]“. A year goes by and she is forced with the same choice pepperoni (no broccoli) again :-(. Another year goes by… and again the same. By now A is terribly upset with severe indigestion, and this time confronts the manager. The manager shouts at her saying “I gave you the choice and you only picked it”. He also says, “don’t say I didn’t give you broccoli! I gave you broccoli (referring to the small decorative piece that came on the side with her pepperoni)”. He also goes on to say he doesn’t appreciate her “tone” (perhaps A should have been more docile, and continue to eat pepperoni for another year). Managers often try to slide in the decisions for their people, but they should at least be tactful, and live up to their promises, especially when these are career choices. However, when talking to this manager, A can’t get a word across without it being shouted down her throat. In fact it is A who had to tell the manager “could you please calm down”! A-D asks, what sort of manager is that? The only manager on the team that exhibited the qualities of a good manager was Uncle Bob. He was respectful of others, mature, professional, listens, never raises his voice (does not shout people down, nor insult people), and keeps his sarcasm within the limits.
6. Visibility/Credit: All the toughest assignments and problems (including duties that require discipline and analytical skills; including debugging E’s problems) are not given to E, but to A. This happens many times. Obviously because they know that A (not E) can do it. Also, between 2001-04, B says a lot of E’s problems (bugs due to poor and undisciplined coding skills) were resolved by B (that too, with lot of confrontations with E). The problem is after A or B works hard at it, including cleaning up E’s mess, E is given total credit for it, while A and B are kept invisible or just given a passing mention (no where near the visibility that E is given). And later management claims, oh we can’t get rid of E because she has visibility to the client. And who made that possible?
7. The superstar: Much to everyone’s chagrin, insult, frustration, E is promoted openly as team lead on certain projects. Ironically even though A was liked by everyone and has proven herself better in many regards, E is promoted, instead of A (and in addition more than once A has proved her team leadership skills very successfully on other projects (outside the team) – including receiving lots of praise from the managers on those projects).
8. Abuse: the management has driven people to breakdown at least six times. People on the team have seen the women on the team shouted down so harshly and abusively to the point as to make them breakdown and cry it off. One manager comments, with a smiling face; no sensitivity whatsoever (as if trying to make a joke), “Hey, I made two women cry today”. Another manager defensively says, “A is like family to me, she is like a sister to me”. My foot! So is this how you treat them?
9. “I don’t know about your culture… but in my culture”: That was the line Q’s manager threw at Q. When Q was trying to explain the bias, he was threw it back on Q saying that Q cares about only a certain group of people, whereas he cares about both sides (what is that other group/side? management? E?). And where does this manager get off with this “culture” accusation? Q could have easily insulted the manager by making a generalization about his culture: “I don’t know about your culture, but in my culture we don’t abuse people/women, or shout at people, or treat people with such unfairness”.
10. Benefit of doubt: Q reminded the managers that there is clear bifurcation between developers and management in the perception of E. That the developers perceived an extreme bias, which at the very least should be listened to and handled tactfully. Q even gave management the benefit of doubt by saying that it might be just an internal business decision that is being perceived as a bias. Whatever the case, management just needs to communicate it. Q said he’s sure the developers are intelligent enough to understand the business need if explained to them. To this, again the manager thwarted the conversation, by saying, “who is this ‘management’ you keep talking about?” For that Q (rolls his eyes) and responds, if you don’t know who management is, just ask anyone on the team they should be able to tell you.
11. “Why haven’t you done anything about it? You’re management too?” Uh? since when did Q become management? Q’s role has always been as the teams senior software engineer, systems engineer, and system architect. Never has he played the role of the title given to him as “technical team lead” (and Q has expressed it to management that he cannot fulfil that role unless he has given or genuinely permitted to acquire the proper team/project resources). And even if so, it is wrong to say Q has not done “anything about it”. Q has spent numerous hours with management as far back as the first two hour talk about E in 2002 on how the support for E was negatively impacting team performance.
12. “We can’t get rid of her”. That is besides the point. What everyone is asking is for management to treat others with fairness and respect. All of the above points can be addressed without doing anything to E at all. If others have managements support, peer pressure can help improve E. Q says, that is not possible as the peer review process is severely flawed – because management strips out anything negative (even constructive criticism) about E and attaches different weights. See the opening paragraph of this story to get summary about E’s core values (as reflected by her peer engineers).
13. Fear of reprisal. In addition people, like B, have fear of reprisal from management (as she’s seen it happen to A, C, and D when they spoke up to management). Because of fear, B does not take up any of her grievances with management. Management meanwhile shamelessly uses B’s fear and complacency to say “look B is getting along with E”. To that, Q says: first, exceptions do not prove the rule, and secondly it is not true that B is getting along with E. B also has severe issues with E, just that she dares not express it to management. Because B has no outlet to express it, she spends hours of precious time (which she compensates by working extra hard!) venting it with her trusted peers (who themselves have their share of frustrations with E).
14. First year developers: D, F, G (of which F and G left the team), have within their first month expressed their frustration about one and only one person – that of E, to Q as well as with each other (at lunch, at the water cooler, after hours,…). D (who is a junior programmer) and F (who is about 10 years younger than E) – both found quality of E’s work incredulous, as well as E’s poor skills as a team player (see again the opening paragraph of this story about E).
15. Saying that Q and others are biased (and are not sensitive): Management goes as far as to say others are biased and are not sensitive! Including even claming the reason why A is good is because A “learns from” Q — out-rightly dismissing all of A’s hard work and self learning. Q has never taught anything to A; A learned everything from scratch, through her own diligence, overtime, hard work. Even if that were the case (which it is not), A has skills that cannot be acquired by “teaching” (like discipline, analytical skills, ability to read books in depth, following the process, communication skills, team spirit, etc.). It never fails to amaze Q and others, the extent that management is willing to go to put down people. A simple example will put down managements unfair accusation: when a certain new technology was given to E she failed to learn it even with 3-4 full weeks exclusively allocated just for this. Whereas A mastered the technology to a very sound level by reading the book cover to cover in 2 days, that too while multi-tasking. Management knows very well A’s tenacity in learning complex new things which is why they dump things on A so that she figures it out, and she does (only for it to be taken away from her, and given to E when all the complex part of it is done, with no credit whats over).

Conclusion

Well, what is my solution or recommendation for the management in this company? Yoga. Round them up and send them to yoga classes.