I hate all incomptetent people equally

[giza]

incompetent, adj.
     Inadequate for or unsuited to a particular purpose or application.


Maybe I should take an LJ entry just to explain my feelings about incompetent people in my industry (the computer industry) in more detail. I have issues with anyone who is incompetent. Why? Well, I never liked bullsh*t artists, if you will. I believe in the concept of a meritocracy, which is where people get ahead based on ability, rather than on other factors, such as being able to fool other people into thinking that they know what they're doing. Or taking a job which they are not qualified to do and screwing it up badly. I think this sort of thing bit of a problem in the computer industry because computers are complicated machines which can be difficult to understand. If you're a manager who is in charge of someone who is BSing their way through a particular job in the computer field, how do you as the manager know that they aren't doing their job properly? It's very difficult to make that sort of judgement unless you have a strong technology background, or listen to the complaints of that person's co-workers.

Note that I have not mentioned MCSEs specifically. :-) I think the reason why I've been griping about MCSEs is because that, as golum pointed out, there are a lot of people with MCSEs who are simply "Gold Diggers".

Maybe I should give a few examples while I feel this way about the issue of incompetence...


Example #1: The Chronicles of George - This site is all about a help desk tech the author used to work with by the name of "George". "George" got the job not because of his ability, but because of who he knew. Once he got the job, it became clear that not only did he not know much about computers, but he had no desire to learn. Between his horrible grammar ("the user is havening a problem") and inability to help people, morale in the help desk department plummeted, as George turned it into a joke to the rest company.

Example #2: This lady replaced the author of the story when he switched departments. She was unable to do the job accurately, in a timely manner, and had a poor attitude on top of that. So what happens? People get hired to help her do her job. Except she doesn't have to do it anymore. She's now a supervisor for the new hires. Blech.

Example #3: This happened to me personally. I worked at one place where the temperature in the server room regularly got into the 80s. With the air conditioner on. During winter. When summer came around, it got much hotter. Pleas to management for more cooling were ignored, until the power supply fan in a $20,000 server kicked the bucket one day, resulting in two days of downtime. Only then did management take us seriously. (I guess this is a different kind of incompetence, since it's the people who are overseeing the technology people in this case)

Example #4: This poor developer wants to test his new code against the production database before deploying it, just to make sure it works. Good call on his part. But his VP won't let him do it, because there is "sensitive information on there" that he doesn't want to risk getting into the hands of his competitors. Never mind that the testing database has the same data on it. The author is warned that if he runs his code against the live database, that he will get fired! (More idiotic management)


So, yeah. I have issues with incompetent people. Their actions cost their companies money and destroy worker morale. No, I don't have a solution to the problem. And yes, I am bitter about this, and there are probably some gaping holes in my logic. (I've had some first hand experiences with people who Just Don't Get Computers)

Feel free to discuss.

Comments

[pyesetz]

I guess this is a different kind of incompetence, since it's the people who are overseeing the technology people in this case

The CEO of my company makes no secret of his opinion that the R&D department is a bunch of whiny brats who are constantly asking for things they don't really need.  There's no sensible reason why R&D would need to use Linux and old-fashioned email programs instead of switching to Windows and putting everything on Lotus Notes like the rest of the company.  Those bitchy engineers just want to be different, that's all it is.  One of these days he'll finally be able to fire them all, after he finishes outsourcing all their jobs to China, and then he can concentrate the company on its core competency: marketing.  Everyone knows that marketing is all that really matters!

[triggur.livejournal.com]

See, but the problem is, there ARE a notable number of engineers who will take any opportunity they can to convince management that they need X, Y, and Z, when X and Z are just fluffy toys that are neat (like having THE most up to date graphics card, or insisting on having a new 4 processor server when what they really want to do with it is play Quake).

There's 4 reasons here:

• Sometimes the problem is indeed that management cheaps out.
  
• Sometimes there simply isn't available budget to be proactive.
  
• Sometimes the problem is that engineering has poor communication skills and can't articulate reasoning why they need what they need.
  
• And on the far end of the scale, sometimes management is reluctant to buy toys because engineers DO occasionally stretch the truth about their needs.

I've seen all four situations on numerous occasions.

As for a group of people unilaterally deciding they're not going to use the company's email/communications standard software, I have to say that I would have little patience for that myself-- it means that IT has not just 2N more work to do, but N² more work to do making sure everything plays nice with everything else.

A lot of engineers love to feel like they're the only smart people in the company and that everybody above them is a dumbfuck, but then a lot of engineers have absolutely no idea how hard it is to run a company in general, or how hard it is to manage them in specific. And engineers are particularly bad at assuming that all the non-technical things they don't understand must be easy.

I've worked every job from junior tech support to CTO, so I've seen a lot of incompetence on both sides of the fence. Fortunately, I've seen a lot of rock solid brilliant people on both sides, too.

[giza.livejournal.com]

how hard it is to manage them in specific

Next time we go drinking, remind me to tell you about "Gabe" who I used to work with. :-)

[nius.livejournal.com]

Weee, I'm so glad I work for the government now. There are 3 managers above me, who are all extremely technically competent. Above that, the dumb starts, but I never have to see it XD

[bigtig.livejournal.com]

While I agree heavily on zero-tolerance for incompetent people, a lot of tech folks miss the point. Just because a person is not competent in their field of expertise, it doesn't meant they are not worth dealing with.

This is the downfall of some of the folks who shout loudest for a meritocracy. Sometimes these folkes who shout are the same people who have broken personalities or VERY BAD HABITS that in turn make them meritless.

Let me cite an example. Programmer #1, whom we will call "Chip" was educated at a strongly named CS program. He has his technical skills and he knows it. He wants to design systems and build the structure and robustness in which he finds beauty.

Programmer #2, who we'll call "Tim," has stepped into his job from helpdesk work and working on side projects for the company. He is not as assured of his own technical competence, but has been working with people in and out of the company for a while.

Manager is working on project for a government entity. It is on site in a secured government facility. Manager is putting Chip and Tim into converting an existing system over to some new requirements for distribution. They both work with the developers of the existing product to do so.

Chip sees many faults in the implementation of the product. Many decisions appear to have been made poorer designs were implemented than should have been.

Tim isn't as excited or angered about such things. He's more interested in finding out what is expected and needed to be done.

Chip goes off coding and in addition to his own work, he starts putting in insane hours rearchitecting all of the "problems" out of existance. There are two problems in this. The first is that Chip doesn't know all the quirks where some apparent problems meet customer requirements and secondly, spends a lot of time solving problems that are already solved or are not core to the product.

Both Chip and Tim have problems that the customer noticies and questions:

Tim does fumble a little here and there. The customer notices. However, with the help of code review, Tim steadily makes necessary changes.

Chip, on the other hand, has loud arguments with other developers. He occasionally cites his superior skills at times to reinforce his arguments for design changes. The customer hears him professing that bad desgins will end up hurting the product.

Depending on how you measure your meritocracy, when the customer asks what is going on, who would you keep and who would you fire?

That all being said, yeah .. I've worked with some stinkers. In some ways, I am glad that the internet "bubble" burst. It shook a lot of idiots and "gold diggers" out of the market.

[wesha.livejournal.com]

There're different stages, you know.

There're people who know they don't know something, but are willing to learn. They're, likely, future hackers.
There're people who know they don't know something, and don't want to learn. They're lamers.
Ther're people people who know they don't know something but pretend they do, and don't want to learn either. Unfortunately, most of the time they're managers.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good points. My take on such a situation (with my VERY limited management skill set) is that if someone can't work with others, then I wouldn't want them on my staff, no matter how good they are.

>That all being said, yeah .. I've worked with some stinkers. In some ways, I am glad that the internet "bubble"
>burst. It shook a lot of idiots and "gold diggers" out of the market.

Dude, you're right! I forgot all about that, but yeah, it definitely did get a lot of those people out of an industry that they shouldn't have been in in the first place. :-)

I think I also need to tell you the story about "Gabe" sometime.

[drleo.livejournal.com]

Well, nepotism is hardly anything new... it's not what you know, it's who you know.

But yeah, it's amazing how folks in the IT field can fake knowing nothing. I've heard multiple stories about primadonnas who end up being totally incompetent, and end up having flunkies do the work for them. Is there some fear about firing these people for some reason that makes it wiser to hire four flunkies? I really don't understand.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Is there some fear about firing these people for some reason that makes it wiser to hire four flunkies?

I can think of a few reasons:

- The primadonna in question contributed to the early success of the company, and management mistakenly thinks they're still valuable.
- Legal reasons.
- Political reasons. If someone has had a number of positive performance reviews, you don't want to be the first one to give him a negative one, because then people will look at you as the source of the "problem".

[randomzen.livejournal.com]

Ya know, I was about to start going off that if you're a bullshit artist, that IS your skill and you should therefore qualify to get ahead in life. Or if you know people who get you in, you are acting with intelligence in that you are using all of your resources to achieve - same goes if your parents having money helped you out of the gates better than others.

The other point that I almost made was that blame should go on the pricks that hired these BS artists and the managers who let them continue. I recalled how when I hired Norma, and later regretted it, I blamed myself, not her, for the problems and failures she caused.

I won't make those points, however, because of one word I recalled; FISH. Instead, I'll pat you on the back because you are 100% correct. I guess my beef isn't that these fuckers get ahead, but that they fuck over others while there.

[tgeller.livejournal.com]

In the "production database", there were probably legal reasons why the manager shouldn't and couldn't provide the "real" data. I work in such an environment, where doing so would be a massive violation of federal law.

Having the "dummy data" == "production data"... wow. That's just dumb.

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

Then there's always the cow-orker. :p

[firedhusky.livejournal.com]

Is not the pork who is guilty of geting fat, but the one that feeds him.

Unfortunatelly is for the rest of the company to live with it.


FDH

[skiprudder.livejournal.com]

Then there's the fact that the builder of this site bothered enough to include pages and pages and pages of examples, and isn't that a bit sad too?

[giza.livejournal.com]

You mean The Daily Shark? Stories are published on a daily basis there. I read the site as therapy. :-P