Grumpy Old Man
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@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
@NTA said in Grumpy Old Man:
I'm a data guy at work. Variously referred to as "Information Systems Manager", "Data Lead", or as I prefer: data guy.
I'm not strictly an architect, but I do a lot of the planning in terms of getting stuff from A to B.
I'm not strictly a developer, but I write a lot of code to ensure that what arrives at B is fit for purpose.
I'm not support, but I am the only data guy witht the level of knowledge and capability in a specific area, so I end up helping a lot of people.
Is it DevOps? I dunno, I guess...Anyway, some fuckwit has decided that the dashboards my team built (using data I did all the work on) aren't awesome enough any more, and they want a single page with KPIs on it. Because taking the key summaries we provide and doing your fucking job is too hard - that's my theory.
They started with about a dozen KPIs (which was already too many IMHO) and it has now blown out to 30+ (which confirms my belief the silly fluffybunnies have no idea how to run their business).
We'd already decided to engage another team whose specialty is meant to be building webby shit for people to use, and they are meant to be in "discovery" phase. There are 2 data scientists - apparently - involved. They're half my age, and probably get paid more than me. I can deal with that as they have to deal with Sydney's real estate market.... but I digress.
I gave them access, showed them where everything is, and said "email me if you need anything and copy in the project manager for visibility".
Since then, one in particular has been shooting me chat messages "Hi Nick! Hey, quick question" and then proceeds to ask something not quick - TBF lack of knowledge probably makes it seem quick, so I'll let that pass.
But not the fucking chat.
The first time I replied in chat saying "hey could you please email me that request? Copy in the PM and your boss so we've got visibility". They agree and dutifully email.
But the chats keep coming. So now I just reply with email and copy their chat text in, cc'ing my boss, their boss, the PM, and the other data scientist.
End Grump.
No wait - one more grump - they said the term "AI" out loud to one of these dumb fucks who think 30+ KPIs is the way to go is now thinking it can solve their issues for them.
The fucking marketing team.
I can't believe this needs marketing. Sounds like an interesting workplace though.
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@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
I partially sympathise with you and partially don't because I hate business email cc-ing.
Totally get that - like when people start a Reply-All and people Reply-All saying "please stop using Reply-All"
I think about it more like this:
- Person "A" sends me a chat and I reply
- Person "A" sends someone else in my team a chat and they reply
- Their boss later asks for an update from Person "A" and it doesn't agree with what either of us said
- Finding that chat is fucking fucked, because chat.
So easier to put both bosses into the loop on both ends, IMHO.
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@NTA said in Grumpy Old Man:
@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
I partially sympathise with you and partially don't because I hate business email cc-ing.
Totally get that - like when people start a Reply-All and people Reply-All saying "please stop using Reply-All"
I think about it more like this:
- Person "A" sends me a chat and I reply
- Person "A" sends someone else in my team a chat and they reply
- Their boss later asks for an update from Person "A" and it doesn't agree with what either of us said
- Finding that chat is fucking fucked, because chat.
So easier to put both bosses into the loop on both ends, IMHO.
I can understand that, I just hate getting included in email chains. With my staff I tell them not to bother, if there's an issue I'll just read their email chain. It's especially bad when you have nimrod fretty bosses who have a freak out when things aren't going 100% perfectly, get involved and it becomes worse.
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@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
30+ KPIs sounds idiotic though, even if I have no understanding of what your role is. We went through a period in my last job of agreeing on KPIs which just meant staff had to come up with KPIs. I made my team stick to 5 each. The fucking marketing team seem to be kindred spirits of your lot and came back with way more.
These are KPIs for the business i.e. benchmarks for operations, not individual persons.
Your point stands tho: to understand why your business is fucked, you need to ask about three questions:
- How much are we spending?
- Is it above budget?
- If so, what can we do to change that?
If you need more than about half a dozen things to explain part 3, you're fucked.
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@NTA said in Grumpy Old Man:
@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
30+ KPIs sounds idiotic though, even if I have no understanding of what your role is. We went through a period in my last job of agreeing on KPIs which just meant staff had to come up with KPIs. I made my team stick to 5 each. The fucking marketing team seem to be kindred spirits of your lot and came back with way more.
These are KPIs for the business i.e. benchmarks for operations, not individual persons.
Your point stands tho: to understand why your business is fucked, you need to ask about three questions:
- How much are we spending?
- Is it above budget?
- If so, what can we do to change that?
If you need more than about half a dozen things to explain part 3, you're fucked.
I would be looking at prioritizing use cases that increase sales or reallocate spends to help increase sales. If ROI is achieved quickly then you've generally increased your budget anyway.
Would I use DS's to create descriptive KPIs?, no its like bringing a light saber to a fist fight. I would use them though to help answer the "why are we shit? and what is a course corrective path out of the shit? based on data.And yes copy the bosses, nothing worse than a one sided chat getting escalated without visibility of what really happened.
and yes fucking marketing will spend a fortune without really knowing how to take action because all their marketing friends do it
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@NTA said in Grumpy Old Man:
TBH she's cute, but she's got no fucking idea.
At this time of life that's a double win for you...
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@NTA said in Grumpy Old Man:
@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
30+ KPIs sounds idiotic though, even if I have no understanding of what your role is. We went through a period in my last job of agreeing on KPIs which just meant staff had to come up with KPIs. I made my team stick to 5 each. The fucking marketing team seem to be kindred spirits of your lot and came back with way more.
These are KPIs for the business i.e. benchmarks for operations, not individual persons.
Your point stands tho: to understand why your business is fucked, you need to ask about three questions:
- How much are we spending?
- Is it above budget?
- If so, what can we do to change that?
If you need more than about half a dozen things to explain part 3, you're fucked.
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@NTA said in Grumpy Old Man:
@Nepia said in Grumpy Old Man:
I partially sympathise with you and partially don't because I hate business email cc-ing.
Totally get that - like when people start a Reply-All and people Reply-All saying "please stop using Reply-All"
I think about it more like this:
- Person "A" sends me a chat and I reply
- Person "A" sends someone else in my team a chat and they reply
- Their boss later asks for an update from Person "A" and it doesn't agree with what either of us said
- Finding that chat is fucking fucked, because chat.
So easier to put both bosses into the loop on both ends, IMHO.
Looks like you need to implement a Six Sigma programme - start with improving email utilisation.
