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Admin
How curious. Mark didn't mention when this was previously posted. Anyway, most of the good comments were made in 2008.
Admin
I especially like the moderation feud taking up half the thread, and the ending offers on escorts in Shanghai.
Admin
Still a hilarious story. This is why ex-military shouldn't ever be allowed to manage people. They seem to have these crazy ideas and run things like a dictatorship instead of like human beings.
Admin
There's nothing wrong with "military-style" management, provided there are some similarities between military service and your company's field of business - if your company does some physical labour, where workers don't have to think too much, you may actually do get more done as you pour in more grunts. It may work for cleaners, construction workers, gardeners, etc. Whenever this doesn't apply (like in IT developement), using "military-style" management fails horribly. But I wouldn't condemn it completely.
Admin
Funny thing is, I actually took military leadership classes in Navy ROTC. They actually talk about the failures of the screaming martinet, and how to motivate technical staff when you are not technical. But then again, the Navy has been dealing with tech geeks since the first steam ships...
I swear this sounds like a system I helped deploy for Greyhound with a whole bunch of DHS money. Commodity cell phones, commodity GPS receivers, web tracking interface, went through a few hardware revisions? Based out of Texas?
Admin
This is beautiful. It epitomizes a lot of quirks one encounters even in more or less normal companies.
Admin
Oh but it's true As we went warp factor 2 And I met all of the crew Where's Captain Quirk?
Admin
Admin
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: We have had numerous reports of TDWTF staff slacking off because it's a holiday in some places. Holidays are no longer considered okay to just post some old article on front page again. People have to work on holidays, and this website should be no different. As such, from now on you will need to be at your computer, started up, and ready to go at exactly 0800 hours each and every morning Monday through Friday. This will give you plenty of time to come up with a carefully crafted, clever article to put on the front page. Those posting old articles in an attempt to have something up to take the rest of the day off on holidays WILL BE DEALT WITH ACCORDINGLY.
--The Kernel
Admin
I suppose this one doesn't count, though.
Admin
Thanks.
Admin
Military style management works for nearly all fields, assuming that the people being managed are trained to be disciplined, responsible, and pro-active. If they go in to work with a "it's just a job" attitude, then the bosses will become frustrated very quickly. The bosses, being bosses, will take perks away until they get what they want.
On the other hand, the Colonel's lack of understanding of the development life-cycle was a major problem. Obviously, a nobody can optimize a process if they don't know what they're optimizing.
Admin
Brillant!
Admin
I'd like to see agile military-style software development.
Admin
TRWTF is using a desk calculator while working in Excel.
Admin
Yeah, that reminded me of Paula too.
Admin
The whole notion that everyone in the military is marching everywhere they go is a product of Hollywood. It's not remotely that strict even in a combat arms unit, and it's far more laid back when you're actually deployed. I had the good fortune of having a lot of good NCOs and officers, and you'd find they would challenge you, and you'd work hard but have a great time.
Now, many NCOs and officers just plain suck as leaders for various reasons, the big one being that it's a fairly rare talent. And they may clamp down to cover up their own shortcomings as The Colonel did. But, the way the military is structured, if you suck at leading, you will be put in staff positions where you can do less harm.
The takeaway is this: If you're ever considering a prior service, check their resume. If all of the positions were staff, that means your candidate didn't have the chops to lead soldiers. Don't be surprised if they make a shitty manager.
Admin
The military manages schools, airports, intelligence gathering, fairly large databases, and every single post is basically a little city run by the military. The idea that it only works for physical labor is just stupid. Christ, the Navy manages nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines, and the Air Force can do mid-air refueling.
I found this crazy Internet thing and looked up the manual on military leadership, (that's the Army's, the Marines' isn't available digitally as crayon doesn't scan too well) so we don't need to speculate as to what it is.
Just flipping through the table of contents, you can see why it's inappropriate for a private firm. Chapter 4: Leader Character, and the next line: Army Values. It actually prescribes a whole system of morality. (That said, if you're looking for a free book on leadership, FM 6-22 has a lot of insight and is very readable.)
When I went into basic, as I had traveled abroad before, I recognized what I was experiencing: culture shock. The military is a separate culture, and the military's leadership structure is heavily influenced by everyone involved having a common culture and at least understanding a common set of values. You just don't do that in a private firm, so to translate military leadership to civilian leadership means you have to adjust to people working for you having widely disparate personal values.
Admin
HR have a set of company values, making developers listen or care about them is a different story.
Admin
Sounds like the Colonel got caught by the WISCA and WIMP issues.
As in, "Why isn't Sam coding anything?" and "Why isn't Mary programming?".
All credit to 'Code Complete'
Captcha - haero. The 'are you there' call of a toothless person down a well shaft.
Admin
Why do you need a desktop calculator when you have an excel spreadhseet>?
Admin
(No, I don't want to know how a calculator works.)
Admin
The Navy couldn't wipe its own ass if their grunts were permitted to seek other employment, and neither could the Air Force. Military management styles only work if retention isn't a priority at all, most often because the job market blows chunks.
That said, there are a lot of former military officers who learned enough about leadership to avoid the military style.
Admin
He should have waited until he had a new job in the bag before bringing the bag to his desk.
Admin
A calculator does what you want when you hit that = key.
Excel will force you to enter a formula first. Or if you use it's Autosum/Autoaverage... feature, it is guaranteed to pick the wrong cells. It will hide decimals. It will deceive you via coworkers who value presentation of their tables more than reusable values.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Coding the SAS way.
Admin
I write mil/aero software, where we have to dot all i's and cross all t's from the detailed specifications, created from the detailed user requirements. The new boss wants to bring in Agile development. Await an article describing the bloodbath!
Admin
Damn - and to think I wasted all that time debugging code! I should have just followed the Colonels lead and never made a mistake!
Admin
Don't know why but after reading this article, DJ Fresh - Gold Dust came into my mind :
"There's no place to hurt yourself The fight - I'm gonna get it Tallest running for me Baby, you're gonna regret it I can't understand why you can't free yourself, let it
Go, go, go, go
Got you in my Palm, now listen good, you can't escape it Bring you to ma world and hold you, see if you can take it Don't you be afraid, I know you're strong enough to make it
Go, go, go,
.........
You keep runnin' and you're runnin' And you're runnin' and you're runnin' away, away, away, boy You keep runnin' and you're runnin' And you're runnin' and you're runnin' away, away, away You keep runnin' and you're runnin' And you're runnin' and you're runnin' away, away, away, boy You keep runnin' and you're runnin' And you're runnin' and you're runnin' away
Go, go, go"
Admin
Thats why its called a Classic WTF. That means it has been posted before.
Admin
Anyone else read "gardeners" as "grenadiers?"
I also find it interesting when 12 staff quit on you in one maneuver, his response is to tighten the fist. Naturally, 8 more squeezed out.
I was at a company and I was the first to resign over some belt tightening (which was only the latest in a tense environment). Another coworker resigned a week later, and the belt was loosened a little bit. It was a fine company, even with the micromanaging owner-boss. Still, it was time for me to move on to better paying jobs.
Admin
It's called kick-yourself-in-the-***-ism.
Admin
Admin
Hmm. Here in the US we have a volunteer military, so retention certainly IS an issue. Yes, you have to sign up for a tour of duty, so you can't just quit whenever you like as in most private jobs. But a bad manager who drives people out will still causes staff losses, it just takes a little longer.
I'm sure that a bad job market makes it easier to retain people despite bad management, but that would be true of a private company just as much as it would be true of the military.
Admin
Hmm, so the Colonel's strategy resulted in a high casualty rate while failing to achieve the objective, and his response was ... to continue to pursue the same strategy? Doesn't seem like such a good military leader to me. What, did he serve in World War I?
Admin
So wait, the military HAS the technology to AVOID this sort of scream-until-it's-fixed approach, but they choose to NOT APPLY IT to the vast majority of their screamers?
Facepalm...
Admin
One must remember ONE thing about the Military:
The enlisted men are the ones doing the job. The officers are just along for the ride to direct the enlisted men.
Don't think it is relevant? Look at the TV series MASH, where the draftees (Doctors were drafted as Captains, so they might as well be 'enlisted') were the ones doing the work and those who thought it was a career, were the ones along for the ride.
The second "Hollywood" example is Kelly's Heroes. Give the grunts a goal, and THEY WILL DO IT.
Admin
I'm not sure that I would say that the guy responsible for the cleaning or cooking staff is doing "less harm" than the guy responsible for the pilots who fly drones and launch missiles at rescue workers. Unless you have a very narrow and skewed understanding of the word "harm."
Admin
"Look at the TV series MASH, where the draftees (Doctors were drafted as Captains, so they might as well be 'enlisted') were the ones doing the work and those who thought it was a career, were the ones along for the ride."
Get out of here! Hot Lips? Along for the ride? Hardly!
Admin
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Admin
what is this "Dicated but not read" nonsense?
Admin
This reminds me of a place I used to work. There was a video camera at the elevator, and someone watching people arrive in the morning and return after lunch. If you arrived at 8:01, or returned from lunch at 1:01, your manager got a call before you could get back to your desk.
My manager, of course, got a call when I arrived one day shortly after 9:00 am. His response was to inquire if they were also watching when I left at 7:00 am, after an all-night disaster recovery.
The whole incident escalated into a major war within the company management. A couple of weeks later, the camera was removed.
Admin
So you present a thesis: Enlisted men do all the work; officers do not. Then you give an example as evidence. Except your example in fact contradicts your thesis, and so you dismiss YOUR OWN EXAMPLE with a glib "they might as well be enlisted".
In any case, the two examples you give are not from the military. They are from Hollywood depictions of the military, which proves pretty much zero about the real military.
Next up: I can prove that there is life on other planets. I saw it with my very own eyes, on Star Trek.
Admin
Staff officers do not supervise the cleaning or cooking staff or anyone else. The definition of staff officer is that they have no supervisory responsibility -- other than maybe an assistant who is also a staff officer.
Admin
Means the memo was dictated by him, but he never read the dictation.
Admin
Ah, the good old Management Antipatterns. You know them when they hit you.
This one is called "Management by Perkele". A classic!
/s
Admin
Admin
In fact, the WTF is that none of the developers was smart enough to say "oh, without any code? yeah, Excel can do that" and then do it and let the boss be blissfully ignorant of the details.