jueves, 21 de octubre de 2010
sábado, 2 de octubre de 2010
I'll have to change this blog title to how to get the hell outta here.
Welcome back boys and girls. I've been fired in what we Spaniards call an "ERE" (wikipedia is your friend).
But I cannot ressit to make some comments about the new magnific piece of labor legislation the Spanish Goverment passed. Basically from having an state backed severage package, we pass to just have some money if we get fired for whatever reason.
Let me say: this will make problems to employers and employees. And the Spanish economy. I suggest you take a look at the new developments. They are fun.
There are real known damages to the worker rights, and unforeesen damages to employers.
Apparently nobody thougth that since a worker can be fired with almost no reason (and still making what we make in Spain, I'd have not problem if I were making 60.000/year) workers can be fired almost "freely" unless they are in an union and so the union takes care of the costs of legally showing that the employee was actually fired for no actual reason and so the employer has to take him/her back in payroll.
I think this is the most stupid reform that I have seen in a long time. Probably it was set up by some intern in the "The Economist" thingking that liberal and free markets are great for the "My-ass-hitchess" syndrome and anything else in the world.
Countries are actully so different one from each other...
Spain will suffer from this reform because it is not a "FREE MARKET" to start with. If you had an environment of several opposing companies fighting with each other for survival... this may have worked even in Spain. But that is not the case. Productivity is a problem in Spain and workers have some say into it (long lunches, alcohol consuption during working hours, ...) and management has a lot more to say into it.
There are lots of ways to fire people in Spain and even with what I get for being fired, that is less than what they pay in England, USA, France, Finland.... as a normal salary.
I rather have free firing but get paid twice what I make now each month. Wait,... no twice what I make... well, then there's no deal.
But I cannot ressit to make some comments about the new magnific piece of labor legislation the Spanish Goverment passed. Basically from having an state backed severage package, we pass to just have some money if we get fired for whatever reason.
Let me say: this will make problems to employers and employees. And the Spanish economy. I suggest you take a look at the new developments. They are fun.
There are real known damages to the worker rights, and unforeesen damages to employers.
Apparently nobody thougth that since a worker can be fired with almost no reason (and still making what we make in Spain, I'd have not problem if I were making 60.000/year) workers can be fired almost "freely" unless they are in an union and so the union takes care of the costs of legally showing that the employee was actually fired for no actual reason and so the employer has to take him/her back in payroll.
I think this is the most stupid reform that I have seen in a long time. Probably it was set up by some intern in the "The Economist" thingking that liberal and free markets are great for the "My-ass-hitchess" syndrome and anything else in the world.
Countries are actully so different one from each other...
Spain will suffer from this reform because it is not a "FREE MARKET" to start with. If you had an environment of several opposing companies fighting with each other for survival... this may have worked even in Spain. But that is not the case. Productivity is a problem in Spain and workers have some say into it (long lunches, alcohol consuption during working hours, ...) and management has a lot more to say into it.
There are lots of ways to fire people in Spain and even with what I get for being fired, that is less than what they pay in England, USA, France, Finland.... as a normal salary.
I rather have free firing but get paid twice what I make now each month. Wait,... no twice what I make... well, then there's no deal.
jueves, 11 de febrero de 2010
The Economist, The Financial Times, subhiring and Spain.
Hello, I don't write too much in here, but to those of you who happen to drop by, be advised that I take this blog more like a diary for myself than anything else. But I'm happy if anyone reads it and enjoys himself.
Going into the topic, I', starting to freak out here because I'll get screwed up in my salary and my unemployment benefits. Granted, Spain has problems. Actually it has had problems for 6 centuries now. But I don't wanna pay for them.
It has been said by those newspapaers I have cited in the title that it's neccesary to do a reform in the Spanish labor market. I'm not so sure about it. I think that will things even worse. And the cause is the process know as "subhiring".
"Subhiring" is something alike contracting or consulting, but it goes in all trades. What it really boils down to is to hire company to use an employee. The employee belongs to "his/her" company but actually works for the one that "subhires"him/her. The problem is that for almost any field in Spain, being that construction, programming, or customer care, almost any big company does it. Which means that in any given market, what you have is really X companies that subhire the job to Y companies. Customers pay an amount for a service to those companies, they subhire the work, and that amount has to be slashed between the company the custormer pays to and the chain of companies that subhire the work to each other till it gets to the person/employee that actually performs the work.
I'm a programmer, instead of making 60000 euros, I make 30000, my company gets 30000 from the company I really work for and pays 10000 to the state. Management in my company gets their pay, and my company gets its benefits by slashing my wage so that they make more money. Result, I should be making 50000 euros, but I make 30000 and some guys are making 120000, 90000, and 60000 just for being in my company and being my "superiors". Before anyone starts nagging me... . I have worked for 3-4 years for the same client each time with a period of 1 month between projects, so I have not created much management costs.
So for the Financial Times and The Economist, I'm actually making 60000 euros becuase you compute productivity (more or less) by counting how much my work produces and substracting how much it costs. So, it looks like salaries in Spain are high because producing anything is expensive. But salaries are not high, though producing anything is expensive because there are a lot of people in between my work and what I make that get a slice of the pie.
The real problem is that if I work for one company or even consult for one company and another pays, that's OK. Somone gets some slices of the pie for coordinating my job, and for doing the legwork of the project. But subhiring in customer care, just as an example... . Somebody works for a company that works actually for Prisa as a customer care employee. Prisa instead of hiring her directly and paying her, "subhires" her from her company, pays her company, she does all the work at Prisa building and offices and has Prisa bosses, but gets paid what Prisa paid less what her company gets.
That company wants benefits also. So they lower her salary whenever things are tough.
At the end you get high labor costs but really low salaries because there are lots of persons (all the people in the chain of subhiring companies) that get their part.
One can argue, that those companies actually have expenses by managing the contrating and job hunting. Well, nothing that cannot be solved by an ad in the "Job Offerings" section of a newspaper or the Internet. Or a contracting agency. My guess is that "subhiring" is far more expensive than the agency kind of deal. As a matter of fact, the number one meassure that would surely change the face of the Spanish economy would be to actually and for good forbide the subhiring practice.
Going into the topic, I', starting to freak out here because I'll get screwed up in my salary and my unemployment benefits. Granted, Spain has problems. Actually it has had problems for 6 centuries now. But I don't wanna pay for them.
It has been said by those newspapaers I have cited in the title that it's neccesary to do a reform in the Spanish labor market. I'm not so sure about it. I think that will things even worse. And the cause is the process know as "subhiring".
"Subhiring" is something alike contracting or consulting, but it goes in all trades. What it really boils down to is to hire company to use an employee. The employee belongs to "his/her" company but actually works for the one that "subhires"him/her. The problem is that for almost any field in Spain, being that construction, programming, or customer care, almost any big company does it. Which means that in any given market, what you have is really X companies that subhire the job to Y companies. Customers pay an amount for a service to those companies, they subhire the work, and that amount has to be slashed between the company the custormer pays to and the chain of companies that subhire the work to each other till it gets to the person/employee that actually performs the work.
I'm a programmer, instead of making 60000 euros, I make 30000, my company gets 30000 from the company I really work for and pays 10000 to the state. Management in my company gets their pay, and my company gets its benefits by slashing my wage so that they make more money. Result, I should be making 50000 euros, but I make 30000 and some guys are making 120000, 90000, and 60000 just for being in my company and being my "superiors". Before anyone starts nagging me... . I have worked for 3-4 years for the same client each time with a period of 1 month between projects, so I have not created much management costs.
So for the Financial Times and The Economist, I'm actually making 60000 euros becuase you compute productivity (more or less) by counting how much my work produces and substracting how much it costs. So, it looks like salaries in Spain are high because producing anything is expensive. But salaries are not high, though producing anything is expensive because there are a lot of people in between my work and what I make that get a slice of the pie.
The real problem is that if I work for one company or even consult for one company and another pays, that's OK. Somone gets some slices of the pie for coordinating my job, and for doing the legwork of the project. But subhiring in customer care, just as an example... . Somebody works for a company that works actually for Prisa as a customer care employee. Prisa instead of hiring her directly and paying her, "subhires" her from her company, pays her company, she does all the work at Prisa building and offices and has Prisa bosses, but gets paid what Prisa paid less what her company gets.
That company wants benefits also. So they lower her salary whenever things are tough.
At the end you get high labor costs but really low salaries because there are lots of persons (all the people in the chain of subhiring companies) that get their part.
One can argue, that those companies actually have expenses by managing the contrating and job hunting. Well, nothing that cannot be solved by an ad in the "Job Offerings" section of a newspaper or the Internet. Or a contracting agency. My guess is that "subhiring" is far more expensive than the agency kind of deal. As a matter of fact, the number one meassure that would surely change the face of the Spanish economy would be to actually and for good forbide the subhiring practice.
martes, 17 de febrero de 2009
How to deal with Spanish Management
Hello and welcome to my Blog: How to deal with Spanish Management
I'm writing this blog as a help, if you wish, to european bussiness people trying to do business in Spain or who have been put in charge of some operations in Spain. This is not a paper and I'm not trying to make a bullet-proof argumentation of my points. I just wanna have fun, tell you some stories, and maybe you'll be ready do dodge some problems at work.
To start with, if you want to know how things work in Spain you should read the novels of "Captain Alatriste", by Arturo Perez Reverte. They may deal with the XVII Spain, but if you change the nobles for managers and the lay-people for workers, you'll have a peek at how working relationships are nowadays in Spain. If you wanna know how the IT market works, read the Fuckowski novel. You can find it in the WEB, and keep in mind that it's not an exaggeration. Also, read the Dilbert strips. I'm not kidding. That may be a satiric view of Corporate America, but the boneheadeness and stupidity can be seen in Spanish companies most of the time.
To put things into perspective, there are some words that we don't have in Spanish. We don't have the words: accountability, compromise, discuss (for us it means arguing), trade-off (we have it, but it's a slang term and is not used in bussines speak), leadership, and cheat (we have expressions that means the same, but are slang and reffer just to academic cheating, and in any case is not a negative action). We do have proactive and synergy, but my advise to you is to cut head and put a stick through the hearth of anyone saying those words before their fangs start to grow and they eyes turn red. Just kidding, but, as I'll tell you later, those are the signs of stupidity and uselessness over here. Remember the novel 1984, that cannot be named it doesn't exist.
Also, keep in mind that stupidity and uselessness is synergetic by nature. :) I mean that two stupid are worse than one because they will try to help each other, and three will create a network.
By no means what I say can be interpreted as "all of the managers in Spain do this". But more like, if in a normal country (USA, England, Finland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, .... you get the idea) useless managers are a 10%, in Spain they are maybe 40%. But since they are really visible and harmful (because of their synergistic nature) they "feel" like an 80%. That's what I mean.
At the end I'll give some examples, some I experienced them, and some other you can read about them in the news, others I heard people personal accounts.
Rules:
1. Expect to be cheated by your managers.
Management is about power and being able to throw trash and blame (not resposability) down the ladder. So, managers resent controls over them because they will percive them as a clear sign that you don't trust them. Yes, in a normal society there are controls over what people do (judicial systems, legal systems, police), and we have them in Spain. Since management is about power and works like nobility in the middle ages (well, more or less, I'm not writing a sociology paper here) they don't like to be accounted for anything. In Spanish companies don't have definite accountability principles because the concept is just not known.
Also, since managers have power, they will blame their mistakes on the workers. So, they will cheat you because they will not tell you what the problem is and will try to just cover their butts.
This means that they will cheat in economic documents or anything they need to do, to cover their butts, by using their power and resources to accomplish the goal: to be kept at their post and go up the ladder.
"How can this be?", you can ask yourself, "Surely a company compiting in a market cannot afford to have these kind of behavior. They will be out of bussines sooner or later." You are right and wrong. Markets is Spain are not about competition. I'm not economist, but I can tell you this: if you look for a product or service, you'll find more or less the same prices and the same customer care (none). It's called keeping the prices. There are no companies going out of bussiness in Spain, but for the ones that the whole market blows up. This means that companies don't need to be a meritocracy. "But what if a company comes with a better product or service at lower costs?", I don't know, but I haven't seen that in the markets that I have dealings with as a private citizen: food, computers, Internet and phone services. I guess that banks (which are the ones funding everything) don't want one company controlling one market so they divide funding and kill anyone trying to win the table. Also, there is not Mafia here as far as I know, but I would not be surprised if people with good ideas and dynamic companies who are not part of the status quo, just have more than financial problems.
Also, they will resent deeply the creating and deployment of policies, and control mechanisms. That will be interpreted as : "You don't trust me." That will be an issue later, bacause they will try to get revenge and your will have to deal with those problems. I'm not giving a solution, I'm not a MBA, I'm an engineer. There is a trade-off here. Don't make them angry, but you gotta control them.
2. Spain is NOT a meritocracy.
And companies are not either. Since markets are not dynamic, there is no need to put the best people in management positions. There are some small places in some markets or activities that NEED to work. Of course, air traffic works, phone lines work, internet works. But they are usually more expensive than their counterparts in other countries and methodologies, procedures and policies far more defective. This has a weird consequence, many very intelligent and competent people are in those areas. And I've know some of them and they are beast at their jobs. They work their asses and keep things running smoothly.
For the most part, anyway, companies are not meritocracies. The decision to make you manager is not based in your capabilities or your academic background or the quality of your work. Networking is the main part. We have a word for networking here :"plug". But it really means that you know someone that gives you something or promotes you but it also implies that you didn't deserve it. Since markets are not competitive, upper managers can afford to promote people that owns to them and have personal ties. It's better to be funny at the coffee machine with you manager than be at your desk solving problems.
Solving problems is expected. But I don't mean it that way. Of course, you are paid to solve problems too. Everybody does in some way. What I mean is that people working for a manager are expected to do his/her job. Remember the movie "Office Space" where a manager gets asked about what he does and turns out that he took the specifications from the client and gave them to the programmers, only that his secretary actually did it? That's the usual thing.
Also, raising issues mean making problems. Usually managers will expect no issues raised, that means work for them. The problem, workers will try to avoid raising issues till the issue explodes. Then it comes who takes the BLAME (not responsibility, that's the manager's area), and things will be solved some way or other: lying to costumers, delays on the delivery, hiring consultants to do the job, firing of workers, reorganize the company... . Whatever you may see in a Dilbert strip.
3. Expect to see a lot of papers moved around.
This ties up with the two last rules. Since managers expect their jobs done for them, they need to be occupied. Then we have ceremony. Expect management to be chaotic, that way they have something to do. Even if it's going to talk to other managers and having meetings about issues that an email would do.
With this rule, I don't mean lots of things get written down. That would be a good thing. I mean "movement", and most of the time the same papers are "moved". What brings me to a another rule.
4. The word for solving is "moving".
If you ask one of your managers about an issue that you brought up, he or she will tell you he or she is "moving it". Here the choice of word is really meaningful. They don't say "I'm solving it" or "I'm on it". What the word means is that the issues has been moved to another person for solution. It implies:
-that the manager is not responsible for the solution of the issue, even if you made it perfectly clear that you need that
solved ASAP.
-that someone else is getting the blame in case the issue is not solved.
-that the manager is telling you someway that it's not in his ir her hand to solve it because there is something at miss,
but won't raise an issue cause that would make him or her look like a trouble maker.
5. Expect the "blame-game".
Responsibility does not exist in Spanish organizations. This is because the concept of accountability doesn't exist in the language. So there are never quality control mechanism or policies put in place. That way managers can have very unsubstantial job responsibilities and not being held accountable for anything. The down side is that when things go wrong, some managers can get the blame even for stuff that they could not control or were not suppoused to control.
Also, it's really funny (if your money is not in the line) to sit in a forensic meeting for a failed project or activity and see how the blame goes around. This added to the principle of "How you dare to question my decisions?" and "That is not the data that we have." can give you many fun moments to remember. Expect lots of arguing, lots. Spanish think that arguing is OK as long as you don't admit anything, you can shout louder than the other guy, and you "win" the arguing. At the end is tiring to sit in a meeting for hours with people bending the rules of logic and not admitting factual data so that they don't look bad. If even if you want to fire them all, literally, restraint yourself. That would lead to lots of legal problems.
6. Murphy does not exist in Spain.
A popular phrase in Spanish: "Well... That's not gonna happen." This is said when anyone points out some problem with anything. I've seen things that "are not gonna happen", happening all the time. So, be very careful with your quality teams, they will BS about practices and ISOs and certifications, and screw things up big time.
There is another sentence said repeatedly: "If you're gonna go like that, then you won't get out of your home." This means that if you're going to point out everything that can go wrong, then you should just stay at home because there are many dangers outside. The reasoning is weird, to say the least. Specially if you think what the Hell a bug in a 911 (112 over here) controlling system or a air-traffic control system, has to do with no getting out of your house.
Last, but no least, we have the winner sentence: "You don't have balls." or "You just have to throw balls to it". Balls meaning testicles. What testicles have to do with problem-solving is something that has been eluding me for years. I thougth that whe you have a problem, you analyze it, design a solution, build the solution, test it, and if it doesn't work, you go back to the drawing table. Not in Spain, you have to throw your testicles at the problem. Just make sure the problem doesn't involve chain-saws, sharp objects, or hot objects, and that you keep your testicles attached to your body.
Be careful, with this one. Part of the others recommendations I gave you can happen in 60-70% of the time, this one is universal. A Spaniard confronted with a flaw in a design, process, or system will resort to this at least once.
7. Spanish organizations are chaotic.
If you put together points 3, 4, 5 and 6 you get organizations with chaos inside. No procedures are followed, no control mechanisms are in place (and they are to be cheated), management resents controls over them, there are no central repositories of needed information. This last one is somehow what really gets your attention at the beginning. Managers tend not to use repositories of information, nor mechanism of communication. They like to "talk with John about ...". But they don't send an email to have something hard to refer to. So, time gets wasted over "trying to find John", "can we talk now?" ... . And then going back to the same topics or issues for days. Since managers don't have really much to do sometimes, that situation is OK, until they have some definite task to accomplish. Then chaos occurs.
This has a very practical implication in my field. There are no specifications for software systems. Not only that, but even the specifications can change in ways and moments that can have very disastrous consequences. Systems can be finished, tested and ready for deployment and the manager responsible can come up and say:
-"What JDK are you guys using?"
-"The one we told you about."
-"That's not the one they have at the deployment site."
-"Well, we told you what we were using and you gave the OK."
-"I have an email SOMEPLACE that says it's not the JDK they are using."
At this moment the manager expects the team to just make magic happen and fix it up before delivery. There are no expectations about having the responsibility of the error or excuse with a "I'm sorry, it won't happen again". He or she will tell the team to fix it and walk away. At most, he or she will make excuses about the email system or his/her workload.
This point is not valid when the manager's ass is in the line. Then he/she will act according to his/her intelligence and common sense. This is not to say that they will accomplish anything. Just that they will act as if he/she needs the workers to get the job done not making problems and getting out of the way as an obstacle. Or they can get nervous and resort to start bothering the team all the time with "Is it done yet?" without walking further than 2 steps away, and getting so much in the way of he solution that he or she is just producing the rope to hang himself/herself. Here the problem of organizations not being a meritocracy whatsoever is more evident.
Many times there are not even version control systems in place. That means total chaos and delivery problems in softare projects. A version control system is a program that keeps versions of the code of another program. I write code that accomplish 1 of 10 tasks, then I save a version. I continue programming. When I get another task done, I save another version. If I test the program when it gets 5 tasks done and figure out that the way I have programmed how to get one of the tasks means that another doesn't get done because my design has a flaw or my assumptions were wrong or the specifications were not clear, then I go back to one of the versions that I have and start again. Why? Because the program just doesn't work. Think of it as writing a book, a bad chapter can make the entire book bad. If I don't have a version control system I would have a program (or more realistically several programs) with hundreds of lines that really does something wrong though I don't know what, and that I don't know what parts to take out to make it work again.
Take my work for it, software developers in civilized countries use version control systems so they can deliver in time and not have to be redoing the same thing over and over again. Not in Spain, it is not strange to see software shops that don't use version control systems at all. People save their stuff in directories and hope things work and spend time just adding and removing and comparing files by hand. But you know, "you just need to throw balls to it".Sometimes version control systems are seen as a way of not doing your job, or not having balls, or not wanting to work hard enough.
Now about documentation, I have seen some projects, but not many where the actual documents of what I was supposed to do was not what I was supposed to do. Plainly stated, I got documents that I was not suppoused to follow, but no one told me so, and my training taught me that software specifications are sacred. Just follow them. I was supposed to phone my boss and start asking what I was supposed to do even though I had the specifications right in front of me. I said: "Sorry, but I'm confused. That's not what the specifications say." "Well, I'm telling you now what you need to do." "Right, but why haven't you stated that in the documents?" "Well, you know... documents!" "I see, can you send me an email with this?" "No, I'm telling you." "Right, I'll write it down, send you an email and you can confirm then." "No, I'm telling you now, and you have to do with what I'm telling you." At that point I was so puzzled that even didn't know if I was suppoused to write the stuff down. I felt like an spy or something in a James Bond movie: "This message will get destroyed in 10 seconds."
TRUE ACCOUNTS.
Now I'll tell you about several illustrative and funny stories that I've seen by myself or have heard of. I'll ommit names cause I have a non-disclosure agreement.
"DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT"
I was sent with a team to a foreign country far much advanced that Spain. I was the only one who had study in the US and could follow a techinal discussion about programming. I dived into the stuff that I was assigned to learn from the orginal programmers, how they worked, the technology they used, how they compiled and how they tested, how the whole process was structured and details about all of that. I was the only one that had a 2 page document about how the test bed system was installed and how the compiling scripts worked. When I came back I was assigned to another boss. I told him I had the info about all of those issues that I was sure they would love to hear about because it would take months to solve them with no prior knowledge. The answer was: "Don't worry about it." I was amazed and pressed the issue. I was told in a no nice way to mind my own business that was from that point on whatever taks he assigned me to do. I tried to talk to other people in the team that went to that country with me and that had told me to ask about those issues. They told me not to worry about it, the testing team would take care of that. It took them 3 months to take care of it, but I was not asked even one time about how the stuff worked.
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND ENGLISH"
Once upon a time, there was a Finnish programmer that knew about a system. The guy was flown to Madrid to be questioned about his system that has been taken from him and to be fired right after the questioning ended. Fortunately, he was to be flown again to Finland after that. The questioning went OK and the guy was a very good professional. The problem was that the last day of questioning was to end at 3 o'clock and he would be out of the job by them. So the guy very polite says to two managers and 5 persons: "You know that my job ends at 3. Ask the last questions because you have 7 more minutes." It was quite clear that nobody but one of the programmers understood his words, so this programmer went on in translating. Fear jumped to the face of the managers who insisted on him in staying further. The Finnish guy said that he would love to if they would pay him and get him another flight later in the afternoon. The two managers said (through the programmer) that it would be enough "just 5 more minutes". The conversation went on between the Finnish guy and the programmer about if they thought that he was stupid and that how could they think he would be missing his flight home just because they needed him and that he was fired anyway. When it was clear that the Finnish guy was taking his backpack to leave, the managers asked him (through the programmer) if he had an email or a phone number where they could reach him for further questions. There was more conversation between the programmer and the Finnish guy about the intelligence level of the two managers and whether they had some problem understanding the concept of "being fired" against "having a job". At the end he told the managers that he was moving to Iceland where there were no phones and no internet connections. And he turned and left, it was 3:10.
"THE LAW FIRM"
Stories are told about a law firm that had only a network of Windows computers and that used to leave important documents in shared folders for every one in the LAN to see. No document version control system. No security in the LAN. No backup of any documents. Story has that the people at the firm spent many nights rewriting documents that had been lost in the nework and that nobody knew where they were.
"HEADLESS CHICKENS"
There was project in a very known international consulting company. The project was critical for the client. It was so important that 2 bosses had been in and out of the project. A hearth attack and a chest pain took them out. And the current one was in the hospital being cehcked for another hearth attack he just had. When asked one of the people who was supporting that team but didn't work for that big cunsulting company, he answered: "Well I'm not suprised. They work like a bunch of headless chickens running all around and accomplish nothing. I tried to organize them, but since I'm not the manager I cannot do much. Also, they would not listen."
"MEETING"
An Ericson consultant was threaten to be removed as the liason to a very big client because he brought to the meetings a task list and a schedule for the meeting. Also, he tried to write down the conclussions they got to, and tried to control the time so it was productive. The client manager argued that he was "too anxious, and either to take it easy at the meetings or he would ask for another liason." The meetings went on for hours while the manager told them about his weekend, brought up some technical issues, and diver the conversation endessly to personal matters. The consultant was getting paid by the time spent at the meetings.
I'm writing this blog as a help, if you wish, to european bussiness people trying to do business in Spain or who have been put in charge of some operations in Spain. This is not a paper and I'm not trying to make a bullet-proof argumentation of my points. I just wanna have fun, tell you some stories, and maybe you'll be ready do dodge some problems at work.
To start with, if you want to know how things work in Spain you should read the novels of "Captain Alatriste", by Arturo Perez Reverte. They may deal with the XVII Spain, but if you change the nobles for managers and the lay-people for workers, you'll have a peek at how working relationships are nowadays in Spain. If you wanna know how the IT market works, read the Fuckowski novel. You can find it in the WEB, and keep in mind that it's not an exaggeration. Also, read the Dilbert strips. I'm not kidding. That may be a satiric view of Corporate America, but the boneheadeness and stupidity can be seen in Spanish companies most of the time.
To put things into perspective, there are some words that we don't have in Spanish. We don't have the words: accountability, compromise, discuss (for us it means arguing), trade-off (we have it, but it's a slang term and is not used in bussines speak), leadership, and cheat (we have expressions that means the same, but are slang and reffer just to academic cheating, and in any case is not a negative action). We do have proactive and synergy, but my advise to you is to cut head and put a stick through the hearth of anyone saying those words before their fangs start to grow and they eyes turn red. Just kidding, but, as I'll tell you later, those are the signs of stupidity and uselessness over here. Remember the novel 1984, that cannot be named it doesn't exist.
Also, keep in mind that stupidity and uselessness is synergetic by nature. :) I mean that two stupid are worse than one because they will try to help each other, and three will create a network.
By no means what I say can be interpreted as "all of the managers in Spain do this". But more like, if in a normal country (USA, England, Finland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, .... you get the idea) useless managers are a 10%, in Spain they are maybe 40%. But since they are really visible and harmful (because of their synergistic nature) they "feel" like an 80%. That's what I mean.
At the end I'll give some examples, some I experienced them, and some other you can read about them in the news, others I heard people personal accounts.
Rules:
1. Expect to be cheated by your managers.
Management is about power and being able to throw trash and blame (not resposability) down the ladder. So, managers resent controls over them because they will percive them as a clear sign that you don't trust them. Yes, in a normal society there are controls over what people do (judicial systems, legal systems, police), and we have them in Spain. Since management is about power and works like nobility in the middle ages (well, more or less, I'm not writing a sociology paper here) they don't like to be accounted for anything. In Spanish companies don't have definite accountability principles because the concept is just not known.
Also, since managers have power, they will blame their mistakes on the workers. So, they will cheat you because they will not tell you what the problem is and will try to just cover their butts.
This means that they will cheat in economic documents or anything they need to do, to cover their butts, by using their power and resources to accomplish the goal: to be kept at their post and go up the ladder.
"How can this be?", you can ask yourself, "Surely a company compiting in a market cannot afford to have these kind of behavior. They will be out of bussines sooner or later." You are right and wrong. Markets is Spain are not about competition. I'm not economist, but I can tell you this: if you look for a product or service, you'll find more or less the same prices and the same customer care (none). It's called keeping the prices. There are no companies going out of bussiness in Spain, but for the ones that the whole market blows up. This means that companies don't need to be a meritocracy. "But what if a company comes with a better product or service at lower costs?", I don't know, but I haven't seen that in the markets that I have dealings with as a private citizen: food, computers, Internet and phone services. I guess that banks (which are the ones funding everything) don't want one company controlling one market so they divide funding and kill anyone trying to win the table. Also, there is not Mafia here as far as I know, but I would not be surprised if people with good ideas and dynamic companies who are not part of the status quo, just have more than financial problems.
Also, they will resent deeply the creating and deployment of policies, and control mechanisms. That will be interpreted as : "You don't trust me." That will be an issue later, bacause they will try to get revenge and your will have to deal with those problems. I'm not giving a solution, I'm not a MBA, I'm an engineer. There is a trade-off here. Don't make them angry, but you gotta control them.
2. Spain is NOT a meritocracy.
And companies are not either. Since markets are not dynamic, there is no need to put the best people in management positions. There are some small places in some markets or activities that NEED to work. Of course, air traffic works, phone lines work, internet works. But they are usually more expensive than their counterparts in other countries and methodologies, procedures and policies far more defective. This has a weird consequence, many very intelligent and competent people are in those areas. And I've know some of them and they are beast at their jobs. They work their asses and keep things running smoothly.
For the most part, anyway, companies are not meritocracies. The decision to make you manager is not based in your capabilities or your academic background or the quality of your work. Networking is the main part. We have a word for networking here :"plug". But it really means that you know someone that gives you something or promotes you but it also implies that you didn't deserve it. Since markets are not competitive, upper managers can afford to promote people that owns to them and have personal ties. It's better to be funny at the coffee machine with you manager than be at your desk solving problems.
Solving problems is expected. But I don't mean it that way. Of course, you are paid to solve problems too. Everybody does in some way. What I mean is that people working for a manager are expected to do his/her job. Remember the movie "Office Space" where a manager gets asked about what he does and turns out that he took the specifications from the client and gave them to the programmers, only that his secretary actually did it? That's the usual thing.
Also, raising issues mean making problems. Usually managers will expect no issues raised, that means work for them. The problem, workers will try to avoid raising issues till the issue explodes. Then it comes who takes the BLAME (not responsibility, that's the manager's area), and things will be solved some way or other: lying to costumers, delays on the delivery, hiring consultants to do the job, firing of workers, reorganize the company... . Whatever you may see in a Dilbert strip.
3. Expect to see a lot of papers moved around.
This ties up with the two last rules. Since managers expect their jobs done for them, they need to be occupied. Then we have ceremony. Expect management to be chaotic, that way they have something to do. Even if it's going to talk to other managers and having meetings about issues that an email would do.
With this rule, I don't mean lots of things get written down. That would be a good thing. I mean "movement", and most of the time the same papers are "moved". What brings me to a another rule.
4. The word for solving is "moving".
If you ask one of your managers about an issue that you brought up, he or she will tell you he or she is "moving it". Here the choice of word is really meaningful. They don't say "I'm solving it" or "I'm on it". What the word means is that the issues has been moved to another person for solution. It implies:
-that the manager is not responsible for the solution of the issue, even if you made it perfectly clear that you need that
solved ASAP.
-that someone else is getting the blame in case the issue is not solved.
-that the manager is telling you someway that it's not in his ir her hand to solve it because there is something at miss,
but won't raise an issue cause that would make him or her look like a trouble maker.
5. Expect the "blame-game".
Responsibility does not exist in Spanish organizations. This is because the concept of accountability doesn't exist in the language. So there are never quality control mechanism or policies put in place. That way managers can have very unsubstantial job responsibilities and not being held accountable for anything. The down side is that when things go wrong, some managers can get the blame even for stuff that they could not control or were not suppoused to control.
Also, it's really funny (if your money is not in the line) to sit in a forensic meeting for a failed project or activity and see how the blame goes around. This added to the principle of "How you dare to question my decisions?" and "That is not the data that we have." can give you many fun moments to remember. Expect lots of arguing, lots. Spanish think that arguing is OK as long as you don't admit anything, you can shout louder than the other guy, and you "win" the arguing. At the end is tiring to sit in a meeting for hours with people bending the rules of logic and not admitting factual data so that they don't look bad. If even if you want to fire them all, literally, restraint yourself. That would lead to lots of legal problems.
6. Murphy does not exist in Spain.
A popular phrase in Spanish: "Well... That's not gonna happen." This is said when anyone points out some problem with anything. I've seen things that "are not gonna happen", happening all the time. So, be very careful with your quality teams, they will BS about practices and ISOs and certifications, and screw things up big time.
There is another sentence said repeatedly: "If you're gonna go like that, then you won't get out of your home." This means that if you're going to point out everything that can go wrong, then you should just stay at home because there are many dangers outside. The reasoning is weird, to say the least. Specially if you think what the Hell a bug in a 911 (112 over here) controlling system or a air-traffic control system, has to do with no getting out of your house.
Last, but no least, we have the winner sentence: "You don't have balls." or "You just have to throw balls to it". Balls meaning testicles. What testicles have to do with problem-solving is something that has been eluding me for years. I thougth that whe you have a problem, you analyze it, design a solution, build the solution, test it, and if it doesn't work, you go back to the drawing table. Not in Spain, you have to throw your testicles at the problem. Just make sure the problem doesn't involve chain-saws, sharp objects, or hot objects, and that you keep your testicles attached to your body.
Be careful, with this one. Part of the others recommendations I gave you can happen in 60-70% of the time, this one is universal. A Spaniard confronted with a flaw in a design, process, or system will resort to this at least once.
7. Spanish organizations are chaotic.
If you put together points 3, 4, 5 and 6 you get organizations with chaos inside. No procedures are followed, no control mechanisms are in place (and they are to be cheated), management resents controls over them, there are no central repositories of needed information. This last one is somehow what really gets your attention at the beginning. Managers tend not to use repositories of information, nor mechanism of communication. They like to "talk with John about ...". But they don't send an email to have something hard to refer to. So, time gets wasted over "trying to find John", "can we talk now?" ... . And then going back to the same topics or issues for days. Since managers don't have really much to do sometimes, that situation is OK, until they have some definite task to accomplish. Then chaos occurs.
This has a very practical implication in my field. There are no specifications for software systems. Not only that, but even the specifications can change in ways and moments that can have very disastrous consequences. Systems can be finished, tested and ready for deployment and the manager responsible can come up and say:
-"What JDK are you guys using?"
-"The one we told you about."
-"That's not the one they have at the deployment site."
-"Well, we told you what we were using and you gave the OK."
-"I have an email SOMEPLACE that says it's not the JDK they are using."
At this moment the manager expects the team to just make magic happen and fix it up before delivery. There are no expectations about having the responsibility of the error or excuse with a "I'm sorry, it won't happen again". He or she will tell the team to fix it and walk away. At most, he or she will make excuses about the email system or his/her workload.
This point is not valid when the manager's ass is in the line. Then he/she will act according to his/her intelligence and common sense. This is not to say that they will accomplish anything. Just that they will act as if he/she needs the workers to get the job done not making problems and getting out of the way as an obstacle. Or they can get nervous and resort to start bothering the team all the time with "Is it done yet?" without walking further than 2 steps away, and getting so much in the way of he solution that he or she is just producing the rope to hang himself/herself. Here the problem of organizations not being a meritocracy whatsoever is more evident.
Many times there are not even version control systems in place. That means total chaos and delivery problems in softare projects. A version control system is a program that keeps versions of the code of another program. I write code that accomplish 1 of 10 tasks, then I save a version. I continue programming. When I get another task done, I save another version. If I test the program when it gets 5 tasks done and figure out that the way I have programmed how to get one of the tasks means that another doesn't get done because my design has a flaw or my assumptions were wrong or the specifications were not clear, then I go back to one of the versions that I have and start again. Why? Because the program just doesn't work. Think of it as writing a book, a bad chapter can make the entire book bad. If I don't have a version control system I would have a program (or more realistically several programs) with hundreds of lines that really does something wrong though I don't know what, and that I don't know what parts to take out to make it work again.
Take my work for it, software developers in civilized countries use version control systems so they can deliver in time and not have to be redoing the same thing over and over again. Not in Spain, it is not strange to see software shops that don't use version control systems at all. People save their stuff in directories and hope things work and spend time just adding and removing and comparing files by hand. But you know, "you just need to throw balls to it".Sometimes version control systems are seen as a way of not doing your job, or not having balls, or not wanting to work hard enough.
Now about documentation, I have seen some projects, but not many where the actual documents of what I was supposed to do was not what I was supposed to do. Plainly stated, I got documents that I was not suppoused to follow, but no one told me so, and my training taught me that software specifications are sacred. Just follow them. I was supposed to phone my boss and start asking what I was supposed to do even though I had the specifications right in front of me. I said: "Sorry, but I'm confused. That's not what the specifications say." "Well, I'm telling you now what you need to do." "Right, but why haven't you stated that in the documents?" "Well, you know... documents!" "I see, can you send me an email with this?" "No, I'm telling you." "Right, I'll write it down, send you an email and you can confirm then." "No, I'm telling you now, and you have to do with what I'm telling you." At that point I was so puzzled that even didn't know if I was suppoused to write the stuff down. I felt like an spy or something in a James Bond movie: "This message will get destroyed in 10 seconds."
TRUE ACCOUNTS.
Now I'll tell you about several illustrative and funny stories that I've seen by myself or have heard of. I'll ommit names cause I have a non-disclosure agreement.
"DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT"
I was sent with a team to a foreign country far much advanced that Spain. I was the only one who had study in the US and could follow a techinal discussion about programming. I dived into the stuff that I was assigned to learn from the orginal programmers, how they worked, the technology they used, how they compiled and how they tested, how the whole process was structured and details about all of that. I was the only one that had a 2 page document about how the test bed system was installed and how the compiling scripts worked. When I came back I was assigned to another boss. I told him I had the info about all of those issues that I was sure they would love to hear about because it would take months to solve them with no prior knowledge. The answer was: "Don't worry about it." I was amazed and pressed the issue. I was told in a no nice way to mind my own business that was from that point on whatever taks he assigned me to do. I tried to talk to other people in the team that went to that country with me and that had told me to ask about those issues. They told me not to worry about it, the testing team would take care of that. It took them 3 months to take care of it, but I was not asked even one time about how the stuff worked.
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND ENGLISH"
Once upon a time, there was a Finnish programmer that knew about a system. The guy was flown to Madrid to be questioned about his system that has been taken from him and to be fired right after the questioning ended. Fortunately, he was to be flown again to Finland after that. The questioning went OK and the guy was a very good professional. The problem was that the last day of questioning was to end at 3 o'clock and he would be out of the job by them. So the guy very polite says to two managers and 5 persons: "You know that my job ends at 3. Ask the last questions because you have 7 more minutes." It was quite clear that nobody but one of the programmers understood his words, so this programmer went on in translating. Fear jumped to the face of the managers who insisted on him in staying further. The Finnish guy said that he would love to if they would pay him and get him another flight later in the afternoon. The two managers said (through the programmer) that it would be enough "just 5 more minutes". The conversation went on between the Finnish guy and the programmer about if they thought that he was stupid and that how could they think he would be missing his flight home just because they needed him and that he was fired anyway. When it was clear that the Finnish guy was taking his backpack to leave, the managers asked him (through the programmer) if he had an email or a phone number where they could reach him for further questions. There was more conversation between the programmer and the Finnish guy about the intelligence level of the two managers and whether they had some problem understanding the concept of "being fired" against "having a job". At the end he told the managers that he was moving to Iceland where there were no phones and no internet connections. And he turned and left, it was 3:10.
"THE LAW FIRM"
Stories are told about a law firm that had only a network of Windows computers and that used to leave important documents in shared folders for every one in the LAN to see. No document version control system. No security in the LAN. No backup of any documents. Story has that the people at the firm spent many nights rewriting documents that had been lost in the nework and that nobody knew where they were.
"HEADLESS CHICKENS"
There was project in a very known international consulting company. The project was critical for the client. It was so important that 2 bosses had been in and out of the project. A hearth attack and a chest pain took them out. And the current one was in the hospital being cehcked for another hearth attack he just had. When asked one of the people who was supporting that team but didn't work for that big cunsulting company, he answered: "Well I'm not suprised. They work like a bunch of headless chickens running all around and accomplish nothing. I tried to organize them, but since I'm not the manager I cannot do much. Also, they would not listen."
"MEETING"
An Ericson consultant was threaten to be removed as the liason to a very big client because he brought to the meetings a task list and a schedule for the meeting. Also, he tried to write down the conclussions they got to, and tried to control the time so it was productive. The client manager argued that he was "too anxious, and either to take it easy at the meetings or he would ask for another liason." The meetings went on for hours while the manager told them about his weekend, brought up some technical issues, and diver the conversation endessly to personal matters. The consultant was getting paid by the time spent at the meetings.
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