Also seems to ignore these aren't replacement parts, these are your team mates or reports, actual humans with names and families attached. If they weren't coasting or not showing up for work, what you describe sounds like yet another alienating, dehumanizing process at work.
Sometimes I don't think it's ignorance, it's willful strategy. I pay you to do X and don't care, so do X. If you burn out in the process I again don't care, I'll just replace you after because the timeliness is more important in this context.
It's like being in a race and knowing you're going to blow out a tire or something. It's a calculated risk you don't care too much about. I wish employers just treated people like humans, really, and not parts to abuse and replace.
The system has gone off the rails with never ending goals of productivity at all costs.
That is a strange, dysfunctional work culture. Consider this a strong indicator that management has no idea what they are doing and you should look for a different company.
Ah, I think I understand what is going on. I've never been in a situation like you describe but I have heard from friends and family about such work environments.
Here is my take on what causes the kind of behaviour you describe: The flipside of German teamwork culture is that it is very hard to restore a dysfunctional team back to how it "should be" once the trust between engineers/workers and managers is lost. After a few instances of people who tried to contribute getting burnt and a few seemingly random but destructive decisions by management, people go into "bunker mode". This means: Serious ass-covering and everybody just doing as they're told (the term for this last symptom is "Dienst nach Vorschrift"). For practical purposes, this is identical to a strict hierarchy, as you will have to go through official channels to get anything done.
For a engineering team or engineering department, this can cause long-term damage. People in Germany are much more reluctant to quit a safe job and search for another than people in the US, so the disgruntled workers will just stay there and perpetuate the bad situation.
There is actually a valuable lesson here for anybody that comes into a managerial position within a German company: In any large organization there is a team or two that has these kind of problems at any time. Hovever, if you get the feeling that this is the rule rather than the exception, the culture of that organization is dysfunctional and in nine cases out of ten that organization is also underperforming.
My experience is similar to yours — including at a company of over 50,000 employees.
I’m baffled as to how so many people here on HN have such horror stories with Teams, while I’ve not experienced nor heard of anything remotely so bad at the companies I’ve worked.
IMO there's nothing you can do to fix this culture. They're determined to ignore the inconvenient problems and then conveniently forget they were told about them. Even if you attempt to document these things, you'll just be labeled some negative name like "whistler blower" or "anal" and the same reputation problems will exist.
FWIW, 2 things mitigate this. First, some companies do actually remember people who fix things and get things done, so that's on your side. The other is that it's not likely you'll be there long-term anyhow. Companies that do this also generally fail in other departments, like paying you what you're worth as your worth increases. So you'll probably look for a new job eventually anyhow.
I know it's hard to see from where you're standing, but I wouldn't fret about it. Just keep doing your job the best you can and warning them, and let the chips fall where they may.
Kinda sounds like poor management. It seems to me that proper management would have everything arranged such that an employee is a drop and replace asset.
Incessant bike shedding about every project concern or business case. All with a tinge of negativity and scepticism leading into rather unimportant arguments because... "last time we tried this." They are often 100% correct but nobody wants to hear yhier shit because the team has marching orders, funding, and they want to complete the project without a bunch of stress and drama.
They have been at the company too long and aren't really happy about it. They don't get a new job because it's viewed as far too distruptive to their life. Again, they are probably 100% correct.
I saw exactly that at the first shop I contracted at decades ago. They treated their engineers like dirt. During the interview they were told that travel would be a couple weeks a year. Then some were literally handed airplane tickets when they arrived their first day of work and left on (remote) site for months. To compound things, they would return expense reports unpaid if everything was not filled out exactly correctly.
One day a co-contractor commented at the lack of energy among the employees. He observed that none had any get-up-and-go. I thought about a moment and replied that anyone with get-up-and-go had got-up-and-gone.
What you write sounds fine. "It’s my job to process it for them" has truth in it too.
However, it takes street smarts, experience, and being burned a time or two to know when it's two guys (associates) talking trying to get it right and when you're being played by a player.
Flailing individual trust precedes the decline in institutional competency. And once that happens the prospect for legit corrective action is largely gone. In-fighting will dominate.
Clues that maybe something is off (not exhaustive) based on some guys I worked with a few years ago:
* The boss talks with team individuals only then brings the team together to report what everybody said, and what everybody agreed to. Actually, no individual knows what anyone else said and didn't have a chance to ask questions.
* You're afraid to bring something up, or notice privately team members complain or share concerns but never say anything to decision makers or in a team setting
* You're encouraged to make changes because of "reputation," team image or other nebulous sounding reasons. Change may indeed need to happen. But those are not reasons
* You're instructed to remain technical to not engage or discuss issues that seem more pertinent to management, organizational values. Being boxed in is a bad sign.
* Being brow beat into doing things out of guilt or entitlement are bad signs.
* Putting internal politics or good light on the boss' project ahead of customer satisfaction even though the work will not satisfy intended customers is a bad sign.
* Abusing through manipulation internal service supplier status is bad. One guy I knew slickly sold his team's capability knowing once tied in they were practically married. The code was implemented such that the customer had no insight or control to it. By running around the floor and vacuuming up as many internal teams as he could, he parlayed his position to "take over the floor, but taking over the data." Guess what? It failed in a spectacular fashion; he never took over control of that system and never gave his "customers" a better solution. He treated his customers as suckers.
* The above point has a corollary: internal service suppliers get implicit management support, and it's implied internal customers have no choice but to work with them. This is NOT how it works on the outside. I choose my roofer and if I am not happy payment may not be given or is disputed or I fire the roofer. The hole in my roof is my motivation to treat the roofer right. My checkbook is why the roofer needs to treat me right. Either can walk away if the other is a jerk. But not in large corporations. That's why, for example, deprecating private data centers for the cloud are horror shows. The internal service suppliers are used to being in charge even entitled no matter how crappy or expensive their service is. And when they find out they might be replaced, they fight it all the way.
I wouldn't blame anyone personally, but it is what it is. If eventually, this is what's happening often, then the workplace feels unjust to me. It doesn't matter if the cause is some manager, HR, CEO, etc.,.
(Sometimes I imagine it can even be the cultural impact of somebody that already left the company...)
Yep this has been my experience as well, and it has popped up more than I expected, honestly. And this is the type of thing to affect a team's productivity for months at a time since it requires taking action, and then finding a backfill, all before the team gets the support they need
Also seems to ignore these aren't replacement parts, these are your team mates or reports, actual humans with names and families attached. If they weren't coasting or not showing up for work, what you describe sounds like yet another alienating, dehumanizing process at work.
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