HAZOP Blues III: The Final Insult

Introduction

In two recent from-the-archives posts (here and here) I described my old job, decades ago, scribing HAZOPs for a consulting firm. While discussing those posts with an avid albertnet reader, I happened to tell the rest of the story: how I came to my senses and bailed on that job, going out in a blaze of … well, if not glory, at least a fireball.

As I recounted all this I realized the story of my departure made a pretty good yarn. Thus, I’m providing here the world premier of the rest of the story. (What follows is as true as memory permits.)

HAZOP Blues III: The Final Insult –December 1995

Eventually it dawned on me that my job wasn’t going to get any better. I was never going to finish a workday at a reasonable hour; our reports, comprising reams of paper in giant binders, were always going to be FedEx’d at the last minute, and I was always going to be sprinting down the sidewalk to the FedEx office mere minutes before they closed. We were always going to be facing a workforce shortage, and the entire staff would always be disgruntled. The cush local contracts were always going to be snapped up by a competitor or done in-house (in fact, we’d just bid on a job in Korea that, if we won it, would have me living in a hotel for several months). And perhaps worst of all, none of this would ever end, no matter how dicey things got, because petroleum companies have deep pockets, lots of things to HAZOP, and seemingly infinite patience for flaky consulting firms that overrun their budgets. It was time for me to look for a new job.

Actually, I’d already started looking, months before; the recruitment process (at the firm that still employs me) took over six months. This was awkward because my employer had switched to a business casual dress code but I needed to continually slip out at lunch for interviews, in a shirt and tie of course. I solved the problem by simply continuing to wear a suit, every day, while the rest of the staff wore khakis and polo shirts. When questioned by my incredulous colleagues, I replied, “I just think a suit is more professional.” To my great surprise, one of the engineers followed suit (no pun intended). This all worked out fine until I had an interview on a Friday, as I’d always observed my company’s “casual Friday” policy. I solved that one by packing casual clothes in my bag, changing into them in the bathroom after the interview, and dropping the suit off at the dry cleaners on my way back to the office. BAM!

Finally, the recruitment process (which included, bizarrely enough, a Computer Programming Aptitude Battery Test), finally completed and I was offered the new job, at an up-and-coming company that all the cool kids wanted to work for. Oddly enough, the very same day I received the offer letter, a colleague of mine (the receptionist) walked into my office, asked if I had a minute, closed the door behind her, and asked, “Do you have low self-esteem or something?!”

Bemused, I stammered, “Why would you think that?” She replied, “Because you’re still here! What the hell! You appear to have a pulse … why would you continue to put up with all the bullshit they pile on you?” I grinned and said, “Well, believe it or not, I have just received an offer at another company, after months of interviewing, and I’m outta here!”

“Thank God,” she said, clearly relieved. Now the only chore remaining for me (besides my regular workload, of course) was giving notice to the boss.

This would be difficult. For one thing, my boss was always on the road and barely ever had time to talk, so this would happen over the phone at his earliest convenience. Plus, he was the kind of guy who views everything that ever happens in the entire world as a series of win/lose propositions, and he couldn’t stand losing. Thus, I know he’d try to talk me out of leaving, even though I’d already accepted the new position. Fortunately, this would be our last real dialogue. History had shown that once an employee gave notice, the boss would basically never talk to that traitor again. The grudge was swiftly formed and never relaxed.

After trading countless voicemails over a day or two, my boss, D—, finally called with time to talk. This was at about 5 p.m. my time; he was a couple time zones ahead on a HAZOP trip with one of our senior engineers, C—. Now, I need to pause for a moment to describe C—. He was a brusque, stuffy Englishman with little patience for incompetence … and this was a trait he ascribed to almost everybody. My own start with him had been rocky, as he’d had to interview me (along with the rest of the staff) before I was hired. I’d been coached by my wife on how to interview: at the end, you should ask the interviewer point-blank if he or she has any misgivings about hiring you, so you have the chance to address them. When I put this question to C—, he retorted sharply, “Well I can’t see that you have any experience or qualifications of any kind!” Over the time I worked with him, though, I managed to win him over. In fact, he became something of an ally: since he considered so few people competent, he valued those who passed muster.

Sure enough, when I gave notice, D— put up a big fight rather than simply accepting my resignation and wishing me well. “How can you leave?” he demanded. “I just gave you a ten percent raise!” This was true enough; since my interviews had been going well and I didn’t want to blindside my boss with my inevitable departure, I’d trotted out a laundry list of grievances during my last review, and he evidently felt desperate enough to keep me that he got pretty generous with the salary. (This was a lot easier than resolving my grievances, after all.) But money isn’t everything; I told D— now that my decision had to do with overall career prospects. “How can you say that when the sky is the limit here!” he cried. I mentioned my lack of an engineering credential and he boomed, “Just look at J—! Last week she was a junior engineer … now she’s Director of Software!” This didn’t make any sense in this context, because she did have an engineering degree. And “Director of Software” simply meant managing our HAZOP software vendor, which a rhesus monkey could have done.

We went around and around for something like 45 minutes, by which time I had ceased to bother explaining myself and simply restated, again and again, that I’d already made up my mind. Finally the dreaded call ended.

A couple days later, D— and C— returned to the office, their HAZOP over. D—, looking in at me, stood there in the doorway for at least ten seconds, clenching and unclenching his jaw, like he was trying to decide whether to even say hi. Finally he walked up and said, “I just gotta tell you something. When C— got the news you were leaving, he was—he was devastated. I’ve never seen anything like it. He was so upset, he had to leave the room.” I was, needless to say, totally taken aback. I mean, this was a company that simply couldn’t keep people. It seemed like every week someone left, and some new guy started, like a revolving door. Could C— really have been that surprised? And to be that upset didn’t make much sense anyway … it wasn’t like I was the backbone of the operation or anything (though I’m sure I had the fastest time of anyone on the run to FedEx). I didn’t know what to say, and D— left my office without another word.

I futzed around at my desk for a while and then C— came in. He said, in his starchy British accent, “I just want to say thank you.” I assumed he meant for all my hard work over the last couple years, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to assume. “Um … for what?” I asked. He replied, “For a really great evening. You see, when you gave notice, D— and I were at a restaurant, about to have dinner. We ordered a nice bottle of wine and a bunch of appetizers and then he stepped away to call you. Well, he was gone a good while and in the meantime the wine and appetizers arrived. I didn’t feel like waiting so I just tucked right in. I ate one appetizer, then another, had a glass of wine and then another, and still D— didn’t come back, so I just kept going, and before you know it, I’d eaten all the appetizers and drunk all the wine! Still D— didn’t come back, and after all that wine I had to piss like a racehorse! I couldn’t leave the table, though, because the waitress would think we’d skipped out on her. Finally D— came back and gave the bad news, but I couldn’t sit around and listen—I had to run to the bathroom! I barely made it in time! But other than that, it was great … all those appetizers and all that wine, all to myself, and I didn’t have to make conversation or anything. So anyway, I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful evening.” With that, he turned and strode out of my office. Ah, I thought. All is explained.

Epilogue

In those days, when you gave two weeks’ notice you actually did work for two more weeks, rather than being immediately escorted from the office by a security guard. Thus, I had a chance to help recruit and train my replacement. He seemed like a good guy and in fact held a law degree. He seemed to hit it off just fine with most of the office, though one colleague said, “Wait, that’s the new technical assistant? He doesn’t look anything like Dana!”

During my final two weeks I continued to wear a suit and tie, because I didn’t want D— to realize just how long I’d been interviewing (i.e., deviously planning my departure). The new guy wore a suit too, which I chalked up to his being new and wanting to make a good impression. But months later, I came back to the office to visit (and to buy one of their old computers), and this guy was still wearing a suit, despite the whole rest of the office being dressed business casual. I asked him why, and—looking confused—he said, “I just think it’s more professional. In fact … didn’t I get that from you?”

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From the Archives - HAZOP Blues II: The Spawning

Introduction

If you’ve been paying attention to albertnet, you’ll have seen my first “HAZOP Blues” tale, from my archives, four weeks ago. Despite popular demand, I am running the next installment, written about a week later (and circulated via email because this was before blogs were a thing).

In case you’re wondering, I left this job a few months after penning the below memoir. Like James Cameron, director of Piranha II: The Spawning, I went on to much better things.

HAZOP Blues II: the Spawning – September 22, 1995, 12:28 AM

Greetings from Pasadena.

Things are, if anything, worse now than they were last week, so if you enjoy only upbeat tidings, please forego this missive. But if you’re intrigued by the idea of a sequel that doesn’t cost $7.50, read on.

We’re way, way, way behind schedule on this HAZOP, so the general mood is panic. My boss underbid this job by an amazing amount. It’s tantamount to saying you could build a skyscraper in the San Francisco financial district for about $50,000, in three weeks. So he’s been very tense lately. Add to this, of course, a software problem. This time it isn’t a computer glitch, but operator error. Hang on tight, because the explanation is a bit complicated.

Just before I came down here, one of my colleagues showed me how to use this special HAZOP worksheet-building software, so that I could scribe this HAZOP without looking like an English major who isn’t an engineer. (Normally, the HAZOP leader records his own sessions, but this client wanted a dedicated scribe. Lacking one on staff, my boss pressed me into service.) This colleague warned me that my boss doesn’t quite understand the software, and invariably gets his columns screwed up. The program uses various user-defined columns in which you record various things: causes of problems; consequences; and, safeguards (one column each). Suppose your cause is “valve stuck.” You might have consequences like “higher tank pressure,” “possible line rupture,” and “backflow to vessel piping.” In the next column, you list the various safeguards. These safeguards can either mitigate the consequences (e.g., a relief valve to prevent higher tank pressure, or a vent system to prevent line rupture), or they can prevent the malfunction (e.g., alarm detects malfunctioning valve and alerts the operator). Thus you have two basic ways to set up the worksheet: safeguards either relate to causes, or to consequences.

Basically, you decide which way to set it up, and then you set up the software accordingly. Thereafter, the safeguards scroll appropriately, and you number them properly, and your worksheet is organized logically. The only requirement is, you must always enter data according to how you’ve configured the worksheet—once you’ve configured it, you’re committed and can’t change your data entry protocol. My boss, I’d been warned, sets it up one way, enters the data that way for a while, and then at some point wanders off course, forgets how he’d set it up, and starts entering the data the other way, so that when you look at the worksheet, it makes no sense.

Well, knowing of this problem, I was very careful when my boss and I set up the worksheet together. I asked him very specifically how he wanted his safeguards to scroll. He was emphatic about relating safeguards to consequences. He said he always did it that way. And for the first week of HAZOPing, he was true to his word and followed his format: I numbered the safeguards within each consequence (i.e., starting the numbering over for each new consequence) and everything worked fine. The problem began when, upon reconvening the study after the weekend, he evidently forgot how we’d been doing it.

Here’s how it played out: there I was, recording away, and he was having a bad morning knowing how screwed up this project is, deadline-wise, and he whispered angrily to me, “You’re not supposed to start the numbering over at each consequence. Number consecutively throughout each cause.” I whispered back that I was doing it exactly how we’d done it the week before. This he denied emphatically. I couldn’t argue further, so I obeyed. In short order, our columns were all fouled up. Then he snapped, “You’re screwing up the rows.” What could I do? I pushed on. As the worksheet got more and more bollixed, he got more and more irritated. Eventually one of the Colombian engineers said, “Why are you numbering the safeguards that way? That isn’t how we’ve been doing it.” My boss assured him that he was wrong. Now I really began to worry.

At the next break, while the HAZOP team was off scarfing doughnuts, I pulled up a worksheet from the first week and showed my boss how we’d been numbering. He told me I’d been doing it wrong all along. So then I pulled up the worksheet setup/option screen and showed him that we’d configured the worksheet to relate safeguards to consequences, and had correctly adhered to this standard for the first week. At this news, he bawled me out for screwing up the worksheet setup from the get-go, and bemoaned that now we couldn’t fix it—that I’d basically screwed up the whole project and set us up to fail. At this point I was becoming very annoyed—enough to go after his goat. I told him that he himself had very clearly specified the worksheet setup.

Now he was good and outraged. I mean, who was I, this utterly green, English-major kid scribing his very first HAZOP, after only learning the software a week ago, to tell him he was doing it wrong? Not only had he helped to develop the software—he’d practically invented the damn thing—he’d been using it for many years, over the course of countless HAZOP’s. Did I mean to say he’d been doing it wrong his whole career!? “It’s a hideous thing to contemplate,” I said, “but that there’s what is.” Actually, I knew better than to actually say this. I just sat there, silent.

As if to finish me off, he commandeered the computer and said, “Look, I’ll pull up one of my own worksheets, any of them, to show you how I do it.” He pulled up a worksheet, and to my amusement, the columns were all screwed up. Furiously, he pulled up the setup/option screen, and sure enough, he’d set it up one way and scribed it the other. Now he was fairly livid. “Wait, that’s not a good example,” he steamed. He clicked over to his latest, greatest, most prestigious HAZOP, and said, “Okay, this is a good example. Look at this one: unless I’m totally fucked up....”

He pulled up the screen. I was relieved, but not surprised, to see that it was just as fouled up as the first one. I didn’t say anything: nothing needed to be said. A small silence ensued, during which I put 100% of my energy into not smirking. Then my boss said, quietly, “Well, I guess I’m totally fucked up.” Less than a minute later, his shock had given way to abject panic. He immediately began complaining about the incredible stress he was under, and all the staffing problems he had, and this whole HAZOP team breathing down his neck all the time, everybody talking at once, etc.

Once the panic/excuse phase was over, he segued seamlessly into a newer, more ferocious anger, lashing out at me with everything he had, like a cornered badger. He began making harsh accusations, finding fault with every aspect of my scribing. He began to blame my inefficiencies for the project being behind schedule (which is a joke, since most of the time I’m just sitting there, waiting for the team to come to a consensus so that I can type something).

Perhaps he eventually divined that my response was not guilt and shame, but mere incredulity, for he eventually began to temper his litany with expressions like “I’m not accusing you, I’m just sayin’,” and when he had determined conclusively that I wasn’t going to cower, accept blame, apologize profusely, and commit ritual suicide by self-disembowelment, he began to shift the blame to the rest of the HAZOP team instead. Finally he settled on a single scapegoat, Salim B—, the project manager, for whom I cannot formulate negative thoughts, largely (if perhaps unfairly) due to his benign demeanor and his pleasant resemblance to Frog from Frog and Toad Together, that wonderful picture book I enjoyed as a child.

By now the team was reassembling, and we continued the HAZOP. Notably, my boss continued to force my documentation astray, continued to demand that I force-feed the data into the worksheet in a manner counter to all logic. As if he hadn’t, mere moments before, come face to face with incontrovertible proof of his error, he continued to chase me down the errant path. Resigned to our doom, I gamely continued to mangle our innocent data, hoping that nobody would spot the inconsistencies and errors we were promulgating. Sure, my victory during the break should have been sweet—it’s not every day that you can sit back and watch while your arrogant boss makes a complete ass of himself—but it was a hollow victory indeed, for this wasn’t Me vs. Him, it was Us vs. Chaos, and we were now going down together. He’s the boss, so when he loses, I lose. (And he then wins somehow, because he’s a winner—got it?)

Perhaps the very worst part about the whole sordid affair is that when the day was finally over—eight grueling dog-hours behind us—my boss wanted me to be his pal, and go out on the town with him. We went to a restaurant; over great Thai food he attempted to find common ground with me by belittling every no-good, disloyal, stupid and immoral ex-employee we ever had (and there are a lot of them). I’m no slouch, either; I expertly tossed in detail after heinous detail about every one of them. I built up fabulous psychological profiles explaining the underlying nature of each one: “What S— lacked, essentially, was confidence. He couldn’t transcend his meager fire safety background and meet the challenge of holding his own among registered Professional Engineers and Certified Safety Professionals.” My boss—PE, CSP—nodded sagely in agreement.

I proceeded to spin elaborately sycophantic soliloquies: “I’ll never forget when you first saw the problem with S—, months before he left. You hit the nail on the head when you questioned his loyalty, way back in February. I think you knew his flaws even before they became obvious to the rest of us. It’s like you said, the cream rises to the top, and we’re better off without him.” My boss had never said these things—indeed, he had promoted S— only a month before—but that wasn’t about to stop him from savoring the memory of having totally nailed it. With great satisfaction, he dragged out his well-soiled cancer analogy, acidly lancing the tumors he had removed, and ordered us another round of beers. By the end of the meal, a dozen epitaphs later, I was beginning to feel sick.

Then we went out and shot pool, splitting (alas) a pitcher of beer. Our playing was absolutely abysmal; at one point, my boss managed to launch the cue ball off the table, where it rolled all the way into the bar. I, his obsequious little helper, shamelessly chased it down and retrieved it.

Now, we’re as chummy as ever; our worksheets, which continue to twist crazily on the page, are a taboo subject. More than ever before, HAZOP is a grind. Fortunately, I’ve developed a knack for recognizing, among the rambling discussions, the special lilt to an engineer’s voice (be his accent Indian, Colombian, French, British, or Turkish) that tells me he’s settled on an idea that should be recorded. Like never before, I swing to the music of valve numbers and failure modes. Between data inputs, while the team argues pedantically over the likelihood of a 2D low-low shutdown if the stage two crude discharge separator were to encounter a closed block valve at startup, I drift off into mental oblivion, fantasizing about being run over by a truck during lunch.

Note

An alert reader wrote to ask me how much of this I made up. Rest assured, nothing here is fabricated ... the sad tale is 100% true and (as I wrote it while still in the thick of the action) it doesn’t even suffer from the natural erosion of memory.

To be continued...

But wait! There's more! Click here to read HAZOP Blues III: The Final Insult.

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From the Archives - HAZOP Blues

Introduction 

Ages ago, before beginning the career I’m in now, I worked for a chemical engineering firm. That’s how it described itself, anyway. I never saw actual engineering take place; the day-to-day work was safety audits of refineries and chemical plants. It supposedly paid really well but I didn’t experience that firsthand.

What follows is a report I sent around via email, before blogs were a thing. This was almost before email was a thing … it was still pretty new and required me to plug my laptop (a prehistoric thing the size of a phone book—if you remember those) into a modem about the size of a pack of cards, and plug this into a phone jack in my hotel room. The bandwidth was 2400 baud, which was almost indescribably slow, as in 1/42,000th of what modern networks deliver. What’s more, you paid by the minute and had to be online the whole time you were composing your message, because it was a terminal emulator that didn’t support copy-and-paste. All this privation is surely why life expectancy was so much shorter then. It’s a good thing I lived through that dark period, so I can look forward to a long life ahead of me.

Okay, enough of this. It’s time to put up your feet, crack a beer, and enjoy this tale from my archives. It’s a sad one.

HAZOP Blues – September 16, 1995

I’m in Pasadena, California recording a Hazard and Operability study, which is interesting only to the extent that I can understand it. (Which I basically don’t.) The HAZOP process is really about as pedantic an exercise as I’ve ever been through. A team of six or eight people from a variety of engineering backgrounds sits around systematically brainstorming potential deviations from the design intent of a process (in this case, a gasoline field in Colombia, which is supposedly the largest construction project in the world right now). The team brainstorms the potential consequences of deviations, what safeguards are in place, and whether or not recommendations need to be made to improve the safety of the system.

It’s not as exciting as it sounds. The only consolation is the food: top-notch restaurants, every meal. Fortunately the Doubletree hotel here has a gym; unfortunately I have yet to take advantage of it. Instead I sit here, in my glorious new paisley boxers, with the rush of L.A. coming through the window. Still my guitar gently weeps.

The HAZOP team here (among whom I sit, pounding on the keys like a court stenographer) is made up of three local engineers (one a mad-scientist looking guy; one right out of Dilbert; an Indian American; a sporty fellow from BP in England; and two Colombians). Over lunch (lobster ravioli with lemon cream sauce, $15.95), I talked to the Colombians about cycling. They were very enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and were thrilled that I remembered that Jose Patrocinio Jiminez won the Coors Classic in 1982, and that Luis (or was it Lucho?) Herrera won the KOM in the Tour. They speak very highly of Andy Hampsten. They knew about the fistfight that resulted in disqualification of two riders a few days ago in the Tour of Spain. They understand that small front wheels do not result in increased aerodynamics in individual time trials. Finally, I’ve found some common ground with these fellows, since I don’t have anything interesting to say about chemical engineering.

While working down here in Pasadena I am continually faking an attitude of enthusiasm. This constant façade is difficult to maintain, so I’ve decided to vent all over you.

I’ve having a very hard time with the sessions. I don’t understand the chemical engineering aspects of the HAZOP, so witnessing the brainstorming is about as exciting as waiting for my wife at the cosmetics counter. At least I get to sit … otherwise I’d suffer a severe case of museum knees. As it is, my hands get sore because I’m typing like a madman the whole time, with my computer screen projected on the wall via a nifty (and expensive) LCD datapad. This means the team gets to find fault with what I’m typing. It’s not that I make typos; it’s that I don’t actually know what words to type. Everybody’s talking at once and I lack the knowledge to successfully synthesize and combine all of their various thoughts. It’s kind of like a psychiatrist attempting to simultaneously analyze both halves of a split personality. Except it’s worse: there are six engineers on the team, comprising four different accents and usually about six different points of view.

The worst part is, when they recommend a double-failsafe trip on a check valve, I’m supposed to know what check valve it they’re talking about (UVV-493012-001, for example) and type the number into the worksheet. This is difficult because all I have to go on is a fifty-page, 11x17” Piping and Instrument Diagram that has about 1,000 valves on each page, the depictions of which would collectively fit on the head of a pin.

The end result is that I’m simultaneously overwhelmed and bored, which means I have a hell of a time staying awake. It’s just like college in that regard. Today my eyelids actually closed several times, each time for a dangerous and terrible one or two seconds. I may have to resort to double espressos if I’m to continue this for two more weeks.

I do derive some small solace from the hotel here, which is fabulous. I have a real furry bathmat, instead of just an extra-thick towel. Maria, my maid, leaves new bottles of shampoo and new soaps every day, even though I’ve obviously just pilfered the ones I already had. I left her a dirty shirt this morning with a note, and by the time I returned to my room in the evening, the shirt was cleaned and neatly pressed and returned to the closet, left hanging of a fine stout wire hanger that, like the soap and shampoo, I get to bring home with me. But that’s not all. The maid not only took care of my shirt, made my bed, and cleaned up my room, but she also got on my computer and repartitioned my fragmented hard drive. I tell you, the service here is fantastic.

Perhaps the best thing about this room is that the windows have giant wooden shutters that, when closed, are absolutely opaque. At night, the room is as dark as a cabin up in the mountains on a moonless night, which is to say, pitch black. This kind of darkness is about the only way I can really submit to an utterly complete and delicious sleep (a depth of sleep that I rarely even get at home).

Of course, this degree of submittal is very dangerous. I become so tranquil, and sink into such a heavy slumber, that almost nothing can awake me. However, if something does—for example, several cars outside my window defying the odds by backfiring simultaneously, or an anvil being dropped on the floor in the room above me—I do wake up. And when I do, I experience a sudden and terrifying shift from the sacred slumber to a state of alarm—head jerking back and forth, eyes darting around in vain for some kind of visual data with which to supply my information-starved brain. Basically, it scares the daylights out of me (a problematic metaphor, I know, since this happens in the black of night).

I bring up this awful phenomenon because it happened last night. I have no idea what awoke me, except for my own blood-curdling scream. The scream is an automatic part of the whole experience. The last time this happened at home was on the night of a power failure which rendered even San Francisco completely dark. I was awakened when a giant framed and glassed picture fell off the wall, hit the hardwood floor, and shattered into a million pieces. Although I woke up screaming, I had no memory of the sound, and no idea anything had fallen. (I do have a memory of my wife asking, when I’d finally stopped screaming, “What fell?” I was utterly bewildered. Something fell?)

This time was no different, except that I never did find out what initially woke me up. I just know that my own screaming scared the crap out of me.

I think you know full well how loud my voice can be, especially when I’m greatly excited; now imagine a scream. It would make Hannibal Lecter’s blood run cold. Perhaps what the most terrifying thing about hearing my own scream is that in a way, I’m a spectator to it; I don’t know why I’m screaming, but have a pretty good idea that I sure as hell must be in some kind of real danger to scream like that.

After the scream was finally over, and I was done shaking on the bed, spinning blindly in a black void, I gradually calmed down enough to consider the scream objectively. Then, I had the unsettling realization that the police could burst in at any moment to find out what was going on. I also was afraid to fall back asleep—and indeed, even in my greatly troubled psychological state I was quite close to complete unconsciousness—since whatever had awakened me, I feared, would repeat itself, and I would scream again and this time for sure somebody would come arrest me. It really ruined a good night’s sleep … sleep I badly needed before today’s HAZOP.

Today went exactly as I described above, except that I was extra tired, and the team was grumpy and argumentative. Somehow, I got a dumb old Journey song stuck in my head (“She took a midnight train going a-ny-where . . “) which only made matters worse. The breaks were also a drag because last night my boss checked his voice-mail and the last of his senior engineers had left a message announcing his resignation. (Such is the boon of high technology: you don’t even have to have a backbone anymore.) Well, that engineer had supposedly been my direct supervisor, the Group Leader, so his resignation is causing a shakeup in the company hierarchy, as can be expected. But what’s especially dismal about this shakeup is how half-hearted all the shakeup is: there’s simply nobody left to supervise here anyway. Our office now has a grand total of three engineers, including my boss. Of those three, my boss fully expects a certain one to quit shortly, leaving an absurd two engineers total.

This total engineer count is down from about ten when I started here, not all that long ago. I mean, we’ve always wanted a project backlog, but not like this! Now, we have all these projects (business was actually in the process of taking off) and no staff to do them. I expect to spend four hours tonight working on another project for another client, and tomorrow we have to drive down to Long Beach to meet with said client. It just never lets up.

I cannot tell you how relieved I am that I don’t have a chemical engineering degree. I’ll never have to step up and be one of the overworked engineers. The only other silver lining I can think of is that I get paid time-and-a-half for all my overtime, which means by the time this HAZOP is over, I’ll be ready to retire and buy a $6,000 house in Claflin, Kansas, where my wife and I can live out the rest of our days as clerks at the AM/PM Mini-Mart. If we save enough, we might even buy a carpet cleaning franchise and be bona-fide business owners. Stranger things have happened!

To be continued...

This tale continues here with HAZOP Blues II: The Spawning!

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All I Need to Know About Corporate America I Learned in Team Time Trials - Part 2

Vlog

What could be more embarrassing to my teenage daughters than my blogging? Well, vlogging is probably on the list. For that reason alone I’m providing this post in both text and video formats. If you want to laugh with me, at me, or at my kids for having such a dorky dad, click the Play button below. Otherwise, just scroll down for the text.

Introduction

This post continues my discussion of how lessons learned in cycling team time trials (TTTs) can apply to survival in corporate America. If you haven’t read my previous post, go back and start there.

Lesson 2: Pace yourself

On the face of it, pacing in a TTT is pretty straightforward: you just go flat out the whole time, right? Well, yes and no. When you’re on the front, sure—you go all out (or, more precisely, at your anaerobic threshold). But how long do you stay on the front? That’s the tricky part. If everybody’s pulls are too short, there are too many transitions, too many efforts spent latching on to the back of the line, too many opportunities for tiny losses of efficiency. But pulls that are too long don’t allow enough recovery and riders will grind themselves down. There’s no pre-established pattern, such as everybody leading for 20 seconds. It’s up to each rider to decide how long to be on the front each time before dropping back.

This will vary by rider, by race, and by how the rider is feeling at any point in the TTT. The only rule is, if the team is going, say, 30 mph on a flat road, you better keep up 30 mph when you’re on the front. If your pulls are only half as long as the next guy’s, that’s fine—but don’t you dare take a slow pull. Your team will never get that time back, and what’s more you screw up the rhythm and thus the morale of the whole team. When you take the front, everything and everyone depends on you. To pace yourself accurately means being completely honest with yourself about how long you can pull, per rotation, at the group’s speed. This isn’t a one-time assessment, of course; you must always be ready to adjust the length of your pulls (because your stamina erodes, or conversely if you start poorly but begin to feel better). In short, you are on high alert the entire time (which is part of why I always found these races terrifying).

Needless to say, pacing is important in the workplace too. And yet, I have known plenty of people (over my decades in the working world) who don’t seem attuned to this. They take on too much responsibility and let their workdays drag out too long—which is like taking too long a pull. Eventually they start to get overwhelmed and, for all their workaholism, start dropping this or that ball, or turning out poor quality work—which is like taking a slow pull. Of course it’s hard to admit you took on too much, which can lead to blaming others, making excuses, and so on.

So what does pacing look like in the workplace? Sometimes it’s not always putting your hand up to lead a big project, but more often it’s pushing back a bit on your boss if you’re getting overloaded. I’m routinely surprised how few people do this—they’ll volunteer to work on something over the weekend, for example. (I would never do this; I figure once you’ve demonstrated that your personal time isn’t sacred, a boss would have to be crazy not to take advantage of that. Today’s stretch becomes tomorrow’s job description.)

Another corporate equivalent of a shorter pull is delegation. I’m talking about handing off a task not because you’re too slammed to do it, but because it might be a nice challenge for a colleague, who may appreciate the opportunity. I used to think delegation was just for managers, but it’s not. If you’ve coached a colleague a number of times and thus built up goodwill, why not offer him or her an interesting task? In my experience, a manager won’t fault you for this, as long as the work gets done.

In a TTT, if you pace yourself poorly, you could slow down the team by taking slow pulls or blowing up and going off the back, unable to contribute anymore. This can ruin the race for your whole team. When we consider what’s at stake in the workplace, the analogy falls down a bit because if you don’t pace yourself well in your job, it’s not just a project or campaign that suffers. It’s your whole career.

Lesson 3: Get help when you need it

We can’t all be “on” 100% of the time, but we’re taught not to make excuses, and to deliver on time, every time. Individual ambition drives us to just dig deeper when we’re struggling. This is fine here and there, but if it becomes a habit, it stops being sustainable. Our mental health suffers, probably our work/life balance, and the collateral damage to our personal lives can eventually become a serious distraction. (My father was a hopeless workaholic, and during his divorce, he couldn’t sleep at night and would often fall asleep on the job—the workplace equivalent of crashing out of a TTT.)

Why don’t we ask for help? Surely somebody could pitch in on a project, revise the scope, or relax a deadline, if we ask? I think the problem is often lack of humility … it’s hard to admit you’re not up to the demand. This is easier to spot in a TTT than the workplace because a rider who doesn’t ask for help is just suddenly gone. It’s a disaster and I’ve seen it too many times, usually in the first few miles of a TTT. In the photo below, we lost two guys in the first mile or so … and needless to say didn’t go on to have a great race.

What does asking for help look like? In a TTT, it’s yelling like crazy if you get gapped, or sitting out a pull if you’re feeling crappy. When you’re on the back and a teammate finishes his pull and drops back, you wait until he’s just ahead of you and tell him, “Take it.” You let a gap open for him and joins the line early. Granted, he won’t be stoked about this, as it gives him less time to recover before his next pull, but tagging him in like this is way better than slowing down the group or getting dropped, thus abruptly leaving the team without your services. I’ve had TTTs where I started badly, got some help, and then went on to fully contribute.

So how do we ask for help in our corporate jobs? That’s more complicated, of course, but it starts with humility, trust that your colleagues won’t resent you for reaching out, and a focus on team results vs. worrying about your reputation.

Lesson 4: be grateful you’re in the race

The team time trial was definitely my best event as a bike racer. I recover quickly from deep efforts so the repeated hard pulls on the front, followed by rest periods in the line, suited me perfectly. Unluckily for me, the team time trial is a somewhat rare event. I did my first one in 1982, but didn’t have another opportunity until 1985 when a TTT featured in the Red Zinger Mini Classic stage race. My next chance wasn’t until 1988 when I started collegiate racing. Happily, in college there were several of these races during each season, followed by the conference championship TTT and—since my teams qualified—the national championship. I was so grateful to ride so many of these TTTS during my college racing years, and bummed that there hasn’t been an opportunity for me since.

Meanwhile, I was blessed to be on that UC Santa Barbara team that was loaded with amazing talent. It has certainly helped shape my worldview that my greatest success in the sport came not so much from my own ability, but from having been on the right team at the right time. I can never forget how lucky I was just to get to race those TTTs when I did, so I am always grateful for the opportunities I have in my career, even if it can be difficult and frustrating trying to make the most of them.

Moreover, to even have a career in corporate America requires a lot of luck. You were born in this country; you had the educational opportunities needed to be qualified for a white collar job; and, you had enough opportunity to secure a position. This is a really big deal. There are something like 65 million Americans employed in the professional and technical workforce, and while this is about 41% of US workers, it’s only about 1.4% of the world’s adult population. Think of all the things that had to be true for you even to have your job.

Why does this matter? It’s because being talented and educated enough to get and keep a job isn’t the whole battle. You have your own contentment to deal with, and I suspect lots of corporate employees have a bloated sense of entitlement—which can make them disgruntled, or bored, or restless. This in turn can a) affect their performance such that they don’t survive the next round of layoffs, or b) cause them to job-hop too often (like hitting the Hyperspace button on their careers) because they blame their employer for a dissatisfaction that has its roots in lack of gratitude.

I’ve outlasted colleagues who spent far too much energy fretting over the golden parachutes the executives get, or the fact of younger people passing them up on the way up the ladder, or the apparent lack of advancement opportunities given to them. I find it a shame when someone lacks the humility to just knuckle down, do their job, and be happy to be there. In this country we are all pressured to pursue and gratify our individual ambitions, but I’d like to point out that where life balance is concerned, contentment isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Instead of worrying about your rise through the ranks, just be glad you’re on a team.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

All I Need to Know About Corporate America I Learned in Team Time Trials

Vlog

Ear hair. It’s becoming a real problem for me, but I don’t always get around to trimming it. Nothing motivates me to groom myself like posting a video to the Internet. For that reason (and because I’m told some people prefer watching videos to reading a lot of text), below is a vlog version of this post. Close your eyes and you’ve got a podcast. Scroll down and it’s a blog post. Enjoy please enjoy.

Introduction

I have worked for the same employer for over 25 years, and have made it through three acquisitions, a bankruptcy, and countless reorgs. Along the way I’ve had thirteen different bosses. How have I lasted this long? I joke that my spirit animal is the cockroach. But actually, I’d say my longevity is a combination of the right attitude and the right practices.

Of course it would be a stretch to say that the team time trial, a type of bicycle race, taught me how to survive in corporate America. However, as I will explain here, the same attitude and practices apply to each. The team time trial is a great metaphor.

What is a team time trial?

In road racing, the individual time trial—often called the “race of truth”—consists of each rider racing alone, against the clock  (typically sent off at 1- to 3-minute intervals). A team time trial, aka TTT, is the same thing but with teammates racing together to try to put up the best time. Crucially, it’s not the time of the first rider that’s taken. If it’s a five-person team, the third rider’s time is what counts. For nine riders, it’s the fifth or sixth. To be competitive, a team needs all (or at least most) of its riders contributing to the effort of taking turns breaking the wind for the others. They must cooperate perfectly.

Lesson 1: Work for the team

“Be a team player” is obviously a cliché. It’s something management routinely tells us, and they might even mean it, but it often doesn’t pack much punch in a culture like America’s where individualism, and individual success, are promoted so universally. So it is in sport, and in cycling in particular, with Lance Armstrong being perhaps the greatest example of the self-focused sportsman—a bully obsessed with individual domination, fearful of any personal ambition among his teammates.

The team time trial is ideally the purest antithesis of all this. A TTT team that works well together is a thing of beauty. Every rider is acutely aware of how every other rider is doing. If you’re totally on fire, you carefully channel this by increasing your output gradually, without disrupting the smooth functioning of the formation. You may take a bit longer pull, and you can even slightly increase the speed of the group while you’re on the front … but harmony is your first priority.

This is harder than it sounds. It’s almost automatic to accelerate when you start your turn at the front, because this is right after you’ve recovered in the line. But, if you’re a good team time trialist, you never forget how hard it is to latch on to the back of the group, after having slowed down to let the other riders past. This is the hardest part of a TTT because at the back, you’ve just finished your pull, aren’t yet in the slipstream, and need to accelerate slightly. If the guy on the front increases the pace at all as you’re latching on, he practically breaks your legs.

Let’s think for a moment about teamwork in corporate America. In your workplace, how much energy do you think people devote to helping their colleagues? Is much attention paid to buoying up those who are struggling? Other than managers, do people even care?

It’s amazing how many seasoned bike racers screw up the team time trial by kind of missing the “team” part. In fact, it’s often the team leaders that cause the most  problems—because their drive and talent and alpha-dog-ness is what made them leaders in the first place. Returning to my Lance Armstrong example, to watch him in a TTT was like agony for those of us who understand this event. He pulled too hard when taking the front, screwed up the rhythm, sometimes dropped his entire team, and—as came out later—would terrorize his teammates over the race radios for not going fast enough.

Not that Lance was the only team leader to do TTTs poorly. In the 1993 Tour de France, the Gatorade team was selected, in part, to support their leader, Gianni Bugno, in the TTT stage. This was supposed to be an opportunity for Bugno to take serious time out of the race favorite, Miguel Indurain, whose Banesto team was better suited to helping their leader in the mountain stages. But Bugno apparently couldn’t keep it in his pants and his team floundered in the TTT, actually losing 12 seconds to Banesto. How was this possible? Well, Indurain—though he was hands-down the strongest individual time trialist in the race—matched his team’s pace perfectly. As reported in Winning magazine, “When asked how it was that Banesto stayed more or less together while Gatorade were all over the place in the TTT, [Banesto team director] Jose Miguel Echavarri responded that ‘it was necessary that the king went with the people, rather than that the people try to follow the king.’”

(Ironically, pro cycling teams are run like companies, and yet all too often the prima donna behavior of riders like Armstrong and Bugno has been allowed, perhaps encouraged, by management … hence the revolving door of talent on US Postal, which can’t have been good for long-term team morale.)

When I was at UC Santa Barbara, our TTT was a perfect case study in selflessness. We were all completely devoted to the team’s success, despite the fact that our two best riders really didn’t get along. This didn’t affect how they rode—they unfailingly set their grievances aside and worked together flawlessly in races. Our reward for perfect teamwork was a TTT victory at the collegiate National Championships.

The next year, I’d transferred to UC Berkeley, and though on paper we had a more talented overall roster, we never got such good results. The reason, as all but one of our riders would happily explain to you passionately and at length, was our team leader. He was headstrong, self-absorbed, and a terrible team time trialist. The way he started his pulls, you’d think he was deliberately trying to saw his teammates off the back, like this event was about him showing us how dominant he was. Spiritually, a good team time trialist is almost like a Girl Scout den mother; this guy was more like Ahab—and every other living human was Moby Dick to him. (For a more complete case study of this strong, successful, but flawed individual, click here and do a page search for “Ace.”)

Okay, so how does this relate to the corporate world? Beyond being an obvious object lesson in the downside of selfishness, I think it points to the need for wider awareness than your personal ambition will give you. A TTT isn’t about you being fast; it’s about your team being fast, which requires a whole lot more than your own strong pedaling. In my experience of the workplace, revenue and earnings are the measure of victory, and maximizing them is extraordinarily complicated. Creating the right products and services, building them right, marketing and selling them effectively, and providing good support cannot be achieved by the smartest guy in the room performing brilliantly.

Yes, you need smart—but also patient, careful, and generous—people in countless rooms working together. Those who rise in the ranks by “promoting their personal brand” and striving to stand out may naturally have a hard time leading their teams toward the results that matter. A company will only thrive if it promotes those with a sensitivity to how well everyone is rowing together. A sales director at my company once joked to me, “I’m good at this stuff because I’m pretty stupid, so it’s impossible for me to overcomplicate things for my reps.” His humility, and his focus on collective results, have apparently served him well.

In all my years of bike racing, I was never the team leader. This isn’t because there’s anything wrong with me, some fundamental lack of ambition or fear of success. It’s that I’ve been lucky enough to be on teams with better riders than myself, and selflessly supporting them was the obvious and correct thing to do. Bringing my support (aka domestique’s) perspective to the TTT was a natural fit, and nice insurance against instinctively trying to show dominance and messing up the flow. Steeped in the art of looking after my team leader, I was a natural at looking after my team as we fought the wind together.

Similarly, in my work life I’ve never been the alpha dog, and my humble approach—i.e., helping others in the background vs. showing off—has worked out well. I sincerely believe it hasn’t held me back; if anything, I’ve been given all the responsibility and growth opportunities I can handle. Even if my approach isn’t the ticket to rising through the ranks at work, it does seem to help with career longevity. Maybe I’ve missed out on some promotions and the income growth that can bring, but I’ve also avoided the pitfalls of the kind of self-serving behavior that hampers the results an employer cares about. I believe there are certain risks in clawing one’s way up the corporate ladder too swiftly; whether or not I’m right, I can say that I’ve never been unemployed. For the last 26 years I’ve had continuous income, and that adds up.

I chalk all this up to my TTT mindset. Recently I had my annual review and my boss told me I “need more swagger.” I took this as a compliment.

To be continued

Dang, this has taken me more words than I expected. Tune in next week for three more (shorter) lessons gleaned from the tarmac crucible of team time trialing.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Inside the Corporate Yurt

To start off, I never actually did get to occupy one of the yurts.  The tour was moving quickly, and with the open floor plan and my poor spatial skills, I feared that to be left behind would mean getting totally lost.  But I got a good look at the yurts.  They were about ten feet tall and a dozen feet in diameter, made of wood and light fabric, and open in the front.  The walls were divided in triangular sections and varied from opaque to translucent to nothing.  Some yurts had chairs; others just had cushions.

I was visiting a San Francisco tech company, in the hip South-of-Market (SOMA) neighborhood, with windows overlooking the bay.  It was a very large, high-ceilinged lofty space.  No matter why I was there; for all you know, I toured it just for this blog, or was covering corporate kitchens, freelance, for Ladies’ Home Journal.  I will tell you I was not being recruited, though it’s hard to tour such a novel, interesting place and not imagine working there.

Modern, quirky, colorful furniture was scattered around, in  (seemingly) random fashion.  There was quite a bit of empty space.  Some areas had empty chairs and desks arranged in neat rows, like a classroom, but mostly the arrangement was ad hoc.  Our guide explained that all the desks—which were pretty much just tables—could easily be raised so you could stand at them instead of sitting.  The overall vibe was more trade show than corporate HQ.

One thing I saw zero of?  Offices.  There were a few meeting rooms, but the walls and doors were all glass.  Also conspicuously absent:  cubicles.  Cubicles equal Dilbert.  Offices, meanwhile, suggest hierarchy and bureaucracy.  This wall-less, open floor plan might be designed as a spatial metaphor for the open-standards hi-tech development realm that removes barriers to innovation.  The place just says “startup.”

Oddly, the company I visited isn’t actually a startup.  It started that way (obviously), but as so often happens it was soon purchased by an industry juggernaut, though it still operates as its own company.  This is not an Uber-type outfit that will blow up a giant, embedded system of logistics and replace it with something categorically different.  Their product will not go viral, or change society, or get you laid.  As tech products go, it’s not on the same lowly end of the spectrum as an HP printer, but it’s also not Facebook.  It’s essentially the Internet equivalent of a much, much better mousetrap.

Better mousetraps, of course, are not sexy, because they’re not … wait for it … disruptive.  The Pied Piper .. now he was disruptive.  Perhaps when a more or less traditional tech company like this, that manufactures objects you can physically touch, tries to recruit top Gen-Y talent, it helps if the work environment is non-traditional, playful, and wacky.

There was an order to things, though.  Different functions (HR, marketing, engineering, operations) were arranged in informal clumps, with empty space between.  This workplace has the sprawl of a megalopolis, at least for now.  So did all this empty space feel moribund, like a ghost town?  Nope.  New-and-empty is a lot different than old-and-empty.  The atmosphere was one of great confidence:  “We may not need all this space right now, but we will soon.”

I had to wonder, where are the Razor scooters?  Maybe that would seem clichéd.  Could it be that employee scooters are over?  I mentioned them to my teenage daughter and she said, “Epic! I need that!”  So, even if they’re passé, maybe they’ll make a comeback in a few years.

Inside one yurt was a giant flat-screen monitor connected to a variety of gaming systems.  Predictable enough.  But then another space had pinball machines, which (our guide told us) were brought in by an employee from his personal collection.  My daughter played her first game of pinball recently, at the Exploratorium (a museum) and was bummed when I outscored her.  How do these pinball machines play out here?  If the rare older employee dazzles the millennials with his skills, does this make him cool or lame?

I couldn’t help but wonder, as we wandered through, what this workplace would be like for an introvert like me.  I could imagine developing a case of agoraphobia here, like so much openness would eventually wear me out.  Of course the idea behind this setting is to encourage collaboration and creativity, but doesn’t the latter flourish in a completely private space?  (I’m thinking here of writers’ or artists’ colonies where you mingle some of the time, but also have a private studio or cottage where you are utterly free from distractions.)

In tech, you certainly need extroverts to dazzle investors, recruit talent, and generate enough media hype to keep the vision alive ... but you also need coders and engineers, and aren’t a lot of these folks on the shy side?  What do they do for privacy … plug in headphones and listen to music?  It wasn’t that loud in there ... perhaps employees don’t always take advantage of being face-to-face.  Maybe a lot of them just have instant message chats all day, with colleagues six feet away.

There was a room, larger than the yurts, that actually had two or three opaque walls, and in the corner was a baby grand piano.  I could imagine this being really useful for an introvert … he could go in there and surround himself with a wall of sound.  Of course this only helps if you know how to play.

Just like at Google, there was a large cafeteria where all the food is free.  “Cafeteria” gives the wrong impression; the combination of tall windows overlooking the bay, the high ceiling, and the scattering of small, round tables created the feel of a café (though one that goes on and on).  I was too late for the spare ribs, but had some apricot chicken, and ravioli that was so sophisticated I can’t remember what was in it.  Squash, I guess, and the pasta casing was varicolored (spinach and sun-dried tomato?), lightly bathed in brown butter instead of a boring tomato sauce.  There was a large salad station (as far from the little buckets and sneeze-guards of a salad bar as this company’s workspace is from a cube farm).  The most sophisticated thing about the cafeteria was this:  not only did they have bottled soda instead of fountain drinks, they had Mexican Coke (made with sugar instead of corn syrup).  Pretty impressive.

Outside the cafeteria was a little table with a sign saying “Suggestions.”  There was no paper to write on or box to drop a written suggestion into.  Rather, the table was covered with Lego, with which to spell out your comment.  Brevity is clearly encouraged.

The tour ended with the lunch, and I never had the chance to ask what, exactly, was the purpose of the yurts.  Perhaps that’s for the best … maybe our guide wouldn’t have had a definitive answer, and maybe it’s better just to wonder.  Here are a few of my guesses: 

• A pseudo-private meeting place.  Occupation of the yurt tells passers-by not to join in on the discussion.  In this way, the yurt functions like the conch in Lord of the Flies.
• A place for having a time-out.  Talking is not allowed in the yurt, so it’s a place where an introvert goes to daydream.
• A place for a punitive time-out, like the ominously named “center pod” in my kid's kindergarten class, where misbehaving students did time.
• The yurt is symbolic of a nomadic inclination, and serves to remind upper management that they must continuously renew the love of their young, flighty talent.
• The yurt is a living experiment, perhaps one of many, being conducted by a very sophisticated, savvy HR department, to gain insight into the mysterious minds of their Gen-Y employees.
• The yurt is actually mostly useless, and exists only so the company can boast of having yurts.

Do you have any theories?  Have you lived or worked in a yurt?  Comment below, or e-mail me.  And if you’re reading this long, long after 2015, in a time when corporate yurts are ubiquitous, send me your recollections (e.g., “I’ll never forget my first yurt…”) and I’ll post them here, or in a follow-up essay.

Fiction - Guide to Managing Millennials

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for crude humor and mature themes.

Announcement

I am happy to announce that this is my 100th blog post since I started albertnet! My first post was in February of 2009. Funny … it doesn’t seem like that long ago.

Introduction

I got a solicitation in my work e-mail that was either spam or a reasonable business proposition, depending on your point of view. (As the aptly named Senator Packwood pointed out, “How can you know until you try?”) The solicitation was from whitepapersforbiz.com and was for a $99, 18-page guide on “Managing Generation Y.” The ad started out: “Generation Y. The Internet Generation. Millennials. Whatever you call them, this new generation of workers is the largest to hit the workforce since the Boomers, and they bring with them unique expectations.”

Right away this caught my attention. First of all, I was thrown by this term “Millennials.” Millennials? As in, born around the turn of the century? These people are eleven now. Please tell me they aren’t invading the workforce. Meanwhile, if the workforce is being flooded with these Gen-Y types, during a terrible recession with the worst unemployment in decades, who are they to be expecting anything? How about “being happy just to have a job”? Why should we coddle and cater to these people?

Naturally, I’m just being a bitter old man here. Obviously we need these youngsters very badly, because they “get it,” they can conceive of the next great “killer app,” they can solve our office computer problems, and many of them are still good-looking enough to be the public face of our companies as the rest of us, skin wrinkling and backs aching, run out the clock on our miserable lives. It has always been thus. So, the management guide makes perfect sense.

This is where I come in. I’m guessing that most corporate wage slaves—especially “individual contributors” (i.e., non-managers) like myself—are going to find $99 a bit steep for an 18-page electronic document, especially when the advertisement has embarrassing typos like “3 way to develop productive relationships with Millennials.” (Whether they meant “3 ways” or “3-way”—which would be kind of shocking—that’s pretty sloppy). So I figured, why don’t I write my own guide, which would be shorter (and thus better), and much, much cheaper? I might not have done as much research as these guys, but a little advice is better than nothing. Best yet, I let my PayPal account lapse, so I’m not even going to charge you. You can just buy me a beer next time I see you.

[Please note that what follows is fiction. I do not allude to any actual company in this piece, nor am I a human resources type, nor do I actually have real advice for anybody in this realm. It’s just for fun. Okay? Good.]

THE ALBERTNET GUIDE TO MANAGING MILLENNIALS

Seven core traits of Generation Y

Naturally there are vast differences among the members of any generation, but certain generalizations can be made (and are essential to handy pocket guides like this). This guide will concern only Americans born in 1990 or later, and who are entering the corporate world of offices rather than service-sector jobs, self-employment, or itinerant farm labor. Also, this guide only discusses males. Research for the equivalent guide for female employees is still underway as it is a much more complicated matter. (The section about boots and other footwear, by itself, is likely to eclipse this entire guide.) Stay tuned for how to order this second guide as soon as it is available!

Here are the seven core traits of Generation Y:

Informal – They consider not only words like “sir” and “please” to be old-fashioned, but also formerly widespread ideas like politeness, hierarchies, and decorum.

Connected – They are continuously in touch with a very wide, though seldom deep, electronic network of other Millennials (along with older sickos masquerading as them).

Casual – Old-fashioned business attire like suits, ties, socks, and clean shaves have been virtually abandoned by Gen-Y.

Entitled – This generation was raised by parents who were kids in the seventies—that is, whose parents were only into themselves. The backlash of the seventies selfish parents has manifested in overindulgent nineties/aughts parents who showered their kids with love, attention, praise, and expensive toys, making Gen-Y hugely imbued with a sense of entitlement.

Scattered – Millennials don’t have time for MTV, full magazine articles, lectures, books, or this guide. Their intellectual activity is the equivalent of waiting tables. They’re able to keep a dozen different text/Tweet/phone conversations going while seeming to be paying attention to you, but their mental worlds are too frantic for deep thoughts or discussions.

Public – Generation Y has become so inured to self-disclosure, due primarily to Facebook and other social networks, that the line between public and private has been essentially erased.

Smart – As far as we can tell, these kids are really, really smart. (We kind of have to say this, in case one of them happens to read this guide and becomes really, really offended.)

Deep down, Millennials are not only aware of these traits, but are very proud of them. This means if any member of an older generation, especially somebody in management, demonstrates these traits, the Gen Y employee is likely to feel patronized. You will do well to be as polite, isolated, well-attired, timid, organized, private, and, well, clueless as possible in the presence of Gen Y. This shouldn’t be that hard. Just be yourself.

Getting off on the right foot

A big part of your success in managing a Millennial is hiring the right one to begin with. Careful recruiting has never been more important—or more difficult—than it is now. Here are some pointers.

One of the most common mistakes managers make when recruiting Gen Y is to be visibly startled by the candidate’s appearance. This can cause the candidate to clam up completely, or else to lash out. If you know what to expect, you can keep your cool and have a positive recruiting experience. Things to be ready for:

• The candidate may not wear a necktie to the interview. Many Gen Yers literally cannot believe that this would be expected, even in an interview.
• Clip-on tie? Hide your astonishment. The candidate may sincerely want to please but knows he could never actually tie a tie; or, he is wearing the clip-on ironically.
• Giant fist-sized perfectly symmetrical Windsor knot? You’ve got a great candidate: somebody who actually trusts the sartorial advice of his (albeit misguided) father or grandfather enough to get help tying his tie. This guy is more likely to be emotionally stable, and might also be more docile in accepting quaint workplace traditions like working hard.
• Corporate logo, penis graphic, or animal art on a necktie? Roll with it—unless it’s a donkey or elephant. That could mean a politically active person, who could seriously damage workplace productivity during election season.
• Totally oversized suit? Could be a loaner from Dad. Or maybe the candidate got a bad clothier recommendation from a pal and went to Big & Tall. So many Millennials are seriously overweight, Big & Tall has become almost the de facto clothier for interview suits. (In fact, the parent corporation, LivingXL, is considering rebranding the clothing chain “Big & Normal.”)

Traditionally, an interview consists of an employer asking questions of the candidate to find out if he is qualified for the job. Today, the candidate’s ability should be assumed. Technology is changing so fast, your candidate will probably have an innovative, super-efficient way of carrying out his work tasks—something you never would have dreamed of. Or, the Gen Y new-hire may think of totally different job activities, or even a totally new business for your company to get into. Thus, the main purpose of the job interview is to convince the candidate that your company is a cool place to work—even while you take care to avoid coming off as a poseur.

Three ways to Motivate Millennials

There are of course countless ways to motivate your Gen Y employees, most of which work only some of the time. But we have identified three surefire ways to get the most out of your Millennials:

Interns. Always have some interns around to do most of the work. Not only do interns not require motivation (after all, trying to turn their internship into a paying job is all the motivation they will ever need), having them to kick around will build and sustain the self-esteem of your Gen Y employees.

Rejiggered ratings. In the traditional ratings scale used for older employees, change “underachieving” to “achieving”; change “achieving” to “exceeding expectations”; and change “exceeding expectations” to “needs improvement.” The name changes to the lower ratings are to protect an employee’s morale, since Millennials in these rungs obviously came through the “praise everybody” system where every player on the soccer team gets a trophy, even the ones who never kicked the ball. The name of the top tier is designed for offspring of Tiger Mothers, who respond only to verbal abuse.

Free soda. Fountain beverages are extremely inexpensive but really make your Gen Y employees feel valued. Put the beverage company’s marketing machine to work for you! (Note: do not offer Shasta or other off-brand beverages—this will backfire!)

Public vs. private

Self-disclosure is a habit for Millennials, so you should be braced for offhanded disclosures, ranging from the candid to the downright maudlin, that would have been unheard of a generation ago. The danger here is that your reaction could catch your employee completely off-guard and cause him terrible embarrassment. It is natural to assume that anybody of this generation would have pretty thick skin, but actually they do not. There is no non-verbal communication on Facebook, and face-to-face workplace interactions are not something the typical Gen-Y person is accustomed to. A poker face and a ready comment (e.g., “How did that make you feel?”) are advised.

For example, in his first or second week on the job a Millennial might make reference to something his therapist said to him. Generation Y, unlike the proud and/or shame-filled ones before it, is very relaxed about getting a little help sometimes. To show surprise at this disclosure—to say nothing of gasping—would be a very damaging, and alienating, faux pas. Instead you should respond (practice this in the mirror if necessary), “Wow, that’s very perceptive. Say, is your therapist accepting new patients?”

Of course, playing off your Gen Y employee’s disclosure is totally different from disclosing anything of an even remotely personal nature yourself. Why? Because you’re like the Millennial’s mom or dad, so for you to open up is embarrassing (in the “eww!” way). If, say, you mention that you have an appointment with a dermatologist, don’t be surprised if your Gen Y employee says, “Dude—TMI!”

To the great consternation of human resources departments nationwide, Gen Y employees cannot be prevented from Tweeting about just about everything that happens in the workplace. The only way to keep your company’s private business private is to require employees to create a Twitter alter-ego. You can put a positive spin on this requirement when explaining it to your Millennials. One benefit: with this alter ego they can be even more brash, insulting not just their enemies but their friends.

Of course, everybody mentioned in these Tweets must have a pseudonym as well. To assure this, have your employees refer to their colleagues (and yourself) by whatever secret nicknames they’re already using. Tell your employee, “If you think of me as ‘Balding Douchelord,’ just use that nickname in your Tweets.” If the employee resists, get him excited by saying, “As of yet nobody has created an iPad app that turns a name into an alias, like ‘Joseba Bloviatronica’ for ‘Joe Blow,’ then checks its availability. Somebody is going to make a killing on that app!”

Internet use

Telling a Millennial not to use Facebook while at work would be a real morale-crusher, so you have to allow it. But with other types of Internet abuse, you need to be more firm. Specifically, you can’t have employees using the corporate network to steal media content. Gen Y-ers cannot grasp that sharing MP3 files or downloaded movies is theft; this is literally beyond their comprehension. Explain that there are some upper-level managers who just don’t “get it,” and that these managers unfortunately have the authority to fire people. This will no doubt elicit a knowing smirk—Millennials are expert at covering their tracks—so you must follow up by saying, in a low voice, “Look, there are sysadmin people in this company very jealous of your success. They might just have nothing better to do than set up network traps to get you busted.”

Of course, even bringing up Internet acceptable use policy will get you labeled as one of “them,” so to build back the rapport with your Millennial, you need to get up, close your door, draw your blinds, and let him in on a little “secret”: that there’s a conference room with an extra PC that isn’t on the corporate network but instead steals Internet connectivity from the Starbucks in the lobby. He can use this PC to browse untoward websites, just like he did at the public library as a junior high kid.

Sensitivity training

Gen Y-ers are known for being sensitive. But this doesn’t mean they’re sensitive to others’ feelings—just to their own. We’d all like to think these kids have evolved into something kinder and gentler than we are, but honestly, what can we expect from a generation whose credo is “Sucks to be you!”?

It is widely accepted among Millennials that you can insult somebody as bluntly as you want, as long as you say, “Ha ha, you’ve just been punked!” afterward. It is very uncommon, however, for them to consider their audience for such gibes; that is, they’re just as likely to insult a grey-haired senior colleague as one of their pals. Naturally you cannot assume the senior colleague will understand, so you need to alter the Gen Y employee’s behavior.

The best angle to work here is the purely pragmatic. Don’t say, “Now Tyler, you shouldn’t give Donald a hard time just because he prints out so many documents. He’s kind of sensitive about his work habits and feels like you’re making fun of his age.” That’s just not going to work. What you should say is, “Tyler, don’t make fun of Donald. He’s a gun nut and kind of unstable.”

This sensitivity washes both ways. For example, if Donald, who is putting his daughter through Columbia, sees fit to pack a sack lunch every day, he certainly may. But just because he’s always eaten peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches doesn’t mean he can continue to do so. Millennials are likely to be allergic to peanuts, and even if they’re not, would be scandalized to see a peanut product right out there in the open. After all, peanut products are practically a controlled substance in modern schools. In deference to Gen Y, have your older employees switch to another type of nut butter.

Conclusion

This guide is really just the beginning. Behaviors among Generation Y are always changing and shifting, even as older employees become ever more rigid, even brittle, in their ways. Perhaps the best way to motivate Millennials, and make them feel good, is to ask their opinion about how you should behave. (It’s tempting to have them critique this guide, but of course they’re much too busy.)

dana albert blog