Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Hurry up and fret

Three weeks and change in the future, and nary a nibble on the place. Sigh. I wonder when the blame-game will start with the agent, who was floating the idea of dropping the price after the first week. (A suggestion, I might add, not borne out by the MLS cross-comparison, but it may come to that after this week anyway.)

Unfortunately, working conditions--if not actual work--promised to become unpleasant. The Powers That Be cannot, it seems isolate personnel/performance issues--they merely dilute them at the expense of the solid folks. At least in our area. We're not shy about firing the true losers, mind you--at least there's that mercy. It's all driven by the belief that the good developers/QA people aren't thick on the ground and we have no choice but to make due with anything mediocre or above.

Yet every pep rally speech from The Big Guy (crying wolf for the umpteenth time about how we have to be ready for The Big Break) segues into how we can't do it all ourselves, that we're going to have to re-gear to manage outside (read: offshored) talent. Never mind how many effing miracles I've seen the workhorses pull off over the years. Without, I might add, any productive assistance from said Big Guy, who doesn't understand that his core competence is to 1.) gladhand customers and 2.) Keep the higher-up off our backs. Anything more hands-on than that is negatively productive.

So, yeah, thanks heaps for the vote of confidence, dude. I suppose we should be flattered that he thinks we'll emerge from our technical chrysalises as fully formed project/program managers as naturally as anything six-legged manages to do. But to whine about how we can't find programming talent in the area--two colleges and a tech school notwithstanding--all while reflexively defaulting to offshoring as the solution and not see themselves as part of the problem (at least in the macro-sense)?

What.

The.

Fuck.

Like I needed another reason to move ASAP. Which I suppose is kind of the flip side of working so closely or so long with some folks that they're like family. Sometimes you really need put some distance between you and the office's peculiar brand of insanity, if only to grow into your own skin a little better.