Monologue incognito from one IT conference

    Disclaimer. The monologue below is a transcript of the speech of one of the speakers at one of the IT conferences. The author of the post only publishes it here with the permission of the speaker.

    Hello!

    In the program of events you were promised an incognito dollar millionaire. Alas, he went to the waters in Baden-Baden to treat the conversational liver and had to plug a hole at random.

    My name is Sergey. To say "I'm a bad speaker" to myself, you need to be at least one of them, a speaker. I'm not it at all. I made my first and one of the last presentations at the age of 18 in Spain, in front of an audience of about 100. My average English language at that time was simultaneously translated into Spanish, people yawned and scratched turnips, waiting for this misunderstanding to finish bleating and a coffee break would be announced.

    To say that I was ashamed was to say nothing, red as a cancer, I dumped the second exit, got into my room and was afraid to catch my eye. All kinds of public professionals like Carnegie would say “shame!” And “never again!” For myself, I decided - anything, even Zhiguli beer on Fridays, but not public executions

    . Why am I? Many, looking at IT workers, confuse modesty with shyness. Yes and figs with them. The main thing is that we ourselves do not confuse. I am shy, so I will look at the floor and read a piece of paper. I would drink, of course, for courage, one hundred grams (and preferably one hundred fifty), but the organizers forbade it. Well, let sucks, but honestly!

    I am the owner of company P, in which we have been developing any garbage about which no one has heard about for 13 or 14 years. Without the talent to do something beautiful and aesthetic, we are satisfied with the underwater part of the iceberg: soft switches and clients for IP telephony, hardware and software solutions for high-load content processing systems, web and e-mail impersonalization systems for virtual presence, cloud video surveillance , several reference and trading Internet portals, well, and a couple of projects in the startup phase, which are too early to talk about, because it’s a shame

    All that I’m going to say is based solely on personal experience, relates to small companies and is absolutely not obliged to work in large ones, although sometimes it happens. For 25 years given to IT business, I managed to go in different skins, from a technician delivering junior coffee to developers to a company owner who does not need to get up at 8. There were probably two main hobbies between these dubious faces - the C language and dark Irish beer. Alas, both that and another with time had to be cut down a lot.


    First, about quantity. After working at Microsoft and having given up rather high positions in the Russian office of SAP and the main Google after an interview, I finally became convinced that working in large teams is not mine. I am opposed to complex hierarchical submissions with a depth of more than one, I don’t like undercover games under the motto “if you want a friend’s place, sit him down”, I want to know what all my colleagues are called and what they live with. In general, I want to go to work with pleasure, because this is a big part of my life and I need to spend it comfortably. There are only 10 people in our company, and, I think, many in the hall grinning - a trifle. Well, garbage, we have enough.

    Motivational relationships between programmers and superiors in recent history were laid down until the mid-90s, when we were nerds with glasses, from about this joke:

    The deputy head calls:
    - so! move tomorrow! do not forget to collect all garbage besides tables and computers
    - what garbage?
    - well there, teapots, wires, programmers ... There was no

    particular shortcoming in computer specialists , the main interests of consumers lay in the framework of text editors and games, and programmers were perceived as aliens, and in the worst sense of the word. And this time should be recognized as a period of decline for IT. Motivation is zero. But it was a time when universities still taught this profession and pretty well. When there were no help, google and had to think, try and analyze to solve the problem, spending nights on coffee with mayonnaise. And do not leave to have a cup of tea when the Internet was turned off in the office and the entire knowledge base became inaccessible.

    During the 90s, a very remarkable process has taken place, thanks to which you are all at the top of salaries, buy imported beer and sea beaches, and also look indulgently at office plankton, which works for 10 a month. And then a huge number of talented programmers left for the USA, Israel, Great Britain and Canada. Those who did not knock down massively transferred to other professions, not having the opportunity to feed their families. Two categories of people remained in the profession: dumb, which no one needs, and convinced, who are actually dumb too - you had to blame while the hole in the matrix was open! The former, forgive me again the terminology and their own subjective opinion, were subsequently employed by the pogrom-onanists in the bread field 1C, and the latter also do not live in poverty.

    If you were born after the 85th year, your merit in this IT-boom is not. Don’t puff out your cheeks, don’t make a big deal, just get, grow and enjoy. And remember that history is cyclical. The economy and society always, albeit belatedly, respond to such disturbances and restore the status quo.

    I believe that before ranting about what motivations are and what they are good or bad, it must be said why they are needed at all. From the point of view of the economy of IT business and its processes, people are the main capital. And not at all because they are unique and irreplaceable, but because the payment of their labor is up to 90% of all costs. Everything else is trifles. Avoiding the crap word “team”, each owner understands that the strength of his company lies in his ability to support and organize an effective group of colleagues.

    This process is not easy, we meet every day at the same office not because we went to one kindergarten and were friends at school, but because we do one job. In order that everyone does not quarrel and does not run away, and those who are satisfied work as long as possible, various schemes of encouragement and socialization are applied.

    The most popular of them is premium. As was the case with Vysotsky - “a premium was covered in the quarter”. A good thing - plus a salary, you can also get an additive. It doesn’t matter - once a month, quarter or year, the essence of the scheme does not change. The most striking example is the "13th salary" - a concept devoid of essence and meaning. The minus of this scheme is one: who decides to award or fine, and by how much? there will obviously be no justice, and the ability to not do their work, but to demonstrate it, not to be known, will come to the fore. In Moscow, it is called "succeed." All large companies of Russia work in this scheme, and I think we have all heard enough about the level of their effectiveness.

    Smoothly flowing from the previous one is the motivation “work in a big company”. 80% of respondents would prefer to work in Lukoil, rather than in a small, effective LLC. These people sincerely believe that working in such a company is more reliable, paid higher and looks more prestigious. In fact, all this is a common misconception: you can not equate the reliability of the company itself with its presence in it. Salaries of middle-level developers in krupnyak have not been competitive for a long time, I would also like to take a walk in prestige: the national Soviet feeling is cool! And if you remove the cheap show-off, what is cool? Write code in morally impoverished 4GL languages? Participate in endless and insanely useful meetings? Wear a suit of a given color? Lose a bonus for a 5-minute delay? To know and feel that cameras are watching you, even in the toilets? Attend wonderful courses of some kind of Hubbardism at a corporate university, where with the help of NLP from your already tender botanical consciousness they will do plant growing?

    The biggest misfortune of large companies for IT people is that you, playing according to corporate rules “lick-sit-boasted-boasted,” will grow into a functionary in it, or it will spit you out and it will be difficult to get a job. Briefly: from small to large you can, back - shish. As with 1C: a programmer can become 1Snick, never again.

    Okay, let's move on to more advanced methods of motivation. The following scheme has entered the lead plan since the salaries of IT people have crossed the level of common sense. Spoiled new celestials lazily look through the hunters' tapes: where, and most importantly WHAT else lure? To curb the wage race, the largest metropolitan employers agree not to lure specialists from each other so as not to drive themselves into a corner with each new round of the payroll spiral.

    Hiring housing, discount programs for large retailers, group trips to the pool, building a floor for a gym, vouchers to a sanatorium, free cakes for cheerful talk of vacationing colleagues and other complimentary pleasures. A joint team building that makes a flock of sheep out of you with the wonderful “what have you done for your company today?” Guys, this is not your company, the company is owned by the owners and does nothing for free. And if you are over 25 and you still need to take a pen to the pool and the dining room, picking up your friends for an hour or a day, then you should think about it like in the famous film: “Before, my parents forbade something, now my wife . And when will I grow up ?! ” You are an IT specialist and for the sure path to the mountain you must be capable of self-organization, knowing and soberly assessing your capabilities.

    For more independent individuals there is a scheme “you will be a shareholder with us, druh!”, In which small packets of shares are distributed to key employees. These bags remind pills "nepizdina": you will confidentially inform selected friends that you are not just there horseradish from the mountain, you are a co-owner of the company! But here, as usual, there is one nuance that the American writer O'Henry told in a story about the sale of land at the bottom of the lake. If 51% of the votes are needed to make key decisions in a company, then happy and key ones can get up to 49%, theoretically owning almost half of the company. This is one of the most powerful ways to tie a person to a business. However, you should remember the law on societies, according to which in fact you do not own anything. The assets of the company may be withdrawn without your knowledge (both immovable and contractual), Dividend payment decisions are also made without you. The owner cannot risk losing his company and will take precautions. If you understand this perfectly, then is it time to become an employer yourself?

    Obviously, all these schemes are not evolution from bad to good, they exist in parallel and are used with different successes in different combinations in different companies.

    Perhaps someone will be offended by the terminology, but it is still worth abstracting (and you clearly must be able to) and perceive the essence. The relationship between masters and slaves should be simplified as much as possible. What the owner should: pay the agreed remuneration on time and provide acceptable working conditions. What should a slave do: do his work efficiently and on time, and also clearly appear at the workplace in the agreed time windows. What else should the parties to each other - only one thing and the mutual: do not compost the brain. Nobody owes anything to anyone else, and there is no need to dissemble, all the notorious social responsibilities of business are the imagination of illiterate economists and low-growth managers who were refuted by Comrade Marx back in the century before last.

    Well, in the end I want to mention the most attractive to me, but still not working method of motivation: a mercenary just needs to pay an adequate fixed salary. Once a year, with it, revise it: does not pull - to reduce, shines - to increase. This approach allows a person to clearly understand how much money he will receive and when, in order to pay on time for his obligations and to know what obligations he can afford.

    Why is that? Yes, because a normal, harmonious person does not need to be imposed, or indicated with whom to go to the pool, he should not be forced to knit knots and scream in chorus any nonsense at team spirit trainings. This spirit will be foul. Strange - we trust the modern developer to develop complex systems in linear teams, but we do not consider it independent enough to decide where and how to spend what we have earned. And we continue to pay him coupons for lunch and trips to the ust-pitching. And you need to trust - without trust in colleagues, the business will not be successful.

    That's all. Thank you for your time and attention!

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