Most employees are usually invisible unless:
a) some brown-noser starts misrepresenting them to management
b) something goes wrong and they need a scapegoat - the more anonymous the better.
c) take too many sickies
Many employees are content to remain anonymous as it is often the best defence.
Had a meeting, probably 5 or 6 years ago, with all our technical and research boffins connected with a specific software project.
Told them that their plan was doomed and would never work, they could carry it out and find out themselves. Showed them mine instead (one slide, a big picture document). It still feels good. That slide will be on my wall for all my days.
Still invisible though, slip in the gates each day, but happy being so.
<I'm new, standing near someone else's desk, looking stupid, one of my stronger skills.>
<phone rings>
I pick it up and say, "Hello?"
Voice says "Who is this?"
Me: "Hell, I don't know; you haven't told me yet."
Voice, laughing: "This is ...; who are _you_?"
<voice is employee #3; I am employee #15789, and no longer invisible>
We are both long since departed from that outfit, but friends to this day.
A few highly visible minor errors are desirable. This makes it obvious, for the brief time you are on the radar, that you are no threat to anyone.
This means that come downsizing/rationalisation etc you will be happily passed over.
Any visible successes mark you out as someone to be watched with the reverse effect.
The time to be safe and invisible is when there are the usual collection of bad/ineffective managers around. The Brown-nosers will target some one else.
The time to be visible is when a good manager appears briefly and comet like on the horizon.
This is when you emerge from the shaddows and drag out all your goodies and put them on show.
IT gives you a brief spell of respect.
AT my last company, a niche product niche market company selling ones and twos at high margin, in came a new and good manager. He said we needed to get some good OEM accounts.
I trotted out my three year dormant project and for a brief while we both shone in the night sky till senior management got rid of us both (but enjoyed the new OEM business where the product became a market standard).
In this case the moral is that it is probably better to stay in the shaddows no matter what kind of manager hoves into view.
The only safe time to emerge is if there is good board level management. Good board level management is rarer than hen's teeth (I mean real hens, not the Hen's that have Hen Parties) but if you do find good board level managers then chance are they have recruited a lot of good middle managers too.
Trouble is these are usually to be found in the flagship companies in the group, not in the backwaters.
Be like Wally. Even if it's just for a few minutes, walk around with a big honkin' binder (or a laptop computer, open, with you glancing down at the screen every few steps) about twice a week where lots of people can see you. Make sure some of them are managers or at least senior engineers.
Everyone will assume you're busy, whether you really are or not, and you'll have time to do thorough work on your projects. No big errors = either invisible or at least more than 50 percent transparent.
Good on ya,
Goober Dave
Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies
Yep, Goober Dave has it.
Most managers mistake activity for productivity.
They mistake engineers sitting doing nothing obvious as doing nothing.
It never occurs to them that simply thinking is a productive activity.
This is because most managers do not and are not required to think.
They have management handbooks which tell them what to do. Mostly they write reports and in any given situation they act as directed by the little book.
Sales down? fire a few people and rein in overheads.
Put up prices to compensate for falling sales. The fact that this further depresses sales is something that escapes them but it is the standard response dictated by their handbooks.
It doesn't matter. If sales fall further, they cut back on R&D, cancel a few product lines, and embark on a mission to create the illusion of profitability for just long enough to sell the company to some other company which then ends a few more products, rationalises, moves manufacturing etc and generally ends up with the brand name and precious little else.
This are conditioned or programmed responses for every possible situation.
There is a great deal of difficulty finding good managers so most management is expected to be pretty much useless for anything else and the system by which companies survive is to control the way they respond.
It is dangerous to let managers think for themselves and they thus are unaware of the value of thinking by others.
SUre, there are situations where god managers emerge and shine briefly before the system can eliminate them and there are companies that shine bright for a while before they crash and burn.
Kodak is the latest.
A company that grew massively but somewhere along the line lost the plot as all companies do eventually.
Apple....how long will it now last?
Microsoft?
What happens is these companies expand beyond the ability of society and education to find and educate a sufficiency of good managers.
The same is true of many aspects of most (all?)businesses.
Sales men are trained to sell anything.
They have methods not insights or technical skills. Modern sales engineers can be little more than monkey see monkey do practitioners who are able to function using computer selection programs. Take them outside of the established and they are lost.
You would think that in all this, every company would be alert for smart clever capable people. The truth is that in only a few companies are such people valued. In most other companies they are feared as the white wolf.
For smart clever people the best thing to do to survive is pretend to be dull and stupid lest they stir fear amongst the idiots.
In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king... and the blind will seek every opportunity to take away that one eye.
Nothing will make you invisible to a Bad Manager that you have angered, shown up, embarrassed, or out-performed if he holds grudges and keeps his adult diapers in a twist about every humiliation.
If that same Bad Manager has a chronic problem with gossiping and starts spouting off complaints about you, predicting your future termination, THAT will make you invisible to your co-workers, despite whether you do your work well or not.
