I spent the last 15 years of my career in software quality improvement and control and in my last job I tried teaching the software engineers root cause analysis. They didn't give a s___ and it was pointless, the team was so dysfunctional I could tell you stories that would make your head spin. I hated that job, management was throwing me under the bus for field failures with the customer for software failures and I had nothing to do with the testing group or the software development but since I was the quality guy on the team it was somehow my fault. The logic and fact the government could not see through this bull#$%* astounded me. It was a government contracting position...
The quality auditing I was doing was finding them not following their processes producing the product and they would not address the audit findings I had written up against the team. We had quality issues over a year old the managers ignored and would not assign or allocate team members to address. I reported it to MGMT weekly...it did nothing but drive me in depression.
The most embarrassing team I ever worked with and the MGMT was a joke. We had to step up the contract and my outstanding audit findings became an issue. The SAIC management one layer up at group asked me why I had not addressed these issues on my last meeting with them a week before my last day and SI explained they were not assigned to me that others were responsible for closing and addressing them and I could not address the issues as it was their process I was tasked to assess and as such they needed to address the audit failures not me or Si was no longer independent of the process I was assessing. They had no clue. I told them I had been raising this issue with the SAIC program manager for over a year and he had done nothing to address the issues.
My lob across the PM's now didn't cause any reaction.
They were pathetic too.
The first team at SAIC I worked for were rock stars, couldn't ask for a better high performance team, the last 2 were slow train wrecks.
Glad you could get things whipped in shape at your company. The last two teams I worked for didn't empower me to make the changes needed and suffered as a result. Should have quit and went elsewhere.
Glad you apply what you learned in industry to our Hondas.
Holy cow, Raf: I thought I was reading a rehash of my last 3 jobs, and the one at Adam Aircraft before those!
Your experience (and mine) are emblematic of the mindset of too much management of ANYTHING related to government-touched projects (or products - even some MIL products). I burned myself out badly during the one at Adam Aircraft (to the point I told management I was carrying to work, and they could either fire me, or let me - they chose the latter in the end) and when they collapsed I took on a short-term job of writing My CB750 Book as my own therapy, not letting anyone else edit, [re]steer, or change the direction I wanted it to go. That took from January to March in 2006, and I felt SO much better after I got that off my chest (wrecked that computer in the process, though!) and made it succeed. This forum was a major portion of that, too.
I can offer this: you KNOW what you know - and that, with its acquired skills from the practice of it, is both yours to keep, and to re-employ elsewhere. My last 3 jobs were for people who seemed like 'mental midgets' as I worked with them, as they could never see the forest in front of them for the trees that composed it, and they all got lost in wandering after nuisance details that meant nothing to the success of their projects. After I watched the 4th one fail I decided to head off on my own and started in that direction: about 4 days later they decided they didn't need me there, either. After I left they lost over 75% of their people (employees) because of such poor work quality that they simply ran out of customers willing to risk another undertaking with them.
So - remember it's not you, it's them. The hard part (for me) during the past 7 or 8 years has been in trying to find someone to work for/with who "gets it" and also has a project worth diving into and spending a portion of your life on: oddly enough, I've received this sort of therapy from helping others here realize their joys and dreams of riding one of these great bikes that had such an influence over my own life. So, I'm happy to spread whatever I know around! The rest of the time I work at a gun range (one of my other passions involves making lead fly realfast) and return the used brass from their floors to the hands of those who would reload them and make them do it again. You meet the nicest people on a Honda, and behind a trigger!
