Who Moved My Cheese

[JJS]

I am going through the archives of Whatever, looking for wonderful rants that I missed before I found the site. I just ran across his description of this "book."

I too was encouraged to read it, on company time even. The company had been one of these enlightened companies that realizes that happy employees work harder voluntarily, and don't need to be browbeaten into it. On paper, this philosophy appears to be more costly, but in actuality the improved productivity more than makes up for the difference. When this company decided to change to a "bottom line is everything" company, they bought 3 copies of this stupid book and wanted everyone to read it, on job time. I thought, "What do I have to lose?" and read it.

What I had to lose was time that I would rather have spent debugging unix scripts. The book is crap. The philosophy behind it is crap. The message I got (not quite the same one the Scalzi got) is, "The company can and will do anything to you that we want to do. We don't care how you feel about it, so don't bother to tell us. We don't want to hear any whining about fairness, promises, or contracts. Just shut up and work harder for fewer benefits."

It should have been a warning to get out of that company, and indeed some took it that way. I, stupidly, did not.

If anyone at your company tells you that you should read this book, start sending out resumes. Things are going to go downhill far and fast.

[KJToo]

Well, I'm now less interested in reading about unauthorized (or at least unexpected) relocation of processed dairy products than ever before!