4 ms·

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right?

• duxup 7y ago
  So true. At one point management had the idea that we should do "chat support" on the website. The website (a god awful mess) was run by the marketing department (that's why all our handy documents were hidden from the world) and they took the lead and suddenly announced support was just gonna be available to "chat" 24x7... and support via twitter would come soon too... nobody in support knew anything about it. Thankfully even the CEO recognized the amount of manpower it would take and how bad an idea that was for what often were complex issues.... and really most social media and chat contacts were from folks who bought second hand equipment and had no support contract.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    Speaking of children in the room. I've known a few people in my life who could talk anybody, including themselves, into any stupid idea you could imagine. And then talk themselves out of it again in six weeks. The whiplash is tremendous. I've started applying advice for talking to addicts to my conversations with them (supportive, but don't invest in it). It's so disruptive. And personally, I find it exhausting. Most of them have been in sales, at least once. Promising things that the company can't possibly deliver for a price that will bankrupt you. Classic marketing dept.
    • rurp 7y ago
      Your description of whiplash resonates with me. One of the most common bad management traits I've run into is constantly changing priorities. Typically in these environments every single thing is an urgent crisis, but the super duper critical stuff from earlier in the week almost always gets completely forgotten about because 1) It was never actually that important, and 2) Everyone immediately has to jump on the next "crisis". Working in a place like that is exhausting, but very little ever seems to get done.