5 ms·

"All I do is work here"

138 points by pclark 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- gaius 17y ago
  I'm not sure what he expected tho' - that anyone who works there can just log into the mail server and update the mailing list?
  - davidw 17y ago
    The Cranky Cynic: "Oh, I'm so sorry Mr. Godin, I'll see if I can get Frank to fix that". After which, of course, nothing is done anyway, but at least Mr. Godin feels like they care.
    - skorgu 17y ago
      Or a middle ground: "I'm sorry Mr. Godin, I don't know if there's anything I can do to take care of that for you but I'll do what I can." Merely acknowledging the problem, taking some responsiblity even by association changes the tone of the interaction. Especially considering they're asking him for a favor.
      - davidw 17y ago
        To tell the truth, if it is not some big organization, maybe it would be possible to do what was requested... Hard to tell without knowing anything about that though.
  - larsberg 17y ago
    Big companies are generally intolerant of bad behavior - if it's brought up. But in the absence of anybody shacking leaves to see, "why did Mr. Godin have a bad experience?" things just continue apace.
  - ggruschow 17y ago
    The best I can think of is the employee he's talking to calling over to the responsible dept noting the complaint (possibly with the customer on the phone), leaving a follow-up email, noting that as an issue with their own manager in whatever reporting they can do, and telling the customer "I'm very sorry sir. I don't have direct access to that myself, but I'll do my best to get ahold of the people who do, and to make sure that our management knows of the problem. Would you like me to follow-up with you on Wednesday?" That said, I wasn't thinking so much of the situation he posed as the message he came away with. You don't get to be Apple by having a bunch of people in your organization taking shots at other parts of the organization. Of course the question now is do you still get to be Apple with the way they run the App Store.
  - fendale 17y ago
    No, but surely they have a better chance of tracking that person down than Seth does, especially if they are asking him for a favour. It certainly wouldn't hurt to spend 15 minutes trying, or as others have said, say you will try. The main point is that blaming someone else inside your organisation to shift the blame from yourself is not cool.
Ardit20 17y ago
So this guy is a marketer. His posts are no longer than 500 words. So he sits on his computer for 20 minutes has a rant and he gets on the front page of hacker news. Has he said anything? Oh I just work here, he sounds like a 10 year old kid having a rant about his friend. Let me refute him. I used to work in a call centre. Some people there were pretty irresponsible, like not taking someone off the list when asked. I just did my job and got paid, so if someone wanted to be taken off the list and not be called I was glad to do it. So, I am me, I am not my company, I am an individual, and I take responsibility for my own actions, not the companies action, unless I am the CEO. Now, what can be done about these marketers?
- cwan 17y ago
  There's a difference being unable and powerless to do something and coming across as if you just don't care. Saying that you're just doing your job and not attempting (or even pretending) to do something about it it comes across as the latter and a major turnoff to both your customers and business partners. In this case it sounds like this company was asking Godin for a favor - sure you could call it a rant, but it's also pretty fair given that it's not like he went to them, they went to him (which would make the attitude especially galling). When you start saying stuff like 'it's not my department' when you're asking for a favor from someone else, it's also saying that you have little to no pride about the company that you work for and I think that's his point. If you care so little, life's short. Why wouldn't you find somewhere better to work (or better yet, start your own business that you can be proud of)?
  - diego 17y ago
    I often interact with people who work for corporations like that. They usually don't care about the company because the company won't acknowledge any extra effort on their part. All that's expected from them is to comply with what they are asked to do. If person A calls me to do X, from the point of view of the company all that matters is that X is done. If A comes back with a complaint from me about Y, from the point of view of the company A is wasting her time. He says "if you are not proud, go somewhere else" but that's wrong. She may need the salary and be satisfied with her conditions. Who says she has to be proud? He's the one with the problem. Seth, if you are not happy then do business with a different company.
Tichy 17y ago
On the one hand I agree, on the other hand most people only work to earn money. They don't consider themselves to be part of a huge, cool machine and they don't see it as their sole reason of existence to enhance their employers public image. The real question would be how to make one's employees care about the company. It's not trivial to set up a system where every employee can affect every other's employee's actions - you don't want to encourage blame shifting and mobbing, after all.
mattmcknight 17y ago
I see it as a problem with the company, not the just individual. If I walked into the Nordstrom shoe department and said there was an error on my store credit card bill, I bet the salesperson would get me on the path to fixing the problem, not say, "I just work here." I also see a problem with the individual. She is failing the basics of the sales process. She calls up a person, someone obviously influential, as she knows who he is, and asks him for something- time at the least. In return, she's not willing to offer him anything? Even the phone number of the person in the department that handles that stuff- someone in marketing that would probably like a chance to speak to Seth Godin, even if it's a chance to get some feedback from him?
prakash 17y ago
I think this is a very important lesson for startups. Most medium & big companies behave this way. Fix a customers problem, don't make excuses about it not being part of your job, or someone else didn't step up.
- adamc 17y ago
  I mostly agree, but the reason most medium and big companies behave this way is that most employees are in fact wage slaves with little influence outside of their direct purview. This is one of the inherent advantages of small companies where a relatively high fraction of the work force has equity, and where the bureaucracy is not yet powerful.
  - prakash 17y ago
    absolutely! In most medium to large companies, the #1 job of most employees is to keep their job and worry about their career. Customers come a distant 2nd, if they are so lucky!
  - timwiseman 17y ago
    Very true and an excellent point. Even so, I would expect a conscientious employee to at least make the effort instead. At a bare minimum, instead of saying "That's not my job." they should say, "I am sorry, I cannot help you with that, BUT the person who can is...."
    - undees 17y ago
      Exactly! I've worked for big companies that have done dumb things, and my bosses and co-workers have consistently taken the attitude of, "I'm sorry this has happened. I'm forwarding the information about this problem to so-and-so." Then they've followed up a couple of weeks later with, "Did so-and-so get back to you? Were they able to fix the problem?" It's a nice example to try to live up to.
- asmithmd1 17y ago
  I was lucky enough to be staying at a Ritz-Carlton a couple of years ago and poked my head into an employee break room out of curiosity. There was a poster on the wall that said, "You have the responsibility and authority to handle the customers problem" I am sure they had been told that in training, but there it was as a daily reminder. Everyone starts a new job with enthusiasm, but I am sure the "I just work here" crowd have been smacked down more than once when they went out on a limb to do what they thought was the right thing.
apowell 17y ago
Who is Seth addressing? Is he talking to the individuals who 'work here'? If so, why should they care -- they have good jobs, go home at night to their friends or families, and leave work at work. They're supposed to care about the company, brand, and 'big picture'....why, exactly?
- brk 17y ago
  why, exactly Because if they take an indifferent attitude it shows through to the customers, who will take their business elsewhere, which will cause the company to fail, which will cause the workers to end up jobless.
  - dasil003 17y ago
    It's a management failure. The employees are not going to magically get excited and proactive about PR just because some out-of-touch Internet marketing celeb thinks they should. It's management's job to make sure people are trained properly in how to handle these situations, and also, more importantly, to provide the clear vision and incentive that makes people care. Finally, if employees are hurting the image of the company, it's management's job to fire them. If a random employee starts taking up issues caused by other people in the company, and there is no culture of communication or escalation procedure then one likely outcome is that they are going to waste their time and not get their job done. That doesn't mean an employee shouldn't be proactive or whatever, but just that in a large organization the solution can not come from the bottom up.
tokenadult 17y ago
"Do you really think someone who worked for Bernie Madoff will go far with this line? 'I'm not Bernie, I just worked with him every day and took a great salary when times were good...' Not sure what the difference is." To answer the question I see posted in other replies to this interesting submission (what brand is this?), I think Seth Godin is saying that people who work for companies who feel that they, or their co-workers, can't work ethically have to SPEAK UP to as many layers of management as possible, to let management know that there is a problem, and that customers, suppliers, the press, and other stakeholders are noticing.
raganwald 17y ago
Is there a whoosh going on here or am I "playing baseball, standing out in left field?" I guess I'm a fielder! My perspective on the entire rant/essay/insight/whatever is that it is summarized by its last line. If you want to take credit for your organization when times are good, you cannot hide behind your powerlessness when times are bad. When I worked for K- G---- way back in the day, we built a hit product. I milked that success for years. Imagine if I had stayed on board and things had gone poorly after a few years. Could I later say, "I only work at KG, I don't make decisions, the problems were elsewhere?" My take on Seth's point is that I can't wear KG's success like a mantle while weaseling out of association with its failures with talk of "I only worked there, other people make the bad decisions." It's ok to just punch a clock and do a job. But if you're going to try to associate yourself with your organization during good times, you have to live with the lumps during bad times. JM2C, you may have read something else in this.
dasil003 17y ago
Anyone else get the feeling he's talking about Yahoo?
- spolsky 17y ago
  I suspect it's the New York Times.
dmor 17y ago
"It's a management problem..." "It's a big company problem..." No! It's YOUR problem if you are starting a company, building a brand, or serving customers. It's not necessary a big company issue - it's a "mentality". I've worked for a Fortune 500 where employees were too proud of the culture to ever "pass the buck" and a startup where employees had a "big company" mentality and thought it was okay to leave features broken for customers for months (to the ultimate peril of the company). If you're a founder coming out of a big company beware of this potential blind spot. Good company culture, good brand, happy employees - those things aren't accidental or simply the result of a lot of money and freedom, you have to cultivate it - and brand destruction or toxic culture starts with the little things, like saying, "I just work here". In my opinion, employees who contribute nothing more than "punching the clock" should be the best at towing the company line, because let's face it - if you just punch the clock your are easily replaced, especially in today's job market.

138 points by pclark 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

gaius 17y ago
I'm not sure what he expected tho' - that anyone who works there can just log into the mail server and update the mailing list?
- davidw 17y ago
  The Cranky Cynic: "Oh, I'm so sorry Mr. Godin, I'll see if I can get Frank to fix that". After which, of course, nothing is done anyway, but at least Mr. Godin feels like they care.
  - skorgu 17y ago
    Or a middle ground: "I'm sorry Mr. Godin, I don't know if there's anything I can do to take care of that for you but I'll do what I can." Merely acknowledging the problem, taking some responsiblity even by association changes the tone of the interaction. Especially considering they're asking him for a favor.
    - davidw 17y ago
      To tell the truth, if it is not some big organization, maybe it would be possible to do what was requested... Hard to tell without knowing anything about that though.
- larsberg 17y ago
  Big companies are generally intolerant of bad behavior - if it's brought up. But in the absence of anybody shacking leaves to see, "why did Mr. Godin have a bad experience?" things just continue apace.
- ggruschow 17y ago
  The best I can think of is the employee he's talking to calling over to the responsible dept noting the complaint (possibly with the customer on the phone), leaving a follow-up email, noting that as an issue with their own manager in whatever reporting they can do, and telling the customer "I'm very sorry sir. I don't have direct access to that myself, but I'll do my best to get ahold of the people who do, and to make sure that our management knows of the problem. Would you like me to follow-up with you on Wednesday?" That said, I wasn't thinking so much of the situation he posed as the message he came away with. You don't get to be Apple by having a bunch of people in your organization taking shots at other parts of the organization. Of course the question now is do you still get to be Apple with the way they run the App Store.
- fendale 17y ago
  No, but surely they have a better chance of tracking that person down than Seth does, especially if they are asking him for a favour. It certainly wouldn't hurt to spend 15 minutes trying, or as others have said, say you will try. The main point is that blaming someone else inside your organisation to shift the blame from yourself is not cool.

Ardit20 17y ago

So this guy is a marketer. His posts are no longer than 500 words. So he sits on his computer for 20 minutes has a rant and he gets on the front page of hacker news. Has he said anything? Oh I just work here, he sounds like a 10 year old kid having a rant about his friend. Let me refute him. I used to work in a call centre. Some people there were pretty irresponsible, like not taking someone off the list when asked. I just did my job and got paid, so if someone wanted to be taken off the list and not be called I was glad to do it. So, I am me, I am not my company, I am an individual, and I take responsibility for my own actions, not the companies action, unless I am the CEO. Now, what can be done about these marketers?

cwan 17y ago
There's a difference being unable and powerless to do something and coming across as if you just don't care. Saying that you're just doing your job and not attempting (or even pretending) to do something about it it comes across as the latter and a major turnoff to both your customers and business partners. In this case it sounds like this company was asking Godin for a favor - sure you could call it a rant, but it's also pretty fair given that it's not like he went to them, they went to him (which would make the attitude especially galling). When you start saying stuff like 'it's not my department' when you're asking for a favor from someone else, it's also saying that you have little to no pride about the company that you work for and I think that's his point. If you care so little, life's short. Why wouldn't you find somewhere better to work (or better yet, start your own business that you can be proud of)?
- diego 17y ago
  I often interact with people who work for corporations like that. They usually don't care about the company because the company won't acknowledge any extra effort on their part. All that's expected from them is to comply with what they are asked to do. If person A calls me to do X, from the point of view of the company all that matters is that X is done. If A comes back with a complaint from me about Y, from the point of view of the company A is wasting her time. He says "if you are not proud, go somewhere else" but that's wrong. She may need the salary and be satisfied with her conditions. Who says she has to be proud? He's the one with the problem. Seth, if you are not happy then do business with a different company.

Tichy 17y ago

On the one hand I agree, on the other hand most people only work to earn money. They don't consider themselves to be part of a huge, cool machine and they don't see it as their sole reason of existence to enhance their employers public image. The real question would be how to make one's employees care about the company. It's not trivial to set up a system where every employee can affect every other's employee's actions - you don't want to encourage blame shifting and mobbing, after all.

mattmcknight 17y ago

I see it as a problem with the company, not the just individual. If I walked into the Nordstrom shoe department and said there was an error on my store credit card bill, I bet the salesperson would get me on the path to fixing the problem, not say, "I just work here." I also see a problem with the individual. She is failing the basics of the sales process. She calls up a person, someone obviously influential, as she knows who he is, and asks him for something- time at the least. In return, she's not willing to offer him anything? Even the phone number of the person in the department that handles that stuff- someone in marketing that would probably like a chance to speak to Seth Godin, even if it's a chance to get some feedback from him?

prakash 17y ago

I think this is a very important lesson for startups. Most medium & big companies behave this way. Fix a customers problem, don't make excuses about it not being part of your job, or someone else didn't step up.

adamc 17y ago
I mostly agree, but the reason most medium and big companies behave this way is that most employees are in fact wage slaves with little influence outside of their direct purview. This is one of the inherent advantages of small companies where a relatively high fraction of the work force has equity, and where the bureaucracy is not yet powerful.
- prakash 17y ago
  absolutely! In most medium to large companies, the #1 job of most employees is to keep their job and worry about their career. Customers come a distant 2nd, if they are so lucky!
- timwiseman 17y ago
  Very true and an excellent point. Even so, I would expect a conscientious employee to at least make the effort instead. At a bare minimum, instead of saying "That's not my job." they should say, "I am sorry, I cannot help you with that, BUT the person who can is...."
  - undees 17y ago
    Exactly! I've worked for big companies that have done dumb things, and my bosses and co-workers have consistently taken the attitude of, "I'm sorry this has happened. I'm forwarding the information about this problem to so-and-so." Then they've followed up a couple of weeks later with, "Did so-and-so get back to you? Were they able to fix the problem?" It's a nice example to try to live up to.
asmithmd1 17y ago
I was lucky enough to be staying at a Ritz-Carlton a couple of years ago and poked my head into an employee break room out of curiosity. There was a poster on the wall that said, "You have the responsibility and authority to handle the customers problem" I am sure they had been told that in training, but there it was as a daily reminder. Everyone starts a new job with enthusiasm, but I am sure the "I just work here" crowd have been smacked down more than once when they went out on a limb to do what they thought was the right thing.

apowell 17y ago

Who is Seth addressing? Is he talking to the individuals who 'work here'? If so, why should they care -- they have good jobs, go home at night to their friends or families, and leave work at work. They're supposed to care about the company, brand, and 'big picture'....why, exactly?

brk 17y ago
why, exactly Because if they take an indifferent attitude it shows through to the customers, who will take their business elsewhere, which will cause the company to fail, which will cause the workers to end up jobless.
- dasil003 17y ago
  It's a management failure. The employees are not going to magically get excited and proactive about PR just because some out-of-touch Internet marketing celeb thinks they should. It's management's job to make sure people are trained properly in how to handle these situations, and also, more importantly, to provide the clear vision and incentive that makes people care. Finally, if employees are hurting the image of the company, it's management's job to fire them. If a random employee starts taking up issues caused by other people in the company, and there is no culture of communication or escalation procedure then one likely outcome is that they are going to waste their time and not get their job done. That doesn't mean an employee shouldn't be proactive or whatever, but just that in a large organization the solution can not come from the bottom up.

tokenadult 17y ago

"Do you really think someone who worked for Bernie Madoff will go far with this line? 'I'm not Bernie, I just worked with him every day and took a great salary when times were good...' Not sure what the difference is." To answer the question I see posted in other replies to this interesting submission (what brand is this?), I think Seth Godin is saying that people who work for companies who feel that they, or their co-workers, can't work ethically have to SPEAK UP to as many layers of management as possible, to let management know that there is a problem, and that customers, suppliers, the press, and other stakeholders are noticing.

raganwald 17y ago

Is there a whoosh going on here or am I "playing baseball, standing out in left field?" I guess I'm a fielder! My perspective on the entire rant/essay/insight/whatever is that it is summarized by its last line. If you want to take credit for your organization when times are good, you cannot hide behind your powerlessness when times are bad. When I worked for K- G---- way back in the day, we built a hit product. I milked that success for years. Imagine if I had stayed on board and things had gone poorly after a few years. Could I later say, "I only work at KG, I don't make decisions, the problems were elsewhere?" My take on Seth's point is that I can't wear KG's success like a mantle while weaseling out of association with its failures with talk of "I only worked there, other people make the bad decisions." It's ok to just punch a clock and do a job. But if you're going to try to associate yourself with your organization during good times, you have to live with the lumps during bad times. JM2C, you may have read something else in this.

dasil003 17y ago

Anyone else get the feeling he's talking about Yahoo?

spolsky 17y ago
I suspect it's the New York Times.

dmor 17y ago

"It's a management problem..." "It's a big company problem..." No! It's YOUR problem if you are starting a company, building a brand, or serving customers. It's not necessary a big company issue - it's a "mentality". I've worked for a Fortune 500 where employees were too proud of the culture to ever "pass the buck" and a startup where employees had a "big company" mentality and thought it was okay to leave features broken for customers for months (to the ultimate peril of the company). If you're a founder coming out of a big company beware of this potential blind spot. Good company culture, good brand, happy employees - those things aren't accidental or simply the result of a lot of money and freedom, you have to cultivate it - and brand destruction or toxic culture starts with the little things, like saying, "I just work here". In my opinion, employees who contribute nothing more than "punching the clock" should be the best at towing the company line, because let's face it - if you just punch the clock your are easily replaced, especially in today's job market.