|
|
Bill Imbler was on his favorite lunchtime topic. “How many people do we have in the IS Department?” he asked. “Maybe 500? How many do we really need? A lot less. You know that. I know that. We all know that. And when the time comes around for the annual performance review, they get all apologetic. ‘You understand we can’t reward our best people with what they deserve,’ they tell us. ‘We only get so much in the pool for raises.’ But what are they doing? They’re dribbling out two or three percent raises to all the people who just look good hanging around. That takes away from what they ought to be paying the people who really do the work. It’s the old 80-20 rule. Twenty percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. Why don’t they figure that out, reduce the staff, and pay just a fraction – just a tiny fraction – of what they save from not paying the people who don’t do any of the work to the ones who do?” This was nothing new. Bill got on this tack every couple of weeks, usually after they’d called him in the middle of the night about some new problem. He kept trying to get them to call other people who could probably fix things as well as he could, but the guys on the night shift always figured that maybe someone else could fix it, but they were sure Bill could. So Bill got the calls. Al Shultz gave Bill the answer he always gave him. “Be careful what you wish for,” said Al, “You might get it.” And it wasn’t so much that Bill needed the money. He was single, didn’t have a family, and he was old enough that it didn’t seem likely he was ever going to get one. He drove a clunky old car, when he could easily have bought a BMW, but that wasn’t Bill. In fact, Bill was the sort who sometimes forgot to cash his paychecks. Payroll kept calling him about old paychecks and trying to get him to go on direct deposit, but that wasn’t how Bill saw things. He didn’t care about the money, he cared that there were people getting paid nearly as much as he was who weren’t doing any work. He
always had to make that point at lunch, too, because usually someone
else at the table would start to object to what Bill was saying.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” someone would
usually say. “Think about it this way. It’s like a
tug of war. Some people are really pulling on the rope. Other
people aren’t even holding the rope very tightly, but one
or another side wins just the same. The people who are goofing
off on both sides just cancel each other out. It’s human
nature. What are you getting upset about?” But of course,
Bill wasn’t really upset. If you got down to it, Bill didn’t
even begrudge the people who didn’t do much whatever they
were being paid. But soon enough, Bill got what Al Shultz had warned him about: his wish was coming true. Someone – certainly not anyone within the IS Department, it had to have been higher up – had started wondering what all those 500 people were actually doing. The company’s computers had problem after problem, and even with 500 people, nobody seemed able to solve them. The company’s e-mail was frequently down for days with one virus or another, and the company’s executive committee didn’t take well to not having its e-mail. The CIO called a big all-hands meeting in the company auditorium, and he started it out looking, as much as any CIO can look, sheepish and apologetic. He began with what Bill would have called the usual convenient lies: “This isn’t a reflection on the job – the absolutely outstanding job – that each and every one of you is doing,” said the CIO. “But you’ve read the news. The company has had to look for areas where it can save money.” The underlings in the IS Department, sitting in the auditorium, were beginning to be very, very quiet. After a suitable amount of shilly-shallying, the CIO got down to the bad news: they were going to outsource the IS department. A company called Digital Discipline Technologies was going to come in and run everything for a flat fee. Of course they were going to chop heads. That was why Digital Discipline Technologies was known throughout the industry as DDT. And having dropped that bit of news, the CIO turned the meeting over to a couple of ladies from human resources, who explained how the whole thing was going to work. “Some of you will be offered jobs with Digital Discipline Technologies,” the sterner of the two ladies began, “and some will not. Our job, over the coming months, will be to determine which of you will stay and which of you will be offered a severance package. Those of you who have been performing well, of course, have nothing to fear. You’ve all heard of the 80-20 rule, haven’t you? It’s the idea that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. . .” The stern lady went on this way for a while, and then the nice lady took over and explained about the severance benefits that would be offered to the people who’d be fired. When
the question period arrived, Bill Imbler was the first to raise
his hand, waving it in the air like an eager second-grader. “I
understand about the 80-20 rule,” Bill said when the human
resources ladies recognized him, “but I’m wondering
about something else. The company will be saving a lot by laying
off the people that it decides aren’t performing. Will it
give back just a tiny fraction of what it saves in raises to the
people it decides to keep?” There was a murmur of exasperation
in the audience. Some people recognized Bill’s hobby horse
for what it was, and nobody wanted to talk about giving more to
the people who’d stay anyhow. All the other questioners
were set to quibble over how many might be laid off, and for what
reasons, all in hopes they might be able to carve out an exception
for themselves, as they were already pretty sure of what the outcome
would be in their own cases. |