Bulldozer00's Blog

In most companies, “respect” is either an explicit or implicit core value. Is it respectful to repeatedly watch, and covertly condone, project teams working 50-60 hour, unpaid overtime weeks for years at a time to meet some schedule that they most likely had no hand in making? Since the overtime is not paid, it isn’t tracked and future schedule estimates derived from past performances don’t accurately reflect the effort needed to get the job done. Thus, the practice is a self-reinforcing loop of disrespect. But hey, since virtually all corpricracies operate that way, the practice must not be disrespectful, right?

Demanding respect while not giving it, or pretending to give it, creates mediocracies. And since respect and loyalty are intimately coupled, demanding loyalty without giving respect doesn’t work too well either.