Softpanorama
IT Slacker Society Manifest

Give yourself a break -- slow down...

After several years of working in IT many highly qualified programmers and top system administrators face strange symptoms which might be defined as "allergy on IT environment". Among them:

You feel that you need to explain things to idiots well too often and that after your explanations they will do their idiotic way anyway; that only few people are qualified enough to do quality job (if all people around look like idiots you probably need to look in the mirror ;-)
You observe tremendous waste of talent and resources, a kaleidoscope of stupid decisions adopted in IT projects and crave escape. And you suddenly realize that IT with its current outsourcing mania is a mouse trap with no good escape path...
You suddenly realize that different types of PHBs such as "control freaks" (the most common and the most dangerous category), "frauds", “soap bubbles”, "wanna-be’s" and "know-nothings" are not only caricature characters in Dilbert cartoons but are actually the most common IT types.
Your manager is a completely crazy control freak or a half-crazy control freak and you are razor-thin close to being summoned on "red carpet" for friendly counseling. And you feel that there is a real danger of punishments for anybody who still has the remnants of sanity in the selection of application or architecture of applications or architecture of infrastructure.
Your career is blocked, your job is at risk and instead of competent employee promotion (you :-) as exemplified in Peter Principle ("In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to or above his level of incompetence." ) you see harsh reality were the most ineffective people around you get promoted to where they can do most damage: management.
You understand that the politically correct clichés like "programming culture", and, especially, "empowerment" in your IT environment are oxymorons and wish you had the guts to resign.
But you need to feed your family and understand that even if you can find another job, other organizations are probably as bad as this one or worse.

If this is you, help is at hand. Join Softpanorama IT Slacker Society. Below you can find the IT Slacker Manifest. It motto is "give yourself a break -- slow down" and this is society for IT "neo-slaves" who are only superficially different from the "damned of the service industry", condemned to dress up as clowns all week or mid-management lemmings who waste all their lives in pointless meetings.

In order to join you just need read and accept the following manifest and click on one of the advertisements at any page of the Softpanorama Web site to pay your annual fee. Anyway it is time for IT wage slaves to hit back. Here are the key ideas that we proudly call "Softpanorama IT Slacker Society Manifest." They are only few of them and they are definitly devoid of usual corporate BS:

You need to accept that you are a modern day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfillment in regular corporate IT. May be there was some in the last century but those days are long gone. You need to understand that like people at Wall Mart or McDonalds you work for pay-check to feed yourself and your family and need to survive till 66 without getting a stroke or something even worse. It you die at 45 or 55 nobody will thank you for this sacrifice in the name of some stupid organization or some even more stupid project.
It's pointless to try to change the system. Opposing it simply makes it stronger. Consider your own work experience and answer this question: "How many incompetent employees or managers have you encountered and how many were subsequently fired?" Fired, not relocated or bump upstairs so to speak. Although this is very sad to see, but promotion from one level of incompetence to another level of incompetence does not necessary negate the Peter Principle.
Beware of excessive zeal in pushing keys on the keyboard and moving electrons too fast. While you can think about yourself as a brilliant programmer or administrator it does not matter one bit. In reality you are just a special kind of mover -- electrons mover. And as such you can be replaced from one day to the next by almost anybody sitting next to you. Or outsourced to some remote or not so remote place. So work as slow as possible, do quality job to preserve your dignity and reserve some time to venture outside your cubicle. Despite your excessive zeal to push keys on the keyboard you need to spend some time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you're untouchable when the next outsourcing wave or reorganization comes knocking in the your door Try to spend some time making real contact with those around you instead of sending email and using IM. From an IT perspective, this means sticking your head out of your cubicle, leaving the server room, and dealing with the real people. As Prince Kropotkin once noted about his prison guards, "people are better then institutions."
You're not judged on merit, but mainly on your appearance. That means that you need to learn to use IT jargon: management will suspect that you have insights. You cannot manage your boss if you speak in a language he finds foreign. You just need to be vigilant against going too far and demonstrating excessive zeal in this area as quantity tends to turn in quality.
You may benefit from avoiding "in the trenches" jobs and positions of responsibility. You'll only have to work twice harder and under more stress for a raise which is just peanuts.
Try to navigate yourself to the most benign IT positions (research, strategy, security), where it is difficult to assess your contribution. Slow down when programming: nobody will praise you for the work anyway, so do quality work that ensure your personal satisfaction.
If you managed to get into sinecure job, never move. You will be surrounded by people whom management tends to protect; it is usually the guys in the trenches who are the most exposed to outsourcing and risk their physical and mental health fighting close hands IT combat in the trenches.
Cultivate good relations with upper management and learn to identify similar thinking people who, like you, understand Peter Principle and believe the system is absurd enough not to fight it (quirks, peculiar jokes, warm smiles might be telling signs of your potential allies).
Always be nice to consultants on short-term contracts. They are among few people in IT who do real work and do it quick.
Don't fool yourself that the absurdity of corporate IT environment cannot last forever. That it will eventually go the same way the communist system went. It actually might happen someday for one particular corporation, but this would be largely an unfortunate incident. The problem here is that if you wait it to happen your life might well be too short to enjoy the crash, not mentioning that you can be hurt during it... More sound approach to consider this to be a regular working environment to which you need to adapt. There is little merit in becoming a corporate revolutionary who fights the system on barricades.

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Last modified: February 28, 2008