Category: Personal

Life as a Cog, 14 months in a corporate cubicle

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I have more to write about my cubicle life, my new Facebook life and my failed startup life. I think what I am trying to say is that I need to get a life:)

Whether or not you know I have quit my cubicle job and my last day was 11/9. I wanted to write about more bad parts and possible improvements for a 100,000 person company to succeed. One day I was fed up with work and emailed Seth Godin about any suggestions and he said “go do something�! SO I have.

Concerns of a 100,000 person company:

1- Bureaucracy, sometimes you hear people talking about it with government and large companies well it’s true. To get a computer program finished that would eliminate many jobs and provide more accurate data is still not complete after 3 years of work.

Solution: Smaller teams and allow lower levels to make decisions. I use to have to call into a meeting to get approval on things I was doing once a week. What is the point of my position if after doing my job for awhile I am still unable of making things happen?

2- Inefficiencies: I would say nearly 80% of the people that were working in my group spent around 2-3 hours a day sitting around browsing the web. Can you believe that? The amount of wasted time and resources, and EVEN crazier is the talk of hiring more people for the group.

Solution: Turn off the internet. Give people more to do or more meaningful work.

3- Outdated: How does a world class top organization base its entire organization on Microsoft Excel. Seriously, Excel is a great program for mom and pop shops or college students to keep inventory of candy bar sales but to manage billion dollar businesses is ludicrous. Furthermore, many processes are manually handled which creates more users errors than you can imagine.

Solution: Self-Explanatory, create better systems

4- Meetings: Spending nearly 50% of your time in meetings seemed like a waste. I think its critical to collaborate and hard when you are a Multi-National Corporation but make it useful.

Solution: Invite me to the part of the meeting I need to participate in or reduce the meeting time and frequency.

5- Cheap: You would think a company grossing nearly $10 billion dollars a quarter could provide higher salaries to their employees. Personally, I felt I was paid adequately for my skills but the lack of free office soda/food and outings was disappointing. An especially funny part was that the CEO discussed internally how we are so much larger and more profitable than our competitor, but a friend pointed out why are we paid the same as them?

Solution: Make soda and coffee free

One of the best things about working there was that I met my gf, she told me to write that=)

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7 Responses to “Life as a Cog, 14 months in a corporate cubicle”

  • Rishi Khaitan
    November 30th, 2005
    4:37 am

    Noah, “Turn off the Internet?” I totally disagree. People will find ways to distract themselves from doing work. Trying to curtail these distractions is a losing proposition. Instead, I believe in the opposite approach. The goal should be to make the workplace and specifically each employee’s job as enjoyable as possible. Happy people care about what their doing. People who care about what they’re doing take pride in doing it. Pride = Quality output. My philosophy is do whatever it takes (within financial reason) to make employees happy. Whatever it takes could mean free food/drinks, foozball tables, more flexible job definitions (work on what’s interesting to you), etc. I know that sounds kinda cliche dot.com but dot.com’s failed because of fundamental flaws in the business, not because their employees weren’t enthusiastic about their jobs.

  • Noah Kagan
    November 30th, 2005
    9:42 am

    Rishi,

    I was half-joking about turning off the internet but I COMPLETELY agree with your thought about making people enjoy their jobs to help efficiency. What do you do if your job function is not that interesting? Should the company only hire people who find that role interesting?

    I think employees should be allowed to browse the internet since working 8 hours non-stop is unrealistic and allowing them some freedom to do other things helps them enjoy their jobs more. My only concern is at jobs where your function/role is limited and you have many hours of free time you end up wasting it browsing the internet.

    A possible solution is for companies to entice employees to come up with ideas and answers to problems non-related to their exact role. As well, have them meet other people in the company for possible knowledge sharing. Any other suggestions?

  • Rishi Khaitan
    November 30th, 2005
    2:57 pm

    Gotcha. It was like 4am when I wrote that comment.

    Anyways, I think the only way to maximize efficiency in a company is to make job roles flexible and have groups share responsiblities. Instead of having an 1 employee assigned to 1 role. Have 7 (some # less than 10) employees sharing 10 roles. Rotation programs are good also (doesn’t Intel have one for engineers?). Not only does it help the individual explore other groups within the company, but also it promotes fresh thinking and knowledge sharing amongst groups.

    Dealing with meetings is tricky. You can do it Bloomberg style and make all meetings standing only. Makes for sparse, short meetings when you can’t just kick back and relax in a nice, reclining meeting room chair. Or, you can do it Apple style and promote long meetings where ideas get fleshed out amongst different groups. I guess I would say the key here is to promote adhoc meetings. Reduce the number of scheduled meetings where everyone and their Mom is on the invite list. Instead, encourage spontaneous, adhoc meetings. Adhoc meetings involve only the people who matter and have no scheduled time period. Stay exactly as long as it takes to resolve the issue and, if necessary, send out the meeting’s conclusions via email. A great example of an adhoc meeting are those that take place in line at the cafeteria.

  • jim
    December 1st, 2005
    8:40 pm

    This hit the nail on the head… every single numbered bullet was right on.

  • Wen-Wen Lam
    December 2nd, 2005
    10:11 am

    At Intel you guys only spent 2-3 hours browsing the net? At UBOC, I would say at least 80% of our time was wasted online useless doing nothing. Fantasy sports - way of life. Myspace- an addiction. The solution really is to have employees feel like they are adding value- nobody wants to work on a project that feels useless or is never going to get implemented.

    See Noah, I read your blog!

  • » Noah’s Cog Life Eerily Similar on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
    August 14th, 2006
    6:21 am

    [...] When Noah published this post titled “Life as a Cog, 14 months in a corporate cubicle,” it resonated with me as I also work(ed) at a 100,000 person company. I said so at the time (check out the comment I left) though I wasn’t going to go further with it until now… after I’d tendered my resignation eight months later. Before you read further, check out his post and let me know how that compares to the job you’re holding now (and whether your company has 100 or 100,000 employees). [...]

  • empty spaces
    November 1st, 2006
    7:27 pm

    no free coffee? thats really cheap!

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