job security
I think i already wrote about how an accounting partnership is like academia - partner=tenured faculty, cadre of super egg-headed arcane knowledge repositories, lip service to a teaching culture but good teachers are not rewarded, etc etc.
My new interest is how it happens that once you achieve Director level at the Firm (non-partner track seniorest position, can get there either by being hired, or by getting promoted), you apparently will never face the firing squad. they just won't do it. and the longer you stay, being incompetent, the less likely you'll ever be asked to leave.
we hired the most innappropriate marketing director two years ago - he had none of the social skills needed for the job here (such as ability to build personal networks, since all his leadership would have had to have been through persuasion [no one in marketing actually reported to him], demonstrate baseline social intelligence [got drunk and told someone who works for his boss that 'they would make beautiful brown babies together,'], ability to bite tongue [told others they were 'stupid,'], etc) and yet he was not fired. His boss actually refused to meet with him one on one for the last YEAR of his time as US marketing leader. last month he became our global marketing leader.
The guy who used to run another part of the marketing function (competitive intelligence plus promotional sponsoroships) managed to run 1mm over budget by not going through procurement to buy third party content, and getting himself stuck in a perpetual license, as well as building ridiculous AI technology for competitive intelligence (included voice recognition software for capturing interviews, and massive database with no usable data points) In addition he NEVER DELIVERED ANYTHING. He is now head of middle market marketing.
and of course once you make partner, you're sinecured for life/retirement.
My new interest is how it happens that once you achieve Director level at the Firm (non-partner track seniorest position, can get there either by being hired, or by getting promoted), you apparently will never face the firing squad. they just won't do it. and the longer you stay, being incompetent, the less likely you'll ever be asked to leave.
we hired the most innappropriate marketing director two years ago - he had none of the social skills needed for the job here (such as ability to build personal networks, since all his leadership would have had to have been through persuasion [no one in marketing actually reported to him], demonstrate baseline social intelligence [got drunk and told someone who works for his boss that 'they would make beautiful brown babies together,'], ability to bite tongue [told others they were 'stupid,'], etc) and yet he was not fired. His boss actually refused to meet with him one on one for the last YEAR of his time as US marketing leader. last month he became our global marketing leader.
The guy who used to run another part of the marketing function (competitive intelligence plus promotional sponsoroships) managed to run 1mm over budget by not going through procurement to buy third party content, and getting himself stuck in a perpetual license, as well as building ridiculous AI technology for competitive intelligence (included voice recognition software for capturing interviews, and massive database with no usable data points) In addition he NEVER DELIVERED ANYTHING. He is now head of middle market marketing.
and of course once you make partner, you're sinecured for life/retirement.
posted by fend for yourself at 9:44 AM
1 Comments:
Glad to hear for-profit is as ridiculous as non-profit. Somehow it makes me feel better to know I'm not alone. Today's absurdity: refusing all day to deal with the proposal that had to go out Fedex by 5, then at 4:15 calling me in to "review" the proposal and making some changes like "model" for "prototype," and chewing me out for not understanding that there were other things that were as important as my proposal. Um, planning a meeting next Friday is more important than a $700,000 proposal to funders who already hate us and say that it absolutely must be there tomorrow? I don't think so. Oh yeah, I forgot, putting me in my place should definitely be the number one priority.
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