First Initiative: You Have To Lead The Revolution

For years I have remain quiet working in different companies, whining and complaining how disappointed I am with the company's culture and management's attitude. Either I am too afraid to voice out my discontent, or I think the management doesn't care about what a worker-ant like me think. I found out most of the colleague and some junior manager agrees with me, but they just shoke their head signalling nothing can be done about this situtation.

A few years passed by, and I slowly began to take some small steps to make my working life more interesting. If the company is not going to provide the infrastructure and support to make my working environment better, then I shall do it myself. I want more collaboration to take place in my work :)

First of all, a Software House do require a central bulletion board to post about Software Update, Knowledge Base, Technical Support Material, etc. Such infrastructure have the following benefit:

• Record down important update/information, so that such information is not lost when the staff leave
• Provide a central Knowledge Base to share knowledge
• Provide FAQ for technical trouble-shooting deployment of your own product
• Update other people in your company about the project you are undertaking (maybe someone is interested to join your team or provide feedback)

As such, I have chosen phpBB (a pretty good php-based forum) to implement a forum system in my own department. At first, I start off by posting my recent work at hand: "Webtra J2EE V6 Migration". I get my team member to join the forum in order to give comment on how we should enhance our existing application: Webtra. The response is a bit cold at first, then it picked up and slowed down again. About 10 people join the forum, only 1 active poster and 2 casual posters. In order to encorage others non-member to join the form, I created a Social Corner for chatting and discuss about our department weekend getaway activity.

To be frank, the response is not very encouraging. People still find email is more convinient to plan social events, as it always has been in our department. So, the non-team member no longer join the forum after 2 weeks. As for my team member, most of them are not very keen to post on the forum as well. Maybe the projects didn't interest them (although they'll most probably be involved at a later stage). Maybe there is no sense of participation. I am eager to participate because the forum is implemented by me. To them, it is just another system in place which they don't care about, or not interested nor have the sense of participation in it. How to I raise the participation level among my passive team member? I haven't found out yet until now. I do found out the following:

• People stop posting when there are very busy into the projects. (Actually they should post more as they encounter more issues).
• Some people are very "shy" in nature, thus will only read and never post.
• Some people adopt the "don't care" attitude, thus will forget about the URL of the forum.
• If you appoint him as Admin, you can increase his participation level (sense of ownership).
• Posting is a habbit. Once you start the posting spree, it never stop. If you seldom post, you'll eventually stop.
• It is easier to cultivate the Posting culture on new staff. They are more receptive with less resistance.
  

Eventually, I embarked on the next project, "OASIS using ASP.NET", where a new team is formed. In the beginning, the posting rate increased dramatically, focusing on the design document/update/source documentation of the project. The postings slowed down after 2 weeks and eventually stopped after 1 month. By then, I created the "Knowledge Base" section which I post all my new findings regarding ASP.NET (It was my first project using ASP.NET). I was the only poster as of this moment, but I find this section very useful as I always refer to it. I believe the "shy" member does read it, just that no one contribute.

At the same time, I also manage to convince a Technical Support guy to use the Forum to record down all possible complication which is frequently faced during deployment of our software. Thus, "Technical Support FAQ" is born.

Though the participation level is not very encouraging, but I think the forum is very useful, especially to myself (like my notebook to scribble important findings). I didn't took me more than 30 minutes to setup the forum; and it's fun administering the forum. Maybe the forum will pick up again when more new staff join our department (they are more enthusiate to participate and prove themselves; yet not polluted by the "non-posting" culture yet). BTW, my posting is immortalised on the server for the future generations of staff to view; unless the server crashed and the harddisk get formatted.

So, take some time to implement some useful system in the office. It'll actually make you a bit happier with your new minor achievement.

What is Utopia@Tech.Corp about?

Utopia@Tech.Corp refer to those Utopian-Style Working Culture practiced by legendary companies such as Microsoft and Google. Even though their staffs' salaries are only average or a little above average, but the environment is great, the benefits are great, and the typical passion, commitment, competence and intelligence of the people around you everyday is exhilarating. They have no timecards, not much office rules and given a lot of responsibility. As long as you deliver results, it doesn't matter if you come in at midnight and walk barefooted in the office.

Some of the legendary "Cool" benefits include:

• You can drink all the Coca-Cola you want for free, apply for most beverages as well (Microsoft & Google)
• You could bring your pet Tiger into the office (Microsoft)
• You can spend 10% of your time on your personal innovative projects (Google)
• Free lunch (Google)
• Massage & Gym (Google) & Paid Health Club Membership (Microsoft)

No to mentioned Medical/Dental/Vision Care, Life Insurance, Tuition Reimbursement and etc.

Okay, the purpose of this blog is not to compare our current company with these legendary companies (how many company in this world can afford such luxury?). Rather, to find out what are the realistic small steps we can take to improve the working culture in our own offices to increase productivity, encourage innovation, boost up the fun level and be responsible with minimal supervision.

I personally believe Software Engineer is a new breed of workforce which does not require constant supervision and repulse repetitive work. We need to be given the space, opportunity and responsibility to innovate and develop.

On the darker side of most corporation, most local IT companies (in Malaysia) does not belive in innovation by the low level technical staff. The management still make most of projects' decision with no regards to the software development aspect of it. Software Engineers are "suppressed" and unable to unleashed their fullest potential. "There are so much to do, but so little can be done". Hopefully from this blog we could develop a few ideas to inject an Utopian-Style Working Culture into our current working environment.

Reference
- Google Job Opportunities
- Microsoft Career Home