Good bloggers at times handpicks old notable posts and gather them under one theme. There is enough content on this blog for me to start doing that and here is my first “back in time” post.

I’ve been doing office jobs in a number of large companies so far and have gathered some insights of my own. In the following paragraphs, you can read how I see the world by being a corporate salaryman.

Happy fortune matrix
The joy and torture of your job is not correlated to the amount money that you get from it. Here is a tool to see the health of your job and whether you should keep doing it or start looking for a new one.

Why appraisals are bad.
Appraisals promote backstabbing since they are primarily a zero-sum game, especially when normalization is involved. Or, why the Pointy Haired Boss should get his own comic strip

Dilbert’s way of doing enhancement requests
Do you have a list of problems in an internal business software that you want to get addressed? One way to get these bugs expedited is to make them a good reason for the development team’s boss to do business travel. In other words, arrange for the manager who is responsible for fixing bugs to get to travel on company expenses because of your list of enhancements.

The Captain and the CEO
Companies aren’t extended families and you shouldn’t believe any manager claiming otherwise. At times of crisis, CEOs will throw people away “out of the airlock” to improve maneuverability — vastly different than what the wise captains of the Enterprise or Voyager would do.