The Amazing Round-About Responsibility Game
Today I spent quite a bit of time doing work for a single desk because their desk developers were all busy building new infrastructure for the firm. Of course, the infrastructure team was busy doing something else totally unrelated to the new infrastructure, but that's really the point, isn't it?
There is a serious bit of disfunction here. While the firm's stated goals are communication, cooperation, and excellence, many groups are so completely walled off - either on accident, by the business, or more likely through the use of incredible egos, that they simply have no need to communicate with others. They are the pinnacle of excellence, and any cooperation they offer is out of the goodness of their incredible generosity.
For a place that says it doesn't like egos, it's all about egos.
So we play this silly game of shuffle responsibilities. Since the infrastructure group is not talking to the desk developers, the desk developers are building their own infrastructure. Since the desk developers aren't providing the product they are supposed to be building for the desks, the desks come looking to the global risk group for that work. My manager is interested in looking good to all the groups, so he allows them to ask me to build and maintain things.
Unfortunately, the buck stops with me, as I have to do their work and mine as well. It's a shame I don't have a group that could pick up my work - Hey, I know, maybe the infrastructure team can manage to do this stuff!
It's just amazing that this place is run like a playschool. Managers know of problems in communication, and they do nothing about it. They give their tacit approval because having a job here is having a job for life. It's sad that professionalism is so lacking from people that are supposed to be professionals.
In truth, a lot of these folks wouldn't last like this in another job. They'd have to actually work, and they don't here. It's very frustrating for me as I end up doing other people's jobs, and nothing is being done to stop it.