Erich Peterson
Bio and Blog
The Temple Secret, Revealed
Author: Erich Peterson27 Jul
I’m obviously shamelessly stealing the title from one of my favorite software related articles, “The Iceberg Secret, Revealed†by Joel Spolsky. In a nutshell, Joel explains how important a good UI is, how nonprogrammers view them, and ultimately he hands out some advice on how to deal with that.
In this article, I wanted to let everyone in on what I call the “Temple Secretâ€. Well to get started, let me introduce Mike. Mike works as a junior software developer for a small to medium sized company. When I say “juniorâ€, I mean he is not a team leader or anything like that; he simply has no influence in the company’s direction. What I mean by that, is that if he does a lousy job, the company might not sell as many units or get the client to renew their contract, but nothing catastrophic will happen to the company.
Mike is unhappy with some things at work. He sees some processes at his company, which are just leading the development team in the wrong direction. Moreover, because he minored in psychology while in college, he thinks it is going to hurt the company if they continue to hire so many people who are related. A few other small things bother him as well.
After a year of working for the company, it was time for Mike to have his 1-year review with his supervisor. By the way, this supervisor is a co-founder of the company he is working for. Going over some of the ratings his project managers have given him, it turns out he’s doing a pretty good job. He likes most of the PMs, most of them like him. They feel he is doing a good job and everything seems right in the world. Until, Mike’s supervisor says the ill-fated question: “So is there anything you are unhappy about?â€.
What should Mike do? Should he say: “Everything is great!â€? Or, should he voice some of his concerns and talk about some of the things he is unhappy about? Well, Mike feels his supervisor is a pretty cool guy and he knows he prides himself on being “one-of-the-guysâ€. Mike decides to just bear it all. Afterwards, the supervisor seems extremely stunned and tells Mike he thinks he is really paranoid, emotional, angry, and is just poisoning the company with his thoughts and opinions.
Mike is then told to pack up his desk and leave (he is fired).
So what is the “Temple Secretâ€? The secret is that most company founders or those who have a large stake in the company and/or its direction–view their company as a temple. As such, their temple cannot contain those individuals (especially lower ranking) who have any types of negative opinions or disagreements with the direction of the company. Therefore, any individuals not found to be pure of heart, must be purged.
The conclusion or lesson to be learned is that, if you have no stake in the direction of the company and you disagree with the direction in which the company is going or in its processes or practices, keep the opinions to yourself. If Mike doesn’t like the way things are being done, he should keep quite and/or look for another job.
3 Responses for "The Temple Secret, Revealed"
I think that is a fine conclusion. I personally see a company’s closed-mindedness as it’s own punishment.
I think the people who run companies see such situations as dangerous to morale. They think, “What’s to stop this person from infecting the rest of the workforce with this negativity.” And that principle has merit - the company has to look out for its own intrests just as its employees do for theirs.
However, it is possible for a company to allow people to voice their opinions and gain valuable insight, while still keeping the real problem (employees spreading bad feelings to each other) under control. It simply comes down to communication and trust. If Mike’s employer could assure him that he has been heard, and if Mike can convince his employer that he understands with whom these feelings should be shared, then both parties have the knowledge they need to make a sensible choice. Whether the sensible choice is made comes down to trust (on both sides) and whether both sides are, in fact, sensible.
I hope that Mike’s employer was not sensible, because if they were, this kind of thing is a casualty - it just doesn’t need to happen.
It’s a shame what happened to Mike. It’s sad when people in authority feel threatened when someone gives their heartfelt feedback in an attempt to make things better. It sounds like Mike’s motivation was pure and had the company’s best interests in mind. Jerph’s points are good, but Mike’s old boss clearly has his head in the sand.
I’ve been thinking…Mike should go back to school full time and get a Master’s Degree. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Decent conclusion, but Mike had no idea what he ran into. Things at A are different, deeper than you know.
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