Question: The other day at work I almost got fired for speculating on Slack that we needed a better training program for our framework than just “send ‘em all to Stack Overflow and let ‘em figure it out”. The framework is really well-engineered, really solid, it’s just not that easy to learn, so why pretend that it is?

Answer:

“Never call somebody else’s baby ugly,” said my project manager, during my tag-team beat down that occurred over the telephone, out of the blue, like 2 weeks later. “The client can call their own baby ugly, but you’d better drink the Kool-Aid.”

These Slack chat channels are a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, they make it super easy to share information. On the other hand, they make it super easy to share information that can be taken out of context by people who are too busy to do more than sweep in like Halley’s Comet every 75 years or so. You never really know who is listening in on these Slack channels, either.

So… yeah, people should be able to handle the truth, including you! And the truth is, if you’re a contract employee, you are NOT part of the team, you are a disposable, expendable cog. Part of playing along is to acknowledge your worm-like status and for God’s sake don’t ever tell the truth about anything, ever.

If you think that makes workplaces inefficient, you’re entirely correct. That’s not the point. These workplaces can be as inefficient as they want, as long as they’re raking in the cash.