Transcorporality of our software products

 

                                                         Comrade Karl

 

Last week, a leading software magazine rated our last two products as sublime crap and unripe bananas. The article infuriated our CEO Stan, who often has anger management problems because of his diet, his wife, his banker and the quality of our software releases. Stan demanded that our Chief Nerd and Client Experience Officer, Comrade Karl Marks, present a road map "to extricate us from the fangs of this negative review".

Recently, Comrade Karl has been somewhat detached from his usual hands-on approach. 

Instead the Comrade has being floating above the worries of the nitty gritty of software development. His recent interests have included speaking to the various investors about the CEO’s limitations, Danish grammar, and Huge Data- AI styled. 

Nevertheless, the Comrade prepared a 'grand' presentation called 'What is to be done", in which he spelled out a road map to negate, castigate and eliminate the negative fallout from the recent press review of "our outstanding products, both of which are pearls". 

Here are a few pearls from Comrade Carl's presentation.

"One cannot judge a software product in and of itself. It must be evaluated in the context of the user, the economy, the Zeitgeist and the Gemeinschaftsgefühl of the user environment.”   

Our CFO,  Mister Herr Krebbs, asked Carl if he was sleeping during German lessons. Carl cursed Herr Krebbs in Russian (Zamochi, kibinimat). Then, the comrade continued.

"I believe that using software without a transcorporal mindset is worse than legal abortion, drug use and premarital sex in Iran. It is worse than legal activism. Worse than Brexit and far worse than Merkel's misjudging of Putin. Software and its user have no interface. We are all one; in essence, the Danes are not wrong". Carl wiped his brow and sat down, grinning like a gato, the Spanish word for cat.

Herr Krebbs passed me a note, "Fraulein Gloria, is ze Comrade taking Pervitin? It's illegal!" Stan sent me a text as well. "Does our medical and wellness plan cover this? What's this new thing about the Danes and transcorporality? Please handle this for me. Tak.

Ms Axe (Cynthia, our beloved right-sizing Czar), inquired if our downsized staff from 2002 and onwards can now be considered as “fully employed” in alignment with our new core value of “transcorporality”.

Adjusting per diems to account for Cost of Living Allowance

                                        Garnering Input

Our German-born CFO , Mister Herr Krebbs, suggested that we lower the per diem allowance for our customer service engineers who travel to client sites to repair our product. 

Looking very lugubrious, which is a word that many people don't know, Krebbs said, "ve neat to vake up unt smell ze Koffee-ve haf cash flow prrrroblems." 

Krebbs suggested that the per diem be cut from $70 a day to $50. "Zat vill safe uz a million dollars. Das is gut!"

CEO Stan, a democrat when feeling cornered, expressed that he wished to "garner" input from others. Garner is also not a word in common use, even less so than lugubrious. "Gloria, what's your cut on this?"

The gates of hell had been open for Mister Herr Krebbs as I delivered my homily.

"I think that Mister Herr Krebbs needs to learn a thing or two about cost savings from HR. It's my take that we can choppy chop chop the per diem down to far less. At the breakfast buffet, nerds can make themselves a sandwich for lunch. Furthermore and all the more so, they can adapt a business-friendly mindset  by taking very early morning flights where breakfast is served. I know that Air Canada, for example, serves breakfast on all flights that leave between 4 and 5 AM."

Catching my breath from excitement, I continued.

"Laundry expenses are personal expenses, not to be footed by the company. I know for a fact that some of our nerds don't change their socks every day. Just walk around the analog group on the 6th floor, or QA. And, I must say, taking a greyhound bus to and from the airport never hurt anyone; bus travel puts one in touch with the common man. One last point. I think Ryanair and Wizz Air are far more daily that Swiss, Singapore or Emirates."

This was followed by my coup de grace.

 "If we put and one and one together, we can bring down our per diem to $12 a day."

CFO Mister Herr Krebbs, always with the German love of detail said, "Fraulein Gloria. Vun and vun is 2"

CEO Stan asked me why I had used the term "daily", wondering if this was "a Canadian thing".

Changing the seating arranagements in our R&D department due to Russian Ukraine War

                                             H 

Our not so firm firm employs 21 Ukrainians nerds and 600 Russian nerds, all named Vlad, Svetlana or Stas. With the prolonged war, it is only natural that there is some tension, despite our mission statement which emphasizes "leave your troubles outside,Ya; life is beautiful".

Sadly, incidents have occured which eventually surfaced thanks to both our GPS tags attached to the ankles of our illegal nerds, and our VMS, Vocal Monitoring Services, which have been deployed generously. The VMS has Slavic languages to English translations provided in an almost seamless manner. "Almost seamless" because when Vlad and Svet were caught in the midst of an amourous affair in the back seat of Svet's car, some of the pronouncements were mis-translated.

Comrade Carl Marks, our chief nerd and senior EVP of Customer Experience, told me that he has moved all Ukrainian nerds to the east wing and all the Ukrainians to the right wing. Diversity, Inclusion and Power to the People uncommisioned officer, Hugh White, suggested that the Ukrainians should move west and the Russians move east. Comrade Carl suggested to Hugh that he engage in sexual relations with his mother (youb tvai mat), and to butt out.

If HR has any value beyond policing, process compliance, downsizing and sycophany, it is in the area of creativity. So I put on my thinking cap, which generally speeds up my creativity, expecially if I am not looking at my smartphone. I use my smartphone all the time, it has been said.

Nevertheless, in a short interlude from my cell phone and with the thinking cap firming on my head, I came up with some value added to Comrade Carl's suggestions to calm down the tension between the warring factions. Our Israeli nerds will sell weapons to both sides to create a balance of power. Our European nerds will be tasked with coming up with a solution which could solve the issue, if both parties were Scandinavian; our American nerds can pray for peace. Old de Villiers, our South  African nerd, will mind his own business. "We have enough problems of our own," quipped old de Villiers.

During our management meeting, all idea were presented to CEO Stan, who remained standing due to a flare up in his ubiquitous hemorrhoids. When we finished presenting the problem cum solutions, Stan asked, "has anyone seen my preparation H?"

Authentic Downsizing in practice

                                      Comrade Lazar Kaganovitz

                                                               

                                              

As 2023 rolls in and 2022 rolls out, our not-so-firm firm is resizing itself to align with flexibility, sustainability, greenness, and end to end blockchain compatibility. Oui!

To make a long story short in line with our core value of being brief, we are expediting the departure of 30% of our nerds to their native homelands, by ship, airport (Wizz Air) or back to Lesbos Greece from whence they were recruited. 

In order to do so in a humane and authentic manner, with malace towards none and authenticity to all, we enable each nerd to upgrade to our Authencity Package, for forty (British) pounds and 28 pence.

This package, unique in nature, features a hand written notice co-signed by Miss Axe and I, a pamphlet on Reuniting with your Family (an extra 7 pounds, tuppence), a plaque of appreciation even if you an underperfomer, and a seminar (in Spanish) on Working from Home, aka, Teletrabajo. And to top things off, we will pay your busfare to the airport when you leave our headquarters on Greyhound (midnight to 5 am buses only).

To sign up for this service, please sign into our blockchain at

authenticdownsizingwithallthetrimmings.www.w.ww.com or call HR digital attendant at GReatpurge4022, and ask for Lazar. 

          

Kicking off Core Values Week

 

Starting Sunday at 23.59 (11.59pm), we kick off Core Values Week. Dedicated to the implementation of our 3 fresh and updated basic beliefs, this coming week is a grand event in our corporate HR calendar. For those of you who don’t know, here are the mighty three:

1-Functional Transparency

2-Hiring Pregnant Women in the 8th month

3-Even White People merit Respect

In order to prepare the week’s events, I was given the floor in today’s senior management meeting. Armed with 250 slides prepared by my lackeys, I actually was asked to sit in CEO Stan’s chair during the discussion. However, my positioning in Stan’s chair did not make the meeting more manageable, as I was faced with a hostile audience. It was non-wow.

Comrade Karl Marks, the head of R&D, claimed that if our clients actually new what our product could do and could not due, we would not have “a pot to piss in”. Karl added that “I suggest we promise to roll out what I would call "transparency of some sort" over the next decade”.

Mister Herr Krebbs, our CFO who actually is a German native speaker, prepared a detailed analysis of the ramifications of hiring pregnant ladies one month prior to birth. “Ve are not a SkandinaFian country; ve are a business, zo ze banks are going to ask qvestions-unt I don’t haf ze answers. Danke!”

CEO Stan said that the entire management team is white “so I don’t see that we have a real problem, Gloria. Enough of your bullshit! Next thing I know, you’ll want to install transsexual toilets with standing room only”.

Such is life. I look around and see that all my friends are working hard and struggling to survive, whilst I net 300,000 Euro a year and drive a Bentley. The 300 K does not include my health club membership, German grammar lessons and business class travel on Singapore Airlines.