Like, dude?

Can't help myself, those ads hit a nerve and make me angry.

First of all, this youth in the ad looks like he had his hair done in a car wash. Second, the cheap suit, definitely not from Harry Rosen where real men go. If this guy was loaded as the ad claims, he would not look like a guy on parole who's trying to sell you something fishy. Plus, the outside glow would be appropriate for an adult DVD, not that I've rented anything in that department, but I've been told.

In any case, going past his questionable appearance, I loathe the "get rich quick" scheme. If Bobby here was serious about money, he would ditch his supposedly attractive penny stocks before the market closes today. I mean, if a company's public shares are worth $0.04, maybe that's a subtle hint that the headquarter is located in a trailer park (best case scenario) and not much assets can be found in the books.

In which case, unless the CEO of this public company has a breakthrough idea after he sobers up, buying this "penny stock" is an unwise investment and it would be more efficient to burn your money because you'd not pay brokerage fees.

GIB.TO made me rich. Get it?

Born to be mild

I find it hard not to call HR every day and remind them that the key to a stable workforce is to attract people with low ambitions. Don't get me wrong, success comes hardworking smart people, I'm not talking about hiring low-watt people with the IQ of a toothbrush here.

Having said that, there's a fine line between being smart and being obnoxious, and from my experience it's important to apply a fine filter during interviews to screen out potential pains-in-the-butt.

Let me give you an example, I was interviewing a guy in his 20's this morning for an internal position. He had a piercing over his left eyebrow, and the stone reflected the sun coming from the window in such a way that I was hosed by a rainbow of photons as he tilted his head. 10 degrees left, the spectrum shifted from red to yellow. Very distracting, I wondered what kind of psychological problems pushed him to perforate his eyebrow. His personal issues - although probably manageable for now - might lead to long term disabilities and heavy medication, 10 years down the road, something I'm not willing to pay.

And then my mind drifted to what might be the cost of this piercing, and how this money could have been used to buy a few shares of GIB.TO. Like I said, it was distracting.

Despite his fringe appearance, this Gen Y had a solid resume full of obscure technologies that I don't jack about but for which customers are wiling to pay a premium.

The interview was going well when I tossed the question "Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?" Usually people freak out or they answer a great line of bullshit where they hope to contribute to even greater projects and have more "fun" doing it. Like if.

The guy hesitated from a mere second before answering "Well you know I'd like to be CEO someday when you'll retire, I really see myself in your position. Being autocratic is one sure to score in life, isn't it?"

HR told me later that day that I had voided the warranty of the document shredder in the room since I had used it for a purpose fundamentally different from the one it was designed for. And it could obviously not be repaired. Oh, well.

Point is, you want to hire mild-mannered yet brilliant people who are so afraid of climbing the corporate ladder that they experience real physiological vertigo when you talk about "increased responsibilities". Those candidates should be convinced that the glass ceiling is so thick that it would take a handful of lifetimes and nuclear devices to get through it. With enough bureaucratic defence in place, people will start working instead of dreaming of a sunny future with a corner office and a bombshell admin.

People with immoderate ambitions are bound to fragment their focus, therefore lowering their productivity which is bad. When an employee think about his career, he's not thinking about how to solve deep IT infrastructure problems, therefore he's not contributing to profitable growth, and therefore he's not worthy. And those who are not worthy well we all know how they end.

Are you worthy? Then get back to work now.

What a way to start 2011

I bumped into one of my way-too-many VP this morning in the coffee room, he said he was interviewing a DBA with 10 years of experience who was interested in a position at CGI. Feeling full of energy - and wearing my favorite crossword-puzzle tie - I said I wanted to talk to this young fellow who I'm sure would be impressed to talk the CEO in person.

The guy was in his early 30s, had solid experience with Oracle and a bunch of other database-related technology. The resume looked good, meaning I could sell this guy with a fat margin to a client. But something wasn't right, and I could not pinpoint what it was. No, it was not body piercings.

I go, young man why do you want to work at CGI?

The guy goes, well it's a good company and it's making the headlines on a regular basis, new contracts, stock is up, I mean this is where I'd like to be.

I go, let me ask you a question junior, this is not your first job right? You are experienced, like Jimi used to say. What happened with your former employer?

The guy goes, name's Mitchell sir. My previous employer was a good one but my career was not going in the direction that I wanted to go. We are leaving in good terms.

I go, junior I hope I'm breaking any news to you, but you're not really managing your so-called career, I hope you know that by now right? A career is just a linear sequence of different tasks, and your employer is the one calling the shots. Anyway, what was your prior salary?

The guy says, I was making $55 000 and among my benefits I had...

Knowing where this loaded train of crap was heading, I cut short to the point and go, junior I'm offering you $50 000, and consider this a generous offer.

The guy goes, what, you're offering less than I was doing before?

I go, that's right young man, I'm not paying what the stupid market is paying, I always bid under the current price, therefore I lower my average member salary.

The guy goes, I'm worth more than 50K, I know what my skills are and if you're not willing to pay me at least $55K I'll just go elsewhere.

At that point an uncomfortable silence took place in the windowless meeting room. I just stared at the young candidate, computing how much earning he could provide me with until the end of the quarter.

After less than a minute, junior gave up. All right, $50K is a deal.

I go, let's settle for $48K then. HR will bring you the paperwork in the next 15 minutes and you'll be ready to start. You should be billable to a project within the next hour or - what's his name - Mr. VP here will take the loss personally. Right?

The VP was sweating like hell and the young DBA was livid, he goes, we had a deal for $50K, how come you're lowering your offer?

I stood up and pushed my chair. $47K, last offer.

I swear I could hear his blood pressure rising when he acknowledged. All right, all right, I get it. Where do I sign?

I gave a pat on the VP's stiff shoulder who was sitting next to me and probably mortified to hear my negotiation skills. You see, this is how we manage business here. Have a great day.

Next in line.

Managing the next generation - Follow up

In regard to my last post on Friday, one kind member from the North East BU reminded me that texting teenagers do not escape Darwin's Law. Here's the proof.

I can only imagine the amused look on the face of DEP employees when they saw this nutty texting teenager with her oversized sunglasses dropping like a stone into the manhole. Hank, you ow me ten bucks, I told you she would fall into it.

As a result, we can expect a fair share of texting teenagers to be incapable of joining the workforce because they will self-eliminate. A minority will have to adapt to face-to-face communication and learn the intricacies of Office 2003.

Managing the next generation

Four thousand fifty texts a month = 135 a day = one every 7 minutes of waking life. And that’s the average U.S. teenage girl,according to a new Nielsen survey.

How am I going to hire those folks 10 years from now? Will I need an interpreter because those young people will totally be incapable of writing a full sentence without a mental breakdown? Let’s compare the depth of the two following analysis:

Analyst #1: Our preliminary assessment of risks dictate that management should re-consider Plan A and analyze what other option is available in order not to expose assets to unnecessary risks. CGI can assist management in pursuing other options.

Analyst #2: wRong, wont work dude. c u L8 R.

Assuming current teenagers will be able to use Office 2003 without a cell phone interface, what rate do you think I’ll be able to charge for Analyst #2? And considering the perforation level of today’s teenagers face, will be they forced to worked remotely not to shock customers with their questionable choices?

A Matter of Style

Maybe it's because I'm a guy in his late 50's and there's this natural gap between my generation and the one starting their career, but I'm dumbfounded by the dress code and consumption patterns of some of our youngest members at the company.

Don't get me wrong, I know it's a natural thing for youngsters to dress differently from their parents. When I started my career in the early 70's, it was okay to wear a tie as large as a small pizza and grow sideburns thick enough for a squirrel to be able to hide inside. Nevertheless, we were dressing for business and regardless of what hues were considered trendy, tasteful choices could help your career greatly. When we were meeting with a client to force a mainframe maintenance contract down his throat, we were not dressed like we were about to climb the Kilimanjaro. Ross Perot had a similar dilemma at EDS back in the days, he could barely tolerate men who dressed with shirts other than white and growing a beard raised suspicions about your political viewpoint.

Which brings me to my point, guys and gals in their early 20's have no dress code boundaries. They tend to dress at work pretty much the way they dress at home. Shirts from The North Face, Merrell sandals, the only thing missing from their outfit is climbing gear. Horrible haircuts are now back for young men where you can barely see their eyes, therefore impeding their visual perception of nonverbal signals during important meetings. What are they thinking? What happened to decency? And don't get me started about piercing, whenever I see a perforated gal or guy in the office, I try to imagine the top career level that this person will ever achieve and the level is usually quite low.

If you want to have a chance in life, keep your skin intact and distance yourself from your grungie friends. Start shaving, and by shaving I mean shaving, not a 3-day look. Go shop at Harry Rosen, if you're not sure about how to wear a tie just google it. And for god sake make an effort to speak in complete sentences, life is not a MSN chat room. I don't care if your job is to maintain a SAN, you should dress like a CEO. Do yourself a favour and ditch that Hyundai shit box and get yourself an old Mercedes for the same price, you can get today a clean 190 for an astonishing price. Larry Ellison from Oracle did exactly that when we was a young stud, and now check what his net worth is.

All this of course won't give you more money from me, but you'll score higher in my mind and that's what's important.

CGI to hire Robert Pattison (Part 1)

Serge came to me with this idea, he sometimes has this uncontrollable urge to do something for CGI. So he came into my office this morning, suggesting that CGI hires some kind of rock star to prove to youngsters that IT is the way to go for a career. As you all know, pushing teenagers to do a degree in computer science is harder nowadays than asking a government not to create deficits.

So Serge said, we should hire Robert Pattison, he may not know a lot about computers but we could find him a good spot at CGI. I go, who the fuck is Robert Pattison, he is a quarterback or something? Serge rolls his eyes, Mike you don’t know jack about popular culture, he’s a movie star man, he’s the hottest ticket you can have for a teenage flick. You should watch Entertainment Tonight more often, he’s the lead actor in the Twilight movies. So I go, a new Twilight Zone series?

Serge sighs, as to demonstrate my cluelessness about the entertainment news that he knows so much about. Mike, he said, I’m a Imdb Pro user and I met his agent at a cocktail party and he told me that Robert wanted to take a break from acting. You know, just to take some fresh air. Since he’s extremely popular with teenagers and young adults, CGI could hit a home run by hiring this guy. IT will suddenly be cool again and we will party like it is 1999 all over again.

I had to admit Serge had a point. Having a movie star aboard could appeal to young people looking for career options. If they go get a degree in computer science, CGI could hire them cheap afterward and tag them on a high-profit gig. I go, Serge tell me, what this Robert guy looks like. Serge opens his briefcase and shows me the picture above.

I go, what the fuck, is this the dickhead you want me to hire? Jesus-Christ, look at this guy for 2 seconds will you, he looks totally baked, sure he’d be the perfect candidate if they do a remake of Still Smokin but this bum doesn't fit into a serious IT project.

Serge goes, his agent says he looks pretty decent if we can keep fun stuff away from him. Moreover, we would hire him for what – couple of months – just enough time for him to chill and for us to leverage his presence at CGI. It’s a win-win situation.

Serge enjoys busting my balls when he knows he has a point. So I go, well give me the phone number of this agent, I’ll call him later today and we’ll see what we can do. Criminey, look again at this guy, he probably burns one after shooting a take.

What a day it’ll be. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Reader's Column Day

Your dedicated CEO is listening again to you today, let’s take a call from Roberto:

I’m a junior Java developer and I work at the CGI office. The company is blocking all access to Facebook and MySpace, how am I supposed to do my work if CGI is blocking communication to the outside world?

Let’s do some profiling on Roberto. This is the kind of Gen-Y slacker who posts what he had for breakfast on Facebook, in addition to what kind of socks he’s wearing (let me guess: white), how he feels about the world at any particular moment (meaning, whining about events outside his control), and what score he just achieved at Bejeweled.

If your local CGI office blocks Facebook, it’s probably because you spend too much time posting rants about your lasting acne problems and you’re not delivering any decent code for your customer. Here’s my advice to you: remove the RJ-45 cable from your PC and try doing work – any work – without Internet access.

The first day will be awful, you will experience full blown hallucinations due to withdrawal. Like seeing Pauline Marois in a sexy nurse outfit. Or Michael Dell announcing that he wants to buy CGI. That kind of really scary thing.

Jee, I just scared myself with the last one.

The next day you will able not to launch MSN when you get to work. You may even be able to use other mean of communication, like a phone, to get in touch with someone. Yeah, like talking. Sounds old school, isn’t it?

By the end of the week you will realize that all you can do with a computer is actually work, meaning producing deliverables for which a client is willing to pay. You may realize that Facebook is just a way to channel your inner frustrations and it leads to nothing but more frustrations because no one really cares that you had Christmas-theme Rice Krispies this morning.

Face it boy, the world is a harsh place and self-interest drives this place. Now get back to work.

Dealing with employees

Let's talk frankly. Dealing with employees is the most underestimated challenge of any manager, and it's not getting simpler down the road. A few decades ago it was so much easier, you'd take the employee out for steak and beer at a strip club, and he'd say to his wife how great a boss you were.

Nowadays if you take a Gen Y out for lunch, you'll be criticized if you pick something off the menu that doesn't fit her/her environment viewpoint. Chicken? Those were raised in a cage smaller that your plate. Steak? Man, you should watch your cholesterol. Salad? This salad doesn't come from a sustainable farm. How about a glass of water, no, wait, you'll tell me bottled water is so bad since it consumes plastic and as a by-product I make my country more oil-dependant, is that it? Dude, you're getting good, I like ya.

Also, taking employees to strip clubs is not CGI policy anymore.

Personal philosophy aside, the annual employee review is the opportunity for a manager to discuss with a consultant that has been out there in the field for a year. It's face time where you review all the mishaps, make sure the employee doesn't plan to quit anytime soon and set unrealistic objectives for the next 12 months.

Of course, you expect the employee to vent some of his frustrations with the company, the client, the crappy PC he uses, his amazingly stupid cubicle neighbour, the world in general and whatever comes to his mind. You - as a manager - must patiently listen to all this nonsense, nod a few times, and give the impression that you share his feelings. This is called empathy. You don't fucking care of course but the employee must not know.

The hard part comes when the employees expects something for his good work during the past year. You know my position on this. People in general expects way too much, so you as a manager need to lower that to the minimum. If you give the employee a 2% raise (which is the standard), he of course will try to bargain something. Don't let him. Tell him that the company had to work double hard this year to meet its sales objectives, and even though the business unit increased its revenues by 20% with the same number of employees there's no money left for raises above 2%. Try to act sincere. Tell him that you got the same kind of raise, and do your best to look clueless but not stupid.

If the employee still tries to bargain something even though you clearly said there was no room for anything else, tell him you'll talk to the VP about this. This closes the argument, and then a week later you send the employee a boilerplate e-mail saying that his request was declined (you don't need to ask the VP since you already know the answer, don't you?).

Note to HR: Do a marshmallow test

One of the hardest concept to implement inside a company is deferred gratification, as opposed to get a cash instant cash bonus. I overheard something in the men's room today about the Stanford Marshmallow Study, where you test kids to act on their impulses (eat the marshmallow now) versus deferring the gratification (wait 20 minutes, and you'll get two marshmallows instead of a single one).

I'm writing this on the blog before I forget it, we're having quite a party with the CGI Germany unit. Note to HR: we need to implement a CGI version of the marshmallow test to screen bozos and obnoxious Gen Y people.

Here's how it should work: You get employee to choose between the two following: either get your full profit-sharing bonus in '09, or wait another year and you will have 1.6 shares in 2010.

Normal people will automatically think that they should get 2.0 shares the next year since they'll skip a year there it's 1.0 + 1.0 share the next year, right? Smart asses will ask for 2.10 shares because of compound interests. Typical Gen Y youths will ask for 25.0 shares because they deserve it - period. Stupid people will think 1.6 shares every two year is better than 1.0 share every year. The latter should be fired and discreetly sent to competitors.

You got Njoyned

It’s a shame employees nowadays are disgusted with the idea of serving 25 years at a single company, they think jumping ships is the quickest way to increase their salary and get promotion. And don’t get me started on those Gen Y youths, they deserve to get their butt kicked hard and… wait… Mike, control yourself, you need to refrain your negative energy. Ok, deep breath, exhale, feeling better now.

Today I’d like to talk to you about how to block unsatisfied employees of leaving your company. Let’s say that there's this kid, let’s name him John, and he’s 25 and doing a good job but he thinks he can get a 10% raise by moving to Desjardins, Bank of Montreal, Bell or anywhere which happens to be one of our outsourcing client.

John’s obviously stupid because he’s already working at CGI, a company whose excellence and values cannot be topped, so he’s already at the best place but John doesn’t see this. Blame his inexperience.

John sends his resume to this company X, but wait, who’s managing this company’s infrastructure? That’s right. John’s resume is tapped by our CGI supersensors located deep into the client’s network and the resume is routed to the Njoyn database where CGI has private access. Our clients are told to report any defecting CGI member. If they don’t, well it’s the game where you tell the client that they have a beautiful infrastructure with tons of server containing sensitive data, and of course it would be bad if something happened. Like, really bad.

So John goes from disgruntled to depressed because he never get any interview or job offer, thanks to our super Njoyn system. Wink, Wink. We introduce self-doubt in the employee so he’s ready for the next phase.

Every week our senior HR guys take a look at this database in their secret room (pictured above) and discuss what treatment should be given to those who dare considering leaving CGI. We don’t beat them WWE-style, of course. We typically reassign the employee to a project where he has to work all alone with very little human contact – from CGI or the client – for a very long period of time. This solitary confinement is an opportunity for the CGI employee to meditate and to begin an inward journey where he/she discovers how much our company has to offer – on our terms of course.

Simply said, the grass cannot be greener elsewhere, because CGI is the grass company.

If you’re not already a CGI client, you’d better firewall your own resources with military-grade control because they will evaporate like free beer on a hot summer day. Instead of trying to do it yourself, why don’t you give a call – I have Njoyn brochure ready for you.

A bright future in a dimly lit office

Being a CEO means finding astute ways to lure clueless college students into the glorious path of IT. A few years ago in 1998 when I came to this company, hiring was a piece of cake. Everyone was so fascinated by the Internet, Marc Andreessen was making the cover of Time and every retard in town was just giddy to send their first e-mail. To top that, we had the Y2K issue on our side. This, my friends, was even better than the H1N1 flu in term of panic. People were freaking out and building themselves bunkers in the desert to isolate themselves from the imaginary disaster. So in the middle of this perfect storm, we were able to hire almost every living creature with a diploma, tag them on an IT project and rack the money. Being an IT CEO in those days was so easy, I was almost ashamed to cash my paycheck.

Fast forward to 2009, the economy is crashing hard and the IT world is 20 times more complex and - truth to be told - people are not 20 times smarter. If you doubt my word, go spend an hour on FaceBook. So we're doing our very best to attract those Gen Y youths into our company. And it's not easy, believe me. The other day one of my director was interviewing a young guy in his early 20's for a job as a .NET programmer. I popped into the meeting just the fun of making my director uncomfortable, and I took a hard look at the young guy.

White shorts, black t-shirt with some kind of a slogan on it, greasy long hair, a goatee and an earring. I cut through the interview. Listen, I said to the young guy, this job involves meeting with customers to assess their needs, draft some diagrams, code something, you know, so it's important to look good. And looking good means wearing a freaking suit and shaving.

The guy fought back and said: listen, bald dude, I'm the top programmer in my class and I know more about .NET than anyone else, so chill out okay? Then he tried to negotiate a salary way above what my VPs are doing, he wanted a mountain bike as a signing bonus and one Xbox 360 station in his office to "unwind after a day's work". I said, listen punk, this company is not a dorm room and you've gotta get serious if you want to work here. This is Montreal okay, you're not in Mountain View and the Google circus. The guy looked at me, said I was so totally uncool, my company sucked because there were no espresso machines, and got out of the room.

Where is our world heading?