Members Column Day: Attitude and Career

Dear FakeMike, I’m a 45-years-old change management specialist and I’ve been posted on a deep-space assignment where the firm has literally no presence. This comes following a meeting with the head of my BU where I challenged the firm’s way of doing things. My client totally ignores my recommendations and they just let me rot on this 3-year contract, it’s a government agency so they don’t really care. The director ignores my requests to be relocated elsewhere. What should I do? Olivia from Boston

Dear Liv, I’m truly sorry to hear you suffer from social redraw syndrome but let me assure you that your contribution to the bottom line is not ignored and you will be rewarded accordingly. Let me check here, well you did not bring much this year, hey I see here that you’ll be getting a 1% increase this Christmas, you’re one lucky gal.

You complain about loneliness when you should be asking yourself the following question: what have you done to increase our presence at this client? How are working hard enough? Are you coasting through this gig just to rake salary or are you thinking about the firm? Maybe your lonely presence over there is the end result of a long career where your ego – not the firm – took center stage. Your VP noticed that you ignored profitable growth and you did not integrate the firm’s DNA into your way of doing things, and as a result you were sent in the corner of the class.

Government gigs are reserved for subpar consultants, I hope you know that don’t you?

Brown nosing is probably not your cup of tea, this might explain why you’re not a director at your somewhat advanced age. You know, your skills are worth nothing if you cannot schmooze with your business unit top brass. How often did you e-mail your bosses about brilliant idea to dramatically increase revenues while lowering expenses by 5% ? How much free time did you give your BU this year? Let me check PSA here... well, let me just say you did everything for being unnoticed.

This I think it your problem, you’re one selfish little brat. Let me call your VP, I’ll make sure you stay there for a loooong time sweetie. Get used to the gloomy faces working next to you. And don't even think about sending your resume to your contacts, you'll get njoyned real hard..

You have questions about your career in IT consulting? Send your thoughts at fake mike roach at gmail dot com.

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.