The cover letter I wish I could send to firms to find one worth working for...

 The cover letter I wish I could send to a corporation and get a reply to: 

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To get to a point--figuring-out the highest-value position I could apply to OR creating a role that is even higher value for [your company, or for yours and several other companies that can all benefit--so that you can distribute the costs of my salary rather than having to sustain my rather odd sort of value], I'm going to share the following and would like your honest (even brutal) feedback or advice:

I work in an aerospace firm. Succinctly, the only times I've ever been in trouble or written up is, surprisingly **for doing my job.** 

If I keep my head down, suggest nothing, pretend to work for 7 of the 8 hours (since my job can be automated away and I have as far as I can within the limits/restrictions/policies of IT), and violate many policies rather than reporting things, I become someone who is "lovely, who never causes trouble, and makes us all so very happy!" But it puts everyone and everything at risk, and actaully SLOWS and delays work throughout the firm overall. I know I can't be the only one who knows this...

Often, people aren't even keeping track of their own standards and policies, and by doing your job (such as following a policy that interacts with your role to report securities violations, such as purchases of IT parts from non-OEM non-traceable suppliers, which could explose internal systems, government data, etc., to the internet, very very easily), you can step on "the wrong toes." 

As even Elon surely knows, a lot of the industry is a total wreck of political entrepreneurs forming alliances and arbitrarily applying or ignoring their own rules...

and destroying their morale, productivity, and potential for rigor (such as sanitized, properly formatted "inputs and outputs" which, to systems engineers, are key for rapid processing--whether in-computers or in-process of operations). 

I think to myself often, "maybe I'm just crazy", then go talk to the many-decades-long experienced people with impressive resumes and skills and degrees (who are often some of the only people with the necessary certifications IN THE COUNTRY to fulfill their role), who tell me,

"no, you're not crazy--we're all thinking about quitting, it's all falling apart."

Tell managers any of this...and they aren't even aware of what you're talking about. About technical matters, they'll tell you, "I'm not interested in that technology stuff!" (From the mouths of managers at companies with "Technology!" and "Aerospace!" in their names!) 

This has led to a couple of phenomena I like to summarize thus:

* we can send spacecraft billions of miles into space operational for decades, but can't keep the network shares or printers running;

* we can send those spacecraft up (as above), but at prices from 4x to 100x the price it needs to be;

* the people with skills are no longer in managerial positions, and know everything that will go wrong before it happens; decision-makers lack all the necessary skills and familiarity with the work, and seem to nothing that will go wrong before it does, then panic;

* problems that take 5 minutes to design a solution conceptually, for anyone particular to get all the relevant details to think it through, and two hours for a competent (e.g. Unix) engineer, to save $100,000-MILLION$ of dollars per day, "have been under discussion in meetings by management FOR TWENTY YEARS" <--this is a real example and a quote by a coworker I showed a solution on the back of a napkin one day, with a glint in his eye and a grin that I was so naive to think that management was actually interested or capable of getting things done. This company gets "top" ratings in many areas for performance/compliance/etc. under audits... Oh God... 

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At a superficial level, my trouble has been the [lack of] degree: I studied pre-med and bio (molecular, genetic, etc.), while minoring in language items and being VERY interested in computing (computational bio, etc.). I had to withdraw for health issues that were odd (probably triggered by my "garden level" apartment getting the ground around it soaked in record rains...) 

But going deeper, I realize by looking-around, that even the degreed folks...simply can't get things done. They silo, CYA, and play games all day, every day, over decades. Even opening saying "this is all just very stupid, stupid!" 

Notably, decisions that get made are usually only under duress when a crisis (that was very foreseeable to the people actually doing work) finally becomes apparent or real. And they're half-baked and don't fully solve the problem: typically, they just stack process and tooling that is complex (overly complex when made, vastly lacking in the information to make it to really solve all the issues) on top of already complex processes and tooling...none of it integrated well (if at all). They also STEAL solutions (that they've typically already rejected them), and since they're underspecified as a result, then tell those they stole them from "no they aren't what you suggested at all!" to avoid EVA-payouts (mandated by company policies). Which is theft/fraud, demoralizing, and ensures that "everyone learns...to keep their mouths shut and not help", damaging the performance and share price that could otherwise be.

This has brought me to think several "crazy" things: 

(1) Tech, tooling, and processes need to be removed from the hands of business managers. This is the stuff for the interested, and the industrial engineers--whom they often have tasked with vastly underwhelming tasks like "document workflows so we can talk about them in meetings." 

This may or may not be the case for technically minded, interested, or engineer-background managers.

(2) Corporations set-up innnovation committees to review suggestions and ideas...

which are always taken-over by a cabal of middle-managers to...kill the same ideas they kill when their subordinates tell them directly. They STRANGLE innovations--then they put crosshairs on their employees' backs when they find out (through those committees, whose staffers typically aren't disclosed to the corporation!) those employees attempt to follow process (and route around them) via submissions that are encouraged "for EVA" (and so there can be made a song and dance if shareholders ask if such processes exist to insure innovation can occur and support or improve the stock price). 

These things need to (a) be staffed independently, and probably (b) more like skunkworks of big companies--as in "run as a separate subsidiary of the company", by people without relationships with the managers and people in the main company: then good ideas can be a cause for that subsidiary to steal those folks who submit them to fully document, design, detail, etc. for the end product and iterate. 

(3) Corps. also need to be forced to adopt systems and tooling that mean if a manager tries to block subordinates from improving things...employees can do it anyway, unmonitored by their direct supers, and with the results being made available to the appropriate people (who are chosen NOT to be alliance-makers of "let's scratch each others' back" middle managers--such as in the skunkworks-subsidiary). 

(4) Middle-managerial strangulation of innovations and innovators demoralizes the workfroce. 

The smartest firms in the world would be those which...set-up unprecedented incentivizations to drive any capable and willing employee to full-bore dedicate themselves to improvements and innovations: like "you can keep it and we'll pay for it at below-market rates, sell-away once it's complete enough and we'll help you get there and invest in ways that you thing are good and help you." I see...ALL THE TIME...situations that employees who knew they could build-out a life/business for themselves would totally jump-into and fix, replace poorly performing crap, and drastically cut costs and raise throughput, quality, productivity, etc. 

(5) Corps. need the following, which you rarely (never) see: 

Chief innovators, Innovation officers, and an analogy to "warrant officers": the "warrant manager." 

The Warrant Officer is a kind of Marine which has the power to "just fix things" and not have to worry about having reports or supervising or answering for any inferiors.

They *can* have inferiors, but basically they're technical specialists charged with making things better. 

I've never seen such a thing in a company -- which is a major shame. Warrant officers aren't messed with by other officers in the military because they're too important and competent and protected. 

People with insights, capacity to innovate, and do amazing things are found everywhere in corporate America...yet they're strangled, targeted, hated, and driven-out by middle managers. It would be extremely smart to have upper-level corporate powers identify, elevate, and empower such people--and put everyone else into the dread of God himself for daring attack, question, meddle with, etc. such people. "They meddle with YOU and report to ME, you understand!?" 

Similarly, you see endless very-defined roles and analytic work...without ever seeing "we need artists with technical chops sufficient to approach and innovate in completely novel ways, change the world and game altogether, and crush all our competition in a legal way so we can cheer shareholders by holding up the skulls of our enemies over the wailing of their women! Feel free to keep the work--just transform our operations so we can focus on the core mission. Additional rewards if you can also sell to other firms so the costs are shared with them in transforming things for us." 

(6) Corps. need to adopt systems that provide what I call "surfacing": 

things that need to be known above middle management should bubble-up or float-up to be evident--like the fat of milk, or foam of a soda. If these always become evident, and nobody told upper-management about them before they became evident, then upper management (of the kind that cares for performance and progress > progressive posturing and politiking) knows there are heads in middle-management to roll, because middle management wasn't taking care of the problems, but filtering-out the information that upper management needed to know (1) the problems were there and (2) the middle managers didn't really know how to solve them. 

(7) Corps. should be encouraged to pay people for performance and innovations, and in some cases, well enough coupled with "warnings" that the following is true: 

(a) people who fill the role scan save-up for a rainey day knowing that, at any moment, their position could be terminatd: they're there to perform--once they can't, they should be expected to replace themselves and leave, elevate someone else and take another role, or remove themselves and go get more skills and education...

controversial, I know, but are we all here on the earth to pretend we're doing work FOR DECADES, call the kissing-up done in this process a "career", then leave the world a worse place? People who aren't improving things are by definition...driving inflation and waste and decay. At the freakin' least, invest in some farm equipment and efficiencies and feed people...rather than pretending and leaching off the poor, caring bastards that keep these decrepit institutions going in spite of the managers.

(8) Firms need their own auditors that are AGGRESSIVE (about process, not toward the Stockholm-stircken staff) inspection and re-engineering. Government auditors  (I know this because my old roommate was hired under the Obama admin in a drive to try to fix this issue and make people actually do their job as auditors:) need to be friendly to insure they have employment options once they move on. This means their suppliers are riddled with inefficiencies--unnecessary and that SEEM 'standard' across industry, that are solvable and would drastically reduce problems, errors, delays, and prices if fixed. 

(9) Investors could make a killing just by looking into the dysfunctions of firms that otherwise perform well enough, buying enough of those firms to be able to dictate things to them, then doing internal investigations within, finding the autistic types inside that somehow haven't been fired yet, and task them with going about fixing those dysfunctions. Many firms that seem alright to the outside world do only because things are now soooo dysfunctional, but still have excellence in one way or another that could be enhanced, and performance to be doubled and tripled. Often, they can be dismembered into a variety of constituents, have functions replace or outsourced, and made far, far more valuable--but execs and managers would never do it because it may reduce their prestige/legacies or the status they seek to build and maintain (less people under their mismanagement = less status). 

I don't think these are nonsense idealisms. I think these are matters of keeping fiduciary responsibility to shareholders as stewards of their capital, and driving awesomeness rather than demoralized middling nonsense among a mass of zombies--as has become all too common. No wonder why firms can't pay dividends... I'm always thinking to myself, "should I REALLY be buying stock on our stock purchase plan, or should I just dump money into crypto? Yeah...crypto." 

If your company is not filled with POSes like the above, and instead agrees, then, PLEASE contact me--I'll work in a damn janitorial position for all I care.

I've done IT, constantly tinker with tech, iterate (on whatever I'm allowed to use at work) to build better tools (than our IT/software engineering...which is freaking terrifying) all within policy of using only what they allow us to or to download (from the internal software center/repo), and have OCD about improving processes and flow of material goods and logistics, etc. I'm not afraid even of using my own pay to build and do things--because who freaking wants to deal with the same solvable ****ing problems day after day, rather than make them go away, forever and completely, with good solutions (accounting for the eventualities by...taking time to think them through instead of sitting in meetings all damn day). 

Regards, 

John [Surname here]