In the past, I’ve dreamed about landing the perfect job which I could do until my retirement day. It’s also Indonesian parents’ dream to have their kids working as Civil Servants or State Enterprise Employees. So, after a year of teaching and making a bare minimum, I tried my best to land my dream job. I did succeed, but reality was never as beautiful as your dream, am I right?
My former employer is a telecommunications company that is in the process of transforming into a digital company. The reason being the revenue coming from the telecommunications field is running low, and the customer growth is just stagnant.
While looking for another source of income, they found out that people are willing to pay for services that run on top of their telecommunications service (e.g. music streaming, video streaming, call over the internet). With that idea in mind, they planned to create their own digital services to compete. While working there for around five years, I witnessed several problems with that idea.
Rigid Mindset
Since the beginning, the image of a “corporation” is seen as a company where the older generation dominates the leaderboard and leads with their old-style leadership. Up until today, the said company is trying really hard to grow a new image of a stylish & modern company for the younger generation. It paid off because of two reasons. First, people are already idolizing the company and want to work there. Second, having their dream company branded as a new shiny corporation makes them want to work there even more.
While they did try to put more and more younger people on the leaderboard, the problem that I saw was: you need more than talent to be promoted.
I’ve seen a number of talented and popular people not survive because they can’t keep their idealism of the “new way of working” and surrendered to the tested-and-true old way; it’s just so hard to change what’s already there for years. This, in turn, makes the younger generation have the same old mindset: doing as what the boss told you to.
Copying Startup
Oh, people are loving startups!
Oh, startups are winning even though they are newer and have less money than us!
Let’s do the same as what startups do, we will succeed!
Yeah, No
That just doesn’t work. Startup companies are moving really fast.
The organization size is usually leaner in startups, which, in my opinion, could lead to a faster feedback cycle. Goals could be better communicated with fewer people, leading to having the same vision.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to lose track of what should be done when you just work as what the boss wants you to. If new employees could have a greater influence, I think that’s a good change.
I know there must be a way for a corporation to move faster, but copying what startups do is not the answer.
Back in my day, the leaders wanted the development process to be better and more standardized. What they did was create several meetings to formulate rules and standards, then after it was done, they just left it to the people to use it.
There was no enforcement process whatsoever.
You want to build a new product? You have to use Golang or JavaScript!
But what if the team can only code in PHP?
Leave them be.
Then what’s the point?
Creating a standardized development process is well and good, but if it’s just on paper, it’s as good as no standards.
Not Knowing The Market
Do you know why you create your product?
If the answer is because it’s what the startup sells, that’s not a great answer.
I heard someone mockingly say that it’s better not to spend any research since the competitor has already proven that the demand exists.
Yeah, building the same product hoping people will use ours is pretty lame, especially when the product introduced has no unique selling point whatsoever, not even a great user experience.
I hate it when they start branding their product with “Made by Indonesian”. Who cares if the product does not even fulfil the people’s needs?
Let’s take an example of an education product, there’s already a successful startup selling e-learning, our product doesn’t even have a smoother or better interface, in fact, it’s slower and has less content.
Even when I was tasked to build a logistics product, the goal was to integrate with as many providers as possible. And the development process was driven by customer feedback. Every feedback, we just took it and implemented it. There were little to no backlogs coming from our research.
The HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) was notoriously bad!
My team and I built a product for three years long and when the leader swapped, they wanted us to rewrite the product from scratch just because the number of concurrent requests was too low to their standard.
That day, the number of active customers was not even bigger than the number of requests that could be handled. Even we hadn’t scaled the server as it was not required with the current user base.
Poor Talent Management
The company has pools of great talent from all over the country, yet they do not place people in the right positions.
If you are not familiar with how management trainees are recruited, it’s common in Indonesia for management trainees to apply for the position while also acknowledging that they are ready to be positioned anywhere in Indonesia in any available role.
Someone could be a top engineering graduate from an overseas university but be tasked to work as a sales officer, which is not their area of expertise.
Upon the final announcement, people might know they got the job, but they still do not know where they will work or in which field. They will only find this out after their probation period ends.
You can’t appeal this decision, but you can choose to forfeit your position if you can pay the penalty.
It was mind boggling. Instead of listing all vacant positions and the required skills before recruiting, they recruit first and then place people in whichever positions are vacant. Granted, some people do get fitting positions, but there are still wasted potentials.
This was the case with permanent hires, who are mostly fresh graduates.
As for experienced hires, the company has no idea how to recruit them.
The HR just leaves the process to the software development division. In turn, the software development division leaves the process to the employees.
The employees who have no idea how to recruit people will do the interview with a list of questions to ask, then score them.
How do they score them? Just as much as they see fits, because there were no repercussions if the hire turns out to be a failed hire.
I have been virtually screaming to the management about this weak point, telling them that this is not the proper way to conduct interviews.
The bar was so low and the scoring criteria differ from each interviewer causing unfair judgment. They responded by renewing the interview questions. That’s all.
The experienced hires are to be contracted for five years at max, the contracts are renewed annually.
After that, a loophole will be used to hire the said person from a subsidiary with a potentially lower wage.
Now, who wants to work at the same place, with the same development process, while being paid lower?
Build a better recruitment process. Put the bar higher. Pay professional headhunters if necessary. Hire people as permanent employees, then pay them a proper wage.
It’s not hard, right?
Too Big To Fail?
This kind of confidence is what kills the company.
I knew back then that it was my time to leave my “perfect dream job”.
I knew that the company’s initiative was doomed to fail.
I thought it was funny when the company wanted to evaluate people by the number of their git commits, turns out they were not joking.
Last time I heard they stopped recruiting people and stopped renewing contracts. The rules got stricter, people can’t have side-jobs (even if it’s one you do on weekends or after office hours). Remote working was shifted to 3 days of work from the office. Even people now need to submit work timesheets every month.
Failing to do all those rules might lead to contract termination.
Gosh! I can only wish for the best for them.