Bully Business

I have been in technology for now more than 10 years, and i have been around 5 years in the online gaming industry. Let me tell you something. I believe that it might be the same as in any industry. Most of these businesses are based on bullying. As a software provider, as well as a B2C games operator (Social gaming), I saw all forms of bullying: External and more importantly Internal.

Let me illustrate with a few examples:

The Software provider

As a 3rd party content provider, we come to integrate many software providers (different kind of Games) all the time, i would see their account managers, project managers or whatever staff trying to bully us to go fast for the implementation (And get their commissions) Others would directly go email our bosses or clients to put us under some sort of pressure. Often, they are busted, and even get angrier for this. I believe this is some kind of self defence mechanism, as they must get, as well bullied by some of their clients. Sadly the result is as follow. Trying to bully us in, they get the opposite result – Most of us are professional, but you will have always a few people in the chain that will actually fight back and well.. bully them back. Only one person in the chain of command can delay their work for weeks. It’s a never ending story.

The Client.

Of course, the client is always impatient to get his software, website or other content live. They are happy that it goes there, and for instance pass all the necessary certifications. However, they crave for support – All the time! And, they crave it with real compulsion. Of course, as a B2B company, we have an account manager, to take care of the business. However, they always manage to go berserk in email at some point.
“We will change provider… We want this to work better… We need answer very quickly”, and if of course an answer doesn’t follow after a few hours : the following email is even more threatening if not insulting! However, i can understand why a client spending money on us is eager to have his work done on time. But, what i cannot understand nor succeed to explain to these people is that sometimes, situations are out of our control. You just want them to sftu. I can understand that they are disappointed – but please : When someone is already down, there is no need to jump on him ! So, in these cases, we really try our best to just stay truthful with them, and let them know in a very strict manner that they need to address their issues to the account manager and not involve any one else in their crazu rants. I can see so many people from my teams getting hurt by that.

Internal pressure

Most of internal pressure is on projects and tasks. The little email asking:
“Is it ready?”
“It should be done already”
“If we do not do that before time, we will lose the client”
etc

Of course, there is need for the CEO and the COO to move the business forward. However, planning is here to organise the technical people, as well as operations. Some executives (not all of them thankfully) tend to believe that we give them long deadlines as well as big planning to work less. We really try to stay on track, and are really doing the best possible work. Sometimes, it really gets hard to explain to C*O that if we do a quick fix, we will be in a big mess later. They sadly understand when it’s a bit too late, and triple time is then used to fix quick fixes issues. Well, that’s their money.

The real issue is that money makes people stressed, no matter what, and money is actually for our city life one of the most useful toy to enable us to take care of our family, or our ego! I have never really been in another industry than IT, but i believe that most industries suffer from the same illness here. I would for my part, always try to make sure that my teams do not bully nor get bullied, to always achieve what we are asked to do : our goals.

As a conclusion, sadly, bullies shouldn’t disappear anytime soon, as it’s a common practice in the business to get what is needed, or be saved from any request. Hopefully standards will change at some point, in due time, and new manners will be adopted to get the work done, even by the most savages.

Submitted in: business, general, news |