Skip to main content

It's so hard to find a good team to work with

It was my last day with my current team. I was with this team for one year. 

 ♪♪ Don't cry for me my old team. I will forget you quickly and you will forget me quickly. We are not meant to be each other.

 After coming back from maternity leave, I didn't have much luck finding a good team to join in my current company. I stayed with my previous team for 3 quarters and then I escaped to this team. Now, I'm escaping again. Let me quickly summarize what went wrong with each team.

 Team A (Duration: 3 Quarters)
  1. Too much planning, slow execution: Meeting after meeting after meeting for no execution. Meet for sake of meeting!
  2. Micro-manager (micro-manage design of slide / spreadsheet): This is not my first time to encounter a micro-manager. This one is yet another unique one. F* you, do it yourself.
  3. Gender discrimination: There is a silent agreement that female workers should take care of tasks like taking meeting minutes, organize team event. 
  4. Everyone has its own opinion and never compromise: No body accepts anything other than their own opinion. 
Team B (Duration: 4 Quarters)
  1. Lack of listening: Smart bunch of people who just totally tune out.
  2. Lack of planning, coordination: Project pops up out of blue without any structure.
  3. Lack of investing time to build quality process: Rush, rush, rush to something.
Even though each team has its own weakness but one common theme here is that both teams lacked spirit of team work. I'm escaping again because I don't get a sense of working as a team. At least that's what I think. 

 My friend once shared an interesting article about humans become less self-centered around certain age (25-ish if I recall it correctly). I think it's true. I get less excited to hear compliment of myself (e.g., "you are awesome") these days. I am happier to hear good thing about things I'm working on with my teammates. 

 On the other hand, maybe I simply become less tolerable with people with traits I dislike as I get older. I easily get angry about people's work attitude. Maybe I should start read about workplace anger management type of book if there's any. Any recommendations?

 My engineer friends often say that dealing with computer is more predictable and pleasant than dealing with actual humans. I totally agree. Why can't we start using AI to analyze each employee's personality / work style and create a "right" team? We already have people looking at AI in workforce: hiring, assessing employee's performance and so forth. We should use AI to create an "ideal" team as well - why not! We already do similar things with dating service (to find the right match), right?

 Nevertheless, it's so hard to find a team you love to work with these days. Here's today's featured shopping list:

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable - The best part of this book was the prologue where it described each unique character in a team. "Dysfunctions" is a lovely term that can be applied to many teams I worked with. 


Enjoy and you are welcome!


Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

"Awa Soda" Soda Bubble Candy

This candy is similar to Smarties but melts faster with flavor of ラムネ " Ramune " (taste like Sprite) with strange bubbles "Awa" in your mouth (a lot of bubbles!).  Bubbly bubble! If you are either Ramune fan or bubbles fan (imagine bath bubbles melts in your mouth) or both, this is for you! This candy is very unique in its flavor and texture for people outside Japan (I hope it was obvious from my description above). However, I totally forgot about its uniqueness for a moment. Then, I came to realization when my daughter put the candy into her mouth for 2 seconds and then spit out immediately with yikes face.  Yikes! Anyway, since my hubby doesn't eat any candies and my daughter rejected the candy, I decided to keep it all to myself at work. I like "Ramune", candy and bubbles so this is a candy of my dream. Very bubbly! Awa Awa Awawa! If you are up for this sensational bubbly experience in your mouth, check out these items now. Today...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Yukimi-daifuku" Mochi Ice Cream

The weather in Bay Area has been weird for the last couple weeks. One weekend, you thought Spring finally arrived but then the temperature immediately dropped to 50s (10 Celsius) the following week (in the morning). This weekend was the same again. It has been chilly for the last two days but this Saturday, it suddenly hit 80s (26 Celsius) during the day. My kids and I were not dressed properly for the temperature when we went to a park and we had to escape back to home in less than one hour! Anyway, although I don't eat ice cream often, when it gets hot, I won't say no to ice cream. I am very particular about my ice cream. I like Haagen-Dazs (strawberry flavor, rum raisin flavor, vanilla flavor, almond chocolate ice cream bar) and  Tillamook (only discovered this recently and only tried strawberry flavor). I also stop by gourmet ice cream shop once a while. However, my absolute favorite ever since I was a kid is mochi  ice cream - " Yukimi-daifuku ". It direc...
Post a Comment
Read more

New hobby just because it's spring!

I have decided it's time for me to have fun this year rather than spending 40+ hours wasting my time emailing / spreadsheeting at work. Yeah - fun.  Basically, I hate my job (actually, I hate corporate job period) and the only motivation I have at work is to get together with colleagues to complain about the company and upper management team and immediate co-workers (hmm, isn't that everything).  I decided to bring my rant to Internet space. That's  boring as is so I decided to make this a little bit sweeter.  I love sweets (French pastries, Asian snacks and on and on). I make simple desserts (I'm not a good cook so it can fail miserably and my family has no choice but to eat). I buy random Asian snacks and feed to myself and my kids. I eat dessert after every meal (even though I'm not French).  So.... My goal is to alternate my rant and sweet here to entertain my readers (if there's any - ha). Come and join my sucky sweet life!
Read more