I have seen this first hand at work in the past month. One Senior Engineer spoke up against upper management about an issue in a major product line. That senior engineer was walking around the whole month thinking that he would be getting fired for standing up. I asked him one day why he never became manager and he told me "If you want to high level position that means you abide by all the rules, you never speak up and you are complacent with what everyone says." Instead of being rewarded for finding out issues in the product line, the senior engineer was walking on eggshells for the entire month. Within a lot of industry jobs upper management frowns upon those who vocalize their opinion if it is against the opinion of those with higher power. Management should motivate their workers to do their work in an efficient yet accurate manner. Rushing to meet a deadline with work that is rubbish should not be rewarded while at times it is. A way to motivate the employee and employer is through offering opportunities of advancement.

It’s not as surprising to see the realistic side and ideal side of working. Ideally, you would like to have team work and all, however, there are a lot of reasons in industry why individual effort and quotas matter. There is also a hierarchy wherein agreeing with the boss is a good thing to do. There are a lot of complicated politics and business factors that affect performance in the realistic workplace, therefore, it causes the ideal reward systems to be dismantled. There’s very little things to do to be change the culture set in these types of companies. However, it is important to note that working for and towards the greater good produces great results. Working together and producing a product that will benefit a bigger population is more important than advancing the career of one individual or making more money. I think that an effective and safe product benefits both the employee and the employer. If the product is good and it attracts a lot of customers, more people will buy it which means that more money will come in.

I completely agree with Betty, many of my friends who work in the industry faced similar situations. Jobs that I personally try so hard for and constantly applying to work a job a friend of mine has. And the person doing the job is miserable. He always points out the flaws in management and how things are actually run in the company and who not to argue with. After hearing some of these experiences, it was upsetting to see how some big companies actually work especially for new employees. However, I will add a company does essentially care about money. Their end goal is to make money and sometimes they overlook issues employees have or complain about because they want to avoid things that don't matter to them. To senior management, the projects better be complete and they better not lose a client. And to be honest, if you look at it from both sides it makes sense.

You have raise a good point but I am not surprised by it. Although we are taught at school that the best workers should get the promotions, I personally even took an Engineering Ethics class on how most of these things should be dealt with. However, the teachings at school are very far from what actually happens. I personally have never seen something like that occurring, but I can imagine that at the end of the day, the person who gets the promotion is the boss’s best friend. So at the end of the day, the major objective is to keep the main boss happy. I think it is important to mention that the person who does a job in the best possible way always gets rewarded at the end of the day (somehow), maybe not by the same boss, but by another company who liked the way that employee performed.

Let me know what you think
Sincerely,
Roberto Pineda.

I don't fully agree with the skepticism on lack of upper management willing to listen. While this is definitely an issue within any industry based off my experience it is in the minority of cases where these situations occur. This can mainly be attributed to the lack of leadership on upper management and a good indicator of this situation at companies is looking to see how high the turnover rate is. If you notice that there are many people coming in and going out you know there is probably not a good work culture there and situations that everyone described above are more likely to play out. In the end companies with a good work culture will recognize that it is better to listen to employees when faults are found in order to better mitigate future risk and this can benefit the employer and employee financially. The main disconnect I have noticed is that while working in industry many managers feel they do not receive enough compensation for their work because they look at the amount of money they saved the company compared to what they received as a bonus for their work that year. I don't know if this is the best perspective to view things because there is no way you're going to be rewarded fairly in that context. An example of this is one of my previous managers would calculate the savings he made the company which came out roughly to a couple million dollars, and his bonus was in the thousands for that year he was disappointed by this and held some resentment as well.

It's not as astounding to see the sensible side and perfect side of working. In a perfect world, you might want to have cooperation and all, notwithstanding, there are a ton of reasons in industry why singular exertion and amounts matter. There is additionally a progressive system wherein concurring with the manager is something worth being thankful for to do. There are a great deal of confused legislative issues and business calculates that influence execution the sensible working environment, subsequently, it makes the perfect reward frameworks be destroyed. There's next to no things to do to be change the way of life set in these sorts of organizations. Be that as it may, take note of that working for and towards more prominent's benefit produces extraordinary outcomes. Cooperating and creating an item that will profit a greater populace is more essential than propelling the profession of one individual or profiting. I believe that a compelling and safe item benefits both the representative and the business. On the off chance that the item is great and it pulls in a ton of clients, more individuals will get it which implies that more cash will come in.

I have seen similar situations in my experience. Often times the fear of termination and disagreeing with the higher ups forces employees to keep quiet. This is an issue that is continuing to increase and can cause a great deal of issues down the line for employee moral as well as the company's throughput. An unreported issue may lead to great detriment down the line. In the case of a product recall for example, a company can be severely fined and may cost lives. However, when employees such as the engineer you mentioned, speak up they can help to stop the issue before it gets out of hand.

I have seen it myself sometimes the area disconnect, when I worked in consumer, I saw the constant push on the release of product from upper management, but never the recognition of a great job. I have seen that contracts to external manufacturers were implemented just because of the good relationship they had with an individual in upper management. Lastly, I have seen people that didn't deserve promotions be moved up in ranks at a quick fashion with minimal effort. Sometimes it may get frustrated, I have heard a recent story about the cancellation of projects, which results in people losing their jobs, because upper management lost faith in the project and the potential it had within the market. I strongly believe that upper management should have faith in their employees and promote/acknowledge hard work, this could be an incentive for employees to put an extra push into there work.

Chris

In my opinion, this issue can be addressed by facilitating better communications. Usually, in many organizations the communication is carried out by the medium of pay stub, but this leaves the majority of workers without any access to this effective method of staff communication. The companies need to understand their people and their diversity to come up with a design to keep them motivated and that aligns with the employee's preference. Effective communication and targeting benefits to different parts of the workforce will be really helpful in the long run.

I believe that they are disconnected because its teamwork vs. individual but I believe they are connected in a strange way.‘individual effort’, ‘making the numbers’, and ‘agreeing with the boss' leads to ‘teamwork’, ‘achieving challenging stretch goals’, and overall ‘candor’. When the company or teamwork wins, the individual wins. When the company or teamwork loses, the individual loses. The lose will look like lost benefits, people being fired, etc. Its that individual work that makes the team win. Even if it doesn't feel like "teamwork" is being rewarded at a company, it really is if the company is still in business because if there was no teamwork and no one was working together, no one would have a job. The reward of teamwork is a job and working at a company that is staying in business. As far as 'agreeing with the boss' I really believe there is a way to 'agree' with the boss and suggest something completely different. It looks like this, "That's a great idea! May I add on to that? Instead of -insert their idea- maybe we could do -insert your idea and provide back up for it-." There will come a time when you work for someone who knows nothing about what they are talking about (its common in management). Do not insult these people or display their ignorance (what kind of a jerk does that anyway?). They know they don't know what they are talking about and their ego will ensure you don't get that raise or something. If you show some finesse you can easily show your smarts as well as not piss them off.

Much of what Chris mentioned in this post is something that resonates with me at my current position. While not always manifested in the form or a promotion, I do see accolades and preferential treatment being heaped on the same individuals by upper management. The work that they do is no better than anyone in their department, and is often times inferior. But they receive these commendations and preferred treatment simply because of how they are seen towing the company line and by being agreeable with everything their manager suggests. I have a hard time accepting this being the norm since I believe disagreeing with a proposed course of action or providing counter-solutions should not make one seem disagreeable or combative.

I feel as engineers we can take one of two career paths, administrative or research based. If you want to follow an administrative path, partiality is definitely an obstacle that will be faced. Partiality in the form of favoritism, talked about in the posts above (management's policies are followed and respected), but there is also nepotism, cronyism, and more. I agree that to become successful in an administrative role you have to be congenial and have high regard for management. The positives of such a career is that your work will be recognized and rewarded. However, a research focused engineer will see less recognition, any will be directly associated with the company or upper management. The research engineer has the pleasure of conducting science. I feel it is very difficult of an engineer to be biphasic, i.e. have both a strong administrative and research position. IF the struggle of climbing the corporate latter is too unethical for you, stay a research focused engineer.

This disconnect doesn't really surprise me. It's very easy for someone who didn't spend much time working on a specific project (usually upper management) to take a quick look at some metrics they might have available (hours worked, number of lines coded, etc.) and quickly but inaccurately award people that may not have deserved it if they asked the entire team working on it. This also heavily depends on the office culture of the company. Is it very highly competitive between departments? Is it lax where promotions are very rare? I feel like certain office cultures ask for more from the individual to benefit the team, or the bottom line. Ultimately it's up to the individual to decide if the company they're at feels like a job or not.

I believe this type of issue is very common in workforce and I am not surprised. If one wants to convey his or her message across, then without arguing with the upper management, should plan an alternate way. There are many factors that affect one’s performance by going over the limits. For example, it can put his or her job with the company in a risk; also it affects the annual performance review of the employee. Managers or supervisors likes to keep even the smallest details in books and the employee should be careful when arguing with the management. On the other hand, employers should motivate the team and provide opportunity for growth. I believe this will be rewarded and appreciated by the employees.