The main task for an employee is to navigate the endless corridors of the Byzantine bureaucracy in order to find out what it is you are here for. After 2 years in this position I'm still not exactly sure. Trying to figure out what my job is, is like seeing an oasis in the desert.
When asked "Why am I here for 40 hours when, as far as I can see, I could do this job in 20?",, middle management refer to the catch-22 of "development". They are not referring to, it turns out, sorting your life out in order to get a real job, strangely.
A word on development (this is the be-all and end-all of the company's culture)
Having no use for all the skills you have acquired up to this point in life, social, academic, professional or otherwise, you are meant to come up with a cunning plan (PDP ) on how you are going to develop yourself. You are allowed little help or advice in this area. This is mainly because the managers themselves have no idea what they are doing either, aren't involved in their teams (apart from chasing the El Dorado of obtaining a PDP) and, developing hoi polloi too fast might mean that their own role becomes obsolete.
The idea is that the goals placed in your plan should be both personal and related to your role, i.e. technical. It doesn't take long (for some) to realize in practice the goals sum up to spying on your colleagues, pushing yourself aggressively above others, being loud, being bitchy, admiration of admin for its own sake, keeping information secret even when the usefulness of the information has expired and first and foremost, schmoozing with your stiff, boring stooges you call your colleagues. I won't bother you with the corporate synonyms for these terms.
One example of the fraudulent action items we are forced to place in our PDPs would be "communication skills". I have improved mine immensely in the time I've been here. This was done by leaning how to "influence" my pairs. By influence read manipulate, upstage, machinate or simply control to gain advantage over them in the horizontal (read vertical) hierarchy.
The "free" food is usually fit only for sub-normals.
Everybody is pregnant (see pros) or talks endlessly about the imbeciles they have created to replace themselves.
