Carl's Weblog

Where have all the gophers gone?

One of the things I have been dealing with at work is a lack of personnel to do the menial tasks. We need paper for the printer, which means an engineer has to go hunt for paper. We need to buy a laptop, so instead of sending someone out to buy a laptop, an engineer has to go buy the laptop. We need documentation written, so the engineer, usually the one that is worst at expressing himself, has to write the documentation.

This really sounds like I am a lazy bum and don't want to do any work, but that is exactly the opposite of what I am trying to say. I think the engineers should be "engineering" and not hunting for paper in the catacombs of the basement or filling out the 15 forms (in triplicate) that you have to fill out to purchase a laptop. Right now those jobs fall onto the shoulders of an engineer or a manager, both of which are paid WAY to much to do this type of work, both of which have much more profitable things they could be doing.

The problem is, no one wants to pay a secretary the amount of money that is required to keep them happy. The only people that have secretaries anymore are lawyers and executives. I am not saying that each engineer should have his or her own secretary, I would be more than happy to share. And I don't think they should be called secretary, maybe personnel coordinator.

Posted by carl at August 12, 2004 11:16 AM