Job Title: Analyst
Location: Columbus, GA
Submitted on: 27-Feb-05
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Job Title |
Workplace
Survey |
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Incompetence at the managerial levels. There is much bad policy
in place. Management is also abusive of their subordinates. Pushyness is
valued over intelligence. Management wants efficiency but at the same
time are controlling to the point where work doesn't get done because of
bad policies. Management's control is valued substantially over
efficiency even when it hurts the bottom line. Three of the worst
policy
blunders are with information security, project management, and change
control. I will explain each in the following paragraphs.
A manager in Information Security at TSYS would be fired at most
companies, but not at TSYS. Poor policies are in place to the point
where there are so many hoops to jump to get anything done productivity
is poor. Red tape is a massive problem. To do anything on a test
system
it requires a minimum of an hour and a half of red tape to just to check
out a logon to get on a system and do any work. And just about every
test and production system logon is locked down. Info Security issues
personal logons, but they are virtually useless. Lower level managers
experience waiting times of a minimum of a day to get any requests of
Information Security taken care of. In several instances it has taken
weeks to get issues addresses due to foot-dragging by Info Security.
TSYS customer service has been impacted by this as well because there
are
too many hoops to jump to fix a problem on production systems.
Project management is another nightmare at TSYS. Project management
consists of business people assigned to the technical groups. The
original purpose of project management at TSYS was to report project
schedules to management and to have someone that TSYS customers could
contact. Instead Project Management has been given the power by
management to put deadlines (realistic and unrealistic) on ALL technical
matters and to make technical decisions. Thus, business people are
making technical decisions.
Change Control was originally conceived to place a mechanism in place to
test code before it was moved to production systems. Instead it has
crippled the testing process because hoops have been put in place to
jump if any issues are found during testing. Now, each issue found
during testing requires separate problem tickets to be opened. Needless
to say people take short cuts that have affected the quality and
quantity
of the service due to the hoops having to be jumped.
The top and middle management tends to be out of sight and out of touch.
Their sole company focus is on the bottom line and control of their
subordinates. They also have personal agendas that aren't company
related and that has hurt the company. They aren't particularly focused
on the company. And TSYS also has a serious excess of layers of middle
level managers. Middle management at TSYS eats salary and contributes
little to the company.
Lower level managers tend to be controlling. Middle management sees
power motivated people to be the best candidates as lower level
managers.
Instead the affect has been to create a hostile environment for the
general employees to work in. It also has limited the number of
advancement opportunities because middle management is so controlling.
Management in general wants the ability to flip a switch and make
employees jump.
Overtime is frequent due to understaffing at the lowest employee levels
and the number of problems encountered due to poor policies. That is
especially true for the employees that have ties to the technical
groups.
It affects middle management levels on down to the general technical
employee. 50 to 60 hour weeks are the norm. Weekend work is common for
the on-call people, project management, lower management, and middle
management.
The dress code is business casual for those below management level.
Business dress is required for management. Most Fridays are casual
dress
for those people below the manager level. The dress code is explicit
(in
writing) and enforced.
The diversity of the workforce is predominately white and black. I'm
not
aware of the exact percentages of each. There are just a handful of
employees of Latin American and Asian heritage. The racial issues and
tensions at TSYS are small scale. Sexism is a larger problem, but is
not
widespread. Sexism is more of a problem at the departmental level.
The general employees are sheepish. They take serious abuse from
management
and tend to stick around at TSYS. Most don't take their allocated
vacation time or leave it until December to take. TSYS is with massive
workloads. The general employees don't make many formal
complaints and rarely stand up for themselves. The employee turnover
rate is in the 5 to 10% range yearly. Depending on the area, the number
of disgruntled employees range from 30 to 70%, but do little to remedy
their situations.
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