Org chart madness

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Checking the org chart today, I was amused to notice the gap between myself, A Lowly Technican, and the CEO.

The CEO is apparently my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss.

That's eight (count them, eight) levels of management above me.

Yow. No wonder nothing ever gets done.

Can anyone top eight?

Comments

[duality.livejournal.com]

we don't have access to an org chart, but our office is considered a satellite. so we have all the levels here, then it goes to the parent company and goes through all -their- levels.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Indeed. We're halfway up your eight before we even get out of arm's reach of our chair.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

I believe GM has something sickening like 23 levels of management between someone who works on an assembly line and the CEO. No wonder they just posted something like $8B this last year, half of that in the fourth quarter alone. Of course, we believe in cutting grunts first to make the books balance.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

$8 billion loss, that is.

[armaphine.livejournal.com]

According to my econ professor, back in the 80s, the going joke at GM was "Sell it at a loss, we'll make it up in volume."

[eightofspades.livejournal.com]

Offhand, I counted at least 9. That's before we get to our parent international company.

[inahandbasket]

CIO -> president.
Gotta love a small company!

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

Yes, according to Outlook, I am 10 "clicks from Bill[G]."

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

7 clicks from me to billg

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Lemme see. Me. Helpdesk supervisor. Ops Mgr. CIO. CEO. Four?

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

5 or 6 between me and the owner, I'm not sure. We don't have an org chart that I know of, but I know how it works.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

omg your icon is great. *chortle*

[shadowkat01.livejournal.com]

Lesse, me, sys analyst, director of IS, deputy exec director, exec director...so four for us I guess? Two departmentally, two above that.

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

My CEO is only 3 levels up from me, but then, we have two levels above CEO...

[prozacnation.livejournal.com]

We don't have an Org chart listed anywhere in the building.

Hmmmm...

[kalium.livejournal.com]

Lessee.

Departmental sysadmin, keyadmin, departmental chair (I think), dean of school, and then regents/university president.

Not too many, actually. I think.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

There are seven people above me, including CEO. I call them "The Seven deadly dims"

Our middle management changes frequently too. About every six months, they take all the management positions, lay them out on a whiteboard, then write the managers names on a piece of paper and put them in a hat. Then draw names against each position. Needless to say, our middle management changes about every six months.

[http://users.livejournal.com/shiara_/]

To the top of my organization, the CEO and Chairman there is.....

me, my manager, the director of the department, the head of the division, the head of the Insurance division, the CEO and chairman. Wow. That's five.

It used to be worse, but they decided to go with at max 7 layers of management between the chief head honcho and the lowly paid person. 7 or 8 layers. So last December, we went through a massive hack and slash of staff.

What gets me about the management is that they give us all this 'scope' and then when we really want the functionality, they deem it 'out of scope' with the intent that 'we'll get to it later.' And we all know how that goes.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

I've got 3 levels of management in the same room as me, and my head always spins when i try to go from in country to in region to global management

[kostika.livejournal.com]

ONly 4 between me and the top man. And yet still things don't get done.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Me, team lead (1), Orlando helpdesk manager (2), general helpdesk manager (3), "customer care" lead (4), CIO (5), CEO (6).

It used to be 8. Most people at the company who are my age and level of experience have only 4 levels between them and the CEO. But they like to keep the helpdesk a little further down so that we'll know our place and so that the secretaries (who are 1-3 levels below the CEO) know that they can shout at us.

[captain-jester.livejournal.com]

rep
Team lead
Unit manager
stage Manager
Floor manager
Site boss
District VP
District Pres
Regional vp
Regional president
Vice Pres
Pres
CEO

Granted that was a non-tech job I had...doesn't quite count the same

[cat-of-dreams.livejournal.com]

Biggest benefit and problem with where I'm at is, I report directly to the owner.

Unfortunately that means I have to explain tech decisions to someone who still has a blinkenlighten mentality.

[residentgeek.livejournal.com]

Me
Supervisor (Campus Network Coordinator)
Director of Network/User Services
President of Campus
Vice Chancellor
Chancellor of College

That's not half bad.

[codecattx.livejournal.com]

There used to be three.

Now that "management-itus" has infected us we are at seven and counting.

My group alone was originally handled by two managers and one director, two years later, we are at six managers and one director - with no increase in headcount.

[shirenomad]

It's a safety measure. Means you have more people to shoot before you can take over.

[squigit.livejournal.com]

Hard to count. Where I work, I've got 5. However, I'm a contractor, so I've got 7 over on that side.

[alphabeter.livejournal.com]

The question is not how many levels are above you, its how many notice when you screw up your TPS reports and talk to/email you about it.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Three. And I've told them all they can bite me - the day will come when the Executive Board will be able to read raw TCP/IP protocol before I'll spend one minute filling in paperwork I deem useless.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I should mention that our CEO reports to a goverment minister who loves calling press conferences and stating "$department will have a fully computerised system for handling X in three months", when the first the department in question hears about it is when one of the execs gets handed a copy of the press conference tape a week later and has a coronary.

So, nine. Ten if you count the head of government, who makes the kind of vague policy statements which lead the minister to make whack-job I.T. commitments on national television.

I keep saying that I should be made the CIO - my policy would be to go on national TV immediately afterwards saying the minister in question is an ignorant whackjob who didn't bother to ask how long such a job would take to implement properly, and that IF we could possibly extract something resembling a spec from him/her, it MIGHT be ready to go sometime just after the next election, two years away.

I'd like that.

"Ah, a question from the press? Yes, well the reason the minister made such a statement is that he/she is what we in the computing industry refer to as 'an ignorant whackjob.' We would suggest that in future the Honorable Minister may end up less embarrassed if he/she took the time to actually check well-known basic facts before pulling random numbers out of the air and pretending they were anything other than complete fabrication."