Reference no: EM133189199
It was 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night and Jay Robinson was still hard at work in his office at TechPoint Software Inc. Jay often stayed into the evening, as did several of the managers, software engineers, and designers at TechPoint's San Ramon, California offices. It was part of the culture at TechPoint to be in the office late at night, early in the morning, and even on the weekends. It was even more important to work these extra hours if you were a junior colleague and were hoping to move up the ladder. Hard work, or at least the appearance of hard work, seemed to matter at TechPoint. And that was part of the problem that Jay Robinson was currently facing.
As he looked over the progress report summarizing the performance of one of his sharpest young software engineers, Julie Abdula, Jay was uncertain about what he should recommend to the promotion committee at tomorrow morning's 10 A.M. meeting. This meeting was essential to moving Julie from a probationary status (that all new engineers went through) to a secure, full-time position. Sure, Julie was bright, graduating at the top of her engineering class at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (one of the top engineering schools in the United States). She was also very productive, completing all of her assigned tasks on time, and even finishing an extra project on a new software application that would allow mobile smartphones to access local television channels. Lastly, she was well-liked by most of her team mates. A couple of them had even commented to Jay that they appreciated her creativity and her ability to solve problems quickly.
But Julie never came in early, worked late, or volunteered to come in on the weekend. And she didn't seem to care that everyone else was putting in extra hours either. One of her less admiring teammates, Allison, had causally mentioned Julie's absence at last week's weekend file cleaning extravaganza (the once-a-year event where all team members come in and clean up online and paper files, scanning in documents that need to be saved, and erasing or shredding those that should be deleted). Allison had commented at the following Monday's staff meeting, "Julie, we missed you this weekend at the file clean up:' This was Allison's way of giving the not-so-subtle hint that Julie should have been there. But Julie didn't seem to take the hint, and simply replied, "Yeah, it sounds like you had a full day". Jay had stressed that the file clean-up was voluntary, and didn't pressure anyone to come, but he assumed that everyone knew that this was an annual "bonding experience" and all of the junior staff members were expected to show up. Julie had joined the team just last Spring. Jay wondered if she could have somehow missed that element of TechPoint's culture.
In fact, as Jay reflected on Julie's performance, he wondered what else she might have missed about Tech Point's culture. In looking at Julie's team, it occurred to Jay that Julie was the only member who had not been a summer intern at TechPoint prior to getting her job. She was a star student, and had made such a positive impression in her interview, that Jay and the other managers had made an exception to their unwritten rule of "only hiring our tried and tested interns". But perhaps Julie had missed much more in skipping the internship than Jay had thought.
The summer internship for undergraduates at TechPoint was renown in the industry as one of the toughest "bootcamps for engineers" that existed. Interns worked 12-hour days on real projects and met with actual clients on a weekly basis. Interns were expected to jump right in and work side-by-side with seasoned employees and to be involved in all aspects of their work projects. For example, last summer, Julie's teammate Allison, along with two other new hires, Juan and Mirabel, worked on a project to allow educators to easily create customized online "textbooks" that combined readings, videos, interactive simulations, and cases-all bundled in an online packet that students accessed with a password. The customer was the State of California-a very important client, with more than 10,000 public schools as potential adopters.
During this project, Allison, Juan, and Mirabel learned early on that they would not be given any slack because they were inexperienced or young. They were expected to get "up to speed" immediately, even if it required coming in early and staying late every day. They were also expected to do a lot of "grunt work"- such as copy editing, fact-checking and other clerical tasks. This work was often done on the weekend, as that was the only time available when the interns did not have more pressing tasks to do.
These weekend work shifts also allowed the three to bond over their mutual suffering, and to become experts at learning all of the quirks of the TechPoint managers through shared stories. Anytime one of them heard a story about a famous "incident" or quirky behavior by a TechPoint manager, he or she would jot it down, and report back to the other three during the weekend. This way, Allison learned not just how best to divide work with Juan and Mirabel (e.g., Juan was a fast typist, and Mirabel was a diva with Internet search engines), but also how best to interact with the TechPoint managers. For example, they all learned that Steve Barber, one of the Software Engineering Managers, -was compulsive about the format of presentations, and all presentations to his group should follow a specific sequence involving the presentation of background material first, then unanswered questions, new data collection, and research findings, and finally, pre- liminary recommendations. They also learned that another manager in Software Design, Tom Cahill, was an early morning person, who always had coffee in the cafeteria at 7 a.m. Tom was a goldmine of information about competitor trends, so meeting him for coffee was more than just a social requirement for interns, it became an essential part of their training.
As Jay thought about what Julie had missed by not meeting Tom Cahill, he suddenly recalled some things that Cahill had said recently. Just last week, Tom had mentioned to Jay that he didn't know who this "Julie-person" was, who was going to be evaluated in the promotion meeting. He added, "I know most of the junior software engineers because we have early morning coffee down in the cafeteria. But I've never seen Julie there . Is there a problem for her coming in when everyone else does ?" Jay had said that there wasn't a problem that he knew of, and replied that Julie didn't seem to be a "morning person"-as a way of explaining her absence. But that comment had stuck in Jay's mind ever since. He wondered what other managers were thinking, and he was sure that they had also noticed Julie's absence at late-evening Chinese Food runs and trips to Vendo-Land in the basement. These were opportunities for managers to check up on who was there and who wasn't, and Jay was sure that most of the senior managers took advantage of them.
Finally, there was last Friday 's team brainstorming meeting for the new project on educational software for home-schooling programs. Julie, Allison, Juan, and Mirabel were supposed to meet with Jay to brainstorm some ideas for developing an online men-toring and idea exchange program for home-schooling parents. Very quickly, however, the meeting turned into an argument with Allison, Juan, and Mirabel discounting and rejecting any ideas that Julie put forward. They complained that all of her ideas rested too heavily on her personal expertise in programming, and would exclude input from others. At first, Jay tried to understand the logic of these arguments, but as the meeting wore on, he began to wonder if the three engineers were merely contradicting Julie's ideas because they didn't like her, and didn't want to help her to succeed. The outcome of the meeting was that the group could not agree on a set of next steps-which was not a positive out- come-and would not help any of the team members to pass their upcoming promotion evaluations.
Jay needed to make a decision about Julie, but he wondered how much of Julie's performance and interaction with others was the result of his lack of supervision, or was due to her personality (something that could make it hard for her to succeed in the long term at TechPoint). He also wondered if it should matter that Julie did not bond with her colleagues, and if that should be a requirement for promotion.
- What are the 2-3 cultural values of this organization? (Provide examples of artifacts, behaviors, etc. to support your answer.)
- How are Julie's actions in concert or conflict with the assumptions that guide TechPoint's culture?
- In what ways, if any, do the cultural values help and/or hinder the performance of this organization?
- How should Jay resolve this issue?
- Would you recommend any changes to the company culture? Please give specifics and reasons behind your suggestions.