Process Parasites
Reflecting on my old software engineering days I remember working for one of the biggest software factories in Russia and noticing IE windows on workstations when I was passing by. Then working for one of the biggest software factories in telecommunications domain I noticed the same screens whenever I entered engineering offices. People there obviously had plenty of time for browsing, reading and typing (not in some programming language of course). At that time I started calling them Process Parasites and their relationship to a team and an organization as Process Parasitism which (paraphrasing Wikipedia definition) is:
a type of symbiotic relationship between an employee and an organization in which one, the process parasite, benefits from a prolonged, close association with the processes in the organization.
What kind of benefits a process parasite gains? Obviously one benefit is time: free time to do whatever a parasite wants or needs but irrelevant to business goals. This especially happens when there are process inefficiencies and underplanning of resources.
One manager reading this post noticed the curious similarity between the word “website” and the word “parasite“.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -
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April 28th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
[…] Some people learn strategically to enhance their skills horizontally on a hiring landscape. When hired they assess what is a common knowledge and skills in the given industry or industry segment. Typical example is mastering C++ programming and its features up to C++ standard. Another example is Windows internals to enhance debugging skills if the company develops Windows software. Sometime strategic learning stems from the desire to gain deep insights or to be a better contractor or a technology expert. Other people learn tactically, for example, the hiring company product internals. Some people take balanced approach. Some do not learn anything but this is another story, see my previous post about process parasites. […]