^ I wish I could delete this. I realize the comment sounds very tasteless out of context.
I was ripping on the sterility and general uselessness of corporate so-called "humor" by describing a behavior that would be offensive and bizarre in normal interaction, but hilarious and awesome within a corporate context (because of its offensiveness and, therefore, its departure from what is expected).
Nope, these are actual guidelines Microsoft uses to make hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions. city41's comment is 100% accurate about how these things are used.
It probably started as your typical big-company CYA in case someone tries to sue them for HR-related stuff and grew into this monster as some middle manager began empire-building.
For some reason, humor and compassion are the only competencies that don't appear on the wheel. Also, does anyone else find it troubling that "results" make up such a thin sliver of the wheel o' competency?
> Nope, these are actual guidelines Microsoft uses to make hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions. city41's comment is 100% accurate about how these things are used.
So... it's edgy humor in the form of a terrifying practical joke? Maybe Andy Kaufman didn't die after all.
You need to think like a large-company HR director. Every employee must have an appropriate rank to justify his or her salary, and a list of qualifications to justify the rank, so that nobody can say “hey, this guy across the hall is doing exactly the same work as me, but I’m paid less, that’s not fair”.
All other things being equal, wouldn’t you rather have a manager or co-worker with a good sense of humor than one without? Therefore, don’t employees with good senses of humor deserve to be paid more than the humorless ones? If Microsoft doesn’t recognize and reward how employee-led humor adds value to their stakeholders, then all the employees with good senses of humor will bolt the company, attracted by the free clown suits that Google offers.
All of us will find ourselves in bad situations from time to time. Good intentions gone bad. Impossible tasks and goals. Hopeless projects. Even though you probably can’t perform well, the key is to at least take away some lessons and insights. Was there anything ironic, odd, or downright funny in all of this?
Trapped on the thirty-second floor of Microsoft Documentation Complex 27B/6, Will Burnham shuddered, silently, and wept.
Is it really possible to develop a sense of humour by reading a list of bullet points, action plans and self-help advice? I'm not really convinced that this isn't a really brilliant, very subtle joke on a completely higher level.
I can't decide whether this is funnier if posted by someone in earnest, or if posted in total seriousness. I think that's the joke.
This may be a little bit convoluted of an idea but when i was much younger I made a concerted effort to be "funnier". I watched stand up commedians on tv and analyzed why some jokes worked and some didn't. I paid attention to my friends jokes and took mental notes. All in all it worked out, i'm no robbin williams, but I make people around me laugh (in a good way) fairly frequently.
So structured learning of "un-learnable" fields can pay off, though your intent, desire, and actions all have to be aligned. Microsofts attempts to introduce humor to the workplace could legitimately be successful if they really really followed through, sponsoring weekly sitcom watching parties, making jokes in email signatures the internal norm, etc.
What makes this document so sad, is the perception that feelings and enjoyment can be delegated to a memo.
It can never hurt to try out your material on the internet. i'm currently floating at the top of the page with an office one-liner. Sometimes it pays to stick to the classics ^_^
"I watched stand up commedians on tv and analyzed why some jokes worked and some didn't."
That's what they do, after all. As much as people protest that you can't dissect a joke, comedians and humor writers pull on gloves and end up elbow-deep in the things to improve their craft.
>Is it really possible to develop a sense of humour by reading a list of bullet points, action plans and self-help advice?
To some extent, of course. When you know enough about how frogs work, you can make a new frog. I don't think humour is any different to writing or music in this case. In particular,
>There are some basic humor tactics. Use exaggeration, use reversal, be brief. Cut out unnecessary words.
This is good advice. Someone who paid attention to it could improve their ability to tell jokes. It's neither necessary nor sufficient, but it's a start.
There's a short story by Asimov where the cause of humour is explained and then disappears forever. Or at least that's how I remember it (proving hard to Google).
EDIT: I remembered this a little incorrectly. The story is called "Jokester", from the book Earth Is Room Enough. Someone has it in a Word document online (on the first page of hits).
"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._B._White
Odd: I just came across a similar analogy in Cory Doctorow's "Eastern Standard Tribe":
"The difference between reading a story and studying a story is the difference between living the story and killing the story and looking at its guts."
If online, post the letters L, O and L (in that order) to indicate laughter in real life. Optionally the letters X and D may be used to form a so called "emoticon", for added effect.
If (or perhaps when) making a joke yourself, you can also use a (semi-)colon and o or dash and a closing parenthesis at the end of your sentence as a hint to the recipient who may otherwise--in the absence of body language or tone of spoken words--not notice that your utterance was meant to be humorous.
However, in some circles this may be frowned up on as an insult on the readers intelligence.
It's similar. They use the same proficiency level guidelines for many different aspects when doing employee reviews. There is also a pre-established ruling on at what level of proficiency an employee of a certain level should be at for each one. So, for example, a level 62 employee should be at level 2 humor proficiency. Level 64 should be at proficiency 3, etc. Being above the expected proficiency for your level is a factor in getting a bigger bonus. You also can't get promoted until your proficiencies are at least at the next expected level.
Don't get caught up in the competencies. Levels are all about scope. And the odd ones require a jump in mgmt chain signoff, so start working with your lead on them early because they ain't getting them for you at the last minute.
Wow. I'm an engineer at Microsoft. I don't know what this particular site is about (from poking around, it seems to be targeted at education) but I can assure you that career paths and employee reviews at Microsoft have nothing to do with humor.
It's a weird day when you have to write such a comment :)
Can recognize the humor in Microsoft publishing strict guidelines documenting requirements for various "proficiency" levels in humor. Microsoft spent money doing this. Money that came ultimately from Windows license revenue. Can barely hold back tears at the thought of this.
Level one, 'Basic,' includes: "Tries to diffuse tense situations with appropriate humor."
In a different row, level two, 'Intermediate,' includes: "Uses humor to boost morale or decrease tension."
Similarly, level one includes "Is conscientious about timing and setting for humor," and level three, 'Advanced,' includes "Realizes when and where humor will backfire, and withholds."
If this were a real skill being assessed, that kind of redundancy would be a problem. In fact, it probably wouldn't be there at all, because the person writing it would sense that something was a level-one trait or a level-three trait. But when you start down the path of bullshit like this, you find yourself in the land of arbitrariness, and pretty soon you're just desperate for some more words to fill up the boxes.
And it is, indeed, bullshit. A good sense of humor is important in the workplace, as it is everywhere, but it's not something that can be assessed in some abstract way like this, separate from the person's other qualities.
This is depressing. How can you work for Microsoft, see that, and not be depressed? Whatever you think of the company's technology over the years, you have to wonder how old timers feel about starting a career at a software company and ending it at a company that exists solely as charity for office workers.
This library thinks Franz Kafka and Charlie Chaplain were the funniest people ever, particularly as epitomized in The Trial and Modern Times, respectively.
79 comments
[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 2114 ms ] threadI was ripping on the sterility and general uselessness of corporate so-called "humor" by describing a behavior that would be offensive and bizarre in normal interaction, but hilarious and awesome within a corporate context (because of its offensiveness and, therefore, its departure from what is expected).
The entire list of 'competencies' is here: http://www.microsoft.com/education/competencies/allcompetenc...
It probably started as your typical big-company CYA in case someone tries to sue them for HR-related stuff and grew into this monster as some middle manager began empire-building.
There's even a wheel, in case you felt like making a poster: (pdf) http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/4/7/3477e49d-315d-4...
I was about to post the same discovery, but you beat me to it. Bah! And +1!
So... it's edgy humor in the form of a terrifying practical joke? Maybe Andy Kaufman didn't die after all.
All other things being equal, wouldn’t you rather have a manager or co-worker with a good sense of humor than one without? Therefore, don’t employees with good senses of humor deserve to be paid more than the humorless ones? If Microsoft doesn’t recognize and reward how employee-led humor adds value to their stakeholders, then all the employees with good senses of humor will bolt the company, attracted by the free clown suits that Google offers.
All of us will find ourselves in bad situations from time to time. Good intentions gone bad. Impossible tasks and goals. Hopeless projects. Even though you probably can’t perform well, the key is to at least take away some lessons and insights. Was there anything ironic, odd, or downright funny in all of this?
Trapped on the thirty-second floor of Microsoft Documentation Complex 27B/6, Will Burnham shuddered, silently, and wept.
"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._B._White
It's also reminiscent of Louis Armstrong's
"Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong
Is it really possible to develop a sense of humour by reading a list of bullet points, action plans and self-help advice? I'm not really convinced that this isn't a really brilliant, very subtle joke on a completely higher level.
I can't decide whether this is funnier if posted by someone in earnest, or if posted in total seriousness. I think that's the joke.
It probably started out that way.
Sometimes the frog dies in amusing ways. See http://xkcdexplained.com/
http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com/
http://www.29-95.com/time-suck/comic-strip/marmaduke-explain...
So structured learning of "un-learnable" fields can pay off, though your intent, desire, and actions all have to be aligned. Microsofts attempts to introduce humor to the workplace could legitimately be successful if they really really followed through, sponsoring weekly sitcom watching parties, making jokes in email signatures the internal norm, etc.
What makes this document so sad, is the perception that feelings and enjoyment can be delegated to a memo.
Can you summarize some of the lessons you learned?
"What is the sec..." Timing!
That's what they do, after all. As much as people protest that you can't dissect a joke, comedians and humor writers pull on gloves and end up elbow-deep in the things to improve their craft.
To some extent, of course. When you know enough about how frogs work, you can make a new frog. I don't think humour is any different to writing or music in this case. In particular,
>There are some basic humor tactics. Use exaggeration, use reversal, be brief. Cut out unnecessary words.
This is good advice. Someone who paid attention to it could improve their ability to tell jokes. It's neither necessary nor sufficient, but it's a start.
EDIT: I remembered this a little incorrectly. The story is called "Jokester", from the book Earth Is Room Enough. Someone has it in a Word document online (on the first page of hits).
Odd: I just came across a similar analogy in Cory Doctorow's "Eastern Standard Tribe":
"The difference between reading a story and studying a story is the difference between living the story and killing the story and looking at its guts."
Really, Microsoft...
However, in some circles this may be frowned up on as an insult on the readers intelligence.
It's a weird day when you have to write such a comment :)
Can recognize the humor in Microsoft publishing strict guidelines documenting requirements for various "proficiency" levels in humor. Microsoft spent money doing this. Money that came ultimately from Windows license revenue. Can barely hold back tears at the thought of this.
I must be an expert because this page is hilarious.
Particularly the fact that they suggest learning to shoot skeet.
In a different row, level two, 'Intermediate,' includes: "Uses humor to boost morale or decrease tension."
Similarly, level one includes "Is conscientious about timing and setting for humor," and level three, 'Advanced,' includes "Realizes when and where humor will backfire, and withholds."
If this were a real skill being assessed, that kind of redundancy would be a problem. In fact, it probably wouldn't be there at all, because the person writing it would sense that something was a level-one trait or a level-three trait. But when you start down the path of bullshit like this, you find yourself in the land of arbitrariness, and pretty soon you're just desperate for some more words to fill up the boxes.
And it is, indeed, bullshit. A good sense of humor is important in the workplace, as it is everywhere, but it's not something that can be assessed in some abstract way like this, separate from the person's other qualities.
"In a seemingly serious situation, what nuggets of humor or irony can I find?"
Even if you make people laugh following these guidelines to the letter, would you have a sense of humor?
How many points do I get for encouraging near party atmospheres because of my comfort with using alcohol?