Second Sourcing, pt 1

How many of you have asked your neighbors or friends to borrow something or to do some small favor for you?

Okay, how many of you have asked two or more neighbors / friends for that same something at the same time?

Second sourcing is a manufacturing term that says, "Let's not put all our eggs in one basket. If our only supplier decides to hike the price or goes bankrupt, we're not in trouble."

I've written about how I used to work for a high ranking technical woman, who is Korean. She is ferocious, although her star at the Mega-lo-corp has faded in the last few years. She's one step below the absolute highest technical pinnicle you can reach at our company. And, it's becoming apparent that she won't make it to the top when she retires.

It's sad and a bit humorous that when I bring up her name, the first thing everyone at the company (who has worked with her in the past) says to me is, "Ummm, she's in China right now right?"

It's both curiosity and fear that inspires that comment. It's curiosity because they haven't seen her in a while. It's fear because when she suddenly shows up in your area (in the past), you were going to have your a$$ handed to you.

After working for her for 9 long months (twice during that stretch I thought of quitting the company rather going in that morning and facing her), I broke down how people felt about her:

• hate
• fear and respect
• liked

and really, I transitioned from hate (many years before I worked closely to her) to fear and respect when I worked for her (that's in between trying to talk myself out of quitting the company).

The reason she will no longer go higher in the company and the same reason that she was feared and respected was that she had a very high ranking mentor (all big companies do) who was a senior VP. Whenever there was a problem within the company and this exec had responsibility to put out that fire, he would tap his mental rolodex and ask, "Okay, how can I get her over there?"

And so, she was parachuted into some critical fire and she would eventually put it out. However, there's a famous saying in war (which I've long forgotten the name of the city), "We had to destroy [some city] in order to save it."

And that was her problem. Yes, she would end up saving some project, but she alienated SO MANY engineers in the process that half of them would swear that they would never work with her again.

To the execs, she had once again saved the day. To the first level managers, she left a trail of bitter engineers they were tasked with soothing over and convincing not to quit the company or complain to HR.

She and I had clashed many years before. She was in France and I was here and she was ordering me to do something from France. I thought, "Who does this woman think she is? Bite me!" Some people who I complained to said, "Yeah, she can be a real bitch. But, you don't want to cross her - trust me."

So for many years, I did the technical equivalent of crossing to the other side of the street whenever we were in the same vicinity.

So, how did we end up working together - or rather how did I end up working FOR her?

I was in a job where I was bored out of my mind, but my manager was the Guardian Angel manager who I've blogged about in the past. She knew I was bored and then suggested I work on an outside project.

There are a set of measurements we have that track how much technical "junk" you've left laying around. These are minor or major problem reports that people say, "Yeah, yeah. The world will not come crashing down if this isn't solved." (actually true). But the bean counters said that this "technical junk" meant we were not keeping our technical house in order (also true). Years of notes asking and begging the programmers to clean house went ignored.

So, my Guardian Angel manager said, "Why don't you see what you can do about this?"