Like most of you I work for a living. At work we have a theoretical culture and what actually happens. In theory all customers are dealt with quickly and efficiently. In practice customers are so devious that they manage to stump me and mine on a daily basis. You can't train away every eventuality. What I've told my people is to just... and this is solid gold.... tell people the truth. If you don't understand the question then tell them you don't, and if you understand but don't have an answer then tell them that too. We're not big enough to sweep stuff under the carpet and pretend we didn't know about it, so we're as honest as we can be. If we weren't honest we'd get sued for sure. Now here is where it gets interesting, We have seven seperate departments, each of which is responsible for very different projects/products. These departments are about 80% compartmentalised with some staff that float (this looks weird when I re-read it but I'm sure it's pretty normal) between departments. We've got things pretty much sorted now but here's what used to happen.
You start several projects and allocate staff appropriately.
Each project matures at a different pace.
Crikey! Now some projects are almost sorted while others are still dragging their heels.
Re-allocate staff.
Slow projects get more staff, established projects lose staff.
As a consequence the best people from fast projects have moved on so there goes the knowledge base, the drive and the brains of the whole operation.
The "easy" projects wither because there's no-one left to MANAGE them.
This is pretty simplified but I've got nearly 70 projects under my belt as a consultant (v. important - consultants don't know how to do things but they've a good idea how NOT to do things.)
I'm still pretty happy with what I've gotten from Totalgaming but it's unfortunate that there may not be a TG.NET to buy strategy games off later this year IF nobody re-subscribes because Stardock are neglecting it. I can almost see the faces screwed up, juggling whether to address customer complaints or to do the thing on the current project that their manager is demanding results for. You just get that head in the sand attitude. Nobody is willing to answer existing customers because they now have new job goals that can distract them. What's easier? Achieving A or Fixing B?
I'm not defending SD, I'm just saying you're witnessing a small company ethos at work. Believe me, it could be worse.
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