Management Support Horror Stories

[Larry Grinnell <eq501lg -at- PTS -dot- MOT -dot- COM>]

In the "top this one" category, when this organization was formed some years
ago, it was with the grudging support of upper management here. It was so
bad, that our V-P and General Manager stated in the formation of our tech
pubs group:

     "Technical Publications is nothing more than a conduit for the
      dissemination of proprietary information to our competitors."

It took us a lot of years to shake that stigma and the seeming "empowerment"
by others (especially managers) to "dump" on us because the GM did. It was
so bad that a six person pubs shop (in a multi-billion dollar corporation)
had to make do with a total departmental software budget of $500.00 (yeah,
that's five HUNDRED dollars) per year.

Fortunately, we now have a far more "enlightened" management team that
supports us with the hardware and software (and even training!) we need
in order to perform our jobs with far greater efficiency and quality than
ever before.

Anyone else with similar horror stories? I thought this had some bearing on
your documentation thread--i.e., if you can't get even your own management
to support you and make you feel useful and worthwhile, how can you provide
useful and worthwhile documents to the poor slobs in the field who
desperately need them?

To paraphrase "Bull" from the old "Night Court" series, "But we're feeling
much better now."

I'm not going to mention my company's name--you can certainly figure it out
from my email address...

Larry