The generation Y manifesto

I have recently read several articles on the rebellious behavior of generation Y in the professional environment. I was very intrigued by the exactitude of the this generation's description since I belong to it. Therefore, I decided to write a manifesto of my generation, explaining our professional expectations and our vision of the Enterprise.

I - We simply want to have fun at work! it doesn't mean we are not serious in what we do, because when we believe in something we will do the impossible to realize it. Fun in work means good working environment: interesting nature of work, informal and dynamic social interactions and playful-comfortable office environment.
We haven't built a wall between professional life and personal life. One is the continuation of the other. We don't compromise either one of our lives: we want to continue our boxing and piano courses, spend time with our family, travel the world, but in the same time we aspire continuous professional evolution. The companies who understood this paradox have put in place flexible work environment: flexibility in work time and work place. Of course this flexibility is built on the foundation of mutual trust.

II - We don't believe in pyramid organizations! we grew up on social networks, where organization is flat. Anyone can poke anyone.

III - We want modern working tools. We want a Google like Information System: simple and accessible anytime from anywhere. We want an open Information System: full access to Internet (multimedia, social networks...) and enabled on our personal devices.

IV - We are radical in our relation with our company. In order to be loyal, the company has to prove its investment in this relation: career development, training, promotion, responsibility. Otherwise, we won't wait a lot before starting a new relation with a new company. Nevertheless, when the relation is going well, we are extreme in it, we put all of our energy in it, and we talk proudly about it on every occasion.

V - We are not afraid of asking questions. We don't take everything as a sacred postulate, and dare to ask why.

VI - We want to make the world a better place.

The importance of Application QoS in the transformation of telcos

Currently, I am working on a WAN optimization RFP. The goal is to optimize the performance of the customer's networked applications by deploying physical probes behind WAN accesses.
there are two main domains in WAN optimization:

• Application QoS: It's about monitoring and controlling the traffic of networked applications in order to satisfy the performance requirement of these applications according to their business importance.
• Application Acceleration & Optimization: Accelerating the performance of an application can be done on different levels:
• Network level: TCP optimization, byte caching and compression..
• Application level: there is a myriad of solutions on this level, starting by simple protocol spoofing (ex: CIFS) to advanced solutions like Content Delivery Networks. I'll dedicate a post to CDNs very soon.

Many constructors provide WAN optimization solutions: Riverbed, Ipanema, Cisco... each constructor is more specialized in a domain. below is an image provided by Ipanema on their optimization solution:

I think that these technologies will be more and more critical to business in the future. Nowdays, business rely totally on the Information System which is being moved to the cloud. It means that everything passes through the WAN access, and thus critical applications should be protected smartly.

Telecom service providers are integrating this approach more and more. The historical proposed solution is to upgrade the WAN access and increase bandwidth. This approach doesn't resolve the problem, it just  postpones it. On modern WAN networks, Class of Services is implemented, and it allows the prioritization of important traffic in case of network congestion. Its a good basic network level solution but it's very limited. It should be combined with previous solutions to have a serious application optimization.

I believe that telecom service providers should start thinking about integrating these solutions in their standard network products in order to accelerate their transformation into service providers and not only dumb bit pipes.
This approach will help them get to know more their customers by understanding their applications, and thus detecting big business opportunities.

Achraf Souk

Orange stressed

When I was searching for my first job, I always told this joke to my friends: people are suiciding in Orange to get out of it, and I am dying to get into it. Orange is the historical telco (France Telecom) in France who suffered in last years from a high number of suicides among its employees. Well it’s true, I never understood the deal till the day, in a bookstore, my eyes were caught by a black book with the Orange logo on it, and entitled: Orange Stressed.

The author of this book, Ivan du Roy, is a journalist in the weekly Témoignage chrétien and collaborator in the online magazine Basta!. In this book, Ivan du Roy gives us a historical glimpse of Orange and explains why we have suicides today in this great company. The chapters are highly backed with facts, especially from the Stress Observatory of France Telecom.

The story begins in the 1970s where France was way behind its neighbors in terms of telecommunications. To end this situation, the government of Gescard d'Estaing launched the Delta LP plan: Thousands of enthusiastic technicians were recruited by the PTT administration (Post, Telegraphs and Telecommunications) back then to modernize the network infrastructure of France.

In 1990 the transformation of the PTT into an international corporate began. The PTT was divided into two public companies, La Poste and France Telecom. In 1996, France Telecom was privatized into a corporation. One year later, 21% of its capital was sold, and its action was quoted in the stock market. Since that year, and till the day, this percentage kept on increasing. So why was France Telecom privatized?

Many factors enforced this direction. First, there was the Milton Friedman's neoliberalism influence with Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in the UK: in these countries, telcos were already privatized. Second, the European Commission, in order to Europeanize the telecom services in Europe, chose the deregulation of this sector. A green book was published on this subject. This decision was highly influenced by some European industrial lobbies (e.g. European Round Table of Industrialists), and a big think-tanker and business man played a key role in this influence: the Belgian Etienne Davignon. Finally, and ironically, it was the left wing in France with Michel Rocard that opened the Pandora box by transforming the PTT administration into a public company. It was their reaction to face the difficult economical situation at the moment. To pass their solution, they had an undeclared agreement with the second most powerful syndicate CFDT behind CGT who knew about it too late. The left wing and the CFDT paid the price of their decisions each one in its upcoming elections. For Ivan du Roy, this direction was a pure political choice, because the announced needs for privatization (modernization and unification of networks, technological revolution, cheaper services...) were already satisfied with the PTT administration.

In 1998, The European telecommunications industry was deregulated for competition. New competitors entered the French markets (e.g. SFR & Bouygues). The strategic response of France Telecom to this deregulation was the expansion in international markets, to catch up the market shares it has lost in France. The CEO of France Telecom Michel Bon led this strategy by a big number of fusions, acquisitions, OPA operations in Europe and in Africa (especially the purchase the UK mobile operator Orange which became the official trademark of France Telecom). Huge sums of money were also paid to buy UMTS licenses in different countries. The French state was blinded by the billions of Euros income due to the sale of actions and never controlled these operations as the main shareholder. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2000, the speculative internet bubble has exploded, and all of risky operations of France Telecom caused it huge amounts of losses and France Telecom was the most indebted company in the world, with 70 billion Euros of debt.

How to get rid of 70 billion of junk bonds? France Telecom will witness the era of cost killers. The new CEO Thierry Breton comes to France Telecom with an army of well paid cost killers. They put in place the NeXT plan to reduce the number of employees by 22000 in three years. Employees were pushed in different ways to leave the company. Cost killing rhymes with work intensification, reorganizations (delocalization…) and shift in professions to ones generating more cash flow like commercial professions. These huge changes caused a cultural choc to the employees. First, these changes question their history and values, in other words they would feel that everything they did before was useless. A typical employee in France Telecom is a technician with the public service culture deeply rooted in him. In a short time, we put him in call center, without convenient training, and force him to give the minimum time to clients, which is completely against his old public service culture. This brutal change caused major psychological problems which are highly reflected on the health of the employee and his private life, leading him to suicide in extreme conditions. Changes came from the top of the hierarchy without being well understood by the employees and the management of these changes seems to have been a big failure.

The alerts are in red for France Telecom: precarity of work, ratio of absenteeism and number of suicide attempts. The direction seemed to be in denial at first. In response to the suicide attempts, the company created cells to accompany persons in difficulty, but never questioned the organization itself. It didn’t consider the roots of the problem.

France Telecom is gradually waking up from this long sleep of denial; there are more and more forces from the inside that are trying to stop the drift of the financial logics from the reality of work.

If you are interested by the subject of stress in work due to modern organization of work, I strongly recommend you to watch the two part French documentary “La mise a mort au travail”. In one of the parts a small debate is held with Stephane Richard, the current CEO of France Telecom.

Achraf

Update: For french speaking readers, there is a recent interesting documentary on the subject by France 5. It shows what have been done in France Telecom since the arrival of the new CEO Stephane Richard who promised to solve these cumulated social  problems after admitting their existance. You can watch it on YouTube:

Rework, a new business book

 Lately I heard a little buzz going on about a new business book, Rework, written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeir Hansson. They are the founders of 37signals, which is a collaborative software company with a few millions of customers out there in the world. I started to read it in the train, between Lannion and Paris, but its great typical-informal-american style of writing, its clear and strong ideas, and its attractive design forced me to keep my eyes on it until I finished it on the road. I will outline some ideas of the book in five themes: Scrum practices, ethical business, good & bad  habits, strictly simple products and culture.

 Through the pages of the book, I noticed that the writers praise alot the agile software development methodology Scrum, without naming it. They insist on the importance of having short term small objectives, and dividing those objectives into small tasks. This way we can build the product by making small "wins", which motivate the employees. Fast meetings are encouraged, and big abstract documents (specs, bla bla..) are highly considered inefficient.

 The second important theme of the book's ideas is the ethical business. According to Rework, the most successful products in the world are those whose creator wanted to solve his own problem (a REAL problem), a product he would use himself, a product that makes difference! Don't copy your competitors, forget them and focus on yourself. Forget all of the traditional marketing techniques, just focus on you product, let it talk for you, let your satisfied customers outgrow you! Stop worrying about growing, this should not be an objective! and specially forget about banks and out-money, try to avoid them to the maximum, because sooner or later they will confiscate the control over your business, and the focus on it, so your business will end up by being ruled by unethical financial logics. Finally, you have to be honest with your clients about your products, about on what can be done and what cant be done, just be your self!

 The third theme is about some good and bad habits at work. Bad habits: Meetings! avoid meetings to the maximum because they are a waste of time; Workaholism! reject working overnights, because it doesnt mean more productivty, but means burnouts; Planning! planning is guessing, so stop planning and start acting. Good Habits: Alone Time! give your self everyday some alone time to avoid interruptions and be more productive; Inspiration Time! start working directly whenever you are inspired, because inspiration doesn't come all the time.

 The fourth theme is about making your product and your company the simplest possible. Simple means less expenditure, clearer, more focus on the core business, on the most important. Simple means less mass, less inertia, more flexibility. This is why the authors advice the readers about working under some prefixed constraints to limit business drifts and avoid complexity.

 The final theme is about the culture of the company. Culture is not some few bla-bla nice words on the walls of the company, its not something that it is decided just after a managers' reunion. Culture is the result of the cumulative behavior of the company through the years. Culture is the sum of all of the decisions of the directors. If we are honest with our clients, our employees will have this attitude, if we are considerate to the environnement, our emplyees will be also. The intersting part of this, is that when you have a company with a strong culture, you never loose your time in taking decisions, because decisions are obvious. A Fair trade label distributor will never take more than 3 seconds to decide whether it should sell a Coka Cola product.

 There are many interesting ideas on other themes, like hiring, identifying by products... but I will not reveal anymore of this book, I strongly recommend you to have a look on it, and as the book cover says: "Ignore this book at your own peril".


Achraf