10 Bad Things About Yumemi Inc. (Part 1)

I will list the bad things about the system development company I work for, "Yumemi Inc."

1. Everyone uses Slack too much

Slack is so active that I can't read everything.
It causes "Slack fatigue."

How active is it?

It seems we even reached number one in Japan for the maturity score (Slack utilization rate) calculated by Slack.
A gathering of Slack addicts is the state of things.

It's like internal Twitter

Every employee is given a Slack channel called an "OJT channel," and everyone writes whatever they like, just like on Twitter.
(It's similar to a times channel)

Some people are just playing around

There are also people who (seem to) spend all their time chatting and playing with ChatGPT.

*We are set up to be able to talk to a ChatGPT bot within Slack.

There are also a lot of complaints

Yumemi's representative (Reitch) has publicly stated the following:

Perhaps due to the influence of such statements, even new graduate employees

Some people write strong words like that, and quite a few people express their inner thoughts openly.
Honestly, I sometimes feel a bit uneasy about it.

Follow-up

Even though excellent new graduate employees have joined the company,

1. Questioning the company's methods

2. But, out of consideration for seniors, one cannot voice negative opinions and ends up bottling them up

3. Ultimately ending up resigning

↑ I think this outcome is the worst, so looking at it from the opposite perspective, perhaps we should be grateful that someone pointed out the company's problems.

“Actually, there are negative feelings, but because they are kept silent,it looks like there are no problems on the surface”
That might be even worse.

I don't really know which is better.
“Thank you for telling me!” “You cheeky little brat!”
Both feelings well up inside me.

Also, I have vented on Slack myself, so I'm in no position to talk about others...

2. The official Twitter is stupid

I think you'll understand if you take a look.

They're always doing comedy skits

There are many joke tweets too

They mess around using ChatGPT

There are many typos

Follow

It seems they operate Twitter with a two-person team, and one of them seems to be posting serious information properly.

3. There are many strange systems, and they change constantly

Yumemi Inc. has many eccentric systems.

Strange systems

• All-CEO System

  • The same authority as the Representative Director is delegated to all employees.

• Self-Determined Salary System

  • Everyone decides their own annual salary.

• Unlimited Paid Leave System

  • Even if you use up your statutory paid leave, you can keep taking more.

Everyone is a CEO, you decide your own salary, and you can take unlimited paid leave...

It makes you feel like, "Surely that's going to collapse someday!"

And it keeps changing

Since Yumemi's representative (Reichi) is a "guy who loves hacking systems," he keeps coming up with new systems and rules.

For example

Suppose Yumemi's representative thinks, "I want to make this a company where employees express gratitude to each other."

In such a case, sending a message to the company saying, "Everyone, let's try to express gratitude to each other as much as possible," would be fine, but since the representative is a "guy who loves hacking systems," he wants to "systematize" it no matter what.

So, in fact, he asked the team that develops internal systems to create a "tool that allows you to easily express gratitude on Slack."

It's something like, if you send a message like this on Slack, the recipient gets 40 points.
(The points received are converted into Amazon gift cards once a month.)

Furthermore

And since there is a system where double the points (80 points) are given after 3:00 PM on Fridays, gratitude messages overflow on Slack on Friday afternoons.

According to the Yumemi representative, "By being thanked on Friday afternoon, Monday won't feel so depressing."

I think it's very tech-organization-like and good that he is trying to realize this through a system so that it "happens automatically" rather than telling employees, "Everyone, let's do this!" but the volume of messages is just too much.

Too much gratitude can also be a problem

Slack is already active and impossible to read through, and since a large number of gratitude messages are displayed after 3:00 PM on Fridays,

I, for one, end up thinking things like that.

Follow

In the first place, they seem to think, "Let's try creating a new system, and if it fails, that's fine."

It seems their philosophy is, "By failing, you can realize, 'I should have done it this way instead!' and gain insights."

I feel like they were saying things like, "Let's fail small, learn from it, improve, and keep spinning that cycle!" and "It's an
agile organization that develops the organization just like agile development!"

*To be honest, I don't really understand what the Yumemi representative is thinking, so a large part of this is written based on my imagination.

Click here for Part 2