Dear Big Boss,

There are so many reasons why you irritate me. So many that I can't even hope to cover the entire lot here. I do want to address a specific few that are annoying me the most though.

Attitude to fault resolution:
Your typical and instinctive reaction to resolving a fault is to say "There is absolutely no fault with $systemX, it is most definately a problem with $teamJ's $systemY" without even investigating the fault. Now, when you originally had an acive hand in building the network and supporting software, you might have been able to make this call, however since the network and software has changed significantly, you might want to try following common sense fault finding and resolving strategies. For instance, if an update from one of your systems is not arriving at one of our systems, you might want to check that yours is actually sending the message at all, and sending it correctly, before claiming with undeniable proof that our systems are at fault. This is particularly important when you are running a new *untested* version of the code on your system, against our system which has been running flawlesly for the last 4 months (since it was deployed), and has anally retentive checking etc designed to prevent these sorts of issues from ocurring within it. If we dare to contradict you on this, then it somehow becomes *our* fault that this has occurred. You are not willing to listen to evidence contradictory to what you have said.

Ability to follow procedure, then lying about what you didn't follow:
Procedures, while they might appear to be the embodyment of beuracracy, do serve a purpose. They help to ensure that problems (as these particular procedures I'm concerned with relate to) are resolved in the most effective manner possible. I might want to add that it was your yourself that decided this is a good way to go. So when you blatently ignore procedure to get something done, it's no wonder that it doesn't happen, and everyone gets confused about what's happenning. Let me explain: we have a procedure where we can receive notification of faults from our clients (you, that is, iiNet), we do what is neccessary, then we notify you of the results. Bypassing this procedure by emailing one of the team directly (which, in fact, you *didn't* do, you just said you did), isn't acceptable. When the team member concerned is away sick, and you wonder why it hasn't been resolved yet, try remembering why we have procedures. As it is, the only way that we noticed that you'd even done this was because you mentioned in a *public* forum, to one of *your* clients, that you had asked us to deal with this problem.

Micromanagement:
Back in the days when our company was still in it's infancy, direct management was possible. There was generally not enough information around that caused anyone any problems remembering. Our company now employs around 180 staff. These staff are divided into a number of divisions, each with their own managers, responsibilities, etc. Each team is pretty good at knowing what is going on within that team, and generally knows how to do their job (god forbid!). With this in mind, it's not really all that possible for you to be able to effectively micromanage something that is not your direct responsibility, or even concern. At this level, you lack the ability to direct us, except in terms of general business strategies, because you do not have the knowledge to do so. You hired us to perform our jobs, and you hired our manager to make sure we did those within the parameters of our business strategy. Let us do that, without you making ill informed descisions based on your lack of knowledge, and them blaming us for the outcome, or daring us to contradict you when you are wrong.

Communication:
There is a saying: to find out anything about the company, read iinet.general. I believe this reflects your general approach to communication. As with the above "procedure" mismanagement, advising clients of things within the company, before actually notifying the staff members concerned, is poor form. I can remember a number of instances where new accounts were released (by you), to public forums, without staff being notified that they even exist. When the calls came in from people wanting these new accounts, no-one was able to even sell one, because no-one knew anything about them. It was only by reading through public forums that any information was available. This state of affairs continued for a number of days. Furthermore, it was the *staffs* fault for this, not yours.

I could go on, but I've gotten most of the major issues off my chest.