Sometimes I see jobs that are “fast paced environment”, actually I see that on almost every job. This gives me the idea that the staff is running around, throwing monkey wrenches at problems, hurrying through work, and trying to squeeze every possible dime out a minute. Is that the case?
I have yet to meet a fast-paced programmer who hurries through developing applications. He may type it out fast, but he takes his time to do things right.
I haven’t met a fast-paced designer who creates totally unique designs in stunning detail extremely fast. Quality seems to take precision and time.
Perhaps the fast paced people are marketers and sales people, which I know nothing about!
On the other hand I don’t think these companies want a “slow paced environment”, because that would sound like encouraging laziness. But when they say fast paced environment, it seems like they want to rush through everything, and to me quality will suffer.
It reminds me of placing this on a resume: “I am a self motivated person”. It doesn’t need to be there, it should be expected. Where is a slow paced environment vs a fast paced one in the computer world?
When I was an office manager, it used to infuriate me when I would enter the office and see everyone acting “busy.” It told me their effectiveness was about nil, because they were trying to look busy by addressing little fires rather than forwarding the overall goals of the company.
Work smart, not hard.
Every industry seems to have its meaningless catch-phrases. As a teacher for ten years, I’ve seen a lot of teacher job adverts, ads for schools and school prospectuses that churn out the mandatory, meaningless cliches. Fact is, you’ve got to look under the hood to know anything about a business/organization. It’s easy for the boss or someone else to use a throwaway, trendy line about the work environment in an advertisement, but it’s only when you’re involved in that organization that you find out how disorganized the place is and what a clown the boss really is.
There is a comedy team in Australia that occasionally turns up to businesses and holds them to the ridiculously unrealistic claims they make in their TV advertisements. Of course, the staff never have any idea what’s going on. Chances are they’ve never even seen the silly ad.