Does your management listen to you?

Back at my first tech job when I was 26, still no 4 year degree yet and working as a QA tech, I was in a whole company meeting. Mind you this company was comprised of PHD’s who’s focus and business model was on encryption. Way over my head stuff at the time in 1996.

They put out the question to the group “is there anything else?” Well at the time, I was beta testing Windows 95 at home. I was one of the few people who had a video capture card at that time. I had heard about “32 bit windows” because of the need to develop drivers for it for my video capture card.

So I timidly spoke up and mentioned “windows 95 will have a 32bit update coming soon”. Silence for about 10 seconds stretched into eternity for me as I asked myself why I even opened my mouth. Finally one of the business owners said to me “wow… we hadn’t even thought of that. We were so focused on developing and perfecting what we have, we weren’t even aware of that.” I got significant recognition for speaking up and being aware of the industry and a great letter of recommendation when I moved on.

Moral of the story, a great company asks for feedback and actually listens to every employee no matter how low in the hierarchy they are. Is your company asking for your input and listening to you? Never be afraid to speak up… how they treat you is a great reflection of who they are.