The Tech Trap

For the Love of...What?

2010-01-19T20:36:00.001-08:00

What do you love about your job?

If you have something you do, and do well, you're in a good position. However, dream jobs only come when you discover that you actually enjoy what you do. If I could do anything I want and get paid, it probably wouldn't be what I'm doing now. But I said, "Probably." Because I do love this stuff. And I'll take a moment to indulge my ego and point out that people love the job that I do, too.

The problem is, what if you don't love your job?

I'm not talking about a job that you hate: if you hate the job, you're long overdue to move (and believe me, others will most likely be happy to help you to the door).

No, I'm talking about a job you don't hate...but you can't find anything to love about it.

I've been in a place where this was a real problem. People were no more excited about their jobs than they would be unclogging sinks, or washing dishes.

A recent study found that loneliness is contagious. We know that when people feel lonely, they withdraw. What the study noticed is that before they withdraw, they invariably communicate their feelings of loneliness to others. When they leave, everyone remembers their feelings and starts to echo them.

Remember this, because the same is most surely true of the work you do. If your heart's not in it, if you can't find anything about your job to make you happy, you are contagiously gray. Your lack of passion does not go unnoticed: it spreads to other hosts. You don't have to be the head of the Cheer Squad, but if you must share something, look for the positives.

(Lonely link: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/50200/title/Loneliness_is_contagious,_study_suggests )

Madness to the Method

2009-12-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

My division is one of many. Ours is currently the only one putting method to the madness, hiring Analysts and Project Managers, documenting all the work that's done, ensuring all the code gets tested, and making sure the customer is happy. We've learned the hard way that when Timmy wrote Our Beautiful Code, Our Beautiful Code is bricked the moment Timmy walks out the door. Too many shops rely on Timmy keeping it all straight in Timmy's head, and there are many developers who thrive on this idea:

"Documentation is nonsense, and asking people questions gets in the way of writing software."
"They'll like what I build because it's not pen and paper."
"They'll use what I give them because they have no choice."
"...And they'll see that I Am the God of the Code."

There's an argument for this approach: it usually starts with, "We haven't got time..." and ends with, "...because everything's on fire!"

People love "the quick win." Developers love it especially because they get bored. They are creative people, and having to labor at the same thing day after day requires a patience and mind for tedium that most other humans lack.

Management loves seat-of-the-pants solutions because they solve a problem quickly. They don't love them when they break. Often another rickety contraption is rolled out while the broken one is trundled backstage to be dismantled.

No one in technology plans very far ahead: that would be silly. Isn't it amazing that Windows XP lasted for 6 whole years? I can tell you now that while it is a nice idea that a software application might still be in use 6 years from now, 10 would be absolutely out of the question. I know without consulting my crystal ball that a user trying to use today's system a decade later is going to curse my name and start casting aspersions on my ancestry.

So why document? Why bother writing it down?

- To get it right before you start down the road
- To build something useful
- To fix breaks without having to track down Timmy
- Because like it or not, you and yours will be supporting this

The Project Manager faces a balancing act between customers and development: imagine your Project Manager going about her daily routine as somewhat like The Cat in the Hat, teetering a goldfish bowl atop an umbrella whilst unicycling. In the midst of this, two important Things must not run amok:

Thing 2 is that the customers must not be bored while you're getting ready for The Great Show that is their product. Don't make them re-read all your use cases and have meetings because you think meetings make your project seem important. Don't use technical jargon to make you seem smart, or go on about this great new feature that Technology X is going to offer the developer.

Thing 1 is that the developers have to be given something of value, then shown--by way of your documentation--that the streets ahead have been paved with gold. I've had more than one developer fuss and struggle with my methods, only to suddenly see, right towards the end of development, that I've magically given the customers training materials and user guides that cut down on the number of phone calls and e-mails...and at the same time I've given the developer a road-map to get back into their system if things go wrong. Or--better yet--hand it off to Junior Developer without having to sit behind him and do half the work using only the power of speech.

The next step I wish to undertake is to empower the client: the more changes to their application that they can apply without putting in a support ticket, the better life gets for everyone.

Without documenting how the machine works, none of us would ever be able to sandbox the client so they don't get themselves stuck.

Making "Dysfunctional" Fun Again

2009-11-30T19:22:00.000-08:00

My house has many masters:

I manage my projects
My boss manages my division
His boss manages all our divisions

My boss keeps us organized. He makes sure we don't waste our time or spin our wheels. Rather than the tried-and-true "carrot vs. stick" method, he applies a middle-of-the-road approach that's more like gentle goads. Prods to keep one on the path and away from the dropoffs.

His boss doesn't ask for much. It's an odd mix: she is laissez-faire most of the time, but occasionally gets hit with a spark of innovation. I'd call it "management by magazine" if these ideas weren't driven by a healthy dose of smarts: she's brilliant, she's driven, and she wants to keep all the ducks in a row.

Where the flock starts to scatter is when it comes to the direction. "Now, go forth and do," she says. Imbued with all the great faith that one could ask of a super-boss, off we go to fulfill that vision.

Each of us in separate directions.

I've seen every division head clumped together in the same room with her, raising the Go Team mentality to a full head of steam...and then seen them go out the door wondering what's for lunch in the cafeteria across the street.

It's a shame, really. Some of it is family feuds, but most of it is a lack of whatever "glue" an organization needs to make everybody pull together. I don't think they're jaded about Yet Another Clever Vision so much as they figure getting things done today is more important than making life easier tomorrow.

Tired of fireworks shows that fizzle (and no doubt wanting to put a gold star on the resume before planning an exit strategy), she's done something rather Machiavellian:

She's sidestepped her own managers. She's asked me to be part of a team of leaders. I can't tell if that means we're Vision Evangelists or Next-Gen Management, but either way, it puts as all in an interesting position: whom do we serve?

"ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne."
--Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

(sourced from Project Gutenberg)

The Cultural Victory

2009-09-14T04:43:00.000-07:00

As the dominant software company across the industry, Microsoft has done both good and bad. In the past, they've been investigated for anti-competitive practices. There are times when the Microsoft Way seems to be "steal it, or buy the company and own it...or steal it then buy it if they sue".

Lately I'm beginning to think that Microsoft isn't trying to succeed by putting down its competition: it seems to be succeeding simply by building a better product. If you can trace how technologies like SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint have grown, you start to get part of a bigger picture for them that more resembles the American Dream: ideas, innovation, and energy.

On the other hand, Microsoft's Hall of Shame probably won't have a Vista wing that's as large as, say, the Aisle of Windows Me or the Microsoft Bob Exhibit. The biggest mistakes with Vista were, in my opinion:

1) taking 7 years to build the product, and still having it be so buggy and incompatible on launch; and
2) vendors having 7 years to learn how to write good drivers, and failing to do so.

Both are more shameful if you believe in the "Microsoft was just copying the Mac OS" philosophy: copying someone else's idea means a chance to outdo the competition by learning from their mistakes.

At the end of the day, if you're a company as far-reaching as Microsoft, impacting as many people as you do, youre best-case scenario is to celebrate your successes, own your failures, and learn from both.

Regardless, I'm now hopeful that hope Windows 7 will be less "Copy the Mac" and more "Build a better product."

2009-08-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Computerworld magazine columnist Paul Glen posted an article about how passionate employees aren't a good thing ("Hip-hip hooray for the Passionless", Aug. 10, 2009). In it, he states that employees who are passionate about their jobs can be bad: they wax and wane and that makes their productivity inconsistent and their passion unpredictable. He also suggests that talk of "Passionate employees" is usually the work of managers trying to brag about their leadership skills.

It's easy to peg "passion" as bipolar when you're using a sliding scale. Humans have good and bad days, productive and not-so-productive ones. That doesn't make them dispassionate.
If you define passion as, "Enjoying what you do," it's a lot easier to recognize that passion in the workplace is not about going above and beyond: it's about enjoying what you do, just enough to care about what you do.

The last thing you're going to want in the technology game is passionless drones. They seem to accomplish consistently, but the truth is they barely get by. In IT, it's dangerous for your shop to have people who would be no more excited creating code or helping others than they would be throwing newspapers or mopping floors. I'm seeing that problem now, and morale and productivity are in the tank because of it.

The Computerworld article:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/341344/Two_Cheers_for_the_Passionless

The Wheelbarrow of Cash

2009-08-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

Cost Analysis does not turn anyone's crank. The word itself is dry and flat.

Most people don't realize that Cost Analysis is not only a necessary evil, but it's also seldom done correctly.

The best justification for an expenditure is that it sits smack in the middle of the needs pyramid: it's cheap, it can be done fast, and it can be done right.

The worst justification for an expenditure is the phrase, "Because we've always done it this way."

Either way, the most important question to ask yourself is, "Do we really need it?"

If you're renewing licenses that don't help you, or you're paying contracts that barely meet your needs, it's time to look elsewhere. The looking costs time and money too, but in the end, cost analysis is all about ROI. And ROI is never a one-time snapshot: it's an ongoing look at what you're getting back for your commitment.

Climbing Aboard the Starship Enterprise

2009-08-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

If you are a large organization, you breathe a huge sigh of relief when you adopt technology.

Then the headaches kick in.

A new version comes out. One upgrade broke another system...until you bought that upgrade too. Now your employees need new machines: the old ones are just so slow.

By the way, the good news is, there's a new Operating System to buy. The bad news is, it's full of bugs and security holes.

Uh-oh--security! I bet you didn't give IT Security a second thought when you put all this together back in the '90s. You slapped McAfee on everything and called it a day, right? Oh, dear--you need firewalls. And countermeasures. Hrm...but you also need to make sure the guards don't punish the peasants: let the right people pass in and out of the gates, and keep the wrong people out. Don't forget to keep an eye on everyone so no one's sneaking your goods through the gates: your enemy pays a high price for your intellectual gold.

What to do with all this growth? "Go Enterprise", they say. The word "Enterprise" signifies a bold business venture. It's both Star Trek and an aircraft carrier--sounds pretty robust.
Enterprise IT is robust. The simplest explanation is this: it manages big systems, in a big way, by thinking big.

And requires you to chuck everything out the window and start over. Really, when IT scales to the Enterprise, it's a good idea to build out the entire infrastructure for an Enterprise scale of operations, and it's a bad idea to try to get there by just bolting on pieces-parts to an existing system.

This is when you start to realize that the NASCAR way is not your way: you don't need a ton of stickers on your Formula One, you just want a couple. No, I don't need Microsoft, SAP, HP/Compaq, Cisco, Symantec, IBM, and some third-party vendors to wander around tinkering with things: just Dell and Microsoft will do. Maybe some Cisco to tie it all together.

Time for another huge sigh of relief: the system is done. It's out there for everybody--Intranet, Internet, Extranet.

So now what? Time to sit back, and reflect. No, really--reflection is good for the soul. Amidst that hive of activity, there are a lot of busy bees bumping heads. You need to turn your gaze inwards. Work that Enterprise system to build a better Enterprise. Use Reporting to tell you what everyone's doing, and how it's working out. Use Analytics to uncover how they're doing it, and see if maybe they could be doing it better.

Are you ready for the challenge? Because the last thing you want to do is outsource it. Vendors will line up at your door if you say you need Business Process Reengineering, and they'll eagerly drop all those buzzwords that got you into IT in the first place: "out of the box", "robust", "turnkey", "integrated" and of course, the twins: "zero configuration" and "high ROI".

At the end of the day, nobody cares about your company like you do. Care enough to find good people who'll commit to the Enterprise. Bring them in, put them to work, and treat them well. You'll find that everything you do isn't as disposable as it once seemed. You'll see that there's a price for dumping developers back in the ocean and fishing around for more. It costs time and money to jettison Project Managers and have the new one rebuild political bridges. And no one knows your systems like your Analysts do. They're the ones who understand your users, and figure out how your IT can serve them.

More headaches? Well, yes and no. More of a brief aftershock, followed by an epiphany. You'll know that an Enterprise-level company deserves a system to match. And you'll see that everyone being on the same page will always serve the Emperor better than a land of fiefdoms.

Another Man's Shoes, Soon to be Empty

2009-03-19T20:46:00.001-07:00

As tough as things were, I was surprised at my new job to find someone who had it tougher. This was a place of job security, of easy, relaxed complacency: nobody scream, you'll get things done, just do your best and take your time.

It's never a perfect world. No bunnies or unicorns bringing you candy and carrying you off to dreamland. He stood there at the team-building event, where he was asked to talk about himself, and talked about other people. About how grateful he was that he had their help, and that they'd helped him cope with his personal battles, even though this was a workplace, and these things aren't supposed to be aired in a "professional" environment.

He'd spent the past year dying. He still came to work. Even when he had to be driven home. Even when his boss finally said, "Go home and get well, so you can come back to us sooner." All of us knowing that wasn't going to be what happened.

He has 6 weeks to live. Maybe. And he's still sending thank-yous down the grapevine, for all the cards and the well-wishes.

Thank you, my friend. For being positive. For knowing that that's truly the only way to make the most of your time.

The Crisis of the Mind

2009-03-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

In the whirlwind of economic failures, IT has become a shitstorm. The field was cruel and greedy enough before the sudden purges.

What is important to remember is this: it's not you. You're in this field because you're willing to stand strong. No matter how hard it gets, know that at some point you're going to look back on these times and be pleased that they're gone. And remember how you got through them all right.

Stand strong. You wouldn't have a resume if you didn't have something to sell.

If it ain't broke...we can't sell it?

2009-01-09T05:45:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why Microsoft completely revamped IIS 7.0, changing the security model from the ground up.

I think it's the old saw about "Job Security": everyone having to start over once in a while keeps them from being able to say, "We don't need to upgrade--it's the same old, same old...".

Plus it sells more books.

A Person's a Person, No Matter How Small

2008-11-16T14:28:00.000-08:00

I got tasked with a project that for some reason strikes me as just plain fun. It's the kind of work that you take home with you, that gets in your head in your idle moments. Much to my good fortune, I started blue-skying about the project's potential, and got told that not only could we fill out the Happy-Path wishlist, the work had already been half-done in an earlier attempt to get the project done.
Pinch me.
Then the other shoe dropped: the reason this project stopped all that time ago was because the product would only have been used by four people. And now all of those people are gone, and the new guy is having to do their jobs.
I cringed at the idea that I might have to break the news to the client that they couldn't have what they wanted. And said a brief prayer of thanks that I hadn't told him about the many amazingly cool things we could do with his project.
I went to my superiors, expecting them to say, "Sorry, we can't justify the cost for just one user," and shoot the project down. Instead they asked the question, "How important is this data?" They had me talk to somebody in a different area who had asked management for the data. I discovered that not only was he going to need the information we had, but he'd need it to be produced using the blue-sky goodies we'd shelved. And the people that he in turn was needing to pass the data to would provide Federal funding to see to it the job got done.
Suddenly, that one miserable person has the potential to get something that's not only going to make his job a whole lot better, it's going to give him some cool tools...and raise his importance to everyone else around him.
Pinch me.

Corporate Kudzu

2008-10-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

It's interesting, the differences between the private and the public sector, and yet there are also similarites. I've worked in government offices where not much gets done, and nobody worries about it.

I had one position where it seemed like no one had worked in the private sector, but they insisted they were, "just like a private company". It had this odd effect on the culture: no one who was a government employee could really be "fired", but they all spent their time worrying and moaning that any day, the axe was gonna swing. Everyone worked really late hours, and yelled a lot, but at the end of the day, they really didn't accomplish much more than any other agencies. I kept thinking they were playing "dress-up".

I didn't last very long there. I didn't have it in me to join in on the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. And I'm too cheery to let someone yelling at me convince me they're right. I also didn't talk politics: there were strong feelings about which party you supported, and if you didn't pick one and choose your allies, you were fodder for the front line.

One place that actually was a typical model and got to play dress-up: a billion-dollar multinational company that was simply beautiful. Beautiful people in expensive suits, women in the latest corporate fashions, and everybody buzzing like a beehive, thrumming with activity. It was like a dream, but you couldn't have it without stepping into the Pod...you were trained before you were allowed to start your first day, and the training was steeped in the Lore of Political Correctness: this is how we talk, this is how we use the phone, this is how we approach people, and these are the things we can and can't do because someone might have their feelings hurt.

It was kind of like a friend of mine's living arrangements--he was in a contract-driven "neighborhood association community". The kind of place with monthly meetings and a thick book of rules. He got in trouble for washing his car in the driveway. He got in trouble for popping the hood where everybody could see the icky engine--why couldn't he just let "The Mechanic" replace the air filter for him? (if you're like me, you're "The Mechanic". Not all of us can afford to overpay someone for a 5-minute part swap). And he got in trouble for generally not fitting in.

His neighborhood also had pest control come and take care of "the squirrel problem". The social sterilization procedures are what made this fascinating: someone had actually convinced the tenants that the Pest Control company doesn't harm the squirrels. Nothing bad--it was all for the better! They were gently captured in a cage full of treats, and then taken...away. To live somewhere happy and free. Some squirrel farm, where they had plenty of free space to roam.

I had a great time with the people in my billion-dollar multinational company: we had weekly meetings over a beer, we played pool together and went bowling, and still managed to crank out a lot of great achievements, crafting feather after feather for our caps.

And yet I always had this weird feeling that at some point, the squirrel truck would come. And I wasn't sure if I'd be on it or driving it.

Who's Holding the Bucket for the Bailout

2008-09-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

This situation is a Financial World War II. Only this time, we are Europe and they are us.

We have been invaded by an insidious nationalistic propaganda that has deluded us all to the point of collapse. Our own people can't seem to stop the invasion because the masses are against them. We need someone to step in and stem the tide.

Unfortunately, this war doesn't involve boats or bombers or soldiers: it's about cash and credit. We need one or the other (or both, if you please), and the only thing we've got as collateral is an outstretched hand and a request for past favors returned to us.

If other markets demand liquidity, America will crash and bleed out like an Ebola patient. Other nations might like to think there won't be a domino effect, but the truth is that the more those dollars are pushed back, the more they drop and the less they give back as everyone scrambles for the exit. If our country won't nationalize its financial system by buying it up (and that statement alone tells you how bad off we are), then we need to outsource our credit to willing buyers.

Is this the Global Economy we've been waiting for?

Let me Reiterate the Point

2008-06-12T04:31:00.000-07:00

I had an interview with a company where the development manager used the word "Iterative" to describe the development model.

For those not in the know, software development typically falls into a workflow cycle, and this cycle can be described in many ways. "Iterative" implies that development begins, moves forward, and doesn't stop. Anything that modifies the development cycle along the way is held off and incorporated in the next iteration: "That's a nice add-on, but we're a bit too far down the road for that right now. Let's incorporate that into Phase 2." Everything is broken up into neat cycles.

What made this interview stand out was the constant re-use of the word "Iterative". It came up several times in the conversation until, when I was finally asked what development methodology I prefer, I'd have been incredibly stupid to say, "Waterfall." I pointed out why I liked the iterative model of development: it encapsulates the scope of each development cycle, it acknowledges the need for modifications along the way, and it provides them a place in the next iteration so that the project isn't constantly stopped and changed. Imagine the difference between changing your oil every 3,000 miles, versus driving with the hood open and the drain plug out and constantly pouring quarts as you head down the road. Obviously, when you wait to mess with things, you get somewhere.

The last time I heard "Iterative" in the conversation was thus:

"It's good that you can work in an iterative environment: a lot of developers get here and find that they can't work with it. They get frustrated because we are so iterative."

I get the feeling they don't quite understand what "Iterative" means...but it's the closest word someone has come up with to describe their crazy work environment, and because it's a buzzword, it sounds more reasonable. More businesslike. It calms everyone down: "It's okay; we're just being Iterative." I got the impression that their journey is more like the driver insisting the oil can't be changed yet...while a half-dozen user-demons are prying at the hood. And the backseat passengers (stakeholders) are telling the driver to just go ahead and pull the hood release so they can do what they want. Management would be passengering, trying to reach around and pop the hood for you because you're the only one with your eyes on the road.

Between the Lines

2008-06-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

I had an interview today that told me a lot. It wasn't any one of these things, but the combination of them that gave away what working for this company was like.

When they said,
"The typical work-week is 40-50 hours"

They meant,

"The typical work-week is 50+ hours"

You can tell this because they also said,

"We're not clock-watchers here."

meaning

"If we were clock-watchers, we'd all be miserably depressed at how much time we spend here."

"People can come in as early as they like: some enjoy being here at 6 A.M. and others stay 'til sometime in the evening."

In other words,

"Most people do both"

"The typical workday is distracting and frustrating, but you need to be here. It's the times before and after the users and stakeholders get here that you'll be getting anything done."

You can't always infer these things this way--but in this case, the combination of the above phrases, and the way the Development Manager looked when they said them, told me the truth.

There's nothing wrong with hearing, "We need someone who can hit the ground running", but I'm coming across a lot of shops who seem to have cranked up the treadmill and everyone's trying to be George Jetson: "Help! Jane! Stop this crazy thing!"

A lot of times this is because the company has been running on a binge/purge model of staffing: developers are a dime a dozen, so let's get a dozen or two, run them on projects, and if/when things start to get tricky--deadlines slip or developers push back on the requests--we'll let them go and look for some new ones. This is reasonable, given the circumstances: it's hard for a non-technical person to interview for a technical position and know that a person's skill-set is what is needed. And there are a lot of programmers out there who talk a good game.

What happens when you have so many hands on the code is that you have so many different ways things were accomplished that the applications become more of a mess the more they are worked on. In this case a lot of the in-house work was going to be to bring everything to one platform. Matters were made worse by the fact that the company had acquired two other companies very quickly, and to keep things running smoothly and make the mergers happen as quickly as possible, they had simply maintained all three separate systems...of everything. Billing, HR, Auditing and more were performed three times over because nothing had been merged yet. Three cheers to them for wanting it done, but a chorus of boos for waiting for everyone's jobs to reach critical mass before acknowledging it was needed.

Nuclear Escalation

2008-06-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

Lawsuit Lawsuit Lawsuit.

I'm not sure why some companies feel the need to throw the "L" word around, but there it is. Like eBay going after Craigslist.org, I fail to understand the need to legally assault anyone and everyone--just because you can pay lawyer's fees, doesn't mean you should.

I think it's because some people enjoy the power: I'm thinking of three specific businesses in my area that claimed (to their employees, at least) to be pursuing legal action against former co-workers. Some were people who quit, some were let go, but I think the reason the jilted take to the courts is because they see an easy win: the little guy's not a big company, and besides, he's not even employed now! He'll never make court costs. He'll beg to settle, and we'll draw up the terms. As I'd mentioned in an earlier post, telling your employees that the guy who left is getting hauled to court is good for morale: either your remaining staff think he must have been pretty bad to warrant that treatment...or they fearfully shut up and hope they're not next.

Oddly, for all the gab from management, I've yet to see any of these particular instances make the papers. I suspect it's because they never happen. Companies get stung, they react, and the bad guy may get a nasty letter from a lawyer. Hard to corroborate my sources when the alleged accused is long gone and not eager to talk about it.

Regardless of your circumstances, never burn any bridges. Even if you're moving to another state, keep your head high, do your best to remain amicable, and don't stoop to mudslinging if your employer tries to draw you in. Document everything and insist on getting things in writing (and refuse to leave the premises until they do, or you'll never get it). Most importantly, smile and wish them well. Because when you blow up, shout at people, use obscenities, or even just think you're clever because you deleted everything off the server, you open yourself up to being sued into the afterlife.

Environmental Extremes

2008-06-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

I don't like having to work so many different places in IT: retention rates these days seem to be awful.

But the interesting thing has been the experiences I've had with so many different places.

At this point, I've been in massive corporate halls of beautiful marble, where everyone is beautiful and they wear the latest fashions...and I've been in 8-room offices with ripped furniture, beer in the break room, and X-Box on Fridays.

What I learned from this is that for me, it really doesn't matter where I work. It's what I'm doing, and who I'm with. Do I like what I'm doing? If not, can I at least keep doing it without coming home miserable and/or annoyed? Are the people nice? That plays an important part--if you like being around the people you work with, you can overlook a lot of sins.

I had one job that was very personally rewarding: I felt like I was part of something great, and I was doing a lot of good for a lot of people--except the ones I was working for. For them I could do no right. They made me miserable, did horrible things with no regard for the danger they placed the general public in, and they ruined my health physically with the most horrible work environment an office could ever manage.

What matters to you?

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much, Part 3: The Raised Bar and the Sinking Quicksand

2008-06-04T18:01:00.001-07:00

Despite the multiple hoops I have to jump through, I'm finding that the prize on the other side is sometimes snatched away. I feel sorry for Contracting companies right now because they're getting hit from both sides: the Scylla of desperate employees trying to squeeze top dollar from their contract, contract-to-hire, or direct-hire options; and the Charybdis of employers wanting fast movement through their own glacial slush.

To be specific, I have had three job opportunities that have taken the following steps:

Beg the contractor to find them someone--anyone. The water-cooler story was one place where the hiring manager said, "I'm so desperate I'm willing to stand out on the road with a cardboard sign, in a chicken suit, to draw people in the door!"

Hurry up and make this great guy wait. The company representing me says, "They loved your resume, and want to interview you right away--how soon are you available?" Then proceeds to be unable to get a straight answer as to when they'll interview you: is it this week? Next week? Either nobody at the company actually planned ahead, or multiple agencies are stoking my ego before the company's actually heard of me (possible)

Stop the Train! It's getting too close to the station! There's always something that stalls the last step. If the whole operation died at the beginning, that would be one thing--I'd immediately assume the problem was with me. But what's happening is that the company finds some fault with me, something about my skills or personality that's "not a good match" despite being happy with everything up to that point.

This is all well and good--as I told one apologetic interviewer, "I understand that these things take time and you want to think it over. I'd rather you know that I'm the right fit than have you place me somewhere I won't bring value to you." (Been there, done that, it's part of why I'm now looking, thankyouverymuch)

The problem is that these particular companies I mention are making things worse for themselves. What happens is that with each candidate they reject, they raise the bar: reasons for rejection go from "Not talented" to "Not friendly" to "Wrong Hat Size." While this is happening, the work piles up and the project deadlines slide farther towards infinity. The work environment becomes a morass of quicksand that guarantees failure because even if they do find Mister or Ms. Right, that person's going to drown in a muddy mess. They're going to be miserable and bail on an impossible workload, muttering under their breath the whole while about what a crazy place that was.

One frustrated contracting rep told me he vented on the company. "Look," he said, "If I send you seven people a week, you tell me there's something wrong with all of them, and a week later they've all got high-paying jobs in your area, then the problem isn't the people." I don't blame him: this particular position has been open since July 2007. It's now June 2008 and the position is still unfilled. The last I heard was that they were insistent that they needed someone yesterday and it's getting more urgent by the minute. The other two companies have been 6 months and 70+ candidates, respectively (see previous post).

As desperation grows, "We need someone to hit the ground running" is the catch-phrase. But in which direction will they run?

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much, Part 2: The Buyer's Market

2008-06-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

I was let go in March. The only employment statistic worse than March's unemployment rate...was April's unemployment rate. So that means I'm up against a lot of competition. I also have to be less mercenary than my competitors: I can't take a 6-month contract and pick up and go, moving anywhere in the country. I have a family to take care of, but neither would you see me sacrificing my time with them to fly somewhere every Monday and come back every Friday.

What this means is that the companies who are looking now have the luxury of picking and choosing. They can also take their time. For my part, I have to commit far more time and effort, and hit the largest number of opportunities to improve my odds. Where a typical job hunt involves a phone pre-screen, a phone interview, and a quick in-person interview, now the decisions I've tried to sway have required the following of me:

Psychological profiles

IQ Tests

Agreement to be investigated for criminal, credit, and personal history

Online skill assessments

Preliminary phone screens

Technical phone screens

In-person preliminary interviews (usually technical)

In-person "get to know you and see if you fit with the team" interviews

More than one place has done all of the above. Most at least do a choice of IQ or Personality, then skill assessments, then the rest. It takes a lot of my time, and if you think about it, it takes a lot of their time, too. They have to read resumes, call clients or companies, assemble interview teams and schedule the appointments.

I was told that one place has been through 70 interviewees and still not filled the position. Imagine that for a moment. With three employees managing the process, a conservative estimate will come up with the following numbers:

Psych/IQ - 1/2 hour (1 employee schedules, evaluates scores, and handles e-mails)

Resume - 1 hour (2 employees spend a half an hour reading and discussing, and we'll assume they just read the one, and even be generous and lump skill tests in)

Phone screen - 3 hours (2 employees X 1.5 hours)

In-person Interview - 4.5 hours (3 employees X 1.5 hours)

Even skipping some steps, we have 9 hours per candidate, times 70 candidates = 630 hours to fill one position. I can't imagine spending 630 work-hours on anything that isn't directly related to a project.

What I haven't figured out is how anyone gets anything done in this model--after all, how many hours in a day do we have?

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much, Part 1: The Opportunity Cost

2008-06-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

Looking for a new job has been interesting, to say the least. When economic jitters hit a company, it's often surprising to see what bizarre steps they'll take to save money. No one has time for close analysis of financials in a business: that's the kind of thing you hear in Mutual Fund reports. Without taking a look at the waste, a company often makes guesses. They cut things that seem expensive. And in the effort to stop waste, that lack of forethought instead wastes more.

For the first time in a job search, I'm running across more than one position that is "cancelled". At some point along the way, the company just calls the whole thing off. "They cut the budget," I am told. "We had to cancel the position. Maybe we'll regroup in the fall."

The problem with this is seldom that the company spent too freely on a hiring binge. Usually the position was shopped out because there was a need for it. Something was getting held up, and now that something is not getting the attention it needs to get better (expect said something to possibly be amputated or outsourced by Q4 if things don't improve).

In tandem with my previous post about wanting the moon for the price of a cup of coffee, I just came across a position that was resubmitted into the system after being canceled. Same company, same job title, but at lower pay. And with some expensive buzzwords tacked on, the kind that normally push this job's salary in the other direction. Thankfully, we didn't get far with me before it was cancelled. But I suspect that the protests that the hire "can't afford to be done" are simply incorrect:

It can afford to be done. When you take into account what it'll cost not to.

DWIM! ("Do What I Mean!")

2008-04-19T05:42:00.001-07:00

I had an interview yesterday. It was described as a Senior level position that involves planning, analysis, architecting and design of a short-term project. This was the "personal interview", that initial sit-down that some companies will do just to see if you're the kind of person they want to work with. I was told that the way this company operates is to make the second interview technical.

I was not surprised when the first thing we did was sit down with my resume and start asking technical questions about my skills. I was disappointed, but not surprised.

If you're in a technical field, you're probably used to reading descriptions that don't match the interview. You're probably also used to interviews that don't match the job. What they tell you about the company is whether they are:

greedy
just incompetent
some combination of both

Greedy:

I regularly run across jobs that say they are "Senior Level", but the pay is Junior. I see "Junior Programmer" jobs that want the candidate to have years of experience and strong skills in things that can only be learned by reaching Seniority, such as modeling, business analysis, and formal documentation. Both of these indicate that your potential company does not wish to pay you. They want something for nothing, and they're probably wasting a lot of money cranking through employees who don't match. Don't become the next embittered disgruntled ex-employee of a place like this.

Incompetent:

I also see the Bad Match: skills specifically poor to the position, or in contradiction with each other. "Web Designer" should not say, "Must have strong skills in SQL, Stored Procedures, database." "Senior C# Programmer" should not say, "Must know HTML." And last, when you see "Java Programmer wanted: must know MS SQL Server, PHP, Microsoft", you should assume Incompetency A: they don't really understand what they need the job to do, or Incompetency B: they've compiled random spaghetti-code apps from multiple platforms over the years, and they want you to manage the mess.

Both:

The bottom line is that the companies I am encountering in my region want a Formula One driver for Cabbie pay, and they're going to put him in a beaten-up Buick without a pit crew. First place is the expected result. There will be no room for Second. The last guy came in Second. That's why we're hiring you.

By the way, that Senior level position that involves planning, analysis, architecting and design of a short-term project? It was listed as "C# Programmer"

Lollipops and Rainbows

2008-04-19T04:50:00.001-07:00

When you interview with a company, anyone you talk to will tell you that the place is a wonderful place to work. This makes sense: the people you're talking to work there because they believe that their company is a wonderful place to work. Otherwise, they wouldn't be coming in day after day.

Or they're lying because they're desperate to get you in the door.

At the interview for my last job, my boss said, "We're a small company, so we're like a family. Everybody who works here, has been here for years. They love it here. No one...ever leaves because they want to." There are enough landmines in that statement to tell you otherwise, but my problem in believing it was my confidence in myself. I thought, "I can already tell that at best that statement is partially true, but I'm going to change their minds when they see what a great worker I am."

It was quite a surprise on my very first day to be kept two hours late in the boss's office while he spun me a tale of woe: the development team used to be 3 people, but two of them quit. As did the head of sales. I got a long story about how awful they were as employees, how misguided of them it was to leave, and by the way, we're suing them as well. Followed by more stories about exactly how bad some of the other people who worked there had been.

It was even more surprising to find out that the one other developer left on the staff had only started a few weeks before me. As did one of the two network techs. Leaving only 2 of 6 employees as anything resembling "long-term". Digging around the network revealed quite a number of names of people who weren't working at this place any more.

When I get into an interview, I have a trick for finding out if it's a good place to work. I wait until the end of the interview and get into a short "chit-chat" conversation with whomever is interviewing me. If there's a programmer in this mix, that's ideal. I'll give you this example from my interview yesterday:

Employee: Well, that's it then. You're free to go. *laughs*
Me: (smiling) Great! I'm going to get back out there and enjoy this beautiful day!
Employee: That sounds great. I wish I could do the same.
Me: You will! (checking watch) It's already 4 o'clock, and it's a Friday. You've only got one hour left, haven't you?
Employee: (bitter laugh) Ha! That would be nice. But that never happens.
Me: Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But just the same, I hope you have a good weekend.

If a place is really awful, they'll answer that last line with "I'd like to, but I'll probably be spending it here." No company will ever tell you outright that something sucks about their work environment. Ask them directly because they expect you to, but whatever they say, either read between the lines or toss it out after you get a chance to chat outside of the interview.

Tactics like this save you a lot of trouble: it's easier to find out if a place sucks with a little light banter than it is to hear how family-oriented a place is, and not know until the first time your child is sick that they don't want you leaving to take them to the doctor. Unless you take your laptop and promise you can check your e-mail. And will make up the hours when you come back in--working from home never counts. Most companies that I have had experience with consider this arrangement to be very generous, because it gives your family permission to need you, so long as you do your best to never stop working.

Try this trick when you interview, and you can easily arrange it to your circumstances. If it's a late-morning meeting, make a comment about going to lunch. If it's a lunchtime meeting, thank them for being willing to work through just to interview you. And any time in the afternoon, as you go, visibly count the hours to 5:00 and make a comment like I did above. Pay close attention to what they say, and respond to it sympathetically to see if they say more. A decent place might tell you that today they won't be going home on time, but this is unusual because of X. Or that they stayed late every night this week, but they're happy because they're going home early on Friday.

Even then, trust your instincts. Go with your gut. My biggest mistake at my last job was being willing to ignore the feeling and believe I could make the company better.

America: More Sides, More Stories, More Content

2008-04-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there are more reasons behind my being let go. As much as I try to do my very best at every job (no, really--at times it's kind of creepy, the degree to which I apply my work ethic to myself), I would be a fool to think things are ever simple.

The problem is, you can't go down that path because it leads you to wonder what the thing is that caused you to be terminated. I was looked right in the eye and told, "You're a wonderful person, and you know we mean that because you know we've had some really terrible people before...and I'm sure we will have them again. But we have to let you go." In other words, let a good person go and start fishing around for bad ones? Knowingly telling someone that you love them and want to get rid of them means:

a) They're lying, and they really think you're a terrible person. But they also think you'll shoot up the place. "What would get you to walk out that door? That's what I'm going to tell you."
b) They're lying, but they can't tell you what pushed you out (for example, the boss's cousin needs a job and yours will do just fine). Sometimes it'll pain them because they really do want to keep you, but it's out of their hands.
c) They thought you were a good person, but then something about you set off an alarm.

You have to watch that last one, because it will always grow behind your back, and you won't know until it hits you. It may hit you so hard you never got the license plate of the Thing That Ran You Down.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid talk that is not work-related. If I have to talk about myself or my thoughts or opinions outside of tech, I try to make it as neutral as if you'd read it on the news. Or parrot a similar thing, from a completely different context:

"Of course, other countries have done X with that idea instead of Y ...",
then nod in acknowledgement at the response and offer little to no opinion.

We can all stand to improve ourselves, but you can't stop to look back and find the unknowable because the wondering will drive you mad. It will lead you down wrong trails and cause you to second-guess yourself, and that can be fatal at your next interview.

You will always be yourself: just continue to try to be better at it, and that's all that matters.

They Like Me! They Really Like Me!

2008-04-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

Well, here we go again. Once more, I am told that I am a joy to work with, and do such a good job. Such a good job, that I have to go. Go on, you're "let go", like I've been paroled from prison.

In this case, we have a project where the original developer was burned out and quit in frustration, but not before writing a ridiculously low estimate. The shop goes entirely off the direct-bill, hourly model: you're only okay so long as at least 37 hours of your 40 can be charged to someone else. When Project Lowball runs out of hours, you're hosed. Carry forward the sins of the last person, and dump them on the next.

This also happened to a friend of mine: he went to a shop of 100% billability. They told him they'd give him his first billable project next week, but first they needed him to help them configure some in-house stuff. He believed them until he saw his first 2-week paycheck. They paid him for the Thursday and Friday of week two where he'd started working on a project, but the week and a half they had him working on their architecture, he didn't get paid for. When he quit, his supervisor actually blew up on him, yelling about what a "traitor" he was and telling him the company would sue.

That's the big thing--my (now former) company tells its ex-employees they'll be sued, too. As does another company I know of. All of them see people as "a drop in the bucket. If we don't fill it up fast enough, dump it out and go back to the ocean for more." And they know that as a business, they have to pay for lawyers, while the average person doesn't. I had strange voice-mails and e-mails contradicting the "you don't have to go home, but you can't work here" conversation I'd had. These are documented things, and they're designed for lawyers to use against you when they draft the threatening letter reminding you what a bad person you are.

Strangest of all was being told I'm fired because they can't afford to pay me when I'm not billable...then wanting to know if I was planning on working for two more weeks on the project.

It's good for morale if you tell your employees that the guy that left is going to be sued: it instantly turns a good person into a bad one. Damn, he must have been stealing, doing coke, and having sex in the conference room if my boss says they're going to court. People will easily believe bad things about others because that's what they're used to: it confirms the general cynicism that comes from being an adult.

About that bucket: are those drops water? Or blood? Time will tell...

Say it with an 'F'

2008-03-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

The last 6 weeks have been a blur. What in the world could possibly have eaten my time so completely?

Two words: Windows Vista.

For the past 6 weeks, I have been hitting Microsoft's latest OS pretty hard. I did a series of upgrades to a desktop machine and contrary to rumors, Vista did not deactivate my license due to "too many changes". I did go ahead and format and reinstall from scratch after this, just because I thought that would help with my problems. I had no trouble re-activating Vista after a format, either.

That's the good news.

The bad news? Pull up a chair.

My conclusion is that many of the "performance enhancements" and "OS improvements" are really just band-aids on an Operating System that at some point during surgery, severed a main artery. The OS bleeds resources, when it's not draining them dry.

Some of this is the fault of driver manufacturers, and shame on them for it: they've had 3-5 years to work with various iterations of Longhorn and figure out 64-bit technology, and most drivers are developed on an aggressive cycle of updates. They should be used to a state of constant revision.

Some of this is nascent technologies, not properly addressed: I have now tried two different USB keys on two different machines. Both say they can be used with ReadyBoost, but neither ever works--both Vista machines spit them out as "too slow" to be used.

Another technology change here is that 64-bit hardware is having to dumb itself down at random to run "older" 32-bit applications: in other words, your programs might pick up on the fact that they can now use 64-bit technology, but the software that runs your keyboard or your IM program is running in an entirely different, lesser (32-bit) space that can support it.

And then we have bad habits, carried over. In the days of Windows 95/NT, we got in the habit of using "temp" files for better performance. This is all well and good: if you have to use a file a lot, may as well put a copy of it in one place where it's conveniently easy to reach. Maybe even let Windows create junk files of its own, scratch space for the crib notes that keep it running smooth.

Because computers are stupid, Windows has a hard time cleaning up after itself. Temp folders would get cluttered with old and unused junk, and users started finding themselves suddenly running out of hard drive space. We quickly learned where to look and how to delete the junk, and so Microsoft moved it for us, hiding more "goodies" in the "Prefetch" folder in XP.

We've had 7 years with XP now, so we learned the Prefetch trick, too. In the meantime, we'd learned that Windows leaned on the hard drive a little more than we realized: this little thing called "Virtual Memory" (or "Paging") let Windows reserve a huge chunk of the hard drive for itself on a regular basis. Think of it as a bucket for your RAM: whatever's moved in and out of the RAM, let's give that information some breathing room on the hard drive so it can be loaded in and out of the RAM as we need it. Depending how you set it, the OS could grow or shrink this hard drive chunk to anything it wanted to (and on some machines, it'd spend more effort playing with the size of this space, than actually using the space). All this in addition to Temporary Internet Files, a separate space on the hard drive where the browser can store all of its clutter and junk (and which XP also has a nasty habit of ballooning to unmanageable proportions)

Enter Superfetch, the one-stop shop for performance. From what I can understand, if there's a spike in system resources--say, for example, you open Microsoft Word right after you launch your browser--Superfetch pounces on whatever's being used and starts caching it like mad, stashing it on the hard drive in an easy-to-reach place, and using whatever it can to speed up whatever you just asked it to do. It takes a quick look at what resources are left on the machine, and grabs them all, overriding your typical OS operations to take command of your computer.

This is probably not so bad for Microsoft Office, or even Photoshop, but it's truly terrible for gaming because it means that suddenly your game is in a neck-and-neck battle with Vista for whatever resources you have left. Superfetch is like a petulant child with games that aren't aware of its existence: "It's mine! I'm taking it all! I was gonna give it to you, but now you tried to take it, and you can't have it any more!" I started noticing that my games would thrash like mad on the hard drive, then suddenly crash, often right after launch. Once I stopped Superfetch, these troubles went away.

I can only think that Superfetch is a way to treat memory leaks or instabilities generated by resource demand. In effectiveness, I can only compare it to your doctor noticing you're looking anemic, and prescribing a course of leeches.

I had a unique situation in which I was going to have one video card for a while, and then be able to add a second for SLi. I thought this would be a perfect chance to share the benefits with other people and really find out how much of a performance gain you could see when you upgrade your video. I ran benchmarks under three settings for a bunch of games, then put the SLi configuration together and ran the exact same settings again. Unfortunately, I had to scrap all of my efforts because my performance with two video cards actually went *down* than when I was just running with one. I'd carefully checked my configuration, confirmed with the hardware manufacturers (of the machine and the cards) that I had it all set up correctly, and still thought I was losing my mind. Unfortunately, no: either the drivers and hardware aren't ready for Vista, or Vista just hasn't figured out how to deal with them. Either way, I have more amazing hardware than I've ever had before in my life, and I'm back to constant blue-screens, just like the days of Windows 98...

I've also spent the last six weeks saying, "I finally think I've fixed the problem! This one thing I tried just might do it!" and being proven wrong, time and again.

System Specifications:

Laptop
Sager 9620 (aka Clevo D910C)
Intel Q6600 Quad-core Processor
4GB (2 x 2GB) RAM, dual-channel configured
dual 160GB HDs, 7,200RPM @ 3.0GB/Sec, SATA2, configured for RAID 0 (performance)
dual nVidia 8700M, 512MB video RAM (1,024 total), in SLi mode
Windows Experience Index (WEI): 5.7

Desktop
ASUS A8N SLi Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 4400+ processor (dual-core, 64-bit)
4GB (1x1GB) RAM, dual-channel configured and tightly timed to manufacturer's recommended specifications for the motherboard and Vista
dual 160GB HDs, 7,200RPM @ 3.0GB/s, SATA2 (not in RAID)
dual nVidia 8800GTS 512MB video RAM (1,024 total), in SLi mode
Windows Experience Index (WEI): 5.2

Bills and Billability

2008-01-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

Contract work is a difficult game. You have to provide a product in a timely manner...but you only get paid for the time you spent on it. No one gives you a bonus for getting the job done early, but you can guarantee that it'll hurt you when you're late.

Most companies have to go by the hourly model: how many hours an employee spent working for a client seems to be the most efficient unit of measurement. Unfortunately, it's also a giant wrench in the works of your process. I know companies that make "billability" their policy. Some of them even claim "100% Billability is MANDATORY!". This simply cannot work.

The moment everything has to be billable, work becomes a game of hot-potato. People focus more on getting someone else to do the work while they write down that they billed for it. Hours get rounded up (and padded), productivity goes down, and people get stressed about who's going to pay for bathroom breaks and general ass-scratching time. This also means that any time someone is looking at a work estimate, the side wanting to close the deal is looking to trim the hours down, while the people doing the work are trying to keep their feet out of the fire more
than they're trying to honestly assess how long it will take. Padding grows.

That's just the beginning. Companies that emphasize billability can't charge the client for the time they took to drive to their office and meet with them. They can't charge for the time it takes to figure out what needs to be done and work up an estimate. And they can't bill for
any time that might be spent making sure the end product works without breaking and can be used by the client.

Worse still, the client doesn't want good code. They don't want elegantly-written, efficient programs because those take time. Get it done, and get it done yesterday. Documentation is the biggest casualty: even if your programmers don't leave the company, even if no one else is
assigned to the project, that same harried programmer can't sit down 3 months later and remember what he or she wrote. It doesn't work that way, any more than you could recite word for word an e-mail that you sent last week.

Suddenly the add-on possibilities become enormous: testing costs money, but bug fixes are billable. If my application breaks when it gets on your servers, even better: because now you have to pay me to come on-site and work with your people to get things right. Best of all, if the
client mis-spoke, or they forgot something, or they just feel you misunderstood what they wanted, you're off the hook: that's not unbillable hours, it's a Change Order. Or an Enhancement.

I once had a company tell me that the Hourly Model was perfect because it was "just like a Law Office, and those guys make a lot more an hour than we do." I talked to a lawyer I know: he said that the greatest loss to his practice has been mentoring. Junior partners are
reluctant to ask a simple question in the hallway because they'll find their mentor just charged half an hour to their client for the answer.

As a result, nobody gets better: they just get by.

Too Much of a Good Thing

2008-01-24T09:43:00.001-08:00

Nobody appreciates a Prophet until after the fact. Then they most appreciate a Prophet who can refrain from saying, "I told you so."

Despite my last post about Honesty, you should realize that too much of it at once can poison a person. It's up to you to regulate the dose, but see that you do so, over time. Raise or lower the amounts based on how the patient responds.

An application I am involved in has seen the worst of it: no requirements, poor documentation, it's the re-write of a bad source application, and it's had complete staff turnover since it began. The data used to provide the application is not only a nightmare, it can't be changed because it belongs to another party and/or connects directly to other things.

The client who hired us to re-write the application doesn't care about this, and they shouldn't. You have to remember that the client doesn't care what you have to go through. They don't want to know about how awful it's been, how sad it was when the developer walked out, and how upset everyone's been at the office. What they care about is results. You have to have something to show.

Our team is making its best efforts. Progress has been unbelievably slow, for a lot of reasons. And worst of all, it seems to be extremely difficult to get anything going that the client can get their hands on and see for themselves. This is the last time to be laying the drama on the Man who signs your paycheck.

Many sins led us to this point, but it will be interesting to see whether our efforts will truly be allowed to continue. It would be a shame if they didn't, but it wouldn't exactly be a surprise.

Money Changes Everything

2008-01-17T18:25:00.000-08:00

I wish I were making this up...

I went to my neighborhood gas station to fill up my car. Standing at the pump, I noticed a cheery glow, flickering from the space in between the pumps. Flickering? Oh, that's not good. The sparks that started to shoot out confirmed it.

I immediately stopped filling, cradled the pump, and drove off without the receipt. Parked the car, went straight into the store, and found two employees. "Excuse me, you have a major problem right now--there's an electrical fire starting between the gas pumps."

That got their attention--"What?" "Where?" "Oh my god, shut 'em off!"

Oh, if only. But it didn't go that way. The Manager Was In Control. He said, "I don't see anything." I said, "Ill show you" and walked out there. The employee followed me, but the manager didn't. He stood inside the store and watched me. Coward. Thankfully, it had slowed down for some reason, and gone back to a flickering glow: the electrical box for the overhead lights was clearly badly grounded, overheating, and conducting electricity across the gap.

A woman had pulled up in an SUV. "You really don't want to gas up right now," I told her. "This electrical box is shooting sparks." She stared at me like I was the stupidest person in the world, didn't bother to look, and went right back to gassing up.

I went back inside with the employee, who was hurrying, "I'd better shut the pumps off," she said.

Back inside, the manager SPRANG INTO ACTION.

No, wait--he didn't. He said, "Hold on--I want to go see this." This time, I thought, "I am getting the hell out of here. I do not want to watch someone burn to death because this idiot thinks electrical fires are No Big Deal. He walked back, said, "I don't see anything. We'll just wait and see." I told him, "If you'd at least turn off your overhead lights, the fire would probably stop. Then you can get an electrician in here in the morning, and in 5 minutes he'll probably have it fixed for you."

"No, that wouldn't work--people might think we're closed."

Well, there it is: what was I thinking? We can't have people stop coming in! Safety is bad for business!

"Well, good luck to you then. You'll need it." And I left.

That was two days ago. Nobody's burned yet...but nobody's fixed it either. I imagine the cheery campfire glow is just the thing to huddle over, on these cold, cold nights. After all, what are the odds that someone will park their SUV just a little further back than normal? And the wind will waft towards the fire? And enough fumes will be trickling out of the pipe to catch? Probably no more than the danger from smoking at the pumps, which people do all the time.

Okay, so Why?

2008-01-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

On the subject of this article:
Herb Greenberg Picks Circuit City CEO as worst of 2008

If we all know about bad management at the top screwing a company, and article after article laments the golden parachutes given to idiots for tanking a company....why is it still happening?

Who looks at, say, Philip Schoonover's resume and thinks:

"Hrm....you hired expensive consultants who told you that the best way to save money was to fire damn near everyone who keeps the stores running. Then your company paid said consultants to "foment their plan into actionable items" (translation: 'to do it'). Wrecked the company's reputation, infuriated everyone from investors to customers, and drove the stock down more than 80%.

"When can you start?"

Perhaps it would be easier for everyone if, any time a company hires a CEO like this, the CEO in question just comes to their first meeting, drops their pants, and craps into a box in front of everybody. The message is conveyed instantly, time and money are saved all 'round by cutting straight to the point, and the golden parachute provides emotional comfort to the Board of Directors because they want the guy to go, and by that point they're willing to pay him extra if he'll carry the box out with him when he goes.

New Millenium Deal

2008-01-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a natural at Sales; it just seems to be in my blood. Where other people thumb through inspiring books geared to "energize your synergy", I can simply...walk in and do it. Close the deal, get what I want, and make everyone happy.

That's really the big secret to being a successful salesman: make the customer happy.

Believe it or not, there are high rollers in the business who make the customer unhappy, but I guarantee you that this way never works out in the long term. I've seen aggressive bastards who cram deals down the client's throat simply by wearing them out: "Come on! What are you waiting for? I've got all this ready-to-go, and you're hanging your ass on the line with your superiors by not just signing the dotted line already!" I worked at one place where the Alpha Male stole from other people's orders to fill his faster. It made them look like buffoons to their clients because they were always "losing" parts of their orders. Alpha sold massive quantities at a loss, to gouge it all out on the next deal.

This is the tipping point between getting one's foot in the door and begging for a restraining order. Alpha Male would also pad the order with the wrong things, just to fix the numbers in the "Quantity" column and make it look like he'd turned the sale around: 15 of the flat-panels you need, 5 wrong ones that were lying around, and let you take the two weeks to figure it out and turn it around: not his problem, he put 20 monitors on your loading dock in 24 hours and you damn well better pay. He knew that in a large company, the guy that signs the deal isn't the guy that unpacks it at the dock and has to send some of it back.

Sales is the worst way to come into IT. I used to spend my time trying to make everyone happy, and in application development that is one of the worst things you can do. Because it means you start thinking about how to gloss over the rough spots when you have to meet with the client. You figure out ways to make it sound like things are going well when you have a fire on your hands. Making the customer happy, as I have learned, is absolutely not the same thing as "managing expectations."

Managing Expectations is really what software development is all about. These aren't widgets, and anyone who's spent any time in IT knows that a) there is no "turn-key solution" and b) "out of the box" is never what you want. Pretend otherwise and you're setting yourself up for failure.

Tell your clients when something goes wrong.
Tell them if you don't think it's a good fit
Don't cover your ass, because bad things grow in the dark
Don't throw anyone under the bus, because you never know when you're going to need them again

and most important:

Ask questions if you're not sure you've got it right

I can't begin to tell you how many applications I've seen get all the way to the demo, only to leave the customer baffled and angry: "Why did it look like that? That's not what our people do at all!"

Some people are afraid that going back and asking questions makes them look stupid. The truth is, it shows that you are listening. And that you care about the customer. My father is a master at sales, and he taught me a golden rule in dealing with people: that they love to talk about themselves. Let them talk, take an interest, and start thinking about how you can make that match with what you want to do for them, and you have a winner of a deal.

Leveling with a customer about things that aren't working can be your saving grace; everyone knows that software doesn't come out on time, delays happen, changes get made, and things don't work out the way they should. Being earnest about your intentions will carry you a lot farther than throwing a curtain over it all and pretending The Great and Powerful Oz has the situation under control. And last but not least, the simple courtesies can speak volumes about you: don't be late to a meeting (call or e-mail if you are), don't interrupt, and if you can't seem to communicate with the client, just do the listening, and save the convincing arguments for another day, when you can think it over and plan up a good way to show them why your way might be better.

And as for the Alpha Males? The customer may sign the contract, but they'll never be happy with the destination if you got them there via railroad.

Screen for LCD

2008-01-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

When you aim for the Lowest Common Denominator, the only direction you will ever go is down.

Rise of the Bastard III: The Grief Sponge

2007-12-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

On the other side of the equation, we have the lifelong griefer. This is not someone who can't keep the personal problems out of the workplace: this is someone for whom the personal problems are the workplace, and there is no divide in between. I haven't had to walk a female friend through a divorce, but I can tell you that for guys, each and every one goes through a phase where their world is in pieces, they're staring at them all scattered on the floor, and they have no idea how to pick them back up or even which one to start with. It's an awful situation, trying to put one's life back together.

Unfortunately, the Grief Sponge is in this exact spot and seems to be stuck in neutral. There is no way out because the exits all lead back to the entrance. As they throw themselves into their work, the workplace becomes the sounding board for all the awfulness, and every little hiccup in the workflow is Her walking out, all over again. Grief Sponges are no fun to be around. Eventually people stop inviting them to the after-hours get-togethers, because the last thing you want is to be close to the guy when he's had a few beers in him. Women get slobbery pleas for sympathy, as if they can barter diplomacy on behalf of their gender. Guys are the shoulder to cry on--guys are bad listeners enough without having to be coerced into a marathon session of How She Left Me--for the nth time.

So....what to do? As bizarre as it sounds, sometimes companies apply the Dilbert Principle and promote the Grief Sponge. Get him out of the workflow and give him something to do that doesn't involve people, much. The catch is that there's this little thing about management that involves actually managing people, and placing The Grief Sponge in a position of power turns out to be a bad thing, indeed. I have a friend who is going through this situation right now. Nobody underneath TGS likes to deal with him because he is pessimistic and rude. Worse, he will issue proclamations from on high that derail the development process. It's a vicious cycle: the more the team keeps him out of the loop, the less he knows, and the worse the edicts become. Typically, this is where the Peasants revolt--they go over his head, and TGS feels the squeeze from being in Middle Management.

Upper management will typically do one of two things: protect The Grief Sponge, or push him.

It seems unavoidable that management will take on an Us vs. Them mentality when it comes to conflicts. Conflicts are messy, and when the complaints come from below, sometimes management doesn't want to be bothered with it. Don't rock the boat; there's a lot of liability from up here, and none of us wants to be knocked off our pedestal. On the other hand, there's the fact that the Defendant in question is Management: part of the fold. Condemning them would both project the image that Management made a mistake by hiring/promoting the guy, and remind the masses that even Managers can get the axe.

Neither is a favorable proposition.

It's amazing how far I've seen the protection racket go--a GS can get a lot out of the company if he tumbles to his diplomatic immunity (Golden Parachute, anyone?). But that is a post for another time. :) Instead, let's look at the other choice: the push.

This one is simple--management doesn't want to fire anybody because fired people bad-mouth the company. They sue. They might even be unbalanced enough to come back and shoot up the place. Or just key a few cars in the parking lot on their way out. All of this is bad, and once again, we want to avoid confrontations because confrontations are messy. So instead Managment culls its own by indirect means. Make the guy's job so miserable/impossible/intolerable/all of the above that he up and quits on you. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and hopefully when he goes, the guy is so happy to be out of there that he forgets to be angry at the company.

Rise of the Bastard II: The Ball-Busting Black Widow

2007-10-25T19:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe the title on that one says it all.

Have you ever met or worked with a woman who could not control her emotions in the workplace? Someone for whom you leave your home every morning to take on their problems for them during the workday? And finally, do you sometimes find yourself wondering which of you would work best under heavy medication?

If you've answered yes to any one of those questions, you've worked in at least one white-collar office environment. Typically Miss Dystemper ends up behind a phone station, trying very hard not to scream at the general public when they call in and mis-dial an extension. Her husband/ex is a jackass, her bills are outrageous, and her children are completely out-of-control: almost as bad as the Automotive Harrassment Squad that follows her to and from work every day.

Things become worse when your sympathetic ear isn't enough. Slowly--

(well, if you want to get there quickly, dry up the sympathy well early on...it's like a secret passage, directly to Hell)

--but surely, you will eventually be rolled up into The Problem and added to The List.

Usually there's a reason this person will never be asked to leave unless and until they shoot up the place. Either they know where the bodies are buried, or they have carefully built their web over the years, and no one dares touch it, let alone try to take it away. By attrition they become indispensable.

"Indispensable" is often in the eye of the beholder, who happens to be a robot. Humanity does not compute. Continued function is imperative. Mission-critical buster of balls shall continue. Inefficient humans will be deleted.

I had the joy of being with two such persons. Thankfully in entirely different companies (though you never know--I hear BastardCo is hiring). In one situation, my cheerful disposition made it a joy to the BBBW to knock my feet out from under me, wrap me up in red tape, and drain the life out of me. In the other, my cheerful disposition was seen as the iron-clad guarantee that the Wicked Witch would Re-Glenda-fy beneath my Awesome Sunshine Powers.

Neither worked, of course. Both taught me that if you're a good person, shitty people don't deserve you. Both also taught me that if you're a good person, you will lose to anyone who owns the web and/or hides the bodies.

(P.S.: for the Morally Offended, this gender-door swings both ways...more in the next entry, because good--and bad--things come in trilogies)

Rise of the Bastard

2007-10-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

I still haven't figured out how nasty people rise above the good people.

I'm not talking about the Peters Principle--that incompetence rises to its own level. I'm talking instead about people who, regardless of how good or bad they are at their job, are simply snake-mean. And manage to get promoted, again and again.

A man I very much admire has an excellent reputation for sales. He had a superior hired into the company after him--let's just call him "Joe Bossman"--who very much resented him for it. Like the aging athlete who sees only his own legacy, the man simply resented the fact that he was no longer in sales, and his underling was somehow better at it than he had ever been.

"New policy," Bossman said one day. "The higher-ups have said we're discounting too much. So...until further notice, there are to be no more discounts of any kind. Company policy."

My friend took the hit and rolled with it. "Sorry guys," he told the customers, "I just can't do it. My hands are tied, but hang in there." And because he's just a hell of a nice guy, most of his clientele said, "We understand," and went along with it.

Continuing to do well was a thorn in Bossman's side. "I'm reassigning districts," he said. "There's too much overlap." Out from under my friend went most of his client base. Park Place and Boardwalk went to Bossman Jr. and a Mister Toadying Crony, both of whom had clearly earned it. He got a dog-eared Baltic, and in a generous move, half of St. Charles Place. One performance review later, and the bar had been lowered--on my friend's head. "Why aren't you making your quotas anymore? These numbers aren't anything like what they were when I came on board!"

What would you do? Well, if "Stand up to the guy," is your answer, you might want to go ahead and draw those savings out of the bank right now, because you're gonna need 'em while you're looking for a new job. Still--at this point my friend had to know that the writing was on the wall. Like any good worker, he asked his co-workers how they dealt with the problem.

Turns out they didn't have his problem. Discounts cancelled? No--who told you that? He did? Oh! That explains why every other co-worker has been laughing at you for the past year! Sam Slytherin over in the Marvin Gardens division kept telling me you were just incompetent, like Bossman says. Or was that impotent? I forget, it might have been both...

He's unemployed now--turns out he had really horrible performance. And low numbers. Oddly enough, I forsee his old stomping grounds changing its name, once all the good people are gone: BastardCo might be open.

Games People Shouldn't Play

2007-10-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some un-fun games that you should avoid playing with your co-workers at all costs:

The Blame Game (of course; this hot-potato will always circle back to you before it gets put down)
Who's Screaming This Week? (or, "Trouble: the Game of Constant Crisis")
Scapegoat - with Ball-Busting Action! (chances are, anyone seeing you do this will be thinking, "Hey, that could be me getting thrown under the bus one day.")
Bridge-Burner: (also known as "Slow Solitaire")
Crazy-Time: the game where Everything's Personal! "If you can't leave your problems at the door, it's time to Get Ca-rayyyzy!"
Mouse Trap: the game where He Who Squeaks the Loudest is summarily squished
The Dating Game: oh, it gets quite ugly at the end. Expect at least one meeting to be a tennis match between She Who Leaves the Toothpaste Uncapped and He Who Never Puts Down the Toilet Seat.

The Two-Way Street leaves little safety in the middle

2007-10-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'd mentioned earlier that the developer-as-manager can be a hazardous thing: sometimes these folks are promoted to management simply by their tenure and seniority with the company; other times their superiors simply assume, "If she can work wonders with code, she must be great with coders!"

Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that some programmers are excellent at what they do because that's all they want to do. I've seen a good programmer become the most miserable manager on earth, slogging through meetings and longing for the good old days of making the machines do magic. I've seen people quit out of fear that they might be promoted.

The other side of this street is that sometimes developers don't understand the value of management: if they're competent, your project managers are there because they get you the information you need. They're not just people who tell you what to do; they're the ones keeping an eye on the goals, watching the calendar to keep the cart behind the horse, and dealing with every last little want, need, hope or complaint of the client. Meetings may seem meaningless to the person who shapes code all day, but there are actually projects where the simple act of spending a bit of time with the client goes a long way. I'll have more to say on this another time, I'm sure; for now, the important point is not whether a particular role is more or less important. It's whether the person doing the role can do it well.

Zen and the Art of a Good Exit Strategy

2007-10-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

I had a job once that seemed absolutely perfect...until I walked in the door.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have this happen; in fact, I'm betting each and every one of you has had a Day One that turned into an 8-hour "Oh, shit!" moment.

It didn't seem like a big deal to have no computer, until several weeks later there still wasn't one. It wasn't all that bad to have to continually ask for software until I was told that I needed to sign up for a credit card. "Oh, is this a company card?" I ask, figuring they have some sort of expense-account for their executives. "No, this is an arrangement we've made with American Express to allow you to sign up for your own card." In other words, get an Amex in your name and we get a kickback. You'll still need to pay for all of your own stuff...and we'll pay you back. Using the same process that's holding up your computer. Well, to be fair, it wasn't quite the same process: anything I needed to be "paid back for" would go on a Travel Reimbursement Request Form.

I was determined to make this work. And I was resourceful: as it happened, I had my own powerful laptop, loaded with the software I'd need to work. I started using it pretty early on, but didn't tell anyone it was capable enough for me to do my job--otherwise, I imagined our staff wouldn't exactly be motivated to get me a machine.

I did everything I could at the time, but the truth is, I just wasn't up to the Machiavellian politics yet. I really didn't know how to handle the situation, and I handled it badly. A point in my favor though, was my clear understanding of the situation: I knew my problems began and ended with my direct superior. Once I realized that all points flowed through them, I realized that there was no way this situation could be salvaged, and I started planning my exit strategy.

It wasn't a graceful one, but I understood very quickly that the same system that allowed people to be cruel and petty in the name of "professionalism", also shielded me from any direct confrontation. Always being cooperative, helpful, and friendly meant that anyone who lost their cool and blew up at me would look like an ass to everyone else. Ignoring humiliation tactics (I was moved to a receptionist's desk because "I needed watching") meant the people trying to feel like they'd gotten to me were denied the pleasure. And best of all, pulling the plug meant that the people who were documenting my downfall had wasted their time--they simply had nothing to work with.

I was plenty upset, with an extra helping of frustrated, for quite a while after that: I viewed it as a failure and kept replaying events in my head to see if I could have stopped the avalanche. I got over it when I realized that I couldn't: this was nothing personal. The position I was hired into was created by a client who wanted control over their relationship with their vendor. The vendor got to pick, interview, and hire me, and the client signed my paychecks. Whoever occupied that hot-seat was meant to fail: failure meant the client would have to admit defeat and the vendor could take over the product because clearly they were the IT partner of choice.

When you serve two masters, be aware that you will be used, in one direction or another. It is inevitable that you will become the lever to jack up one side or another of the relationship. And when you're in an unwinnable situation, don't waste your time: bail. There will be plenty of other opportunities out there, and the less you have to put on a resume about the disaster, the better.

Leading Edge Versus Bleeding Edge

2007-10-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

A massive tech facility was constructed in my city. It's an amazing place of brand-new and contemporary offices. Technically, it's not even finished yet, but already eager tenants have moved in: massive corporations, seed ventures, and academic think-tanks all busy buiding the World of Tomorrow. When you look at the gleaming mothership architecture, sprawling lawns, and blinding glare of mirrored windows, you can't help but think "Caution: Futurists Crossing"

Unfortunately, all is not well in the EPCOT of the New Millenium. In the race to inhabit the hippest place for 50 miles around, a little bit of forethought goes a long way:

None of them has Internet access.

Well, let me put that a better way: the grounds are not equipped for Internet access. The first companies through the gate probably spent a good portion of 2007 desperately scrambling for whatever they could cobble together: Satellite broadband? Cellular wireless? Get us whatever you can--we've got a future to plan here!

Teh Notworkz has since been brought...well, into the ballpark. One particular tenant was told to run their pipe to the box at the corner of their property--that's where the data firehose began. Contractors were called, machines rolled in, and as quick as you can say, "Wow! Look at all the dirt!", a ditch was dug.

To the wrong corner.

I can't imagine which player in this comedy of errors was the first one to figure out what went wrong: was it the Construction Contractor, who at the end of his long dig, found himself staring at an empty box? Maybe it was the Service Tech, who rolled out a spool of fiber, only to find nothing to connect it to? Or the builder, eyeing the new ditch and pondering how soon he might get someone out there to finish the job?

Whatever the case, take it as a cautionary tale: when the aliens land and we're all invited back to AlienWorld for a big party, maybe you should ask a question or two before you hop aboard the giant Space Ark.

Mensa Never Had it This Good

2007-10-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me this message the other day:

Folks, wanna know something fun?

I just had a phone interview with a Major Company in the Netherlands.

A long interview.I didn't get the job, I'm sure, but the questions I was asked were.. hmm.. odd. Half hour spent on tech stuff ( e.g. "what's the difference between Debug.Write and Trace.Write?" and "how would you implement a deep copy interface?" ).

One and a half hour spent on ..err.. three questions.. err.. (the following text is abridged)

Interviewer (with thick dutch accent): "Why are manhole covers round?"
G: "Come again?"
I: "Why are manhole covers round? You know the things you use to cover the holes in the ground on the streets."
G: "Err.. because the hole in the floor is round?"
I: "No other reason? Why not making them square? Or rectangular?"
G: "Err.. well, why would them make manhole covers square when the hole is round?"
I: "Is the hole always round?" (and here I started wondering if this was a joke or something, or if the guy was a lil fruity)
G: "Hmm.. a manhole cover covers a hole made so that a man has to go through it, and the cross section of a man is roundish, plus, if I recall correctly, the best shape to withstand the pressure would be a sphere, in the case of a vessel like a batisphere, or a cilinder, in the case when you need more space, like a sub, and in the case of a long tunnel, to withstand the pressure from the ground, a cilinder would do the job, so I'd say that manhole covers are always round."
I: "Ok, thanks."
Interviewer #2: "Hi, this is ."
G: "Howdy Fronk."
I2: "So, let's say you're in front of a door.. this door is closed, and there is a switchplate. On this plate there are three switches, each switch is attached to a light bulb inside the room. You need to check which switch controls which bulb, but you can't open the door but one time. How would you do it?"
G (who is starting to catch the drift and gettin a lil testy): "Why can't I open the door?"
I2: "Because the switches lock the moment you open the door, and closing the door again won't help."
G: "You've been asked this before, huh?"
I2: "Yes, we heard them all."
G: "Well.. hmmm.. in this case.."
I2: "Yes?"
G: "I'd ask whomever wired up the place. He should have the drawings."
I2: "Heheh. He's not around, this place is old and noone remembers what happened and who built what."
G: "Then I would turn off all the switches, remove the switchplate, rip the first cable, short the second, and leave the third be. Then put the plate up, turn everything on, and open the door. The first one will control the light that's off, the second one the light that's blown, and the third will be on."
I2: "..err.. ok.. that's a way.. but what if you want all the lights to be on?"
G: "Then I'm out of luck, the door's open by now."
I: "Yes yes, good. Listen, there're four jars, all equal, all containing the same exact number of pills, each pill is equal to the other, in color, shape, taste, etc, except that in one jar the pills are bad and they weigh the regular pill's weight plus 1. You can make only one measurement, how would you find out which jar contains the bad pills?"
G (hungry and slightly annoyed at this point): "The pills are bad?"
I:" Yes, bad."
G: "Like they taste bad, or are they poisonous? Because if they just taste bad.."
I: "No no, they taste good but they are poisonous, you can't eat them or you die."
G: "And in everything else, bar the weight, they are the same as the others?"
I: "Yes."
G: "So I read the label."
I: "Too easy. The evil mastermind made all the labels the same."
G: "Hmmm.."
I: "Go on.."
G: "How long does the poison take to kill me?"
I: "It's immediate, you don't have time to go to the ER."
G: "Do you have a dog?"
I: "Why?"
G: "Simple, I give one of each pills to the dog and see what happens."
I: "You can't do that!"
G: "You don't have a dog?"
I: "The dog doesn't want the pills!"
G: "I force feed it."
I: "That's inhumane!"
G : "I didn't say I force feed you, I said I force feed your dog."
I: "You can't kill the dog! There are no dogs, you can only weight them."
G: "How about a cat? Even a stray would do."
I: "No killing animals!"
G: "Ok, then I force feed the evil mastermind."
I: "No!"
G: "Why not? He tried to trick me, he put the wrong labels, and he won't tell me which one is the bad one, and even if he would tell me, how could I trust him?"
I: "You can't do that! You can't find the guy!"
G: "Then I take his family. At the very least, he has a mother."
I: "You can't kill anyone!!"
G: "Not even his pets?"
I: "NO!"
G: "Then I toss the pills and forget about it."
I: "You can't, you want the pills."
G: "No I don't. You want the pills, but you don't give me any way to find out. Using only the weight is not enough, because depending on the number of pills the difference could be very minimal, besides I don't see much space for error, let alone human error. Besides if the evil mastermind has changed the labels, what prevented him from adding extra weight to the other jars, or change the weight of the jar cap, or anything else that would give me a false positive? Clearly this is not a scientific lab I'm working in, otherwise I would just do some test on the pills themselves and I would be able to try more than one measurement, therefore in extreme cases, one has to rely on extreme acts." (and here I resisted from yelling "and now gimme your mutt!!", but I so wanted..)
I: "..yes.."
I2 (who had been laughing in the background since the dog question above): "Thank you, do you have any questions for us?"

And from here it was the usual pleasantries "don't call us, we'll call you" and that was it.

If I do get the job, I don't think it will be in development.

It's not all in the Pointy Hair

2007-10-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

On IT and Management:

The right type of manager for IT is one who says, "I know enough to know that I don't know." These enlightened individuals realize that what the developer is doing is as close to magic as we'll get in the real world, and that as such, sometimes it needs special consideration.

Unfortunately, for the good of the world, this type of IT manager is typically whisked away to where they can do the most good: say, at NASA, a missile silo, or a nuclear reactor.

The worst type of IT manager is Conan: a brutal barbarian with an ingrained hatred of magic. He doesn't understand what programmers do, so every aspect of it to him is unpredictable and riddled with chaos. Since the developer is so (relatively) calm about working the magic, he hates them for it.

For the record, the second worst type of IT manager is a veteran programmer. There are veteran programmers who prove the exception to the rule, but mostly you'll get one of two types:

an idiot who was never that great of a programmer, but he gets by with a little help from his friends; or
someone who maybe knows a language that's mythologized in academic halls (but is otherwise dead), and loves to talk about the old days of COBOL pointers and punchcards.

When they're not promoted to management for their keen insight and people skills, the hazard of the programmer-as-manager comes if he or she feels that, "I've so been there--so anything coming from my people that I don't agree with is bullshit, because I know what's what."

A close friend of mine has been afflicted with Conan the General: enough time spent in the trenches to take both First and Second place in the Upper-Class Twit of the Year competition. With any luck, he'll accidentally run himself over in the parking lot.

Another friend of mine just has Conan.

In both cases, management goes by what it sees: if the page doesn't load in the browser, it must be the programmer's fault. Never mind bad databases, ill-fitting business logic, overzealous firewalls, or the Spyware that's clogging the machine: it all begins and ends with the developer.

Interesting how like the upper echelons of the business world, the low-level IT world can be: when the leader drives the good people away, bad (but agreeable) people fill the void. They all say "yes" to bad direction and gleefully sink the ship. Smart people get harassed, because who needs an old smarty spoiling our yacht party with news of a leak?

To further flog the metaphor, the short-sighted see the tiny ice-cap on the surface and ignore the glacier underneath: the problem must be those programmers--it couldn't be our infrastructure, practices, gaps in communication, nepotistic favoritism, politics, culture, or group myopia! It's those guys out on point covering our asses--our asses are getting bigger and they're not covering enough!

The Great American Swindle

2007-10-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

Worst Job Ever:

They moved us all into a small room with no ventilation. They installed ductwork that recycled the same air at 80db, 24-7. We had an exposed ceiling of steel girders, coated with flame-retardant chemical foam. It had been coated with flat black paint. Both substances flaked off the walls and got in our lungs, on our clothes, and made us all very sick--a typical day would involve 12-15 of 54 people being unable to come in, and the coughing was nonstop.

We were under the bathrooms. The pipes leaked. At times someone might get toilet-water dripped on them when you heard a flush. Alarms malfunctioned and went off at random, right over our heads. They could run for half an hour or more, and were much louder than the ductwork.

We were under a cafeteria. The gas pipes for the stove leaked when they fired things up for breakfast or lunchtime, and would cause headaches. The kitchen waste pipes were leaky, and dripped "kitchen waste", sometimes rupturing and gushing all over the floor, the walls, or in one case someone's computer. There was a water leak from the cafeteria's ice machine, and there were flying insects that lived in the salad bar and would swarm down the holes in the floor.

Needless to say, you never ate at the cafeteria, you always left at lunch to get some air, and you always kept any food covered or wrapped as you were eating it.

Here's the punchline: know where I worked?

Public Health.

Chapter One: A Statement of Purpose

2007-10-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

"What the heck is this? 'Chapter Eight: I Am Born'...ah, god, we're in for a long ride...

-- My modern-day thoughts on long exposition

To borrow from Mike Rowe: "Get ready to get nerdy"

I've seen some pretty bizarre things in the technology biz--most of us have. This is my place to share the strangest and funniest things that I've seen or experienced.

You don't have to believe a word of it--some of it I find highly suspect--but you do need to enjoy. If you're not enjoying, you're probably in the wrong place. Perhaps you should go somewhere that talks about kittens, or food.

Whetting the Appetite for Destruction

2007-10-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

It truly pained me to see that Guns 'n' Roses' debut album Appetite for Destruction is actually 20 years old now. It reminded me of a moment when I worked in software retail. It was 1992, and we were all excited that we had a CD player in the store, and some killer speakers with which to crank.

I was playing Van Halen's 1984 when someone not much younger than me walked in, cocked his head, and said, "Man, that's some OLD Van Halen!"

Yikes. Embarrassed, I hastily shoved their first album under the counter, hoping maybe he'd think I'd brought in my older brother's music.