IT misunderstood again

So found this off the wire:

Study finds IT pay up in six areas, down elsewhere

Research firm's CEO says 'we've never seen anything like this before'

Here are the six areas:

1. Management / Methodology / Process
2. Database
3. Messaging and Communication
4. Architecture
5. Security
6. Networking

Now for skills that are down:

1. Application Development
2. SAP & Enterprise Development
3. Operating Systems
4. Web / e-commerce
5. Systems Networking

So in classic fashion, those trying to research the industry have fundamentally misunderstood the industry.  And I think that the problem is obvious, how do you actually "track skills"?

The report claims to track over 354 IT skills.  That's a lot of skills, of course, it could also just be a lot of fluff.  Anyone who's looked for a job in IT knows that the market is acronym-crazy.  It's also short on any form of acronym meaning. 

I mean, what the heck is the difference between "Networking" & "Systems Networking"? According to the stats, that difference is worth 3%+ in pay. 

What counts as "Web / e-commerce"?  It's obvious that general e-commerce is becoming commodity, that's to be expected.  But is "web" really worth less?  Facebook app development, Google App Engine, Microsoft's Azure, Amazon's AWS... these are all "Web" technologies.  Where do they fall?  Heck, Azure and AWS are also Operating Systems technologies.

So get that, skills in AWS have actually dropped in value. Right.... Huh?!?

I think the reason the CEO has "never seen anything like this before" is really that he's asking the wrong questions.  Trying to track IT pay by grouping across these massive skill sets is doomed to fail.  In fact, trying to track IT pay by any grouping of skill set is seriously flawed.

And the reasons are simple:

• There are too many IT skills and new skills are constantly being created
• Each skill has a lot of gradients
• Skills with different names can be very closely related
• Skills are constantly being picked up by experienced people

So how anyone plans to track that is beyond me.  Last year's "Database skills" are not this year's and they're not next year's.  Why you would group them under the same category each year and then pretend that they correlate demonstrates a misunderstanding about the way this industry works.

Enough to Retire?

Just came across the 10/10/4 model as presented at Mint.com. It demonstrates a pretty tenuous grasp of reality.

Comments below.

Jess:the life expectancy in the US is only 77 years according the the CDC

Is the current life expectancy or the life expectancy for people who are currently 20 and won't hit 77 for another 50+ years? Do we have a link for this?

Even if we change the model to 80 years (let's give medical science a little credit), that still leaves us with 45 years of working to 35 years of not working. That leaves us with 45 people working for 35 people not working.

Imagine that you're living in a (global) village with 80 people. 45 of those people do all of the hunting / gathering / farming / house-building. The other 35 people are either non-productive children or old people who sit around smoking pipes and eating food brought in by the other 45 people.

Either way.

If you save 10% / year for 45 years, and receive no effective pay raise between 20 & 65 (i.e.: pay raise = inflation). Then you would need ~3.25% real returns (that's returns above inflation) for basically the entire 45 years to meet the goal of having 10x your annual income. That doesn't sound like much, but here's some perspective.

Right now TIPS bonds are offering 0.7% real returns (they were offering 0.0% returns just a few months ago). Real Stock market returns over the last decade are into the negative. If you earn 0% real returns one year you have to make 7.5%+ real returns the next, just to make it up, that's not easy.

What's more, you're subject to a very critical period. At year 30 you have about 5x of your 10x. From year 30 to 45, you're only going to save 1.5x (putting you at 6.5x), which means that you're relying on 15 years of solid returns to make up that other 3.5x. If you have a 5 or 10-year drought, you could end up way short. And a 5 or 10-year drought is going to happen somewhere in those 45 years.

Finally, we made the very unsafe assumption that your "real income" doesn't change. Realistically, your income increases over time.

According to the 10/10/4 model: "...by the time you are 65, you will need 10x your income immediately prior to retirement to retire at the level you want.."

So you need 10x your final income, not your starting or even your average income.

Let's say you're 20 and making 30k today. Your "10x" number is 300k. You save 10% for 10 years and save just over 1 year's worth of income (say 31k). At the end of 10 years you make the big switch and find a new job earning 45k (again, no inflation). Awesome for you!

However, now your "10x" number is 450k, but you only have 31k in the bank. You're behind, right? You're at year 10, you should have at least 10% of your target number, but you only have 6.8%. So what if you continue to plow along for another 10 years and then get another pay raise to 60k? Now your 10x number is at 600k, you're 20 years in to the plan but you're way behind the curve. You should have saved 120k (+ interest), but you're nowhere close to that number.

And then you have to account for medical. If you're earning 60k but receiving 10k in medical benefits (may be low-balling in the US), you now need 700k in savings (not 600k).

You can see where I'm going with this. If you follow the 10% savings route and you also follow a normal pattern of increasing income throughout your career, the 10x goal is very difficult.
- Your increasing income makes previous savings insufficient.
- High medical expenses inflate your "10x" number.
- You need consistent returns well above inflation and you need them at the right times.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a savings advocate. I save 10% and then some in tax-advantaged accounts.

But I make no pretenses of making it to 10x without saving more, getting lucky or making some savvy investments.

Again, the model presented above is very broken. Readers can follow this at their own risk.

Counter offers when leaving?

Inspired by a couple of good links, original post here with further thoughts at Ron's wisdom and Frugal Dad.

Lots of great links and all kinds of neat ideas and lists of reasons “not to accept a counter-offer”.

But I think the reason is simple.

You don’t want to work for anyone who feels that the counter-offer is a good idea.

Sure it’s an ego boost for you, but it’s really desperate management decision. Do you want to bank your future on desperate management?

The game is simple, an employee generates X revenue and the company pays that employee Y, where Y is X minus expenses and a risk-adjusted profit margin. In fact, it’s a lot like the stock market (actually, it is the stock market, but that’s a different discussion). Either way, the goal of the employee is to maximize the hourly yield for the work they’re willing to do, they want to maximize Y. The goal of the employer is to maximize profit, they want to maximize X and minimize Y.

The problem of course is risk. If you “over-minimize” Y, then you drain X (lower productivity) or you lose X all together (employee leaves). In the grand scheme, employers have been doing a lot to minimize Y: reduction in pension, reduction in health care allowances, no more 20-year gold watches or 10-year sabbaticals, etc. But many employers still insist on making some silly decisions with Y.

In Patrick’s case (the original poster), the competition was willing to pay 30% more Y. Assuming that Patrick could generate an equivalent X, the company felt that Patrick was a small enough risk to pay him 30% more.

That’s a very big difference in evaluation. That’s the same thing as me thinking a stock is fairly-priced at $100 when you think it’s fairly-priced at $130. Of course, we commonly hear about 20 & 30-somethings jumping jobs to make these types of pay raises because it's the only way to get a raise.

There are typically three reasons this happens:

1. The company is doing poorly and cannot afford to pay the employees more. Or they’re likewise not generating money from having the employee around.
2. The company is trying to extract as much profit as possible from the employee or using the employee’s profits to fund a different venture.
3. The company really has no clue (typically poor management). Any/all of: they don’t know the market rates, they don’t know which employees are generating money or losing money, they don’t have a growth plan, they don’t have a succession plan, they don’t understand what the employee really wants…etc

In a case like Patrick’s I’m sensing a heavy dose of #2, with a little #3.

What I don’t understand is why they suddenly perceived me as valuable as soon as I mentioned leaving?

It’s up to management to manage and mitigate risks and they really blew this one. (And remember the profits they make are their “risk-adjusted” piece of the pie) Not only did they underestimate your value by 30%, they also underestimated the value of their counter-offer by another 10%. That they would even go back to “up the ante” again means that they were still suffering from a #2 brain fart.

So back to the original thesis. You don’t want to work for these guys.

• If they suffer from #1, then they’re likely laying people off and even if you don’t lose your job, you won’t be getting a good pay raise.
  
• If they suffer from #2 and they’re underpaying by 30% (or more), then they’re not showing a lot of foresight.
• If they suffer from #3, then you’re resting the fate of your next raise, your next promotion and even your next paycheck on the back of someone who doesn’t have a clue.

You don’t want to be working for these guys. You want to be working for proactive managers. You want people who have vision, who can see problems before they arrive. You want people who lead, people who hire more staff before everyone gets too busy, people who give pay raises before you have to ask for them, send you to training before you need it.

So if your employer makes a counter-offer, they are not one of these people. They’re one of the hordes of reactive managers. Just because they’ve finally realized they’re behind and can afford to pay you more doesn’t mean that they’ve changed their ways and stopped being bad managers.

So don’t accept a counter-offer when resigning your job, you don’t want to work for the type of people who make counter-offers.

Of course, ymmv.

The problem with tech recruiters

This quote was pulled from a post on the Joel on Software forum. The post is about providing a salary history to a recruiting firm. Partway down, a recruiter (likely with an axe to grind), makes a couple of serious posts. Most of the points are easily refuted or quite weak and somebody on the forums does a good job of picking these out.

But the recruiter also makes a good point:

Why don't we know the difference between a 60K and a 100K programmer? Because only a programmer could tell the difference and if the person was all hat, no cattle or the real deal. Most programmers would prefer to, say, program, than wade through 20 resumes and phone screens just to get to talk to two people who might be a good fit for whatever reason.

Of course she's perfectly right. And this is the fundamental problem with technical recruiters: They're completely unqualified to do the job.

It's not their "fault" per se, it's just endemic to the field. Being a good tech recruiter requires a ton of technical background, plus some business savvy, some sales skills, some research skills, networking skills and a ton of patience. Of course, if you already have all of these skills, then you have a job that pays way more than being a recruiter!

Personally, I would rather just avoid the recruiters all together and seek out the job I'm looking for rather than the other way around. Of course, YMMV.

A Slashdot reply: Young IT Workers Disillusioned, Hard to Retain

So off the Slashdot wire, via Network World comes: Young IT Workers Disillusioned, Hard to Retain

The lead-in quote: Young IT employees pose a challenge to many managers who say the Millennial generation holds employers up to unrealistic expectations and makes unreasonable demands for their services.

*Sigh*

It's a good read, it's nice to hear one side reported; but I feel there's a whole other side to this that's not understood. Most "millenials" that I've met have very little concept of business and business finances.

The average worker expects to sit around and do as they are told and basically "be taken care of". The average worker never sits down with their boss and says "I'm making X and I want to be worth X+10%, what do I need to do?". There's an expectation that simply showing up will get you there. Most workers I've met simply let the company decide their next step. I've even met tons of smart and skilled developers who simply don't know the math behind their salary. They can't ask for a pay raise or different benefits or some other employer concession, they don't even know how much they're worth. They don't know what income they generated last year or the typical overhead cost on their time.

Meanwhile, from the other side, most companies I've known are simply terrible at managing workers and projects and growing their #1 assets. They set up win/lose pay structures that heavily reward management instead of the workers. They ask for more work hours instead of more project deliverables. They expect employees to train outside of work instead of accounting for the cost of "in-the-week" training time. They ignore the concept of "apprenticeships" and the time required and just add juniors to the team as a single unit of time (instead of the .2 units of time they actually generate). They fail to build progression plans (including scheduled pay increases for young workers) and then wonder why they get caught with their pants down when the best young workers leave for more money and the bad ones hang around.

It's a two-way street and there are ample examples of failure on both sides. There are tons of "sweatshop" workplaces and tons of workplace Princesses.

Of course, YMMV.

Save big on a tiny income ???

So maybe I'm just an eternal critic, but I caught this one off the wire and I had a good laugh, though there are few gems here too:

Save big on a tiny income - Savings & Debt Insight - Sympatico / MSN Finance

FTA: When I wrote an article describing how some of us could save more, I got an earful from frustrated readers, many of whom don't earn as much as the rest of us.

"If I had that kind of income I could save easily. Try (saving) on the incomes of most of us working, single moms, which is more like $2,500 a month! Cut our expenses? How???"
Carrie Bowers, 29, of Colorado, added: "How would the average service worker go about saving for retirement, a child's education (or even (her) own in hopes of moving up in the world) on less than $18,000 a year? Some financial advice for the public-transit set would be appreciated more than you know."

Now I read the original Dunleavy article for which she received the "earful" and it was pretty prissy. Of course, now she tackles a far more complex issue and basically fails to satisfy needs. I mean, imagine that you are making $18,000 / year. That's less than $9.40 / hour, that's $1500 / month to feed you and a kid (and pay taxes).

Now here's the advice that you're given:
- Stash a dollar in a jar every time you do the laundry
- Save all your $5 bills in a coffee can.
- Create bank errors in your favour. "If I spend $2.16 on a coffee, I deduct $3 (in my check register),"
-Switch from paper to plastic

Because you somehow have these "extra" dollars sitting around with 18k / year, right. And I doubt that the plastic will be necessary (if the 29-year old making 18k actually qualifies), the truth is, she probably makes like 8 purchases / month: 4 grocery runs, 1 rent cheque, 1 "bills run", 1 bus pass, 1 misc shop. She doesn't need a credit card to control spending, she doesn't have any money to spend! ($3*20 on coffee = 4% of pre-tax income!)

This one sounds like a great idea:
-"Don't forget gardening as a money-saving venture,"
Until you realize that single Moms making 25k/year don't exactly have houses with gardens. At the least she could suggest some public programs that offer free "gardening space" for families in need (and yes these do exist).

And spoken like a true "rich kid":
-"Look at the Pottery Barn catalogue, shop at Goodwill,"
-Buy generic instead of brand-name products.
-Buy non-perishables in bulk

Like anyone living on less that $400/week hasn't figured this out already. I'm pretty sure this strategy is part and parcel with keeping our two commenters off the street. Of course, when you can't afford a car (and on 18k, you can't), buying bulk goods is really a pain unless you're really lucky and the bus happens to go to your local Costco (which doesn't tend to happen b/c buses and warehouse districts don't tend to cross paths). The only saver here is this:
-Share the savings. ... buy toiletries and such at a warehouse store and divvy the spoils up with friends.

Which can at least mitigate the transportation and storage issues ('cause you don't have a lot of square footage when your monthly rent budget is under $600).

Am I being overly critical? Well OK, I'll throw out a couple of bouquets: "Make your savings automatic". is a good, if standard piece of advice. I guess if you pretend that you only have $1400 instead of $1500 each month that you may be able to parlay that $1200/ year into both a retirement fund and a university education (but good luck). She also suggests making "trades" (i.e.: bartering your time: cleaning for daycare time), which actually has useful applications but obviously doesn't scale.

Ok, so I can hear the readers now bored with my criticism: What would you do, oh GatesVP the smarty-pants???

Simple answer? Find a way to make more money.

What? What kind of answer is that?

It's a realistic answer, if you're 29 & single, with a kid and you haven't cracked $10/hour then the only way you're going to get ahead is to find a better paying job or move up in the job you're working. You can try all of Dunleavy's silly tricks, but all you're going to be doing is cutting more corners. You're not putting your kid through expensive American college, you're not "quitting work at 65".

At some point you have to figure that you're not going to make ends meet, and I think that 18k has hit that point. I mean really, even a 30k single mom with multiple kids has probably hit that point.

I know a guy who started managing his own McDonald's at 23, making 30k+. In fact corporate McDonald's stores have good family health coverage, good training, good benefits plans and managers even get a car after a few years. Now 23 is young, but I have met tons of McManagers under 30 (even some with kids) and I've even met a district manager under 30 (50k+ bigger car).

These are not prestigious positions, these are entry-level, show-up-to-work-and-we'll-train-you positions. These aren't kids with university degrees (those ones are working elsewhere), these are the ones who put in their 40 hours, go to paid McSchool and work their way up the chain is 5 years or less.

So at some point you have to ask yourself when are you going to start running your own McDonald's (insert career here) and build yourself a future?

Yeah I know you can't save for your own education, but if haven't noticed, we have tons of government programs and funding for single mothers in just this situation. Maybe it's just a Canadian thing, but you certainly don't have to starve to get an education, you just have to put in the time and pass your courses. And we also have nearly draconian laws when it comes to child support, so hearing about mothers not getting child support, while others are receiving money they're not supposed to (yes I've heard both), just burns my bacon.

Now I want to be clear here... I make 54k/year (18k * 3) and I don't own a car and I don't own a place (I rent an apartment with my fiancé) and that's how I (we) get ahead. I live close to work and do all of my grocery shopping on foot. We bus to the mall on weekends for "stuff" runs, but we've mostly cut that out now that we're done furnishing the apartment.

I'm cutting a bunch of big corners to help me get ahead, but at 18k / year, you're just not cutting it. There's simply not enough money there to live a healthy lifestyle and save.

It's cute that Dunleavy tries to help, but I think she missed the point of what it means to feed multiple mouths on 30k/year. It has nothing to do with cutting corners b/c you're already cutting tons of corners. It has everything to do with making enough money to support your needs and then making a little bit more.

Coding Horror: Leading by Example

Coding Horror: Leading by Example

I read Dennis's story and just had a flashback to some "olden days", FTA:

I was recently brought in to help a software team get a product out the door, with a mandate of helping with some web app code. I've been trying my best to integrate with the team, trying to earn some credibility and respect by making myself useful.

I've been forwarding various Joel On Software essays to all, recommending that the office stock up on Code Complete, Peopleware, and The Mythical Man Month, and I make an effort to point out everything I believe could be done better. I regularly browse through the source repository to find ways that other members could be working better.

When other developers ask for my help, I try to maximize my input by broadening my assistance to cover the way they're developing, how they could improve their typing form, what naming standard they use, to advocate a better code editing tool, and to give my educated final word regarding the whole stored procedure/dynamic SQL debate.

Despite all of this, I keep facing resistance, and I don't think the team likes me very much. Many of my suggestions aren't adopted, and several people have replied with what I suspect is thinly veiled sarcasm.

What's going wrong?

Well, I'd start with the fundamental problem: People are resistant to change. Inertia is not just a physics concept it's a people concept. If you are asking a team to change in any way, they won't like you very much.

Dennis is working from the fundamental concept that his teammates are actually interested in becoming all-star programmers. From the sounds of it, Dennis is fundamentally wrong. He's probably right, his team probably doesn't like him b/c he's making them look quite bad. But that's OK, most programmers don't want to be all-stars, that's just the way it is. I work with a team that has some star programmers, but goodness knows that they don't read the magazines we have sitting around, nor do they visit the boss's extensive library or follow blogs like Coding Horror or Hanselminutes. They care, but not quite that much.

What really makes things worse for Dennis is that he has years of doing the stuff that makes an all-star programmer. Excellence is a habit, it's not some sudden burst of inspiration. Even the geniuses with seemingly sudden bursts of inspiration have generally built that up with their daily activities. Dennis has more suggestions than even the dedicated can reasonably perform in a year. I mean, just reading Joel Spolsky's books and Code Complete and Peopleware and Mythical Man Month, that's like a 6-9 month journey.

Even if you could physically read all of those books in 2 weekends, you need months of work-time to actually process and apply that information. Dennis here was brought in to save a project and is probably making good money to do so. If he wants to make a better team, he'll need management's approval for some Professional Development time during 9-5 and he'll need a specific plan of action.

Creating an all-star programmer takes months and years, not weeks.

So you can do three things:

1. Accept that people don't like being one-upped from their "comfortable" positions, especially the types you find in big corporations or union positions.
2. Find a way to improve morale first so that people want to learn out of pride rather than being forced to learn out of shame.
3. Ensure that management respects and supports your efforts and that you're making way more money than the "unwashed masses".

After that, just do what you do best, you can't replace great programmers.

Multiple streams of income (part 2)

Wow, there are definitely some negative thinkers here:

FourPillars:
I have a number of friends who quit jobs to start a business or new career and fell into the trap of thinking that they could make a living doing something they love.

Did they make the appropriate lifestyle adjustments? You can't just jump jobs and then expect to live the same lifestyle. When you start a business doing what you love your whole lifestyle has to change. Usually, the trap is thinking that you can change one fundamental part of your ecosystem (your job) and then have everything else remain stable.

Karl Katzke:
“it’s better to be liked than to be good.”

Isn't being liked part of being good? If you're twice as productive as the average worker bee, but you're a jerk and no one wants to work with you, then you're not very good at your job.

And let's face it, if you're amazing at what you do and the average guy next to you is getting the pay raise instead of you, then you should be asking for a pay raise to match his. If your bosses don't think that you're worth it, then it's your job to find a new boss that does. Yeah it doesn't seem fair, but that's just the way it works. Truth is, if you really were amazing at what you did and you were underpaid, then your departure has cost the company more money than the pay raise would've cost them.

So not only do you get more money, your old company is actually going to start losing money (I guess it seems fair now).

Brip Blap:
If you want to succeed as a wage earner, you have to put a LOT of effort just into your job.

Depends on your definition of success. If I work 40 hours weeks for 40k and you work 50 hours weeks for 50k, is that really success? Sounds to me like you're just getting paid for the privilege of working an extra 10 hours/week.

I figure that success is all about getting more done in less time. Having to put in overtime is just a bad sign for everyone involved, it either means that the company is not bringing in enough money, or that the guys at the top at reaping more benefits.

So maybe you need lots of EFFORT, but more effort is not about giving more time, it's about getting more done per unit of time, which is really what you want to do anyways b/c you want more money.

So how is more efficient work time any different from more efficient investing time? Maybe you can make more "extra money" spending 5 hours on your fund picks than you can by spending 5 hours on "professional development". But there's a break-even number here and you should figure out what that is, I mean otherwise you should be investing full-time b/c you'd make more in 40 hours of that than 40 hours of work.

Deborah:
So, we have the comments about the long working hours to climb the corporate ladder. I think employers are expecting more and more for wages that decreasing relative to costs.

Well Deborah, from a global standpoint, anyone in North America has been living well beyond their means for decades. The economy is Globalizing which means that we're flattening out the economy and flowing money from rich countries to poor ones. Of course, we're the rich ones, so money has to be flowing elsewhere. So over the next several years (at least) of the rate of increase of our standard of living will probably slow, but our standard of living will still be increasing.

Short term, things may seem like employees are losing ground, but long term, these don't seem to be much more than variations. After adjusting for inflation, median salaries haven't really shifted much in the last 30 years. Meanwhile the average household has more square footage/person than 30 years ago, we have commodity computers, way better health care, cheaper air travel, safer / more efficient cars and commoditized access to things only in sci-fi books at the time: Internet, portable music players, digital cameras. Now sure, the last 2 or 3 years have seen increased profit margins (so employees are getting less than they could), but this stuff doesn't last forever.

100 years ago there was no "retirement", so the very fact that you can even envision having enough money to spend several years or even a couple of decades doing nothing "productive" is actually quite a feat. Heck it's a feat that you even have that many decades in sight. Average life span in 1907 was about 47, you didn't even have decades to piss away. Here's a neat link with more info.

So this whole "employers wanting more for less" thing may be a sentiment, but it's really hard to back with any kind of numbers. Do you want more than last year? More than 10 years ago? More than 30 years ago? Or more than 100 years ago? Your statement about employers expecting more and more is probably only true for time spans less than 10 years. B/c I'm sure living better than my parents were 20 years ago.

As to the whole corporate ladder thing. What the heck is that anyways? Maybe it's just me being a 20-something, but there is no single corporate ladder out there.

There are people I listen to and people that listen to me. There's income I generate and income I get paid. If I'm not getting my cut of generated income, then I find someone who will give me my cut or I go out on my own. If I'm making less than the people that listen to me and I'm doing it for too long, then I leave.

Corporate entities do not need you for anything other than your abilities to generate income and your abilities to lead income generators. Most of us are streams of income for the companies we work with. They owe us as much loyalty as the income we bring in and we likewise owe them as much loyalty as the income and lifestyle they can afford us.

If no amount of increased efficiency will earn you your next raise then you've hit the end of your job with that company. Your new job is to find the company that will afford you the next raise for the money you bring to the table. Because that's what you are, you are a stream of income, you are to a company what a stock pick is to you.

So let's skip this whole corporate ladder paradigm. Your ultimate goal is lifestyle and happiness enhancement. Your worth to the company is the money they can make off you and the company's worth to you is the lifestyle they can afford you. You are a commodity to the company and they are a commodity to you. Anything that you do that does not respect this relationship is doomed to failure.

Where do things go wrong in Software

A while back I posted this in reply to somebody's really negative time at their office. It was serious reply to a "fellow programmer" wh0 was having some work-world issues.

Now just today I came across this piece by Frank Carr.
http://vbnotebookfor.net/vbnb_softdev_7Steps_1.htm

Which brought up a lot of the same stuff, he's asked for comments, so here's my reply. It's a good reminder of what we go through.

But I'm going to say something that may be wildly unpopular, but hear me out: Joe (our "hero") deserved to be fired .

Obviously, so did Brian (the evil manager), but Joe failed to do his job from the very beginning. When you are the team lead, your job is the protection of your staff and the protection of the project that's assigned to you.

Joe just failed this thing multiple ways, starting very early. In Chapter 3 he asks for help getting a meeting with Mary and Brian gives him a verbal reprimand. Good Leads don't let this happen, you don't just "ask Brian" for help, you forward him copies of all of the other failed meeting requests and tell him that your stake-holder meetings are being canceled. You tell him that you have no specifications or timelines and that you either need Brian to book the meeting and/or you need a new stakeholder and you put Red Exclamation Mark on the e-mail. If you don't get a reply in 2 days, you e-mail Brian's superior and you forward him all previous e-mails.

Already, this mitigates the big problem in Chapter 4. Joe agrees to work, but he still doesn't have a stakeholder, he's agreed to work that he simply cannot deliver. If I'm working for Joe, I'm probably already off looking for new work. Joe has failed his role as project lead, he's accepted work that he cannot delegate to a finish. He has failed to protect his team and his project.

The rest of the story is a funny read in personalities (could make for a movie), but all stems from the one fundamental flaw. It's all just more downhill b/c Joe couldn't even get the first thing right.

Now following that, Joe demonstrates his fundamental personal flaw. Joe cannot defend himself. He accepts not only Brian's reprimands but also the official HR reprimands. By accepting these reprimands he has not defended his own career or well-being. Brian is clearly a work bully and (in this story) Joe makes no effort to defend himself. Bullying is not just bad practice, it's illegal. Any office with an HR department knows this. Rather than accept an HR reprimand, Joe should be printing out e-mails and gathering documents for his case. He should be talking to HR and telling them that Brian is engaging in Bullying behavior and that the incident is not isolated. Joe should have phone numbers on hand for all government-related agencies and for his lawyer and he needs to walk into the HR office and tell them that the bullying ends as of his visit.

Joe needs enough spine to say that he will not be fired over Brian's behavior and he needs to follow up with a lawyer if he is let go. Why? B/c he's a team lead and that's his job. If Joe can't even protect himself, there's no way he can protect his project and his team. I don't want to be with Joe or follow Joe, I have very little respect for Joe. Joe's not a hero, he's a loser with a protagonist role, just like Brian is a loser with an antagonist role.

The story rings very true but all of the major players are losers. So I guess it's a great example of what not to do.

Loving what you do

I just got off the slashdot blog with a pretty powerful post.

Here's a link to the original post.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=238919&cid=19559553

And here's a copy of my reply:

So why the hell are you not doing what you love everyday? Why do you spend your days doing stuff that doesn't fill the soul? If you really love your horse, then why don't you become a professional horse trainer? Then you can spend time with her everyday.

Sure your current job allows you to "help her have a better life.", but that doesn't mean that you couldn't give her a better life while doing something that "fills the soul". I mean, it's great to hear nuggets of wisdom like this one: "Company X, the best place in the world to work, will can your ass the moment the numbers do not add up for keeping you.", until you realize that that's pretty much how everything works out in life. (didn't take me 28 years in the field BTW) If my SO doesn't get her cut in the relationship deal she leaves, if my boss doesn't pay me enough or treat me well, I leave, if I can't carry my own weight at the company, then I get dumped, if I can't pick up the rebounds then coach benches me. It's pretty darn simple.

So I go to a job I love doing every day. And as a direct result of the fact that I love my job I'm not worried about getting canned b/c I'll find another. Just b/c some company dumps me doesn't mean that I can't find deep spiritual enjoyment in my work. Being fired doesn't mean I'm inadequate at what I do either, it's just a wrong time/place. Heck your beloved horse is going to die someday soon, probably before you will, how's that any different than getting "downsized" from a job that you love?

You may be a horse whisperer masquerading as an IT guy and for that you have my deepest sympathies. But I'm an IT guy and that's tattoed on my breast. It sounds really corny, but that's what I do, I'm not here to "die a slow death for some company", I'm here to throw in my 2 cents the best way I can find. The company is my means to that end, they make it easier to do what I'm good at. I have loves outside of work, but I surprise the most people and do the most good in this world by solving and automating complex processes and problems. If I'm "dying" at a company, then I'm not really contributing as best as I can and it's time for me to go.

So if you're pissed off at companies and the job in general after 28 years, then you're just in the wrong field or suffering some major emotional breakdown. Cash out now, take the retirement money and go train horses. I mean, isn't that what you're saving for anyways? So that you can "retire" and spend the days with your girl? So if that's where you want to be, if that's what you're good at, if that's what you're passionate about, then you'll find a way to make the money from working with horses. You said it yourself, this money is just a "means to an end", so why not use your means and find an end you enjoy? Why not pick a life and then make it happen instead of picking a job and then hoping that you can find a life?