I feel like work gives my life the illusion of meaning. On the other hand, it really cuts into my day. Dilemma . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Work
Small Consolations
Who possesses the wherewithal for labor or love without small consolations? Who can live? — Jeredith Merrin, “Downtown Diner” Read more →
A Moron’s Guide to Success
You could easily conclude from reading profiles in OC Metro that there’s not a single businessperson in Orange County with an ounce of wit or self-awareness. Case in point: A profile in the current issue of “surfing banker” John Lynch, executive VP of Secured Funding Corp. in Costa Mesa. The hook is — he’s a banker but he surfs every morning before work, and he says things like “Hey bro,” “We rock,” and “I never took a day of college.” Read more →
Unskilled and Unaware of It
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. — Justin Kruger and David Dunning,… Read more →
Management 101: How to Demoralize Your Top Performers Into Early Retirement
Sanders quit because Lions weren’t winning — ESPN.com headline Background Barry Sanders, as you may already know, was a running back for the Detroit Lions — one of the best running backs ever. It was shocking news — to the extent that an athlete’s retirement can be considered “shocking” — when Sanders retired in 1998 because, at age 31, he was at the peak of his career, and on the verge of breaking the all-time NFL rushing record. Some Lions fans — to this day — still expect him to change his mind and play again. What Sanders Said Sanders has an “as told to” autobiography coming out, in which he says that he retired, not — as the above headline says — because the Lions weren’t winning (which they weren’t), but because of his realization that the management of the team no longer cared about winning. Big difference. Here’s… Read more →
A Brilliant Waste of Time
A colleague is internationalizing error messages for a login form. He can tell you that your password is wrong in 12 different languages, even though the users of the application all speak English. “This is a brilliant waste of time,” he chortles. “It sure is . . . if by ‘brilliant waste of time,’ you mean ‘waste of time.’” Read more →
Alan Turing
A colleague at work asked me, “Do you know how Alan Turing died?” “He ate a poisoned apple.” “His mom always maintained that he did that by accident.” “Does his mom also maintain that he just never found the right girl?” Read more →
Feet
We have a young woman at work with the most extraordinary feet — beautifully polished toenails, toe rings, and just this week she added three small faux (I assume) diamonds to the big toenail on each foot. Read more →
Great Moments in Hubris
I had lunch with a couple of colleagues today at an Indian buffet. When the time came to divide the check, one of them announced as he tossed in his money, “I don’t tip at buffets.” When this met with silence, he added, “And I had to ask for more water. That indicates a lack of attentiveness. So no tip.” As we were leaving, the “inattentive” busboy came running up and handed Mr. I-Don’t-Tip-At-Buffets not one, but two cell phones, which he’d left behind at the table. Read more →
Management 101
I saw the new Jackie Chan movie today . . . it was pretty bad, but the thing that resonated with me was that the movie, like all movies of this type, had an evil villain, and the villain would gather his evil henchmen and say things like “Which one of you would like to explain this latest failure?” He sounded just like one of the managers I work with . . . Read more →
Undercutting the Offshore Bid
Primate Programming Inc. Read more →
Stuff They Don’t Teach You in School
A client I’m working with is rewarding the top 20 percent of its sales force by flying them to Lake Tahoe for a 3-day weekend. An enterprising competitor might say to himself, “Hmmm . . . what if something were to happen to that plane?” Now there’s something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. Read more →
Useless Reports
A client is paying me to streamline its reporting system. Like many companies, they produce a lot of reports, most of them not very useful. So far, my choice for the least useful, or most useless, is one titled “All Sales Data in Database.” Guess what it prints? If you said all the sales data in the database, you’re right! It’s a big report . . . Read more →
Your Résumé is Quite Impressive
Possible responses: It should be. I wrote it. It’s the only thing more impressive than my actual accomplishments. Read more →
The Ultimate Morale Booster
Cybersex and so-called virtual affairs on the Internet are the all the buzz among professionals who study spouses who stray. But the truly fertile ground for dangerous emotional attachments outside marriages is much more conventional: the workplace. — USA Today, “Infidelity reaches beyond having sex”, Jan. 8, 2003 The Programmer reflects that perhaps sex in the workplace is a good indicator of employee morale: I remember my first job, I worked on some great teams and great projects. I also had liaisons with a secretary and a senior systems analyst (quite a coup for a junior programmer). A married operations manager kind of came on to me, but she had a crisis of conscience at the last minute. Currently, I work in a low-morale workplace — a low-morale industry, for that matter — no one has any emotional connection with one another, and I get no sex at all. Of… Read more →
Job Posting of the Week
From an actual job posting: Time management and data organization skills are also required. What kind of world are we living in where that sort of thing has to be explicitly specified in a job description? Aren’t time management and data organization skills pretty much required for daily life, outside of, say, a prison or a mental asylum? Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
How’s Business?
People often ask me: How’s the computer business? One thing I can tell them is that a significant number of my Merry Christmas emails from former colleagues end with something like this: P.S. Please let me know if you hear of any job leads as I am currently unemployed. Read more →
Overheard
A brief conversation between Victor, one of our project managers, and our Sales VP as Victor is walking out of the VP’s office: VP: You’re the greatest! VICTOR: I’m trying. VP (louder now, as Victor is halfway down the hall): Thanks, Wayne! Read more →
No Work Today
A former colleague of mine died over the weekend — “former” only in the sense that he’s now deceased; he was in the office as recently as last Friday. Sadly, I suppose, my first thought was: “At least he doesn’t have to come to work today.” Read more →
“Hiring the Best” Explained
An employer is always somewhat reassured by the ignominiousness of his staff. At all costs the slave should be slightly, even much, to be despised. A mass of chronic blemishes, moral and physical, are a justification of the fate which is overwhelming him. The world gets along better that way, because then each man stands in it in the place he deserves. A being who is useful to you should be low, flat, prone to weakness; that is what’s comforting; especially as Baryton paid us really very badly. In cases of acute avarice like this, employers are always a bit suspicious and uneasy. A failure, a debauchee, a black sheep, a devoted black sheep, all that made sense, justified things, fitted in, in fact. Baryton would have been on the whole rather pleased if I had been slightly wanted by the police. That always makes for real devotion. — Louis-Ferdinand… Read more →