Resemblance to persons living or dead is statistically probable. Name: Snopes, Flem Title: Software Development Manager Developing Others Flem was not effective in giving team members an opportunity to be successful or to do high-quality work. The project development process was limiting and frustrating. Rating: Did Not Meet Expectations Integrity Good work ethic. Big problem here is that Flem didn’t seem to see how poor project outcomes were a direct result of anything he did or didn’t do. He seemed to feel that he was a victim primarily of bad technology, as well as bad clients, bad luck, bad karma, etc. And while there were some unavoidable setbacks on the project, as there are on any project, Flem didn’t seem to see the human decision points in the process where he could have made a difference. Rating: Met Some Expectations Change Management Flem was slow to react to changing circumstances.… Read more →
Remember That
Motto on the wall at my son’s tae kwon do school: A Winner is never Excuse. A Looser is always Complain. Read more →
Absolutely Sweet Marie
Marie Antoinette misreads the mood of the peasantry: When we went to walk in the Tuileries, there was so vast a crowd that we were three-quarters of an hour without being able to move either forward or backward. The dauphin and I gave repeated orders to the Guards not to beat any one, which had a very good effect . . . When we returned from our walk we went up to an open terrace and stayed there half an hour. I cannot describe to you, my dear mamma, the transports of joy and affection which every one exhibited towards us. Before we withdrew we kissed our hands to the people, which gave them great pleasure. What a happy thing it is for persons in our rank to gain the love of a whole nation so cheaply. — Marie Antoinette, Letter to Her Mother, 1773 Read more →
Fun Fact of the Day
If you leave the final “s” off the word “assess,” a spell-checker will not flag it as an error. This was an accidental discovery, like penicillin . . . Read more →
Profiles in Management: The Intrepid Imbecile
We have some vending machines at our office, in a small alcove off the development area — the kind that have the snacks lined up between spiral rods, so when you buy something, the appropriate rod rotates and the snack drops down for you. This is obviously a horrible design for a couple of reasons: I don’t want my M&Ms dropped from a height because it breaks them; and Sometimes the packaging of the snack gets hung up on the rod and the snack doesn’t drop. When that happens, the victim usually rocks the machine back and forth trying to dislodge the snack. This often works, but not on the first couple of tries. It also makes an incredible racket. I’ve heard that vending machines are extremely top-heavy and tip over easily, but so far — despite my fervent hope that someone will be mashed flat as a lesson to… Read more →
Why Is Everybody So Happy?
This is a story about customer satisfaction in the Internet age. Today’s Good Morning Silicon Valley brings this provocative item: Problems with Webvan? Mercury News reporter Joelle Tessler would like to talk to former Webvan customers dissatisfied with the company’s service. If that’s you, please drop her an e-mail at jtessler@sjmercury.com Is this for real?! Well, there’s one way to find out . . . From: Paul Epps Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 2:35 PM To: jtessler@sjmercury.com Subject: webvan Are you preparing an article on dissatisfied Webvan customers? How do you know they’re dissatisfied before you’ve talked to them? Who can the *satisfied* Webvan customers talk to? I’m in no way affiliated with Webvan, nor was I a customer, but this doesn’t seem fair. Apologies in advance if I’ve misread your intentions. From: Tessler, Joelle Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 2:39 PM To: Paul Epps Subject: RE: webvan I… Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Ingmar Bergman – film director Henri Cartier-Bresson – photographer Archibald Cox – Watergate special prosecutor Olivia De Havilland – actress Edward Heath – British prime minister Skitch Henderson – bandleader Thor Heyerdahl – anthropologist Edmund Hillary – mountaineer Van Johnson – actor Mitch Miller – bandleader Stan Musial – baseball player Bettie Page – model Thurl Ravenscroft – voice, Tony the Tiger Max Schmeling – heavyweight champion boxer Penny Singleton – actress, Blondie, Jane Jetson Enos Slaughter – baseball player Billy Wilder – film director Alan Young – actor, “Mister Ed” Updates Ingmar Bergman – died 7/30/2007, age 89 Henri Cartier-Bresson – died 8/22/2004, age 95 Archibald Cox – died 5/29/2004, age 92 Olivia De Havilland – died 7/25/2020, age 104 Edward Heath – died 7/17/2005, age 89 Skitch Henderson – died 11/1/2005, age 87 Thor Heyerdahl – died 4/18/2002, age 87 Edmund Hillary – died 1/11/2008, age 88 Van… Read more →
N-Tear Development
And there was sadness round, and faces bowed, And woman’s tears fell fast, and children wailed aloud. — William Cullen Bryant, “The Old Man’s Funeral” On any software project, the development time and cost, as well as the amount of weeping and gnashing of teeth, will increase geometrically with the number of abstraction layers. That’s why it’s called “n-tear development.” Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
Leaving Silicon Valley
Notes from the Rainbow Hotel Casino, Wendover, NV: Belongings in a U-Haul in the parking lot. I liked the Bay Area, but it was indifferent to me. I sold online ads for an Internet company. I wore shorts to work and still made a lot of money. Then in October, the executives called a meeting and told us the company was closing. We had an hour to leave the building. I was really sad. I got another job selling ads for LookSmart. But LookSmart wasn’t as smart as it looked. In January, they laid off 30 percent of the staff, including me. There was good news too. I could always find 12 friends to go bowling on a Friday afternoon because they didn’t have jobs either. Now I’m going B-to-C. Back to Cleveland. Read more →
Ansel Adams (and Other Great Americans)
Ansel Adams was born on this date, Feb. 20, in 1902. Adams was a great American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photos of Yosemite and other natural monuments of the American West. Read more →
Integration Chickens
Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves . . . — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I. Sc. 2 The Programmer finds that the integration chickens have come home to roost . . . I remember when Vignette first arrived at our company and the people who had made the decision to buy it would show up at meetings in their complimentary Vignette polo shirts and explain that the project was going to be delayed just a bit more because they still couldn’t work the bugs out of the Vignette installation — but hey, willya look at these free shirts we got?! Well, we’ve been trying to work the bugs out of it for three months now, and to integrate it with IBM’s WebSphere for a client project. We tried Vignette 5.5 with WebSphere 5.1, which… Read more →
BZY CHIC
Dying with the most toys Saw a license plate in the office lot today on a BMW 535i: On the frame, it said “Hey Boys — This Girl Will Die With The Most Toys.” Read more →
Profiles in Management: The Protector
Cast of Characters Manager, the leader of a software project that is floundering because his needlessly complex design cannot actually be implemented. Programmer, a programmer on the project. Manager: Keep working hard, and I will protect you should things break down. Programmer: Protect me from what? That sounds kind of ominous. Manager: Some people may be worried that if the project fails, they may get a bad review, or not get a bonus. But I’m looking at whether or not people are working hard, even if the project isn’t going well. So as long as you’re not goofing off, and you don’t have a bad attitude, you should be all right. A “bad attitude” in these cases is defined as pointing out that 20 people have been working on the project for two months without producing a single working line of code, because they’ve been asked to yoke… Read more →
Lead Web Developer: No Experience Required
Who’s TheMan? I’d never heard of TheMan.com until yesterday, when I read that the site had shut down, and replaced what I assume must have at one time been content with the resumes of its out-of-work former employees. You can get a good feel for the company from this Sept. 27, 1999 Time magazine article. Cringe in horror as moronic 27-year-old CEO Calvin Lui closes meetings by barking “All right, dudes, let’s rock and roll!’ Gasp in amazement as he draws analogies between TheMan.com and one of his former employers, the Walt Disney Company! “This could be a major, major public company,” he says. Not a major public company, but a major major public company! Feel his soul-stirring passion to recruit “the A people” for”‘below-average salaries”! Lui was right about one thing though: “I understand that right now we’re a zit compared to everybody else. But in a year, we’re… Read more →
The Winchester House Effect
Background The Winchester House in San Jose was built by Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester (“The Gun That Won the West”) Repeating Arms Company fortune. After her daughter and husband died, she came to believe that the family was haunted by the ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles. She consulted a medium in Boston, who told her to move west and build a mansion that would never be finished. As long as she kept building, she would never die. (Whether or not you believe in spiritualists, you’ve got to give high marks here for originality.) In 1884, Mrs. Winchester moved to San Jose, which was then a rural community, and bought an eight-room farmhouse. She kept builders employed at the house 24 hours a day for the next 38 years, until her death in 1922. By that time, the house was four stories high (it had been seven… Read more →
Action is Eloquence
Action is eloquence. — Shakespeare, Coriolanus Vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked persons, gentlemen, and ladies can be project managers. Lost souls, procrastinators, and wishy-washies cannot. — Jerry Madden, “One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers” You can have a lot of bad qualities and still be an effective project manager, but you can’t be indecisive. Work out your personal insecurities on your own time. Make a decision. Move on to the next problem. Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
The Programming Circus
Most of my illustrious career has been spent working or consulting for Fortune 1000 companies. These companies are fundamentally dependent on their computer systems, particularly their online systems, to transact business. If the systems are down, the business stops running. In fact, the systems don’t even have to be down to create havoc. What if the response time is too slow? If you’ve ever done user testing with people whose job it is to enter money-making financial transactions for large corporations, you may have been amazed, as I was, at how fast they are. Obviously then, the software you build for them has to be even faster; split-second response time is required. If your software is slowing people down, the business is losing money. Or what if people are sitting around staring at their monitors because they can’t figure out how that great new interface you gave them is supposed… Read more →