On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.
From an actual job description for a Software Development Manager:
If you’re writing job descriptions and learning English at the same time, there’s no shame in having a native speaker review your work.
The job description goes on like that for 10 or 12 more bullet points. I singled that one out because I like the phrase “minimize retention.” I can recommend a couple of people for that.
I assume it’s a language problem in this case — that the author meant to say “maximize retention” or “minimize turnover” — but it might be a kick to have a job where your actual charter is to minimize retention.
You would not be an easy person to work for. You would take all the credit. Your subordinates would get all of the blame.
Picture having the names of all staff members written on a whiteboard in your office and removing them one by one with a triumphant swipe of your eraser at the end of their (hopefully brief) tenure.
Maybe your boss would stop by every now and again to tap on a name and ask, “Why is that guy still here?”
Of course, if some clinging vine is screwing up your retention rate by refusing to quit (maybe he really needs the job?), you can just call him in and fire him. Or her.
Good times! If only all job objectives were this easy to meet.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
This is a few years old now, but I just saw it today. (Please read Gene Weingarten‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning story from the Washington Post for the full details.)
[youtube https://youtu.be/hnOPu0_YWhw]
The premise is that Joshua Bell, international virtuoso, one of the best violinists in the world — maybe the best violinist in the world — dresses in jeans, T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap, and for 45 minutes plays several renowned classical pieces (on a good fiddle — the Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius of 1713, purchased by Bell in 2003 for $4 million) in a Washington, D.C., metro station, during a Friday morning rush hour, with a violin case open in front of him for donations.
Do people recognize beauty in everyday life?
[SPOILER ALERT]
No. They don’t. Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, is the only person out of 1,000 or so passers-by who recognizes Bell.
“It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Furukawa says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters!”
(Some people gave less than that, including pennies. Bell’s total take was $32.17.)
Furukawa enters the video around 1:35, stops 10 feet in front of Bell and listens smiling to the rest of the performance while everyone else in the place goes on about their business. It’s heartbreaking to watch . . . because of the one person who stopped or the thousand others who didn’t, I’m not sure which.
The worst scenario I can imagine is when we allow real customers, users, and our own salespeople to dictate “functions and features” to the developers, carefully disguised as “customer requirements.” Maybe conveyed by our Product Owners. If you go slightly below the surface, of these false “requirements” (“means,” not “ends”), you will immediately find that they are not really requirements. They are really bad amateur design, for the “real” requirements — implied but not well defined.
Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away
Speaking of selling chickens still in shells, an august panel of industry giants laid out their recent improvements and plans for ALM products (Application Lifecycle Management, for those not in the know). These guys dazzled the audience with how they’ve moved far beyond simple source code repositories and testing tools to a complete integration of all modern software practices. Quite a coup, indeed, since most real live software developers I’m seeing out there today still aren’t using the practices automated by the ALM tools. . . .
In other words, many software developers aren’t using practices such as test driven development or source version control. Yet here are HP, Microsoft, and IBM announcing new ALM tools that automate more advanced practice in areas not even in use in the first place. Unbelievable.
If Grateful Dead fans are Deadheads, what are fans of Philip K. Dick?
From a corporate alumni group on Facebook:
We lost another good guy last night. [Name redacted] fell off his boat crabbing in the Chesapeake. He died doing what he loved.
He loved falling off boats? That’s unusual. It’s too bad he didn’t love swimming. Or wearing life vests.
Via LinkedIn:
I know George Zimmerman has had a lot on his plate lately, but when is he going to get back to doing those Mens Wearhouse commercials?
East coast woman on conference call is yelling into the phone. Why? To be heard at a distance? HEY HONEY THE PHONE WORKS ELECTRONICALLY YOU DONT HAVE TO YELL!
In 1986, Steve Jobs famously challenged John Sculley, asking him if he wanted to keep on making sugar water or help Apple change the world. While that did not quite work out the way either of them intended, the challenge itself still holds. Do you want to spend your next decade developing more digital distractions to amuse people while they stand in line at Starbuck’s, or do you want to take the human race to the next plateau?
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. — Vincent van Gogh
Aerogramme Writers’ Studio: Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop
We are one nation. We are one people. We will rise and we will fall together. Anyone who doesn’t believe it should come here to Detroit. It’s like the commercial says: This is a city that’s been to heck and back. And while there are still a lot of challenges here, I see a city that’s coming back.
POTUS: “When the auto industry was on the brink of collapse and Gov. Romney said, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt,' I said no.”
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 16, 2012
In California back in 1979 I helped to get the Libertarian Party’s Presidential candidate, Ed Clark, on the ballot. Since then, I’ve had nothing to do with politics, which I’ve come to regard as unseemly. That others can be enthusiastic about this or that politician surprises me in the same way that it might surprise me to learn that there is such a thing as an official streptococcus fan club with a list of dues-paying members. And although I can’t claim never to have voted, I can at least say that I would hate to ever have to admit voting for any of the people I voted for. All things considered I’d much rather exercise what Herbert Spencer calls my "Right to Ignore the State."
African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population, despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your Ground” would help African Americans.
Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.
Detroit used to be known as “the Paris of the midwest” – a city of wide streets, imposing buildings, and home to the great US auto industry. In 1960, it had the highest per capita income in the nation. But decades of decline, racial tension and corruption have brought the motor city to its knees.
Highest per capita income in the nation! I did not know that.
Anyway, Detroit filed for bankruptcy last week with debts of more than $18 billion.
The city’s population has dropped from 2 million in 1950 to 700,000 today, as Detroiters have become fed up with decades of mismanagement and rising crime and poverty. Detroit’s murder rate is at a 40-year high, only a third of its ambulances are in working order, and nearly half its streetlights are broken.
Citizens wait 58 minutes for the police to respond to calls, compared to a national average of 11 minutes. There are 78,000 abandoned buildings . . .
Detroit (1701-2013). Don't cry for us, America. You're next.
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) July 19, 2013
Michael Moore, like a stopped clock, is occasionally right. It’s funny he should say that though — “You’re next” — because he’s never been an advocate of fiscal responsibility or not spending lots and lots of money that you don’t actually have.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting but if what he’s saying is that America is on track for bankruptcy, then I couldn’t agree more.
