I couldn’t help noticing that Harriet Quimby is a lot prettier than Harriet Tubman.
“As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
Who Wants to Be a Salesman?
Our new Sales VP came down from his office on the 7th floor to the development area on the 4th floor. He was gripping and waggling a golf club, a driver.
As you might imagine, we don’t have a golf course on the 4th floor — so why is this jackass holding a golf club?
Does he want to be a golfer? Could we possibly find a salesman who wants to be a salesman?
Not coincidentally, our booking of new business since his arrival has been nonexistent.
He only seems to be able to keep one piece of information in his head at any given time — and usually that piece of information is his next tee time.
We got an email from him the other day stating that anyone who brings in a qualified sales lead that is subsequently closed and billed will be paid $1,000.
Honestly, if I had a qualified lead on a development project — unfortunately, I don’t — but if I did, I’d go work it myself before I turned it over to this guy and the collection of hayseeds and slobs he calls a sales team.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Classic Review
Fortunately, however, the chief damage done will be to the author himself, who thus dishonors his own physical nature; for imperfect though the race is, it still remains so much purer than the stained and distorted reflection of its animalism in Leaves of Grass, that the book cannot attain to any very wide influence.
Last Words
“I’d like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass.”
“I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.”
“Hurry it up you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re screwing around.”
A Bad Review
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. He took a “stay the course” approach and continued to pursue strategies long after they had proven ineffective. Rating: Did Not Meet Expectations |
| Communication |
|
Flem is an articulate communicator but does not seem to be effective in reporting bad news to clients and upper management. He has a “can do” communication style that unfortunately keeps people in a state of total denial about what’s actually happening. As a result, what could have been modest setbacks, had they been acknowledged as such and dealt with, escalated into full-blown breakdowns. Rating: Met Some Expectations |
| Customer Service/Responsiveness |
|
Flem was probably overly responsive to customer requests, with a resulting boomerang effect. He took client requirements at face value and did not provide the kind of risk management one would expect from a responsible professional. As a result, most of the client’s investment in web development was wasted on non-productive activities.
Rating: Met Some Expectations |
| Leadership |
|
Flem maintains a positive attitude when things aren’t going well. Unfortunately, his projects never seem to be going well. He failed to fulfill the main role of a project leader, which is to monitor plan vs. actual and to take action as needed to bring the two closer together. In some cases, a project manager fails to observe that a project is veering off course, but I don’t think that was the case here. I think Flem just failed to act on that observation.
Rating: Met Some Expectations |
| Performance Effectiveness |
|
Flem did not establish any sort of professional quality standards for the project, resulting in a considerable waste of time, money and human potential. He did not demonstrate the ability to effectively steer a software project.
Rating: Did Not Meet Expectations |
| Problem Solving/Judgment |
|
Flem advocated a fairly random approach to problem solving. When dealing with system errors, rather than attacking root causes, we took some random action hoping that would fix the error. Sometimes it did, although we didn’t know why. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it introduced a new error. This is an area where a technical leader needs to take a stand and do the right thing.
Rating: Did Not Meet Expectations |
| Team Orientation |
|
I think Flem’s failure to establish professional quality standards had a disheartening effect on the team. People will work hard to achieve excellence, but not if they see that management places no value on it.
Rating: Did Not Meet Expectations |
| Technical Expertise |
|
Flem has some very good technical skills, but did not exhibit a good understanding of the full range of technical options, risks and tradeoffs involved in developing a web application.
Rating: Met Some Expectations |
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Having it All! (Except the Kids)
More highlights from the Census Bureau’s Fertility of American Women report released last week:
- Overall, 43 percent of women of childbearing age (15 to 44 years old) were childless in 2000. Among women who were nearing the completion of their childbearing years (40 to 44 years old), 19 percent were childless, almost twice as many as women in the same age group in 1980 (10 percent).
- Women nearing the end of their childbearing years had an average of 1.9 children, which is below the level required for the natural replacement of the population (about 2.1 births per woman). This average is one child less than the average for women in this same age group in 1980 (3.0 children).
Having it All!
Working moms are destroying the nation
The labor force participation rates of mothers with infant children fell from a record-high 59 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2000, the first significant decline since the Census Bureau developed the indicator in 1976, according to the Fertility of American Women report released last week.
Remember That
Motto on the wall at my son’s tae kwon do school:
A Winner is never Excuse.
A Looser is always Complain.
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.
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 . . .
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 other machine-rockers — that hasn’t happened.
Today, a young woman was in the process of shaking one of the machines when our dim-witted Lothario of a CTO wandered by and said, with absolute sincerity:
“Can I help you with that?”
The Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs, in which “lower-level” needs like food, water and shelter must be met before moving to “higher-level” needs like esteem and belongingness.
If we apply this theory to the workplace, I think it’s fair to say that before knowledge workers can be innovative or creative or anything like that, they’ve got to at least be able to hear themselves think.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Dav Pilkey Lives!
Charles Dickens, however, is dead
I was reading Bleak House last night, and my 8-year-old son said, “Charles Dickens is dead, right?”
And I said, “Yes, he’s dead.”
“It seems like all the good writers are dead.”
“Well, a lot of them are dead.”
“Dav Pilkey is still alive.”
So there you have it: Charles Dickens is dead but Dav Pilkey lives.
Tra-la-laaaaaa!
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: webvanAre 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: webvanI have been working on a story about Webvan for about 6-7 weeks now (have spoken with more than 40 people who worked there) and I am learning that they had some pretty serious problems in the Oakland warehouse. Because it was so highly automated, things would break and everything would come to a halt. I keep hearing about orders that never made it out the door, orders that were hours late or cancelled altogether, orders in which half the totes were missing and so on. This is all coming from the couriers, customer service representatives, warehouse workers, etc. But just about every customer I have ever spoken to loved Webvan and I can't figure it out... If I can't find dissatisfied customers, I will say that in the story.
From: Paul Epps
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 2:54 PM
To: Tessler, Joelle
Subject: RE: webvanWow, what a quick response! Here's a theory for you: It doesn't take perfection to satisfy people where Web technology is concerned. They still have such low expectations that they're amazed when it works at all.
From: Tessler, Joelle
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 3:11 PM
To: Paul Epps
Subject: RE: webvanWell, some of that was cut and pasted since I've had to explain this over and over... You're probably right. A lot of customers have written back to say they did have some problems, but still loved the service.
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 Johnson – died 12/12/2005, age 92
- Mitch Miller – died 7/31/2010, age 99
- Stan Musial – died 1/19/2013, age 92
- Bettie Page – died 12/11/2005, age 85
- Thurl Ravenscroft – died 5/22/2005, age 91
- Max Schmeling – died 2/2/2005, age 99
- Penny Singleton – died 11/12/2003, age 95
- Enos Slaughter – died 8/12/2002, age 86
- Billy Wilder – died 3/27/2002, age 95
- Alan Young – died 5/18/2016, age 96
N-Tear Development
And there was sadness round, and faces bowed,
And woman’s tears fell fast, and children wailed aloud.
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.
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.
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.
Integration Chickens
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves . . .
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 didn’t work. We tried Vignette 5.5 with WebSphere 4.1, and that didn’t work either.
Through it all, we clung to the hope that the upcoming release of Vignette 5.6 would solve all our problems by working — as promised — with WebSphere 5.1.
That is to say . . . even though 5.6 hasn’t been officially certified by Vignette to work with WebSphere, the rep who provided the free shirts told us that he personally thinks it will work, so we’re counting on it.
And . . . it doesn’t work.
The failure of the 5.6 release has been a horrible psychological setback, and there has been mourning and lamentation.
“We trusted them . . .”
“If this is how they treat their friends . . .”
But . . . if we were to indulge in a moment of introspection, search our conscience, we would have to admit that this is a risk we incurred when we elected to create the dependency on Vignette — that Vignette might somehow drop the ball, that their next release might be a piece of crap, that they might change their product strategy, that they might fire the remaining 85% of the workforce and go out of business entirely, any of which would be a body blow to those of us who’d elected to build web sites around their technology.
It’s like handing a loaded gun to a trained ape (and a poorly trained ape at that). When something goes wrong, you can’t blame the ape.
It’s a way of living with a tragedy, I guess, to claim after it happens that you saw it coming, as if somehow you had already made the necessary adjustments beforehand.
Sycophant: You saw this coming.
Project Manager: Big time.
Well, Mr. Project Manager, it’s not even something that was coming . . . the whole project from Day One has been an integration nightmare. And there’s really no credit in having seen something coming if you did nothing to avert it. It makes people think that maybe you didn’t see it coming, or if you did, that you grossly underestimated the severity of the problem, or you didn’t care, or you thought you could bluff your way through it.
Summary
Integration of third-party products is always hard and best avoided.
The problem isn’t specifically with Vignette or Websphere. Substitute your own favorite “best of breed” solutions; the issues would still be the same.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Related Links
- IBM, Vignette team on e-business
You might remember seeing this announcement last year. Don’t be confused. That was a marketing agreement; it doesn’t mean the products actually work together.
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.”