Review Time

Its that  time of the year where I work. Review time. I'll call it review, but they have some fancy management frou-frou name that conveniently has a three letter acronym. Its sort of a three word version of "screw you".

Can you think of management-speak that means screw-you but can be used for various career and performance reviews? Perhaps this could be a drinking game? Now that I mention it, this is probably how  the term "Personal Business Commitments" was created.

So, I sat there looking at the commitments I made last year, and now one year later they seem so shallow. Pointless. Naive.

And then I had to look at the section on my "development". And this part hurt the most. It hurt because I love learning. I want to learn more. I want to be  the best I can be at my job.

But at the place I work, they not only do not care about my development. They go to great lengths to try to make me "feel" like I am, but at zero cost to them. There are, in reality two costs. Firstly, the cost of the management time they waste on propaganda trying make us "think" we are developing. But then there is the loss of knowledge when people leave (and they are leaving) because they are tired of the propaganda.

As for me? Why was I not being "developed", or developing, or learning? Because they will not pay for any training in my specialisation. And secondly, I have to self-manage everything. From any servers I need to being forced to use their crappy, internal, bottom-dollar tools that don't work. Now that is time I will never see again and never get back.

Its a shame really, because I like the team I am on, and the people I report too.  But the place is a mess.

Python, Factors, and Primes

So my son had math homework on determining the factors of numbers. This was part of a larger mondule on factors, prime, and composite numbers. So after completing the homework together I asked him: "Do you think we can modify our times table program to calculate the factors of a number?".

He thought for a moment and then said: "Yes".

And so we set to it. As it turns out, the program required little change, but the significant new piece of learning was the moduls operator.

We essentially looped from 1 to the given number and took the modulus of the given number by the loop iteration. If the modulus had a value, then the loop iteration was not a factor. If there was no remainder, then it was a factor, which we would print.

Of course this also introduced to him the concept of the if test statement in python.

Killing Motivation #12: More Training

So I know I have talked about demoralizing your staff with training games - but the fun is only limited by your capacity for evil.

Here is another trick.

Pretend to give you employees training by getting other employees to share what they know. The design pattern here is called "The Blind Leading the Blind" - or in the case of some three letter corporation "Think".

Let your staff pretend to think they are getting training. I mean really you don't care if they get training or not. What is important is that they "Think" they are getting training. And it costs you nothing.

Python for Kids

So I wanted to expose the world of programming to my son, who is pretty adept as a computer user, but has little knowledge of their internal working or how software is actually created.

I was looking at python since its cost of ownership is free, there are lots of online resources, and we can do a lot with it. I also wanted to brush up on my Python knowledge so this seems to be a good match.

I found the O'Reilly book, Python for Kids, as a guide. But I am sure we are going to go off course. The nice "hook" with this book is that we are, by the end, going to create a game. Once I said that, it was like I entered a Shangri-La of enthusiasm.

We had a couple of sessions getting use the environment, understanding what a variable is. What we can do with it. Some math operations running the interpreter. And then we moved into storing our commands in files so that we did not have to continually retype our program.

But then we created an assignment for ourselves: The times table. This is what we decided to do:

1. Take two numbers from the user, the times table to output, and its range, how much of the table we wanted to product.

2. For each value in the range calculate the times table entry.

3. Output it for the user.

4. Profit. (Why do people say this?)

This little assignment taught us:

• About user input. 
• How user input is a string, even if they type in a number, since a number can be a string. 
• Converting that input string to a number.
• How a for loop helps us count through the table.
• Performing the calculation.
• Printing output.

He was quite amazed at the speed at which the computer can calculate since he is trying to learn his times tables and fun things like long division.

Killing Motivation #11 - Ignoring your own Advice to Client on Retaining Staff.

Lets say you have a subset of your workforce that is highly specialized. Also,  this is in an area of business that you want to show to your clientel that you have expertise in. How would you demoralize your specialized workforce?

Follow these quick and easy steps.

1. Ignore training. Your highly specialized workforce needs training to be effective and keep up in that ever changing area. They want/need training. Decline all requests for training, no matter how cheap.

2.  Enforce use of Chimp Tools. Force your highly specialized workforce to use stupid and embarrassing tools that you create. Make sure these tools are the laughing stock of the industry. Ensure that your specialized workforce MUST use these tools and that they have to continually apologize and make excuses for these tools. This way, your specialized workforce will be made to feel like chimpanzees operating a vending machine.

 3. Ignore advice. Your specialized staff has good ideas on how to make your products better based on their expertise. Ignore it, no matter how stupid and embarrasing you will look.

4. Webinar to customers on retaining staff yet be clueless in your own implementation. Once you have done all of the above, then have your Specialized Workforce Pimps group webinar your clients on how to retain your specialized staff. Ensure you tell your clients that training your staff is important.

Killing Motivation #10 - Expecting Blood from a Stone

So lets pretend you are on a high profile (and as you are led to believe ) important project. Lets also pretend that this project is on a specific piece of hardware. The hardware is important because it is all powerful. The goal (also lets pretend) is to take existing software and make it work on the fast hardware making the combination of machine and software a delight to the customer.

Did I say the project was important? Let me reiterate. Its important.

But since its on a specific piece of hardware, you would imagine, yes?, that you need that hardware to build on or at the very least, test your delightful software on. No?

So how would you demotivate your team on this important project? Its simple if you follow these  important steps:

1. Only supply one platform what at least two is needed. That way the people on the project are fighting for time/space/sanity.

2. That one box must show up late. So late in fact that the entire team must, absolutely must, spend evenings and weekend to meet a deadline for a beta demo. This overtime would otherwise have been avoided if the specific hardware it required showed up on time.

3. Make additional absurd demands. Late breaking bug shows up in the middle of the night on Sunday. Then expect that bug to be fixed by Monday morning from a team that already worked the weekend to get basic functionality working for a beta candidate which was delayed by 1, and 2 above.

4. Blame the team. Ensure you blame the people on the  team loudly, publicly, and abusively if that issue in 3 is not fixed on Monday morning. Do not consider that items 1 or 2 had anything  to do with beta release time or quality. Ignore the fact that they have been working weekends and evenings because of 1 and 2.

The absurdity of this combination of steps are guaranteed to demotivate your staff.

How you run your business as a warning to others...

Could it be that how you run your business is really a warning to others?

Question: How can you take a $300 piece of third party software, and make it cost thousands?

Answer: Have lawyers quibble over the EULA for days.

Consider the fact that I have used this software for years within the company with no issue. This year happens to be the year of stupid. Or at least more stupid.

They will have to lay off a few more competent westerners to accommodate this  extra legal cost.

Killing Motivation #9: Constant Unneccesary Internal Roadblocks

So it finally happened. I know it had to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time.

What I am referring to is the license blockade.

Do you have a tool that is fundamental to your job? This tool helps you be successful? This tool helps you make a strong and successful product?

Someone, somewhere, eventually will get wind of this success and try to stop you.

Today it was someone from a part of the world known for resume falsification, certification falsification, and generally getting other smarter people to write your exams, telling me that I cannot renew my license because of x, y, or z.

Ignore x, or y, or z, its legal crap. The real reason is that they are attempting to stop your success, motivation, and happiness. Insert relevant Dilbert cartoon here. Motivation and happiness does not equate to shareholder value.

Ignore the fact that I have been using this tool for years. Had it renewed many times.

So, what happens now. Will this be the last straw for me?

Why Education is failing in Ontario

I was buying a book at my local Chapters/Indigo store the other day. If you are Canadian this may not seem like a surprise, but I notice they sell a lot of other things (now furniture), so I feel it may be necessary to be clear. At point of sale the clerk at the till asked me if I wanted to donate to their foundation supporting reading in schools.

This surprised me on a few levels, so I had to ask more questions, just to make sure Heather of Indigo was not spending it on male strippers, cocaine, or Oprah swill. The clerk kindly told me that the money goes to underprivileged schools  who need books. I then asked about where these schools are - is this local, provincial, or national? On this she was less clear but she did mention that some would go to local schools.

This shocked me.

This shocked me, not because Indigo is doing this, but because it told me how far we have descended into the abyss. I donated, because the cause appears, at least on face value, to be a noble cause. But I have thought a lot about this, and I have tried to collect them here:

1. This is a smart move on Indigo's part. Not just because it makes them appear to have a social conscience, but because they benefit from a considered, intelligent, and thought provoked community that buys the books (and the furniture and the tack) that they sell. If our community was populated by a collection of drooling imbeciles (I am trying hard not to make a reference to conservative MPs here) then they would be selling bingo cards, velvet Stephen Harper prints, and guns.

2. Why are the schools in this situation in the first place? Does not our taxes pay for adequate funding of schools? Why would one school be better off than another? Does not the government have enough money? Where is this money going?

3. If the government does not have enough money, where is revenue failing?

And there we have the crux of the problem. We know that the government of Ontario, with its cash cow the OLG, are trying desperately to tax the stupid through lotteries and casinos. But this is still failing to fund health care and education. But why do they need to do this?

4. They need to do this because they have made large tax concessions to corporations. The governments do not want to do this, they have to, because the more greedy of the corporations decide to offshore if they do not get the corporate tax discounts from governments they want. And in some cases (Catepillar) they take the tax breaks and then move shop anyways. In some cases, the elected representatives are really only representatives of corporations but  I will leave that as an exercise to the student.

So the corporations take the money, we loose our health care, and our education.

But we loose much much more. We loose independent education and critical thinking, because Corporations then step in to a) look good, to appear to have a social conscience and b) can then fill the education role by molding young minds to whatever opinion the corporations wish.

Killing Motivation #8: Dead Men Walking

In the vocabulary of demotivation one can never forget the "layoff". Yes, nothing says demotivation like a good lay off. But let us forget demotivation for a moment and really explore how to say "SCREW YOU!!!".

Real pros can really make this meaningful. Lets discuss some of those special techniques.

1. Never call it what it really is. Call it a "Resource Action". Or a "rebalancing". The peasants will only really understand that they are meat for the grinder when you disassociate it from reality. I loved the term "right-sizing" - has a ring to it, like a blocked toilet trying to flush.

2. Layoff despite making a good profit.  Made a "sustainable" profit? But sadly its not obscenely better than last year? Then clearly you have to make your workforce pay. Made 16 billion in profit but not more than the previous year? Then layoff. After all, you are a robot overlord.

2. Layoff experienced older workers. Do you have staff who have given you their all for most of there career? Are they nearing retirement? Remember that a layoff close to retirement really makes it awkward for them. Who is going to hire someone planning to retire? And by screwing them during this gap you can really say!!!" while they are between unemployment insurance and a fixed income.

3. Layoff women just returning from Maternity leave. Make that joyous new family and responsibility a time for doubt, fear, and stress. Despite making a profit you cut them just to show what a class act you are.

And remember, You are a meat Popsicle.

Killing Motivation #7: Flaunt your excesses while cutting benefits

You think your employees are scum? You want to grind them into a pulp? But how to do this and propel your own ego?

Easy peasy. You cut their benefits, lets say cut their sicks days. And make them pay more for the "benefits" they do have.

But that's only half the job.

The other half it to flaunt your excesses and here are some handy tips. After cutting salaries/sick days/oxygen (timing is important) in the office you absolute must:

1. Drive to work in a new flash car and park it in an featured location in the parking lot for all to see. The flash car MUST be a top of the line quality motor. Ferrari would be a good example.

2. Email pictures of the exterior and interior of your palatial home. Flaunted in your new book.

3. When you frequently crash a gazillion dollar vehicle, since they are disposable to you, mount pieces prominently in the office. 

4. Despite customer complaints, refuse to hire additional staff....or even better, say you will and then slowly try not to or create imaginary road blocks.

Nothing says they are "little people" and boosts your own ego more than hitting them in their wallet.

Killing Motivation #6: Constant Unneccessary Change

In my experience a simple productivity killer is to make your employee's work environment behave like Carol's bedroom scene in Poltergeist  

However in this case we are not talking about furniture in the cube farm, we are talking about the computing environment, the tools, the things you need from the local network to do your job.

If that environment is changing on a weekly basis, with new rules, locations, services, and whatever so that you have to relearn and reconfigure everything constantly, then how in Gaia's name are you going to get anything done? You will spend all your time fighting with the environment....or the so-called corporate Poltergeist.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, you would get sick and tired?

So much that you might want to leave.....oh wait. And if this happen enough then the corporation doesn't have to pay severance because you left of your own volition. 

So this is really a cheap way to lay off the employees you call "little people" without being forced to pay a severance: Make their world such a living hell that they make the move you wanted.

Killing Motivation #5 - Software Building

I don't know what it is, but software developers like to build stuff. Its like a wasting disease. When you are in a small group its pretty easy. But when that group of developers (a gaggle of software developers, a nerd of software developers?) is quite large then centralized build mechanism are "a la mode".

Which is great if you want to demotivate a large group in one fell swoop.

To demotivate en masse you need to create a fragile build environment. The build will fail, daily, and not because a developer made an error, but because the environment that performs that build fails. Fails early......fails often.

And of course, to the sound of a scythe cutting down its victim, the build system will send a message, a form of Dr. Goebbels propaganda, telling everyone that the build failed. It will do this so much that the nerd (plural, as in herd) will suggest that the build system should only send a message when it succeeds, since the obvious default value is #FAIL. 

The build fails, frequently, because of server issues, disk issues (buy cheap small disks that fill up quickly), power issues, and network issues. The list can go on because the de-motivating organization while have missed no chance to miss a chance.

Killing Motivation #4: Bad Toolsets

My Uncle once told me that to help you do the job right, and to do it efficiently, you need to have the right quality tools. He never skimped on the cost of the tools he used and he achieved success in his craft. The result was that he saved several times over the cost of his tools in the time it took him to complete a task. In addition, he had a committed clientele.

By contrast, one clear way to demotivate a worker in any field it to force them to use poor quality tools.

Let say you are too cheap to provide your employees with quality tools. They want to do the job right and they want to do it quickly. So to turn them into frustrated venting sociopaths you must force them to use bad tools.

One good way to do this is to make your own. Some people call this "eating your own dogfood" but you can play with their minds by calling it "drinking your own champagne". What it really is, and you know this, is "eating your own shit". Make sure the staff making those tools are given poor tools, have little resources, and have to sit in broken chairs. Make sure that  this group suffers several layoffs.

Make sure those internal tools are buggy, with user interfaces that would thrill the mentally deranged. Make sure the user interface looks like the cockpit of a Saturn V rocket. Ensure that these tools work and do not work at random times. Also, and this is a special thrill, force your employees to use these tools to complete a task in an aggressive time frame and then make it complex to even get access to the tool.

If its a software tool, make it hard to find to download. Make sure they need an "internal use license" that expires quickly. Also make it near impossible to get that license. Hide access to that license with a web page that you move around or just plain does not work. Do not tell people how to use this site. Provide a link for "support" for the license site in case your staff encounter the inevitable problems - but make sure the link is dead or the support site is even more complex than the site they are seeking support on. If they do happen to have the tenacity to get access to support, that support should deny them any help because they are "internal" and not a paying customer. If they happen to actually get a license, change the procedure each time between license lifetimes so nothing they learned the first time cannot be applied on any subsequent attempt.

You may think that this is random stuff made up from a poorly cast Tim Burton film. But this is exactly what happens where I work.

Killing Motivation #3 - The Wrong Training

Hurrah! You have been allowed to use 40 hours of your working year to training in ....whatever. But then you receive an email saying that you must attend a talk presented by a Toupeyed perfumed gigolo-executive on some Three Letter Acronym (TLA) and this talk counts against your training.

Your training time now has become devalued to that of Canadian Tire Money, or the European equivalent, the Euro.

Not only is the TLA made up, but we are informed that we must be part of our DNA. So we have taken a scientific term based on research, considered scientific opinion, and fact, and reduced it to the level of bullshit. It's a sad, sad day for the human species.

I am  not sure what the colour of the sky is in your world but its not clear to me what I could  possibly learn to make me a better productive contributor than spending hours on a imaginary subject like one of hundreds that the upper floors float like a bad fart in an elevator.

Dignify that email with a special place in the spam folder aaaaaannnnnnndddd ....flush.

Your ego owns the fast lane.

So you are in the fast lane doing 120 klicks in your red Chrysler van. You see me catching up on the inside. So what do you do? 

You speed up because you know its against the law for anybody to be faster than your ego, fragile that it is. Once you realize that nobody can pass you on the right, since there are other vehicles doing 120 klicks on the right you slow to 120 klicks. 

Now we have gridlock. Thank you. I was scared that your esteem issues would get the better of you, big man.

Nobody can pass you, nobody can get by you, all you have to do is stay in the fast lane doing the same speed as the middle lane.

Fortunately for the rest of us you have to exit. We can continue, safe from your retardedness. And to be fair, your plate told me you weren't quite from Ottawa. But I have seen this ego-lunancy from Ottawa before. Its really a human species thing.

Killing Motivation #2 - Training

Nothing tells your employees that you care like investing in them. This is normally in the form of training. Training your employees, sending them to courses, and paying for their courses, tells them that you care about their development, their career, and their place in the organization.

But what if you don't care? What if you think that your employees are merely vessels to drain and then dispose of?

In this case, not paying for training is clearly insufficient. What you need to add is a mind game.

To do this you first of all have to tell your employees at large that you support training and that you will pay for it and that includes trips to far flung exotic places like New Jersey. Then, while the poor suckers look for a course that would be appropriate them to be a better skilled employee in the company you send out an email indicating that there are "internal" and "no cost" mechanisms (like reading a book) that would fulfil the training offer. Even better, suggest they spend an hour googling some subject. If they attempt to request a course then deny it, claiming their is no budget.

Nothing says "We don't give a shit" like a good mind game.

Killing Motivation

Do you have a well motivated and competent staff? Are they coming up with new and innovative ideas regularly? Is your quality and productivity high?

Then clearly, you do not have enough rules, procedures, and lawyers.

Step 1 Conformance
Enforce conformance. Doesn't matter if its a government standard, or even your own governments standard, make conformance to ALL of them mandatory even if it makes no  sense.

Can't find a protocol or procedure of your own? Make one up.

To help the process, make believe a standard does things it doesn't. Claim FIPS 140 will protect you.

Ensure that your staff spends every waking hour at work investigating, changing, and working on conformance. This mind numbing pointless work will ensure you are well on your way to killing your deadline and demotivating your staff.

Hire more lawyers to keep that hamster running in that wheel.

Stay tuned for the next instalment...

Software Development Arrogance

During my past 25 years in software development I have met many interesting personalities. From the intelligent stars to the dysfunctional fascist. But one type of personality seems to be more common than most. I am going to talk about that today.

But first, why today? Why after all this time do I now feel compelled to scribble about this one personality?

The reason is because this industry is in crisis and that personality is a key player in the drama.

That personality is the so-called "know-it-all".

Crisis? What Crisis? Are not software and high tech companies making money? Perhaps, but that only hides the real problem. The crisis I am referring to is the security horror the mainstream media has now latched onto. Yes. I know. Security has always been a problem and the media has now only found out it exists.

The causes of the issue is complex and has many actors. From the half-baked products rushed to market to "realize-revenue", the hapless neophyte who does not consider the malicious use case, to finally, my favourite as you can imagine, the know-it-all.

And I see it all the time. No, they will not consult with experienced staff on the subject, they will roll their own. No, they will not present their design to experienced security staff, they know better. And no, they will not ask questions, since they have no questions to ask, because they know it all.  And no, they will not consider customer opinions and just deem this is what their security policy should be even though they have no security experience whatsoever (I mean, how hard could it be). They would perform their own brain surgery if they weren't unconscious at the time.

They are the bulldozers who attempt to talk over and interrupt others with their amazingness. The male of the species will announce to their colleagues that they are "brest-feeding experts"  (true story, you can't make this shit up) after they read a book because their wife (poor soul) is expecting to pop out their spawn.

This creature will look at existing code, and even though there is no reason to, change that code (and introduce risk) because it was not the way they would write it, and therefore it must be wrong.

To be perfectly honest I am not surprised we are seeing the hacking headlines. Its a long time overdue. And it will be with us for a long time until software development teams can deal with, educate, and manage this personality. And they need to do so soon, because its killing us.

http://www.dilbert.com/2013-02-24/