The UnSub

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This video will scare the crap out of most parents but if more toddlers are trained, there will be less tragedies.

http://www.childdrowningprevention.com/home1.htm

Not sure if Singapore has such training…

For those who know me, some may view me as unforgiving, harsh and critical. I never regret what I’d said to some of these people whom I worked with. This post is not an entry of self-justification, it is a reminder to most of us who are very comfortable with mediocrity.

The root of mediocrity…
I wrote a brash email to my manager over the issue of time-sheet. Despite my futile attempts to better at office diplomacy, I have to do something about such wide-spread stupidity. We hardly stop and as why, or challenge certain assumptions.

The fundamental problem:

The naive association of quality/productivity with time

Yes, I understand time is money but what triggered me to write all these was this statement (paraphrased): “Each of you must work 40.5 hr/week, otherwise you will be seen as not productive”.

Unfortunately, by making people behave like punch-card workers does not make it any better, regardless of project or product-base development. Mediocrity is encouraged and reinforced by such management practices. With such a system, people will be conditioned to see the value of their work measured in units of time alone.

The most obvious sign of failures of such a system is increase in the time of development-cycles. Why? Because most people will give themselves more time! Suppose you complete sooner and better, then you will be seen as NOT productive because your time-sheet shows that you are spending less time. So why bother to improve, might as well take your own time?

The cure…
This may look ridiculously simple but it is not easy:

1. Measure your work in terms of the benefits
I am not talking about benefiting yourself but others (customers and fellow-workers) in general. Quantifying benefits is much more motivating because it let’s you see something more than a task or job. When your company sells something, it is all about the benefits, no one gives much a damn about the zillion features without first seeing the benefits.

2. Create competitive advantages
Sales people think Benefits, Advantages then Features. Engineering on the other hand does the reverse: create features that translate to advantages and benefits. In fact, good engineers are predominately focus on handling failures, so don’t blame for being too negative, it is just part of the job. That being said, it doesn’t mean we can’t quantify in terms of advantages and benefits.

3. Do more with less time (and not the reverse)
This has to do with attitude which leads to wider skill-set and creativity. Even if you were a specialist, it doesn’t hurt to understand other roles (eg sales or support) so as to work better together. It is good to ask if there is a better way to do something, especially so if it is frequently done. Can we save time and do-away with stuff that has little value but time-consuming? Of course, that is true if one is able to discern what is valuable. If in doubt, read 2 and 3 again.

Closing note…
Yeah, I know it is not politically-correct or nice to talk-down others. I usually do not give a shit if I do not have to work with these people. But I have to say something because it is a matter of survival. If people choose to remain status quo and take more time, use silly NPV valuation approach based on man-days, then we will be out of business soon!

Finally done up our wedding site…

Credits goes to Princess Sabrina for her wonderful wordpress theme! I took the liberty to modify the background image and removed some stuff. Hopefully, she doesn’t sue me :P.

The entire site was done on a Ubuntu machine using latest Wordpress and Gimp (photoshop equivalent). I am sorry if you find my smile a bit plastic because I really can’t smile on demand like my beautiful wife. Hey! Opposite attracts

My new Dell Inspiron 530, a Quad Core, 3Gb RAM together with 3-year Plus Phone Support is less than inspiring. Less than 3 weeks old and it is failing. The phone support on the invoice states that support is available on Sat 0900-1600 but

the number to the Plus-Phone-Support is nowhere to be found. For goodness sake, just print it on my invoice or put it clearly on your support site.

Dell has done a heck of a job with their direct sales and logistics management. So far, I am very pleased with the order fulfillment and delivery process for both desktops and servers.

Unfortunately when it comes to my own machine, Dell’s support site looks like a cacophony of irrelevant information. I can’t even find a simple phone number after many clicks and searches. Yes, there are plenty of other numbers that is “manned” by pre-recorded messages but where is the Plus-support number? If a tech-savy user can’t find support number that works on Saturday, how would you expect a non-savvy user to find it? And the weird thing about their search engine is it returns some results that were seemingly relevant but are zipped up in a file.

Why put information into Zip files that contains nothing more than some HTML and images when you have a website?!?

The site has everything but the relevant telephone number that I was looking desperately for. The very idea of displaying all the troubleshooting issues and forum gives people the perception that the products are problem ridden. I have about 10 years of computing experience since the days of DOS6.22, I’d done enough of troubleshooting, nowadays I pay for someone to fix my problems.

The most annoying thing about the support systems of most businesses is the use of IVR or Interactive Voice Response system. IVR is invented for the benefit of businesses that are short of man-power to handle calls. No one, whose purchase is broken, has little if not any patience to listen to your long-winded pre-recorded message.

No matter how diplomatic the speeches in your IVR might be, all I hear is: “Sorry, we don’t work on Saturdays”.

After all a round of frustration while filling up their email support that DID NOT WORK on Firefox browser, I called the sales line and to my surprise, a human!!! Actually not a surprise considering sales-lines are “revenue” centers while support lines are cost-centric. Naturally, she has to take the first blow of my sarcasm before I got hold of the so call Plus-support extension. It’s just too bad that she was the first person who represented Dell who spoke to me after digging around their stupid website and listening to recorded messages for 10mins or so.

The next person on the line was basically Dell’s saving grace. Of course much of my lethal negative energy in me was fired at the first Dell representative, she basically did a good job of asking the right questions and making the arrangement for an on-site engineer. Before this event, i have never considered other desktop brands because they have done a good job making online configuration and purchase convenient (and of course cheap). The next buy will definitely NOT be a Dell.

Things failing within 2 weeks+ is not acceptable, regardless of how well you can sell and distribute. It’s time to look at the basics and common sense when it comes to designing portals. Dell’s search engine is basically crap compared to Google. A unhappy user needs a phone-call to a human who is trained to make arrangements to resolve the problem, not some pre-recorded message that says “we don’t work on Saturdays”, or a bunch of irrelevant information littered on your website.