The UnSub

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!

The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect : an interesting discussion of the struggles with information technology (IT) development in companies. It is an apt analogy and applies even at a larger scale, like a country’s brain drain, not just in the IT industry.

Talented people simply move on when they hit the limit of managements’ fuck-ups and stupidities. As time grows, these people have shorter tolerance. Those who remain generally have some forms of learned helplessness or are enjoying as part of the corporate incumbents. You are either leveraging or being leveraged. Sometimes, it is better to be talented at leveraging than be leveraged. Leveraging and manipulation is just a very fine line.

The unpolished talent who is wise, will take the opportunity to enjoy L.I.F.E for 1-3 years as one of the phases of his/her career. Learning In (a) Fucked-up Environment is just one of the many ironies of life. We need adversities to mold us. We need a fall due to arrogance before considering the humble pie. The list of ironies can go on..

In short, we grow when we get our of our comfort zones. If you are getting too comfortable, watch out. Yet another irony.

Visited Sim Lim Tower yesterday to get one of these. Simple but cool design. Running flexible copper strips with surface-mounted resistors sealed in polyprolene; neat idea! Another nice thing about it is the well-diffused light it generates, not too harsh and bright. After the purchase, I roamed around the rather quiet complex that is next to its packed sibling Sim Lim Square.

Sim Lim Tower is somewhat a nostalgic place to me. During my aimless walk, I saw young inquisitive shoppers looking out for resistors and parts, presumably for their electronics projects. It somehow brought back nice memories, no not talking about RAM, but a reminder of that hobbyist self. After-all, my interests in technology began with electronics before it evolved to larger systems and web.

I guess it is good to go back to where it started and rekindle that passion and curiosity…

I am quite irritated by the fact that people ask some silly rhetorical questions and making pointless comments. Eg. “Why should they (re)invent terms like ‘Domain Name Service’ that is not clear?”

My response to this specific silly question is: Don’t blame others for your own ignorance. RTFM. Without the domain name service, the internet would not be what it is today and you would be remembering a bunch of numbers instead of names.

Second: it is pointless to ask too many “why” questions without enlarging your HOW-TO department in your brain. The underlying motivation behind such questions is usually to complain and not driven by a “how-to-make-it-better” attitude. The next time you have the urge to disguise your complains with “Why” questions. Maybe ask yourself, “Why am I asking this why question?”.

http://www.codeproject.com/…/IfOnlyWedUsedANTSProfiler.asp

I am quite impressed with the Princeton team even though they didn’t managed to win the $2Million prize money. To summarize, the computer controlling Princeton’s driverless truck failed in a competition due to software memory usage (technically it is not leakage).

The moral of the story; invest time and money in a code profiler for whatever development language that you may be using for serious work.

A note to myself for my own projects.