Michael Murray has an announcement about podcasts aimed at helping you think about your career. Take a look at Announcement – Episteme IT/InfoSec Career Portfolio Teleseminar & Podcast Series. From his blog: This series is going to be focused on the portfolio of skills that will make you a better IT/Information Security professional and
I have an all-in-one machine, a fax/copier/scanner/printer, that I use for copying, scanning and primarily faxing. It’s fine fax machine. And it’s a great copier. But when I hook it up to my computer for scanning to a file, it falls apart. Half the time (or more), my computer can’t establish a USB connection
Recently, a reader asked me about applying for a project management job. She was missing a particular technical tool, but had plenty of what seemed to me as reasonable job experience. I suggested she apply anyway. When I see an ad (or a job description) focused on tools, I am sure that the hiring manager
I’m trying to describe the costs of multitasking. Here’s what I’ve got so far: There are three parts to multitasking: Stopping the work you’re doing. The stopping cost is the time it takes to mark your place, save your work, etc. You haven’t stopped thinking about what you’re doing, but when you stop to
The nice folks over at computerworld.com asked me to comment on this year’s salary survey, and to discuss with folks how to obtain a better salary. (See A Slow Thaw” for my column.) I’m blogging over at my computerworld blog. Please visit and leave comments.
I’m finally back home after 4 weeks on the road. Yes, I was completely nuts to spend 4 weeks away. My office is a disaster, and so is my email. (My domain name is being spoofed, so I’m getting thousands of returned failed email messages a day. Pain in the tush to process.) So,
I’ve been traveling for the past three weeks (one more to go), and heard one manager say, “With good people, you can deliver almost anything.” He’s right. And it’s hard to define good people. Saying, “I’ll know one when I see one” is not enough. That’s shot-in-the-dark job analysis. Job analysis, even if you don’t
One of my clients said to me, “There’s no one who doesn’t need a boss.” He meant it as “Everyone needs someone to check with, to make sure they’re headed in the right direction.” I agree.
I’ve encountered a number of projects where people didn’t know the context of their work. As developers, they were working on the thing they had to develop or fix today. They might remember what they had done yesterday, but there was no sense that they knew what they needed to do tomorrow, or that they
I facilitated a management problem-solving session at the STARWest conference yesterday. When I was debriefing the activities, one participant said he’s met a bunch of testers and test managers who had a “siege” mentality. He was surprised by that. I’m still surprised when I meet people like that. I sometimes see developers who feel