In his post, Scary – For Real!, Hank discusses a change in the hiring climate. Turns out, there is competition, at least in some places, for technical folks. (Good news to lots of great people.) He mentions some organizations’ troubles finding people and waiting too long to make an offer (and waiting too long for
Set Godin, in his The ever-worsening curse of the cog says something profound: The end result is that it’s essentially impossible to become successful or well off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else. I still think managers can describe parts of a useful, non-cog job. But jobs where a person’s
In Who Wants to be a Technical Lead? I promised I’d talk about succession planning. Here’s the general idea: as someone who works for a living, your job should be to work yourself out of your current job by learning, practicing, and mastering some new skills. The less work experience you have, the easier this
In More on the labour shortage, Michael points to The Coming Labor Shortage. Here’s a quote : What’s interesting about Deloitte’s prediction of a “critical talent” shortage is that they’re onto the fact this isn’t about bosses alone. The biggest skills gap will be smack in the middle of the so-called creative class workforce. “Critical
Candidates, read How to Interview Potential Employers. Hiring managers, read it too, so you’re prepared.
Via Pragmatic Marketing, I found In Search of Overhead Heroes” by George Tillman, who advocates thinking like a business even if you’re supporting the business, not contributing directly to revenue. Certainly, you’re supposed to align yourself and contain costs. But here are the questions I felt were most important for any organization to answer:
Managers have an obligation to coach employees to help employees obtain better performance. However, managers choose when and whom to coach. Managers also have an obligation to provide feedback — which is not a choice. Every employee deserves feedback about his/her work on a frequent (weekly) basis. I’ve never met a manager who didn’t
In his comment, Rich explains, “I am directly managing 12 employees and 14 contractors doing application support and maintenance for something like 12 or 15 software products. I have most of my old team, and 6 other teams. I have been asked to develop a plan to cross train these individuals to build out a
Sound of hand slapping forehead. Argh, I posted this in the Managing Product Development blog, got interrupted, and forgot to post it here. If you’re in Wellington, New Zealand on Mar 15, Sydney on Mar 17, and in Israel during Mar 23-31, let me know. I’ll be there (and there and there) and would love
I just got off the phone with a colleague who discovered his boss is reading his email. The employee, whom I’ll call Dave, is hurt, unhappy, angry, and frustrated. “Yes, I know my email isn’t private, but what did I do that would prompt my boss to read my email?” The more he talked,