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, […]
The two articles I found most telling about Carly Fiorina’s departure from HP are Worst. CEO. Ever. and Carly Fiorina and management. High tech organizations require a vision (from the CEO), a budget, and room for innovation. Maybe I missed it, but Fiorina didn’t provide any vision, except for cost-cutting. When will senior managers
I just received this in email: Pledge Our company is completely and absolutely committed to quality. * * Except on time-critical projects and during adverse cash-flow situations. When else would you need to be committed to quality? (Not to zero defects, but to an appropriate level of quality for the product you’re trying to
I’m teaching my older daughter how to drive, and I now realize why inexperienced drivers are so dangerous. They are inconsistent and unpredictable, because they are inexperienced. I can’t help her gain experience by making a list of all possible situations and explaining what she has to do. I have to generalize. Right now,
My colleague, a senior manager, is inundated with too much to do. Hundreds of emails, seven of hours of meetings every day, hundreds of emails, hiring the next level managers so he doesn’t have to backfill, project portfolio management, and backfill of those management roles not yet filled. My colleague is trying to manage
I was reading Hiring Great Hackers, and I realized what went wrong in the places I’ve worked who hired great hackers. (In this case, a hacker is not a derogatory term, it’s someone who lives and breathes producing great software — just not software that yet has a customer base.) The problem was the
In general, technical people don’t seem to make great managers (unless they’ve been trying to become great). A result of that is what Reifer says in his IEEE Software (May/June 2004) column Catching the Brass Ring: “software professionals aren’t often tapped for top corporate leadership positions.” He goes on to say “executives of my
Now that I’m back from vacation, I’m catching up on my reading. I enjoyed David Anderson’s Management versus Leadership on ‘The Apprentice’ which prompted me to think about what I would have done in Kwame’s place. It took me a long time to learn, but a manager always has the option of firing people who
Because I work for myself, I frequently miss things like Secretary’s Day or Boss’s Day. This year I almost missed Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work day. When the Ms. Foundation started Take Our Daughters to Work day, many colleagues poo-poohed it. “Who needs such a thing?” But a funny thing happened. Girls started
David Anderson has an intriguing post, Lawyers, Unit Tests and Performance Reviews. David says “Individual team members can be set specific goals and behavior objectives…” and gives examples. I prefer that team members set their own goals with input from their managers. But the key here is that a technical person should be looking to