Scripted Management

For a long time, all of us in the business community or perhaps touched and otherwise inappropriately handled by it, have known that managerial and worker relations have never found a balance. They probably never will. I believe the problem has to do with those high rollers distancing themselves too much from their flock, making decisions without quite knowing the impact of their actions. The employees don't like being mistreated and higher-ups don't want to hear about it, which means everyone suffers. Well I propose a solution to this problem which will sever this social engagement: the employee API.

If you thought looking at Gantt charts and budgets was cool, wait till you have work flow accomplished just with the work() method, allowing you to supply an optional time parameter expressed as work( hour hours_ ) for the day to day as well as work( day day_start, day day_end ) to express continuous ranges of days when those deadlines have to be met. Having problems with workers? Let's turn to nature for the solution. Did you know that male worker bees die after a run of a few short days? I don't know if it's because they didn't work hard for the honey, but it's quite possible that they were just 'replaced' for efficiency reasons. You can do the same; ever hear of pop() and push()? Yep, it's that easy. Your HR staff has a Queue of applicants waiting to get hired, since the economy 's rather down.

I truly didn't have the well-being of too many people in mind. Too many is too many. But after a good day's work, you do deserve some respect for writing and running your worker script. The fact that you don't have to know anyone's name in our method doesn't stop the work force from being forced to work up a party for you. Everyone is assigned a number from 0 to num_employees -1 and the range-based get_appreciation( employee 0, employee num_employees -1 ) will get everyone to celebrate on your behalf.

You may be wondering how all this works? Why would "you are allowed to use the bathroom today" incentive plans inspire those minds you ask? Well love is a complicated problem, but if you've seen the movie Perfume, you'll understand how it's done.

Chart Theory : Hours Past Midnight 2

due to popular demand, I've included a vertical scale.

ComputerWorld : Will making computer science more fun attract college students?

ComputerWorld writes about efforts to study if [Will] Making computer science more fun attract college students?

To combat falling enrollment rates and shortage of CS talent in the industry, the researchers at Washington State University, Vancouver hope to increase enrollment by offering courses where the student make computer games. Under an NSF grant they came up with a Java game engine (labeled JIG, short for Java Instructional Gaming Project)

To quote the article, "... students create two-dimensional arcade-style games from the ground up, including graphics, networking and even some artificial intelligence features -- all in the name of learning about key computer science concepts ..." The article goes on to further postulate about why incoming students are not interested in Computer Science : "... many incoming students read news headlines about the effect of offshoring as IT jobs move to India, China or elsewhere, and they see an IT career as a bad move."

While the effort is admirable, it roughly equates to Teaching Computer Science with Flash.

It is a marketing problem, and there's really no need to 'dilute the brand' here. The IT industry problem isn't a shortage of people who wish to design 2D computer games. Refer to T. Friedman's book 'The World is Flat' for a further discussion of exactly why what proposed here is a bad idea. I hate to name drop, and I did not like the book very much, but I think that was one of his few valid and not outdated points. We don't have a shortage of C++/Java programmer, we need Masters and PhD students to fuel the Institutional Research machine with good ideas and new projects.

What is presented here is more of a standard pitch for a Digital Media program. CS is a long, hard, and treacherous path. The turn over rate is pretty high, and JIG Project isn't exactly targeted at the core audience. I don't think the promise of a class where you can build side-scrollers will really fool anybody into majoring in computer science. How would being able to write Java games prevent you from outsourcing. If so, this program sets it self up for a high turn over rate. Being promised computer games and getting 'stuck' in discrete math and algorithms will have applicants reconsidering and joining the Business Technology Management flock.

I'm not a marketing expert by any means (I took 1 summer class), but it seems that they need to find better things to market. Maybe graduate placement statistics ? Research opportunities ?

I think this is more of a PR issue that needs to be dealt with. 'Outsourcing to India' is freely thrown around to scare people. The ComputerWorld article mentions it as a deterrent for students enrolling into CS programs. My opinion is that most people (outside the industry), especially incoming college freshmen, are pretty ignorant about it. Most people I know graduting college with a CS degree had multiple job offers and were able to pick an employer on their own terms, or at least had the option to.

What's ironic is that it does not serve as a deterrent to students aiming to enter the Finance industry by majoring in economics, finance, accounting, etc. For some reason, there is no publicity about financial institutions off-shoring business functions. However, based on (my) conversation with friends in the industry, they claim that their jobs will be extinct in 2-3 years due to 1) machines that can do their jobs faster and better 2) para-bankers in India who can do their jobs faster and better. Why are there no articles on BusinessWeek citing fears of this in incoming freshmen at Pace, Baruch, NYU, Bing, and SUNYs ? Where are all the studies that report freshmen's fears of working in middle office?

Employee Stock Purchase Plan, a good idea ?

Most publicly traded companies offer some form of Stock purchase plan. You can get the shares of your own company at a discount price. There are usually some rules about 1) amount you are able to purchase and 2) not being able to dump the stock right away.

Companies tout this as a way of employees building equity in the company. The 'grunts' become not only workers, but 'shareholders' as well, and some how strive to perform better to avoid losing money. I will not speculate on the correctness of these assumptions, but:

To me investing into the stock of where you work seems like a bad idea:

• If the company does well, you'll get a piece of it anyway through bonuses, perks, etc
• If the company does poorly, you don't get a bonus and you lose money to the company. You also realize you gave back a portion of your paycheck back to your employer for no reason.

Unless you are hedging you employee stock purchase with the purchase of a competitor/different sector/etc, it doesn't seem like a safe investment.

Countdown to unemployment

Employment is transient, fortunately. This being my last day, I decided to record some privacy preserving statistics:

Email:
Number of email messages left in my mailbox on my last day: 28
Number of unique authors among those messages: ~10
Number of human authors among the former: ~5
Number of people I know among the human authors: 3
Number of messages that affect me and my work directly: 0

My Documents Folder:
Number of documents in My Documents: 40
Number of documents that I am deleting because they do not pertain to work: 28
Documents pertaining to research: 20

Software:
Additional compilers/interpreters/frameworks not provided by the company: 4
Specifically: Perl, Python, recent version of JDK, .NET
Development environments: 2(Eclipse, SciTE)
Browsers: 1 (Firefox!)
Miscellaneous unauthorize software: putty, python gmail lib, doxygen, graphviz

Office supplies:
Sticky notes(not postits!): 7 blocks, small
Pencils: 2
Pens: 3
Company issued notebooks and scratchpads: 2
Personal notebooks: 1
Thumb tacs: 15
Papers attached to cubicle wall: 7
Boxes of Harrod's tea attached to cubicle wall: 1
Starbucks frappaccino labels glued to computer: 1


Pantry:
Forks, spoons, and plastic knives: MANY
Sugar packets: 4(at 9AM, 0 by 9PM)
Bags of Ahmad tea: 1....last one
Cups: 1
Napkins: more then cutlery

So what do these unimpressive statsitcs show? Nothing. I'm just happy to be done.


PS:
This might be neurotic but I'm very pleased that I managed to finish my tea exactly on the day that I finish working.

Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use

Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use discusses how researchers in Microsoft 'are developing software that splits a computer screen in two halves, each side with its own operating system, desktop, applications, cursor and keyboard.'

1. hardware is cheap. it's simpler to buy more than force people to share screens.
2. I think these researchers didn't understand the point of the extreme programming workflow.
3. They claim to have a minimal cost, no hardware required, but cubicles are not set up for 2 people. This sounds like its enabling something horrible.

This being said, it think its a wonderful idea for multi player gaming.
What better way to put the 24inch monitor to use? You can even ghost for yourself.

As an added bonus, the article comes with the following picture and its caption:

'Computers to Work Harder
Software programmers at work at INFOSYS, one of the best known Indian software companies, in Bangalore, India. Workers at Indian companies must often share computers. But a new technology that divides a computer's screen could stretch the technology's use.'

How terrible is that ?
Why would you publicize being the IT equivalent of a sweatshop?

caption should read: look at the size of those .....

Chart Theory : Hours past midnight

Career Opportunities

The following email has graced my mailbox.

New Jersey is just such a wonderful marketing tool. Also kudos on the wording.
I guess I can appreciate the honesty. Most companies will jerk you around before admitting they're sticking you in into Q&A in Hoboken.

Dear Naive Baysian,

Following is a description for career opportunities at [Mid Cap]

OPEN HOUSE AT [Mid Cap]

Open House for Wall Street IT Career Opportunities in New Jersey

[Mid Cap] is currently seeking individuals for the following positions:

Java Developers, C# Developers, Business Analysts, Integration and Development Support, QA, Oracle DB Architects, Data Modelers, Information Architects

(Previous financial services experience preferred but not required.)

Chart Theory : Hours to an Exam

Chart Theory : Hours To An Exam

Day::Made

This made my day.

Analyst: that guys weird
Analyst: the one walking past u
Analyst: right now
Analyst: right now
Analyst: that guy
Analyst: he's weird
Machine|Earner: just cuz he's walking back and forth
Machine|Earner: or you actually know him?
Analyst: hes on the CTG team
Analyst: what does that mean?
Analyst: nobody actually knows
Machine|Earner: HA
Analyst: they improve 'efficiency'
Analyst: for testing
Analyst: do they actually test?
Analyst: which would be helpful?
Analyst: no
Analyst: do they do analysis of the reports after testing? not at all
Analyst: they look at everything, compile lists and tell us how to test better
Analyst: completely useless
Machine|Earner: this is totally a Dilbert/Office Space comment
Analyst: I should send him a memo
Machine|Earner: to file his TPS reports
Analyst: to include a cover letter on his pointless emails

Worth sharing.