Wabewalker

Let’s compare some product logos, shall we?

Now	Then

Sigh. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Sometimes meetings are so boring, you forget what they were about. For instance, I have no recollection of ever writing the following, yet it appears in my notebook:

Crap! He just said ‘Man-Month.’ Eject! Eject! Eject!

I realize that Jerry is trying to make things “informal,” that he’s reïnforcing his “personal brand,” and that this is a quick one-off message to the troops (rah rah); but seriously, someone get the boy a copy of Presentation Zen stat. To wit:

• Constantly looking down to your desk to check your notes is a no–no. If you must use notes, have them written on cue cards and held next to the camera. Glancing down constantly sends two unappealing messages:
  • I am ashamed; and
  • I am lying.
  You don’t want to send either. A steely-eyed focus on the viewer sends a much more positive message.
• Kill the “ems” and “ahs.” We know you are a big fan of Steve Jobs, so take a lesson from his presentation style: rehearse, rehearse, then rehearse some more. The more familiar you are with the material you are presenting, the more confident you will be during the actual presentation.
• Hire an editor. These video updates are supposed to be informal, but re-filming segments that appear ill-paced would go a lot towards improving the confidence the troops have in your plan and your ability to execute it.

In short, my advice is: do it right or don’t bother doing it at all.

A funny thing happened at work today. Funny as in “troubling.”

I work at Yahoo! (exclamation point mandatory, sorry), and unless you’ve been under a rock for the last two months, you are aware that Yahoo! is fending off the unwilling advances of Microsoft.

Well, this appeared on the internal boards this week:

There are photos of someone on the walls of Bld A 1st and 2nd floors
(break-room, stairs etc). Why and who is this?

The response was:

I heard he is a new employee that has been planted into Y! by Microsoft.
Watch out what you say around him.

This exchange immediately brought to mind the final exchange from that story by Rod Serling:

“Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines, their telephones, their lawnmowers, throw them into darkness for a few hours, and then sit back and watch the pattern.”

“This pattern is always the same?”

“With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find.... and it’s themselves. All we need do is sit back and watch.”

Indeed. In the immortal words of Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”

In summary:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l
@m = qw(mi cro soft);
@y = qw(ya hoo);

while (@m && @y) {
  $s = shift @{rand > .5 ? \@m : \@y};
  push @r, $s if !@r || rand > .5
}

$" = "";
print "\u@r!"';

Was not fired.

Which is amazing, considering that:

1. Through no fault of my own, I have done absolutely nothing for the last three months as projects have been cancelled, delayed, or reassigned; and
2. I have begun a not-so-covert “whispering campaign” against any and all people I report to, directly or indirectly.

I blame this on the popularity of House. People have lately decided to equate ‘asshole’ with ‘genius.’ I for one would normally welcome this attitude, but not when I’m desperate to move on.

location: 2821 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA

mood: confused

Not fired yet (but considering leaving on my own).

Not fired yet.

Not fired yet.

Just got an e-mail from the CEO: not for me personally, it was a broadcast bulletin. Nothing special, just a bunch of bland corporate-speak.

What annoyed me was the lack of capital letters. It was all lower-case, like a whiny posting to some prepubescent emochild's all-black LiveJournal page.

Is the stress of running a multinational corporation so taxing that you cannot hit the shift key?

Followup: Apparently, others are bothered by this as well.

Not fired yet.

(Watch this space for bulletins)

Had the talk today at work (tick tick tick...), and as usual, this has made me introspective on software management.

Why do so many managers believe that if you officially end-of-life a product (that is, stop active enhancement), that product will suddenly stop working?

“We can’t stop development on that product! It’s vital to our revenue stream!”

“But if you stop working on it, it still will run, right?”

“That doesn’t matter! We have to keep that product alive!”

Attention Managers: since the majority of you are members of the Managerial Cult of Steve Jobs, here’s a little factoid: Jobs killed MacOS 9 five years ago, but I still run it for some old games and unported applications. A handful of businesses still run on it. Yet by refusing to enhance it further, Jobs released needed resources to move forward with MacOS X.

location: 2821 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA

mood: aggravated

ret•req |'ret ,rek| noun a bizarre behavior from software explained post facto by editing the wiki holding the requirements document once said behavior is discovered.

Origin early 21st cent.: blend of retroactive and requirement.

See Also CYA

location: 2821 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA

mood: crying

While doing maintenance, I found the following atrocity:

inline void fast_strncpy(char *dest, const char *src, int nbytes) {
  if (nbytes <= 10) {
    switch (nbytes) {
      case 1:
        dest[0] = '\0';
        break;
      case 2:
        dest[0] = src[0];
        dest[1] = '\0';
        break;
      case 3:
        dest[0] = src[0];
        dest[1] = src[1];
        dest[2] = '\0';
        break;
      case 4:
        dest[0] = src[0];
        dest[1] = src[1];
        dest[2] = src[2];
        dest[3] = '\0';
        break;
        // AND SO ON FOR AN OBSCENE NUMBER OF CASES...
  }
  else {
    memcpy(dest, src, nbytes - 1);
    dest[nbytes] = '\0'; // WHAT’S WRONG HERE, KIDS?
  }
}

“Why does our performance suck compared to the competitors?”

Because maybe, just maybe, your engineers can’t program worth crap?

location: 2821 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA

mood: pissed off

Gah, just tried to use the company’s new Web 2.0-ish map program and found that, because of Flash, I could not cut-n-paste an address.

In the words of TED, of uncov fame:

FAIL

mood: depressed

I've just started a new job with a major online web property; deep within the algorithms and infrastructure portion. I don't have to deal with JavaScript or CSS or any presentation elements of the application, just raw data.

The problem is that the manager has dropped me into “Project Goosefood.”

You know, a project that has had more members get shoved in and pulled out than Madonna. A project that has produced only three pages of wishlists and vague requirements after being started almost two years ago. A project that has the success metric of "make it somewhat faster."

"Somewhat faster."

The only thing I'm going to be accomplishing on this project is finding a new job.

mood: apathetic

I’ve been thinking a bit about why I’ve had such lousy luck finding good quality jobs. I mean, I’ve moved from a scumware company to an ad agency trying everything under the sun to get minuscule improvements in revenue, then on to a printing company that’s so busy expanding that they cannot see their infrastructure collapsing under its own weight.

The problem with each of these companies (scumware aside) is that they all bought into the “Netscape”-style rapid development model: produce a lot of junk, throw it up on the web, see what sticks. Netscape and the rest of the dot-coms could get away with that in the era when VC flowed like water, but in the post-bubble era that business model just cannot hold together. It may sustain a small company (and the two former companies have, in fact, downsized tremendously) but it offers no long-term growth potential. People don’t realize how difficult it is to scale up ad hoc development, especially when your company becomes unpleasant enough that the churn rate becomes noticeable.

But this is not about them; this is about me. Why have I been wasting my time with these companies?

I think the hint came to me last week, when I ended negotiations with a company that was staffed by — you guessed it — old Netscape refugees. I was dearly tempted to ask the question, “What did you learn from your mistakes?” but the answer quickly became obvious: absolutely nothing. The same attitude was there: keep adding smart people and miraculously quality software will emerge. No concept of the difficulty in throwing together a large number of egos; no questions about the overhead required when large software systems are built from disparate components. Ignorance is bliss.

I caught myself regretting turning them down today. Why? Because my current workplace has become distinctly unpleasant. I started this job $15 grand below what I asked for because I was told that “we raise your salary at the end of a 90-day review period.” Of course, the 90-day period is now ending, and I can all but guarantee that they will not raise my salary, citing my performance. They’ve done this to others; they will certainly do it to me.

I cannot afford to make the same mistake again; I cannot continue working in a place that makes the most ludicrous offers appear attractive. If I were to do so, I’d just end up in another craptacular job.

mood: annoyed

I got “the Talk” today at work.

“The Talk” is the Rubicon in all relationships between worker and company; once crossed, there’s no return to the blissful naïveté of the happy worker. Part accusation, part admission of guilt, it’s a last-minute attempt to salvage a rapidly degenerating relationship; not unlike the frantic apologies of the guilty party in an imploding love affair. In fact, the two have disturbing similarities.

The talk always consists of the same three parts:

1. Darling, I’ve noticed something wrong. This is how the talks always open: the “surprise” revelation that things are not going swimmingly.

   “I realize you feel [underworked/overworked/underappreciated/exploited] and I want you to understand that I am aware of this.”

2. It’s not you, it’s me. The admission of guilt is supposed to assuage any guilt that the problem is yours, and thus you do not need to take drastic action (i.e., quitting the damn job).

   “You have to understand, management has [significant deadlines/pressure from the board/lack of real world experience], so your concerns were unfortunately overlooked.”

3. We can get through this together, baby. The attempt to appeal to the better nature rarely works, because by this time there is so much distrust that any promises of a better future — especially the exaggerated promises usually made — are as insubstantial as the breath required to utter them and are as likely as winning the lottery… twice.

   “In a few weeks, [the deadlines will have passed/the board will change/we’ll have positive income/we’ll have new hires] and things will be much better for you, for me, and for all of humanity!”

Why do people bother with the talk? All it does is foster resentment on both sides and makes the parting less amicable.

mood: nervous

In two hours, I get the joy of sitting down with the big boss—my company’s CEO. This “breakfast with the boss” is a one-on-one meeting where he attempts to find out how well his new employees are fitting in.

I’m not fitting in.

I’ve tried to convince myself over the last week that Internet advertising had a slim future, but my analysis convinced me of exactly the opposite. Certainly the current bubble will pop; when it does, I want to be as far away from the epicenter as possible.

The other problem is that the company is a practitioner of faux extreme programming. I say “faux” because they don’t follow any of the best practices of that questionable philosophy; they simply have an ad-hoc process and they wish to conceal its chaotic nature from their sponsors and potential recruits.

Finally, they have been given me projects that a high school dropout could do. I’ve been so bored I’ve over-engineered my solutions, which is bound to cause me trouble in the future.

On the other hand, they pay my medical; which I need because of my broken leg.

Rock, meet hard place.