The Problem with RTO
1,285 days ago, many of us were sent home to face an unknown future. Most of us had no idea that a couple of weeks would turn into over two years, that thousands of people in Alberta alone would die, and the long-term …
Topic
Management
34 posts tagged with this topic.
In the Believeco Tent
In the second week of August, I got a rather strange meeting request. It was lacking nearly all details. It was at the end of the day, a Friday. This was the sort of timing and specificity that usually suggested an …
Soft Skills are Hard Requirements
Today I had a call with one of our vendors who helps find developers and other technically-skilled contractors that we’ve employed in the past. It wasn’t with Marlene, who’s been my contact with this …
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How to Work Remotely
Welcome to the Global Plague of 2020, courtesy of COVID-19. The world has not seen something like this in a century, even the polio, cholera, and various influenzas that have struck since then haven’t created the …
Why your manager sucks
This year, I celebrate 15 years operating as a manager, in one form or another. I am by no means an expert, I certainly wouldn’t be the sort of person to conduct high-priced seminars that espouse …
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The importance of experience
“Experience” is a tough word to use in the digital marketing industry. Quite often, it’s used to encompass one’s adventure and awareness through a user interface of an application. It’s one of the most common …
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The Annual Review
Sorry for the long silence, folks. I’ve been a very, very busy boy the last couple of months, and … well, writing hasn’t really been a high priority for me. Family, as always, comes first, with my job (which …
The need for the Big Picture
On Saturday, my wife Alex and I went out on our own. (We manage to do this every couple of weeks thanks to Alex’s mother, who comes over to watch the kids so we can behave more like adults for a while.) On our little …
The fork in the road
Not so long ago, when I managed a team, I used to coach people in their career directions. (How well I coached people is another matter, and I can only leave it to those people to assess my real effectiveness.) I’d help …
The development in my life
If I were to summarise the last ten years of my career prior, specifically from about June 2000 to June 2010, it would look something like this: web developer, specialised web developer, senior web developer, junior …
Get Geeqee
Back at the beginning of the year, I took a different direction in my career. Until December, I’d been a career man — work for one company. Work your butt off, be the cog in the machine, and do the best you could to stay …
Visit Calgary - You're Very Welcome!
When we returned from Costa Rica, our plans had been pretty simple: take off the month of December to get settled, and then head back to work in January. Plans changed shortly after arriving back home, and suddenly I …
Mentorship is a must
No-one is ever born knowing everything. Like all animal life, we enter the world devoid of knowledge, having only the instincts innate to our species after countless eons of evolution, adaptation, and survival of the …
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What makes a Senior Developer
Every so often, someone asks me what I need to see in a senior developer. Why people ask me this is a mystery. I mean, besides the fact that I’m a Know-It-All, could it really be that several years of being a manager …
Overtime is not a solution
Every project is defined by a schedule. That schedule determines when certain tasks start and stop, when people enter and leave a project, and ultimately how much that project will cost (because, after all, time is …
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Impossible is a four-letter word
‘Impossible’ is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible …
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A good programmer is lazy, not stupid
I say this, in one form or another, to developers I manage. I’ve said it for years, and I’ll continue to say it until I’m proven horribly, horribly wrong. Which, until I leave this industry, is not likely to happen.My …
I wouldn't have done it that way
I’ve recently run into a common programming problem. While turning a development project over to another development agency, we heard that worst of comments: Why did you build it that way? It seems like a simple …
How to do offshore software development
North Americans are relentless at wanting things as cheap as possible. This drive is what has led many companies to look at using less expensive resources from other countries help bring down the costs of products and …
Failure is an option
One afternoon, a few years ago now, the head of my department uttered something completely heretical while we were in a fairly high-stressed meeting about some technical difficulties we were having on a project. It was …
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How to handle a problem
Problems fill our daily lives. Sometimes they’re trivial (“where are my keys?”), sometimes they’re pretty significant (“how do I hide this dead body?”); sometimes you can solve them on your own …
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The power of responsibility
With great power comes great responsibility. – Various sources I’m sure you’ve heard this quote before. It’s a good one, often used to reinforce the need for people to not slough off their priorities. Don’t get me …
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The blinding effect of an ego
One of the most dangerous things for anyone to have is an unchecked ego. I say “dangerous” because egos lead to a significant number of problems between team members, and can even lead to teams being pitted …
The importance of delegation
Delegation is the act of assigning work to other people, generally people who report to you. It’s supposed to be a way to ensure that the right people are doing the right jobs, and that large pieces of work will …
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Why didn't I get a promotion?
Aside from “I quit”, the worst thing a manager can hear from someone on their team is: “Why didn’t I get a promotion?” This is something I’ve run into a few times in my management career, and it’s …
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I'm just a "passionate" guy
I didn’t mean to hurt you, I’m sorry that I mad you cry, I didn’t want to hurt you, I’m just an “passionate” guy. – With apologies to John Lennon I won’t lie. Things haven’t been easy here in Costa Rica. …
My evolving job
When it was first proposed that I would come to Costa Rica and start up a new office, there were a lot of questions about how all this would be done. Starting a new office means running without the infrastructure that …
What have you done with Spock's brain?
One of the hard parts about leaving any group is passing your legacy off to someone else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a short-term thing (e.g. vacation) or a long-term thing (e.g. leaving the company). It still has to …
I hate going on vacation
I get four weeks of vacation a year. It’s not a lot, especially now that I have a family that I want to spend lots of time with. But you make do with what you have, right? My problem isn’t so much the lack of time I have …
Damn Good Manager
I love skipping through my hits every now and then. Not so much for ego (though there is no question that ego is an element of the desire), but also out of plain ol’ curiousity — how are people finding all the crap I …
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My Expectations of a Technology Team
I’m a tough person. I don’t settle for mediocrity in my own work, or in the work of those who work with me. There are the minimum height bars, and then there are the ones I set. Knee-capping height, some even high enough …
Review and reflection on my job
One of the things Critical Mass introduced years ago was performance management. I was glad to see it come. Radical Entertainment had it when I worked there, and I lamented the lack of such evaluation when I came to …
Promotion to Manager ... uh oh!
It seems that good things do happen to those who wait. Surprisingly enough, that also applies to me. You may recall some weeks ago, I lamented Critical Mass’ ability to see the need to promote from within. It wasn’t so …
Middle Management
I found out today that I’ve become middle management. I’ve become my own arch-nemesis. Critical Mass has (almost) finished its massive organizational effort. It’s not really a reorganization, per se, but it is a process …