Perfectly stated

Penelope Trunk says:

A hallmark of talent is loving to practice.

She's talking about laboring at a hobby, but it certainly applies to good coding. The best coders I've worked with go the extra step -- creating unit tests, writing quality code, etc. -- not necessarily because it's the right thing to do, but mainly because they get satisfaction from it. Penelope captures the sentiment perfectly.

Watchmen

How people get paid drives much of a company's culture.

Despite requiring taxpayer bailouts, Citi's CEO earned $38mm last year, according to Bloomberg. That only made him 3rd on the financial service. Number one was the CEO of Goldman, another taxpayer bailout recipient, at over $42mm.

CEO compensation, as a process, is fundamentally broken.

The reason my boss doesn't pay everyone who works for her enormous amounts of money is because she's on a strict budget. Her budget is set by her boss, who received a number from his boss. And so on, until you get to the top, where the executives act as "the watchmen". They decide what's right for everyone else.

At the top, the CEO gets a number from the board. Boards only have incentive to raise, and not rein in, CEO pay. Why would you want to upset your CEO? And who's watching them anyway?

Government controls and independent board members can't solve the problem. They have the wrong incentives.

I think the only thing that might work is shareholder approval of CEO pay. I might go farther and say shareholders can also make proposals for CEO compensation, as they can with other corporate resolutions. Shareholders are the only ones whose incentives are perfectly aligned to paying the executives correctly. Too little, you'll end up losing your CEO; too much, you're taking money from yourself.

Supposedly, shareholders get their say by electing board members. If you own stock, can you even name any board members of any companies you hold (excluding CEO + Chairman title holders, which of course only exacerbates the problem)? How are you therefore supposed to know which ones are doing a good job in general, much less what their involvement is in executive pay?

However, you probably know most of the CEOs. And you probably have a strong opinion about the job their doing.

Let's hope companies give shareholders a chance.

The limits of software

At the margins, the limits of software get exposed, even in areas you'd expect software to excel. This site went to a mechanical solution to overcome random number generation limitations (via Bruce Schneier):

Introducing the Dice-O-Matic mark II, now generating the dice rolls on GamesByEmail.com. It is a 7 foot tall, 104 pound, dice-eating monster, capable of generating 1.3 million rolls a day.

Jeff Atwood recently talked about famous math errors. What do you do to fix those?

What do the Google, Windows, and Excel (pdf) math errors have in common? They're all related to number precision approximation issues. Google doesn't think it's important enough to fix. They're probably right.

As he alludes to, the answer often is: you don't. Almost all human activity is not at the margins.

Good developers and development teams know where to stop engineering and accept the flaws, based on the code base, user skill level, and anticipated future requirements. (And, if you have mechanical skills, maybe you also know how to create a giant machine to handle the exceptions.)

Passion and motivation

Philip Broughton, in Ahead of the Curve, goes on an enjoyable rant about our current obession about:

Why was it then that every speaker who came to Harvard Business School demanded we be "passionate" about our work? ...[Perhaps] the word passion was just another form of corporate coercion. It was no longer enough simply to do a job that you found okay for a reasonable financial reward. You had to say you were passionate about your work even if you found the work meaningless and unsatisfying. And then, of course, if it was your passion, why wouldn't you want to stay in he office until late at night and all weekend long? Didn't you say it was your passion?

...[Another] explanation was that businesses used the word passion because it reflected what they wanted their employees to feel. Work at its best should be about passion, not just drudgery. A few lucky souls might feel genuine passion for their work, but companies used the word so freely, I sensed, because it set a loftier goal for their activities than mere profits. To be in the business of business was not enough. You had to be about something bigger. [Emphasis his.]

"Passionate" is just the modern lexicon for "self-motivated". After everyone figured out that they should put "self-motivated" on their resumes, similar to how everyone puts "good communication skills", the verbal bar had to be raised to separate the herd again.

Having employees with motivation solves a lot of problems. If you can hire self-motivated people, then the company needs fewer managers, and the managers look better.

However, I maintain that motivation equally comes from the managers and the company as much as it does from the individual.

If you've got unmotivated employees, it may not be the hiring practices that need re-working. Motivating employees is one of the most difficult and central tasks that a manager does.

Illicit sleeping

Here's a thought experiment for you.

You're working in your cube. Your boss comes to the guy next to you. "I've got some drugs for you. These will help you work better, faster, especially if you're tired. Safe, no side effects. Hold out your arm, I'm going to inject you." Now your boss turns to you.

Most likely, you're thinking, "Get away from me!" It's freaky even if you knew the drugs to be safe, and regardless of how you feel about steroids in baseball.

Yet, most of us do exactly this, willingly, everyday -- even spending our own money because the company-provided stuff doesn't meet our standards.

None of that bothers me, except now suppose I were to take a 20-minute nap at my desk, during lunch. Go for a walk, fine. Browse the web, fine. Call your mom, fine. Take a nap, people would be all over me. At first, they might think I was ill. If it continued, it would either turn into an office joke or someone would try to put a stop to it. If the practice spread, someone would definitely try to put a stop to it.

"Geekapolluza" asks:

I wonder about the social stigma of napping during the day at work - how in the world did it occur? Why does it exist? ... It is something unthought of in our culture - it is taboo. Instead, stimulants are the first choice, and completely accepted and even encouraged.

Geekapolluza is experimenting with "polyphasic sleep cycles". He sleeps only about 4 hours a day, which includes several very brief naps during work hours. Because he builds his entire day around this lifestyle, his work has been accommodating to him, which is also very fortunate for him.

But we shouldn't have to be sleep experimenters to be able to get the benefits of a 20 minute nap. I have, on very rare occasions, managed to sneak in a nap at an isolated desk. I do it more frequently on the weekends. It always leaves me profoundly more alert and productive for the rest of the day.

Isn't that what companies want from their employees?

(Not to mention a double win for companies who are actively slashing their coffee costs -- you know who you are.)

Dead zones

Dead zones occur when the app you work on or the business you support stops growing and starts shrinking.

At first, it's not too bad: there's too many people, and so plenty of hands can help with any problem. Occasionally turf wars break out if people find others encroaching on their traditional area.

Then, inevitably, layoffs reduce the numbers, and the survivors take on larger work loads, usually involving mundane tasks far below their pay grade. Prospects for promotion or developing on new technologies plummet. Morale suffers. Welcome to the dead zone.

The first instinct is to run to your headhunter. I recommend regularly evaluating one's position for learning opportunities and career growth, so this obviously is as good a time as any.

But I also maintain that a dead zone offers some interesting aspects that can be learned from. Here's a brief list:

1. refactoring. During growth times, everyone pumps out code quickly. Slow times can be useful for revisiting things and doing it right.
2. good coding methods. While refactoring, basically you're learning how you should have done it. Next time you build something, you can now do it correctly from the start.
3. processes. What could have been changed in the org so that the "right way" could have happened the first time? Code reviews? Automated unit tests?
4. innovation. During growth, the solution to almost every problem is more people and more code. With strictly limited money and people, think of elegant and creative solutions.
5. expectations management. "No, can't do it" may become the answer to an increasing number of work requests. Learn how to say it while maintaining good ties with users and your boss, and without becoming Mr. or Ms. Negative.
6. team motivation. A stock-picker finds out how good they are in a down market, not by making 30% when everything's up. Same if you're a leader: are you really a good leader or just been getting by because things have been going well? Time to find out.
7. org experiments. Often, org resistance is down because people are trying to figure out what's going on. This is a good time to suggest things you haven't tried before, for example, iterations or daily scrums. Or, more radical things like combining the QA and analyst roles. You can sell almost anything as long as you can make a plausible argument around "efficiency" or "new skills".
8. new responsibilities. People will leave, responsibilities will open up. While some might not be that desirable, and some are, and can be claimed just by doing the work. Should things turn around in the group, you'll emerge as one of the veterans.
9. recharge. The overall pace may slow a bit. Invest in yourself: sleep more, read books, learn new technologies or skills.

The financial world, in the absence of being able to create new financial products, is creating lots of dead zones. They go by the name of wind-down groups and "bad banks". Other industries face similar situations.

Do not stay in this situation out of laziness! If that's in your nature, then force yourself to leave. But if you're a naturally ambitious person, this can still be an interesting, educational time.

How to say good-bye

Don't screw it up at the end. I've been thinking about this lately given all the turnover going on around me. It sounds easy, yet there seem to be a lot of ways to do it badly.

I had one boss who was extremely well liked by his business users and his own staff. He flubbed the good-byes, and that's what everyone remembered. When staff members would leave, he would frequently miss the good-bye party, and that soured their memories of him later. When he switched to a different project, he never again stepped foot near his old users -- not even to tell them that he'd been given a new project -- and they felt completely abandoned.

Another guy I worked with adamantly refused to allow or participate in any kind of farewell party or drinks for him on his way out. Obviously he didn't want the attention, but how hard is it to grant this simple request? Up until that point, we all thought he was a normal, good guy. Only someone who was pathologically self-conscious couldn't bear to stand around for an hour smiling at people, so we started wondering.

Finally, there's the old standard, whether you've been laid off or are quitting: the good-bye email. Unless you have an axe to grind AND you intend to use it, keep it simple.

The greatest example of having a serious axe is Ken Hamidi. The legal battle over his "good-bye emails" to Intel lasted 8 years. He complaints were serious and real, he refused to settle, and he ultimately won several lawsuits Intel filed against him.

Most of us just have small gripes and complaints. Keep them to yourself. Send a kind, professional email to the co-workers you liked, then leave the bad feelings at the door on your way out.

The weirdest email I ever received came recently, when two people were quitting on the same day. The first guy sent a polite, professional email. The second sent his email about a half hour later -- the same email, but with a few phrases and adjectives moved around. Apparently, he found sending a simple email so difficult he had to plagiarize someone else's!

Pride

After I recently graduated with my MBA, my dad said, "You must be proud of your accomplishment." My response: "Actually, I'm probably more proud of being able to swim a mile everyday!"

Over the past 2 years while in school, I went from being able to do about 12 laps max, to doing 32 laps on a regular basis.

In school, the curriculum was set up; I just followed the path. It takes work to get out, but it takes true incompetence and an unwillingness to make an effort to get bad grades in b-school. At graduation, they give me a fancy diploma and a big ceremony.

Meanwhile, the swimming was completely optional. Everyday, I set my own goal and then decided whether to meet it. Nobody else cared. Because of that, the swimming required real mental effort, real commitment.

Your job is the same way. Your boss and co-workers require things from you. But what are you doing that you're proud of?

Crisis management by being visible

Being visible is often encouraged during a crisis. When the software isn't working right, I try to next to my business users, take the heat, then figure out how to can make a quick improvement.

Similarly, when a company is doing badly, the leaders need to get in front of their groups. The leaders showing their faces can help rally the troops.

It's sad to report, then, that the opposite seems to be happening in my group. While the CEO has done a good job with his emails, our group leaders have really botched it.

The head of the business unit has scheduled, canceled, and rescheduled his meeting with the IT staff four times. The CIO has scheduled, canceled, and rescheduled his meeting with our IT staff three times. Both of these meetings are now scheduled for late this month. We'll see what happens.

Meeting the "people", spreading optimism, sharing a vision -- this is one of the completely free things that a leader can do that can make a big difference. It assures people that their work is important and valued. Canceling, on the other hand, demonstrates that many other things have priority.

Yes, I'm sure both of these men are busy. But they also surely know the importance of keeping commitments. If their schedules prevent them from making a one hour commitment, they shouldn't do it. At this point, we'd be far better off if they'd simply never bothered.

If being visible helps with crisis management, what does being noticeably invisible do?

Slow software practices

Alex Tabarrok highlighted this chart about eating. Somewhat paradoxically, more time spent eating actually resulted in lower obesity.

I wondered whether a similar effect might exist for software.

It's easy to think of a hypothesis where this could be true. Quickly built software, with fingers flying, usually allows little time for planning. The goal is to get the code out as soon as possible, and lots of code is what happens.

All that code begets more code fixes. Also, the code likely doesn't involve a lot of abstraction, having been built for some specific cause, the emergency of the day. Thus the next emergency requires new, specific code for it, as well.

Perhaps a slow software movement is what we need. Of course, our company owners and business managers would freak out if we started saying that we're adopting "slow software practices".

So, of course, we call it other things -- requirements gathering or architecture review or quality control. But at the heart, one of the main elements of all of them is to slow things down, to create room to stop and think.

Keep that in mind the next time you're facing a project. Yes, it needs to get done right away, but invest in yourself and the project, and slow down.

Good is bad, better is worse

The economy seems getting better. The markets the past couple weeks might even be called good.

All of that is bad news for my company. I will not mention my company's name, but suffice to say that it is a large Wall Street investment bank.

Here's my company's current plan: cut costs, avoid losses, reduce risk. This is, I think, a recipe for disaster. An investment bank only grows by taking risks. That's what you get paid for! The idea that you could back into profitability by reducing losses goes against the business model. It's tantamount to not servicing the airplanes in order to save money.

The worst part is, an almost tangible sense of disillusionment is settling in among the troops. Last week, I felt surrounded by it. Two things always happen in these situations:

1) First, the best people leave. So far, that hadn't really happened, mainly because the economy stunk. Now with growing hope at the macro level, people realize they have options. I only know of a little turnover, but I can seriously feel it in the air. A flood of exits wouldn't surprise me at all.

2) When the best people leave, the good ones follow. The company that remains resembles the decrepit local mall, where no one really shops anymore, and the staff of teenagers doesn't care about the store, service, or customers. They're just drawing a check. I've personally seen increasing evidence of this.

If you're a manager or have any personal influence, you can do something about this. But, as with many situations, if you're someone who might try to do something about this, you'll most likely be one of the flood going out the door (see #1 above).

When things getting better are bad for the company, the game is surely up.

Bruce Eckel, publishing revolutionary

According to my recollection, Bruce Eckel put out the first digital book for free at the same time he had a best-selling hard copy at the book store. I believe the free version played a big role in Thinking in Java selling so well. At my dot-com, everyone who learning java started with his book, being free, and then eventually most of us bought it.

He made his book not only free on-line, but downloadable as both pdf and html. He didn't try to ramp up website stats by making you read the html on his site.

I actually thought that Bruce's successful example would herald a new day when free digital versions of book would become more common. Trying to break through a cluttered market can be difficult, and offering a free version might be the answer.

That day never came. So Bruce remains an anomalous experiment. I'm glad it paid off for him.

Bruce's latest idea (part of this interview) is equally brilliant.

I hope to make [the latest version of Thinking in Java] a community effort, to be published electronically under the creative commons.

Not that we need intro to java books so much these days -- but all the more reason to embed it into the landscape permanently. Give it to the software community, who knows what it will turn into. At the least, it could become the final, definitive book on learning java as a beginner.

A truly radical and fitting end to a book that started radically as well.

Everyone becomes incompetent

The quote comes from this chapter in Scott Berkun's book Beautiful Teams. I particularly like the first and last sentences of this excerpt:

If enough big things go wrong, everyone becomes incompetent. Everyone gets ugly. People quit. Despair rose. Managers stormed out of meetings and heavy things were thrown across boardrooms. Months flew by and therapy bills rose. As other parts of the project were completed, we tried not to notice the gaping Channels-shaped black hole at our center, slowly pulling everything inside.

I remember Channels well. I never used it, and always disabled it immediately, and occasionally it would reappear again. It was intrusively annoying, much like Windows Messenger now.

Bad projects take on a life of their own, and even good people can get taken down by them. We like to believe that good project and team management and solid developers prevent or overcome bad projects, but that's often not true. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

Everyone, to a person, will end up working on a fair number of bad projects in their careers. In some cases, there's nothing you can do about them -- except learn from them. Figure out what made them bad, understand the warning signs, and consider what might have made a difference.

From reading Berkun, I get the sense he does this very well, which make his Microsoft anecdotes very powerful.

Excellence is the best job security

A few months back, a friend asked me a question.

He was in the middle of developing several new major features for his application at his investment bank. Meanwhile, he expected layoffs within a few months. As a result, new features weren't being discussed until the layoffs occurred. Was it wise to finish off his work, even though that would leave him with nothing to do at the time that layoffs were likely? Isn't that like asking to be laid off?

Situations like these make me re-examine my motto "always put yourself out of a job." Maybe this -- a crisis of a lifetime in his industry -- was the exception to the rule.

But I told him that he should continue to work at his best rate. By pushing himself, he'd keep his mind sharp. He'd get to finish the project and understand it thoroughly. He'd burnish a reputation as a professional programmer who did excellent work. Whether or not his name ended up on the list, all of these factors would make him either a stronger developer at his current place of work or a stronger candidate for the next one.

Last week, his company did have those layoffs. But, we'll never know if he was on the list, because a couple weeks before, he accepted a great new job. Some of the experience he earned in his last project made him very attractive to his new employer.

I take no credit for his success; obviously, he did all that on his own. But it is nice to see one's personal theory get validated in real life, especially in a tough market like the current one.