My mate today asked me how they can overcome the fear of being downsized. It was pretty easy for me to counsel them because its downsizing that anyone who works in IT faces every budget time. Its a monster that we know is there, but which we hope we can roll a 5-6 and run away from each time.
So I asked them, what are what do they want, advice on overcoming the fear or ways to avoid downsizing and they of course wanted both. And since I always want blog topics, I figured this would be a great opportunity to share my thoughts on the matter.
To avoid getting downsized, its less about how good you are and more about how much people think you are vital to the firm. When it comes down it, most of us are average to good at our job, but some people always survive and flourish whilst others flounder and sink.
It's all about profile building and getting involved. Be known as the person to go to for help whenever ADVICE is needed. If you become known as the guy to go to when something needs fixing, you'll just be buried under more work then you can really deal with.
Also whilst many ISO/CMM processes rely on projects being survivable with the loss of a member, this isn't really in your interests. Hoarding information is bad and will bite you one way or another, but if you can prove yourself more accessible and valuable then a bunch of documents, do so.
Suggest new ideas for improving productivity, processes and what not, and take ownership of those. All people need to know is you're independently looking at a problem of your own accord, and they'll be impressed. Doesn't matter if you're actually doing anything!**
So they go, I should really start fixing my CV up again. Attitude wise, I reckon the attitude of I'm going to get fired so I should get ready for it is often self fulfilling. If you like, prepare, but drop the attitude.
Ideally you should be like, this year, I'm going to find ways of being more useful
And really as far as kicking the fear goes, think of it as a win win scenario...
If you survive the downsizing, you're competing with less people. Also typically in order to stop the massive morale hit that is downsizing, companies award more money for remaining employees. If I remember correctly, they year after we sacked several thousand people had the biggest pay rises and bonuses.
Downsizing also results in more work amongst fewer people, so you get more responsibility and more interesting work.
And if you get 'unlucky' and get downsized, its fairly awesome too. You get paid out (typically) redundancy pay, you get paid out any remaining vacation leave, you get a good reference (extra good reference cos its a 'Sorry for kicking you out' reference) and now you are free to move onto any firm you like.
The money really is quite good. Each time my dad got retrenched, he paid off an entire car from the redundancy payment. Each company and each person is different, but typically you get 3-4 months worth of money to live on till your next job.
So as you can see, its not really that scary***. Live on and be happy.
** In some organizations like mine however, running an idea and not doing anything will get you cruxified however, so beware.
*** unless you're looking after a family and have specialist obsolete skills which will make you impossible to rehire.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Audacious Audacity
Audacity Rocks! This is a completely free/open source music editor that can be very handy for everyone who is really into their music editing (but who can't afford the heavy duty mainstream gear), or those like myself who just want to do something simple like cut 5 seconds of garbage of the end of a track.
Audacity comes in Windows, Unix and even OSX flavours, and the windows installer is easy and convenient. The interface is pretty easy to use, though one surprise is you need to install the LAME Mp3 Encoder Library separately. Don't try and get LAME from sourceforge since it requires compilation. Instead use (http://lame.bakerweb.biz/) to get the lame_enc.dll and just stick it somewhere where you can point Audacity to it. Usually audacity will ask you where to find the dll, but in case you miss the screen, just go to Edit -> Preferences, File Formats and then Find Library.
I might fall follow up with some audacious creations and even more audacious quotes about Audacity.
Audacity comes in Windows, Unix and even OSX flavours, and the windows installer is easy and convenient. The interface is pretty easy to use, though one surprise is you need to install the LAME Mp3 Encoder Library separately. Don't try and get LAME from sourceforge since it requires compilation. Instead use (http://lame.bakerweb.biz/) to get the lame_enc.dll and just stick it somewhere where you can point Audacity to it. Usually audacity will ask you where to find the dll, but in case you miss the screen, just go to Edit -> Preferences, File Formats and then Find Library.
I might fall follow up with some audacious creations and even more audacious quotes about Audacity.
Hunter valley expedition
Recipe for awesomeness: Take 14 pumped up guys and girls and a cabin in the woods for the weekend in the Hunter. Add copious amounts of alcohol and stir until heavily toasted.
Whilst last years trip to Shoal Bay was a fun, relaxing trip, this was great in a completely different light. The CSN FC team was organised into a lean-mean wine-drinking force by the wonderful Mr Derek and shipped via a mini-van (and two cars) to the beautiful Hunter Valley. Whilst I and Richard took the faster, yet sedate drive up, the van arrived at the quaint, yet well equipped Belford Country Cabins with most of the regular drunks already tanked up. The night quickly progressed into more drinking and hence more hilarity.
Amazingly enough, everyone woke up the next day mostly fresh and ready for a day of drinking. And that we did. From 11am to 5pm, it was wines, wines, more wines, beer, schnapps, wines and cheeses. We visited The Boutique Wine company, Polbolkin Estate, Ivanhoe Wines, Harrigan's Irish Pub, some random Schnapps place (which had AWESOME chilli schnapps) and another winery with a name which we might never know. Apparently we each drank 47 different wines, which probably doesn't include the schnapps.
We also tried lots of cheeses, and I can tell you this now. Avoid aged goats cheese. Its mostly just ewww. But there were plenty of other tasty cheeses to offset that taste.
Our troop arrived back to the cabins around 6pm, and we then ran a bbq. The rest of the night was mostly a blur. A few notable exceptions included Ryan walking around STARK naked, and a lot of stacks-on people. Immature you say? Maybe, but you'd sure be laughing if you were in our position.
The next day was mostly quiet. People were tired (aka hungover) and mostly broke from the prior day. So after visiting a few more cheese and chocolate shops, we headed back to Sydney. A brief stop in Cessnock reminded us why we want to avoid backwater towns (the place feels like time hasn't caught up with them), but otherwise an uneventful trip home.
Kudos to my friend Richard for coming along with a bunch of people he never met before and for integrating so well. Even if he did get confused for Harry Potter.
For incriminating photos.
Whilst last years trip to Shoal Bay was a fun, relaxing trip, this was great in a completely different light. The CSN FC team was organised into a lean-mean wine-drinking force by the wonderful Mr Derek and shipped via a mini-van (and two cars) to the beautiful Hunter Valley. Whilst I and Richard took the faster, yet sedate drive up, the van arrived at the quaint, yet well equipped Belford Country Cabins with most of the regular drunks already tanked up. The night quickly progressed into more drinking and hence more hilarity.
Amazingly enough, everyone woke up the next day mostly fresh and ready for a day of drinking. And that we did. From 11am to 5pm, it was wines, wines, more wines, beer, schnapps, wines and cheeses. We visited The Boutique Wine company, Polbolkin Estate, Ivanhoe Wines, Harrigan's Irish Pub, some random Schnapps place (which had AWESOME chilli schnapps) and another winery with a name which we might never know. Apparently we each drank 47 different wines, which probably doesn't include the schnapps.
We also tried lots of cheeses, and I can tell you this now. Avoid aged goats cheese. Its mostly just ewww. But there were plenty of other tasty cheeses to offset that taste.
Our troop arrived back to the cabins around 6pm, and we then ran a bbq. The rest of the night was mostly a blur. A few notable exceptions included Ryan walking around STARK naked, and a lot of stacks-on people. Immature you say? Maybe, but you'd sure be laughing if you were in our position.
The next day was mostly quiet. People were tired (aka hungover) and mostly broke from the prior day. So after visiting a few more cheese and chocolate shops, we headed back to Sydney. A brief stop in Cessnock reminded us why we want to avoid backwater towns (the place feels like time hasn't caught up with them), but otherwise an uneventful trip home.
Kudos to my friend Richard for coming along with a bunch of people he never met before and for integrating so well. Even if he did get confused for Harry Potter.
For incriminating photos.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Yet Another Busy Saturday YABS
Saturday was a full day of unproductive activity. Well I'd like to think it was unproductive, but realistically I was putting effort into the other important things in life, which are my relationships. I caught up with Richard, Sunny and Doug after two weeks to again play games together.
The old favourite Settlers of Catan got a play (special cheers go to Richard who won his first legitimate Settlers win in ages), but it was mostly full of new things which was awesome. We had 4 Nintendo DSs linked together to play Super Monkey Ball together. Doug's Nintendo Wii once again got a lot of action with 'Rayman's Raving Rabbids' being the star attraction there. Richard also bought a new card game called Munchkin. As a quick summary, this could be thought of as parodied D&D in card form. It makes for a fun, easy to learn but quick experience.
After that I had a choice between sitting at home and buming around playing NWN2... or going to Jeffs place. Whilst the first option was incredibly tempting, I figured going to Jeff's was the better option since I don't see Jeff that often and its good to maintain that relationship with the Eng guys/girls. Surprisingly enough, there was yet ANOTHER Wii there and hence, MORE Wii action. At least we broke it up with some Poker and Pool action. Jeffs house is good in that way, for there is always plenty of entertainment.
Of course now I feel quite guilty that I did nothing productive from 10:30am till 2:30pm, but I've logged it on paper as to what I was up to at least. Friday is still 18 hrs of what the hell did I do there. I really should hurry up and get my C++ activity summariser application up and running so I can start doing some real analysis of my life activity.
The old favourite Settlers of Catan got a play (special cheers go to Richard who won his first legitimate Settlers win in ages), but it was mostly full of new things which was awesome. We had 4 Nintendo DSs linked together to play Super Monkey Ball together. Doug's Nintendo Wii once again got a lot of action with 'Rayman's Raving Rabbids' being the star attraction there. Richard also bought a new card game called Munchkin. As a quick summary, this could be thought of as parodied D&D in card form. It makes for a fun, easy to learn but quick experience.
After that I had a choice between sitting at home and buming around playing NWN2... or going to Jeffs place. Whilst the first option was incredibly tempting, I figured going to Jeff's was the better option since I don't see Jeff that often and its good to maintain that relationship with the Eng guys/girls. Surprisingly enough, there was yet ANOTHER Wii there and hence, MORE Wii action. At least we broke it up with some Poker and Pool action. Jeffs house is good in that way, for there is always plenty of entertainment.
Of course now I feel quite guilty that I did nothing productive from 10:30am till 2:30pm, but I've logged it on paper as to what I was up to at least. Friday is still 18 hrs of what the hell did I do there. I really should hurry up and get my C++ activity summariser application up and running so I can start doing some real analysis of my life activity.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Beware the IDEs of March!
My next upcoming project is an C++ project. Yes whilst this does fill me with horror, its also a nice chance to learn something new.
The first task is the most tedious in some ways, which is to find the best IDE for it. I'm not a purist (and I'm keen on getting some work done) so I'll be avoiding text editors wherever I can. A part of using an IDE is learning how to use it, and a part is fighting the IDE when it wants to do one thing, and you want it to do another. But even after taking away the time that absorbs, I suspect the amount of time saved using an IDE far outweighs using simply an text editor.
So far I have two candidates for the job. In the left corner is Microsoft Visual Studio and in the right corner is Eclipse with the C++ Development Tools.
After a week or so of playing around with it, I must say for pure coding, Visual C++ falls really short of the conveniences of Eclipse. Theres not even a call hierarchy until you get to VS.Net 2005. Theres no quick way to get to a particular file, like Eclipse's Cntl-Shift-R/T. However, it does allow for building relatively easily, debugging is far less painful then in Eclipse and its also the only development environment thats got built in support for MFC (funny that..).
This combination of things is enough to convince me to stay with Visual Studio. Even if it is going to make me dumber :).
Heck its a lot better than vi/gvim!
P.S. For those who didn't get the reference of this title and went 'but its January -> Click here.
P.S.S. xoxoxoxo
P.S.S.S. I can't help myself when I get a P.S. The hugs and kisses must go on.
The first task is the most tedious in some ways, which is to find the best IDE for it. I'm not a purist (and I'm keen on getting some work done) so I'll be avoiding text editors wherever I can. A part of using an IDE is learning how to use it, and a part is fighting the IDE when it wants to do one thing, and you want it to do another. But even after taking away the time that absorbs, I suspect the amount of time saved using an IDE far outweighs using simply an text editor.
So far I have two candidates for the job. In the left corner is Microsoft Visual Studio and in the right corner is Eclipse with the C++ Development Tools.
After a week or so of playing around with it, I must say for pure coding, Visual C++ falls really short of the conveniences of Eclipse. Theres not even a call hierarchy until you get to VS.Net 2005. Theres no quick way to get to a particular file, like Eclipse's Cntl-Shift-R/T. However, it does allow for building relatively easily, debugging is far less painful then in Eclipse and its also the only development environment thats got built in support for MFC (funny that..).
This combination of things is enough to convince me to stay with Visual Studio. Even if it is going to make me dumber :).
Heck its a lot better than vi/gvim!
P.S. For those who didn't get the reference of this title and went 'but its January -> Click here.
P.S.S. xoxoxoxo
P.S.S.S. I can't help myself when I get a P.S. The hugs and kisses must go on.
Monday, January 01, 2007
IDEs are making you dumb.
Ever felt the more you programmed, the crappier a programmer you were becoming? It could just be your editor of choice. I read this thought provoking and mostly amusing article from a guy who is bagging out Microsoft's MS Visual Studio.
Some good quotes from the article.
On Intellisense: "Human beings have never been inclined to refrain from pursuing certain technologies because they may have unfortunate repercussions."
On interactive design tools: Eventually, the interactive design stuff found its way into development with C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Classes, and there, I truly believe, code generation was used to hide a lot of really hairy MFC support that nobody wanted to talk about.
On visual studio: Almost twenty years after the first Dialog Editor, Visual Studio is now the culprit that generates ugly code and warns you not to mess with it.
and
But Visual Studio is not interested in having you write good code. It wants you to write code fast.
Whilst the majority of the article is MS specific, it applies to every IDE. So don't you snicker at the evils of MS all your open-sourced Eclipse fanboys because it still applies here.
Overall a good read.
Some good quotes from the article.
On Intellisense: "Human beings have never been inclined to refrain from pursuing certain technologies because they may have unfortunate repercussions."
On interactive design tools: Eventually, the interactive design stuff found its way into development with C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Classes, and there, I truly believe, code generation was used to hide a lot of really hairy MFC support that nobody wanted to talk about.
On visual studio: Almost twenty years after the first Dialog Editor, Visual Studio is now the culprit that generates ugly code and warns you not to mess with it.
and
But Visual Studio is not interested in having you write good code. It wants you to write code fast.
Whilst the majority of the article is MS specific, it applies to every IDE. So don't you snicker at the evils of MS all your open-sourced Eclipse fanboys because it still applies here.
Overall a good read.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)