Arghh! Zombies!

Why won't some things stay down!?

Bringing projects and programs back from the dead is nothing new in the software industry. Which is one of the biggest annoyances compared to some other engineering disciplines. You don't see anyone decide to resurrect a bridge project and go, lets make this bridge longer!

From a business point of view, there is really nothing wrong with extending existing software. For minimal additional expensive, you can get either more revenue, or extend the longevity of it. Nearly all projects have continued development after their initial release. Currently I'm working on a project that had no work done on it. The problems occur when you have a project that was meant to be dead and buried and is now coming back to life. And not in the good Jesus-resurrects-Lazurus sort of way, I'm talking more about a necromancer bringing back a project that is currently brainless and lurching around until someone figures out what to do with it. And our resident necromancer manager has sent it lurching towards me!

This is why I'm complaining. I was 'volunteered' to lead an existing project that was meant to be off shored to the US after its birth and development in Sydney. Unfortunately the person who was meant to take it over resigned. Clearly he saw what was coming and decided to take the window instead of the fire.

As Jeff Atwood would say, in programming, one is the loneliest number. Being the only person in Sydney assigned on this project would suck more than I can describe. Having someone to talk with, and bounce ideas off in real-time is invaluable. There are others who've been on the project before, but pressing on them when they aren't officially assigned to the task would make me feel guilty.

Now where's my shotty?

Redun-dancies

It was a sad day today at work. We had a number of redundancies take place, in the typical sudden one day's notice sort of scenario. To make it worse, all the people who were made redundant were people I work with every day and one of them was my boss, mentor and friend for two of my four years at Avaya. As much as I tried to ignore it and get on with work, it was a hard and painful day and its probably going to difficult for a while.

Redundancy isn't always a bad thing, especially if you've been there for a while. The payout is typically quite substantial and if your timing is accurate, you can potentially move jobs and effectively get paid a bonus to quit. The people that were leaving are top performers who wanted to move on and they volunteered to leave so good on them! I'm sure they did the redun-dance when they found out they were approved to leave.

If you think about it from a economic stand point, having more voluntary redundancies made available to be negotiated is a great thing. All companies have staff who want to be somewhere else, but stick around for the money. Typically people become bored and want to move on because their skill set isn't effectively utilized by the firm. Its in their best interest to move on to another role/firm, and its in the company's best interest to give them a good reason to leave so that they can use that person's headcount to hire people who are more suitable for the strategy in play. And even if its not a skill set problem, just being at the same place for too long can kill your drive and this is bad for you and the firm.

From a personal standpoint, its a bit of a 50/50 affair. Whilst you do lose that person as a comrade-in-arms in the company, what you are actually gaining is potential contacts for new job placement. Peers within the firm are typically useless for ensuring promotion, but if they leave they can have (depending on their eventual role) a great potential impact in your ability to find jobs 'on the outside'. Whilst in the near future this isn't a relevant point for me, I'm sure it'll come in handy at some point.