I've moved into Project Managment myself, voluntarily. What I've found is this:
1) Remember all those things that managers did that you hated? Be open to the discovery that some of them actually made perfect sense but you didn't see it. Your Geek perspective may have been more limiting than your realize. 2) After you get through #1, take the things that still don't make sense and don't do them. Your Geek perspective can also be liberating. 3) People skills, people skills, people skills. If you can schmooze, talk, flatter, cajole, comfort, query, and chat - and get results, good. If not, start working on your people skills. You will need them. 4) Business perspective. Stay informed of business issues, policies, plans, and news. If you did previously, good. 5) Your Geek past is a great building block. You have an area of strength, start with what you learned in that.
You will have to change, but coming at a job from a different perspective is also a great advantage.
A fantatic technique I was taught - go to people you respect and ask them to list 1) Your two best traits. 2) Your two worst traits. 3) The two best traits of a manager. 4) The two worst traits of a manager.
You need to query at least 4-5 people, but it'll give you a perspective on yourself, on management, and what you need to do to do it well.
Will you get widely differing answers? Yes. But reconciling those answers is part of the learning process.
Not a bad speech. Certainly better than the platitudes I got.
I'd argue two points: 1) I think goals are just as important as options. It's like a dialogue, really - find a goal you want that also gives you options. Options are nice, but goals are a good way to focus and plot progress.
2) Graduation speeches and such are all well and good. This is a nice one. But I'd argue our culture and our school system need to change, not just the speeches. Guidance counsellors have proven useless for me and my friends and I'd say our culture discourages a lot of what he suggests here.
The part about having projects is something that I am very glad he said. I've always been making projects for myself since I can remember, from making lego structures to maintaining my web page. Some were stupid or ineffectual, but I always kept moving forward and always had something to do. Indeed among people I know, the ability to "make a project" seems to be a large definer of success. I've seen late bloomers who came into their own, and almost inevitably they had the same "do-a-project" approach, they just had to channel what they gained.
It's similar to an argument I've heard over parents forcing children to take art classes, sports, music classes, etc. - the kids, despite some regrets, at least get to develop a skill or ability and have some success. I personally prefer his gentle approach, but there's some similarities.
"In total, the core of our team has invested something like 80 man years on this experiment, 18 of which are mine," Atkinson wrote. "I think right now the key lesson is this -- if you're looking for a job with instant and guaranteed success, this isn't it."
It sounds like some of his work will continue at least. Got to admire his attitude and perspective.
The best bet I'd say is talk to your lawyers and review the contract. But you made several mistakes.
1) Always test the application yourself from compiled code. Its too easy for people to code to pass tests. 2) Always have source code. Always. 3) The final version should be compiled from source code. 4) The code should be reguarly reviewed by your staff for errors and suspicious code. NEVER give someone else access to your network.
The problem is that the enforcement is done with our tax money and people are reluctant to turn over power, especially politicians who have no other useful job skills.
So it'd take a long time for a bad system to fall apart. It's best dissasemled ahead of time.
A very good point indeed, and one I hadn't thought of. Not just bad laws and badly enforced laws, but stupid follow up measures to enforce the already bad ideas.
Though I'm not cynical about human ability and intelligence (the only way we could do the stupid things we do is be smart enough to come up with such innovative stupidity), I'm not sure we're ready to handle immortality.
Let's face it, people can't even keep spyware off of their computers, program their VCRs, or use all the features of their cell phones.
My concern with these laws is that if the greedy but technically ignorant get such laws passed that, yes, they won't be able to truly enforce them - but they'll do a heck of a lot of damage trying.
These stories of various laws designed to address issues of technology and piracy fall into a very weird area of what I call "news that's not exactly news."
This is a bill that if passed could have dangerous repercussions while at the same time be insanely hard to enforce and would doubtlessly cause even more confusion and problems. It's important.
Yet at the same time it's another story of people who are both technically ignorant and beholden to various special interests pushing another dumb law. So it's not news, it's pretty much par for the course.
Though this statement is a bit snarky, I think it actually is important - are we becoming numb to this incredible stupidity and pandering, so much so its harder and harder to fight it?
There's fear, then there's rationally thinking ahead. With a variety of technologies coming to the fore quicker, we're best planning ahead, since the future becomes the present with surprising speed.
. . . is why aren't we asking more of these questions and why aren't they in the public eye.
This is a nice simple article on some interesting questions, but it barely scratches the surface of all the concerns we're likely to face in the next 50 years. A few alone:
When is someone responsible for a machine that functions independently, but that they configured?
What resources will be affected by robotic production. Do we really NEED these robots?
When a human and a robot work together on something, who gets the blame for failure?
Of course anyone here can come up with more.
The problem is that as technology improves around us, more people aren't asking these questions, and even less are coming up with useable answers.
The future is coming. I wish we weren't watching "Who's your Daddy" while it approaches.
Interesting article. I can't disagree with its findings, though I'd argue they're of limited usefulness as the problems it notes can happen under a variety of situations.
The most unexpected result here, and the most insightful to me, is "Similarity to Previous Projects." This is a factor that I think deserves more attention - you can have a great staff, great management, and all the resources, but stick them in unfamiliar territory and your chance of failure goes up.
I don't think people pay enough attention to this factor, and thus it sneaks up on them easier than the obvious ones.
I have witnessed very talented people completely screw up an simple application because they had no previous experience with a project of that particular kind and neither did the management structure. Thus they all did their best, worked hard - and still produced a massively flawed product.
In these cases, I asked myself "How could they mess up like this when the solution was obvious." Now I realize that the solutions were obvious to me as I was more familiar with the kind of software they were trying to design.
It's still hard to wrap my mind around the extent of the disaster.
It also is amazing just how much information we have at our fingertips from cell phones, cameras, the internet, and more. Had this happened twenty years ago, the sense of it would be different.
It's amazing seeing the global impact, and being aware of the global impact. The world is much smaller these days.
I am also heartened to see how the internet has given people information on how to help out. That, too, is different than what we would have faced twenty years ago. Let's hope it makes a difference.
I have fond memories of Earthsea, and I think the fact that it WASN'T a group of pseudo-European white people appealed to me. It added a certain different flavor to the story, it took me out a of the standard images I had.
I think to her, having fought hard to even get the covers of her books right, it was an example of how ridiculous the changes got. I mean would it have killed them to hire some actors that looked like the characters for the most part? Were they afraid that people wouldn't take to a less-caucasian cast?
We have the question of software covered by copyright. We have the question of software covered by patent. We have companies using both.
Why assume, however, that copyrights, patents, or a combination of both are appropriate at all to software.
Perhaps, and this is pie-in-the-sky, software needs to be uniquely recognized separate from current ways of registering rights.
Do I have a solution? No. I merely throw this out for discussion.
Re:Neurotic compulsive shoppers?
on
Digital Packrats
·
· Score: 1
To be fair, I've suspected that non-functional hoarding/aquisition may not be due to brain damage, but may be a kind of tendancy that humans are prone to falling into.
Also, frankly, the abovementioned industries play on our hoarding/aquiring tendancies. I'd say they know what they're doing.
I'd say hoarding is basic human behavior. It can even be altered by Brain Damage, suggesting a strong, hard-wired component.
So, this doesn't seem abnormal to me. Though it's interesting to imagine how humans will react to the ability to hoard more in the same or even less "space" as it's all information.
As a geek, I always found the Automata fascinating, even from my youngest days. It was the science, it was the art, and it was the sheer ambition and talent that it took to create these things that amazed me. Art that moves and acts, science in motion.
I'm glad to see this and hope I can visit it. It's always good to understand one's technical past.
I wonder if there will be a museum of programming some day? Will there be ancient systems running Half-Life? Will people marvel that a PS2 could "do all that when it was so prmitive", etc. Will we, crotchey old geeks, go there and reminisce?
Slashdot Mirror
I've moved into Project Managment myself, voluntarily. What I've found is this:
1) Remember all those things that managers did that you hated? Be open to the discovery that some of them actually made perfect sense but you didn't see it. Your Geek perspective may have been more limiting than your realize.
2) After you get through #1, take the things that still don't make sense and don't do them. Your Geek perspective can also be liberating.
3) People skills, people skills, people skills. If you can schmooze, talk, flatter, cajole, comfort, query, and chat - and get results, good. If not, start working on your people skills. You will need them.
4) Business perspective. Stay informed of business issues, policies, plans, and news. If you did previously, good.
5) Your Geek past is a great building block. You have an area of strength, start with what you learned in that.
You will have to change, but coming at a job from a different perspective is also a great advantage.
A fantatic technique I was taught - go to people you respect and ask them to list
1) Your two best traits.
2) Your two worst traits.
3) The two best traits of a manager.
4) The two worst traits of a manager.
You need to query at least 4-5 people, but it'll give you a perspective on yourself, on management, and what you need to do to do it well.
Will you get widely differing answers? Yes. But reconciling those answers is part of the learning process.
Good luck.
This seems nice and fast, but the sad fact is Ruby doesn't have the ISP support or userbase of the "P"'s.
So, when will they create a competitor to this? Or have I missed it already . . .
Not a bad speech. Certainly better than the platitudes I got.
I'd argue two points:
1) I think goals are just as important as options. It's like a dialogue, really - find a goal you want that also gives you options. Options are nice, but goals are a good way to focus and plot progress.
2) Graduation speeches and such are all well and good. This is a nice one. But I'd argue our culture and our school system need to change, not just the speeches. Guidance counsellors have proven useless for me and my friends and I'd say our culture discourages a lot of what he suggests here.
The part about having projects is something that I am very glad he said. I've always been making projects for myself since I can remember, from making lego structures to maintaining my web page. Some were stupid or ineffectual, but I always kept moving forward and always had something to do. Indeed among people I know, the ability to "make a project" seems to be a large definer of success. I've seen late bloomers who came into their own, and almost inevitably they had the same "do-a-project" approach, they just had to channel what they gained.
It's similar to an argument I've heard over parents forcing children to take art classes, sports, music classes, etc. - the kids, despite some regrets, at least get to develop a skill or ability and have some success. I personally prefer his gentle approach, but there's some similarities.
"In total, the core of our team has invested something like 80 man years on this experiment, 18 of which are mine," Atkinson wrote. "I think right now the key lesson is this -- if you're looking for a job with instant and guaranteed success, this isn't it."
It sounds like some of his work will continue at least. Got to admire his attitude and perspective.
This is why I insinst on compiling code myself during evaluations and updates. That and review the code - you never know what's been snuck in.
The best bet I'd say is talk to your lawyers and review the contract. But you made several mistakes.
1) Always test the application yourself from compiled code. Its too easy for people to code to pass tests.
2) Always have source code. Always.
3) The final version should be compiled from source code.
4) The code should be reguarly reviewed by your staff for errors and suspicious code. NEVER give someone else access to your network.
Outsourcing is a real Pandora's box.
The problem is that the enforcement is done with our tax money and people are reluctant to turn over power, especially politicians who have no other useful job skills.
So it'd take a long time for a bad system to fall apart. It's best dissasemled ahead of time.
A very good point indeed, and one I hadn't thought of. Not just bad laws and badly enforced laws, but stupid follow up measures to enforce the already bad ideas.
Depressing - but insightful.
Though I'm not cynical about human ability and intelligence (the only way we could do the stupid things we do is be smart enough to come up with such innovative stupidity), I'm not sure we're ready to handle immortality.
Let's face it, people can't even keep spyware off of their computers, program their VCRs, or use all the features of their cell phones.
Are we ready for an innovation like immortality?
My concern with these laws is that if the greedy but technically ignorant get such laws passed that, yes, they won't be able to truly enforce them - but they'll do a heck of a lot of damage trying.
These stories of various laws designed to address issues of technology and piracy fall into a very weird area of what I call "news that's not exactly news."
This is a bill that if passed could have dangerous repercussions while at the same time be insanely hard to enforce and would doubtlessly cause even more confusion and problems. It's important.
Yet at the same time it's another story of people who are both technically ignorant and beholden to various special interests pushing another dumb law. So it's not news, it's pretty much par for the course.
Though this statement is a bit snarky, I think it actually is important - are we becoming numb to this incredible stupidity and pandering, so much so its harder and harder to fight it?
. . . you may have just come up with an adjunct to a Turing test. A good test of Artificial Intelligence is can it lie to achieve a goal . . .
Avoiding planning because some people may do it wrong is a way that ensures that you won't have a hand in the planning.
The future comes wether we like it or not. Other people will be planning. So we can only do our best to have a hand in it.
That's a good point I hadn't considered. More "are we asking the right questions" than anything else.
Which of course is part of the problem with predicting thing, since it's ALL questions. It's easy to get lost in what's important.
There's fear, then there's rationally thinking ahead. With a variety of technologies coming to the fore quicker, we're best planning ahead, since the future becomes the present with surprising speed.
. . . is why aren't we asking more of these questions and why aren't they in the public eye.
This is a nice simple article on some interesting questions, but it barely scratches the surface of all the concerns we're likely to face in the next 50 years. A few alone:
When is someone responsible for a machine that functions independently, but that they configured?
What resources will be affected by robotic production. Do we really NEED these robots?
When a human and a robot work together on something, who gets the blame for failure?
Of course anyone here can come up with more.
The problem is that as technology improves around us, more people aren't asking these questions, and even less are coming up with useable answers.
The future is coming. I wish we weren't watching "Who's your Daddy" while it approaches.
Interesting article. I can't disagree with its findings, though I'd argue they're of limited usefulness as the problems it notes can happen under a variety of situations.
The most unexpected result here, and the most insightful to me, is "Similarity to Previous Projects." This is a factor that I think deserves more attention - you can have a great staff, great management, and all the resources, but stick them in unfamiliar territory and your chance of failure goes up.
I don't think people pay enough attention to this factor, and thus it sneaks up on them easier than the obvious ones.
I have witnessed very talented people completely screw up an simple application because they had no previous experience with a project of that particular kind and neither did the management structure. Thus they all did their best, worked hard - and still produced a massively flawed product.
In these cases, I asked myself "How could they mess up like this when the solution was obvious." Now I realize that the solutions were obvious to me as I was more familiar with the kind of software they were trying to design.
Which is why I donated to Doctors Without Borders.
It's still hard to wrap my mind around the extent of the disaster.
It also is amazing just how much information we have at our fingertips from cell phones, cameras, the internet, and more. Had this happened twenty years ago, the sense of it would be different.
It's amazing seeing the global impact, and being aware of the global impact. The world is much smaller these days.
I am also heartened to see how the internet has given people information on how to help out. That, too, is different than what we would have faced twenty years ago. Let's hope it makes a difference.
Some of us have, it's just not enough of us have done it for it to register.
I have fond memories of Earthsea, and I think the fact that it WASN'T a group of pseudo-European white people appealed to me. It added a certain different flavor to the story, it took me out a of the standard images I had.
I think to her, having fought hard to even get the covers of her books right, it was an example of how ridiculous the changes got. I mean would it have killed them to hire some actors that looked like the characters for the most part? Were they afraid that people wouldn't take to a less-caucasian cast?
Of course they trashed it anyway.
Tossing out an idea here.
We have the question of software covered by copyright. We have the question of software covered by patent. We have companies using both.
Why assume, however, that copyrights, patents, or a combination of both are appropriate at all to software.
Perhaps, and this is pie-in-the-sky, software needs to be uniquely recognized separate from current ways of registering rights.
Do I have a solution? No. I merely throw this out for discussion.
To be fair, I've suspected that non-functional hoarding/aquisition may not be due to brain damage, but may be a kind of tendancy that humans are prone to falling into.
Also, frankly, the abovementioned industries play on our hoarding/aquiring tendancies. I'd say they know what they're doing.
I'd say hoarding is basic human behavior. It can even be altered by Brain Damage, suggesting a strong, hard-wired component.
So, this doesn't seem abnormal to me. Though it's interesting to imagine how humans will react to the ability to hoard more in the same or even less "space" as it's all information.
As a geek, I always found the Automata fascinating, even from my youngest days. It was the science, it was the art, and it was the sheer ambition and talent that it took to create these things that amazed me. Art that moves and acts, science in motion.
I'm glad to see this and hope I can visit it. It's always good to understand one's technical past.
I wonder if there will be a museum of programming some day? Will there be ancient systems running Half-Life? Will people marvel that a PS2 could "do all that when it was so prmitive", etc. Will we, crotchey old geeks, go there and reminisce?