Wrong Lane

I interviewed for a full time position after many years a month ago. This is one of the biggest companies in town and pays better than most other outfits. Post marriage and with J getting ready for middle school next year, I thought it would be best for me to slow down and settle into a regular job, have vacation time and generally better work-life balance. The interview process was like a decathlon - I jumped and cleared all the required hoops and had no less than four different hiring managers clamoring to bring me on board.

Life was good until it was not. A couple of weeks after all these "great conversations" were had, the recruiter came back with an offer that was for a position one level below that what I had interviewed for and had these "terrific" discussions with the different hiring managers.Right after dissing me with respect to the position she threw me a bone - she promised to make up the pay difference by giving me the highest salary they could at the level. In a full time role, position often counts more than salary - I may have settled for the lower pay if the position (specifically, title) was what I needed it to be. 

I found it intriguing how this all worked. I was being low-balled for position and not money (we may have been able to agree on that) because it must have become apparent during the course of the many discussions that the title and where I was in the hierarchy was more important to me than compensation. The whole experience left a bad taste in the mouth - I realized that I had failed some shibboleth that identified me as the outsider I am when they were looking for an insider who could be like one of them, fit in the culture and generally not upset the established order of things.

It has been a while since I have been in the corporate environment as a full time employee - I have forgotten how to swim in the shark tank that it can be.DB tells me that I am being needlessly proud and emotional in making the decision not to accept the job offer - the money I am being offered is still very good. He is probably right but I feel like I would be better off leaving with my dignity intact than accepting less than I deserve. In my single parent years, I never exercised my right to choice about employment - I took the first thing that came along because being employed was the single most important objective - I sacrificed a lot in the process. This time I am exercising my right to choose not to be in the wrong lane and wait until I find what is right for me. As the holiday nears and the job market dries up for the year, my resolve may start to waver - I would feel like I am imposing upon DB if I don't do my part for the family.

Burst Bubble

I have been in the workforce for what seems like a very long time though my "dream" retirement age will likely not be met . In all this time, the one accomplishment that I am truly proud of is my ability to manage difficult people and situations without letting it impact my quality of life. I did not come to this state naturally or over-night - years of hard-work and perseverance got me there - or so I thought.

A week ago, that accomplishment took a real drubbing at the hands of a co-worker. He is our on-site technical lead from one of India's largest outsourcing companies. They have over thousand resources working for this client and have the muscle that goes with an engagement that size. This man found it impossible to accept that he had to report to me - a woman, a desi and a local consultant (as opposed to a full time employee of the client). It was a combination that was too much for him to stomach - he simply did not feel that I had any authority to ask him anything about his work. I brought my years of experience dealing with insubordination to bear on this situation. He went back and forth between aggressive and compliant behavior, we had some process gains but the system continued to grow more and more unstable. Every other week, a major fire drill would be required to keep the engine running.

I was brought into the role that I am in to provide technical direction and mentoring as needed - specially when a system bottleneck is hurting the team's overall operating efficiency. To that end, every recommendation I made, he met with vehement opposition if not outright rejection and continued to grow the patch-work of hastily put together fixes that has now brought the system to its knees. He is trained in a set of tools but has no foundational knowledge of technology to buttress it. He finds himself placed in the position of a technical architect /lead designer when his skills are more compatible with a mid-level developer. To compensate of his deficiencies, he works almost round the clock, micro-manages the offshore team and makes it impossible for anyone to get past him and to the issues to see if they can help.

On that day, in the middle of an IM conversation, the man walks up to my desk in a physically aggressive manner and talks in a tone of voice that I have seen used by domestic help in India during altercations with their employers. This is simply not the standard of behavior I have seen in my workplace in all these years - here in America or back in India. I was completely dumb-founded and too afraid to engage him in a discussion not knowing what he may decide to do if provoked any further. This was the third such incident and I felt not taking any action would would embolden him to a dangerous level.

I reported the incident to my management and the whole process of resolution was set in motion. In net, I was made to feel like a hysterical woman who thanks to an over-active imagination had read way more into the situation than was warranted. The Indian company told me that this man did not owe me an apology because he did not feel that he had been out of line. I would now need to find someone else to act as the go-between to get work done through him - they had asked him to stop all interaction with me immediately. The client does not want to get involved directly because the neither of us are full time employees with them. So I have now become the official problem - the woman who failed to manage the man she was required to manage and has turned that failure into a inconvenience for all concerned. It was a well orchestrated move and everyone was complicit in it - including the client who shied away from taking any direct action knowing fully well there has been a pattern of aggressive, unprofessional behavior for months. Then man got away from all of this looking like the victim and with no consequence at all.

Not only has this incident burst my bubble about my ability to manage tough people and situations, it has also made me realize what my girlfriends have told me many times before - that the moment a woman shows signs of weakness, she becomes the pariah in the workplace. No one wants to have anything to do with her or her imaginary issues. This is the modern day, workplace equivalent of being made to wear the Scarlet Letter. If you feel like you are being discriminated against of being treated differently, it will be chalked up to imagination because nothing is really being said or done to me. Everyone wishes this thing had never happened and more than that they wish I had not started all this stuff up and caused disruption to the normal order of things. The man who offended me has the support of the vendor who knows the client will not rock the boat too much given how deeply entrenched they are in their organization. They want enough time to pass so I move on or get over it so they can continue to go about their business as usual. For my satisfaction, they have left the incident unresolved.

Lean Kaizen Amulet

I had the fascinating experience of being part of a Lean/Kaizen event recently where the facilitator bulldozed a group of fifty people over the course of a week to create a workplan for a couple of months. The idea was for these folks to head off as five different teams to work in concert on delivering the first piece of functionality in a large, complex product.

The traditional waterfall method of software delivery has fallen to as much discredit and ridicule as it has because there was nothing to show for the project team's efforts until the very end and the world could have changed completely by then. More often than not by when strategy and vision got translated to reality, it bore very little resemblance to what  the powers that be had in mind - not to mention that the market and competition had transformed enough to make the product obsolete. Then there was the whole business of scope bloat, cost and time overruns.

Lean/Agile is supposed to fix all that and help teams to recover from their mistakes quickly as they continue to deliver their minimal marketable features at the end of each iteration. Sounds beautiful in theory except that the devil is in the details. In the session I went through, the project teams had a lot of inter-dependencies and could not realistically be free-agents that churned out widgets every other week. There were key architecture decisions that had to be made which impacted everybody. Understanding of the full scope of the work and thrashing out the details was therefore critical to success.

Yet, the facilitator kept emphasizing the importance of not getting too far out into the future because change was inevitable. Defer decisions until as late as possible was his mantra. Some of the senior developers were clearly not on board with the idea but had to go along with what the "expert" advocated. At the end of the week, all the artifacts that were to come out of the workshop were ready and to that end the leadership team touted the session as a magnificent success.

There were two or three "open questions" on the table that could depending on resolution trash nearly everything that was accomplished over the week. Our Lean/Kaizen guru minimized the impact that they may have because as far as he was concerned this was "Mission Accomplished" - an we all know how that turned out.

After having worked Agile for years now, time after time I have seen projects turn into tain-wrecks because there was never enough time to get design and architecture right. If you have the foundation laid and a solid blueprint, it is possible that you construct a high-rise in small chunks and stop at a logical point when time or money run out. You have the basis on which to build and know what the end game is.

To expect to work on the foundation and blueprint "iteratively" as you build goes against commonsense and yet that is what the so-called Lean/Agile experts advocate IT shops to do and even more amazingly management buys into this and gets into Kumbaya mode. Just because stuff is not being done in the much derided "traditional waterfall" method is no guarantee of success. We can move Kanban cards on Heijunka boards till the cows come home and will still not have a high quality product to show for it. It never ceases to amaze me how the a process has come to be like a magic charm for success. This is no different than reposing faith on an amulet to cure a disease instead of trusting the advice of a trained medical professional.

Gravy Train

One of the most commonplace workplace complaints is about A doing the work B is too lazy, incompetent, unwilling or some combination thereof to do. It would be tolerable if it ended at that even if A was not officially expected to do any of this and instead B was. But rarely if ever is the story that simple. Someone higher up (C) that both A and B report to will make it seem it it was really A's job to begin with and that B was expected merely to provide direction and commentary. B's deficiencies end up working as their advantage.

In effect, C is implying that B is supervising A's work. The ineffective and incompetent peer is being at least symbolically promoted over the deserving one. Unless A challenges this narrative and refuses to have reality spoken out loud and acknowledged, that becomes the official version. In six months, B will get promoted over A for having provided leadership. The obvious irony of the situation would have escaped everyone except A.

I used to imagine that this kind of problem is the exclusive preserve of full time employees and that consultants were somehow immune to it. Recently, I had that notion dispelled. When I became a threat to an expensive consultant's gravy train, he acted like a B with me being the A and our common client being C. I also used to imagine that silly stuff like this did not bother me and I left work behind at the parking lot - that I found out was not entirely true either.

Past Fifty

In an IT shop full of young people fresh out of college and management in their mid to late thirties, someone in their fifties does not fit in very comfortably. I tend to observe what works and what does not for this demographic for very selfish reasons. Unless, I am able to retire before I am that old, I will at some point need to be part of a workforce whose average age is twenty years less than mine. The pace of social and cultural change driven by ever newer technology will make for a generation gulf rather than a gap by that time. The little that a fifty five year old has in common with a twenty five year old today, may entirely disappear by then. If anything, the challenges will be far greater.

I have learned a few things from the fifty plus set in the workplace. If they happen to be consultants with a wide variety of experience, their acceptability tends to be a lot better. They are able to remain relevant instead of becoming obsolete - they are respected for the perspectives and lessons they bring from success and failures of the past. Someone who has worked forever in the same company may be valued for their deeply entrenched knowledge that could only be acquired over the years but as soon as management does an infrastructure rebuild (as is inevitable), their value plummets.

Ability to learn from younger people, take an interest in what they think is cool is very helpful. Respecting them for their nimbleness of thought and action is critical. I have seen some who act like they are victims of a cruel system that is designed to make their lives miserable - that they are being unfairly treated because of their age.  This attitude invariably results in bad outcomes. Some people of that age come across to the younger set as very positive role models and even parent figures. This is possibly the best thing that can happen.

Alien Habitat

One afternoon she was in the office, the next day she was gone - or had been let go rather. In the few weeks that we had worked together, her disengagement from the team had become all too evident - she continued to reinforce her status of an outsider by making constant references to past projects and places of employment. This is probably just as damaging in the workplace situation as talking about past relationships is on the first date.

Over the years, I have found teams to resemble ecosystems - there is a lot of variety in terms of personality types, talent, work style and more. Yet together they define a certain type of culture - open, friendly, withdrawn, competitive, deliberate, spontaneous etc. When a new person comes on board, it works best if they have a neutral energy level almost - they are able to find the flow in their surroundings and go with it quite effortlessly. Then there are those who have the ability to tease the best out of the ecosystem. Both types are make this alien habitat they are thrown comfortable enough for them to survive (and often thrive).

And finally like her, there are those who can't seem to open their mouth without causing trouble for themselves. They (along with onlookers such as myself) are astounded by how little it takes for them to cause waves. It is like dropping a marshland creature in a desert and expecting it to make it. So it was with her - she had the right credentials, did well on the interview and came with decent references. From what we could tell, she was competent as well. The team had not spent enough time with her to understand if she was right for their habitat.

Test Of Time

There are some universal truths in all disciplines - even in the fluid and evolving world of information technology there are principles that do stand the test of time. The sooner one learns them the better because sloppy habits are easy to acquire and very hard to lose. A programmer is well served to learn good, elegant programming style from the get go, testers devise ways to automate as much testing as possible while aiming for maximum coverage, a designer or architect must know to use patterns, build reusable frameworks and components and a project manager must stay on top of metrics earned value or otherwise, convert risk and issue resolution into a lessons learned inventory that can be used on the next project.

No matter what technology platform being employed or business problem being solved, these are things that do not change and make the difference between a failed or successful implementation.

Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to revisit all the lessons from the early days of my career when I was a programmer. Lacking both the temperament and the desire to pull myself out of mediocrity, I found other things to do. However, having worked with people who had both the passion and the ability to be among the best, I learned enough about the discipline to have discernment. What was true ten years ago, is true even today only the mistakes have become a lot more expensive.

I am dealing with a vendor who is trying to integrate between a client's application and a third party product for which they are the preferred service partners. Given their credentials, the price tag is high.Our implementation is no different from many others that they have done before. The roster of clients they have worked with is lengthy and impressive. You would think with all their diverse experience they would have by now built a framework into which a new project could fit in with minimal effort and that they would be able to estimate size and scope of work quite easily. Common sense would dictate that they would want to reach that level of maturity. Not only would their development cycles shrink, they would also be able to bring on more clients.

As is turns out, none of that is true. Instead of being this well-oiled machine that they should have been by now, they scramble to cobble together infrastructure for the new project, without putting much thought into long term maintenance and stability. They force the client to lock down every last requirement at the earliest date so they can scope and schedule the work assuming all is set in stone. Any revision from that point on is a change of scope that only needs to be budgeted separately but will also play havoc with the schedule. Very quickly, the stress levels on both sides mounts to unhealthy levels, the vendor starts missing delivery dates by wide margins and ties to pin the blame on business requirements - one of the most blatantly abused and minimally understood terms in my line of work.

Ten years ago, when there was not nearly the same diversity of offerings in the packaged solution space, the same set of problems could have killed an implementation and it is no different today. It is still just as important for every member of the team to learn to do their respective job the right way. Lessons learned must become part of a team's DNA and not a time to do lunch while reminiscing over the high and low points of the project just "completed". One weak link in a team's chain can be a huge drag force on it but when you have several of these, the chances of success are almost non-existent.

Staying In Touch

That the billionaire SAS co-founder is still writing code should be inspiration for so many managers and executives who unlike him are no billionaires and yet have no tangible skills. When comes time of organizations to trim fat and become the bare bones versions of their former selves, there folks are the worst hit. Their skills don't always travel well and they are so far and long removed from any core discipline that it becomes hard for them to actually "do" any real work.

This is particularly true in the information technology business where technical obsolescence renders management and executive skills irrelevant as well. Consider someone whose last hands on job experience involved programming in Cobol for mainframes, chances are they would find nothing to borrow from that learning that is relevant to their present day job. They would not be the most qualified to make technology purchase or implementation decisions let alone be a good mentor to the team. Then there is the whole idea of leading by example. In geek circles, a manager who gets it is much more likely to earn their respect and cooperation that one who is largely clueless.

Passing On

Recently, a former co-worker succumbed to cancer. She had been battling the disease for over two years with a great deal of courage and good humor. I remember the strong medicinal smell around her cubicle and sometimes (maybe in my imagination) that of death and decay. Yet there was nothing about her manner that would suggest that she expected to see the end soon. We all admired her spirit but truth be told she often exasperated us with her know-it-all attitude - she was by no stretch of imagination easy to work with.

In doing an outstanding job of ignoring her condition, she made us forget how much she was suffering, the emotional and physical toll it was taking on her. B leaves behind a husband and four young children. We might have been far more accommodating had we always been aware of her condition - but she made sure she was not treated any different from anyone else.

When the news of her passing came, we all recalled her best qualities and if my own example is any indication, with complete sincerity. We remembered her willingness to go out of her way to help others and her resilience. She was no whiner or defeatist. When she was alive, it took an effort to like her though admiring her was easy enough. In death she has both our love and respect - that must be a life well lived.

Master Of Nothing

'Partly by design and partly happenstance, I do happen to be a Jack of All Trades professionally. By extension it must imply (to most people at least) that I am the master of none. Being a generalist has for the most part worked out for me, but I do find it hard to slot my resume into the specific cubbyhole of a "job description". That said, it was nice to read this take on the virtues of being a Jack of All Trades. Could not agree more with Tim Ferriss when he says :

The jack of all trades maximizes his number of peak experiences in life and learns to enjoy the pursuit of excellence unrelated to material gain, all while finding the few things he is truly uniquely suited to dominate.

I have stumbled on to the most interesting and valuable work experiences by taking on projects that were underfunded or not all in my spare cycles. There was no material gain from any of them - though some peer appreciation resulted at times. Between my "real" job and all these other things that I picked along the way, at some point I was able to discern my real strengths and inclinations. That learning is important and stood me in good stead. While I don't claim mastery over any subject area but dabbling in a bunch of things did not come in the way of acquiring it.

Bear Shaving

When Seth Godin writes about Bear shaving, I am reminded yet again why he is one of favorite bloggers. He says : Step one to eliminating bear shaving: call it when you see it.

I have tried step one many times in the workplace and most often have never made it to step two. Bear shaving is simply too easy for most people to be bothered with doing the right thing. Besides the right thing involves making a whole slew of people (often with conflicting interests and priorities) stop bear shaving in their individual areas of responsibility so that the organization can change for the better. So there will be many bear shaving alerts from all over but they don't amount to more than random spikes of noise that is drowned in the general hubbub of organizational chaos.

Maybe Godin will follow up this post with ideas on how to go from step one to two successfully.

Four Day Week

This Scientific American article on the economic and environmental benefits of the 4 day work week implemented by the government of Utah, has provoked an assortment of comments for readers. Clearly, the 10 x 4 work week is not everyone's idea of work-life balance panacea. The first thing that comes to mind is the coverage of daycare and after-school care centers. Unless they synchronize their hours of operation to match those of the Mon-Thu workers, the benefits would disappear very quickly.

If schools were to operate closer to a 9-5 schedule it would do a world of good for the parents - not only will they have to spend less on child care costs, they would be spending less time on the road back and forth from picking up and dropping off their kids at locations that call for lengthy detours from their home to office commute. Obviously, such an arrangement hurts the prospects of childcare businesses but in the long run, both parents and children can have a better quality of life - a goal that should definitely be worth more than lost revenue for businesses that exist solely because of the misalignment between school and work hours.

Ideal Job

For anyone who loves Venn diagrams and has pondered over the question what exactly does it take to be happy at work, Bud Cadell over at What Consumes Me has an answer. The analysis is amazing for its sheer simplicity - the clean presentation only makes it better. It got me thinking about how this graphic can come in handy while describing one's ideal position to a prospective employer or even to ourselves.

What We Do Well : This would obviously be the skills, competencies and experience we bring to the organization and the job.

What We Want To Do : This would describe the role in which we believe we can be most successful.

What We Can Be Paid To Do : While we may have a lot of interesting ideas, the organization may not be able to support the incubation (and eventual fruition) of most. This would therefore describe what we will be paid to do and how much.

Learn To Monetize It : This might include venturing on our own with those ideas that we can't get an employer to pay us to implement or perhaps expand the scope of our job (or find another one) to help us do so. The room for horizontal growth in a role is worth investigating during an interview.

Learn To Say 'No' : This needs no further explanation but is possibly the most tricky one to solve. In an interview situation this may entail finding out if the culture of the organization values compliance over dissent under all costs, all circumstances because if such is the case you may never be able to say 'No'.

Learn To Do This Better : Also self-explanatory but in the context of a job search might imply finding out the employer's attitude towards people developing their skills and knowledge and if they actively support/reward such efforts.

Name Unrecognized

It is nice to see someone who has been through the system say it like it is about the JEE entrance exam and why it is such a terrible means to a good (?) end - a post I happened by long after it was written.

I think that IIT kids were really brilliant at one stage, but a mind numbing system like the IIT, mind numbing profs and meaningless societal expectations just robs people out of their real passion for life.

Finally, very few in the US even today have heard of the IIT’s. The only companies who know are those hiring massive armies of coders. Its time people get over the IIT hype and start living a life.

I have lived and worked in several cities working for small to large companies in the US and am yet to meet a non-desi who is even familiar with any Indian universities, IITs included. To most of them us desis are this homogeneous glob of brown techies who can write reams of code and sometimes function in other roles within the technology business. Some of us are really good at what we do but there is absolutely no dearth of morons in our tribe as folks will be quick to point out.

We tend to be hard-workers and will not flinch at working late hours, holidays and weekends to make up for the lack of innate ability. We also tend not to be very expensive and that is generally pegged on the H1 status. While many of these characterizations maybe be cliches and stereotypes, they seem to have considerable sticking power.

One way or the other, a brown techie is likely to get the job done. That is not exactly a stellar reputation but is possibly responsible for the success the community has had in the job market. It would have helped all desis in the IT business at least, if the IIT-brand had the name recognition that it is supposed to have.

Shocked Out Of Buzzwords

Though the idea may be a bit Pavlovian, the usefulness of the Buzzword shocker bracelet in undeniable. Maybe all companies should hand these to everyone whose job description might involve copious amounts management-speak - if only as a favor to those who have to listen to them. The best part has got to be the USB connected wristband that allows you to download buzzword data from your computer. The technology business generates an obscene amount of them every day so the notion of being able to expand the list of offending words is particularly thoughtful.

I am trying to imagine this thing on the wrists of some of the most verbose executives I have met over the years. Most of them would not be able to get a sentence in without receiving an electric shock. There is almost a sense of karmic retribution in that from the point of view of those who have been subjected to their buzzword-laden gibberish meeting after meeting.The idea is "Soon your subconscious is associating those words with an unpleasant sensation, and before you know it, you sound more polished and professional". This is almost too good to be true. The handy graph that traces your buzzword culpability over time is excellent.