Pensieri di un lunatico minore
I don’t know whether that light is the sun, or if it’s an oncoming train, but effective September 5th, I am “off” this project. Now, I don’t know if off actually means “never working on it again”, or if it just means I’m not traveling, but that’s the date, and I’m standing firm.
This didn’t come easily, though. I’ve repeatedly asked for a roll-off date—for 2 months—and been denied any information. In many cases, I was told it as “inappropriate” to even ask. Regardless, I finally put my foot down when it was apparent that there was little if anything that I could contribute at this point. I discussed it with my manager, who backs me, and emailed the project manager and his boss.
The response? Nada. Zilch. Zip. Squat. Null.
In his normal passive-aggressive fashion, Eeyore is not even alluding to the fact that he knows I’m leaving the project, even when I bring it up. I know he read the email 2 weeks ago, but refuses to acknowledge it. I’m quite sure that come the 8th, I’ll get a call wondering where I am.
4 thoughts
In our continuing saga of incompetent project management, today, at 5:09pm, I was approached by Eeyore1 to let me know that we would be running some tests with the client tomorrow morning. Now there’s a few problems with this “plan”, a word I use quite loosely:
- We’ve not “dry run” this test before
- It involves a third-party that will not be directly participating
- It requires hardware to be installed that isn’t installed yet
Unfortunately, none of this is unique to this instance. It has all contributed to a failure in testing that could easily have been avoided with better planning, and more importantly, listening to the subject matter experts (SME) who are actual responsible for accomplishing work. There’s nothing like making commitments to the client, then discussing it with the staff that has to execute.
Moron.
1 I now call the Project Manager Eeyore because he can suck all the motivation out of a team simply by walking into the room. That, combined with his speaking “style”—if one can be so generous as to call it that—contribute to the general attitudes towards him.
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The times, they are a’changing. A few days ago, in a discussion with my sister, I discovered that my mom’s health has been slipping a bit more than she has confessed to me. This means that her situation—emphysema—is something that is slipping slowly towards a foreseeable, if unthinkable, end. That’s got me wondering if it’s time to move back to Austin, if only for a few years.
Since moving away 14 years ago this month, the city has changed, but so have I. I left for many reasons; not least of which to prove I could make it on my own from scratch. I’ve done that, in spades, but now family beckons me back, and so my mind has turned heavily to what that means.
I could certainly continue my current travel insanity from anywhere with an airport, however, that’s not what I want long-term, and I wonder how to extricate myself from the insanity. Much to contemplate.
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Alan Kay has some thoughts on education in this country:
[ ... ] As Marvin Minsky once pointed out, every educational method works for some students. This is because another deeply important factor is that children in a single classroom exhibit a wide variation in motivations, knowledge, skills, maturity and “wiring”. Different children need different approaches. A classroom is a tough place to learn anything (as an orchestra is a tough place to learn how to play an instrument). The US factory approach to education was hoping for economies of scales via method, but it forgot that it wasn’t about just turning out Model-T’s, but every kind and variation of vehicle using every kind and variation of materials and design.
As a student of an alternative structure of education, I can say that the traditional manufacturing approach is inappropriate for my needs.
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Reading Jeffrey’s blog post, it all made stunning sense. I had seen—all over the Internet—posts about the professor who gave The Last Lecture having died. The thing was, I had no idea who it was, and given the health of my mom, I wasn’t really in a good place to be reading about someone else’s passing who I didn’t know.
The thing was, I did know him; or at least I’ve met him. Like Jeffrey, we met at IPC8 held in DC in January of 2000. Randy Pausch was one of the keynote speakers and he spoke about his “baby”, Alice, but that really wasn’t what the speech was about. It was about breaking down barriers and inspiring kids of all ages. It’s a speech I still remember to this day, not for the deep technical insight, but more for the deep human insight that it contained.
And there’s the thing. Randy brought that level of passion, intelligence and humor to everything; even long before he was diagnosed with cancer. While “The Last Lecture” might be a retrospective and what he is now remembered for, it was only the last in a long line of passionate living.
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... or why you shouldn’t believe anything you’re told sometimes.
In the ongoing saga of the world’s worst-managed project—an epic clusterf_ck—we pick up where we left off: me at home in Arlington.
I received an instant message on our internal system Tuesday mid-morning from my “project manager”, a label that is insulting to anyone with a clue, saying, in his passive-agressive style “So I guess you’re not coming down today.” My response was simple: “Per previous arrangements, I will be working from VA this week”. Nothing else.
Then, later that day, around 6:30pm I receive a call from my actual manager, saying that they had identified an “expert” resource to work on a system that I’d been fighting with1 for weeks. That person was supposed to be flying in this morning, I’m assured. Suspicions were aroused when my request for a resume and contact information were met with a resounding silence. Regardless, I booked tickets on the 7:30am flight out of National and arrived here prior to 9am with the absolute assurance of 3 different managers that this “expert” would be here.
It’s now 3pm, and nobody knows where this person is, nor when he will arrive, if he’s coming, or anything else about the details of the schedule. To make matters even more maddening, he lives in suburban MD, perhaps 30 minutes from my house.
Once again, I’ve been duped.
1 A system, I might add, which I was told would take 3 months to get up and running, and which I got up in 2 1/2 weeks. I never saw it before.
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Last night I got a call, at 10pm, from my boss saying that the project manager was demanding I be down on-site this week. This was after we agreed I would be home for a week this week over 2 weeks ago, and after I worked through a weekend to make sure that I could do that. What makes it even more laughable is that what he’s worried about is something I know nothing about and can’t really promise I can figure out. I’ve been saying he needs some specialized skills for 3 months now.
I told him no.
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The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.
—George Carlin
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In the continuing saga of insanity, I received an email this morning, sent at 9:30pm on Sunday which contained this lovely tidbit:
Traveling members of the team need to plan for a Saturday morning departure home and a return to RDU on Sunday night. Please plan on working through Fourth of July weekend.
That’s right, forget your weekends, forget your Federal holiday—it’s only a celebration of our independence from the King. Never mind that the delivery date is July 3rd and therefore working through the weekend indicates failure and therefore should be resolved with the client prior to failing. The real psychotic cherry on the sociopathic cake? The closing:
Best Regards,
Wouldn’t “F#ck you” have been a better, and more honest closing?
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So historically on this project, I came in Sunday evening and left Thursday evening. That meant 4 full days with the client. A few weeks ago, the “PM” decided we all needed to come in Monday (by noon) and leave Friday (afternoon). Not any more time, but certainly more useless. Today, as I’m leaving around 1pm, I’m cornered by the PM asking where I’m going, and when I’ll be back. I point out our “agreement” that was his idea, and he gets upset, says I need to stay the rest of the day and come back Sunday afternoon.
The “conversation” then descended into him threatening me and telling me I was “this close” to losing my job for not working 70 hour weeks. Funny, I just got a bonus, a raise, and several commendations from executives. Not really matching his craziness.
The fun continues.
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In today’s status meeting, the team was “motivated” by the project manager by being told he expected everyone to work 10hrs/day, or more, 6-7 days a week or “risk losing their job”. Nice. That’ll get everyone motivated … to find another project.
Dick.
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For those who know me, they know that to say my father and I aren’t close is to misstate the epic lack of closeness. Having not spoken to him in over three years, and entirely unsure of what happened, I can only read wistfully from PZ Myer’s memories from his father.
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For those who doubt the insanity of my current projects, I need only tell two things from this weekend that have happened:
- While I’m at dinner on Friday with friends at Jaleo, I left my phone in the car. I came back, around 9:45pm to find a call from my project manager at almost 9pm saying that he needed me on a conference call tomorrow (Saturday!) at 9am to discuss the schedule.
- Today, around 11am, I get an SMS from a coworker who is stuck staying on-site this weekend telling me there’s meetings today (Sunday) at both 2pm and 3pm.
Bizarro World indeed. I’m sorry, no. You don’t call people at 9pm at night to tell them you need to ruin their weekend. You ask politely early in the week, understanding how much of an imposition it is, and schedule it around what they have going on.
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Today is the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby—the most elegant two minutes of racing in the world, surrounded by a week of parties—and as my mom grew up in Kentucky, and my parents met in Lexington, there’s a bit of nostalgia for the time I spent in the hills of Kentucky. While I grew up in Austin, it was typical for me to spend quite a few summer months with my mom’s family. Part of that family, though not genetically related, was a wonderfully kind woman named Janice.
Several years ago, Janice passed away. She had been my mom’s best friend for decades, and she had been like an extended aunt for my sister and I. One of the best memories I have of her is all the wonderful food and hospitality she extended to all of us. So, when I ran across a recipe for Bourbon Balls (some history), I couldn’t help but be reminded of hers. I have no idea if her recipe is “better” or “more authentic”, but the taste has lingered with me all these years.
So, in celebration of my heritage and the extended family I’ve been lucky enough to call my own for 35 years, today I’m making some Bourbon Balls and plan to have a fine Mint Julep.
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I’m not speaking of the platonic love of family, nor the warm love of romance. What I refer to is instead the cold, steely glare of being loved “at work”. Perhaps it is my somewhat unique background and skill combination, but at my current employer—more than ever before—I feel entirely too loved. I want to be ignored sometimes; left to my own devices, and projects.
Instead, I am constantly asked to come in and resolve problems that others have been unable to. This invariably happens under immense time constraint and political pressure, thereby making it “extra fun”.
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