Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Another instance of “don’t judge a book by its cover” slaps me in the face.

I bought my wife an Android tablet for Christmas. If you know my wife, you will need a couple of minutes to regain your composure and resume breathing. Okay, we continue.

I, being the smart computing person that I am, was going to have it all set up for her so that when she opened the box, it would have all the apps and all that good stuff. I was staying in a motel, and the WiFi in the motel was a bit odd (that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it). Despite being the smart computing person that I am, I couldn’t connect the new Android tablet to the Internet.

I was sitting in the motel lobby, when this fella’—if you saw him with his front teeth missing and his belly hanging over his belt, you would know why I call him a “fella'”—who worked the night shift looked over my shoulder and asked what I was doing.

After several shrugs and just-leave-me-alone-because-of-the-smart-computing-person-that-I-am looks, I handed the non-cooperative Android tablet to the fella’. In five minutes, he handed it back to me fully connected to the Internet.

“Sometimes they act a little funny,” was his reply or some other folksy saying that a fella’ with no front teeth, his belly hanging over his belt, and scratching out a living as a night clerk would utter.

Being the smart computer person that I am, I had to admit, well, I don’t know what I had to admit, but I had to admit something to myself about Android tablets, motel WiFi, and night clerk fella’s. I guess the big admission is that the night clerk fixed my Android tablet when I couldn’t. No, you can’t judge a book by its cover. And yes, you can learn a few things from just about anybody, so keep your notice-er working and learn.

by Dwayne Phillips

Old adage, but still true. Something about pointing a finger at someone else means you have three fingers pointing at myself.

The News Channel (fill in with your favorite news channel that you dislike) reports that corporations are greedy and only want more money. Of course, The News Channel is itself a corporation that moves persons in and out of the camera’s eye depending on who brings the most viewers and the most advertising money. That is not greed on the part of The News Channel, it is just, uh, er, well, never mind.

The News Channel reports that corporations have accountants that dig through the tax law and find “loopholes” to reduce their taxes and cheat the American tax payer. The News Channel itself is a corporation that has accountants that…well, you know. And, by the way, the high-paid reporter on The News Channel has a tax specialist doing her taxes and advising how to shift income into different categories to reduce tax liability, but that is just, uh, er, well, never mind.

The project manager complains that upper management is putting arbitrary deadlines on work. The project manager tells the system builders to finish everything a week before the deadline just in case something goes wrong and they will have a cushion. That “week” is an arbitrary figure and an arbitrary deadline, but this is just, uh, er, well, never mind.

The programmer complains that the tool being used is buggy and causes extra work. The system the programmer built might have a few bugs in it and need an occasional reset, but that is just, uh, er, well, never mind.

Everyone but us.

by Dwayne Phillips

If we could keep concepts and tools separate…well maybe the world would be a better place.

There is graduate school: learn concepts and how to extend concepts.

There is trade school: learn how to use a tool to do a job.

Hmmm, these two sound different, different enough that we wouldn’t confuse the two. For some reason we can’t seem to separate them. If we could, I think we would do many things much better, but what do I know other than a few concepts and how to extend them?

by Dwayne Phillips

In Agile Development, we are supposed to talk to one another each day. Sometimes, however, we just didn’t sign up for this talking stuff.

In Agile Development, we are supposed to talk to other persons. We are supposed to sit next to other persons and work with them. All of us are smarter than each of us. We know what we are doing, so we do that and don’t do other stuff. Smart. Efficient. Easy to change direction because we talk to each other.

Yikes, sometimes we don’t like that. We didn’t become programmers so we could talk to other persons. We became programmers so we could—no genius required here—program computers.

Why are we talking to each other? I think I’ll modify agile practices till they fit what I want to do when I want to do it and with whom or with no one I want to do it with.

Agile works. Agile can be fun. Agile is different. Ensure people know what they will be doing when they enter. They will be talking to other people every day.

by Dwayne Phillips

Go ahead; we all know it is the best thing to do. Take a nap.

A man at work struggling to read something and stay awake. Something was happening physically, low blood sugar or something like a gizzard malfunction. Sleep kept trying to drop a black hood over his head. He fought it off each time, but was still re-reading the first sentence of a ten-page document.

We all know the best thing to do is—take a 10-minute nap, get your gizzard working again, then read the thing. And we all know that we won’t do what we all know is the best thing to do because:

• we work hard here
• we are tough here
• we are so tough we can overcome gizzard malfunctions and everything else nature throws at us
• we are incredibly arrogant here
• we deny all reality here
• we just don’t do those things here!!!

Take a nap. You have my permission to concede to reality and do what everyone knows we should do.

by Dwayne Phillips

What do companies want from job candidates? I wish they would make up their mind, but I’m just that kind of person.

Let’s go around this little goofy circle

1. Companies won’t hire you unless you walk in with a certificate, a.k.a., a college degree.
2. Companies don’t like what colleges teach (see link)
3. Companies have their own classes that teach what they want.
4. So where does (1) come from

Doesn’t make sense to me, but I am neither a company CEO nor a recruiter.

by Dwayne Phillips

The stereotype of the scientist and engineer is someone who would rather be with technical things than people. Here are a few tips.

As an engineer, this holds for scientists as well, there is one fundamental question we must always be prepared to answer (two words):

what’cha doin?

The answer does not need to be elaborate. We do, however need to have the answer. Replies like, “Same old stuff,” and “You know, the usual,” aren’t acceptable. State specifically what you are doing and how that task fits or why it fits.

For example, “I’m looking a cloud computing options to see if they would give us a place to perform experiments,” or “I am trying the new features of the software so I can demonstrate them to our users.”

Now that we have the introductory interpersonal communication course behind us, let’s move on to the advanced course. In this, we answer a three-word question:

When’ll’ya be done?

No, they aren’t prying. No, they are being a bureaucrat. This is a fundamental question that question askers ask. Have an answer like, “I think I need two more days.” If you really want to impress the other person, follow that with something like, “Is there something else you want me to do now or in two days?”

See, this really isn’t that difficult. Know the introductory and advanced questions and their answers. Life can be good—even with these question askers around.

by Dwayne Phillips

Recognize special days. And when we starting looking, we will notice there are a lot of special days.

Today is Christmas. I work with a lot of people who don’t recognize December 25th as a special day. They have other days that are special in their culture, their childhood, their family.

I have fond memories of spending special days with persons. I saw the glee of children in the eyes of adults on those days.

Do you work with other persons? Most of us do. What days are special to them? Learn. Celebrate. It’s all okay. It’s all better than okay if we make it so.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes I fill the role of the “just notice-er.” Perhaps that should be an official title in systems development.

I was preparing a demonstration of software we developed in house. Something wasn’t happening as I expected. I asked a couple of the programmers to look over my shoulder.

“Look at this,” I said. “Tell me if I am doing this wrong.”

I demonstrated what I saw. The programmers were puzzled. There, right in front of them, the software wasn’t working as it should. Many questions followed. They were honestly trying to understand the odd circumstances I presented to the software they had written. I could see their minds churning through the code to find where something was possibly misbehaving.

Later in the day, one of the programmers had me look over her shoulder at how what she saw. She said, “I don’t think we are testing the software correctly.”

Then it hit me, I wasn’t testing the software. I was just noticing something about how it behaved.

Hmmm, could it be that “just noticing” is a part of “testing?” Is “just noticing” another branch of system development? Who has the official title of “just notice-er?” Why is it that these “just notice-ers” always spoil the fun? What could I do as a “just notice-er” to speed product development and improve quality? Why do I come up with titles like “just notice-er?”

Possibly someone out there reading this has answers to these questions. Answers are welcome. I am happy to notice anything you pass along.

by Dwayne Phillips

Nothing is so cruel as to learn that the system we built doesn’t do what we thought it would.

We are good, smart, caring people. We work diligently to build good systems that serve others. We test. We really test—no kidding, no fooling around. We really test.

Then one day, someone walks in the room and says, “Hey, this doesn’t work right.” Then they show us that our creation doesn’t work right. What? Something must be wrong, and the wrong thing has been done by someone else. We, we, we, er, uh, we can’t deny what we see. The ceiling falls in on us.

We understand that this person has done us a favor by showing us a fault we missed. The fault will be corrected before folks out in the world depend on our system. Still. This is crushing.

Now we have to crawl through the inside of our system to find what we missed earlier. That is called “crawling” for good reasons. It requires getting down on our bellies and moving slowly inch by inch and gosh that is tedious and I really had some enjoyable things lined up today that I like to do and this isn’t fun and I’m going to miss lunch and and and things just are bad.

Take a walk. Five minutes, but just five minutes. Breathe deeply and slowly. Realize once again that:

• we are human, not perfect
• the system is the system, it is not us
• no one is saying we are bad, they are just noticing something odd in the system

Breathe a while longer. Regain composure. Now begin the work.

Fantasy? Maybe, but it works better than other approaches I have used.