Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Shortage of qualified applicants? A myth. Here is one of the explanations. Sorry if this exposes what you wear under your kilt.

There is a shortage of…

• qualified programmers
• qualified analysts
• qualified engineers
• qualified qualifiers

that is why we want more fill-in-the-blank-with-magical-government-magic.

Listen to what companies say: “We can’t find qualified fill-in-the-blank-persons.”

True statement. Note, the company representatives didn’t say, “Qualified fill-in-the-blank-persons don’t exist.” They merely can’t find them.

Now we are moving closer to the problem. Sorry if this offends you:

Companies have trouble hiring persons.

Big companies have big trouble hiring persons.

Here is a link to a “joke” interview process. The joke is this isn’t a joke. Interviewers ask questions like this and don’t understand the answers they receive.

Answer: Let persons who actually understands what they need in an applicant converse with the applicant.

Note: the above answer does not:

• use the word “interview”
• involve a recruiter
• use a standard interview script

But this is a pollyana world that does not exist. No one can afford to have working fill-in-the-blank-persons step away from their jobs to converse with fill-in-the-blank-persons applying for jobs.

Perhaps. Perhaps that is merely an excuse. Perhaps it is easier to lobby elected officials to plead for magic instead of doing the work.

by Dwayne Phillips

I used to love the NCAA basketball tournament. Perhaps it is only for the young.

The NCAA men’s basketball championship game will be played tonight. I won’t watch it as the game won’t start until after I go to bed on the east coast. It starts late in the east as that maximizes the nationwide TV audience and brings more advertising dollars.

What was once a sporting event is now a TV show. I suppose that is okay as it makes more money that way. And the players do deserve the higher pay they recei…uh, oh, no, uh, wait…the players don’t get paid. Never mind.

It is odd that while there is more money in NCAA basketball than before, the players are paid less. Yes, the players used to be paid. Their pay was against the rules, but they were paid here and there by this person and that person who were only “associated with” the basketball programs. Now, there is much tighter scrutiny by the NCAA so the money spigot was closed.

I used to love watching the NCAA basketball tournament. The finals were played on Saturday afternoon after the third-place game was played earlier in the day (on TV). Now the finals are late-night Monday night in prime time on a school night. It is no longer a sporting event for kids who love sports. Now it is a TV show for adults. Oh well.

Still, the guys playing on the teams do it because they want to do it. Some of them simply love playing the game. Some love the attention they receive. Some do it because they may do this professionally and support their close and extended families. I find that admirable. Trouble with that last one is that only 1% are good enough to make a living.

I know when I was young I would have given almost anything to be on a team that was in the NCAA tournament. I would happily have sat the bench and never played just to be there. I was young.

Perhaps that is key to all this. The TV show is for the young.

Troubling question: is it all for the child-like or the child-ish?

Perhaps many of the players are child-like—something I find admirable. Those older people who are spending and making all the money; perhaps child-ish, and I don’t find that admirable.

end-of-rant

by Dwayne Phillips

Writers (and everyone else): use the research resources that are available. And extend them.

Mark this one under the non-existent tag of #a-writing-basic-that-I-feel-compelled-to-write-about-just-for-the-record or something like that.

Writers: Google stuff before you write. Google stuff while you are writing. Google stuff after you have finished writing.

This is not a paid commercial for Google. (Does Google pay for stuff like this? Where? Where is my money?)

Want to write about someone who lived in rural Iowa in the 1950s? Google will point you to things that explain how that was. Want to write about earned value project management? Same answer. Want to see if your description of sine cosine and tangent are correct? Same answer.

Some writers haven’t heard this before. Hence, the long nonsensical tag in the first paragraph.

All kidding and ranting aside. Use the research resources that are available. Extend those resources. Google for people who know about rural life in Iowa in the 1950s. Then go find those people, buy them lunch, and talk to them. Now you are the expert and people will find your writings when they Google “rural life in Iowa in the 1950s.”

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a fundamental question to ask in analyzing and engineering systems. Why don’t we use it more often?

A: We put this into the system.

B: And then what happens?

A: Well, now the system can do this great function for the users.

B: And then what happens?

A: For one thing, the users don’t call us so often.

B: And then what happens?

A: We have more time to ourselves to do what we want to do.

B: And then what happens?

The conversation can take several twists and turns depending on how A answers. This important thing is that B repeatedly asks the question.

It is a simple question—only four words. The words are easy to say. I often wonder why more people don’t ask the question more often. It provides useful answers. Of course A can become quite irritated, but then again, some persons hate it when you ask them anything.

Proceed with caution.

by Dwayne Phillips

Somteimes I miss the analog days. They covered a lot of my mistakes.

Handwritten notes let me fudge and smudge and avoid mistakes—like spelling. I could smudge the “i” and the “e” together and put the dot of the “i” somewhere in the middle, and no one could tell that I didn’t know how to spell. Well, the digital world finally came around with typing on a computer with auto-correct, so that’s okay.

But still, is it “effect” or “affect?” Is it “farther” or “further?” When I wrote this by hand, I could make squiggles so no one could tell if I knew what I was doing. The auto-correct word processor doo-dad doesn’t correct those goofs for me. I type them, and the whole world can see my ignorance.

All this digital computer stuff pushes me to know what I am doing. Rats.

by Dwayne Phillips

I have seen this in people often, especially when looking in the mirror.

Not off to a good start, but let’s try to pull something useful from this.

We all tend to do what we like and avoid what we don’t like. Not surprising. I like ice cream. I hate paper cuts. My following actions are obvious.

I like solving some types of problems over others. Again, my following actions are obvious.

So what to do with all these meta-obvious-ness? Here are some things I have told myself to push me into the less-liked actions:

• This is your job. You are paid to do it. Do it.
• The longer you delay, the more it will hurt.
• Surprise yourself and do it, you might actually learn something.
• Well, we’re waiting…

There are other things I tell myself. The list could continue, and it will.

by Dwayne Phillips

Here we are in the present. We can decide how we create the future.

by Dwayne Phillips

Facebook was the end of the old media. Facebook didn’t start the downfall, but it ended it for good.

Mark Zuckerburg recently released a new manifesto for Facebook. The mainstream media is dead. Facebook didn’t kill that big, bad, old mainstream media, it just finished it. Of all things, talk radio on the AM dial and the wide availability of inexpensive computing did it. The new printing press overcame the old one.

And Facebook didn’t invent fake news, the old media already did that decades ago. I guess the old media started killing itself when it just couldn’t resist bigger sales. It couldn’t resist the lure of having media stars instead of news. Those stars wandered about and betrayed themselves to keep their stars shining brightly. It happened in TV. It happened in newspapers, and it happened in the rest of them.

The Internet let anyone publish news. The old media couldn’t stand that, so the old media made fun of the new. “Those aren’t professionals like us!” No, but the guys could read and write just like journalists could. I guess the professional journalists didn’t have that much of an edge in education, skills, visions, and all the esoteric stuff that they claimed.

So, out with the old. In with the new. I guess we have to wait and see how long it takes us to learn how to read the new news. This isn’t the end of the world, folks. It is just yet another new season. We will adjust.

by Dwayne Phillips

Excuses are great. As long as I have plenty of excuses, I don’t have to take responsibility for my life.

I have plenty of excuses why my life isn’t the way it is supposed to be. I have plenty of excuses why my job isn’t what it is supposed to be.

Please don’t take away any of my excuses. If you do, I’ll have no where to look or go. I’ll have no one or no thing else to blame for my unmet expectations. I’ll have to be responsible for my own life. That is a frightening thought. I don’t know if I am ready for it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Excuses are great. One of the best is “I have so much to do” as it gives me choice as to what I will do today.

I have ten jobs I do. If I don’t want to do #3 today, I have an excuse as I am really busy with the other ones.

Please don’t hire someone to do #3. That will remove one of my choices, and it will leave me with fewer excuses of why I can’t do what you want me to do (instead of what I want to do).

Hmm, being overworked is a good thing. At least it is good for me. Perhaps it isn’t so good for everyone else.