James Tanner

legacy-wiki

Management

October 9, 2012

Recovered from the older tannerjc.net wiki snapshot dated January 23, 2016.

Bad Management

Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions. blockquote This chestnut showed up during the era when people were beginning to think about business process and realizing that employees could often solve their day-to-day problems in the moment and on the ground, rather than having to go upstairs to get help. That’s O.K., but too many managers have reinterpreted “Bring me solutions, not problems” as “Don’t complain — shut up and deal with it.” The fact is, business processes and organizations are complicated today, and often the employee who spots a problem doesn’t have the information she or he needs to solve it. That’s where a manager can help, if he or she is oriented that way. Managers who say, “Bring me solutions” are often really saying, “Stop telling me what I don’t want to hear.” Working for a person like that will shorten your lifespan. /blockquote

In these times, you’re lucky to have a job at all blockquote The funniest thing about a manager who would open his mouth and say, “You’re lucky to have a job at all” is that these managers never seem to think they’re lucky to be working — just everyone else. “You’re lucky to have a job at all” in an era of more than 9 percent unemployment is the same as saying, “I can’t believe you manage to stay in that 90 percent of the population that is working.” It’s a huge insult, but worse, a statement of personal failure on the manager’s part. People who live in fear don’t tend to see the potential in themselves, or in others. If your manager’s native mode is critical, and if she tosses around compliments like manhole covers, know that there are plenty of other employers who’d be happy to have someone like you in the mix. /blockquote

meritocracy

  • http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/jim-whitehurst-of-red-hat-on-merits-of-an-open-culture.html?_r=2pagewanted=1 blockquote Now a voice doesn’t mean decision rights. It doesn’t mean you have any say in the answer. But at least you have a vehicle for an opinion to be heard. […] As long as our employees are involved they will accept virtually any decision. /blockquote

  • http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/06/the_false_theory_of_meritocrac.html

  • http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/zynga-bully-or-meritocracy/

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Dominance_Theory#Meritocracy_and_social_dominance

  • http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/02/24/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-with-meritocracy/ blockquote a multicultural meritocracy is much more palatable than an Episcopalian aristocracy. But, as Nicholas Lemann tells us, the two amount essentially to the same thing: a self-serving and self-perpetuating elite. […] There’s a major difference between the US aristocracy and the meritocracy though. Aristocrats like Henry Chauncey, bred at Saint Grottlesex boarding schools and the Ivy League, were conscious of their privilege and social responsibility, and focused on developing the character and leadership skills necessary for public service. Many of today’s meritocrats, in contrast, don’t believe it’s a rigged game in their favour, and commit themselves to winning it at all costs, which means stepping on everyone else. As a result, too many lack self-reflection or self-criticism skills, meaning even those who are grossly overpaid give themselves outrageous bonuses. /blockquote

  • myth of meritocracy blockquote This Note now takes the legal profession as a case study of the myth of meritocracy, and seeks to examine how system-legitimizing rhetoric could lead to the myth of meritocracy and to ignorance of structural discrimination /blockquote blockquote They have proudly pointed to the progress made by women and minorities in the last few decades as evidence that, in their organizations, individuals are judged on their merits alone, not on immutable characteristics such as race or gender. […] Law firms do have to explain, however, the lack of numerical di-versity at the partnership level. Like many other organizations, they tend to explain these unequal outcomes as a consequence of the labor market and the choices made by the individuals within that market. /blockquote blockquote In general, structural discrimination in law firms arises from institutional practices such as high partner-to-associate ratios, which reduce direct monitoring; disunified training opportunities; and subjectivity in promotion standards, selection and compensation deci-sions, assignments to challenging tasks, performance appraisals, and developmental experiences such as mentoring. […] /blockquote blockquote They posit that “the in-herent subjectivity of quality assessments and the difficulty and ex-pense of monitoring” attorneys’ work have incentivized firms to pay above-market wages to motivate relatively unsupervised work, to have a high associate-to-partner ratio to weed out poorly performing law-yers, and to institute a two-track system, training some associates in preparation for partnership, and doling out relatively menial work to others. /blockquote blockquote evaluation standards remain subjec-tive, though predominantly white male senior partners — some of whom may hold implicit biases against women and minorities — are in charge of evaluating diverse associates. This arrangement results in the increased likelihood that women and minority associates will get lower marks on evaluations and be pushed off the partnership track or denied mentoring opportunities. /blockquote blockquote evaluation standards remain subjec-tive, though predominantly white male senior partners — some of whom may hold implicit biases against women and minorities — are in charge of evaluating diverse associates. This arrangement results in the increased likelihood that women and minority associates will get lower marks on evaluations and be pushed off the partnership track or denied mentoring opportunities. /blockquote blockquote There are ways to combat structural discrimination, but they involve difficult and large-scale institutional changes, such as “constructing heterogeneous groups, . . . replacing subjective data with objective data, and making decision makers ac-countable for their decisions.” /blockquote

bullshit

outsourcing

layoffs

  • http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2766001cid=39576813
  • http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/673.pdf
  • We found only a small number of published studies explicitly linking organizational restructuring to performance.
  • A Study by Worrel, Davidson, and Sharma found a smal negative reason of shareholder returns (…) in response to layoff announcements.
  • Layoff announcements by troubled firms without any accompanying strategic announcements signal the presense of un-address problems that may hamper future earnings.
  • Organizational restructuring is more contingent upon the circumstances in which it is initiated and has the smallest impact on performance.

coping

control

antipatterns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

http://msmvps.com/blogs/peterritchie/archive/2009/01/27/house-of-cards-design-anti-pattern.aspx

  • House of Cards Anti-pattern

  • Problem**

A problem occurs when software is written that works in a specific observed scenario but no one knows why it works in that scenario. Observation of working is taken as enough evidence of completeness. It is very often not enough to observe something working in one scenario for the software to be considered correct.

This is often a result of continual hacks in sole response to correcting bugs without consequence to design or maintainability. Repeated hacks (cards) are are placed on top of other hacks until something has the appearance of working then all development on it stops and no one wants to go near the code again for fear of breaking it.

At the very least, House of Cards design is fragile, hard to maintain, un-agile. Worst case it’s is of low quality and prone to error and data lose.

This is a general sign of cowboy coding. I means there is no acceptable methodology, and no real management. There’s little development direction, and likely no development leadership (at least none with any meaningful experience). Features are generally driven solely by an external source that communicates directly with developers.

  • Symptoms**

When reviewing code or questioned about code, developers respond with comments like don’t touch it, it works, or we don’t want to change it because it works. There’s a reluctance to change the code because no one really knows why it works. The code stagnates, new features are slow to be implemented, and there’s a general un-assuredness about the code.

The code is generally procedural, although following object-oriented syntax.

  • Refactored Solution**

Establish experienced development leadership. Establish a development methodology that separates the stakeholders from the developers.

Invoke Agile methodologies to manage the requirements of the project and begin Agile redesign of the code employing unit testing, refactoring, patterns, etc. Aggressively refactor the code adding unit tests to test for specific problems as they arise, until the code is robust and reliable. Mandate adherence to SOLID principles: classes adhere to Single Responsibility Principle, Open-Closed Principles, Liskov Substitution Principle, Interface Segregation Principle, and uses the Dependency Inversion Principle Technorati Tags: design,anti-pattern,software development

Valve

  • http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf blockquote Hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability and repeatability. It simplifies planning and makes it easier to control a large group of people from the top down, which is why military organizations rely on it so heavily. But when you’re an entertainment company that’s spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value. We want innovators, and that means maintaining an environment where they’ll flourish. That’s why Valve is flat. It’s our shorthand way of saying that we don’t have any management, and nobody “reports to” anybody else. We do have a founder/president, but even he isn’t your manager. This company is yours to steer—toward opportunities and away from risks. You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products /blockquote

Cisco