Quality must be considered as embracing all factors which contribute to reliable and safe operation. What is needed is an atmosphere, a subtle attitude, an uncompromising insistence on excellence, as well as a healthy pessimism in technical matters, a pessimism which offsets the normal human tendency to expect that everything will come out right and that no accident can be foreseen – and forestalled – before it happens. -- Hyman Rickover, founder of the US Navy Nuclear fleet. ...
No control, all the responsibility. Everyone complains to you, and you control absolutely nothing. You can’t hire anybody to help out your situation, you can’t fire poor performing team members, and you can’t make a decision that your manager can’t override. And yet, all the downside is yours, because managers make sure to CYA on everything. All the responsibility, no extra pay. I get paid an obscene amount of money for my age, education level, and experience. But when I got this loser position of team lead, did I get any extra scratch for my trouble? Nope. However, unlike my days as a grunt, I can’t take off random days to achieve personal sanity. ...
I’m struggling with this latest technical book I’m reading, J2EE Development without EJB Basically, it’s hard to digest, with lots of high-level enterprise construction pieces, but not much to hang it on. I’ve never built applications the way the author has for the past 5 years, so things he finds as a matter of course, I don’t intuitively understand. I’m blogging about it, basically so I can try to synthesize what I’ve read in the book so far. ...
The process chronicles, day 27: Perhaps the most preposterous thing in our overworked, self-involved world is going to work and being told not to work, but that’s where we are. After three meetings today, each resembling a ’talking to’ from a teacher to a relucant, whiny pupil, my manager rolled-over and said, “My people won’t do the work you promised them they could do? SATISFIED?!” I feel let-down. It’s not that I don’t have other stuff to do; rather, it’s that for once it seemed we had opportunity and approval to do things “The Right Way”. Seemed a *little* too good to be true, and it is. ...
Random thought I had while doing laundry: Everything takes longer than you estmate. Personally, I’m late to most everything. It’s rather a personality trait (thanks, honey!), and it puzzles me. I used to be spot on time (or early) to everything, but then I realized: I wasn’t, my PARENTS were. My mom was my chauffer everywhere, and she’s always early. Anyway, I suck at estimating how long something’s going to take. From brushing my teeth to housecleaning, combine my proclivity for procrastination with my bad estimating skills, and i’m chronically late. ...