Skip to main content

Cubicle And Job Aids

We used to call her the Mistress of Decks. The boss needed to spin the same data over fifty different ways for different audiences over a period of six months until he hit pay dirt - a promotion and a new line of business.

The M of D was indefatigable when it came to rehashing the same message in an infinite number of ways - we marveled at her patience and resourcefulness. But it was a thankless job that took up the better part of her working day. As a result, she slaved over the weekends to get "work" done. Docstoc could be a dream come true for The M of D and the rest of us.

Another woman I once worked with had a discreet computer rear view mirror installed on her cube so she would near be caught off guard by someone sneaking up on her. While the alarm mechanism worked like a charm, there was quite a bit of snickering about the device by the water-cooler. Maybe she can get herself a smart mouse and get rid of the offending mirror.

Then there is this PMI certified Project Manager that our team recently brought on board. One of the first things she did was to produce an twenty five page document designed to whip one of our vendors into shape. She is insisting that they produce copious amounts of documentation every step of the way.

As we expected, the vendor responded by bumping up both cost and time to the point of ridiculousness. Management decided to do away with the PMI compliance and just get the job done. Both approaches are flawed. I wish our Project Manager would get a little real and draw inspiration from this lite document - it would make everyone's life easier.

Its not for nothing that I dread anyone in the technology business who makes a big deal about being certified or worse is looking to hire only those who are. All takes to be successful in this line of work is common sense, clarity of thought, ability to see and state a problem in the simplest terms. But most importantly the ability to find what you need on the web and never reinvent the wheel. To get overly hung up on a piece of paper is never a good idea - unless its your first job and that is the only way to gain credibility.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more