Ergononics are so important – when I let them slide I end up with numbness and tingling in my small fingers and wrists and aching in my forearms. Ulnar nerve irritation is the problem as far as I can tell. So I’ve been forced to take the last couple weeks off to heal – no computer time. Checking email but nothing else this week.
Archive for the ‘general’ Category
Down with wrist injury
Monday, December 1st, 2008New Year’s Resolution – Resume Bloggin’
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008Apologies to my readers (Hi Mom) – for not keeping the blog up. Last post was last halloween? Lame. 2008 – time to pick up the blog again.
Stay tuned.
Employers think workers are stupid
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006About once a week some recruiter emails me with a “great opportunity”. Only the opportunities are usually worse than I have now.
In a keyword search your resume came up as being possibly qualified for the following position I have open
with a very successful IP Network Security software development company I am currently working with in the
Sunnyvale area:Please review the following requirements and reply with a copy of your resume if you would be interested:
Sunnyvale. I quickly do a web search for median home price of Sunnyvale and find its about double my current home value. So I email the guy and tell him my salary requirements to consider a move. His reponse?
Sorry, that’s a CEO salary.
Ignoring for a second that I have yet to meet a CEO worth anywhere near what he gets paid, I tell him to go ahead and outsource the job somewhere with sane real estate prices. I mean, since when are knowlege workers supposed to be stupid enough to take a real pay cut?
No wonder they can’t find qualified workers, they are totally oblivious to the market forces talent has to deal with. My salary expectation is (median home price)/4. No matter where you are. If you can’t pay that, move or plan on outsourcing to some location where people can afford to live on what you are willing to pay. That doesn’t necessarily mean India or China or Russia or some other country. Lots of folks in the US live in sanely priced areas as well who can do the job just as well or better for the money you’re willing to pay as long as you don’t expect them to relocate.
Workers have costs too. Respect that.
Great Book on Managing People
Monday, May 1st, 2006I picked up the book Harvard Business Review on Managing People in the Seattle airport on Friday and read most of it over the weekend. It backed up a lot of things I knew intuitively about managing people from experience. Only it provides data and case studies to explain why. Lots of light bulbs going on for me.
Perhaps the most gratifiying thing for me was its vindication of my management approach and condemnation of my manager’s approach. Since we are diametrically opposed, this book makes me the right one. Its a shallow victory given that, while I have the satisfaction of being right, he still wins and will keep on winning because bad employees are completely unassailable from below at work. I’ll probably post more articles on the specific revelations I’m having.
If you manage people, you really ought to buy this book.
Its a conspiracy – and San Francisco hates tourists
Friday, April 28th, 2006I booked a full travel package with lastminute.com and got a surprisingly decent deal on a flight to San Francisco for Startup School. I also booked a car from Avis for a reasonable rate. Then I booked a hotel.
Big mistake.
The best “deal” turned out to be a room at the SF Hilton in the financial district. Its not a great location but its close th chinatown and north beach. Room was about $42 per night. What they do not tell you is:
1) Parking is an additional $42 per night
2) Internet access is an additional $10 per 24 hour period
and upon learning of these atrocities, lastminute invokes the “all sales final” attitude and is completely unapologetic about the situation.
Henceforth I will never ever book a hotel online without first calling said hotel and asking how much is parking and is there internet service included?
I managed to find cheaper parking around the block for $24 per night. It seems only the hotels gouge their patrons.
BTW, the desk guy told me this room normally goes for over $350 per night. Its not worth it. Its just a room with a really lame view. This also matches my rule “the more the hotel costs – the less they include”.
So that settles it. No more big name hotels in big cities. I would have been happier in one of the small older hotels on Nob Hill.
Now I’ve got to decide between Italian (North Beach) and Chinese (Chinatown) for dinner.
Here we go
Sunday, February 12th, 2006I had started one blog years ago but I ended up hating the software and put off dealing with it until I could get around to writing my own.
I’ve started my own but other projects keep intervening and with wordpress now out for free I can’t quite justify the effort right now. So I’ll start with this and see how it goes.
I managed the “Rich Client Platform” team at Amazon.com. Basically we work on making the shopping experience more responsive and friction free using JavaScript (what everyone else calls AJAX). There is a lot of great stuff in the pipe, stay tuned and I’ll announce new features as they roll out.