gingerandjohn.com » Pointy-haired boss

Compensation tactics

John — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 15:49:16 +0000

Two blog entries in recent days, both dealing with compensation (and in particular, "secret compensation"):
* Why secret salaries are a bad idea
* Four Principles for Compensation Decisions

Both address some of the common wisdom at companies today. I'd love to use "myth" rather than "common wisdom", but "myth" implies it ain't so. Common wisdom may be wrong, but that doesn't make it less real. More to come later.

It’s Wanktastic!

John — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 03:04:53 +0000

Mimi Smartypants has given me a new description for the self-congratulatory missives that spew from our marketing department like the spam they wax so lyrical about: wanktastic. There are so many things in my life that this applies to: Wanktastic? Definitely. Fun? Not so much.

Mimi, however, was referring to one of those New York bloggers. You know, the ones who pity the smallness of our non-New York lives? Yeah, they can bite me too. So much for southern genteelness.

While I'm on a roll, Mimi? "Aspiring writer" is the politically correct way to refer to "can't write, but think they can". "Aspiring writer" is the bald-spot comb-over of blogdom.

Real Men of Genius

John — Tue, 25 May 2004 20:27:24 +0000

Here's to you, Mr. Can't Understand Email Distribution Lists!

(Mr. Can't Understand Email Distribution Lists)

You love to waste everyone else's time by sending personal requests through mass distribution lists.

(You LOVE to email everybody')

You've checked all common sense at the office door before sitting down at your computer to compose an email.

(Please stop hitting Reply All)

Maybe you should ask all of Mighty Mighty Mega Corp what you should eat for lunch today, or let everyone know each time a new email address will be filtered or not, or make an idiotic request to be added to a non-MMMC distribution list, or...

(NOBODY cares)

So sit back, relax, and enjoy a Bud Light knowing that you've single-handedly decreased productivity throughout the office!

(Mr. Can't Understand Email Distribution Lists!)

Mad props to Karen Jones at Mighty Mighty Mega Corp

What I learned in Calgary

John — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:20:36 +0000

"Cojones" is used all the time in casual (maybe gutter is a better term) Spanish conversation. It appears to be similar to the use of "fuck": Fucking-A, that's fucking incredible, I'm fucked.

In spite of this, "de nada cojones" does not appear to be an appropriate usage of the form.

What goes around, comes around

John — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 22:39:31 +0000

Ginger came to the conclusion long ago that I had been reincarnated as Buck, and she had been reincarnated as Lilly.

If reincarnation doesn't respect time, then for damn tooting sure my boss is the reincarnation of my father-in-law.

Death march in a week

John — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 01:14:35 +0000

So finishes the week from hell. Customer left yesterday, and I got to go home early (that is, when it was still light outside). I think one of the big hangups was performance, which was pretty frustrating since we didn't get any inkling that it was any kind of problem before the customer came out. The customer didn't sign off on the FAT, but I think the verbal agreement was that if we could demonstrate the performance improvements, he'd sign.

I thought that one of the better things that came out of it is that we had only 50-odd bugs in 350+ test points. Of those, only about 35 were "real" bugs; the rest were pissant or enhancements.

We did get shown an e-mail that our customer sent to his boss-squared, who in turn forwarded to my boss-squared. Shit flows downhill, indeed.

Don't get me wrong, this guy's a great customer. He wants to make this work, and he wants to make sure it gets done. I'd rather have someone who acts like a stakeholder any day, but it's frustrating (there's that word again) that he had to point out a lot of this as obvious.

So next week will be spent tuning the Oracle DB and fixing the big bugs. Then I get to see how long I have to go up to Calgary. Blech.

The funniest part was the post-mortem demo we gave to the president, CEO, super-CTO, CTO, and CFO.

Both the questions the super-CTO had were nitpicky graphics ("Why is that message on two lines? It should be on one line!"). What a super-bozo. A multi-millionaire super-bozo, but a bozo nonetheless.