Rich parents create rich kids becaue kids are friends with other kids (who’s parents also happen to be rich) and they continue to run into opportunities (because they know the right people) and drag their friends with them.
The apple DOESN’T fall far from the tree. And always choose your friends wisely.
I am now the owner of a new duplex and an apartment complex… not a bad deal. Just thought I’d keep you posted.
I don’t think anyone dislikes me but I can tell you plenty of times when I’ve told people great news, only to find out their negative thoughts and fake excitement. More often than not, people would rather hear bad news than good news.
Throughout your life you’ll see many people secretely wanting you to fail. And sometimes, it won’t even be a secret. Judging reactions, measuring friendships, and trying to get people on your side takes a lot of energy, and usually, it’s not worth it. Some people will never change and will always root against you. And most of those people root against everyone.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Feelings, friends, and pride have never paid the bills.
For the last six months my computer has been running extremely slow. I decided to wipe the thing clean and start over. I ran the backup and started the reformat. After a gruelling 6 hours, I had it ready to go. I installed about half of the software and then restored the backup. After thumbing through everything, I realized that half of my files were gone!
About a month ago I began creating incremental backups to save time. The first time you do an incremental backup, it will create a copy of all files. The second time you do an incremental backup, it creates a copy of only the changed files. I created a scheduled backup so that each night at 3am, my computer would do an incremental backup.
What Microsoft doesn’t tell you, is that it stores each backup in the same file. So, when you go to restore your backup, it shows you a list of each day, allowing you to tell yourself, “I know I accidentally deleted the file on Wednesday but I want to get the file from Monday because I didn’t like the changes that were made on Tuesday.”
This sounds like a cool deal… and it actually is. But, what they don’t tell you is that after the 40th backup, it starts deleting the oldest backup. That means that the original backup was gone!
I’ve been keeping pictures on my computer since high school, a journal since high school, and documented/took phots of my completely remodeled my house.
The moral of the story is… backup your files, twice.
I’ve recently read Peopleware - productive projects and teams - by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister.
It’s a must-have for all managers in the technical world. I’ve written a little summary of each chapter for your viewing. Its 226 pages and broken into many chapters, making it an easy read.
PART I
Part I is dedicated to fact that people are not machines and no matter how hard we try, we cannot manage them like machines.
Chapter 1 — Somewhere Today, A Project is Failing - This chapter focuses on the fact that technology businesses are made up of people, not machines. If you want to succeed in the technology world, you have to succeed in the people world.
Chapter 2 — Make a Cheeseburger, Sell a Cheeseburger - The authors start the chapter by saying, “Development is inherently different from production”. In the development world not everyone is created equal, people aren’t interchangeable, and mistakes must be made to lear. Thinking about projects and problems are a must!
Chapter 3 — Vienna Waits For You - Why do managers push to get the most out of their employees? When people are overworked, they usually get it back by under working later. When managers are crazy about efficiency, they tend to forget about turn-over. People lives are not their work and when your cramming efficiency down their throat, their wives, friends, and family are convincing them to hate their jobs in the form of, “You work too much”, “your boss is mean”, etc. etc. etc.
Chapter 4 — Quality-If Time Permits - There are a number of instincts that are burned into our brains “firmware” that, if threatened, will explode emotions and cause us to do something upsetting. The instinct that is involved at work is self-esteem. Since workers hold their work so close to their hearts, when quality is surpassed, the product is criticized, unreachable deadlines are set we get emotions involved which causes an unhappy work environment, poor quality, and high turn-over. So, let your workers determine the quality standards, not your project managers. When PM’s set unreachable goals, they threaten quality.
Chapter 5 — Parkinson’s Law Revisited - Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time allocated for it. For instance, if you have a project due in two-weeks it will take you the entire two weeks. But, if that task was scheduled for two-days, you could still finish it in two days. This was a theory I’ve noticed since high school (before I knew it was published, I thought I was coming up with something original). The authors disprove or doubt the theory by showing studies that show projects are more efficient when estimated by the worker rather than the boss. So, when estimating someone else’s work, be sure to consult them first.
Chapter 6 — Laetrile - People who are desperate enough don’t look very hard at the evidence. They search for quick solutions to complex problems. This chapter talks about false hopes that managers and technology developers try that in the end are just a waste of time.
PART II
Part II is dedicated the work environment. How can we make it more work-conductive and healthy for “workers”.
Chapter 7 –The Furniture Police - Good office organization breeds creativity and quality. Don’t let your furniture police convince you that a paging system that disrupts 30 people to find “John Williams” is a good idea or that placing everyone in a cubicle that looks identical is the most “efficient” way to place furniture. Natural light causes people to feel better.
Chapter 8 — You Never Get Anything Done Around Here From 9 to 5 - Remember how we said that quality breeds better productivity? This chapter reiterates that statement. While many businesses ignore the fact that the offices are not fostering productive work environments, the data presented in this chapter is strong. By testing programmers from different organizations for almost 20 years, the authors have shown that those environments who have acceptable quietness, privateness, dedicated work space, etc. have higher performing workers, less errors, and higher quality products.
Chapter 9 –Saving Money on Space - This chapter tries to find a correlation between the space provided to the employee versus his/her efficiency. To make this correlation, they showed research data that found the noise level raised if the space provided decreased. They found that the majority of programmers thought the workplace was not acceptably quiet. And the few employees that said it was acceptably quiet were one-third more likely to deliver zero-defect work.
Chapter 10 — Brain Time Versus Body Time - When you get in the “flow” of things, you get lost in your work. “Flow” is a term used when a worker starts working (uninterrupted) and looks at his watch and says, “It’s been 3 hours!”. This can only happen if there are no distractions. Fee free to give your employees the opportunity to think on the job, ignore calls, or close the door. It will only make their time more valuable.
Chapter 11 — The Telephone - What a distraction the telephone can be. Change your habbits and realize that the quality of your work matters just as much as the quantity. Emails advantage over phone is that you can respond at your convenience. It doesn’t interrupt your “flow”.
Chapter 12 — Brink Back the Door - This reiterates the message that doors are necessary and paging systems kill productivity. You pay for separate offices either by dishing out the money in the beginning or through productivity.
Chapter 13 — Take the Umbrella Approach - Try allowing your employees find where they should work. What about working outside when the weather is nice? This chapter allows you to see the different options when developing the perfect office space.
PART III
Part III is dedicated to getting the right people, keeping them happy, and letting them loose.
Chapter 14 — The Hornblower Factor - In business, we don’t have enough time to “change” people. If they’re not right for the position in the start, they’ll never be right for the job. Focus on learning how to hire people based on the company needs. Ignore “professional policies” unless you’re in the public eye (sales, PR, marketing, etc.). And let your people be happy at their job.
Chapter 15 — Hiring a Juggler - You would never hire a juggler if you never saw him perform. But, interview after interview we find ourselves hiring based on 5 year goals, most important decisions, etc. When you hire a programmer, he needs to understand key concepts and be able to work through problems.
Chapter 16 — Happy to be Here - An average employee stays with a company for 15 to 36 months. When you loose someone your usually plagued with having to hire and train new people. Usually, they’re useless for 1 month, pulling away one of your upper level managers for a solid 2 months, and maybe at full strength after 3 months. Organizations that think long-term goals, not short-term, invest in their people. They having training programs that allow secretaries to become analysists or PhD’s to become programmers. Invest in your CURRENT employees and you’ll they’ll see your loyalty to them and leave their loyalty with you.
Chapter 17 — The Self-Healing System - The authors state that methodology (policies and procedures) could actually harm an organization. It makes them feel like machine, ruining their motivation by deducing them to a machine. It also places employees in a box or a set of rules that MUST be followed; this ruins creativity. It speaks of the Hawethorne Effect which states that people perform better when they try something new.
Part IV
Part IV looks into the concept of the successfully bonded team and the things you can do to help such teams form.
Chapter 18 — The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts - A “jelled” team is special. A jelled team has low turn-over, strong sense of identity, joint ownership of the product built, and obvious enjoyment in their work. They align their goals and work to meet goals together.
Chapter 19 — The Black Team - A short chapter explaining the formation of a testing team that became “jelled”. This productive team is a cut above all other teams. Leading the company in efficiency and even developing a “group name”.
Chapter 20 — Teamicide - While it proved to be a difficult task to come up with “ways to create a jelled team”, the writers worked differently and came up with seven ways to never become “jelled”, including: defensive management, bureaucracies, physical separations, fragmentation of people’s time, quality reduction of the product, phony deadlines, and clique control.
Chapter 21 — A Spaghetti Dinner - Good managers are considered “lucky”. Good managers SEEM to get the most motivated team, the best friends, the guys who are willing to work all night, and the easy projects. This is because success breeds success. A good manager makes even small successful projects seen. The team gathers around one goal and attacks that goal.
Chapter 22 — Open Kimono - As a manager, feel free to get out of your employee’s hair. Visual supervision of knowledge-based workers is a joke. The best managers understand that natural authority works in all directions. Each manager is known as having special skills in certain areas and each worker has their special area of expertise. And all are trusted by all.
Chapter 23 — Chemistry for Team Formation - Some organizations are famous for their consistent good luck of getting well-knit teams. But the authors suggest making a team that loves quality, provide a lot complements and assurance that tells the employee’s that they’re on the right track, build a sense of eliteness, allow and encourage heterogeneity, preserve and protect successful teams, and provide strategic but not tactical direction.
Part V
Part V focuses on the premise that work should be fun for all employees.
Chapter 24 — Chaos and Order - Order is great in a company but there are times when chaos works wonders. Chaos brews creativity and fun. To achieve chaos try pilot projects, war games (tournaments), brainstorming, proactive training experiences, and trips/conferences/celebrations/retreats.
Chapter 25 — Free Electrons - Sometimes, if you have an employee that can show worth, its advantageous to allow him or her to define their job. These “free electrons” allow your company to stay creative and competitive by looking into all directions.
Chapter 26 — Holgar Dansk - The entire book speaks of radical changes. But, try to implement them slowly. Don’t try to wrestle a bull, try making the revolution, one change at a time.
PART VI
Part VI contains new sections and modifications to previous chapters. It has been years since the original “Peopleware” was written and a lot has changed in the industry since the original work.
Chapter 27 — Teamicide Revisited - Revisiting teamicide shows new things that modern management is doing that creates a cruel atmosphere. These things include plaques, self-help posters, and over-time.
Chapter 28 — Competition - This chapter deals with the negative effects of competition. It shows how traditional rat races are bad for working environments. It forces employees to withhold useful information from each other, refuse to ask questions, and refuse “coaching” from a colleague.
Chapter 29 — Process Improvement Programs - When you focus on process improvement methods, you risk losing creativity. When you risk creativity, you risk creating a valuable product. There is little value in taking a $40,000 loss and making it a $38,000 loss. The authors state that to create the most efficient projects, recreate past projects, don’t undertake projects unless they are clones of past projects, work on what you know you are good at, and DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.
Chapter 30 — Making Change Possible - People hate change. They would rather do things the wrong way then find a new way to do things. The people that blindly agree to change are just as dangerous as the people the militantly oppose change. But, force people to realize, you cannot improve if you can’t change at all. But be sensitive to change, it’s frustrating and embarrasing to abandon methods you have mastered, only to become a novice again.
Chapter 31 — Human Capital - Salaries, Seminars, and other costs incurred with employees are not expenses. Think of these things as an investment that will be returned instantly. The companies that fail to properly invest in their employees will suffer in the long run.
Chapter 32 — Organizational Learning - An organization’s ability to learn is limited to company’s ability to keep people. When a team has learned a lesson due to a project going wrong, the organization remembers until those people leave the company. Generally, after years of “learning lessons” entry level programmers are moved into middle-manager roles. When an organization looks to downsize, they usually do this by eliminating middle-managers. This is usually a recipe for decreased learning.
Chapter 33 — The Ultimate Management Sin Is… - The ulimate managment sin is wasting people’s time. This includes taking a phone call during a meeting, scheduling a meeting when people aren’t even needed, early overstaffing, and assigning multiple projects to one employee.
Chapter 34 — Building a Community - An organization that succeeds in building a satisfying community tends to keep its people, form “jelled” teams, and develop useful products.
I’m looking for a simple piece of software that probably already exists. I need some help here and if anyone knows about an existing piece of software, I would appreciate a link. If not, this is a great opportunity to implement a simple idea.
The software can have a cool title like “Idea Management Solution” and be sold to inventors world-wide. Inovation is the future of all technology and without it, they die. To keep up with innovative ideas, people have to come up with market trends.
A lot of good ideas are stirred up through market trends. Most inventions are “pulled” through due to market trends. The piece of software that I envision will allow you to enter market trends. Once you enter market trends, the software then allows you to enter industry implications.
For instance:
Market Trends: rising oil prices for the next ten years
Automotive Industry: increased sales of fuel efficient vehicles
Banking Industry: High oil costs keeps inflation low and interest rates low.
Real Estate Implications: Interest Rates low keeps house prices higher for at least the next 5 years.
Technology Implications: Research and Development for alternative fueling methods.
Etc…
Grand Rapids in General
Well, I’ve been spending my Labor Day Weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At one point, Grand Rapids was the furniture capital of the nation. Now, it’s a pretty cool city and has about 197,800 people covering about 45 square miles. In comparison, Little Rock has 183,133 people covering 116 square miles. The weather has been around 75 degrees in Grad Rapids, bright blue skies, and a cool breeze. In comparison, Little Rock has been HOT… around 90 degrees!
I’ve been able to visit Lake Michigan. It looks a lot like the ocean with waves and natural sand. The sun sets on the ocean and you can’t see from one side to the other. The people were friendly and use an “a” rather than an “o”. For example, when I told people I was going to buy my “mom” a gift, they told me I could buy my “mam” anything.
The Cost to Go
From Little Rock to Grand Rapids I paid $165 round-trip! I know, you’re wondering how I did that… Well, I took a train. Which sounds like it’s a bad idea but on the way there, I slept the entire way. There is plenty of leg room, an outlet (perfect for your computer, cell phone, etc), and cell phone service most of the way there. I could have a mobile office. The biggest problem with the train was that it was a horribly long trip. I left at 3am and didn’t arrive in Chicago until 4:30pm. Then, from Chicago to Grand Rapids was another 3 hours. That means on average the train travels about 65 miles per hour and cost roughly $2.95 per mile. That’s estimating it is 975 miles one-way. If I drove and I paid myself what the gov’t pays for tax purposes ($0.405 per mile), it would have cost me $789.75… So, I made the right decision unless I could have used somebody else’s car… b/c if I were to use someone else’s car, I wouldn’t have to be worried about ware-and-tare which is what the gov’t pays the $0.405 per mile for. If I were to use someone else’s car, it would cost me about $234.00 assuming I didn’t get a speeding ticket.
So, to recap:
Dining
I ate at a lot of great places including the Bil-Mar which is right on the coast and Louise Benton. The two restaurants’s filled me completely. They had fresh meats, great atmosphere, and superb staff. I’ve realized that the food is one thing you remember when you leave a city. So, if you bring someone to your town, make sure they eat at the best restaurants.
Two Innovative Ideas
Grand Rapids is also home of Amway, the creator of multi-level marketing. I drove by it and saw an empire. They sit on over 390 acres and literally have their own fire department, police department, and buildings upon buildings. I think it’s amazing. Although I don’t like 95% of multi-level marketing companies, I think the creators of multi-level marketing are true innovators.
I also spent a lot of time at a dog park called Shaggy Pines. Shaggy Pines sits on a 15+ acre fenced land that allows dogs to play ball, run, swim, and release all of their energy. It’s a membership only park and from the information I gathered, they have roughly 550 dogs at around $360 per year. Some people pay monthly but its much cheaper if you pay yearly. They also provide obedience classes, bathing services, photography services, gift services, and offer different membership levels. It allows owners the opportunity to walk their dogs, lounge with other pet lovers, and jogging/hiking trails. I think it’s a great idea and could easily be implemented in any city.
Related Item: Michigan Car Insurance Quotes free quotes
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