I’m out of the office today, in Austin, TX (yee-haw!) at the Stack Overflow Dev Days – Austin. There are a few more around the country coming up, and if you’re a developer, I’d go check it out, just for the speakers. I’m not sure you’ll learn a ton about how to be a better developer in any of these events, but I think you’ll be inspired.
That’s part of why I’m going. After all, the lineup for Austin has talks on
Of those, maybe 2 or 3 are applicable to my career. I’m not likely to pick up tips that I’ll use next week, though I may learn a thing or two that I could use in the future. There’s a better reason in my mind to go to an event like this, going to hear some well known and well respected speakers:
Being around smart people is exciting
It’s actually more than exciting; it’s inspiring to me. Coming away from an event like this I’m sure I’ll be excited again about my job, and I’ll have ideas that I can apply to my job. Or I’ll be thinking about how I might try something new in my job.
I’ll also be going to see how the format works. How they handle a one day event with multiple speakers to see if this is something that might work in the SQL Server world.
So I’ll be mostly out of touch today, and not responding to messages, but I’ll post some notes and updates when I get back and hopefully a few pictures.
I added a new blog to my reader today: The Client Revolution.
I heard about this from @NeilDavidson, and he mentioned it was a good example of innovation in the legal industry. Quite a few things I've read on there could be applied to other professional fields, especially software, so it's on my list.
I study karate on a regular basis, and over the years I've practiced a number of different martial arts, most of them in fairly strict in the traditions and routines of student behavior. When I started this new school with me son, it was a lot less strict. That was OK with me, I'm older, and it was a new business with a fellow IT worker leaving his job to pursue his dream of a martial arts school.
Old habits die hard, and I was used to bowing before I moved, before/after kata, and at other times, without exception. Most people in the school only bowed when asked (begining or the end of class, when the teacher mentioned it at the start of kata, before partner drills, etc.) However I bowed every time before I moved to change position, line up, keeping with the routine that had been drilled into me at many places.
After about a year, most people were doing the same thing. Our teacher had noticed, and actually called it out one day. I hadn’t really noticed the others since it wasn't something I cared about. I study for myself, and I've tried to pass that belief on to my son. Our instructor did say that I set an example, and he appreciated that.
By living the way I thought was proper, I’d influenced people. I'm not sure what I take from that, but it did make me realize that our actions change change lives, even passively.
I got quite the mention from Robert Cain over at ArcaneCode in a blog recently. He listed me as a "Big Thinker" along with some pretty amazing company. Kim Tripp, Paul Randal, Alan Stevens, and others that are prominent in the tech community. I'm sure more are coming, and it's an interesting take.
Thanks, Robert!
I worked at a company that had a yearly bonus. Actually I’ve worked at a few companies, but this one in particular set a plan in motion in January of one year. This plan was structured as follows:
I don’t remember the exact targets for xx and yy, but they aren’t important. Most employees I knew thought these were reasonable goals, would require some work, but not an extraordinary effort, and were fair. People were excited, and despite a slow economy at the time (this was around 2002), they worked hard.
Until April.
When we released our Q1 results (we were a public company), we hadn’t had a profitable quarter. Management gave us the usual story about being upbeat, we can still pull together and work hard, and we’ll have a good year.
Anyone want to guess what happened with moral?
Salesman still pushed hard, after all, they have a separate bonus structure called a “commission”. Most of the rest of the company was a little disillusioned. Not that they looked to quit, or stop working, but there wasn’t an incentive to work harder than necessary. Executives were mystified, they pushed harder, complained, and tried to motivate people.
I found out later that executives had a different bonus structure than the rest of the company, which is something else I need to write about in another post. So they were on track to still make bonuses.
Many employees, however, checked out for the year. “We’ll hope for bonuses next year” was the consensus for most people working there. The #3 item for our bonuses had been blown by a bad quarter, which meant that there was no longer an incentive to work harder.
Granted employees owned stock, so they would still get some benefit from a profitable company, but most don’t own enough stock, and tend to hold onto it, so this doesn’t provide any short term incentive.
And that’s what a bonus is, a short term incentive.
What could be done better? First, a bonus should stand on it’s own in a period. Each part of the plan above should have been assigned a percentage of the overall bonus. If we had 1% of our bonus come from each quarter and the other 6% from the first two incentives, people would still be motivated. They’d have lost one part of their bonus, but not all of it.
I also think that having yearly bonuses, the traditional “Christmas bonus” is a mistake. It’s a long time for employees to focus on the incentive, and with the uncertainty in many companies and the lack of loyalty from both sides, it falls out two ways:
In either case you aren’t necessarily building a good business plan.
My thoughts are that you should motivate people in short bursts, provide incentives to change behavior for short terms, make them fair, and change them often.
Think about your career and the managers, and potentially leaders, that you’ve had in your life. Think about life in general and who do you admire, who have you modeled yourself after or who you wanted to follow in sports, in a hobby, in life, etc.
I’ve heard about, read about or seen many people on TV, in newspapers, books, and more. Some of them I admire, most I don’t, but as I learn more about some of them, there are always some I like that I start to question whether they’re good leaders. To be fair, someone can be a good leader in public, or in some roles and have a mess of a personal life. They’re not necessarily related.
I started thinking about this after reading a post on herds. No, I still don’t like horses, but it’s my wife’s blog and I follow it just to see what she’s doing. I’m interested in her, not the horses and it helps me to better keep in touch with her.
Everyone needs someone to follow. We have to decide who inspires or motivates us, but do you know why any particular person does so? As I read about horses, I’m not sure that we’re much different. We feel drawn to one person or another, or some group, and we don’t always know why.
I write on a daily basis, and while I don't find it hard to come up with things to say, it is hard to write something great every day. Actually it's probably hard to write something great ever.
I try and I think there are some great things I've written, but in trying to get something done every day, I find it hard to write something that will stick with people. Something that is inspirational and touches people. And it's not just me. I find it hard to find anything out there in the hundreds of pieces I read each week.
I Ride
I found this one from an unlikely source: my wife. I read her blog regularly, mostly to just keep in touch with how she's doing with horses. Typically she writes about how she's doing this or that with the horses, how the ride went, etc. It's one way that I learn more about her and see what she's doing in life. Most of the time when I follow her writing I think it's more for her clients and people working with horses than anything.
However when I read this post, I had to stop and read it again. I could feel the passion and it really meant something. It really touched me a bit, not because it's my wife, or because I like horses (I don't), but because the intensity of someone's emotion came through.
It's the type of passage I wish I could write more often.
