The one you liked working for?

Post #140,598 by Arkadiy 2/8/04 6:11:51 PM Reply	The one you liked working for? The one that called himself "your towel boy"? Not good. -- "...and pronounce all four E's in the word 'shit'"
Post #140,606 by broomberg 2/8/04 7:52:37 PM Reply	Yup, that one I hired him as a programmer. Shared and office with him for 3 years, as he was mentored by my brother. Helped him get promoted into management. Created systems for him, usually designed by him that were good for all of us, both the company and our careers. Followed him as he moved departments and was promoted the MIS director. And watched him self-destruct, battling with everyone, not taking advice. Me, the person who had to go to people school because I was universally despised, and was told that I was the only person to ever rebound worse, was giving him advice, telling him to be nicer. Very sad. He had very high expectations. Because he was pretty good programmer. And he worked with me, and I was better, so I guess he figured he could either get the same level of productivity from everyone else, or at least push them to be better. But he pushed poorly. That is why I never will be in management. The frustration I get out of dealing with semi-competent people pushes me over the edge. So I back-off before I hit that level, and try to automate them out of a job so I just don't have to deal with them.
Post #140,678 by Ashton 2/9/04 7:10:47 AM Reply	Re: Yup, that one Condolences on having to watch such a play in slo-mo :( I've learned some quite useful things from your always legible posts. You could probably be a better analyst of [doomed interactions? frequent stupid bizness behaviour?] than most of the overpaid Official peddlers of such nostrums. And whatever you charged - you'd be cheaper too, as you'd probably choke before ever uttering a Biz-speak TLA, in delivering your analysis. Right? (But, I bet you'd Hate that, too ;-) Pity.. that the fallout from and on! someone doing just-this (if I've gleaned anything from zillions of Rorschaks of zIWE bizness enviros, over the years) - is maybe why you would hate it. Few really want that much light shed upon the pet neuroses of the Power folk; never mind any idea of 'improving' such! Am I right, sir? ... Am I righ... (10 points for source)
Post #140,682 by broomberg 2/9/04 8:05:21 AM Reply	This one was a killer He is a decent programmer. Not phenominal, but on the upper bounds of good. He is very good at math, has a math degree, has good visual skills, good presentation, and wanted to be in management. He had good client interaction skills, decent at teasing out what they really wanted. Good at presenting the solution and getting an agreement of what to do next. He has 2 mode of operation, though. Micromanage where he lays out the code for you, step by step, or wide open bluesky, figure it out yourself. When he blueskied, people would get confused. If he didn't take into account certain limitations, or though he did and then didn't communicate well enough how to deal with it, programmers involved in that project would believe him to not understand the difficulties and then would stonewall. He typically DID understand. In my case, when he didn't, I'd corner him for a while, shake it into his head, and then we'd come up with a solution. Other people didn't, so their projects would be more difficult since they didn't have his input when needed. When he micromanaged, that was a little painful. No 2 coders will code the same way, so when he would layout the underlying data structures of a project, and they did not match how I was designing, none of his input had any value since it was shaped around the data structures. So I'd beat him up to the next level, and we'd work from there. He was great at working with various departments in the company, finding out how the whole organization would do better, and working in that direction. But internally, dealing with people who stonewalled or took 10 times to get something right, he could be harsh. Not insulting or abusive. Just short. He hated when people wasted time. Their's or his. He felt the clock ticking away. Deep down, felt it. But so do I. Time isn't just money. Time is life. If I spend 10 minutes writing this post, I have made a choice to SPEND a limited piece of my life doing it. It is a piece of my life that I will never get back. He felt the same way, that when other people were wasting his time, they were costing him a bit of his life that could be better spent doing something else. So we got along well. We didn't waste each other's time, we were productive, we got things done, we had fun. Gonna miss him.
Post #140,794 by Ashton 2/9/04 7:58:12 PM Reply	Thanks for that irretrievable ten minutes! (Really) er QED See, your description is clear enough for me to believe I've just seen a - probably as near we get to unbiased description, of some basic strengths/weaknesses - said in useable form. (And I'd probably miss a cohort of that description, too.. in fact - I do - there was this guy -) Point: IME, you have an unusual ability to analyze in this way, and also to describe that, sans blab words. I know that I have heard many attempts at 'characterizing' for similar aim: ~just to understand WTF 'is going on with this guy'.?. So I have these horrible examples, for comparison. If I ran a business, I would prize one with such a skill / talent hugely. Of course, you've shown that you like a different kind of problem, most probably would Not want to play in the human management game (?) But if you ever burn-out on TB/sec RAID via fibre optics... y'know? [no flattery intended: simply You're Good at this!] Ashton who heard a different Kind of virtuosity last night - wordless. Music!

Welcome to IWETHEY!