September 2008 Entries

My past experience with recruiters has been at a level that I put on par with my recent experiences with newbies to my team.  Today I got this from a guy I know who just changed jobs through a new recruiting firm. Recruiting Firm X is smart.  They sent me a giant gift basket to my job.. one branded coffee metal big mug thinger.. two glasses and a bottle of wine.. total cost probably not very high.. but it got noticed by my co-workers and more importantly the coffee mug has their name in a fairly...

I had an experience today that made me...well...flat out fucking angry.  When you start working with a new team, on a new project, at a new company...heck whenever someone can point at you and call you the "new guy", you need to be very careful with your desire to impose your belief system onto the group.  The only time that this is acceptable is if you've been brought in to impose change, but even then you usually will want to wade, not dive, into the pool. Today I had to work with a relatively new-to-our-team person.  The previous work...

I had a conversation the other day with Tom Opgenorth about the trends you see when you're ending a contract with a client.  Our experiences both show that during the life of a project the client will usually (painting with broad strokes here) talk like they want to learn, understand and be competent with the project.  Most claim that they want to grow that knowledge during the life of the project so that, at the time of your departure, they will have the ability to smoothly transition the work.  Rarely does this seem to happen. Instead, the end of your...