RE: Performance Review

I feel for ya.

Recently I've been going home feeling like I just finished a Calc 3 final.
But every day it gets worse.  You know, that feeling that your head is full
of sludge.  Can't think straight, and later it turns into a slight headache.
It's fine in the morning, but by 10am the next day you feel it coming back.
Those 100 different projects with impossible deadlines couldn't be the
cause.  Nah.

I spoke with my neighbor about this last night, because he noticed that I've
been "complaining" about feeling like this more and more after work.  He is
very spiritual (and a counselor) and I enjoy talking with him.  He mentioned
that we are given gifts.  Everyone has them.  Things we are good at and
things we enjoy doing.  But, those gifts can also be used to slowly destroy
us if we don't evaluate the situation and learn to say no.

It reminded me of the story of boiling a frog.  Throw a frog in boiling
water and it will jump out.  But, put a frog in luke warm water and slowly
bring it to a boil, and he'll die, without even knowing it.  I feel like
that frog now, the only thing is I have no way to express it to my managers
because, like you said, how do you explain something like that?  They've
never taken a Calc final.  :)  Sure, they have budgets and meetings and
stuff, but it's different (and the same).

I am heading to Bakersfield CA this weekend, so I will have a few hours of
flying.  I've brought along a book entitled "The Aladdin Factor" that is
supposed to help you with situations like that.  We'll see.  This short trip
will probably stress me out even more.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to retire in 3 months, and open a Mercedes,
Subaru, Kia dealership.  <bg>  When people email me about AS/400 stuff I can
say "Hmm.m..  dunno, but do you wanna buy a Kia?"

Brad

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MacWheel99@aol.com [mailto:MacWheel99@aol.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 5:43 AM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Performance Review
> 
> 
> I just had my annual review & it was not a pretty sight.
> 
> The good news includes - I still have my job - my boss has 
> given me clear 
> indication of what needs to be fixed & some overall goals, 
> which have been 
> sorely lacking in recent years.
> 
> It occurs to me that it would be extremely constructive if I 
> could provide my 
> boss with some alternatives to the system he now uses, since 
> he is not a 
> computer technical person ... how on earth is a non technical 
> computer person 
> expected to be able to judge the quality of software I write 
> in some language 
> he does not know ... how challenging is this or that?
> 
> There is stuff that is extremely difficult for me to do, but I cannot 
> communicate with a non-programmer about what the challenges 
> are.  How can a 
> non-programmer evaluate my performance?
> 
> It would be simple for some 3rd party, familiar with the 
> languages we use, to 
> look at some of my programs in an audit & make some remarks 
> about how my 
> relative worth to the company, compared to the quality of 
> code at other 
> comparable companies, but I have been suggesting for decades 
> that we get a 
> computer audit on a larger scale, so this just aint going to happen.
> 
> Of course this sort of thing can backfire.
> 
> I remember in the midst of some conversion at a former 
> emplouer whining about 
> some challenge they had given me, saying that there is no way 
> I can get all 
> this done inside the deadlines, and my boss informing me that 
> the company, 
> without telling me, had asked IBM if I had what it took to do 
> the conversion, 
> without any professional help, and the SE (which tells you 
> how long ago this 
> was) told them that I was the best programmer that anyone at 
> the local IBM 
> office had ever had the good fortune to run across.  So the 
> result of that 
> was they threw even more work my way.   The shame of it was 
> that when I 
> finally left that place, I was unable to use the SE as a work 
> reference.  I 
> did ask the SE for confirmation that this was not a snow job.
> 
> I asked my current boss
> 
> HOW MANY DAYS HAS THE COMPANY BEEN DOWN DUE TO COMPUTER 
> INFRASTRUCTURE 
> PROBLEMS?  He said NONE, in a tone of voice as if he was 
> surprised that I 
> should ask such a question.  I told him that in my opinion 
> there are 3 
> reasons why that is so ,,, our choice of having IBM 400 
> hardware, our choice 
> of a good ERP, and my performance in managing it.
> 
> Now I think that there ought to be some industry statistics - 
> how many days 
> of surprise down time & other mishaps do other comparable 
> companies have - 
> 400 & non-400, so there is a basis of comparison with our performance.
> 
> How much time do companies typically spend testing software 
> improvements?
> How critical is this?
> 
> I was going to ask him, but I bit my tongue, because my foot 
> was headed there 
> at lightning speed.  HOW MANY COMPUTER BUGS HAVE BEEN 
> INTRODUCED AS A RESULT 
> OF SOFTWARE I HAVE WRITTEN FOR THE COMPANY.
> 
> The reason I bit my tongue is that I can think of 3 in the 
> last 2 years & the 
> really embarrassing part of that answer is that 1 of them I 
> could not find, 
> so I developed a work around.
> 
> This is another area in which there might be some reliable statistics.
> Rate of bugs created, both in terms of like
> 1 bug per million lines of source code & how many in what time period
> 
> It would not be fair to compare to Microsoft Windows because 
> that software is 
> written with full intention of tossing it in the garbage in 
> 2-3 years when 
> the next version comes out - we should compare with other 400 
> places whose 
> software is intended to work for say 10 years at least.
> 
> MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
> 
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