Here's Your Box

Layoffs have become common place these days as the economy sinks and consumer optimism fades. It's been a long hard road since the 2002-2003 recession and in many ways we it feels like we haven't accomplished much in the last four years. If you trade equities or hold a mutual fund your probably aware that the broader market has given up most of its gains since 2006. Wages have clearly stagnated with respect to inflation which, though not historically high, has been steady and unrelenting.

Everything in the world sucks and now you find out that your being laid off. I understand your pain, believe me because I was there a little less than a year ago. It's a rough ordeal but ultimately you'll get through it. Even so there are a couple of things you might want to do today just in case you get a pink slip in the near future.

First and foremost back up your documents. We all drag personal items to work especially if your company provides a mobile phone, PDA or laptop. Depending on how paranoid your employer is you may find your access immediately revoked to network shares and systems. If you're unlucky enough to have copied the phone list for your child's PTA to the network you may find yourself in the awkward place of having to ask for it.

Likewise any contacts or email address you may have on your phone (ie company property) will become off limits once the ax falls. The best bet is to sync anything of importance with your personal system as a precaution. Granted I am not saying you should download the companies client list or any other confidential information. What I'm saying is you need to back information for any colleges or coworkers you may want to contact in the future. This information will be invaluable as you look for a new job.

The next thing you'll want to do if you sense an impending layoff is to preemptively update your resume. It's far easier to figure out what you've been doing for the last four or five years if you have ready access to your old files. Once your ex-company slams the door you'll be hard pressed to remember that project you worked on in '04 or the title of everyone you interacted with.

Finally, clean up your work area computer included. If you have any personal or confidential information in your "My Documents" or printed out you'll want to purge them. Maybe you've left ATM receipts in your desk drawer or a soft copy of your insurance application on the hard drive? Get rid of it unless you want it to become public, or at least known to the IT staff. This includes music files or photos that you don't want to share.

Holy hell! It's been a rough five days at work but at least we are near the finish line. Over the past few days I've been working nonstop to deploy a third party integration for our CRM product which, by all accounts, has been the most convoluted process ever. While I'd like to think that I'm being melodramatic, I can not say that I'm exaggerating. Though the technical problems were solved the remainder of the solution, which we outsourced to a contractor, was not fully documented nor fully tested. This created a huge, nightmarish workload for us as we attempted to roll out the solution.

The moral of the story is that while it's beneficial to have outside help when accomplishing project goals it's imperative to keep the deliverable items static and well documented as possible. If your goal is to hit a moving target and then distill the information into a meaningful document you need to keep very detailed notes and to be very organized. If your vendor or contractor does not exhibit these traits then odds are you will end up with a huge mess when it's time to deploy your project.

Having written a lot of code and having worked on many projects I can honestly say that the greatest skill a software developer can possess is not coding proficiency, but a knack for organization. Regardless of whether you practice traditional development or iterative design you still need to maintain order in both code writing and project documentation. While code can be self documenting application function and business processes often are not. When you skimp on explanation about what a program or system is supposed to be doing you risk unintentionally breaking things when changes are made. You also further complicate the process or sunsetting those systems if their role is not explicitly apparent.

At the end of the day I'd rather work with and have work outsourced to developers who are able to document their work and the processes they seek to improve. Anything less means more work for us coders and more confusion and hand wringing for our bosses.

Few things are more uncool than when you mom or dad latch on to the latest slang phrase or start leaving comments on your MySpace page. The following is much worse my friends. It's an attempt by corporate mofos to sound hip and to start something viral. This video was a nominee for "Best Song" according to last year's Pwnie awards. Take that for what it's worth:

Yes, that's Dan Finnerty (aka the wedding singer at Will Ferrell's wedding in the movie Old School). He's about the only redeeming thing in this video since the words are no more than oddly placed industry jargon and lamo rhymes. Hell I'm in the industry and still didn't understand what they were trying to say. Hardware/Software based security? Not if it's put together by the same guys that made this video.

Despite the responsibility there are few life and death scenarios. Though we occasionally get a wake up call at 3am, unlike doctors we IT people rarely deal with situations where life hangs in the balance. Sure a server may crash and burn but no one is going to be injured unless they happen to be sitting atop the unit when it goes.

The downside, pay grade aside, is that unlike doctors we do not have a fully stocked medical supply closet from which we can produce any tool we need or so desire. Scarcity of resources is one of the most frustrating things about working in tech. There are never enough computer cycles, system memory or hours in the day to get everything done. Technology is often left in service well beyond its expected life and is often retrofitted instead of replaced so as to save money in the short term.

Still despite the downside I still look forward to coming into work and rarely dread the impending crisis of the day. If only I could have the same attitude when home electronics or automobiles fail.