My therapist is worried about me. I’m not sure if that reassures me or worries me. We were talking about the incredible hours I’ve been working and he heard me use the phrase, “It’s what I do.”
Maybe we should discuss that in more detail next time.
Do you ever listen to talk radio? I do occasionally and I’m always consider it a little weird when people say,
Thanks for taking my call.
The host normally says something like, “What’s on your mind,” or “You’re on the air.” If I ever become a radio host, and someone says, “Thanks for taking my call” I’m going to respond with “It’s what I do.” Because if you think about it, that’s your job as a talk show host is to take calls.
I am complemented often on the hard work I put in and the results I get. I’m not sure exactly how to respond. My job is to keep our computers running. Sometimes that’s as easy as showing up and not touching anything. Other times, it’s an 18 hour per day job. The point is that the job is defined by the results. So, when I spent 30 hours over two days working with our operations and engineering teams to fix an issue and someone thanks me for it, my most natural response is “It’s what I do.”
I have admit I try to say it in Nathan Fillion’s voice when I say it.
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(Serentity)
But my therapist isn’t worried about me doing a good job at work. He’s worried about my “becoming” my job. He’s concerned I don’t have an idenity outside of this workaholic that craves people’s approval. I don’t think he needs to worry.
So, how do you keep them separate? Or, more importantly, since this is my therapy session, how do I keep them separate?
Good judgement.
Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from poor judgement.
I haven’t always had good judgement. I don’t always use good judgement today. But, when I took this job, I knew the hours were going to be long and the client was going to be demanding. Sure, I was unemployed (in IT we call it self-employed. None of us are ever unemployed) when I took this job, but I made the conscious decision to stay. So, how do I exercise that judgement?
Priorities vs Loyalties
Let’s be clear, my loyalty is pretty simple. I’m loyal to the 9 other people that share my house. To the 4 single daughters who live outside my house, and the daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter who live about 15 miles from me. There’s no question.
That means they are my first priority, right?
Nope. My priority is the place my paycheck comes from. I have a son with a birthday next month. I’ll be gone on his birthday. We are celebrating it on Saturday when I get back. I’m going to miss a fair number of concerts this spring, just as I missed a bunch of the fall concerts.
My daughter graduates from college and is being commissioned in the Army in May. I’ll be there. Last night I got to attend an elementary school arts festival. My boys were brilliant. Right up unti thier performance I was in the back of the gym on the phone solving a work issue.
My kids know that even thought I want to be at certain events, my job pays for the house, food and clothes.
Time
I’m starting to sound like a rotten father, aren’t I? I’m that guy with the phone pressed to his ear saying, “Yeah, boys we’ll play catch as soon as dad finishes this call.” Harry Chapin wrote about that guy in “Cat’s In The Cradle.”
I’m not that guy.
I’m going camping with my boys this Friday. I’ve been to the opening two games in Rugby season to watch my sons play. I’ll be at my daughter’s graduation. So, what happens if the network blows up in the middle of graduation?
Too bad.
No, not in an “I don’t care” way. Just that we can each only do what we can do. Will I be able to respond as quickly during a graduation, or a campout as I can when I’m at home working in my garage? Of course not. But, here’s the thing about being passionate about your clients and phone agents. When you have a reputation for excellence, then, when you cannot respond as quickly, people understand. Oh, they still want it back up and running as quickly as possible. But, they understand that are doing the best you can, and if your best is the best, you catch a break.
I just go and do the things that are important to my kids when I’m home. If I get a call, I get a call. But, I could just as easily get that call while in my garage.
Emotional detachment
I don’t love my job. Not really. I love my wife. I love my kids and grandkids. I love my mother who will be 70 this month. I love my friends. I love most of my family.
I like my job. There’s a difference. If I lost one of my kids, I’d be devastated. If my best friend were gone, I’d grieve. When my mother passes (may she live many decades more) I’ll be an emotional mess.
If I got laid off tomorrow, I’d be disappointed, but I wouldn’t be devastate. I quit marrying my employers a long time ago. The emotional pain was too much and it was unneccessary. Last year I talked about Company Loyalty Only Ever Goes One Way. The employees are loyal to the company, but the company cannot reciprocate that loyalty. It’s a corporation, it’s not a person. If we lose my account, the company will have no more need of me in the role I’m in. They would look at the cost/benefit analysis to keeping me or laying me off. It wouldn’t be personal. They wouldn’t do it because they were mean. It’s economics.
Likewise if someone came an doffered me a 40% raise to leave my current position, and assuming it wasn’t a non-compete environment, I’d go in a heardbeat. 40% more would make a big difference to the people I’m loyal to.
In the mean time, I do a good job and try to bring excellence to my position. But, love it? Not hardly. It’s not who I am, it’s just what I do. I’d tell my therapist that, but my client scheduled a meeting over my therapy appointment.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Did I type that out loud?
It’s not true, right? All companies care about work/life balance. It does no good to burn out your employees. When I entered the workforce in the 1980’s, it was the age of Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas’s ruthless driven character from 1987’s Wall Street. Bill Gates was the poster child for young, hungry, 100 hour per week tech geeks.
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We worked like crazy, the stock market was skyrocking so we were all getting rich. If we were married, we bought our wife a big house, and an SUV and told her we’d call her from the office.
But then in 2000 the stock market crashed and we lost our big houses and fortunes. In 2006 Gates announced he was stepping down to use his billions to save the children of the world and we all realized that there was more to life than ship it dates and an ever running upgrade treadmill.
We started to slow down a little. The kids had soccer games that we made it to once in a while. We met our neighbors who were also in IT and were starting to get a life. And companies realized that there was value in helping their employees achieve this “work/life” balance. Interesting that the opposite of “work” is “life.”
I went to work for a new company about a year ago. My job was a typical IT project manager. Then, we added a 700 seat call center in Salt Lake City, and keeping it’s computers running was my responsibility. Then, we built a 500 seat call center in Richmond, VA. Building it was my added to my plate. And when it came online, I owned the IT structure for that one too. And we built a 500 seat call center in Louisville, KY. Building it was added to my plate. And when it came online, I owned the IT structure for that one too. We’ve added 10 lines of business across the three sites over the past year. And each of them has an IT component. And the IT aspect of them belong to me. And this year we will expand Richmond by a couple hundred seats and look to open a new call center. And those will also be mine to look after the IT needs.
I’m busy. It’s a surprise if I go through a weekend without getting calls. Last weekend I two calls on Saturday, and one on Sunday. I’ve been gone more than here this year. My weeks average between 50-60 hours with occasional spikes to 70 hours. I have a new manager at work. He’s trying to find time on my schedule to meet with me. So far we’ve found about a 45 minutes.
This is all wrong. . .right? This is the opposite of that whole work/life balance. Shouldn’t I be complaining? (And make no mistake, this blog post is most definitely NOT complaining.) So, why am I not complaining? Why do I put up with it?
First, there’s no putting up with it. I really enjoy my job. I get to solve interesting problems. When I do my job well, other people can work. If I do my poorly, lots and lots of people cannot take phone calls. It’s fun.
But, the hours. Don’t they get too long? Don’t they cut into my “life” side of the balance?
I won’t lie. Yes, the hours can be brutal. I don’t LIKE working from 6:00am – 5:00pm and then coming back into the office for an IT change at 10:00pm to midnight. But, you know what I do like? I like having a job. I LOVE having a job. I’m a pretty good IT guy. I’ve got loads of experience. I got great reviews in my previous job. And then they did layoffs and rather than walk out the door and into a new gig, I spent 13 months pounding the pavement. I went through the severence and most of my savings before I got a job with my current employer.
Would it take me 13 months if I got laid offf tomorrow? Probably not, but at 50 years old, I’m at the point that my age will become an issue. I’ve been in middle management for a long time. It’s where real work gets done, but it’s also a position that is viewed as somewhat interchangable.
Do you know how you stop being interchangable? You become indespensible. You show that the organization is better with you and without you. And just like an athletic competition, the youth have an advantage. I’ve got experience, but when it comes to getting the work done, experience isn’t going to get the deliverables met.
Do I expect to work 60 hours for the rest of my career? Probably not. But, for right now, there is work to be done. My new manager suggested I take Friday afternoon off.
I’ll probably leave around 4:00.
Everyone else will be gone by then.
I’m sure I’ll have stuff to do.
Just because I leave early doesn’t mean that anyone is going to come in and finish my work. That’s what they hired me for. And I’m glad they did.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Rodney, I still have no idea what you do here. But, whatever it is, I need you here doing it. – Dave Brady
I should have never hired him. I mean by rights, he wasn’t a good fit. I was the Executive Vice President of a small startup called Agile Studios. We were a custom software shop. We made web sites mostly, but really anything that you could think of. Most of our programmers were straight out of BYU. Several, in fact were still at BYU.
Dave was a recommendation from a friend of my brother’s. My brother isn’t a software guy, so the recommendation was more a request for a favor than an informed referal. We called Dave in and interviewed him. He interviews well. It’s not surprising when you consider he’s had lots of practice. He’ had 10 or 12 different jobs in as many months. But, there was also a reason he’d gotten hired so many times. He was really good.
I remember him telling us that he’d built an automated system to upload graphics to a website. It had a single client, but thousands of customers. The way he described it sounds somewhat fantastical. I later learned it was the infrastructure behind early versions of Schlock Mercenary, an award winning web comic written by another friend.
Dave and I instantly became friends. We both have rampant ADHD and sometimes our discussions will span multiple topics, time zones and even continents. SQUIRREL!
But, it’s not my friendship with Dave that landed him at the top of this list. He’s without a doubt one of the smartest guys I know. He’s funny. He’s dedicated. He’s hardworking. . .
- Trustworthy
- Loyal
- Helpful
- Friendly
- Courteous (Not so much)
- Kind (Definitely)
(We’ll leave the Boy Scout Law comparison at this point.)
Dave made it okay for me to be a leader.
Ninty-five percent of all leaders are insecure. The other five percent are deluding themselves. As a leader, or more importantly, as the leader, you have to make decisions. If the decisions were easy, someone else would have made them. A good leader gathers as much information as they can before making a decision. A bad leader continues to gather more. The fact is, you reach a point where you have to decide. You never have full information. You have to fill in some of the gaps and hope for the best many times.
It’s too much for some people. Some people don’t want the responsibility. Or they are too afraid of making the wrong decision. I’ve had managers, you’ve probably had them too, that like Rodney King, just want everyone to “get along.” They avoid conflict at all costs, even when avoiding it hamstrings the team.
So, as a leader, you do the best you can and then see what the results are. If you are the president of the company, or the head of a department, you don’t often get the feedback on your choices. You’ll have plently of people to tell you what a great job you did. How great your decision was. But, those type of people are worse than someone who would offer no opinion on your work at all. “Yes” men approve of everything you do, so it’s impossible to use them to judge your effectiveness.
Dave was never a yes man.
There are other people who will give you advice, but they lack the experience to really know what the right choice would be. They are willing to speak up, but their lack of real world knowledge means that their opinions are not informed, and any critique of your performance is likewise lacking credibility.
And then there are those people who have the experience, the intelligence and the knowledge to understand the decision and evaluate the alternatives. These people are often the leaders themselves. Those are exactly the qualities you want in a leader.
Dave was a good leader for our development team, but he was a fantastic support and validation for the decisions I had to make as a leader. He was the Mr Spock to my Captain Kirk. I didn’t always make the decisions that Dave thought were the best, but he always understood why I made them.
It’s rare to find that sort of friend and coworker. Because, let’s face it, Mr Spock should have been off leading his own ship. He had all the necessary experience and atributes.
Dave made me a better leader. But, more importantly he validated my role as a leader. And that has made a huge difference. . .to me.
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(Photo from LinkedIn)
Dave is active on Twitter and occasionally blogs.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
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LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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Rodney, don’t be afraid to take a chance and try something completely different. – Howard Tayler
Howard is my friend. Howard feels sorry he gave me this advice. He feels like he helped send me into one of the worst situations in my life. I moved my family across the country to go into partnership with a man who was a liar and a crook. Recovering from it took over five years and was one of the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Some people at this point might say, “It turned out for the best,” or “All’s well that ends well.”
I’m not one of those people.
It was awful. I hated it. Even now, almost ten years later, the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. And my friend Howard encouraged me to go. So, why does he rank as one of the people that made a difference to me? Not because he encouraged me to pursue a dream that turned out to be a disaster. But, because he encouraged me to pursue a dream.
It’s a topic that Howard is a world expert on.
My interaction with Howard started, like so many of my important stories did, at WordPerfect in the 1990’s. (Back Where It All Began) We didn’t know each other well. In fact, I don’t even remember Howard really until I met him while he was at Novell as a manager over the Novell GroupWise development team. I was visiting for another project and Howard was genuinely excited to see me. He greeted me like an old friend. I’m slightly embarrassed to say I didn’t really remember him, and I sort of nodded and shook his hand and thought, “What an energetic personality.” We must have talked for at least a few minutes, because he told me that he wrote a webcomic, and he had recently killed off a major character.
It was at that point I became a fan of the comic. Despite that, Howard and I became friends. We had mutual friends. We lived in the same area. We both worked in the software field.
And then he did something completely unexpected. He walked away from a six figure salary and a steady, stable job working with computers to become a fulltime cartoonist. It truly was a leap of faith. It was an amazing thing to watch, and it was one of the bravest things I’d ever seen.
Howard showed me how to be brave.
There was one other aspect of Howard’s story that has had a profound impact on me. Howard never misses an update. His comic posts every day. He’s amazingly consistent.
When I got ready to launch this blog, I asked advice from Richard Bliss, a brilliant marketer and my older brother. (My Brother The Rock Star)
Becoming an expert on the Internet requires two things: persistence and presence. Show up every day, and keep doing that for a long time. Eventually you will be considered an expert.
My brother told me that lesson, Howard showed me. His work ethic is inspiring. He didn’t set out to make money with his comic. In fact, according to him he didn’t draw very well. This is his first comic from June, 2000.
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((C) 2000-2015 Tayler Corporation)
He got much better. Here is today’s comic.
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((C) 2000-2015 Tayler Corporation)
But, he kept showing up day after day, year after year. And through that and a lot of hard work, he became an award winning cartoonist. I have unashamedly stolen several of Howard’s lessons. This blog hasn’t missed a day in two years. I feel a sense of responsibility to you. If you are willing to check in every morning, the least I can do is try to have an interesting story for you. That drive for consistency, I owe to Howard.
Like Howard did, I recognize my limitations as a writer. However, just as I’ve seen his art and storytelling improve via constant practice, I continually strive to get better. If, at some point I were ready to take that next step and make a go of it as an freelance writer, I would go more confidently into the dark knowing that Howard went that way first. If I make that choice, I count myself especially lucky to have been around when he made that transition.
Why is Howard on this list? He encouraged me to take chances. He set an example for me. And he was and remains my friend.
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(Photo by Vladimir Chopine from howardtayler.com)
Howard still writes his comic. June 12th will mark his 14th year of publication without missing a day. Schlock Mercenary is found here.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
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LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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When you were a kid did you ever dream that you scored the winning touchdown? That you fought off the terrorists to save the princess. Basically, that you were the hero?
I hope so. We all should be the hero of our own story. But, in real life how often does that opporunity come around? Most of us never get asked to do the extraordinary. David Thoreau said,
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
I had that chance. I had the opportunity to do something extraordinary. It happened early in my career and that opportunity has set me on a course that, while not always extraordinary, certainly included more than my fair share of extraordinary moments.
There was no good reason to pick me. I was on a team in WordPerfect Office Support with other engineers equally qualified, equally capable. But, just as getting assigned to the Office team was a random stroke of luck that defined most of my career, getting asked to work with the EPA account was a seeminly random event that had far reaching impact.
The man who made that decision was a WordPerfect Product Manager named Dave Clare. Dave was the PM for the Office product, which mostly meant WordPerfect’s email program. It was sometime around 1989 or 1990. WordPerfect had recently shipped version 3.0 of Office. It allowed multiple email servers. It sounds strange today, but in the early days of PC based email programs, all the email had to sit on a single server. If you wanted to send email to someone in your company, you logged into the email server and sent your email. It was then delivered to another user on the server. That person would later log in and read you email. The problem was that only a certain number of users could be logged into the email server at the same time. It was not unlike queuing for the restroom at a sporting event. You pretty much had to wait until someone in front of you was done.
WordPerfect Office 3.0 changed all that. Now you could have as many post offices (that’s what they called their email servers) and connected them all together. There was now no end to the number of users you could host. . .except there was. We weren’t sure exactly what the maximum number was, but it somewhat less than the EPA was trying to host at one time. They spent a ton of money on Office and they couldn’t make it work. So, they would call into support and talk to us, and we all dreaded their calls. They were demanding and their system was so complex that you would spend the first 45 minutes of the call simply learning the background needed so that they could even ask their question.
Dave’s job was to market GroupWise. The sale to the EPA had seemed like a fantastic deal. But, now it was turning into a disaster. They gave him an ultimatum.
Fix our GroupWise problems or else.
Or else what?
We will go with a different email supplier.
Who would you go with?
Anybody except you.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Suppose I give you one engineer and he’s dedicated to learning and supporting your system?
We’ll try it.
And just like that, I was thrust into the hero’s role in the story. But, it wasn’t just a story of adventure, there was intrigue as well. Our executive vice president was adamently opposed to WordPerfect employees touching customer keyboards. He was not going to be pleased with me flying to Washington DC and get my hands dirty setting up EPA systems.
Dave had some brilliant advice. . .”Don’t tell him.”
So, not only was I called on to be the hero, I had to do it covertly. It was awesome.
The reason Dave appears on this list is for two reasons. It was the first time anyone had bet the farm on my ability. There was no alternative. Plan B was to make sure that Plan A worked. It was an incredible amount of pressure. I was all of 25 years old. And I had never felt more responsible. Because Dave believed in me, I had to believe in myself. Throughout my career I’ve had opportunities to play the hero. Times were the entire enterprise depended on me. Everytime I was ever tempted to doubt myself, I remembered sitting in Dave Clare’s office and him telling me how confident he was that I could fix this.
Secondly, Dave gave me great insight into office politics. We were going against the orders of the third most powerful man in the company. But, it was the right thing to do. So we did it. I found out later that he nearly got fired for it. I think even he had been let go, he still would have done it. Because it was right. And when you know what is right, and you get results, you can get away with a lot.
Incidently, I redesigned the EPA network and got it stable. My success led to WordPerfect creating a group of dedicated on site support people called the Strategic WordPerfect Assistance Team. Yes, I got to be a member of a SWAT team. Coolest team name ever.
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You can read more about my time helping the EPA at “How I Saved The EPA (Don’t Tell Pete)”
Dave remains active in the IT world. His LInkedIn profile is here.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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He got a B in college ballet. Luther was the only person I knew since my friend Mark’s parents made him take lessons as a kid who even did ballet. Did? Danced? Took? It’s so far out of my realm of experience that I don’t even know the proper verbs. Ballet was quite a ways outside of Luther’s realm of experience as well. How Luther ended up in a college ballet class without ever having taken dance is part of the reason that he’s one of the people who made a difference to me.
Luther and I met at Brigham Young University in the Computer Science department. He was a brilliant undergrad on track for a steller career in theoretical computer science, I was a middle aged guy trying to go back to finish my degree.
I’d left Microsoft the previous year and decided that now was a great time to go back and finish my CS degree. I had a chunk of money, not as much as I had before the market tanked, but still enough that I thought with a little skimping at home and a serious approach at school, it would be enough to see me through to graduation.
From the time I was a kid I’ve been told that I was smart. But, smart without discipline is not a recipe for success. My high school friends were honor roll students. I was a bottom-third of my graduating class guy. My first time through school had been fun, but chaotic. I started as an Electrical Engineering major in the honors program. My test scores were good enough to get me that. Honors lasted exactly one semester. I stayed with EE until I hit the 300 level math courses. Linear algebra did me in. I switched to Computer Science.
I did okay thanks to a very patient roommate who was also a CS major, and thanks to a very pretty girl who helped me with my final project. We’ve been together for 27 years, so I don’t count my time in CS142 as a total loss. I even joined the ROTC for a semester. Finally, I left to go to work for a little computer company called WordPerfect.
I hate losing.
I felt like I’d lost something by leaving school early. I always wanted to go back. Fall of 2004 was my shot. By now, I’d had a career. Five years at WordPerfect led to nearly ten at Microsoft. I understood how to get things done. And most importantly I’d learned to stick it out and finish.
As we moved to Orem, UT and I started back to school, my very first goal was to find a study partner or a tutor. I found Luther. Since I was closer in age to my professors than the other students, I asked one of them if they could recommend someone. Luther’s name came up. And it turned out we had multiple classes together.
It was a perfect setup. What I found out right away was that I shouldn’t attempt to keep up with Luther. He was going to run at clock speeds that would burn me out. However, I also realized I didn’t have to. It was fun to watch him devour concepts and lectures. Rarely did I have my program done before his. It was a good thing to. Much of the grading was automated. You submitted your program to a grader application and it checked to make sure you did it right. The grader app wasn’t always 100% accurate. Luther would finish first and then help the TAs debug their grader.
And he would help me.
I’m not sure what benefit that Luther got out of our relationship. And maybe it’s crass of me to consider a friendship in terms of what each person gains. I hope that I helped him, because it would be a shame for him to have helped me as much as he did and not gotten anything back.
Luther was a geek. He was a geek’s geek. He was doing original research on mathmatical implications of multidimensional spaces, or something like that. I could barely comprehend it and he was doing it for fun. It wasn’t even the field he was interested in. I don’t remember him ever being impatient. And he had plenty of opportunities. He was the sharpest tack in the box, I wasn’t even close.
But, I had committed to myself that I was going to focus and work hard this semester. And I did. I did all the reading before class. I sat near the front. (That’s where Luther preferred sitting as well.) I did the assignments early. I even had a hard drive crash in the middle of the semester and managed to not get thrown off track.
I studied for the tests. Luther didn’t. I couldn’t understand it. When the first test came around I asked,
So, do you want to get together and study for the test?
Not really.
What do you mean? You aren’t going to study for it?
I’ll help you study if you want. I don’t really study for tests. I learn the concept during the lectures. If I learn it well enough, I should know it for the test.
I’d never heard of such a thing. But, it was true. He really was that smart. We finished the semester both with straight A’s. It was the first time in my life I’d ever managed that. Had I taken one additional credit I would have made the dean’s list.
Luther taught me how to learn.
But, that’s not why he is one of the five people I picked who have made a difference. The next semester was the semester that Luther took ballet. He never really explained why he chose to fulfill a PE requirement with a ballet class. But, I think I know. Luther lived in the CS labs. Between classes, being a TA, doing research and tutoring me for free, his entire day was involved with computers.
There is more to life than computers. For one thing, there are not a lot of girls in Computer Science, my lovely wife not withstanding.
Do you know where there are a lot of girls? Yeah, ballet. Or just PE classes in general. Luther attacked ballet like he did everything else. He threw himself into it. The change in him was remarkable that semester. He was still a geek, but he was also someone who was embracing life. I took “safe” PE classes: Basketball, raquetball, swimming. Luther never really was the play-it-safe type guy. Shortly before the end of the semester he told me about a conversation he had with his instructor.
You’ve really worked hard this semester. I think you will finish with a B+. That shouldn’t hurt your GPA too much.
No, not too much.
You didn’t tell him?
Tell him what?
About your GPA?
No. It never came up.
Doesn’t it bother you at all?
Why should it?
Why indeed? Luther was junior and had a perfect 4.0 GPA. The ballet B+ wasn’t just going to hurt his GPA it was going to destroy perfection.
Luther didn’t see it that way. He had a specific reason for taking ballet and it wasn’t to maintain his perfect GPA. It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. And it has stuck with me. He wasn’t there for the grade, he was there to learn, to experience, to do new things.
I’ve often thought about those couple of semesters and the lessons that Luther taught me. I ended up spending my schoool money to adopt three girls from Colombia. Luther went on to a brilliant career in Computer Sciene. But, for just a little while, I got to experience what it was like to be both the smart kid and a good student. I thank Luther Tychonievich for that.
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Luther Tychonievich is a full time lectureer in Computer Science at the University of Virginia.
the end
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#5 Trevor Harrison – The first geek I ever met
Hey Rodney, wanna see a trick?
Sure.
Watch this.
Okay, what am I seeing?
Open the that file on the screen.
That’s my password? Both passwords, the system and my private one! How’d you do that?
Trevor was a geek. He was also my friend. We were teammates in WordPerfect Office support. WordPerfect Office wasn’t like Microsoft Office. WP Office was basically email with some other utilities thrown in. Trevor had just run a program against our corporate database and sucked out not just my password, but everyone on our post office. It almost got us fired.
This week I’ll introduce you to five people who have made a difference in the IT world, to me. You’ve probably never heard of many of them. Unless you know me outside of this blog, you may not have heard of any of them. But, each one taught me something very important at a critical point in my career. Unlike many of my other posts, here I’m using their real names. If you are lucky enough to know these people, you are lucky indeed.
When I started working at WordPerfect, I started in the telephony office (Back To Where It All Began.) That was a part time gig and with a young family to support, I needed something better than 20 hours per week. I started into customer support in 1989. At that point in time, the most important qualification for getting a job at WordPerfect was the ability to touch-type. If you had a friend recommending you and you could type without looking at the keyboard, you were in.
It was a magical time to be in the computer industry. The industry was still young enough that often we were making it up as we went along. And by starting in WordPerfect, I learned from the very beginning that the customer was king. (You Want A What? We Don’t Even Make Those Any More)
During our two week training period, we spent a lot of time learning WordPerfect 4.2 and about an hour learning WordPerfect Office. When my class of about twenty graduated we went to the “Pool Group.” We were essentially temp-workers. If one of the printer teams had someone call in sick, they’d assign someone from the pool group to head to printers for the day. My first day I went to the Office group. Actually, at the time it was called WordPerfect Library. But, most of our calls were on the new email product.
I got a crash course on the tools to setup an office system and then thrown on the phones. Years later, as a course writer for Microsoft’s email system, I often drew on the terror of those early days to try to anticipate what to put into the training materials. Microsoft’s Exchange Email training is two weeks.
It was a bit of a pressure cooker environment. But, for those who survivied it was a great place to work. We were on the cutting edge of a whole new industry; truely pioneers. I don’t remember when Trevor joined the team. It was at least a year or so after I started. I was one of the senior engineers by then. Although, my tenure had been longer, Trevor was light years ahead of me on the technical side. He really should have been in Testing or Development.
When he showed me his utility for cracking passwords, it was almost with a conspiratory tone. He made me promise to not tell anyone he’d built it.
But, Trevor, if it was this easy for you, there have to be others out there who could also do this. We should let development know.
It makes me smile to think how naive my young self was. Of course, development knew. They were probably praying like mad (it was Utah after all) that no one would notice before they had a chance to get a version out with proper encryption.
You can tell them if you want, Rodney, but leave me out of it.
Trevor understood corporate politics a lot better than I did. Development’s response was to be expected:
Tell whoever wrote this to forget they ever knew how to do it.
Eventually, they fixed it. Eventually WordPerfect Office would challenge the email goliaths of the time, cc:Mail and Lotus Notes. Eventually, Microsoft would beat all of them. . .like always.
But, what impressed me most about Trevor, and has stuck with me nearly 30 years later, is his intense curiousity. He didn’t break the passwords to do anything malicious, he just wanted to see if he could. Trevor also helped me realize that as smart as I was, I would never be as smart technically as he was. He wasn’t arrogant about it. Years later, when I was hiring developers for RESMARK, I remembered the lesson I learned from Trevor. I knew that there were men and women who had that innate curiousity. People who were much smarter than me when it came to coding. I realized that if I wanted my project to be a success, I needed to go find people like Trevor.
Like I said, it’s a lesson that’s stuck with me for nearly 30 years.
I’ve lost touch with Trevor over the years. But, I believe you can still reach him here. Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s doing cool and exciting things with comptuers. That was just his way.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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I had no idea who he was. We didn’t even have anyone in common. He went to the same college I attended. That was our connection. Should I add him?
It depends on the social network you are on. I’ve already admitted that I’m not much of a twitter user (I Have No Idea What I’m Doing.) But, the point of Twitter is to get people to follow you. You think President Obama knows all those millions of fake accounts that follow his Twitter feed?
On Facebook, I’m selective (I’m Sorry. We Can’t Be Friends Anymore.)
But, on LinkedIn! I add everyone who asks. And it has to do with what I see the purposes of LinkedIn being. I have a friend who is president of a major TV studio. I was talking to him several years ago about this.
Kevin, I saw like four LinkedIn profiles for you. Which one should I connect with?
Rodney, I have no idea what LinkedIn even does. I keep getting these requests and click through and create a profile and then ignore it. Is it even worth it?
I think so. and I think you are going to want to start using it, to screen people if nothing else.
LinkedIn is an online resume. But, more than the resume, ti’s an entire interview loop. When I’m talking to perspective employers I don’t offer to send them a resume, I give them my linkedIn address (www.linkedin.com/in/rbliss) I even put it on my business card.
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I think you should use LinkedIn in three ways ways.
Networking
If you are like me, you hate to go to “networking” events. You stand around like college kids in a pickup bar trying not to look desparate. Eventually, you leave with a few names and cards, but no real connections.
LinkedIn solves a lot of that. First, you can go exploring. Want to go to work for Microsoft? Search LinkedIn for the company name and you will see everyone in your connections list who worked there. Want to sell into UPS? Search and see if you know anyone there, or anyone who used to work there.
This is why I accept all LinkedIn connection requests. I never know when I might need a contact. It’s not a one way street of course. I also understand that others might reach out to me. And that’s not a bad thing. Getting a job is only slightly harder than finding the right candidate for a job. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, I’m happy to accept. Click Here.
Vetting People
This was the main value I saw for my friend Kevin all those years ago. As the head of the studio, he gets lots of people asking for a piece of his time. LinkedIn is an easy way to see if the guy in your lobby who claims to be a producer at Sony is actually who he says he is. And if he’s not and you really are looking for a producer at Sony, you can use LinkedIn to see who you may know that works there.
LinkedIn gives you the option of endorsing people for particular skills. You go to their profile, click on ENDORSE and pick your skill. Honestly? I think it’s a waste of time. I have plenty of endorsements, but often I get endorsed by someone for a skill that they know nothing about. I don’t really look at the endoresements.
What’s much more valuable, in my opinion, are the recommendations. You can go and post a recommendation for someone you’ve worked with, someone you’ve worked for, or someone who’s worked for you. Those are gold. But, you might think that since the only recommendations are from people who liked your work, it’s not a good represenation. And I would say you are correct. But, if you ask a person for three references, you are only going to get the people that already like them anyway. You don’t lose much. Besides, you can go through the list of recommendations and start your vetting process all over again. Was your potential candiate recommended by someone you used to work with? That’s then pretty easy to follow up on.
Your Online Extended Resume
By far, the most valuable use of LinkedIn is the online resume. You can go into more detail. You are not bound by the single (or double) page. You can include pictures, recommendations, certifications. It’s a wonderful opportunity to tell your story.
But, Rodney how do I know what to say since I don’t know who might be looking at my profile? The point is that you don’t know what to say. You cannot really craft LinkedIn to a particular job the way you do a resume. But, that’s okay. Because if you are pursuing a job, you are not going to rely on your LinkedIn profile. You are going to research the company, search for people you know there, and craft your resume to fit the job. LinkedIn won’t do that for you.
LinkedIn is a passive tool to catch people who might otherwise never consider you for a position. And unlike other social media sites, LinkedIn gives you one huge advantage. You can see the people who have checked out yoru profile. So, if someone is interested in you, you’ll know they came and looked at your profile. Keep in mind, it goes both ways. If you look at someone’s profile the person will know that you were there.
There are other features in LinkedIn, of course. You can publish on LinkedIn and as a writer, it’s a great way to get noticed. You can also signup for their job service. They will send you jobs that match your resume. Or, as an employer, you can post jobs.
It’s one of the most valuable business sites on the Internet. And it’s free for most of the content.
By the way, my friend Kevin now uses it extensively.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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Rodney, you unfriended me.
Yeah, sorry about that. It’s nothing personal.
Well then what was it?
I’m never facebook friends with people I work with..
Of course, no discussion of social media would be complete with out discussing facebook. Everyone seems to use it. But, is it a business tool?
We don’t normally think of it that way. It’s full of ads, so someone is making money on it. For me, I choose to distance my facebook usage as far from business as possible. You cannot avoid it any more than you can decide your cell phone is not for business calls. What are you going to do when someone calls your phone about business? Hang up on them?
I won’t try sell you on facebook. You either love it, hate or you’re over the age of 80. But, I will share with you three rules that I use in my facebook usage.
No friends
Okay, I have tons of facebook friends. Some of them are actually people I’ve met, but I’m not friends with people I work with. We’ve all heard stories of someone who’s lost a job or lost a lot in their divorce because they vented on facebook. And I guess that’s part of it. But, for me, I just don’t want the worry.
When I managed a team, I told them team to not try to friend me. I don’t want to have someone call in for a sick day and then read their facebook post about going skiing, or being hung over, or whatever. I know managers who really wanted to know that kind of information. But, as a manager, I never looked for a reason to fire people. I hired people to do a job. What they did on the weekend, or what they did on a day that the company granted them time off, I didn’t really want to know.
Did people take advantage of that?
I’m sure they did. But, here’s the thing. If someone did a good job for me, I don’t begrudge them a mental health day. If someone didn’t do a good job, their attendence policy is the least of their issues.
No Pictures Please
Earlier this week I talked about Why I Don’t Tell Other People’s Stories. I explained that I don’t use names. When it comes to facebook, I rarely post pictures of people. It’s the same concept as the stories. Maybe you’re wife didn’t know that we went to a ballgame this afternoon. Maybe, you told her we had to work late. I don’t want to be the one to break it to her.
And with my own brood, I never post pictures. At least not of the kids under the age of 18. My teenagers do not have facebook accounts. They won’t until they can buy their own computer. That’s typically when they are on their way to college.
It’s more of the stories idea. I don’t want to decide for them that their picture will be well known. I realize that others disagree. I have a friend who has posted at least 3 pictures of her daughter since the girl was a baby. She’s now 5. If she wants to do that, it’s up to her. But, for my kids, they can decide what to post when they are adults.
Rodney’s Not in Right Now
I enjoy facebook. I spent hours debating politics with a group of Liberal and Conservative friends in a private group. But, I do not know how to balance facebook with work. I read it at home. When I get to work, I don’t touch it.
Of course, this blog posts to facebook every morning at 7:00 AM MST. And occasionally I’ll come home to find an entire conversation happened around one of my posts. But, it’s a rule that helps me keep the two lives separate.
Many people build successful businesses on facebook. I understand that it can be a business tool. For me, it’s one more outlet for my writing and a diversion to visit with friends.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the social media platform that I do use for business.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com
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??There’s this guy on Twitter who has 110 followers. He’s following 57 people and he’s shared 1,035 tweets. Those are not outstanding numbers compared to some. But, they are not terrible. He must know how to do something right. I mean, the guy shared enough content to convince 110 people that they should follow him.
I’m not one of them. I can’t be. I’m him.
But, as for doing something right, I’m not as confident as I look. I don’t get it.
Knowing my readers, I’m guessing there are many of you who are right now talking to your screen,
Rodney! It’s not that tough!
So, I’ve been told. I’m sort of technical. You know, in the “I studied Computer Science, I built my own file server, I write a technical blog” sort of way. But, twitter is one that I just can’t seem to grasp.
You might have a couple of questions based on the profile I shared above.
- How did I get 110 followers?
- What was in those 1035 tweets?
I tweet my blog every day. Well, I don’t tweet it, my blogging software tweets it for me. And facebook sends my wall posts to twitter. So those tweets are mostly links to other content. Occasionally, I go tweet a specific item, but because I don’t “get it,” I don’t get it. It’s like opening my front door and yelling a greeting to the neighborhood. I’m not sure how long I’m supposed to stay there at the door waiting for someone to holler back. Or, do I go back inside and wait for them to knock on my door?
How did I get those followers? I can only assume that it’s those of you who “get it” and want to get it. And by “it” I mean this blog.
But, what about those 57 people I’m following? I must have gone out and done that on purpose, right?
You’d think that. And yet, as I look through the list of people I’m following, some are very dear friends and relatives. Others are people I don’t recognize. In fact, several are in languages I don’t recognize. These are the people I’m supposed to be reading. And yet, I ignore them all equally. If you DM me, I will get the message. Not because I use Twitter, but because I send DM tweets to email.
Alright, what’s this have to do with business?
Two important messages. First, if you want to be in the tech business, you have to have a twitter account. People expect it. Obviously they don’t expect you to use it. Sure, many people do, but it’s not a requirement. But, if you want to be accepted as a techical expert in any field, you pretty much have to have a presence on Twitter.
Second, because I know there are many people who do get Twitter, I learned just enough about it to be able to push my content to the medium. I’m a writer. I want as many people as possible to read my content. Twitter is one of the places go to read content.
Blogger sites are used to create content, not consume it.
That’s not universally true, of course. There are many people who check in at www.staging.rodneymbliss.com everyday to read the content. But as a general rule, people consume content in social media settings.And THAT is why I have a twitter account.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about a social media site that I do understand. For today, please retweet this is you found it helpful.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
Follow him on Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss) or email him at rbliss at msn dot com