We all got new computers. Why? We’d been begging for new computers for months. But, now, we finally got them. Why? Because of the calendar. It was December 1, and our department still had budget left. This was years ago, but the same things plays across conference rooms all around the world.
Why?
It’s called “Use it or lose it.”
I once went on a training mission with our ROTC class. It was a “night manuevers” type of exercise. But, it was a bunch of college kids, so it was not exactly Seal Team Six. At the end of the evening, before we headed back to the busses, the instructors had us stand in a circle, (Facing out, we weren’t THAT stupid.)
We all had rifles, and about a hundred rounds of blanks.
Load your weapon. When you are instructed to fire, you will fire and reload until all of your ammunition is exhausted.
Ready
Aim
Fire at will
The desert lit up with the flashes from two dozen assault rifle flashes.
Why?
It’s called “Use it or lose it.”
It’s an extremely inefficient way to do things.
I’ve only seen one case where it made any sort of sense. I’m a volunteer scout leader through my local church. We get an annual budget. The young women’s organiation does as well. As we got to the end of the year, we were pressured to make sure we spent all of our budget. Not because we’d lose it for next year, but because the purpose of the budget was to help the young people in our church, not using the money meant we were not helping the young people as much as we could have.
I have my own version of “Use it or lose it.” Today was a vacation day. But, no one was working anyway. The difference between a vacation day and non vacation day on Christmas eve, in an IT job, during an IT Freeze, is mostly a matter of bookkeeping.
If something broke today, I’d have to fix it. But, taking a vacation day did mean I didn’t have to look at email or try to find something to do.
But, mostly today is a vacation day because my company has a “Use it or lose it” policy for vacation days. If I didn’t use my remaining vacation days I’d lose them at the end of the year.
Most times, “Use it or lose it” is a terrible strategy. One interesting way to know it’s flawed, is that small business owners, the ones who control the entire company never have a use it or lose it mentality.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Two feet they were predicting. And this in a city that shut down for more than an inch or two.
It’s easy for those of us living in “snow” states to make fun of our more fair weather neighbors.
When I moved to Utah many years ago one of my kids was in the third grade. As the first winter storm came in she asked about school.
Do you think they’ll close school tomorrow?
Sweety, they don’t close school in Utah for snow.
But, what if it snows a foot?
They don’t close schools for snow.
What about three feet?
It really doesn’t matter how much. They don’t close school for snow.
And it’s true. I’ve seen days were the weather was so cold they kept the kids in from recess. . but they didn’t cancel school. I’ve seen times where the busses refused to run because they were unsafe on the streets. . .but they didn’t cancel school.
Seattle was different. Seattle shut down with anything more than an inch or so. I say “Seattle” but really it’s all of Puget Sound. It’s not really their fault. Here in Utah was have dozens of salt trucks and snowplows just for my little down.
During the storm where I slept at Microsoft, it came out that the entire city of Seattle had two snowplows. It’s hard to clear the roads with only two plows.
Anyway, the storm was forecast for Christmas Eve. We knew it was coming. Most people opted to stay home. I lived on top of a small mountain on the East Side. This was before the days of high speed internet.
My problem was that I had a project due January 2nd. You might ask what idiot would set a deadline for the day after the holidays? I must have hated that guy, right?
Yeah, I set the deadline and I was an idiot.
Anyway, the project still needed a lot of post production work. I couldn’t do it at home and there was no telling how long the storm would last and the roads be impassable.
I opted to drive in. I kissed my wife goodbye, packed a change of socks and headed off to Redmond.
We got the 24 inches they were predicting. And, as expected, the city shut down. I was in my office busily working away on my course and eating out of the vending machine.
On the second day, I got an email:
TO: Residents of Building 7
FROM: (Some VP)
RE: FoodI’m going to go out and see what places are open. Reply back if you are in the office today.
I sent off a reply and went back to work. About 90 minutes later I got a second email:
TO: Residents of Building 7
FROM: (Some VP)
RE: FoodThe only place open was Dominos, but it was carry out only. Pizza is here in the common room.
Turns out there were about 25 of us working that day.
We were all idiots.
I did finish my course on time.
And I no longer set my deadlines for right after a holiday.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Have you ever considered how lucky you are to not know everyone? To not have too many friends?
I went to WalMart today. I went twice. At least I think it was only twice. It’s that time of year. My lovely wife ordered all her Christmas gifts weeks ago. Packages have been arriving almost daily.
I guess I should be better. I’ve got most of what I need for Christmas. This evening the trip was to get some gift cards for kids who are further away, and lightbulbs. I needed lightbulbs.
The holidays can be a lonely time for people. It’s something that we all worry about. Suicide hotlines put on extra people on the phones. We all make an extra effort to reach out to our neighbors. We call family and tell them we love them.
Maybe it’s the time of year. Maybe I just had a down day. But, I really wasn’t interested in talking to anyone. WalMart is like a big old school mall. It has everything a community would need. It has food, clothing, bedding, tools. I would imagine there are even some where you can buy a car. I know you can at Costco. You probably can at WalMart.
So, it’s kind of like a big 40,000 square foot village. But, the people come and go. Some we know, some we don’t, and some just look vaguely familiar.
Like I said, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Every time I thought I recognized someone I tried to think of how to avoid talking to them. And then, I realized I didn’t know them after all and we walked passed each other in opposite directions.
Because I was buying gift cards I couldn’t use the self checkout lines. I had to talk to a checker. It wasn’t too bad. We made small talk. He had to cancel out one of the cards because he got the amount wrong the first time. That meant a supervisor had to come over. But, it was fine.
As I gathered my bags and started to walk out I thought I recognized someone. Quickly I tried to figure out how to avoid talking to him. Then I realized I didn’t know him after all and we walked passed each other in opposite directions.
It occured to me how inconvenient it would be to know everyone. Every person you passed would want to stop and talk. They’d want to make small talk. Say “Hello, how have you been?”
I have lots of facebook friends and linkedIn connections. I follow only a few of them. Is it because I’m afraid of running into them in WalMart?
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2018 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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The older couple in the next booth paid their bill and got up to leave.
Did I hear you tell the waitress today is your anniversary?
Yes, sixty years ago today.
It’s our anniversary too. . .
The couple looked remarkably spry for a couple in their, what? Eighties? We wished them well.
Let me tell you this though, sixtieth is the best. It just keeps getting better.
My lovely wife and I are just past the half way point to the where the older couple is today.
Two of my children are married. Two of them are engaged. It struck me that here we are, the old, the middle aged and the young. We are each striving for the same thing. The older couple at Olive Garden shows that the path can go on for a long time. My lovely wife and I work everyday to make it work. And it’s working. The kids are at the beginning of the road. They are the hope of the future.
The future’s in good hands.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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We wrapped up our testing call at 10:00pm tonight. The engineers will keep at it for another couple of hours, but my testers part was finished up early. And by early, I mean, “before midnight.”
I sang in church on Sunday. It doesn’t happen often, but my lovely wife was responsible for putting together a group to preform a medly of Away In a Manger and Baby In a Manger. I’m a reasonable tenor. I’m more of a baritone.
Fortunately, I don’t get performance anxiety. We rehearsed a few times and we were definitley ready. The meeting starts at 1:00pm, but we would be performing around 1:45. Unfortunately at about 1:10 my phone started blowing up. Something was broken at work.
I normally take the call when something breaks. I’ve taken calls in the back of school auditoriums as my kids performaned on stage. 7,000 feet up the side of a mountain because I had a clear signal and something broke. And on Sunday, I took the call in the middle of Sunday services. Services where I was on the agenda.
Okay, I didn’t take the call. I did take the text and email.
I’m not going to be able to join the call for an hour. Send me the impact counts.
It’s the time of year. This is the storm before the calm. IT companies rarely work over Christmas and New Years. Maybe we all got burned out in the run up to the Y2K events of December 31, 1999. And despite what you may have heard about IT overblowing the seriousness of Y2K, it really was as potentially devastating as your IT guys said it was.
Anyway, the fact is that IT guys typically don’t work over the holidays. Many IT departments take the last two weeks off. And you might think that the slow time is a good time to get maintenance done.
Nope.
IT departments implement a freeze sometime in mid-December. The exact date various depending on the company. It generally starts anywhere from a week to a few days before Christmas. During the freeze, no changes are allowed on the network. No regular maintenance is allowed to be scheduled.
Obviously things can break, and when they do, emergency maintenance typically needs to be approved by a senior vice president.
The goal is to keep the system as stable as possible through the end of the year. I think they need it so that accounting can run end-of-year reports. Those reports are super time sensitive. At least I think so.
The point is that we have this Freeze to look forward to every year. The downside of the freeze is the time before the freeze. Most IT departments work on an annual timeline. Q1 starts in January. Q4 ends December 31.
Many projects need to be wrapped up before the end of the year: that does not mean December 31. It means whenever the Freeze starts. So, every year the Freeze starts. And every year the weeks leading up to the Freeze get really, really busy. Typically it ends on January 2.
Our performance on Sunday went off flawlessly.
I expect at least a couple more outages or last minute maintenance events over the next few days. We’ll get through it. We always do.
After all, this is just the storm before the calm.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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There’s an old Dilbert cartoon where the Pointy-Haired Boss informed Dilbert that he has recently run spellcheck on his code.
And don’t even get me started on your punctuation.
I have a friend who wants to be a comedian. He’s young. He has no experience. He doesn’t think school is important. He’s going to be a comedian, right? He’s going to stand on stage and tell jokes. Who needs school for that?
I’m not sure my friend knows that I’m friends with several professional comedians. Full-time, travelling comics, not just open mic’ers. Everyone one I know who is making a living has a university degree.
I had a guy on my team one time who deserved to be promoted. His previous manager had told him “work harder.” That’s stupid advice. Hard work is important. I have great respect for people who work hard, and not much respect for people who are lazy. But, “work harder” is stupid advice. Harder how? Punch the keyboard harder? Stare harder at your screen?
The guy really did deserve to be promoted. And he was already a hard worker. But, his problem was he was an engineer, not a marketing guy. And he couldn’t spell. I mean, he was a terrible speller. And he didn’t seem to know.
The funny thing is that we were the email team. Outlook has a built in spellchecker. But, it’s not on by default.
First step in getting him promoted was to get him to turn on spellcheck. He’s now a Vice President of technology at a large bank. Spellcheck wasn’t the only thing that got him promoted, of course. But, it was an important thing.
You might think that writing isn’t important at your job. Maybe you’re an engineer, or a phone service agent or even a comedian. Here’s the secret: every job require good writing skills.
Because every job requires you to communicate. Every job requires you communicate with other people. And every time you send an email people use it to judge you. Write a brilliant compelling argument for a new proposal, and people will notice. Mispell a siimple word in an email and people think your not very smart.
And the funny thing is that often technical people are terrible at writing. Too often we use it as a crutch. But, it’s important.
My engineer friend found that something as simple as turning on spellcheck would change people perception. My friends who are comedians will tell you that performing is only a part of being a comic. The real work, the hard work is writing. Comedy has a pattern. It’s nearly impossible to teach. Some would say it is impossible to teach.
Writing is a binary skill. Either it’s helping you or it’s hurting you.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2018 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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How do you get an elephant into a cherry tree?
You plant a cherry pit, get the elephant to sit on it and wait.
I think that’s the best advice I’ve ever heard for how to train teenagers.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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You hear it at the beginning of each call every time you call customer service:
This call may be recorded for quality purposes. Please stay on the line for a short survey.
Everyone gets the first part of the message. Many people get the second.
If you are like most people, you called customer service because you had a problem, or a question. And like most people, you are busy. You’re life doesn’t revolve around talking to someone on the phone. At least not your bank, or your credit card company, or any of the other services you may find yourself calling during the day or night.
Once the call is over, your problem is solved, or your question is answered. All you want to do is move on to the next question or problem that you need to fix. Who has time for a survey that is just going to add some data bits to a database, right? I mean, it’s just a simple survey, right? It’s not like it makes any difference, right?
Oh sure, if you had a bad experience, we all want to tell someone about that experience. But, the agent on the phone was super helpful, right? In fact, she was exemplary. You’re thrilled. Goodbye and have a wonderful day.
But, there are people whose life does revolve around talking to someone on the phone. That agent, or customer service representative that you talked to spends six to eight hours per day talking to people just like you.
We’ve come a long ways from the days when I started as a customer service rep for WordPerfect and then Microsoft corporation. Operating system have improved dramatically. When I was doing customer support calls I had to rely on the the customer to be my eyes.
Can you tell me what you are seeing on your screen?
We’re way beyond that stage now. Now we can share screens. We can remotely control a client’s interface. We can even see a user’s phone screen if they grant permission.
There are a few ways that call centers rate their employees. In addition to tracking how long people are at work and how long they are available to take calls, one typical measure is number of calls taken. They also track how long an agent spends on each call. It’s called AHT, or Average Handle Time. Another common metric is how many calls are resolved on first contact.
But, the gold standard of how to evaluate employees is customer satisfaction. That’s why a bad review is so devasting. And I can tell you from personal experience, a bad review does get looked at. And if an agent gets too many bad evaluations, they will be given the opportunity to be successful somewhere else.
But, what about the good reviews? What about the time the agent fixed your issue in record time? What about that review?
For the agent, that review is the most important of all. In call centers I’ve worked in, each superior rated survey is not just acknowledged, but celebrated. Some call centers have a flashing light on the ceiling that goes off when someone get a 10 on a survey. Others ring a bell.
Agents that get multiple perfect surveys quickly rise to the top of the organization. They are the first to be considered for promotions, and raises. They become trainers and team leads.
Their calls are used as an example for others to show them what works and how to be successful as a customer service agent.
Here’s the hidden secret. Agents are never allowed to tell you that. Not a hint of how all important that simple 90 second survey is. But, a good survey is literally money in the bank.
So, the next time you talk to a customer service agent that does an exceptional job, take the time to answer that survey. You will be brightening their day way more than they brightened yours.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I found some money today. It was just laying on the ground. I stopped and picked it up. Why not? It’s free money.
There are people who honestly think I shouldn’t pick it up. They’ve done a cost/benefit analysis and think that there’s a certain amount, below which it’s actually counter-productive to stop and pick up money.
Here’s how it works. You take your annual salary, let’s suppose it’s $80,000/year. That means that you make about $40/hour given a typical 40 hour week. If you break that down into a per second rate, that comes to $0.011 per second. That means that if it takes me longer than a second to pick up a penny, it’s not worth it to pick it up. The more I earn the more impractical it is to pick up money.
Let’s look at Bill Gates. It was while working for Microsoft that I heard someone make this analysis. In 2013 Bill Gates made $11.5B. That works out to $33.3M per day, $1.38M per hour. Or $385 per second.
So, imagine Bill Gates walking down the street. He sees a $100 bill laying on the ground. Should he pick it up? The cost/benefit analysis says that he shouldn’t. Not if it will take him longer than a quarter of a second. Obviously, it would take him longer than that to reach down and pick up a bill off the ground.
BTW, the cost/benefit anlysis is wrong. Bill Gates absolutely should pick up the $100. He will end up $100 richer. Not that he needs the money, of course, but he won’t lose any wealth by choosing to pick up money off the street.
The problem with the cost/benefit analysis is that it assumes a zero-sum-game. It assumes that any time spent picking up free money off the street is time that will not be spent earning money in your regular profession. That’s not true. If Bill Gates picks up a $100 bill or a $5 bill, He will still earn the same amount.
My job pays me a salary. I don’t earn money by the hour. My boss, of course, expects me to put in an honest days work. And, trust me, that’s an important thing for me. But, my days don’t start and stop at scheduled times. Monday, my day started at 6:45AM and ended at 9:30PM. Tuesday, I had a doctor appointment at 10:00AM. My day started before that and then continued afterward. I finished up Tuesday night with some testing we were doing in Lynchberg at about 12:30AM.
So, how much do I make per hour? It’s not enough to just divide my salary by 2,080 hours worked in a year. (40 hours per week for 52 weeks.) If I cannot determine my hourly rate, the cost/benefit analysis mentioned above makes no sense.
I’m pretty sure Bill Gates doesn’t keep office hours either.
Moral of the story? Free money is free money, not matter how much you earn.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2018 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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You worked 60 hours last week. . .what did you get done?
A couple of phone calls.
Really? That’s it?
Well, they were really long phone calls
We had a product launch last week. We handled it remotely, which means that most of us were dialed into a phone conference. Just a couple of team members were at the launch site. We had plenty of agents, but those of us on the team, were able to avoid travel to Vicksberg.
We all dialed into the phone bridge at 8:45AM.
Thanks for joining everyone. It looks like we are probably about an hour away from the first call.
Should we stay on the bridge, or dial back in?
No sense sitting on a bridge for an hour. Let’s just all regroup at 9:45.
The people on the launch bridge are different than the people on my IT bridges. I convene an IT bridge for two reasons: outages and maintenance testing.
Outages are by their very nature, impossible to plan for. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of my job. This week, my kids had a choir concert. It’s the Christmas concert. (We still have those in Utah.) The concert was at 8:00PM. Two hours before we were supposed to leave for the concert, my phone rang.
As the hours ticked by it became obvious that I was still going to be on the call at 8:00. At times, I’ll actually take my phone with me. That’s what headsets and mute buttons were designed for.
Not this time. I had to not only be at my computer, I had to do a fair amount of talking. Not considered good “concert etiquette.” I was still on the phone when they came back from the concert two hours later.
The next night, I had maintenance scheduled for 9:15pm. Fortunately, the concert was two night. I attended the second one, by myself, but had to hurry my kids home to join my maintenance call. It was scheduled for an hour. We finally finished up after two hours.
In both cases, it was a requirement of my job to be on the call, but, I really didn’t get to accomplish much. During a five hour outage call, it’s not unusual to get hourly updates and have dead time between them.
You might think we should take the route the launch team did. Just reconvene. But, the problem is we never know when we will need to validate or test a potential fix.
My record for long phone calls was over 12 hours. I learned that my office desk phone’s “call timer” maxes out at 12 hours. After that it resets to CALL LENGTH: 0:00.
I once got a call from my cell phone provider. They were going to shut down my phone because they suspected I had set it up as a cheap data connection. You know, you just dial into a system and leave the phone on.
Sir, you are not allowed to use your phone as a data monitoring device.
I wasn’t.
But, on the date in question, it shows your phone was on a call for 549 minutes.
Yeah.
Well. . .that looks like a monitoring call.
No, that was an actual phone call.
For nine and a half hours?
Yes.
And I thought my calls were long.
Okay, he didn’t say the last part, but he did turn my phone back on.
Sometimes I feel like I’m working hard, but hardly working.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2018 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved