IT administration

Work-Life Balance - No Measure of Cost

An article which recently caught my eye entitled “5 signs your people don’t have work-life balance” triggered my interest once again in blogging about this topic.  (See my earlier post). 

One doesn’t have to look far to find someone in their life whose work-life balance is, putting it nicely, far out of proportion - usually with the “life” area suffering from lack of attention.  I must admit that I have struggled with this all of my life.  My natural tendency has always been to put work at the top of my “todo” list (…that is IF I even bothered to make a list!).  In my earlier years there was no question about where my priority was - work, work, work - and coming in a distant forth and beyond everything else.

Fortunately now, for those around me, I have a far better balance between my work and “the rest of my life”.  The resulting change in my well-being has been significant - but there were many lessons I needed to learn before reaching some semblence of balance.  (Like the trauma of a failed business and a stressed marriage to start with).   

There is a high cost associated with Work-Life Imbalance - both to employee AND employer.  For an individual such as an independent software developer - it can be huge!  I have never seen any indications that burn-out, health issues or relational problems has ever helped boost productivity!  Regardless of ones occupational position, the maintenance of work-life balance is critical for employers to recognize and encourage.

It’s NOT easy to achieve however!

Application Performance and Other Investigative Opportunities

Sometimes I feel more like I’m a detective than programmer/analyst.  Fact is, I believe, that there has to be at least a little bit of detective in every IT person who has the opportunity to evaluate software applications and their sometimes strange behaviors.

As an example of what I mean, I share with you an opportunity I’ve been presented that has surely become a mystery worthy of any good detective - or perhaps a sick mind :-).  Picture this, an application that runs flawlessly and with acceptable speed on a minimally configured server when moved to a new “high-end” server slows down to borderline acceptable performance - clearly and noticeably slower than the old one.  Both systems use RAID 5, both are running MS Server 2003 SBS.  Main difference between new and old is that new uses more powerful chips, faster drives, 4 times the RAM and gigabit network connectivity - none of which cause me to suspect that it should run slower than the old.

The issue was called to my attention after the company “network” guys had all but thrown up their hands and said basically “…it must be the application…”.  It seems very hard to believe that it would be anything other than configuration of “something” on the new server.

As yet the issue remains unsolved - but I use it to highlight one of the great challenges that we in the IT field are presented with .  One need not look beyond the next IT person you talk with to find the next “detective” story or unsolved mystery.  We are faced with them constantly.  We need software and hardware tools, knowledge bases and lots of experience to investigate and solve such issues.  Issues which cross various specialties such as security, networking, programming, application testing and design require us to be “detective” - to ask the right persons the right questions - to find the right tool to identify the cause of the problem, as well as to recognize opportunities to “check into”.

“Lots of luck” also helps!

The Technology Career - Demands and Observations

I read with dismay and a good deal of reflection a recent article entitled “Why women quit Technology Careers” and comments posted to the article by an Anonymous (presumeably female) reader.  This article caught my attention on numerous levels — the first being that somehow through my years I have become a champion for women in their jobs - be it technology or other.  I’ve seen too many very capable women move on because their work was somehow devalued, considered somehow to be less than their male counterparts.

Secondly the article made some references to work-life balance.  The article states that “…in tech, the average workweek is 71 hours…”.  In my book this is just unacceptable - not that I haven’t done it of course!  However, it still was not acceptable.  I remember picking up the phrase from someone that said “…we work to live, we don’t live to work…”.  I’ve always worked long hours, but I’ve also chosen work that I love to do.  Enjoying one’s work in and of itself I believe provides a level of work-life balance. 

That being said, I believe that in technology anyone, male or female, who leans toward a more “normal” work-life balance leaves themselves open for criticism and all too often become devalued in their workplace.  For example, I remember how a worker at a vendor of mine was viewed after he took “maternity” leave to be with his wife and new baby.   “Mr. Mom” lost significant respect among his fellow workers for his choice, while managing to keep his job after all the time off. 

I really believe that when all is said and done the reason why tech people leave their field often has little to do with hours, but rather has to do with how they are perceived and treated in their workplace.  If they feel valued, if they are not isolated, if they are trusted, if they like what they do — they stick around.

Developer Responsibility, Ethics and Attitude

I have heard too many stories in my years as a developer, of clients being taken advantage of by either inept developers or downright unethical schemes used to enrich the pockets of the developer.  I remember being shocked when a developer I met with talked about his clients only in the sense of them being “his revenue stream”.  The developer cared not one bit about the quality of what he provided (and clients were in fact very unhappy), what he cared about was giving them the minimum in order to protect his revenue stream.

Yes, certainly the revenue stream is important, but I do not believe it is all important.  Personally I believe that a developer has a responsibility to the client to provide service to the client which meets or exceeds the value intended for the project.  The attitude which has the customer as only a “revenue stream” is not one I respect. 

There are times when I will be asked by a customer to work with another developer with whom I’ve not worked before.  This is always an uncomfortable situation to be placed into since I find myself working with another whose attitudes and ethics I am not familiar with.  To further complicate matters in most instances I am new to the customer as well - so I don’t know the attitudes or ethics of the client either.  One situation that I ran into a few years back was a nightmare - clash after clash of values and ethical standards.  I couldn’t wait to get away from that situation.

Holiday Weekend Work and the Independent Developer

It seems I’ve often found myself in the position where a project I was working on required a concentrated effort on my part during a holiday weekend, and this Memorial Day weekend is no exception for me. 

A long weekend is actually a time when I really do prefer to work with application upgrades for my clients.  For one thing, it offers the longest time window that I have to work with live data to do table field additions, table changes or add/change indexing.  I’m fortunate in that only one of my clients requries 24×7 use of their database.

However, if I’m going to be doing such work over a holiday weekend, I want to make the time invested really matter.  Detailed planning and testing ahead of time really helps accomplish the tasks required in an efficient manner.  This tends to be an area where I use my “virtual” network extensively — develop on one machine, test from others.

If I’m going to be doing development work over a holiday weekend I really don’t want it to be just like any other day — in other words I’m looking for my holiday weekend work to be stress-free, who needs hassle on a weekend?  Certainly not me!  That’s why more than any other time I come into the work really knowing what to expect (besides the un-expected).  “Plan your work, then work your plan” is always a good method — but for me, prior to my holiday weekend work it’s a must!

Thoughts on the Career Software Developer and IT

Ron Richards in his post “The career software developer…” alludes to the observation that “…it is not surprising to discover that there are more people scoping, managing, testing and supporting the work of software developers than there are software developers.”  I would have to say that I believe this is a sign of hope for software applications - or at least it could be, depending upon just how well those performing in these support roles can identify and communicate, or otherwise translate user and operational needs into the formats for the career programmer or software engineer to do their job most effectively.

I recall a situation a few years back where I was part of a group evaluating potential ERP systems designed for the particular vertical market of the business.  One of the biggest selling points of the vendor finally chosen was that their software didn’t originate from software development guru’s, but rather from the roots of key company players who were firmly entrenched in the vertical market for which the software was created, and through the years they had developed and enhanced their product to keep up with the needs of the market.  Sounds good, makes sense, but the reality was that much of their successive revisions and enhancements after their early years were more created to boost sales or meet changing technology requirements.  Hence their system rather than being updated with re-design was rather “patched” together as a patchwork quilt.

I don’t believe that the career IT professional needs to start out as a programmer of software developer.  What I DO believe VERY STRONGLY is that to be most effective the career IT professional MUST understand the business of their employer to a level I suspect very few do.  Perhaps I think as I do because my introduction to IT had its roots in software quality assurance, though it really was more like software evaluation.  The company developers hated to see me wander into their offices - they knew I probably had another “brainstorm” about a feature that should be added. 

I believe that the most valuable IT professionals are those with an understanding of the business, an ability to adapt, a keen eye for opportunity and a burning desire to make a difference to their organization.  These professionals are not necessarily the “guru’s”, and in all probability are not.  Of course, being a bit crazy also helps!