December, 2008

Office politics again and again and again

I think office politics are as old as the devil himself. If you want to work in a place where there are no office politics, than you better work in your garage, even than you may be bothered by your neighbors.

There is no way out of office politics, I even wonder if there is one place in our world where there are no office politics. Just imagine yourself working with people with different background, educational levels, attitude, ethical standards, etc. You work with these people more than half of your day everyday of the week.

We get into argument in our houses, in our relations and in life in general and our work place is only part of our life so to imagine our work place without conflict is not being realistic.

How you handle office politics will be the same way you handle your other relations in your life, there is no magic solution. If you are level headed, patient, good listener and think of what you will say before you say it then you are well equipped to handle office politics.

I read a story about a group of explorers who were trapped by heavy snow and freezing cold somewhere in north pole, these men were confined to their tent facing death at any moment and even then these men were arguing about their sleeping spaces and their share of food as one of this wrote later.

What you do if you know more than your Boss?

Guy Kawasaki in his book “The art of the start”, recommends hiring the right person for the job even if that person knows more than his superior; you will face situations in your career when you know you have the right solutions for your company’s problems only to face total rejection by your superior for your ideas.

Successful mangers must always be ready to listen to their employee’s suggestions and ideas, those employees are more aware of the daily issues facing the company or some employees may be even better skilled than their managers to tackle difficult issues.

In reality however, many CEOs and managers will be offended if a subordinate suggested a better solution. In my career I have worked with few managers who would refuse to listen. I felt deeply offended for a while, but later on I felt more confidence as I watched how these managers were really struggling to deal with issues I warned them about.

Abraham Lincoln, as I read in some history books, was known for hiring the right man for the job, even if that man happened to be his worst enemy.

If you are better skilled than your boss than you have two options:

1- Wait for the right time to introduce your idea or solution
2- Move on to a better company where your boss is more open to new ideas and suggestions

Just don’t feel bad because your solution was rejected, it doesn’t mean that the other person is better skilled than you are, it means he is not willing to listen or feel intimidated.

Many companies around the world are looking for the right skills, so if one company can not appreciate your skills move on some other companies will appreciate you.

Do skills really reflect salary?

On my first real job interview, the CEO of the company asked me “how much you made on your last job?” and based on my answer he gave me his offer. We had 3-4 developers with almost the same degrees and skills set, but with different pay rates. So it’s all about how you negotiate your salary and not only your skills set.

Working in management position at my current job, I consistently struggle with the salary issue, what is fair pay? Do we go by industry standards? Do we go by employees job skills and negotiation skills?

I came across few employees who are getting paid less than what they should only because they didn’t have the right negotiation skills at the time they were interviewed; they have excellent job skills.

I know there is no simple answer to this issue, but I know one thing for sure, don’t hire an employee or give him/her a job offer depending on how much they made on their last job.

Service as a product (SaaP)

As independent consultants and service providers, services we provide are our most valuable assets.

Most Independent consultants work within the small business community, small businesses spend $101 billions on IT, 49% of that go to services, (source: AMI Partners, 2008.) Small businesses spend $4 on services for every $1 spent on software (source: Microsoft.)

The economy may be slowing, but life has to go on, companies may cut down on new purchases but the current infrastructures must be maintained which means demand for services will be maintained.

Service as a product (SaaP) is the transformation of selling and delivering IT services from a complex process into a simple product (source: onforce webinar.)

The message: work with small business community, they need your service (product), it is hard for many businesses to deal with complex support channels when the demand service from the vendor, small business consultants can deliver better service in more efficient and expedited way.

Privacy and On-line applications

I got excited about using Google Apps but I changed my mind about using them as soon as I visited Google Apps website. I suddenly thought about the privacy issues and how secure my files would be the moment they leave my hard drive.

But than I thought about e-mail accounts, bank accounts, driver licenses data files, medical files, etc; all this information is stored somewhere in the cyber space. We hear a lot about cyber crimes and unauthorized online data access, but aren’t cyber crimes just like any other conventional crimes. Bank s and house robberies are daily occurrence, but we still deposit our monies in banks and live in our houses.

On-line applications will soon become a part of the modern office setup, what drives business is cost cutting and using on-line applications will drive costs down for many businesses.

I am still not sure when I will start to use on-line applications.

The world’s worst Spam Haven countries

If you, like many savvy Internet users today, depend heavily on your e-mails as a mean of communications, you must check your blocked e-mail or spam e-mail folders frequently. What a PAIN.

Every single day, I have to check my bulk e-mail folder few times, I have to do this because almost every few days I find important e-mails found its way to the bulk e-mail folder.

I have been thinking, why we can’t just stop the spammers? It’s a very simple question to ask you may think but its not that simple. Countries and ISPs are not working hard enough to stop this practice.

I found some interesting facts about spam and spammers by visiting Spamhaus website at www.spamhaus.org. The Spamhaus Project is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to track the Internet’s spam operations, to provide dependable real-time anti-spam protection for Internet networks, to work with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.

Visit their web site to find some really interesting facts about spam and spammers.

If you work from home, do you really have a weekend?

With the advancement in communications and the fact that large number of people can afford to buy communications devices made it even easier to get work done while away from office or even work full time from home office.

I have started to work from home since 2003 and needless to say, I work everyday even in weekends. The conventional office hours has no meaning when you work from home; your office is only feet away and you don’t need to get dressed to go to work, you can work in your Pajamas.

This new work style is changing how people work, its changing the traditional work habits and with this change the concept of weekend is changing.

If you look at outsourcing, its very clear is that someone is doing your work away from office. In reality, outsourcing is nothing more than doing office work away from office, either that work done at employee home or done half way around the world, the idea is same, office work can be done outside the office.

Since people can do office work at home, many will start to use the weekend to finish the work of the week ahead or do some catch up.

For the first time, a cyber criminal punished harshly in Saudi Arabia

According to the Saudi newspapers, Al-watan (reported on Sunday Dec21-2008), the Saudi court system delivered its first verdict on a cyber crime. The court sentenced a young Saudi man to jail term of a year and nine months, 200 lashes and fine of 50 thousands Saudi Riyals for hacking into a young lady e-mail files and stealing her personal photos and threatening to publish her photos.

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), Just how many Certificates are there?

The below article can be found at:
 http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mc…

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certifications enable professionals to target specific technologies and to distinguish themselves by demonstrating in-depth knowledge and expertise in their specialized technologies. An MCTS is consistently capable of implementing, building, troubleshooting, and debugging a particular Microsoft technology.
Refer to the following list to learn which MCTS certifications are currently available. More certifications will become available as new technologies are introduced.
• MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, ADO.NET Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Communication Foundation Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Forms Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Presentation Foundation Applications
• MCTS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Workflow Foundation Applications
• MCTS: SQL Server 2005
• MCTS: SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence
• MCTS: SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance
• MCTS: SQL Server 2008, Database Development
• MCTS: SQL Server 2008, Implementation and Maintenance
• MCTS: BizTalk Server 2006
• MCTS: Enterprise Project Management with Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
• MCTS: Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007
• MCTS: Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
• MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 – Configuration
• MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Configuration
• MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Application Development
• MCTS: Windows Embedded CE 6.0
• MCTS: Windows Mobile 5.0, Applications
• MCTS: Windows Mobile 5.0, Implementing and Managing
• MCTS: Windows Server 2003 Hosted Environments – Configuration and Management
• MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Configuration
• MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure Configuration
• MCTS: Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure Configuration
• MCTS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Application Development
• MCTS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Configuration
• MCTS: Business Desktop Deployment
• MCTS: Windows Vista – Configuration

Cloud Computing and the Current Condition of the Economy

I didn’t think I would write about Cloud Computing anytime soon, but Ryan Greives from BLASTmedia sent me an interesting e-mail explaining the advantages Cloud Computing could offer in the current economy.

He wrote:

“ Why cloud computing is ideal no matter the economic conditions?

Here are seven reasons the down economy is feeding cloud computing:

1) Lower up-front costs – instead of buying hardware, software and consultants to set up and run applications, businesses can pay a cloud-based provider “by-the-drink”
2) Faster time to market – ability to deploy and scale your app in hours without changing code, ultimately enabling companies the ability to begin making profit sooner
3) Reduced financial risk – instead of entire financial risk taken upfront, with uncertain return, financial risk is taken monthly and matched to return
4) Lower CapEx - cloud computing model leverages commodity hardware and eliminates unnecessary over provisioning, allowing a utility pricing model
5) Lower OpEx - administrators are freed from tedious manual provisioning and management of servers, so application operations are streamlined
6) Decreased downtime & costly delays - ability to add capabilities quickly without investing in new hardware or having uncertainty of data loss and downtime - scale from a fraction of a server to hundreds of CPUs in days
7) Additional services - services include more security, redundancy, bandwidth, and dedicated expert staff than most small and midsize businesses can afford on their own Cloud computing makes the most modern world-class IT infrastructure widely available, ultimately removing barriers for companies of all sizes to adopt leading edge infrastructure for their business.”