Scammish: Employee Engagement Survey Anonymity / Confidentiality and Why I Rather Not

Every year or some companies are twice a year, I have to fill an employee engagement survey. Every time I fill it in I cringe in the information that I have to share. I have been on teams of 5-10.

I Can Tell With Some Uncertainty From the Results

Most bosses will share the results. From the different graphs, I can usually tell which data point is which person. It does require that I am a bit familiar with each person. The easy data points are the people who have issues/problems. But not any issues/problems, these are typically the people who really, really, really want to help the group. Because most people will just lie on the survey.

I Tried But...

I have randomly been extra truthful on the survey. I even filled out the open ended response on extra this to say.

I also have routine meetings with all my bosses. If they did not, I set up the meeting. So they should already know my positions on certain topics. 

Even Ideally... Surveys Are Totally Useless

5+ companies, multiple more bosses (due to reorgs), they all have the same results... nothing. I was part of one group that actually did try harder. Still all "improvements" barely last the one call discussing the results.

Sure the boss may appear excited for the change, animated, hoo rah rah, booya, etc, I have only seen one get past the meeting . That one time lasted maybe half a year (but COVID happened... so........)

Survey Answer Is Always Perfect or Near Perfect With One Exception

If you are not confident in your workplace and you just want to stay in the the status quo, the the answer is ALWAYS, ALWAYS the happy answer. If the question is negative, then the answer is the negative of that negative.

For example, do you hate your work? Answer is fully disagree.

For example, do you love your work? Answer is full agree.

ALWAYS

Why? Because everyone else is. And if you disagree, the boss will know. And most bosses will cut you because it is easier to deal with than dealing with the real problem.

What if you have a good relationship with your boss? Then the answer would naturally be the same anyways.

What if the question is on the corporate level? Still the happy answer.

Exception?

You really hate your job and you really want to tell the company about it. But why would you want to help at the end? The answer is still the same.

Unless you really, really want to screw over your boss and you plan on never leaving. Because that sore spot will forever stay on his employee engagement score. But likely, he'll identify you anyways and get you fired. Then his score will go up the next year and it'll look like he did something............

Sooooo...... for me, if I were to analyze the results... I would expect everyone to either say they are happy or lie that they are happy. Anything less is more of a sign to what I consider my real answer...

REAL ANSWER for company if possible

Hire or promote good managers if you want to improve. Train managers? I have not seen a single manager ever change the way they manage their team. It seems to be a natural soft skill that people either have or don't have. Jerk managers will continue to be jerk managers. They may pretend for a short period of time. I am even tempted to say that even if you incentive the preferred behavior (if that is even possible), I think they still wouldn't change (or change back). Even for mediocre managers, lazy managers, hands-on managers, etc.

Maybe, maybe.... change the incentives on how teams should work. The biggest problem I see even for good managers is that the "real" demand is to deliver quickly with good enough QA that defects can go undetected. "Real" because the demand that managers deal with is usually different than what their managers say the demands are.

For example, lvl2 manager will say the demand is to upgrade the system to the next system but in reality is stressing lvl1 manager to manage current fires which is not related to upgrade. Lvl3 manager is telling lvl2 to modernize but escalating fires to lvl2. This is my dubiousness on modifying the incentives.

Review: Jira Cloud (1 month usage after several years with Jira DC)

In summary, DC seems so much more intuitive. After a month, I am still struggling on how to easily navigate between pages. I like to think that I usually one of the faster adopters. Maybe I have reached the age where I no longer can adapt.

Most of my issues are with team-managed projects. For company-managed projects, I do not like that I have even less control than I had in DC. I used to be able to modify workflows. Seems dumb for me to create a ticket just to have our Jira admin rename a flow just because some useless developer cannot read or learn which forces me to create flows to say "(NOT FOR DEV USE)". [[Makes me really question the developer's ability to follow instructions or understand requirements]]

Epic Link

Now there is a concept of team-managed and company-managed. It seemed at first that the only difference is who manages the configuration. But there are lot of differences in the tool itself.

The biggest one is that the concept of Epic is completely different. And I don't even need to use Epic for my use. I just wanted to display the Epic Link in the details of the ticket. The field exists, but I cannot add it to the details. And of course, the web contains all the HOWTO on how to add it (for company-managed).

Board

I created two epics and several stories. After nearly throwing my laptop out the window, I associate the stories with the epics. Then you go to the default board. What would you expect to see?

Something? Yes, I was expecting to at least something but my board is completely empty.

Check my stories. They all have status To Do. Board has a column To Do but empty.

After some research and reading, you have to assign the stories before it shows.

One Board Only

So team-managed can only have one board. At least at the time of this. I found a page that Atlassian that it was coming in "next few weeks" but it was posted in May. It is now a few months.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17371?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=a5593a0b-d488-4200-9323-c823f430a8c2

Team-Managed Project

This is very misleading. This is not a permissions issue. This is really a completely different solution (as can be seen that it used to be called NextGen). Looks like Jira is trying to assimilate it which does not make sense either. Why not just limit features from company-managed?

My recommendation is not to even try team-managed projects. It is not worth the headache of bypassing Company admins. For me this is kind of a pain because our group is essentially a subsidiary of a subsidiary of the main company. The love from corporate admins is quite robotic in that they are kind of effective but at the same time just feels like using a hammer to swat a fly.

Interview: Job Entails More than One Role

Release management is quite time consuming, similar to project management. So I find it odd when companies feel that they need to create a role that is really two or three roles. I can understand if they were much smaller in size, but they shouldn't be expecting people to have all the experiences they are looking for. Sure, I can fake it to land the job but I am still a loser that the company cares that I be more honest but will choose the guy who was most likely faking it.

I actually had an interview with a company that was hiring a release manager but expected that person to also code, deploy, and handle change management. I made the mistake of saying that is a lot of work for a single person (I also confirmed that this is a single person role, and not a team of people sharing all the responsibilities). Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the role is also a management position that will have future direct reports in a year or two (which really means 2+ years), so they are also looking for someone with direct report experience.

In the corporate world (I worked for two fortune 10 companies), each with the responsibilities they listed are handled by multiple individuals at full-time capacity. There are people who does change management full-time and coding full-time and plenty of managers who do not do any of that level of work. Deploying is something some developers have to do if there are not enough resources, and none of them enjoy doing that. Plus, a lot of release management is also during off-business hours.

So, I was honest and explained that it was a lot of work for a single person, and that it would be difficult to find someone that really wants to do all that much less someone who has the experience of each one. Of all the release managers I have met, I think only one colleague and myself had development backgrounds. I have had no RM managers with development background, nor worked with one. We also had to work with a team of change management people.

I think I wasn't selected because I had no direct report experience even though I gave them some of my leadership roles. The reason is that seemed to be the low-energy part of the interview. The interview was at least able to fake excitement over my other skill sets.

The other day, I saw the role was re-posted again on the job boards so I guess they haven't found a person yet. A year and a half later, the position is still available.

Work Life: Attentive to detail? Detail-oriented? Why do people who claim this seem to be the worst at it?

Although this one instance today triggered this post, the main reason I post this is because I just have flashbacks to all the other individuals who also claim to be very detail-oriented.

I have worked with some extraordinarily detail-oriented people. I worked under a CEO of a company of over 500 individuals. I met him once. He remembered my name and some random information about what we spoke about over 15 months prior. Others may not have been as good but they were still impressive. And if there was one thing in common for all of them... none of them have ever said that they were detail-oriented.

If anything... perhaps I am biased to the data... I find everyone who has ever told me that they were detail-oriented especially after I tell them to correct a minor detail are the worst detail-oriented people. Always something on the line of "so sorry, I don't usually make these mistakes. I pride myself on being attentive to details.", "please let me know because I am very detail-oriented", or some other BS. They are not even average.

There was one guy that was so terrible that I nearly told my manager that I could no longer work with him because it was taking me longer to edit his work than to do it myself. I was really about to, but his work was so bad that even upper management said enough was enough. This was a lot because I've seen them accept pretty bad works before.

And today's example was a developer who talks a mile-a-minute to cover his inability to stay focused. He "prides" himself on his detail-oriented work. Yet every request has some pretty big blunders like misspelled object names, wrong server, wrong types. What really threw me for a loop was that he misspelled a name twice. One was an obvious catch like "label" vs "lable" but the other was OB210. OB is for outbound, so obviously that should be the letter O, but instead it was a number 0. It took me a little bit of time, and I actually tested that... it took me another hour or two because the "misspelling" of label was the actual spelling.

Yes there is human errors but this guy is up there. Developers have to provide me a list of their changes. Because he appears awesome, he gets a lot of new projects so many of his objects do not exist yet he will provide me a list of stored procedures like... spName, sp_Name, NameWithoutSp, NameWithSpAtEnd_SP, SPName, SpName, [spName], dbo.[spName]. It is just pure crazy how inconsistent this guy is. I can understand other developers do a little of this because the name was already that way but this guy gets to create his own names.

Third example, he created a bunch of destination folders. They have the same structure CustomerName_Type_CarrierName_something. A list of maybe 10 of them, then there is one folder that keeps failing because it is called CustomerName_Type_CarrierName _something. Who puts a space in the folder name? Then not catch it because it also needs to be set inside a configuration file where it is even more obvious there is a space.

Last example is he somehow screws up the SQL stored procedure names in such a way that even SQL gets confused. I use C# SMO to create automatically create scripts and he has one where it creates a name [SpName ] in the textheader but sql actual corrects the name to [SpName]. So this creates an error because the textheader doesn't match the actual name.

I just do not understand how these people have such huge egos and still look impressive.

My Life: One reason men don't talk and how my wife makes me talk even less.

"Happy wife, happy life" what a truly frighteningly true statement of at least modern relationships.

My thoughts always seem to upset my wife. If it doesn't upset her, somehow she's angry at me. If we do "talk" somehow I was angry first. Yes, maybe I make snide remarks. Yes, I am very sarcastic. But maybe I just do not know how to identify when I am angry or upset.

If I learned anything about "arguing", it is that I always lose. Whether it is the point because I just do not wish to keep talking about it, or if I keep talking about it, I have a really, really, really angry wife. So what is the best solution to this? Not talk about it.

And not talking about it is not easy either. My wife will notice that I have something to say. If I refuse to say it, she'll still get angry. So I tried to preface it with, "I do have something to say but you will get very upset about it so I won't say it." Then she'll beg and plead and repeat that she won't... but I can swear that she has always been either upset or angry at me anyways. So what is the best solution to this? Work on my poker face so that I don't have anything to say.

There are times that I do feel a bit daring (completely unintentionally). Some times I let slip a remark and then we need to have a talk. For example, I left the front door unlocked for the entire night. My wife kindly reminded me, and I said ok. Then she found out the side garage door was also unlocked the entire night. Of course, adding a side comment that the front door was also open. Again, ok. Then later she referenced how the doors were unlocked. This time I just ignored the statement. We had dinner, then had some random conversation, then split to our own thing... and suddenly she says to the air "You know both the side door and the front door were unlocked the entire night. Anyone could have just entered the house." I suppose my brain went on vacation because my mouth just went into auto-pilot: "yea, I bet there is a burglar just waiting every night just for that one time I don't lock the doors."

When I saw her again, she just had that look that we need to have a talk. The conversation starts with "why are you always mean to me." I said I wasn't being mean. I was just making a comment on how unlikely it is that someone would be attempting to come into the house on the one night I randomly forgot to check the door. (That's right... check the door, because I have a habit of always locking the door behind me... but I know well that if I said she was the one who forgot to lock the door...) Then again, "why are you always mean to me." So I said sorry (multiple times). This obviously does not solve the problem. So I ask why she was still upset. And somehow that led to somehow I was angry. I politely said that I was not angry. And she reaffirms that I am angry. So I said, "oh now, you can tell me when I am angry." At which point she just left.

And I slept on the couch.

Does not talking solve the problem? No. But talking will only make things worse... always. So the moral of the story is that "not making it worse" is an accomplishment. And men like accomplishments. Therefore, men don't talk. 

Therapists say that conversation is important. This is very true. Misconception is that both parties need to talk. Men talking is not required to have a conversation. The wife converses. The husband just does it except for talking. End of conversation.

My Return to Visual Studio........... sigh

Microsoft Visual Studio

I know in my previous posts that I had left Visual Studio. Sadly I have returned back. In the previous post, I had left primarily through pricing. I was charged a new customer price when I have been paying for over 10 years. My credit card was canceled due to one fraudulent charge, and I did not update my new card with MS. Also shows you how often I use VS, so I just hated that I was practically donating money to MS and they won't even recognize that been blindly paying them for years. Now the company pays for it, so I grudgingly (morally) returned.

Nothing against the actual application, Visual Studio. It is by far superior IDE to the ones I have used in the meantime, including Visual Studio Code. I can only speak for developing in C#, but I have to say that my programming efficiency is noticeably better with Visual Studio. 

Is it worth the cost for a hobbyist? Not really. The main functions are there in free versions, the pain points are tolerable. Is it worth commercially? Yes, the amount of money you save or produce for the company is definitely worth the price. Is the whole Microsoft shop worth it? That is arguable as other enterprise solutions provide a much better price point. If the company is not a technology company, then it is probably worth it. It is a bit bulky, but you don't need the expertise to hire the right person nor pay the additional cost of "real" developers. Not that option is cheap, but my assumption is that non-tech companies will not have good IT and will not have the expertise to really effectively run IT for the long term. They may be able to find one person, but that person will eventually leave or retire, then it will just be downhill. If they are a rare breed with excellent IT, then I recommend that they should consider transforming into a tech company.

Opinion: Chase Ultimate Rewards (Part 2 - Latest Chase Travel Information email)

"""
...

As always, we follow the policies of our partners, which means a credit, refund or change is at the discretion of the airline, hotel, cruise line or other travel provider.

...

We understand your feeling of urgency, but we can serve you better when you wait to call us if:

• You are not starting your trip within three days

• You trip isn’t covered by a specific flexible change policy offered through the partner

To change or cancel a hotel reservation, please go online to MyTrips https://travel.chase.com/trips?eapid=0509-70501 and click on your itinerary.

We are also working with our travel partner Expedia to launch other self-service cancellation options soon. We are addressing individual cases and will work with customers who can’t reach us right now.

...

"""

Just read this email today from Chase. As I mentioned in the previous post, Chase did not honor this policy as I provided the email from Alaska Airlines. The Alaska Airlines email was sent 4 days prior to my call. I was not starting my trip within three days, and I was not changing the ticket. Email clearly says cancel fee waived. There were a few additional criteria. My ticket met all the criteria with Alaska Airlines eventually honoring the ticket themselves by giving me a credit.

I had even called into Chase support, yet all I get is the email for generic user. What about those who already called? I suppose it is too much to ask for an apology.

Opinion: Chase Ultimate Rewards Refused to Refund Alaska Airlines Ticket where Alaska Airlines Honored Refund

In short, I have a lower view of Chase rewards which happens to coincide with me wanting to cancel my Chase Reserve Card; and a better view with Alaska Airlines which happens to coincide with me wanting to move away from United.

My situation is that I am flying cross-country. Due to family circumstances, I did not want to put them at risk with the Corona virus even if it is a rather small chance so I decided to cancel my trip with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska Airlines had launched their Peace of Mind policy which waived change and cancel fees. Because I booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards, I called them. When I reached some guy with a moderate Indian accent. After I explained my situation, he goes to "research" his options then puts me on hold several times. Eventually, he says that my ticket is a 'savers' ticket so cannot be considered for fee waivers. I explained to him that Alaska Airlines has the policy which he responds that I need to go through the airline even though the Alaska Airline site specifically says to go through the agency that I purchased the ticket from. He then repeats that my ticket will be charged a cancellation fee.

A bit off-topic, I can barely hear the guy and he barely hears me. When he speaks, there are random background noise. I am not sure why there is such a low quality with support this time. I usually have rather high quality sound and service from Chase or their credit card services. To add, why did he need to research on how to cancel my ticket? And also on one of the final holds, I just got this annoying beeping sound as if I was disconnected instead of the hold music I had before. I was unwilling to hang up at this point, and he did eventually return to give me nothing useful.

So then I called Alaska Airlines which I had to wait a long while. Eventually, I got through and spoke with Becka. Becka was wonderful, professional, and explained that I should go through Chase. I then explained that Chase refused and that I speak with Alaska Airlines. She understood and went to ask what she could help me with. I was on hold for a few minutes. She came back and told me that she explained my situation and confirmed there was "difficulties" with Chase so she needed to reach out to see if she could assist with exception for me. She came back on and said that she could help by giving me credit with Alaska Airlines which I was perfectly fine with (although, I would have preferred refund as the policy stated). Since I was most likely going to fly with Alaska in the future, this was not a major problem.

So, I do not understand why Chase cannot honor the policy the airline was willing to waive. From what Alaska said, they could have reached out to Alaska for a waiver code. I tried to call back to Chase but I was told that the wait was 3-5 minutes and eventually waited 20 minutes before giving up.

Job Search: Re-applying to Amazon, Google, other less known companies

http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/

I just read this article that I saw on LinkedIn. This got me thinking about my reaction to companies' response or lack of response. I know that is not what the article is about, but that is what triggered my thought.

Amazon

I was daunted by Amazon's initial application process. It was long and tedious. I actually avoided applying for a lengthy period of time because of it. But once completed, Amazon is impressively fluid to use compared to almost all other sites. Their interface is also levels better than other sites (including ATS systems which you think should be the best in market since it is their industry). I have to say that I am personally surprised.

I have applied to a couple positions, and only one interview. When the position closed, I received an automated email that I was not selected. I had an interview, was not selected, and received an automated email that I was not selected. The interview itself was not great, but that was more on the interviewer than Amazon.

Will I apply again? Yes. My experience with them is quite positive (relative to others), especially after each experience with another company like Google.

Google

Applying is simpler. I have applied years ago, and also a couple recently. No responses at all. The applications can still be found on their website untouched.

Will I apply again? I have to say that after a period of time after each application, I am less inclined to apply to Google. Today I even saw a couple new positions on LinkedIn, I shuddered, and didn't even bother to see the job description.

Snap

Applied once, and had an interview. My interviewer was great: charismatic and a pleasure to talk to. She was very up-front about my shortcomings which I also agreed with but did argue that I had similar experiences. I was applying to a management role with no direct report experiences. I had many leadership experiences but clearly not enough.

This position would also have been a 1.5 hour commute. Just because of the recruiter and her enthusiasm, I probably would have accepted the role if they offered. I received emails that I was not selected.

Will I apply again? Yes, and I would recommend others to apply to Snap.

Other Companies

Many companies are like Google. Even using Indeed or Glassdoor who automates some of these steps, I will still not receive any responses. I have most definitely skipped over companies that I have applied to previously where I have received absolutely no responses.

I have been highly selective in re-applying to companies that I have received no responses for.

I still re-apply to companies that I have received automated rejections. 

I continue to look at opportunities to companies that have more personalized messages that are not automated.

My Conclusion About Feedback

I feel that this is a classic game theory situation. If all companies gave personalized responses, then they are all equal again. So a couple companies that do not will benefit because there is not enough to detract people who apply. The reasons that I prefer companies that give personalized responses is that others do not, thus benefiting those who do. And this is why most companies don't because it is practically the same state as everyone doing it but less effort.

Reference

http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/

http://linkedin.com

Job Search: Does PMP Correlate with Being A Good Project Manager (PM)? (My Super Limited Personal View)

While I search for jobs, I often see that many project management jobs require or prefer people with a PM (Project Management) certification. This some times causes me to think of all the project managers that I have worked with in the past.

In summary, I really do not feel like there is any correlation with a good project manager and being a PMP (Project Management Professional). My opinion could be flawed in what qualifies as a good project manager, but I think some of the qualities of the project manager far outweighs certain biases.

For starters, a good project manager should be able to handle a project well (not necessarily to completion/deployment). I specifically want to avoid saying successful because there are too many external factors on why a project could "fail" that is out of the PM's control. If anything, I feel that a good project manager really shines when a project is failing.

I have probably worked with over 50+ project managers with about half PMP (an extremely rough estimate). Most do the bare minimum; some do a decent job; and, very few do a good job. Bare minimum to me is just to keep their job. I often have to follow up with these PM; they often "lose" emails, notes, etc. on a consistent basis. Decent job to me is doing what is needed when things are not ideal. They will help out a little or upon request, but not more. Good job is when they don't need to be told multiple times to do their job.

By doing their job, I mean that they tell resources when their project is going to be delivered, the status of their projects, things I think a PM should know. So, I suppose I fail to see how a PM certification helps identify good project managers. What is it that they do that is so difficult? I practically do at least half the job of poor performers. I don't have a PMP. Those with PMP is about the same distribution across each quality of project managers.

To me, a company really only needs one person with a PMP and that should be whoever is managing the PMs. The other PMs just follows directions because almost all companies have their own variations so it is nearly impossible to really transfer one company process with another. Those who are more pro-active are able to figure it out, and those who are less or non-active are able to figure out how to fly under the radar. Yet, the company continues which seems to me that PMP really is rather useless, waste of money, and time.

Does PMP title mean a good project manager? To me, easily a no. Is it worth getting one anyways? Yes. Why? Because companies think PMP title means a good project manager which means they are willing to pay for it, therefore PM certificate is of value (unless I am the hiring manager, which I am not, so you are safe).

My Thoughts: MySql or MariaDb for Beginners in 2020

MySql for learning purposes.

Go with MariaDb when you have more experience with MySql. Most things you will need are supported by both DB. Once you have more experience, you can move onto MariaDb if you believe that is a better option.

One of the biggest reasons is that there is more resources available for MySql. Most MariaDb refers to MySql, but it seems to be starting to branch a little. 

Another big reason is the a graphical interface, GUI, or IDE. Most are not free for MariaDb. Although some articles say that you can use MySql, there are also recent articles that state that MariaDb is starting to not work or less stable. From personal experience, I have had no problems with DBeaver with MariaDb.

Fitbit ChargeHR (first impression)

I have finally succumbed to popularity of the FitBit. Up to this point, I have been using Google Fit on my phone which can be kind of hassle to carry while running.

Why FitBit?

Why FitBit over the other brands? Mostly because my circle of influence use FitBit. That was basically the only factor with the assumption that the top smart-pedometers have similar features. I do like the ability to track how much activity I have during the day.

The price has been keeping me from buying FitBit. Is it worth $120+? This will have to wait to see.

I decided to go with the HR because I am curious about my heart rate history but more for the sleep tracker.

Setup

Setup is easy. Install the app on the phone. Follow instructions. This took 15 minutes.

Comfort/Style

It's simple but stylish enough for my needs. The band is comfortable and wears like a watch. I kind of wish the button was on the other side (or I suppose I could also wish I was left-handed). It would be cooler still if I could just tap the screen.

Accuracy

I did not do not super scientific test for this. My test is just an approximate accuracy with Google Fit. I check how many steps before an activity, then check the steps after an activity. I know Google Fit is not completely accurate due to the way it sits in my pocket (which I keep in the front pocket of baggy shorts). Overall, the steps were pretty aligned. Over 500 steps, FitBit registered 8 more steps than Google Fit. With over 7000 steps, Fitbit was around 50 more steps.

I typically run on the treadmill, so I have done some tests with the heart rate monitor. Most of the time, they seem to match within 1-2 bpm. When the FitBit does not sit very securely on my write, the readings could be off by quite a bit, the difference around 20 bpm (treadmill reading 140 bpm). I do not know the accuracy of the treadmill, so I cannot say what those numbers really mean.

More importantly, the numbers go up with I feel my heart rate going up and down when I'm resting. For me this is good enough to track. Especially since the target bpm is an estimate anyways. As long as it is consistent, I mostly just want to watch my efficiency increase as I get more fit.

I've worn it for two nights of sleep. I find it interesting how often I move around while I sleep and how consistent I am. I seem to move around almost every hour. Unfortunately, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep due to work.

Reporting

Looks nice. There is a charge for the fancier reports. The basic reports are standard and has more than Google Fit.

Overall

I'm pretty satisfied with the FitBit.

Did you ask a good question today?

Some times I wish I spent more time reading but I just love figuring things out. The little details bore me, and I do not have the patience to trudge through all those words to find the golden nugget of information.

Although people say I am smart, but in comparison to most people... I really am not. I am good at asking questions: questioning the status quo, questioning thoughts, questioning answers, and even questioning questions. Perhaps that is why I can be very dumb at times.

They say there are no stupid questions, but there are. The internet has resoundingly proved that with a lot of anger and a lot of hate. But when we say that there are no stupid questions, we really mean that I would rather that you asked and learned than not ask and remain stupid... with some reservation.

But... there is a time and place for questions. If the question is a low level question (i.e. a very general question) and the audience is a high level group, then save the question for later (i.e. a smaller group). If the audience is a low level (e.g. introduction course) group, then ask away. If you are not sure, wait till you are in a respectable sized group. Bottom line... although you should ask questions, be mindful of other people's time. It is better to take up 1-3 people's time than 10s, 100s, or an internet-worthy number of people. Time and place is more about respect to those around you.

Unlike Chelsea Handler (article below), my parents didn't have a lot of impact on that front of my life. For me, they couldn't figure a lot of things out so I suppose I got my inquisitiveness from need rather than encouragement. So fear not if you didn't come from a more curiosity-nurturing background, there is still hope for you. Lucky for you, the lesson is quite simple. Question anything, everything, or "nothing."

But we wary not to be stuck with asking "why" about everything. "Why is the sky blue?" "Why is the world round?" "Why am I here?" Although "why" is a good place to start, it does not easily lead us to the answers. The reason is that asking that question does not lead us to consider new ideas because the question does not bring us new information that we didn't already know. If we knew, then we wouldn't be asking why.

"What if" is my method of curiosity. What if I took part of A and a part of B, what will happen? What if I wore the brown shirt with the purple pants? What if I mixed Teriyaki with horseradish? Unlike asking why, we can begin to create new ideas even with a set knowledge base by re-ordering certain information. And if we cannot figure it out, we then can attempt to try.

Even questioning existing knowledge can be fascinating. To pick a sensitive topic, the existence of god. There is nothing wrong with questioning your belief to see if the new idea enforces or deters your original thoughts. If it deters, don't let a single idea threaten your belief. On a indifferent topic, the workings of a door. How does the hinge carry the weight? If the top hinge carries more weight, why are both hinges on most doors the same? Isn't it amazing how 2-3 pieces of metal can hold up the door for several years without any physical wear-and-tear to the naked eye? What if one of the hinges broke? What if we keep adding layers of paint? What if we hung on it?

Ultimately, questioning is not really about how things work but how we think things work.

Reference

This blog was inspired by this article:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-journey-from-academic-reject-semi-respectable-adult-handler

Review: Pizza Hut's Cheesy Bites Pizza (First Impression)

Ordered my first Cheesy Bites Pizza and it was ok. It is different and maybe worth a try. For me, the bites were a bit sweet. I'm not exactly sure why it would be sweet. The topping I had was the italian sausage, so that shouldn't have made it sweeter. I kind of like the cheesy "crust" but then I did not have a crust to eat the pizza. I prefer the cheese stuffed crust over the bites. Pizza Hut's regular pan pizza is still the best, in my opinion.

Life: Meaning of Friendship?

More interesting than the article, the comments have some rather polar differences. What does friendship mean to you? Are you ok with a 'stranger' to use your name and call you a friend? Do you use friendship loosely for use on anyone?

One post even suggests that the term 'friends' has evolved due to social media. Has it evolved?

Reference

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140730152125-69244073-you-re-not-my-friend?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

Game: Candy Crush Saga... rigged? (Part 2 - Dreamworld)

Sigh....... I've started playing this game again. Looking at my last post, I did not even make a whole year. But in my defense, I was testing out a new desktop recording application Camstudio then just kept playing.

When testing it out, I noticed there is a new area which I call Dreamworld (which I found in Youtube but not sure if that is the official name or not). I brings a new mechanic where pieces of a random color are automatically destroyed after so many turns then changes to a different mode. In this mode, the random color also no longer appear as long as you remain in the mode. Some levels this mode is only one turn but can span multiple turns. When in this mode, you can get a lot of combinations more easily. One drawback is when you need to get certain recipes which may not longer appear because it no longer appears.

To counter-balance this new mode, there is also a mechanic where you cannot match too many of one of two specific color. This is represented by an owl on a moon. The moon tilts either clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on which color it is weighted towards. You fail when the own (named Otus) falls off the moon (ie balance). For example if red and blue is on the balance, too many reds cleared will cause the game to end or too many blues will cause the game to end. You can counter the balance by alternating between red and blues. This only occurs in the normal mode. There is no balance when in the special mode.

Currently in level 223, I have found that the levels are somewhat more enjoyable but I still notice a few rigged-like behaviors. What is more enjoyable is that it appears a bit more random so I rarely get stuck on a particular level, although there have been a couple where it took me a few days.

What seems odd with the supposedly "random" pieces is when I am stuck and the moon is tilted at the max, there seems to be an increased chance that combinations will more likely to occur for that color or that color will drop causing a combination.

What also seems odd to me is that I always seem to beat certain levels (past around 100) is that I beat levels on my very last life on levels that I get somewhat stuck (stuck being that I already used by 5 lives + the lives given by friends on a specific level). Then I will coast through a couple then get stuck again.

I am not sure about this one, but CCS has an opinion survey that comes up randomly. I have rated some of the levels which took me 2-some days to beat as boring. This appears to increase my odds. I have not rated anything positive so I'm not sure if voting increases, or even that I just perceive it that way.

I'd like to use the record the games as I play but I seem to need a new PC because my computer lags quite a bit when I have multiple apps running. I'm not sure why Facebook games uses so much of my PC memory. I cannot watch a stream and play CCG or Tetris Battle with it slow noticeably but not impossible. Yet, I can play more intense games like SC2 or DOTA while streaming.

Game: Candy Crush 605

I was waiting for people to stop by so I figured I checked out where Candy Crush is at. So I started playing against a couple weeks ago and just finished the last 105 levels which currently ends at 605.

In reference-1, I was a bit addicted to the game. This time around, I was not as addicted by not having to play it during my free time. I also did not have that itching feeling that I have to continue playing nor did I feel as frustrated when not able to beat a level.

In reference-2, I had run into a lot of problems with the supposedly "random" pieces that falls and the movements of the chocolates. I have to say that the latest levels were pretty challenging yet not as frustratingly difficult. There were still a couple levels that took a lot of luck like level 586 (which I did not enjoy playing at all). I am not a big fan when a level depends too heavily on luck than skill.

It still seems that I get good combinations after the last move. Chocolates still seem to me to have some backend logic depending on where you leave your mouse after a move (although I'm not sure if this is a problem in the mobile version). After suspecting this, I have found if I leave my mouse (right after I move a piece) in an area that I rather have the chocolate go towards that it has a higher chance in going in that area. But, this does not work all the time. When it does not work, it does seem to be more random-ish.

In conclusion, I actually found the last few levels much more enjoyable. I really liked the conveyor concept.

Reference

1 - http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-candy-crush-saga-addiction.html
2 - http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/07/game-candy-crush-saga-rigged.html

Work Life: Enterprise Release Management for Hardware Dependent Solutions

I see a greater need for release management. Now with agile development becoming more of the norm for corporate/enterprise level solutions, there is even more need to validate what is going out into production.

To me, the main driving force is because software solutions have finally deviated (in my opinion) from the traditional workflow of hardware development, a very traditional waterfall model. Even with agile development, agile also follows a very cyclical version of the waterfall model.

In the past, software was deployed in its own instance at a client system. Thus each client can be on different versions thus maintaining an overlapping waterfall model if one was to build a model on an instance level. In other words if we tracked each individual client, we can create a waterfall for that client even though the SDLC will be shared among the clients with the same version.

But with introduction of cloud, now there is only a single solution or a single client install that everyone shares. Add this to a corporate/enterprise level, you have many development cycles that need to be deployed to a single instance.

With a single instance, a software company can no longer just push out changes whenever they want to. Planning and scheduling is also more complex. Basically, software releases now must follow a more traditional waterfall process while software development is moving towards a more agile process. There are two bottlenecks in an enterprise cloud solution: system testing and production deployment.

System testing has to continuously run regression testing, but as enterprise solutions grow larger, regression testing becomes longer and longer. When regression testing starts to get around 2+ weeks to complete, this becomes a major bottleneck for changes to be deployed within a normal agile schedule.

With more components, there are also more defects. More defects means more emergency change windows. With more change windows, there are more regression test needed. Not only do changes become longer, but they also become more frequent.

A simple solution for non-hardware dependent solutions, is to create more replications of the production environment. This allows multiple regression testing to overlay. Although this does not help with decreasing the cycle time, it allows a higher frequency of deployments into system test.

Putting all the changes into a single "patch" can alleviate a lot of stress on deployment but adds stress to production support. With more changes, it becomes more difficult for production support to know the source of the problems whether it already existed or coming from one of the other changes. By isolating changes to only a few select changes, then a queue will build up.

Priorities also require different expectations and management when multiple changes are bundled together. If one of the changes is a high priority, but then a low level change fails in production deployment, all changes should be rolled back. General management must then make the decision to go with the change with a regression test that did not test that specific scenario or to roll back a high priority change that may delay other factors by several days if not weeks.

System test environment will be under even more stress than production because production only has to maintain the latest completed and tested code. System test has to maintain three different environments. In an enterprise level, this causes a lot of complications.

First, it is difficult to financially maintain three instances of relatively the same thing. One is needed for the latest major release, one to test emergency changes (aka point releases, patch releases, etc.), and last to be on the same version as production to replicate errors and bugs.

Second because there are three different environments, not all vendors are capable of existing in multiple instances on the same network much less different versions, etc. Then if you want to have different versions of a vendors application, then more labs will be needed.

Third, changes are coming from many different groups. Agile causes even more iterations to be introduced into system test. Eventually, a quiet period (aka code freeze, soak period, etc) is required to do a comprehensive regression test. Rarely will there not be an issue, then scheduling becomes an issue because quiet period is no longer possible to fix changes.

This does not even include all the politics that occur in enterprise level solutions, nor the management of defects across different groups, nor the different policies of different groups. There are also many things out of the control of process like OS maintenance updates, vendors no longer support older versions, bugs from vendors (ie Heartbleed), and so many other variables that interrupt a process that is already very stressed.

Evident of current software development and trending agile development, having more formal processes are nearly impossible to implement much less enforce. I believe there will be a greater need for skilled engineers and technical managers, because they are required to maintain processes that require less common abilities. Formal processes has corrupted the workforce with personnel that cannot keep up with the pace.

In corporations, processes have been so dummiefied (ie idiot-proofed) that people who can follow instructions call themselves engineers. These people are unable to keep up the changes. Sadly, they are so tenured and senior in the company, that they are also the source of the inertia to any change to the culture.

The age of corporations to make human resources a commodity is in the recession. This is why the technical sector has a need for "skilled" engineers yet unemployment still remains relatively the same. This is why small companies can take over corporations.

Returning back to the topic on release management, release management is needed to make sure that changes that are introduced in the different environments are maintainable. For example if there is a backlog of changes into production, new changes should not be introduced into system test. If they must, then dependencies must be evaluated. If there is a dependency, then many other factors must be considered.

Interview: New Oddball Interview Questions for 2013 from Glassdoor

Question was asked: "If you were on an island and could only bring 3 things, what would you bring?

• If I were already on a deserted island, I wouldn't be able to bring anything.
• If I were bringing something from the island, it would depend on what island I was on.
• If the question meant 3 things to bring to a random, deserted island for survival, then a knife, shovel, and a fishing line (or fishing net or fishing rod if it came with a line).

If you were a pizza deliveryman how would you benefit from scissors?

• Cutting coupons and self-defense
• I liked this response: It would keep me from running.

Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer

• Because I am typically assigned to solve more complex problems, I have more experience as a hunter. Complex problems tend to require the ability to analyze a moving target. Otherwise, I can be a hunter or a gatherer effectively.

What is your least favorite thing about humanity?

• I actually interviewed with ZocDoc, and my questions were all technical. All questions were generic programming questions that you regurgitate from a text book. Sadly, I do not perform well with those questions. Seriously... who says they are going to use polymorphism when they design, architect, or program? Or list the different types of sorts when most frameworks already provide solutions to sort data? Although I can answer them, I think part of my mind goes into why do they even ask these questions. Sorry for the rant.
• People who complain but do not vote. People of apathy deserve what comes to them. Procrastinators know it is their fault. But, whiners think they are right, portray an illusion that their problems are bigger than they are, and yet do nothing about the problem thus wasting everyone's time, attention, and energy.
• People who think oddball questions are a waste of their time, especially if those people are engineers.

Can you instruct someone how to make an origami "cootie catcher" with just words?

• What is a "cootie catcher"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller
• Yes. Get a square paper, fold corners toward the front center to form a smaller square, fold corners toward the back center to form an even smaller square, create two creases by folding and unfolding the square into rectangles, stick fingers underneath the square flaps created

What's the color of money???...

• The color of blood and sweat

Reference

http://www.glassdoor.com/Top-25-Oddball-Interview-Questions-LST_KQ0,34.htm

Work Life: Lack of Female Employees in Tech Industry - Thoughts on Dropbox Hiring Practice Article

Interview Questions

If someone came in right now and announced that the zombie apocalypse had just started outside, what would you do in the next hour? What is something that you’re geeky about? What is a superpower you would give to your best friend? (questions from LinkedIn article)

"They don’t lead to better hiring outcomes as Google learned." Yet it is used at DropBox and they appear to be doing well. Google used to use them, and see where they have gotten. I think the problem with the question today is either the interviewers no longer understand why they are asking those questions or the interviewees just do not know how to interview.

"Dropbox's interview process is juvenile ("frat-boy" indeed) and their C-suite dudes need to get a clue." (Clinical Coordinator) "Are these interview questions some kind of sick joke? Did I really work so hard all these years, only to be rejected because I don't know (and don't care!) what I would do in a zombie apocalypse?" (Attorney at Law) "Asking what you would do with the last hour of your life is deeply personal and has 0.0 correlation with work ability." (Analytical Marketing Expert) "I'm with you, these questions are bull." (owner)

I just find these responses interesting. Basically, many of these comments boil down to (in my opinion) is "that fits my model, therefore my opinion makes sense and it is so obvious that this does not require any more arguments to support my opinion." Why do they not consider that both companies have started just as small as theirs but has grown that much faster with what they think are bad interview questions? Or not consider the interviewer wants to know how you analyze the problem, come up with a solution, and provide the reasoning behind the choices? Are questions that just want you to regurgitate an answer whether you know why that is the answer any better than these? What are the better questions?

I somewhat agree with one comment by Elizabeth Langdon, "I do not, for a minute, believe that anyone would be excluded from consideration at DropBox, or anywhere else..." It is rare that an open-ended question is one of the questions that make or break the interview.

I know this is just from the internet and should be taken with a grain of salt. So, I am just posting this to encourage my readers to put more effort into providing a constructive criticism than just ranting.

I am not bashing the content of the comments just the lack of value of the comment while projecting that it should have value. I also agree that oddball questions are not the most effective questions or at least should be asked by someone that understands the purpose of the question.

Gender Card

Another pick topic in the article and the comments is the unfairness to women in a technology company.

First argument is that the questions are geared more towards men. Do women not consider the end of the world, or imagine having powers, or being geeky? Who hasn't thought of the end of the world with all the world-ending movies that we have? I can guarantee that most men and women have thought of it more than I have. Who has not dreamed of having superpowers? I do not even see the correlation to gender. Perhaps, the poster thought they had to choose a superhero? I can see that there are more male superheroes than women. And then there is about being geeky? There are plenty of female doctors, lawyers, and other very high educated positions who I would consider to be geeky. I wouldn't even say that I was geeky.

The second item is about discrimination against women. There is some but I think it is even less so than other industries. I have worked primarily with men. In my current employment, there are more women than I have worked with in the past. Even then they are a minority. Interestingly, there are more female IT managers than male IT managers even with that discrepancy. 

I do not know anyone that would have any problems working with women. Many would even favor having more women in the group. And plenty of them willing to go farther with favors from women than from men. I have a hard time believing that the IT industry discourages women more than other industries.

Sadly, there are very few female engineers. Even the ones that I have met and worked with, few have really proved their value. Of the rare few, they have truly deserved their respect and positions. Some I would consider may even deserve higher positions, but I think they struggle equally with their male counterparts.

I really liked this statement by Debbie-Lee Mumford, "Like most things in life evolution is a slow process. For those woman that have been held back, or have not succeeded in male dominated environments; are we looking at the reasons why they don’t succeed? Or are we crying foul because we cannot change things to our liking soon enough? I think there is a lot more to this discussion and we are scratching the surface."

Another statement from Gayle Coffman, "If you can not or will not fight for your own rights then fight for the women that will come after you. You have 10 years experience. I am glad it is getting better that it was when I started in IT 34 years ago but it is only because your rights have been hard won by your American female predecessors. Don't forget how it used to be."

Although in the article, Coffman appears to be somewhat against Mumford but I agree with what both stated. Not just women, but for anything that is right. I am not one for extremes. Just because I did not have the luck to have things lined up for myself, I fight for certain rights. But, I choose which fights are to be taken and I do not expect changes to happen overnight. I think with many things in our society, we expect change too quickly. Things already move much faster than they did in the past, but being spoiled by technology we have succumbed to the illusion that we can get results instantaneously (or close to it).

I think the main issue is not how we treat women in the workforce, but how education and social expectations are hindering them from excelling in the technical field. I remember in the first level of computer science, the class nearly had half women and half men. By end of the semester, only a third of the class were women. By the following year, there were even fewer. For some projects, even those that remained struggled with the course material.

In the professional world, I have found that more women struggle keeping up with the logical flow of information and arguments. Although I think I do a better job of training than my colleagues, I struggle relating to women's thought process. Am I wrong somewhere? I do not know. I could be.

For example, I was explaining how we should organize our group mailbox. I do not move the messages to different folders. My colleague did not like the mailbox to be full of messages. She keeps pushing that they should be organized into folders. I explained that it makes it difficult for the team to search for emails when they are in folders because each role have different ways to gather certain emails. One reason is that outlook does not search emails in folders very effectively. Another argument is that if I move the email, someone may not know that there was even a new email to read.

Her counter-argument was how was she supposed to read emails that she has not read? I explained that she just had to read from the newest to the oldest until she reaches emails that she already read. This seemed simple enough but for some reason she just said that she could still miss an email. I tried to understand how she would miss it using that method, but she just stuck with that it would not work.

Then she argued how she would organize all the emails to how she wants to review. I recommended her to use the search feature. Each email has a certain unique characteristics that she can search by. I also explained this is why I have been pushing us to standardize certain terms so that it would make it easier to search for emails. For example, use the word "defect" and not "bugs", "issues", or "problems" that way we can search by the term defect. She says that is impossible because people outside our group may not follow that. I stated that my experience is that it is ok as long as we are consistent. To be consistent, we should respond and use the proper terms so that at least our emails will come up with the specific keyword. Over time, other groups would start using our terms as long as we are more consistent than they are. This goes for date formats, ticket number formats, etc. She just nods her head and agrees. After about a week, she does not follow the format and still complains about how full the mailbox is. Everyone else in the group seemed to have already accepted the new process.

Later, another woman joined our group. She also had a hard time adopting a shared mailbox concept. There were times where emails were moved and we lost traceability of certain tickets because there are gaps. So, I tried to explain by using that example. Because their roles need to find emails in a certain way, other roles need to the same emails but in a different way. They want to sort work done in testing into a test folder, work in release to a release folder, and approvals into a management folder. When they need to reference a past email, they only need that one email. While audit requires all the emails. By breaking into the different folders, we lose the ability to track tickets across multiple emails. So it is more important that we do not sort it into folders.

I have demonstrated how they would find their specific email which is basically the same as what they did except they did it in a folder. So it does boggle my mind why they cannot adapt because it is the exactly same thing minus a step. I was not adding a step so why is it more difficult? To this day, they just come to me to find the email which takes me seconds to do.

Maybe I am biased. I am able to work with some women. There is another woman in our group that understood (and also unable to convert the other two). So from my point of view, I think it is more the process is in how we process information. I find I have the same problems with men who have similar thought processes. I chose a simple scenario but issues are more complex as the situation grows larger. After dealing with more complicated situations, I see certain behaviors that seem similar between those that I have difficulty training.

Questions

There were many questions about some of the statements in the article. For example, why does it matter that only people who talk are men? Why don't they speak up? Shouldn't the statement be that they are not allowed to speak? That would be an issue. Only men speaking is not an issue. In some meetings I have been in, it is always the same 3-4 people speaking. Now that I think about it, they are all Caucasian while 80% of the team are not Caucasian. Thinking further, majority of management is also Caucasian while majority of the team are not. And most of us don't consider that the company is racist.

No females in leadership? Majority of our managers are women, while a large majority of the team is men. The team does not treat them any differently. Our nation's presidents have been all male, yet female population is about half. 

They were uncomfortable with Break-up Room and Bromance Chamber? I would be too.

The article fails to explain how these relate directly to women. There are serious issues on how society pictures women and expectations of women. I do not think this article did a good job on explaining that.

And the last question, if the workplace is so terrible why are there not more woman started companies? If the situation is so biased, a woman-led business should easily be able to undercut the market and start their own ideals. I am sure there are reasons and I think those would probably be worth more of my time to read and learn about.

Reference

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140217222725-8451-dropbox-s-hiring-practices-explain-its-disappointing-lack-of-female-employees?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0
http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/02/interview-oddball-and-riddle-questions.html