Information Technology Dark Side

Most career advice sucks at least 50% of the time. Context matters when it comes to advice because most career problems aren’t simple enough for generalities to work very often. Buy a house. Have kids. Don’t lease cars. Good advice? Sometimes, not always. For career advice to be really useful, it has to context imperial. [...]

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Tuesday night I spoke at XP Western Michigan, an XP user group in Grand Rapids Michigan. Here’s a link to the presentation - “Pulling Your Head Out of Your… Budget: Mental Re-tooling for Agile Project Management.” It was a great time - thanks to XPWM for having me out and to Matt Heusser for introducing [...]

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10. Deodorant is not optional.
9. Change jobs early in your career to get ahead.
8. Change jobs late in your career to get ahead.
7. Work as an independent consultant anytime you can.
6. Blogging is a two-edged sort. It can take away as many opportunities as it helps you find.
5. Get hemorrhoids. It’s a perfect excuse to [...]

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Over a year ago I traded in my old PC for an iMac. Since then, the whole family had converted over - my kids have an iMac, my wife has a MacBook Pro. There’s not a single PC in my house anymore. I don’t have an iPod yet, or Apple TV, but… I am really [...]

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Drive by cubicle invasions interrupting your code efforts?
Long talking visitors sucking the life out of you?
You don’t have to come into the office before dawn to get a few hours of uninterrupted work time. No sir, cubicle drop-ins are a thing of the past with this foul smelling productivity boosting tip from my cubicle neighbor [...]

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I wish I wrote this article.

Join the order, and turn your brain over to the information age. Very nice.
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I met John Garrett at a charity event for The Hair Fairy Project, where he opened for another, “more famous” comedienne. He was funnier than the headliner, to tell you the truth. I laughed my butt off.
John started out as an accountant. You don’t normally think of accountants as funny, and maybe that’s why he [...]

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One of the nice things about corporate IT is that you get to wear jeans on Friday, at least in most places. Sure, you can wear shorts, flip flops, and bring your dog to work at Google (or Microsoft, or lots of other SOFTWARE companies), but this is THE DARK SIDE. Take what you can [...]

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Dave Christiansen is the founder and managing editor of
TechDarkSide.com. He manages projects for a Fortune 100 financial services company and writes and talks about project management. He can be reached at dave@techdarkside.com.
I’m kind of a fat guy. Anybody who’s met me will confirm this, and I’m not really embarrassed about it. I am worried about [...]

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Here’s a very nice example of what mediocre management in corporate IT can do to the world… Can you imagine suddenly getting a tax bill based on a value of $400,000,000?

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