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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This essay by VC Paul Graham should be required reading for every college graduate.
Here’s how it starts:
A few days ago I was sitting in a cafe in Palo Alto and a group of programmers came in on some kind of scavenger hunt. It was obviously one of those corporate “team-building” exercises.

They looked familiar. I spend [...]

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I play Yahtzee on my phone. I like the game, but the interface sucks. It takes four button pushes to start a new game, and at least that many to exit. Why do I need to confirm that I want to exit a game that automatically saves where I’m at? Who designed that interface?
It doesn’t [...]

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There are times when we walk away from an interaction feeling either super-impressed with someone’s competence without knowing exactly why the person seemed so competent to us. Other times, we get a distinct sense that someone is incompetent, though we might not be able to nail down exactly why. Last night as I observed an [...]

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1. For your slides use high contrast text. For example, black text over a blue background IS NOT high contrast and is not readable from a distance. The colors that you see on your monitor when preparing your slides will likely appear much less saturated during your presentation particularly if you are using a projector.
2. [...]

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Dave Kokoska sent me a link to an article this morning by Ken Rockwell that I think is terrific and is certainly applicable to the issues we face in IT. Here’s a quote:
You waste a lot of time worrying about your equipment and trying to afford better. After that first 20 years you finally [...]

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Years ago I knew a professional football player by the name of John Tait, currently of the Chicago Bears. John is an enormous guy and hanging out with him made me feel small. I’m 6’1” and have never been less than 200 pounds as an adult, so feeling small was not something I took easily [...]

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Deodorant is an extremely important part of your life. You might not think so if you don’t use it, but trust me, your cubicle neighbors do! A few years ago I developed an allergic reaction to the deodorant I’d been using for about twenty years. My armpits turned red and swollen, and they stunk like [...]

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Read this article - Ivan Bowman of iAnywhere Solutions decided his telecommuting arrangement was leaving him out of touch with his co-workers. Since a 2000 km commute was out of the question, he came up with a different option: IvanAnywhere, a robot version of himself he could control from home but would roam around his [...]

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How do you know if your IT job is part of the dark side? Are you employed by a corporation’s IT department? Well then, you’re in the dark side. Here is a list of some of the ways your corporate IT job is dramatically different from our cousins over at Google, Microsoft, and any other [...]

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