Information Technology Dark Side

Many organizations have compensation structures & processes that reward “high performance” employees more than regular joes. Usually, these high performers are a group of people with the performance ratings in the 90th percentile, or the top 10%. Conversely, some organizations automatically fire the bottom 10%.
A few months ago, I was lucky enough to find [...]

[Read more →]

There are two experiences in my life that have shaped my views on honest, both in the workplace and at home, more than any other.
The first experience happened in the first week of the first grade. By luck, I had the same first grade teacher as I had had in Kindergarten, Ms. Knockle (sic). Like [...]

[Read more →]

In the May 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, Surviving Your New CEO by Kevin P. Coyne and Edward J. Coyne, Sr. describes the fate of senior managers under a new CEO (bad, as a general rule) and steps senior managers can take to reduce their chances of getting punted like a squishy brown banana [...]

[Read more →]

As I sat watching the movie 300, I wondered how this movie with such quotes as “We are with you sire! For Sparta, for freedom, to the death!” could be relevant to our lives in the IT world. Even though we’re currently ’suffering’ compared to the booming Internet years, our careers seem to hold [...]

[Read more →]

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’ve been thinking about this post for a couple of months now. On several occasions in my career I have given advice to others [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been thinking a lot about centralized groups lately. Centralized groups are usually created as an attempt to leverage common skills and practices in a uniform, cost-effective way. It’s most common in matrix organizations, and I’ve seen them formed for many different purposes, including:
Development
Analysis
Testing
Project Management
Governance
Architecture
Infrastructure
Centralized organizations have been on my mind lately for two reasons. [...]

[Read more →]

Once upon a time, Mike Kelly, Tate Stuntz, and I were discussing organizational change. We were observing an organization that was going through a great deal of change, some of it planned and some of it that just happened. Some changes were being orchestrated by committees of concerned people who put programs into place to [...]

[Read more →]

Most companies these days use a performance management process that is based on objectives. As I’ve complained before, I’m not a big fan of this approach. It’s very difficult to make it work, and seems too heavyweight for me. There’s got to be an easier way.
That said, let’s face facts. If you work in a [...]

[Read more →]

Following up on a previous blog, how to pronounce Indian names: I found a great explanation of how to pronounce Indian names that covers some areas I missed. And, to make it even better, the author of the site (Chad Fowler), is also a Rails advocate. More power to him! Here’s a link to his [...]

[Read more →]

How much money does a time-tracking system cost at an enterprise level? I have no idea, but I’m sure it’s a heckuva lot more than my salary.
What is the point of tracking the time of a salaried employee? I have been trying to figure this out ever since I left consulting, where time tracking [...]

[Read more →]