Revision progress: Pages complete: 33% Word count reduction: 9.8% While getting my kids their passports, I saw an article in the Star Tribune that said Minnesota IT companies are desperate for talent. It was the primary reason Amazon dropped Minneapolis as a candidate for its new headquarters (not that I’d want it to be here — mega-corps come with their own baggage). They want them local and experienced. The ones who can analyze and lead a team. And even singled out Java and DevOps skillsets. And as I was completing my yearly resume revision, I realized I had more leadership experience than I thought. My last two jobs, I could…
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Why Developers Should Not QA
The new hotness in software development is Kanban. Kanban’s like an assembly line. As soon as one person’s done working on a thing, they shove it along the conveyor belt to the next, like manufacturing a car. But sometimes things bottle neck at one station or another. So when that happens, you take the people who have free time and put them on something else. They don’t do as good a job as the worker dedicated to that station, but it’s better than nothing. In the software engineering world, that means Business Analysts can do QA and development. QA does development and software analysis. Developers do QA and build business…
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Somebody at Work Keeps Bringing Their Kid In
Somebody at work keeps bringing their kid in and I thought this would be a good thought experiment. My intention is to demonstrate what’s going through the heads of those people who want to burn down health care, transgender bathrooms, marijuana regulation, immigration reform, and the like. Someone at work, an Indian woman, one of the QA, brings her kid in to work about once a month for the past two months. Seven or eight-year-old boy. Mostly he plays on an iPad all day, but I occasionally see him run around or during an all-team meeting, coming to get his Mom for something. He doesn’t make trouble. THE EMOTION This…
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Swimming Back to the Surface
In addition to problems with reading (that I mentioned last time), I’m also still struggling to stay writing (and not watch YouTube videos all during lunch hour). I think it has to do with two reasons. One is my new job. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. It’s very easy to hide here. They don’t assign me much work (or know if they’ve assigned me work). I feel like a relief pitcher, kept around in case they need me for something. But in this spatial environment I feel very exposed. There are “enclaves”, but they have glass doors, like I’m in a zoo. And they’re closed in so they…
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Work and Play Go Hand in Hand
In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been posting much. Mostly because I haven’t gotten any ideas for new articles or posts. But mostly just because I’ve been bored. Bored, bored, bored. I don’t want to put up more linkbait like Morgan Smith Goodwin (I do have some integrity). I feel like I’ve run out of anything to say about movies or video games (I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Origins, which is just like Arkham City — it plays like an expansion pack — so nothing new to say about it, except that I like the new Joker). Ssssssomebody sssstop me! But also because I’ve switched positions at work, to…
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Go Ahead, Make My Incentive
If you haven’t noticed, posting frequency has gone down lately because of work, but that should change soon. But I had to write about this thing that came up recently. My company was trying to come up with a way to incentivize the developers to release the app we’re working on “on time with zero defects”. One of the ways they offered up was a kind of raffle. For each hour of overtime (productive overtime, emphasis theirs), you get an entry to win a VIZIO 50″ Smart TV. I did the e-mail equivalent of laughing in their face. First of all, think about the people that work in software engineering.…
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Update
I got a new job, so working the transition means I have to concentrate on being a good “employee” at the current time. Switching jobs always sucks. You have nothing to do at your old one and nothing to do at your new one. But at least at your old one, you had all your stuff. I am now programming on a laptop, and while it’s beefy enough, I don’t have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, or phone yet. So my back is getting sore from all the leaning over. It also means I have to find a new place to write. My old place had a nice couchy lounge area…
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The Empty Cube
There’s something broken about modern business. I can’t make friends at work. I can’t make personal relationships. Why? Because I might disappear at any time, like in Logan’s Run or 1984. There’s probably a term for it. Hiring practices, termination, lay-offs. It’s ruining company morale and worker morale. I think it’s because these policies haven’t changed in decades, even though the world has. I’ve been laid off. I’ve been fired. I’ve quit. I’ve been under three month contracts. So I’ve gotten the full experience from the employee side. They tell you to come to a meeting that’s not on your calendar. It’s always at the end of the day, about a…
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Macro 2: Find Sentences Longer than 20 words
UPDATE: This post has been amended. You can find the complete list of writer’s macros here. Okay, here is the second one, and probably the 2nd most useful. Word already has the ability to look for long sentences, but in today’s age, long is a lot longer than you should have. Especially if you’re writing query letters or synopsisesises. You can customize what the cut off is by altering the “maxWords” variable. One of the most difficult things when developing these macros was determining when a sentence begins, when it ends, and how many words are inbetween. Word claims to have native functions for this, but I found it quite…
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Macro 1: Find Questionable Words
UPDATE: This post has been amended. You can find the complete list of writer’s macros here. As part of my everlong quest to help my fellow writers, I will be posting some of the Macros I’ve provided (I’m a programmer!) to help out with writing. Here is the first one, and probably the most useful. It searches for all words in a given list (adverbs, overused words, and cliches) and highlights them. To use: 1. Copy the code below. 2. Open Word. 3. Press Alt+F8 (or go to Tools->Macro->Macros) 4. Click Edit. Microsoft Visual Basic will open. 5. In the project window (upper right), select Normal->Modules->NewMacros 6. Paste the code…
