boblog

“IT pros complain primarily about logic, and primarily to people they respect. If you are dismissive of complaints, fail to recognize an illogical event or behave in deceptive ways, IT pros will likely stop complaining to you. You might mistake this as a behavioral improvement, when it’s actually a show of disrespect. It means you are no longer worth talking to…”

This is a really good article by Jeff Ello over at Computerworld about how to manage and work with IT pros. Lots of good insight to those outside IT and to those inside IT who just haven’t been paying attention.

A lot of the tension inside an IT group often comes from the influx of so many non-IT people into an IT environment. I’ve seen way too many cases where a mid- to upper manager came in and, instead of trying to understand the department, ran roughshod all over everyone, stomping on well-defined processes, all in the name of progress, change, or “diversity”, which now seems to be defined as whatever fits the current management focus.

Don’t get me started.

Anyway, it’s a good read. Check it out at http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137708/Opinion_The_unspoken_truth_about_managing_geeks?taxonomyId=14&pageNumber=1.

Never forget.

If this is a copyright violation then I will willingly remove it. But Chuck Swindoll has said it better than I can when, in his book Why, God? Calming Words for Chaotic Times, Charles R. Swindoll, in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America wrote:

“It was not just one act of treacherous terrorism that stunned us on September the eleventh; it was several. To make matters worse, these several attacks were carried out in a carefully planned sequential strategy of brutal destruction. And before the smoke cleared, we were stunned to discover that there were other planned assaults on our national leaders that, gratefully, failed to materialize that same day. I shudder, literally shudder, when I pause to think of how much more terrible it could have been if the demonic plot had run its course as had been devised in the original scheme of evil, demented minds.

If I repeat just a two-hour-and-thirty-one-minute log of the events of that morning in rapid-fire fashion, you will have sufficient information to remember what transpired that frightening morning. The times I refer to are based on central standard time.

At 6:58 A.M., United Airlines Flight 175 left Boston bound for Los Angeles with 56 passengers, 2 pilots, and 7 flight attendants.

One minute later, at 6:59 A.M., American Airlines Flight 11 departed from Boston en route to Los Angeles with 81 passengers, 2 pilots, and 9 flight attendants.

Two minutes later, at 7:01 A.M., United Airlines Flight 93 left Newark, New Jersey, headed for San Francisco with 38 passengers, 2 pilots, and 5 flight attendants.

Nine minutes later, at 7:10 A.M., American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles with 58 passengers, 2 pilots, and 4 flight attendants.

Thirty-five minutes later, at 7:45 A.M., American Flight 11 plunged into the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan—a direct hit.

Eighteen minutes after the north tower was hit, at 8:03 A.M., United Flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Forty minutes after the south tower was hit, at 8:43 A.M., American Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. A hole at least two hundred feet wide was ripped open on the west side, and flames burst forth from the nerve center of our nation’s major military building.

Seven minutes after the Pentagon was hit, at 8:50 A.M., the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

Eight minutes later, at 8:58 A.M., an emergency dispatcher in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, received a cell phone call from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93. The dispatcher quoted the man as saying, “We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked!” The man then said the plane was going down and reported some sort of explosion and white smoke coming from the plane. At that moment the dispatchers lost contact with him.

Twelve minutes after that cell phone call, at 9:10 A.M., United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco crashed near Summerset, Pennsylvania, eighty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Representative James Moran of Virginia, after a Marine Corps briefing, said that hijackers evidently planned to crash the plane into the presidential retreat at Camp David or the United States Capitol.

At that same moment, 9:10 A.M., a portion of the Pentagon collapsed.

Only 19 minutes after the Pentagon’s west side collapsed, at 9:29 A.M., the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

I thought I had already lived through America’s worst disasters. How wrong I was. Many other significant events could be named, but that gives you sufficient evidence of how these atrocities happened back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Right on schedule, planned to the point of precision, the horrible events ran their course. “Why, God?” was the question most people were asking.

At 7:30 that same evening, as millions of Americans met in places of worship to pray, our president briefly addressed the nation, which we all saw, and tape recorded for later viewing. One statement he made stood out in my mind then and still lingers today: “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundations of America.”

Excerpted from Why, God? Calming Words for Chaotic Times, Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. ”

Never forget.

Every now and then you come across someone who does something you used to do but you quickly realize that he does it so much better you’re ashamed to ever admit that you used to do that.

This is one of those guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg54ws2tgGM

And if that doesn’t do anything for you, take a listen to his version of the Hindrix hit Purple Haze. Or, Ry Cooder’s Paris Texas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsT_-4Inyvc&feature=channel_page). Holy moley.

If Dad was still alive I’d give him all his money back that he paid for my guitar lessons.

Job seekers know there is enough work and stress involved in the job search process to last a lifetime. But, the one topic that seems to add more stress than any other is the question about your salary expectations.

Every job seeker knows internally what salary he wants from his next position. He knows what he made at his last job and, deep down, he hopes to replace, if not increase, that salary. Is that a realistic expectation?

We’ve all heard stories about the manager who was able to find her next job quickly and, to add insult to injury, was able to negotiate an even higher salary than the one she left in the previous job.

And, we’ve all heard about people who have landed in new positions at lower salaries than they had before. So, what gives?

Who knows? Life is funny that way. I suppose if someone took the time to conduct an in-depth study of those two outcomes, they might find some significant indicators that would help the rest of us in our salary negotiations.

But, I do know one thing for sure: the more prepared you are about salary going into the interview, the more prepared, relaxed, and confident you’ll be when it comes time to talk money.

The more you know about your skill set and what the local and national salary trends are for what you do, the better armed you will be to answer the interviewer’s question. Knowing that you have supporting evidence to back up your salary request gives you an edge of confidence, not arrogance, that you’ve done your homework and that you’re only asking for what, according to the data, seems fair.

Of course, they already have a budget for the position, a range in which you must fit your request. But, if you’ve gotten past the resume screeners, past the telephone interview, and done a good sales job during the interview, the salary conversation can be a breeze because you’ve researched the market, you know your fair market value, plus you’ve practiced the salary conversation multiple times with a counselor or friend.

So, where can you find good salary information? Here are some resources that will help with your salary research:

www.salary.com – Use their Salary Wizard to locate salary data. Enter your title, zip code, and click on Search. The system displays salary information for you and for the employer that is free. There is an option to purchase additional salary information.

http://career-advice.monster.com/salary-benefits/careers.aspx – This is the monster.com salary application and, to me, is less helpful. You must select a job category that may or may not be what you do, enter your zip code, then click on Search. The resulting screen, after you click No Thanks on the ad page, gives you a collection of job titles, a description of each, and a Base Salary Range link that takes you to, what looks like, a salary.com-like graph of the lower 25%, the median, and the upper 75% of salaries.

http://www.cbsalary.com/salary-information/article.aspx?t=KnowYourWorth&id=8e3398a7-e1de-43cd-b5da-475a74565926 – This is the salary calculator from careerbuilder.com. Enter a Job Title and click on Calculate. Click on No thank you to get past the ad page and CareerBuilder displays a list of job titles. Click on the one that most fits you. The page displays the national average salary and a low-to-high salary graph. At the bottom of the graph, enter your City, State, and click on Go. As always, click on the No thank you button to get past the ad page and the system displays the average salary for the city and state you entered.

http://www.texasindustryprofiles.com/apps/win/eds.php?compare=5&page=0 – I must admit, this is a very comprehensive presentation of salary information for the state of Texas. You simply enter your job title in the Search for field and click on Search. The system displays a list of links that contain the job title you entered plus a Relevance field that indicates how relevant the result is to what you entered. Since the top link is probably the most relevant, click on it. The system displays a compensation summary, a brief job description, and a breakdown of the data by industry. There are tabs across the top (Industries, Areas, Occupations) that provide even more salary data by those designations. As I said, a very comprehensive site.

There you have it. Not an exhaustive list of links to find salary information but a good start. I’m sure there are many other sites that provide valuable data that will help you build a case for getting your next salary. In fact, if you Google salary calculator, you’ll get about 3,440,000 hits. So, take your pick.

The point of this, and any discussion of the job looking / salary negotiation topics, is that there’s no reason for you to go into an interview unprepared, for whatever topic: experience, skills, tools, or salary.

The data is out there. Look at it. Research it until you’re sick of it. Get a big yellow pad and write down the data from as many sites and you want, compare what you’ve found, then drive a stake in the ground: decide in your own head what you think your fair market value is, pick a range you can live with, and move on.

Now, when you got to your next interview and the interviewer asks, “So, what kind of salary were you looking for?”, you can say with confidence and with supporting data that you are looking for a specific number because you’ve done your homework, you’ve worried about this topic long enough, and now it’s settled.

It’s amazing how much stress relief is contained in that one decision!