CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

I have been reading a few books about how to manage people to get results that you want. The simplest approach that I have read is by the One Minute Manager. I have never been in management but I have been the brunt of management mistakes before. Anyway, the theory that the authors explain are quite simple. The secret is being able to do all three.

• One minute goals
• One minute praisings
• One minute reprimands

Just remember the following tag lines: Set goals; praise and reprimand behaviors; encourage people; speak the truth; laugh; work; enjoy. If you are interested in what I briefly explained, go buy the book “The One Minute Manager” by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my career options lately. The current company that pays my check has committed a number of bad moves toward me as an employee that I feel warrant a change of scenery. Firstly, all the PTO that I’ve saved up over the last 4 years have mysteriously disappeared. Secondly, I didn’t find out till last week that my wages were reduced by 5%, applicable since the start of 2005 (all without telling me before the start of the year). I had to find out when I took a look at my last few paycheck stubs and complained. Thirdly, they got rid of the tuition reimbursement program in 2003, when I was nearly half way into completing my Masters degree program. It will take me at least a couple more years to complete my degree because of that set back. Anyway, I’ve had meetings with my managers and I’ve communicated how I felt. I’ve done a lot of thinking lately and I think it is time for me to move on. From a wages and benefits standpoint, my current compensation is far below average. I’m pulling in only about $41,000 per year. Not good considering all the experience that I have. Although, I enjoy certain aspects of working at IBM (as a contractor), I must admit there is a glass ceiling as far as rewards structure, and leadership responsibilities are concerned. I was kind of feeling like my career had derailed or stalled. I have always observed that contractors/vendors at IBM were treated as second class citizens. Maybe this is not completely true for all organizations within IBM, but that was the pervasive feeling that I had gotten.

Anyway, enough of my bitter ranting. If any readers of my blog wish to give an experienced web developer/designer a chance at career bliss, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My resume is available here online. If anyone from Apple, Google, and any major web design firms come a knocking, I’m ready to listen.

Previously I wrote about a Google employee Mark Jen who blogged about his experiences at Google. Well, he was fired only several weeks later when other Google employees complained behind his back. I had an opportunity to see the original posts and the revised posts, and I must admit they were borderline inappropriate. Google reprimanded and fired him on the first offense (clearly not good management practice). Of course, he could’ve been smarter about what he posted, but everyone makes mistakes. It’s the fact that he was not given the opportunity to correct those mistakes that gets me a little miffed.

What he has done has brought up a very important legal topic for today’s electronic age. What happened to Mark Jen has happened to many bloggers. If you read the Washington post article titled “Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs“, you’ll notice a trend. Free speech in the constitution does not apply to corporate settings. I took one law class in my Masters degree program at UoP, and there was a case that set a legal precendent that allows employers to fire employees for inappropriate behavior using email. It would be interesting to see if this precendent can be applied to the blogging world as well. In any case, companies should clearly have blogging policies, since it is becoming a very hot trend in the online world. This way, there is no grey legal issue if someone writes something inappropriate on their blog about the company they work for.  

I usually go through the better part of the morning checking out my RSS subcriptions on bloglines.com. Here’s a few stories that I found interesting:

JHymn Goes Behind Atoms and Apple To Bring DRM-Free Music
by Howard Wen describes the newest successor to Hymn that allows iTunes purchased songs to be freed from their shackles of DRM.

Microsoft worker wants to be Trump’s ‘Apprentice’
describes how TV’s Apprentice contestant Verna Felton is going for the title of Trump’s apprentice. She even has her own following at Microsoft and her own website.

Besides having a Microsoft representation in the show, Apprentice contestant Stephanie Myers works at IBM. Since, I work at IBM also (as a contractor), I was interested in seeing if I could locate her in the Intranet directory. Hmmm… looks like she still works at IBM, but her telephone number is not publicly made available. For legality reasons, I blurred out her email and building location.

One Canadian’s wireless neighborhood network could someday serve us all.

Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service. Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew’s neighborhood is watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has anything to say about it.

This blog has interesting stuff about life at Google from the inside. Google employee Mark Jen never envisioned that his blog would garner much attention. That is until everyone else on the web and Google found out about it. He was forced to revise some of his posts. Ironically, his original posts were cached by search engines. It’ll be quite interesting to see how popular his site will become. I have a funny feeling that he will be closely monitored by everyone at Google. What a way to start out on a new job, eh?