This morning the Google Chrome Team is at it again, and released 19.0.1041.0 which is primarily a bug fixes release. It's impressive to see these updates coming so quickly, as it's only been a few days since the last significant release. They are certainly back at it, and moving things forward. Nice to see.
This morning I wasn't at all surprised to see that Google Chrome dev 19.0.1036.7 was released, as I'd noted a few days ago that the beta channel had a more recent version than dev, and that's just not how they typically release things. So they've upped the major version number and included the latest V8 javascript engine (3.9.4.0) and a few UI issues. It's interesting to see that there are more than a few Windows-only fixes, but that's nice to see too - Mac OS X was a little more stable - or is still buggy, hard to say.
Great to see the improvements keep coming!
Today has been another hard day… specifically, for me in the realm of emotional turmoil and personal happiness. Yesterday, I got my yearly bonus number, and it was less than 50% of what I had expected. This expectation was based on deals and promises and last year's numbers, and frankly, I was more than a little disappointed. Yet, after I heard the number, I was calm, and collected on the outside, and asked if that was it.
My manager then wanted to know how I felt.
Hmmm… first, I think this is a very silly move on his part. He knows what he said, he knows it's less than 50%, and he expects anything but anger from me? Foolish man. But he wants to know. So I tell him Hey, it's not important to the discussion, is it? Just to try and say "You don't really want to know - you're just trying to give me a chance to vent."
But he pressed on, and said that he cares about how I feel.
Not true, I think. Not really. If he really cared, he'd have made the number bigger, and if it wasn't going to be bigger, he wouldn't try to make it out to seem like anything other than a kick in the pants. You hired me because I was smart… why are you now treating me like I'm an idiot? I know what's going on here. I've owned a business. It's not about good/bad. It's about compensation. Period.
So we had a talk, and the more we got into it the less honest they seemed to be with me. Maybe it was because I was asking a lot of uncomfortable questions of them - like if the compensation isn't important, or I can do nothing to impact it, then what's my motivation for working hard? Why not just put in a decent day's work and be done? Why kill myself?
They had no answer, because there is no defensible answer to that. In this business, they pay you for killing yourself. I've heard them say it time and again, place after place. That's why the bonus is so much of your yearly compensation. They want to see you earn it every single day. I get it. No problem. But then when you come through, they better pay you, or someone else will.
Which brings me to my point… If I'm getting no personal gratification from this job - or let's say I'm not getting any additional personal gratification from this job for working the extra hours, then why do it? It's a simple problem. I'm sacrificing my home life for this job, in the thought that I'd get paid for it and make my home life better. But if that implicit contract is broken, then what's the point? I might as well live on less, and be happier because I'm not killing myself.
Better yet - get a different job and work for someone that honors that contract.
It's a classic blind spot… companies spend gobs of money finding the "right people", and then some will cheap out on the bonus. This makes the person leave, and the replacement cost is far far greater than the difference in the bonus. It's simple business sense. Dollars and sense. If you pay a good person well, they will stay. Pay them poorly, and they leave, and you have to spend even more money to get the next good one.
Don't forget that the bad reputation you're building with employees as a cheapskate firm will make it even harder to get good people in the door. It's just bad business.
If, as an employer, you have set expectations, then you better meet them, or get pretty close. And less than 50% of expectations isn't even remotely close.
This morning I saw that Google Chrome dev 18.0.125.7 was out, and the release notes say there are a few bug fixes with regards to the settings pane. Good enough. I like reading in the comments the praise for the speed of fixing these issues. It shows me that the folks finding the issues are really happy with the team fixing them in a reasonable time frame. Says a lot, because if I had a problem, I'd like to know it was being addressed. Just nice to see.
[2/11] UPDATE: Interestingly, this morning I saw that the beat channel was updated to 18.0.1025.25 - a jump over the dev channel. This makes no sense as the dev channel is supposed to the be more often updated and less stable of the channels. So something much be going on… like maybe the dev channel is going to 19.x.x.x, or something. In any case, it's an odd move that certainly means something… I'm just not sure what it is.
Well… it's only been a few days since 18.0.1025.1 was released, but I guess the Google Chrome team realized that there were a few outstanding issues that warranted a new release and a few ticks in the version number. Nice that they all appear to be fixes for crashing bugs… way to keep on the crashers, guys.
Yesterday, I heard about Bloomberg's new Open API initiative. It's a new .Net, C++, Java, and C API that is "Open" for all to use and make use of. The catch is that all the data you'd want to get is really still exceptionally expensive, but that's Bloomberg, eh? The last time I used a Bloomberg API it was the Bloomberg Server API, which was a mild modification on the old Bloomberg Terminal API that came with every Bloomberg Terminal - Windows and Solaris, going far, far back into the past.
I've just briefly scanned these docs, and it's a new API alright. Much easier to deal with, and hopefully far easier to decode the data once it's returned from Bloomberg. I like that they are trying to really make it easier to use - both in the pub/sub and the req/resp modes. It's an improvement.
Heck, almost anything is an improvement.
Still, the kicker is the cost of the data. When last I looked, it was still some of the most expensive data around. I mean outta sight prices. I don't think it's gone down in the last two years, but I could be wrong.
Yet I can't blame them. They have a nice gig - they have a great reputation on the street for their data, and so they can charge a ton and use that to keep away the riffraff. It's working for them, and who am I to give them grief. Sure… I'd love to build a system off this for the Mac and build in all the bells and whistles, but that's a really hard sell as the data is so expensive and all the online brokerages are giving their data away - with decent tools.
Still… if I hit the lotto, I'm all over this.
This morning I was thinking about the particular situation I find myself in at work. Interestingly enough, the one guy that I thought could really give me great advice is one of my oldest friends - Bret from grad school. I've known Bret since 1980 - that's more than 31 years now. We've worked together, laughed together, and lived a long time together.
To this morning, I wrote to him to ask him his advice:
I've been struggling here at work for the last few months - amid some massive re-orgs (yes, multiple massive re-orgs in that time), and in the midst of all this, I thought of the one person that I could really trust to give me some solid advice - you.
So here's what I'm struggling with: When I hired on here at The Shop about 2 yrs ago it was all about who I was going to be working with, and how we were going to be developing, and no more crap for HR… all the things that after a long stint at First Chicago, then UBS, I was happy to hear. It started out great, and my manager was just made partner, so it seemed like it was going to be great for a long time.
Then things changed. My manager, Clive, was put in charge of all IT for The Shop. Everything. And it's changed Clive. We no longer work together. For a while, I found someone that reminded me a lot of you - funny, easy to laugh, good coder, thoughtful. A really nice guy to work with. And while it was a little team of the two of us, it was great.
Then Clive decided that his view of IT needed to change, and that guy, is now managing the group I'm in - a group of 14 people.
Out the window goes the "who" I work with. Now I'm working with regular (which is to say, junior) guys that are dolts in comparison.
Out the window goes the "how" I work. Now things can't be released unless we have a meeting about it and it'e perfectly acceptable to leave bugs in production until that time. There are times they will have to check to see if it's OK to fix a bug - priorities are important, after all.
Out the window goes everything that I once liked about this place.
And so I'm asking you: How do you do it?
How do you work with people, systems, organizations, etc. that are clearly more like Roman galleys than places for creative people to work. It's not that I mind hard work, it's the conditions under which it's produced. Maybe I'm just fooling myself that a place like this Shangri-La even exists, but I'd like to think it does. But maybe that's my problem.
Maybe I need to just accept that people that want my effort, my energy, my work really aren't interested in my best work - they would be happy with 80% - if they get to choose the terms under which it's given.
Anyway, I'm hoping that you have some words of advice for me. Something that I can use to re-adjust my thinking, to re-align my sights - to get to a place that I don't dread coming to work.
Anything you have would be really helpful.
I'm hoping he's got some good advice for me. Stay tuned.
[2/13] UPDATE: I wasn't disappointed… his letter was right on target and it got me to thinking about what I need to do:
Hmmm, well, I think I should tell you a story. This is how my thinking has changed during the last 6 months of my last job. It has to do with all that's happened before but took a form I could articulate last year.
I started working for Avocent in 2008. It was a new team building a pretty cool product. Long story short, it was the best team I'd ever been part of. Best is terms of mutual respect, fun, and actual quality and quantity of output. Then we were bought buy a much bigger company. Things changed like black and white. One day when I was thinking about my options a light bulb went off. Every job I've ever had started out hopeful and for varying lengths of time was pretty rewarding. But something always happened to change that. What I realized was not that things always change. It was that *I* have been wrong every time about my estimation of the longevity of the job. Every time. On that day I made two decisions. Or rather two changes in my thinking. One is that I don't care one wit about the longevity prospects of a job opportunity I'm considering. Everyone tries to sell you and the vast potential of whatever they are selling. Now what I'm about to say will sound harsher than I really think in general (I mean I've not turned into a hopeless cynic, far from it) but to the job salesman I say bullshit. But really it's my desire to assume more than I should that I call bullshit on. Here's the deal. I've been wrong EVERY time. It's not that I didn't have educated assumptions, I believe I did. Doesn't matter. There are too many factors that can change. I NEVER saw the purchase coming by a company that was both large and insane at the same time. So, to be clear, I'm not jaded, I just don't consider longevity to be a factor. I just want to know if the work is interesting. If things change I'll look again. But I said I made two decisions. The second I'm still working out in real life. Since I can't count on others for long term job satisfaction, my goal has changed. I used to want to find a job that was "interesting" (there are many dimension to what "interesting"means). What I realized is the reality that I could continue this path of going from job to job (really meaning from employer to employer) as things change, to I could seek to become independent of that rat race. The best word I have for what my goal is right now is independence. There are just way too many ways today to make your own path and divorce yourself from the work you want to do and a bunch of other factors (where you live, who you work with, etc.).
I guess in answer to your question of how I do it, I don't think I do really. I've always moved on. That takes time sometimes, but the mental switch flips pretty easy and hasn't ever flipped back. In the meantime, be yourself, advocate the quality you expect. THAT is hard and I've failed many times but that's the standard to measure against. Remaining true, that is. This has been a bit of a ramble. There's probably more to say so feel free to call anytime. I mean it. I'm living this out everyday right now so talking this stuff through would be helpful to me too. It's been good for me to reflect on this as I've typed this much to you so far.
Take care and let me know how things go.
He's dead right, and I knew it before he even wrote back. The problem is me and my expectations. I need to lower them. Way, way, lower. When I was new here, and had lower expectations, things were a lot better, but as I started doing more work here, they rose on the hopes that things were really going to be great. Big mistake of mine.
Focus on the things that are important to me. That's the ticket. It's not important that I'm a convert to the cause, I just need to be a solid, good, hard worker, and that's always going to happen. It's when I think they have the same vision as I do that things go sour. I just need to keep a respectful distance. It's not easy for me, but it's important.
Thanks, old friend. I knew I could count on you!
This afternoon I saw a tweet from Twitterrific about 4.4.6 being released and decided to give it another try - even though I've been using Hibari for a while and it's very nice indeed. What I was hoping was that Twitterrific had fixed the GPU switching problem they've had for a very long time.
So I updated, did my test, and Wow! It works! They might not have realized it, but they fixed the GPU switching problem! Fantastic! Now I have two choices, and that's even better.
This morning I noticed that Google Chrome dev 18.0.1025.1 was out and it looks like a few nice things for me in the release notes. SPecifically, the latest V8 javascript engine (3.8.9.0), and then a few nice Mac-specific things like fixed Lion gestures, fixed momentum scrolling in frames, and an issue about the devtools closing prematurely. All nice things to have. I'm really glad that aren't focusing on Windows and leaving Mac OS X a version or two behind. That would be sad.
I've had quite a few troubles with Twitterrific and the official Twitter client with the GPU switching from integrated to discrete and back again. In both cases, the apps appear to be working on the GPU that they started on, but if you 'hide' them (both have this feature) and then switch the GPU - for example, go from battery to power adapter, and try to un-hide the apps, they won't function. This has been ongoing for a long time with both apps. I like both, but this one feature means that I have had to stick with one GPU - regardless of the battery/power adapter setting, and leave it there if I want to make sure things are going to work.
Not horrible, but I've been hoping with each update of each of these apps that the bug will get fixed. I've sent bug report after bug report to both teams, and they either can't reproduce something that's superlatively easy for me to reproduce, or they aren't working on it. Sad.
So when Daniel J. tweeted that he was trying Hibari as a new Twitter client, I gave it a look. The big difference here is that Hibari is being actively developed, and that's something that does not seem to be the case for either of the other two I really liked. First, I was glad to see the style. It's clean, nice, solid, and shows thumbnails of the inline images. Very nice so far.
Then I realized it can hide/unhide nicely. Even better. Then I did the GPU-switch test and it passed with flying colors. OK, time to pay my $10, it's passed everything I wanted in a Twitter client. And it's still being developed!
I then saw that Gus M. of JSTalk fame was using JSTalk to tweet in Hibari. Even better. Auto-updates, I'm hoping are with Sparkle, but we'll have to see, and I'm smiling. Not bad at all.
I'm going to give it a while. See how it goes. I'm glad I can now let my GPUs switch and take advantage of the better GPU when I'm plugged into the wall, but fall back to the internal GPU when it's on battery, and I don't have to worry about my Twitter client.
Oh… and it's got great Growl integration. Can't beat that!