This morning, Unison 2.0.5 was released, and I know it's in good shape because once again, I was a beta tester for this release. It's not a really hard thing to do, but it does mean testing the code and making sure it's doing what they say, as well as what I need. It's really getting to be an incredible application. I'm very glad they decided to do ahead with the new codebase/design.
This morning I noticed that Firefox 3.6.2 is out and contains the requisite number of security fixes and performance enhancements. It's just another "point release" for the Firefox team, but good that they are making progress. I'm very interested in the new JavaScript engine they are planning, as I'd like to see Firefox overtake Google Chrome in that area. But until that day, I'll deal with these little improvements.
I got a tweet today that Acorn 2.2.2 was out with a nice list of fixes and features. It's my favorite image editor for the Mac primarily because I don't have to re-learn anything when I start to use it. GIMP is far too complex, and Photoshop is too, but I don't even try to get that one because it's so expensive for the little work I do.
Anyway, a great tool that works like a champ.
I was chatting with a friend today about my current disillusionment with the management decisions that I seem to be more aware of in these past few months. To be honest, it's the clumsy, inept management that makes Dilbert a comic that everyone believes is written with their workplace in mind. And to a large extent this is the case - people are the same no matter what the workplace. There are executives, bosses, managers, and workers, and no matter what the company does, it's the interactions of these people that are remarkably similar.
So goes the theory.
But at what point does this similarity stop being a commonality, and become a difference? Specifically, if you're having a difficult time with the current management, what makes you think it'll be significantly different at a different workplace? After all, that's one of the big reasons for changing jobs, isn't it? To get to a better environment.
So I was thinking... How much of what I'm feeling about this management is just universal management dissatisfaction, and how much is truly unique to this place? Based on this, is the difference really all that bad, or is it just frustration I'm feeling in a lot of little ways, and rather than push back, my first instinct is to walk away because I don't feel it's my place in a large organization to change it. It has evolved to this point, and who am I to say it should adjust/adapt to me when the reverse is probably what every one else has done?
It's a lot of good questions, and there's no way I'll be able to find out all the answers because it's all very subjective, and you can't know what every place is like until you work there. For instance, getting here, I believed that this place would be significantly better than my last position, and in a few ways, it is. In some others, it's decidedly worse. Other areas, it's just very different. So is the move to this workplace a move up, down, or just a move?
I'm coming to the conclusion that it's just a move. But it can be a very important move. If the differences are over one or two issues, then that's not going to really change, but if there are serious disagreements over how work should be done, then maybe this you're in a workplace that's not as good a fit as another.
At my old company we came up with a saying: Some times, good people just don't fit. And it's not a statement that there are a lot of good people in the workforce, and there's a lot of good workplaces. But not every good person fits well with a good place. There's a lot more to a good fit than the goodness of the person and the place.
One of the things I've found most difficult to match up properly are the real goals of the place and the person. Someone may be looking to create some of the greatest works of their career. Some places may be looking to be the very best in their field. Others may be very content to work at the level they have achieved and leave the superlatives to the others. There's nothing right or wrong about one set of goals - they just are. The problem comes in when the goals are different and the friction builds.
Someone looking to create great things can be very frustrated when faced with an environment that's only interested in the next incremental change. They accept that the feeds are bad, or the data is iffy, because it's "OK", and to the person looking to do great work, "OK", is just not "OK". They are looking for great. The individual can think that the workplace is just not interested in doing the level of work they are interested in doing, and to a great extent, that's exactly it - but not because they don't want to - it could be as simple as the fact that they are very comfortable with the flow of work they have evolved to, and aren't really interested in changing. If the great work can be done while retaining the work flow they have come to depend on, then fantastic! But if not, then they'd rather keep going like they have rather than venture into territory they might not like.
This is one of the easy ones, really. Virtually every place expects folks to get in around the same time and work a certain number of hours. Additionally, they may expect a certain level of effort from a group which translates to hours based on the development cycle. In any case, there are expectations of the amount and level of effort from the people at the workplace.
It's not always fair - the executives may work less hours than the workers, or maybe more, but the expectations won't likely be spelled out in the interview process. It's not the best way to attract top talent by telling them something they may already know, or will learn within the first few weeks anyway.
And there's the problem for me - if one person is ready to put in significantly more effort than the others around him, what's likely to happen is that managers will become reliant on this person and will allow others to slack off a bit knowing that this 'engine' will pull the majority of the work anyway. Then, when they take a vacation, or need some time off it's nearly a revolt because the others got lazy and don't know what to do.
The reverse is typically weeded out by the workplace for someone hot showing up for the 'standard' hours and level of effort. Still... it's not completely fair to the person to withhold this information from them in the interview process. Yet, at the same time, how many people want to go to a place where they hear "Everyone works 55 to 60 hour weeks, and if you don't you'll be let go at your first review." Answer: not a lot.
Given that the duration and the pace of work are compatible, what about the other demands of the place? Are there going to be calls after-hours? Are there games, events, parties that have an implied expectation of attendance? Again, these might not be clear in the beginning, but after a few months, there may be a significant level of this type of 'work' associated with the position.
While many may say this type of commitment cannot be required of an employee, everyone in that position knows that there's a million different ways to mask the truth of the matter. Re-assignments, difficult goals, there are always ways to make it appear that there's no bias towards the person, but the talk at the water cooler is that this person didn't get this promotion or opportunity because they didn't go to the Company picnic and let the Boss win the sack race.
Everyone has a different tolerance level for politics, and while it shouldn't matter in an intelligent, mature, professional workplace, we all know that's just idealistic.
There's more to a job than the paycheck, and while that's got to be acceptable to the person and the place, there is a lot more to this than just dollars and cents. Look at all the volunteerism around you - that's got nothing to do with a paycheck, it's all about the satisfaction they receive from doing the job they are doing. It can externally motivated like power or acclaim, or it can be completely internally motivated - simply knowing they were capable of accomplishing the feats they set before themselves.
Tapping into this is hard because it presupposes that everyone knows what internally motivates them - assuming something does, which is not universally true. But for those few that have this knowledge, there can be a lot lacking in the other parts of the fit as this will allow them to ignore some other problems and still feel very good about themselves.
I've done a lot of thinking about this. I'm coming to the opinion that I'm not a great fit for The Shop. Lots of little things, but all pointing to the same thing: a significant difference from the 'average' developer here. It's not bad or good - it's just different. In the long run, some times good people don't fit.
I think that's me.
I got a tweet this morning that MarsEdit 2.4.1 was out with an interesting collection of features and fixes:
- Support editing slug on Tumblr posts
- Support editing the date of Squarespace posts
- Fix issue that caused Autosaved posts to get "stuck" and recover on every launch
- Avoid showing spell checking marks inside HTML tags
- Improved Accessibility for VoiceOver and other assistive interfaces
- Fix accessibility attributes of main post editor fields
- Fix accessibility of weblog list utility buttons
- Expose per-weblog busy indicators to accessibility
- Quiet noisy console warnings on Snow Leopard 10.6
and while I haven't run into any of the stated problems, it's something I clearly use every single day, and I love what it's been able to allow me to do.
In all fairness, my own journaling tool wasn't bad... it was just far too early and non-standard. I was glad to move to WordPress at HostMonster and MarsEdit. It's been a fantastic release for me.
I just got into work after having one of the nicest commuter experiences that I've ever had. I was sitting in the train, on one of the two-person bench seats, and the train was pulling into the station. As is their custom, many people stand in the aisle - effectively blocking in those people that are sitting in the bench seats. When I was getting ready to get off the train - though it hadn't yet stopped, he looked at me and said:
"You go ahead, you've let me go when I was up there." gesturing to the upper deck seats in the car.
I was floored. He remembered not only that someone had helped him once or twice, but that it was me that had helped him.
It's something to go through a lot of your life thinking you're pretty invisible. I know sixteen years with kids makes you feel pretty invisible. But this guy remembered.
I felt very special.
This morning I was thinking about SQLite3 and decided to check and see if Base had been upgraded since the last time I checked. It's a great little tool for SQLite3 database, and there's a lot to like there. SQLite3 is the backbone of CoreData, and it's been shown to be a great alternative to a config file or even an application's data file. SQLite3 is a single file database, and it's fast.
So I checked, and sure enough, Base 1.4 was out with a few nice improvements: CVS loading, SQL loading, and a lot of nice exporting file formats. Impressive. I'm not sure I'll use all them, but to have these in this nice, minimalistic tool is a really nice feature.
It makes me want to mess with CoreData - or just get into more Mac development. Darn, it looks like a lot more fun than what I'm doing now.
I was thinking about Bean this morning and decided to see if they had updated anything recently, and indeed they had! Bean 2.4.3 was released back in February, and includes Czech localization along with various enhancements.
Nice to see it's still getting updates. Pages and TextEdit need competition on the Mac desktop and OpenOffice.org is too generic to be a good Mac app.
I noticed this morning that JollysFastVNC 1.10 was out, and given that I might need a VNC client to get to some Windows boxes, it's the VNC client I've decided to have on hand. It's not something I've had a lot of use with, but it looks solid, and minimalistic, and that's good enough for me.
This morning I saw that ClickToFlash 1.6b8 was out with a few fixes for YouTube, so I upgraded it within the plug-in. It's very convenient. I have to say that I have really enjoyed using ClickToFlash, and don't miss all the Flash adds that used to clutter all the pages I went to. Now it's boxes, and if I want to see it, I can. But the vast majority, I don't.
Can't get any better than that.