Archive for the 'Business' Category
Posted August 10, 2007 at 7:46 AM | Tagged as: Business, Career, Web Standards, Work | 4 Comments
Karl Dubost’s recent post on the craft of HTML coincided with the launch of the first round of Web coding standards at work. Why did we need coding standards? Karl answers that for me in his first paragraph:
HTML is a practical art. In a professional context, it requires precise and extensive skills. As with many popular crafts, the vast majority of people do it on their own, but only a few do it for a living. The quality of products varies a lot.
When you have a team of developers working on a product, you need to set quality requirements… but to meet those requirements you also need to set the expectation that the developers will work in a consistent manner. Sometimes this can be achieved by having the team lead set the direction for the code by crafting templates and doing code reviews. But what happens as team members rotate on and off the project — how do you retain the knowledge about the coding direction without taking time to bring each person up to speed? What happens as your development team grows to 10, 40, 100 people? This stuff doesn’t scale without spelling out the rules and setting expectations… thus the need for coding standards.
But standards alone won’t create consistency, of course. When Karl says that “HTML is a craft”, he implies that there are techniques that one can only learn through study and practice. When practicing a craft, there are skill levels that reach into the realms of mastery that only few will ever meet. Out of that team of 10, 40, or 100 developers, how many will truly become those masters?
My experience over the past 8 years of working in industry has led me to find that only a few will ever commit themselves to the craft of Web development, and that worries me as a developer and as a manager. We all want job security, and dedicating oneself to excellence in a field implies we’re in that field for the long haul. But what career path can a Web developer expect to have today? What opportunities will be available 5 years from know? There are many unknowns and I think that this may be one big reason I don’t see more talented developers taking the plunge and committing themselves more fully to Web development as a craft and career.
Karl points to another problem: the “majority of people do it on their own, but only a few do it for a living”, which to me implies that most people think anyone can be a Web developer (how many times have you heard someone state that their kid could build a better site?) and therefore they don’t take the craft of Web development seriously. I’ve found that most Web developers who didn’t emerge from computer programming backgrounds have serious complexes over whether or not they’re “real” developers… and a lot of this is due to snarky computer programmers who put Web developers down because they make the same, stupid assumption that “anyone can do Web development”. How is that encouraging to anyone looking at committing themselves to this work as their career? (Nevermind how irrational it is for a computer programmer to dismiss part of their larger discipline.) How is that encouraging to anyone who has hopes of using Web development as a basis for a career that could include programming in other languages?
So what’s a developer to do? And what’s a manager to do? I’ll post my ideas at another time… right now, tell me yours.
Posted August 7, 2007 at 3:16 AM | Tagged as: Business, Meeeeeeee, Women!, Work | Just 1 Comment
In this recent study, a Yale post-doc has found that a woman who shows anger in the workplace is likely to be seen as incompetent and out of control. In order to achieve status at work, women may have to behave calmly in order to be seen as rational. In fact, an “angry” woman is also likely to make less money than an “unemotional” woman, though in either case is still likely to make less than a man.
No wonder why so many women end up adopting a “nice girl” approach in business. But you know what? That doesn’t work either — at least not for the woman trying to always be so nice. That’s why I’m glad to see that Erica wrote up her 5 steps to stop being too nice. I was also pleasantly surprised by the book Ambitchous by Debra Condren, which promotes embracing ambition as a virtue, standing up for one’s self, and being authentic in order to be achieve success on one’s own terms and to be happy with one’s life.
I could go on at length about the “nice girl/angry woman” paradox, but I won’t because I resolved this internal conflict a long time ago. Ultimately I only care about being authentic, because when I’m not true to myself, everything else in my life goes to hell.
Sure, I try to be nice, and yes, I get angry. I don’t let people step all over me, but I also don’t run around yelling and screaming (much — hey, I’m Italian!). Some people will think of me as the crazy lady but really don’t care. I simply hope that others will remember that I behave the way I do because I care about myself, my work, my people, or whatever the issue is at hand. It’s in expressing some emotion that I am (and I think most women are) most comfortable demonstrating my commitment to my work, by showing how much I care about what I do. An unemotional response might help a man better understand my point, but wouldn’t be an authentic expression of myself.
To those that know me and work with me, I hope the above is either already apparent to you or is now clear. To everyone, here’s what I ask of you: The next time you encounter a “nice girl”, ask her if she’s being true to herself by always being so nice. And when you butt heads with an “angry woman”, acknowledge her commitment to the work and doing what is right. Encourage people be themselves, to be authentic. I bet that you’ll find that you can then do the same, and everyone will be all the happier for it.
Posted May 23, 2007 at 10:30 AM | Tagged as: Business, Just Sayin, Work | Just 1 Comment
Robert Scoble alerted readers to Jeff Barr’s post about Google recruiting. I had to laugh out loud here, because I’ve also been subject to some strange Google recruiting crap myself.
Most recently, I got an e-mail from a Google recruiter (who clearly did look at my Web site, because she commented on the pink-ness of my blog) with regards to a technical solutions engineer position. The first thing that struck me as odd is that, if you actually read my resume, you’ll learn that I’ve been in management positions for a while… so why would I be interested in an engineering position? The next oddity was the requirement that I complete a self-evaluation before discussions could proceed. Uh-huh. No thanks.
Of course, when I got that e-mail I was laughing pretty hard, because in the many years I’ve attended the Grace Hopper Celebration I’ve talked to Google folks many times about job opportunities there — and was basically told again and again that “Google doesn’t recruit Web developers because that’s not important to [their] business”. Whatever.
I have some friends that have gone to Google, but honestly, the more I learn about them, the more suspicious I am of them. I feel like they’re one giant social engineering experiment, and we’re all their guinea pigs.
Posted May 10, 2007 at 11:21 AM | Tagged as: Business, Women! | Comments Off
According to the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business and Loyola University, as reported in the April 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review, women who make it into senior management roles in Fortune 1,000 companies get there faster than men.
Though nearly half of Fortune 1,000 firms still have no female executive officers, those that do seem to be aggressively hiring and promoting them into the top ranks. As the chart shows, a much larger percentage of Fortune 1,000 women have made it to executive officer positions in their thirties, forties, and fifties than have men their age. What’s more, these women achieved their executive positions at a younger average age than the men did (46.7 versus 51.1) and have less tenure on average than men in their current positions (2.6 years versus 3.5 years).
Check out the chart, too: Younger Women at the Top.
Posted January 4, 2007 at 2:46 AM | Tagged as: Business, Women! | Just 1 Comment
Via a friend at the Johnson School at Cornell…
Do you wonder why there are not more women in business school and in business professions? Please help us spread the word about Camp $tart-Up.
Camp $tart-Up
- Teaches young women 13-19 about business skills and professions in business in a week-long summer program
- Differentiates the Johnson School: the only top business school reaching out to women at a younger age, to increase the number of female business school applicants
- Provides an opportunity for sponsors and donors to differentiate themselves from their competitors in the eyes of young women, future leaders, other sponsors and donors and both the Cornell and Johnson School communities
About Camp $tart-Up
Camp $tart-Up is a week-long business and leadership training program in Ithaca, June 23-30, 2007, to expose young women aged 13-19 to business. During the program, campers learn about marketing, operations, finance, planning, research, technology and entrepreneurship.
Camp $tart-Up is part of a larger initiative at the Johnson School to increase the number of women interested in applying to business school, by building business and leadership skills in young women.
Sound like something you care about? You can learn more or complete an application on the Camp $tart-Up website.
