Fire Drills

I've never worked in a really big building, a building with thousands of people. That's why I suppose I've never experienced fire drills like the ones we have at Law R Us.

Fire drills are done by floors and are spread out over a day or two. If the alarm goes off on the floor you're currently on, even if you're just standing in line for coffee, you have to go outside. Security does a sweep to make sure people evacuate the building.

Once you're outside you stand around until the security guys let you back in. The drills are in the spring and fall so it's not too punishing but I would have liked to have my coat today. If you're outside for any other reason (e.g., coming back from lunch), you have to wait outside until the fire drill people are allowed back in.

It's possible to have to go outside for multiple fire drills. You may be caught in a fire drill when you're at your desk on the first floor in the morning, then another an hour later while you're in a meeting on the fourth floor, then another two hours later while you're talking to someone on the third floor. There are people that claim that has happened to them many times over the years.

Of course there's also the urge to cheat. I was on the fourth floor in a class today when the fire alarm went off. We started down the stairs and I'm pretty sure I saw one of my classmates quickly go through the door to the third floor which already had it's fire drill.

There's a potentially funny situation when the basement evacuates--there are shower rooms down there. I was using one of those shower rooms to change into my soccer kit on Wednesday when I saw a sign that said "Fire Drill on this level, Thursday at 8:15. You will have to evacuate the building!" Okay, no problem for the drill but if there was a real fire...

That reminds me of the 911 instructions. We call an internal emergency number so our security people can call 911, then meet the ambulance/firefighters at the main entrance so they can direct them to the exact area where there's a problem. There are five or six buildings and lots of doors so I suppose it makes sense.

Widgets Update

Last weekend I had a chance to talk with some of my favorite Widgeteers.

What's up with Widgets? Well there's been a major reorganization, the first in probably five or six years. Some of the changes, like consolidating programming under technology, has been talked about (quietly) for a long time. There's a new PMO that's staffed with a crew of people that in the past few years has had the thankless task of managing projects that don't have defined requirements or reasonable deadlines--will there be enough training and recognition of process within management to make it work? There's also the back to the future idea of having partner coordinators that manage the relationships with the customers (that's what Producers were originally supposed to do). There's also a building move for the tech folks which could be good, although I hear the new cubes are the short fabric kind, not the designer wooden deskticles left over from the internet boom.

There are some major initiatives from The Network Who Shall Not Be Named that sound like they've become little mini-organizations within the company. The Network, never the company to prioritize, is still demanding everything/anything they want NOW and Widget's management still tells everyone that doing what The Network wants is crucial to the company's future. I wonder if that's going to make my shares in the company more valuable (they're value-less right now).

When I talk to people I hear that familiar Widgets ambivalence--they usually like what they do and are proud of their accomplishments but dislike that fact that they feel unappreciated. A year ago management made appreciative noises and threw around some cash when they feared everyone would quit before The Games but the flow of money (and kind words?) has apparently dried up.

Hmmm, there must be another way to show appreciation. How about a picnic away from the building and an accompanying budget for small celebrations in other places? Small gifts and prizes? An awards program which gives out gift certificates? Peer awards? Web geek of the month awards? If someone over there needs ideas on employee appreciation I'll check out some books on the subject from my company library for them.

Well, I could write more but I won't. I'm close enough to Widgets to know a lot but far enough away to not have all the context I'd need for a good critique of what's going on. All I can say is good luck to all of you that are sticking it out there!

NEXT: My first project release.

My First Overtime

Last weekend, after almost eleven months on the job, I worked more than forty hours for the first time. Working extra hours on a regular basis was one of the things that drove me crazy at Widgets so I've enjoyed working eight and leaving. At the beginning of the year, however, my manager informed the leads in our group (I'm a lead but don't have anyone reporting to me) that he would appreciate it if we would all volunteer to be the test lead during one of the monthly releases of our flagship software, Gold-Law. He then tried the Jeddi-mind-trick on me to get me to volunteer. I volunteered anyway.

The actual go-live period for the release is early Saturday morning so a test lead and a tester come in at 8 a.m. and run through a suite of tests until the "all clear" is given. Most of the tests are automated so you start them off and see if anything breaks. The test lead is responsible for communicating our group's status and finding out what's going on in the other groups that are testing that day. On an easy release, everyone is there for four hours and goes home. On a difficult release, there may be a number of fixes which require several rounds of testing. Everything needs to be working perfectly (or as good as it was) by Monday morning.

I don't have much to do with the mechanics of testing software--my job is to make sure people have a test plan and actually do the testing. If someone asked me what the test suite actually tests, I couldn't give a good answer (the software, right?).

Luckily, since this was my first release weekend so I was just shadowing. We (me, another lead, and a very experienced tester) spent the morning in the test lab down the hall from my cubicle. I spent most of the time manually testing some new features, actually getting the correct results. There was free Sunny D (yuk) and lots of doughnuts (which I don't eat).

At noon we announced that everything was good in our tests. Unfortunately, there were some "customer facing" issues that required fixes which would not be ready until later in the day. Since I was the shadower I was released but the tester for our group wound up working a few hours late on Saturday night and again early Sunday. Normal stuff for Widgets but unusual for Laws R' Us although there are a lot of release horror stories.

Hopefully I won't do this again for at least a year.

NEXT: Widgets Update!

Spaced Out Presentation

So I went to one of my usual project manager meetings with my manager yesterday and no one else has shown up. He looked at me and said "We need to have this meeting because we HAVE to talk about this presentation now. You have to give it to the Project Management Office tomorrow afternoon."

Sirens go off in my head. When did I....oh shit, last week I said I would take the lead on a meeting. But I thought it was a meeting to talk about the presentation. I was stuck.

And I wasn't feeling too good--I think it's a sinus infection that's also messed up the rest of my systems. I had that almost-out-of-your-body spaciness that makes thinking or talking or anything else difficult.

So we talked about the two year old .ppt I was going to work from. There were things to add, language to clean up, and I had to collect a number of sample documents and make a training package.

I spent the afternoon working on the .ppt instead of doing some last minutes things on my project that's launching next week. I was sort of done when I left last night.

I came in today even spacier. I was so spacey that I went to a meeting I run without a pen or pencil. I didn't write anything down and certainly forgot everything before I got out the door.

I showed my manager the .ppt early in the afternoon. He said it was fine. I told him how spaced I was and he said "Well how are you going to do the presentation?" He suggested a lot of caffeine. But I told him I knew what to do...Dew.

(Does anyone else remember when Mountain Dew was marketed as a "country" drink--Yahoo! Mountain Dew?!)

I felt okay at show time. There was a poor turnout at the meeting (although all the senior PMs came) so it was very informal. My peers who were there thought it went well.

When I got back to my work area, I sat down and stared at my computer for thirty minutes until I could leave. Yay! Survived again.

Award Programs

The new award programs were announced at my job. There are three levels.

The first is (let's name it Olympic style) bronze. We've had this level for a while. Anyone can reward anyone else for something good they did, giving them a gift certificate-the kind that you can use in a lot of different places. It's not big dollars but it's a really nice thing to do. I've given one out to a tester that helped me and all the other testers to do a better job on a project.

The next level is silver. You get nominated for this, your accomplishment getting reviewed at a fairly high level in our technology organization. The reward is big, we're talking thousands of dollars. The idea is that a lot of these will be given away, not one. Sure cash gets taxed but it's still enough money to pay off some bills or take a short trip.

I don't know how many gold awards they will give away but it's major dollars. This probably has to go to the VP level but it's enough for a real vacation.

We still have the recognition cards that you give to someone when they help you out. There's no money right away but every six months there's a drawing for a gift certificate from the pool of people that gave cards and one from the card recipients.

Also, every six months a number of people are recognized at the tech organization meeting. Anyone can send a nomination to an employee committee that reviews the nominations and chooses six or seven winners. There's usually a project team or two that wins.

Of course there are Happy Hours for software releases--if you can get the software released. I have one project that's had release delayed four times (for quality reasons) and we've about given up on that party. But I've got a release on Saturday!!! Party (I hope)!!!

[Name Deleted]: Stop writing about Internet Broadcasting.

That was the comment someone made to my last entry on Widgets and mentoring at my new job. They put my first and last names at the beginning but neglected to give their name. C'mon, tell me who you are and why it makes a difference what I write.

(BTW, I deleted the comment. If the person wants to sign a comment with both names they can use both of mine.)

Why do I continue to write about Widgets, a place I left almost a year ago?

1) I have many friends there, some of which I see or talk to on a regular basis. They tell me interesting things and sometimes I want to comment on those things. It's a free country...well, mostly...for now.

2) I am a major Widgets stockholder...well, a minor stockholder...okay, I've got a few shares so I'm interested in what happens there. Like, what's the mission of the company these days and how will it lead to growth of the value of my shares (which I think are actually worthless)? How are operations being aligned to more adequately handle the constant-urgent needs of the customers? Are employees being compensated fairly and motivated to increase their productivity through incentive schemes? Are they being trained to handle their current jobs and their next career opportunity?

3) I like writing about Widgets as a example of a workplace with great potential for good because of the quality of the people.

4) Some of the many Widgets expatriates read my blog for company news. I can't let those lucky folks down.

Note that I also write about Not Big Blue, my former workplace that completed yet another major round of layoffs this spring/summer. A new employee in my current group just came from there and said morale is very, very bad. That's what happens to a major computer company that ignores the Internet.

I could go back further but my short term contracts and freelance jobs aren't that interesting. I could reach back to the Going Postal Service but no one can relate to that except for the six or seven hundred thousand people who move the mail.

Retirement

Am I announcing my retirement? I wish. No, I watched the PBS Frontline show on Retirement streamed it from their web site and it was scary. It was especially scary for me--someone who didn't start saving for retirement until ten years ago and will supposedly retire in ten to twelve years.

The most important point the show made was that 401Ks work well if you save 15% of your salary for thirty years, you make a mid-middle to upper-middle class income and you invest the money in a mostly intelligent way. Everyone else will come up short at retirement and basically work until they die so they can maintain a middle class life style and pay for health insurance and medications.

That means that a large percentage of the baby boomer generation will never retire. There'll be grey haired people driving the buses and making capacinos (that's what I'm applying for) and otherwise holding onto jobs that younger people need. Oh and we'll be pissed that we're stuck working like that.

Some states are actually opening pensions back up because they see 401Ks aren't working for their employees but company pensions are disappearing because 401Ks are cheap for the company. My company just closed off the pension to new employees so they only get the 401K. I have both but my confidence in a pension plan that doesn't have new employees joining it is pretty low. Maybe I'll get a lump sum payment at some point.

I also have a very small pension from Not Big Blue. That'll be enough to pay my bus fare to the coffee shop where I work. The odds of that pension surviving are about the same as the odds that the Greenland ice sheet willincrease in size next year.

What about Social Security? I trust that the politicians of both parties will work together to destory Social Security before even I can get anything out of it, probably spending the money in a controversial war against you fill this in. When Social Security fails the number of poor elderly people will be staggering but they are the easiest segment of the population to ignore so it won't be a problem for the policitians, just the children of those poor people. Sorry kids.

If you're rich or inherit money I suppose you don't care about this but everyone else better pay attention. Make a plan to save money, stay as debt free as you can, save a lot in your 401K or Roth IRAs.

Oh yeah, you also need to hope the brilliant people that make our laws don't change the retirement laws again and make it even harder to retire.