My Professional Blog

Out of the blue yesterday, I received a request to take down a testimonial on my “hire me” site that I had received from a colleague from a past employer.  There was some question about the testimonial being a violation of that company’s policies on employee references.

As I had done on every testimonial, I cited their current company and the company where I worked with them.  These citations give the quote context and are helpful to the reader.  When I collect a quotation, I always ask how someone wants to be cited and give them the opportunity to differ from my normal method.  I even let them know when its been posted to the website.

However, in this case, the citation ran afoul of the company policy which forbids any employee from giving a reference to a past employee.

When I first got the takedown email, I was stunned and thought that they must have misunderstood the policy.  It was a positive comment, of course, and I felt like it was good for both the company and me to have positivity out there.  I had even wondered about freedom of speech issues — surely my colleague was entitled to express an individual opinion.  But alas, I took the citation down so that the person’s opinion is not blurred with the company’s opinion.

But it made me wonder if the citation really blurs the issue.  It was a personal opinion, not a corporate endorsement, otherwise I would cite the company alone.  In the end, I respect everyone’s policies and I definitely want to ensure that my past colleagues are not disadvantaged by saying something nice about me.  I will just be a lot more careful in the future, I had no idea that anyone would ever have a problem with this.

I read somewhere that Bill Gates retreats for a few weeks to read whitepapers and books in order to strategize for the future.  I know there are fewer Bill Gates fans out there these days, but idea has definite merit.  So as I embark on another vacation, I usually spend a couple of weeks trying to decide what readings I’m going to take along with me.  Of course, I never work through every book I take, I just want to have the variety around me just in case I stall on a book or just am in a different mood on a particular day.

So what am I taking this year?  In no particular order:

• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
• Mavericks at Work by William C. Taylor and Polly G. LaBarre
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
• Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg

You’ll note that none of these books is technical in nature — well, you could make a case for Dreaming in Code, but its certainly a different sort of book about technology.  I get a full dose of technology during the other 50 weeks of the year.  I treat these two weeks as an opportunity to read about business strategy, marketing, innovation, or human behavior.

So why this mix of books.  Made to Stick is about the science of memorable ideas and appears to be incredibly well-written.  I am guessing I’ll power through this book and maybe even complete it on the plane.  Who among us does not need to know how to sell their ideas?  You need this skill every day, though admittedly some ideas are bigger and deserve more attention in their craftsmanship.

I have already read over half of Mavericks at Work, so this one will get finished fast as well.  I enjoy reading about creativity in the workplace.  If you’ve been in a culture where you feel somewhat suppressed, reading a book like this gives you hope and inspiration for the future.  I’m particularly enjoying the sections that talk about Southwest Airlines since they are a local company.  Their culture seems to be remarkable.

Wikinomics and The Wisdom of Crowds are two books that center are on group behavior in the online and offline worlds.  Though the perspectives are different, I’m very interested to read about each.  I’m reading these two for insight into the growing popularity for social websites.  And who knows, maybe I have an idea rolling around in my head that needs to be nourished.

And finally, Dreaming in Code.  This looks like an interesting book, though I can see myself stalling out on it as it might remind me too much of the other 50 weeks in my life.  I’m not sure when I’ll start this one, but it will get read at some point.  At any rate, I would really like to see what others’ experiences are.

Not making the trip is Release It which is a book about properly architecting systems for their life in a production environment.  You say that every system eventually goes to production, eh?  This would be true, but you’d be surprised how little thought goes into the post-development landscape.  I have read the first part of this book and many of the anecdotes are ringing very true and familiar.  But of course, as I say that, don’t think that I design crappy systems.  All I can say is that sometimes constraints beyond your control lead you down a sub-optimal path.  The trick is to minimize risks in the face of the constraints you will surely have.  Obviously, this book doesn’t make the trip because this is the life I lead outside of Think Weeks.

To the uninitiated, RIF means reduction in force.

On February 15th, Nokia announced that they would be reducing staff in their IT organization.  A total of 90 people globally were said to affected.  Finland was to be affected first, then the folks Stateside.  Apparently, there are complicated labor laws in Europe and so it took them a while to get to us in the States.

We had received little information until finally meeting invitations were received by all.  In those meetings you were to be told if you were staying or going.  I was told today that I was going.

I was prepared for this news, but still surprised.  In January, I received my best review yet, though all my reviews have always been better than average.  In addition, I’m on a team that already is short-handed and serves a business with aggressive goals.  I’m involved in two high-priority initiatives targeted for June 30th deployment.  The funny thing is, we just yesterday met to begin to explore who might back me up while I’m gone on my upcoming vacation.  In the end, no one really had the time, but we decided we’d explore it as the time grew closer.  So to me, this decision does not appear to be in harmony with business needs and competencies.  I am sure there will be some interesting fallout once our business partners learn that their goals may be affected by these cuts.

Quite frankly, this is a change for me that has been a long time coming, and though this is not necessarily on my terms, I am looking forward to what’s next.  I will make that the subject of some future blog entry as I figure it out.

Its fair to say that Nokia has some challenges ahead to right their ship.  Many of the points that I made in my Why IT Sucks post were inspired by some of my recent experiences there.  Based upon the feedback inspired by the Reddit readership who visited the entry, my experiences there are not unrepresentative of the industry as a whole.  But anyway, they really need to consider their management approach in both their business and technical areas.  We rarely saw our line or organizational management wandering the aisles or asking questions.  There are opportunities for them to get to know “the factory”, improve it, and be better equipped to manage and sell its services.  Without knowing its people or processes, its inevitable that each may go astray.

On the bright side, while at Nokia, I was able to supplement my Java skills and to be a part of bringing complex systems into being.  We introduced the Spring Framework to the company as well as other frameworks like the Acegi Framework for Security.  Not only did we introduce it, we built a federation of 20+ web apps that are happily deployed on a WebLogic Platform, but none of these apps use session beans or entity beans.  We introduced lightweight J2EE into the company successfully and we did so based upon our own initiative.  This is to say that we found the framework, we learned it without any formal training, and we deployed it successfully.  This is quite a feather in our caps.

I did introduce Ruby and Rails where I could, but quite honestly it just doesn’t appear to be taking hold.  Nokia is really a Java shop and they announced recently a desire to move to LAMP architectures.  I don’t disagree with LAMP architectures, but I think Ruby and Rails would enable cleaner application architectures to evolve.  I don’t think this was even considered because the idea of LAMP architectures came from Finland and there doesn’t appear to be too much awareness of Rails in Finland.  Apparently Jarkko isn’t spreading the word well enough. :)

To be fair to Nokia, they have at least been pretty fair with the termination process.  Some companies put you out on the street with little notice and with little regard to your financial situation.  Nokia has defined a transition period, where I will transition whatever I know and whatever I am involved in, followed by another period where I am not required to be onsite or carry any responsibilities.  The point of this period is to look for employment.  Thereafter, there is a lump sum severance which is reasonable given my 5-year tenure.  Suffice it to say, this is the best I’ve been treated and I am thankful.

So with that, its on to what’s next and I’m looking forward to the ride!

No, this isn’t a sports-related post on my professional blog.  Well, okay, maybe it is sort of.  Its just that sports analogies come easy to me since sports is one of my passions.

While the above post title refers to the long-languishing baseball team from my neck of the woods, this post is actually inspired by a retirement in the hockey world.  Joe Nieuwendyk retired today.  He’s one of my heroes from the 1999 Stanley Cup Championship run and beyond that an all-around great guy.

Besides being a part of a championship team, he always seemed to be the guy who scored the great goal…or the memorable goal.  I’ll never forget his game-winning goal in triple overtime in the first round in the 1999 series against a physical Edmonton team.  He had a joyous celebration jump afterwards which I can still conjure up almost exactly in mind.

But to the point.  Joe is a guy who can look back on his career and savor the memories.  He has played for winning teams and has won a championship.  Any of the Texas Rangers?  Not so much.  When you hang ‘em up, you want to be able to look back and have felt like you achieved or made a difference.

So as I heard of this retirement today, my thoughts soon focused on my own career.  Right now, I feel like I’m playing for the Rangers.  Underachieving.  Losing.  Not growing.  Retirement is still 20+ years away (if I’m lucky).  Given that, I still have time to play for a winning team and to stand out enough to maybe be remembered.  But that won’t happen defending the status quo.  I need to make something happen.

Maybe you feel the same way.  Here’s hoping we find a way to knock one (or more) outta the park…

I’m in the processing of relaunching my personal website in plain view here. I say plain view because its up under a temporary design and parts of it are not up at all. But since the address is known, I didn’t want to stay down for too long.

If you are one of my current readers, you are probably looking for my “life” blog. I’ve relocated that content under http://life.billeisenhauer.com. Over there, you’ll get my life-oriented posts. Over here, you’ll get my business and professional posts. As such, you can subscribe to whichever channel interests you. Hopefully that’s one or both!

This makeover is prompted by a number of factors. I’ve been hosting my blog over at Typepad for quite a while now. Meanwhile, I’ve been paying for hosting for a few other things that I do. Its only been from laziness that I haven’t hosted my own blog(s). And so now that’s been accomplished.

My other motivation was to get a bit more personal branding out there. Perhaps a few more technical posts or longer articles now and then. And definitely, I’d like to have my resume out there to remind me of where I want to go with my career.

As I mentioned, this is all up under a temporary design. I modified a WordPress theme, but intend to make my own sometime soon. In the meantime, I’ll make this one work even if there are areas that I’m not quite ecstatic with.

The site tools are Wordpress, Feedburner, Google Analytics, and Ruby on Rails. The store is an integration with Amazon.com.