Technorati Blogger Drivel

Dear Technorati,

Stop emailing me random requests to blog for your network. I respect what Technorati does. It's a decent blog aggregator. It does a good job at separating "real" human blogs from bot blogs and links to some interesting stuff. I understand you want your own content so you can make money off of that. That's all fine and good. If you sent me an email asking me to write about something I have a proven skill with and maybe a decent following to show for I would completely understand.

But by your standards my blog's "authority" is not so fantastic. You've also asked me to write about autos which was probably the best guess but still not something I've written about more than a dozen times. Then you decided to ask me to write about books, business, and amusingly enough travel. I have a constantly fluctuating authority level in those topics and pretty much never travel. This leads me to believe you are sending me spam emails.

Which is pretty crazy because otherwise I'd say the request is legitimately from you. Why would a high profile site need to send generically generated emails to random people in the blogging world? Upon visiting your about page I also discover that you all have emails either from gmail, cox, and scarily enough yahoo. Even gmail is pretty unprofessional coming from someone supposedly employed at a business. Also some of your twitter handles are neither your name nor say anything about who you are. That's pretty crazy. Someone too busy to go to the Web 2.0 seminar?

So feel free to invite me to blog for your site in the future. But please ask me to write about something I'm already doing a kickass job at. When I'm way down in your rankings and don't even have an authority level on a topic you ask me to "professionally" blog about it just makes me question you and your business model.

Flashpoint

When did it all start to fall into place professionally? That's a paraphrase of a question Female Science Professor asked a few months ago on her blog. Or specifically in her case, when did most people start taking you seriously (as a science professor)? I am not and never have been a member of the communist party or a science professor. But I did wonder at what point my career would start to feel more solid. When I would feel like I was being pulled up not dragging my broken body up and clawing my way past obstacles and attacks?

I still wouldn't say I've achieved some magical level of respect. When I started working in a technical field I got treated very differently from my clerical days. And when I first started getting mistaken for an engineer (though I wasn't one at the time) that was a big boost to my confidence.

I'm an ambitious person. I'm not going to be a shrinking violet or hide that under a bushel(which apparently some yahoo named Matt originally coined in something called The Bible, who knew). I mean look at this freaking mandarin fish, do you think he gives a @#$ about what you think?

He doesn't. But moving up can be tricky. I've had to employ an almost reverse psychology method of maneuvering the corporate world. Sound like you are too interested in extra responsibility and a couple of things can happen:

1. Your immediate supervisor/lead will feel threatened and try to hold you down.
2. People will think you are an arrogant ass, not want to work with you, and management will think you are demanding.

So I've had to tread water carefully (boy is this post getting fishy with its analogies). But it seems to be working. I've had to focus on projects and pretend like I'm not interested in their promotion potential, visibility, or in any credit I might receive for doing the work (monetary or just the thanks and positive feedback that I think all employees appreciate from their superiors). It seems to be working. If I look glum when they suggest me as a backup, I pretend I am so overloaded and treat it as just another onerous task, the more they seem to make me want to do these things. 

I think managers must have some higher level of sadism than ordinary people. Appear too eager for something and they won't give it to you. Only when you grudgingly agree to take it on as a humble and hardworking employee do they suddenly see leadership potential. So nothing yet, but I seem to be having some initial success gaming the system. Which of course means I'm going to be just like them some day: unrepentant, self absorbed, narcissistic, sadistic asshole. So not much will change really.

Business Friends

If you're in my line of work you deal with a lot of people at geographically disparate locations and on the phone. Sometimes you're on calls with these people numerous times a week and sending emails back and forth. Sometimes you get rather friendly with them (especially if they're your customer and you're sort of obligated to be nice and polite).

Sometimes I get an overly friendly note in response that if taken on its own sure it makes it look like we are pals. But these people haven't even seen me! It's sort of amusing to think how friendly you can get before you see a person. I'm always a little taken aback. It's like hey I could be Jabba the Hutt for all you know. And I don't just mean large with a penchant for eating live food, but also diabolical and vengeful as well. I'm just sayin'.

Awesome Jabba the Hutt birthday cake courtesy here.

Future of Engineers

Tom Gillis writes a post on his blog on Forbes today called The End of the Engineer. It's sort of like reverse STEM recruiting we typically see everywhere else. Which would be refreshing if it wasn't so ignorant. He first posits that post industrial revolution the need for better machines and manufacturing has been outsourced (not going to argue manufacturing has been outsourced). Then he talks about how the slight differences in performance that engineers generally strive for are no longer as crucial. He cites Apple as moving away from the engineering model towards one of marketing and customer understanding. Saying instead that that is what makes Apple successful.

 

He may be right that incremental improvements no longer please consumers. But I think that's always been the case. I think music industry people were surprised when MP3s gained such popularity. Their quality was a lot lower than CDs. However their portability and ease of use with a variety of devices was what had the mass appeal. And the same with cell phones and smart phones. We use them for convenience not because the sound quality is fantastic (anyone remember the old hear a pin drop Sprint commercials?) Now industry executives are surprised that the mainstream way to watch music videos is YouTube. Watch what you want when you want at your own convenience and for free. That's what consumers want rather than the high quality that executives might have assumed consumers would always be demanding. However, these incremental changes are still appreciated when your smartphone or your LCD TV gets slimmer or the next model of car gets a little lighter and a little better fuel economy.

 

So none of this means engineering is no longer crucial. He mentions the hoardes of engineering graduates from India and China. But for now, whether its societal or level of education, these high numbers have not meant Chinese and Indian companies are always able to compete with equal fervor with western companies. Part of Apple's success is certainly marketing based. But a lot of it is a core product that required a lot of fantastic engineering. And just because Chinese companies have no qualms about stealing IP and churning out cheaper products later doesn't mean they actually have the independent engineering knowledge to make another Apple. And as the sole commenter on his blog alludes to, not every American company that relies on engineering talent is a consumer electronics company.

 

True we're no longer innovating as much in agricultural machines, but we are in power generation plants, offshore drilling, mining applications, solar and wind energy, automotive design, aerospace, weapons, military technology and medical and biomedical breakthroughs. I think Mr. Gillis has really been sheltered too long in the bubble that is Silicon Valley. Apparently he is a VP at Cisco and his Forbes profile includes such excellent buzz words as "social networking", "new security paradigm", "leverage today's tools", "strategic" and he goes on to claim credit for making Cisco strong in the security market. I hope none of the engineers on his team who helped him position Cisco as a strong security leader read this article and realize their head honcho doesn't appreciate their technological contributions. For all his flattery of Steve Jobs and Apple one can only assume he's trying to get a job there. I hope Cisco recognizes this and lets him go so he can make his move. If I want marketing and social media BS I'll go talk about it on Twitter. If I want a company that makes reliable hardware and services because I know they have a good engineering core I will continue to go to companies like Cisco. When a VP doesn't see what's right beneath his nose he doesn't deserve the job.

 

Gillis goes on to recommend that people get Liberal Arts degrees and that he will give that advice to his own children. I sincerely hope he's kidding. As a highly paid executive I'm sure he'd have no problems placing his children with jobs after they get their Art History or Communications BA but he's not only living within the soft bubble of Silicon Valley then he's living within the privileged bubble of upper class if he thinks liberal arts degrees are a viable path to a solid middle class lifestyle. Engineering isn't as respected as it used to be (as evidenced by this article) but I wouldn't tell an intelligent young person who had strong math or science skills not to major in it any sooner than I'd suggest a broad liberal arts degree is a good path either. People should follow their passions certainly as success tends to be elusive no matter what path you take. But underestimating the need for some percentage of the population to be engineers is complete ignorance. Just because we aren't always putting these minds to the best use is a limitation of our policies and a focus on short term growth. If we were thinking Apollo Program big again we'd be able to achieve things way beyond what Gillis could imagine. And we'll need engineers to get us there.

How the party started

Whenever you see a news or documentary clip that talks about the great depression they always show pictures of flappers and 1920s parties. So much of the financial bubble that led to the 1929 stock market crash we seem to portray as a wild party leading up to it.

I can't wait to see how the exuberance leading up to the 2008 recession is graphically depicted. I hope to see photos of those wild parties of the early 2000s.

Lines of Communication

This being more than a decade into a new century you'd think we'd have our jet packs and flying cars already. Or more importantly perhaps, weren't we all supposed to be working from home by now?

 

Telecommuting was supposed to be the future. And I see why corporate America doesn't switch over to that model (both for good and bad reasons). But one of the many drawbacks of working in an office together has to be the tendency to share news and information via word of mouth. This is good for informal chatter or tentative things you can't commit to official writing yet. But it also allows the important folks to procrastinate on making decisions. They can verbally tell a subordinate to go in one direction, and not have to take blame for switching course a few weeks or days or hours later.

 

It also means there's a plethora of emails that go unanswered. Both because people are slacking and not responding, but also because the official response that can be done in email becomes a lot more serious. It's the new memo or fax of today and while it doesn't always have to be formalized you know that, like what goes out on the internet, it will be there forever. Your words will be around and you will have to commit to what you wrote about or write a retraction email, the great shame giver.

 

But in my case it means waiting for direction and not getting it because once it's in writing it goes. And the higher ups may have their reasons for delaying, but it can be frustrating when you're dealing with an internal or external customer that expects an answer and you have to tell them your superiors are just sitting around ruminating on it rather than sending a quick yay or nay via email.

Workplace Politics and the Engineer

People in general have a tendency to over estimate their own skill level in comparison to their peers. I am guilty of this, likely having seen myself as an "above average" employee since the minute I started working. All this despite struggling with impostor syndrome where I am prone to doubts and being found out as a fraud not as capable as I'm pretending to be.

 

So this was kind of in the back of my head when I read this article from Evil HRLady at BNET about whether you should dispute a performance review. The employee was marked average on everything, and felt they should be above average on some things and below on others. Evil HRLady's response seemed practical and correct:

 

 

Problem:  You are, actually, pretty average. Ouch.  Sorry.  But average is average and if you're better in some areas (as you said) and worse in others (as you said) that is going to average out to be, well average.

 

 

Sounds pretty correct. Then the original poster piped up in the comments and tried to stress that they were in fact above average. They pointed out all the things they do (working long hours, helping customers, sorting sections that had been abandoned, volunteering and covering for other employees). This got me to thinking. Their employer doesn't care about all these things. Does an employer really care about your "effort"? Maybe if you're a grad student, beyond that your boss wants to see output, results, to-do lists knocked off. They don't care that you "help" or "share" with your coworkers. It's a known fact that those who are good at working with others and training new employees are rarely promoted.

 

I suspect parallels in academia would be a professor who is an especially good teacher for which they get no credit for. Their research maybe places them at "average" at their university, and in their eyes exceptional teaching in addition to average research makes them above average.

 

I think the key is in order to not kill ourselves at work is make sure you're focusing on what's actually important to your boss. Mine likes to see a lot of written output even when the actual problem is not solved. Tracking progress, tasks and investigations look good to who he has to show his numbers to. Theoretically if you make your boss look good, they will value you. They may take credit for some of your actions (though more often in my opinion even a good employee doesn't always realize the value of direction and ideas from superiors that add to their projects). But in the end if you can separate what you think makes you an "above average" employee with what's important to those doing your review you can probably save yourself a lot of angst and heart burn focusing on things you might think matter but your organization doesn't actually value.

Standardized Tests & Cabezones

I can feel the sweaty rage across the cafeteria, where I'm drinking coffee. He hasn't seen me—too busy yelling. His game face is on, and his team is losing. Coach's battle voice pollutes the air. His words slap, bruise and punch in ways you can't see, but will keep me up all night.

"You faaaaaiiiiiled!" He keeps saying it.

The former coach is blaming the students for their poor grades. Some are stupified with shame, smiling, pretending this is cool. They are too old to melt into nothingness and too young to give him the finger.

This is just a snippet from a brilliant article in the Texas Observer on The Testing Machine: or Texas's TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) the standardized test a school is preparing for. The author is Bárbara Renaud González sent from the local university to observe a local public middle school in its effort to prepare for standardized testing that will determine whether it falls into the "low performing" category, lose funding, and possibly lose jobs of teachers and administrators as a result. There are no heroes in this story.

 

I started to post quotes but you'll just have to go read it, it's that good and I'd end up linking the whole darn article. No seriously why are you still here, click the link, go read the article!

Synergistic Cross-disciplinary Trending

I'm inspired. Fluxor wrote a humorous post on some buzz words he heard around the workplace. If you're looking for more than fluff, go over to Engineer Blogs where I talk about subcontracting for dummies or the art of working with your company's vendors on custom products.

 

In the meantime, the managerialistic my life becomes the more I get involved in this. And even find myself forced to use the same phrases I can't stand in my email correspondence. So here's some crap I get tired of using (and yet, don't know the workaround):

 

-Get on the same page

-Touch bases with that person

-Follow-up on that or bird-dog that

-Lines of communication

-We need to have a presence there

-Go make nice with them

-Rally the troops

-We need to massage the message

-I'd like to close that one out

 

Or...

-Are we reading now?

-Oh now we're playing baseball?

-Like that has ever helped do anything but piss someone off, not to mention who the heck in corporate america even knows what a bird dog is?

-Must be a less cheesy way of saying this

-Pointless postering

-Because we're four now?

-Didn't know white collar workers were exactly like battle hardened soldiers

-Shine the shit

-Well we'd all like to clear off our "to-do" lists so yeah, you don't need to tell me

 

Learn enough phrases and you don't need expertise, you'll fit right in.

Kissing Up to the Boss

There was a segment on Marketplace Money last week on the art of sucking up. They remind you to be subtle and give three basic tactics:

1. Phrase your compliment as asking for advice and guidance
2. Pretend to disagree at first before coming around to their point of view, supposedly this will come off as more genuine
3. Pass compliments through a third party

Is it true that the ass-kissers really do move up more? Probably, though it's disappointing. I mean pure flattery probably isn't going to get you somewhere, but as someone in the segment put it, flattery lets someone know what qualities you value in them. It's almost a way of encouraging a certain kind of behavior, especially if it's done to subordinates or colleagues rather than to your boss.

 

One of the successes in the story when asked for a tip reminds the listener that often when someone gets made a boss they expect others to ingratiate themselves to him. Maybe that's what I tend to forget, that sometimes "the boss" wants you to at least pretend you're kissing up now just because he expects it from everyone. I've certainly seen it after promotion.

 

How about in your experience, does kissing-up help? What are your strategies for using flattery as a job aid?

Great kid, now don't get cocky

There's something to be said for getting more important and respected in your profession and at your work. You get noticed more, you notice people treat you with more respect and deference than they did before, you're a lot more high profile. There's good and bad to this, obviously the growing plague of more and more meetings and phone conferences being on the bad side. But sometimes you are cruising along like the cat who just ate the canary and someone turns on the vacuum cleaner.

 

Now you're a scared cat hiding in the corner. Your goofs and mistatements are a lot more high profile now too. You can't hide behind the "well I just work here" when you're supposed to be running a project. Or to quote Spiderman's uncle, with great power comes great responsibility.

 

And it's tough to take that slap in the face. To know that you, oh great rookie whom much is expected, can also fail and do wrong every now and then. It's a painful reminder of your own humanity. Or to quote from The Philadelphia Story, with the rich and mighty, always a little patience.

 

You can't let yourself blow up like a balloon just because you're a rising star. That balloon rubber is awfully thin material and punctures easily. You'll need a thick skin for when you get blamed for other people's mistakes as often as you get blamed for your own. I think it's easier getting yelled at for something you didn't do than for something you know you goofed on. Even if you think you didn't know any better at the time you keep telling yourself you should have known better. I had this same problem more than a year ago and I've apparently learned nothing since. I'm trying to tell myself that on the inside a little humility is a good thing. But on the outside, I need to put my shield up and be ready to take no prisoners.

Hello there old chap

How often do you use the phrase "good morning"? And how often do you use the phrases "good afternoon" or "good evening?" I say good morning or, alternatively, mornin' quite often. But good afternoon makes me feel like some old timey gentleman who's taking off his top hat and inviting you to tea and good evening makes me feel like that or like a Bond villain. Sure you might say these things on the phone occasionally, but how often do you say them in person? Discuss.

You Get Stronger

Heard this on the radio last week, NPR's Fresh Air and felt like it was powerful enough to reiterate. Terry Gross was interviewing columnist and author Dan Savage and his husband and author Terry Miller about their It Gets Better project and their book on the topic (transcript of the interview here).

 

To quote Terry Gross and give a background if you are unfamiliar:

The project is a collection of videos on their website and YouTube channel addressed to teenagers who are bullied because they are or are perceived as gay, lesbian, bi or transgendered. On the videos, people share their own stories of being bullied and then urge teens to hang in there because things will get better.

Savage and Miller founded the project after reading about two 15-year-olds who were bullied at school and then hanged themselves. Savage and Miller made the first video, in which they talked about how they were bullied in school and how their lives got better, much better. They found each other; they adopted a son.

When they launched the website, they were hoping to get 100 video submissions, but the website went viral, and before the end of the first week, they had 1,000 videos. Now they have a book version of their project, collecting some of the stories from their website. The book is titled "It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying and Creating a Life Worth Living."

Then Gross asked for their favorite ones and Savage described the following (emphasis mine):

One of my favorites is by a lesbian Latina poet in the Bronx named Gabrielle Rivera, who said - really contradicted the message in a powerful way. She writes: As a gay woman of color, I just want to let the youth know that it kind of doesn't get better.

All these straight, rich celebrities, I'm not even going to name them, they can tell you that it gets better because they've got money and people don't care what they do. They're coming from a good place and stuff, and I appreciate that.

But I'm going to be real because I live this life and I'm not rich and I'm brown, and I probably look like most of you. It doesn't get better, but what happens is this: You get stronger.

And I thought that was so tremendous when I watched Gabrielle Rivera's video because it's really the Latina, lesbian, Bronx way of saying it gets better: You get stronger.

I think that speaks to a lot of people and is such a universally awesome message. So wherever you are this week if you're having a tough time or know someone who is: You get stronger.

Priming and the justice system

You may have been wondering why it's been so quiet at Haus Tech lately and the answer is I was called in to do my civic duty as a juror. Due to being boring and having no strong opinions on anything they asked I was unfortunately selected to jury service. Four days later I feel I've aged by years. What began as the most boring multi-day episode of Cops ever ended as very angry and frustrated people arguing, patronizing each other, belittling and badgering the minority which was unfortunately where I found myself.

 

But before all that began I noticed how despite the admonition that an individual is innocent until proven guilty there's a lot going against that individual. The "defendant" doesn't sound particularly encouraging when he's up against "the people". The amount of authority we are willing to grant our police officers also seems boundless. Some of the other jurors felt that a police officer's opinion or viewpoint should be paramount and that because we were all "not on the ground" we shouldn't have an opinion contrary to that. Which of course made me ask the question of why we had a justice system at all if we were going to allow our police officers to be judge and jury as well as enforcer. Sympathizing with the cop or feeling that the cop should be vindicated in their actions led people to side against the defendant rather than be able to separate the two as a difference between an action taken on site or actually feeling a conviction was appropriate. I know I felt badgered and abused, and myself and another minority member had already withdrawn and were no longer able to articulate our viewpoints by the end of the discussion and I wonder how many times someone is convicted because the majority feel a police officer's word or opinion is law and use anger and insults to get the other side to submit to just have it over with. In the end we were a hung jury which I'm sure was a great disappointment to the majority who were surprised we could not come to conclusion by which they meant the minority didn't come around. They were able to see their viewpoint as "fact" whereas the opposing was just "opinion" and felt that because they were in the majority the burden of proof was on the minority rather than on them or the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Several of them opined how sad they were that there were people in this country who felt a police officer's word did not always have to be obeyed and felt we the minority were destroying the criminal justice system. I felt sad that they seemed to have forgotten what the purpose of a justice system was.

How to network without really trying

I went to a "technical talk" at another company in a related industry to mine last week. It was put on by the Society of Women Engineers and a local organization of Systems Engineers. I'll admit I had diverse motivations in attending this. The topic interested me, but honestly if I was 100% happy staying at MegaCorp I probably wouldn't have gone.

On the outside it looked much like my own company. Non-distinct white buildings with glass windows several stories high. Grass and other greenery around the perimeter, and the occasional benches and tables for employees taking their lunch. The lobby looked much like any lobby I've ever been in. Then I turn around and see a placard for Women's History Month. A variety of events were occurring, some with the company and some not. Let's just say that this sort of thing would not be tolerated at MegaCorp. Some dude would loudly ask when Dude History Month is and why we have all these "special" things for non-white dudes like himself. I mean, he never got an unfair hand up.

I was further surprised when I realized their women's bathroom had  "mother's room" attached. Or I am assuming, a lactation room or whatever you want to call it. I have no experience with motherhood but I probably signed something when I started at MegaCorp where I agreed not to lactate within five miles of any work buildings (see MIL-STD-JK). So all of this was pretty foreign to me.

But besides the obvious advantage we women had going into it, the actual talk was still overwhelmingly male from the local systems engineering group. There was one woman from that group, and two other women both members or officers in SWE. And all of the women there had jobs. There was another probably eight dudes, half of which were currently unemployed. And I couldn't help but wonder that their being unemployed was the only reason they were there.

They looked uncomfortable and awkward as you might expect from a guy without a job who showed up because he hopes he'll meet someone here where he can get a job. Some were "project engineers" (who blog readers will know I have no love for). All were easily over 40. Everyone there was white. I had to wonder as we all introduced ourselves and they heard all the women cite employers if the dudes watching were angrily thinking to themselves how easy it is for a woman to get a job and how difficult for them. And I wonder if there's not a difference there that's leading to this misconception.

I know several graduating female engineers who have job offers already, or at least some place to pay them for a while. I also know several still unemployed graduating male engineers. All the female engineers I know with early job offers worked internships. I'm not sure if this is because of a purely male/female thing; perhaps female engineers knew they would have to work harder to prove themselves and wanted "practical" experience. Perhaps the kind of woman who becomes an engineer is already more devoted to the field than the average undergraduate male. And when they all have job offers, but some percentage of the men do not, that can create a mis-perception that women have an easier time getting jobs.

And I wonder that maybe because of this, that women already in the field know they have to be ever vigilant and stay up to date in order to keep up with their male colleagues. That oftentimes they will be expected to work harder to be treated the same. Or in my case, feeling alienated at my own workplace I reached out to a woman's group just to meet people a little like myself and not feel so alone as a female engineer. So though we all had jobs, we were still there. But the guys clearly didn't need this support system until they were actually job hunting.

Just my observations. I'll wait for the barrage of guys who would like to write in and tell me how easy women have it in getting scholarships (I should know, I never got a single scholarship, as someone who worked full time and went to school part time the deck was stacked against me as well as most scholarships require full time status) or how easy women have in getting jobs (again despite having way more experience than my classmates my job hunting experience has been about average, or slightly below average when you consider I should be doing better). And all that is dangerously anecdotal. But I do think the way men and women treat networking is something interesting to consider, especially in a male dominated field like engineering.

At last, validation

I just received this exciting email. Looks like my job search is over, this sounds like the right opportunity for me.

 

Hello.
We have vacancy in ---- Inc.
We have reviewed your profile, and concluded you are the right person to become
our employee.

If you meet the requirements, please kindly send your respond.

Please NOTE: You must be US citizen
Best regards

 

Where do I sign up?! If they want my social security number straight away, that probably just means they're serious, right?