Ah – 4 games of live footy in a weekend [plus the Eagles v Lions game on a big screen of course]…

It’s the AFL grand final and a man makes his way to his seat right on the wing. He sits down, noticing that the seat next to him is empty.

He leans over and asks his neighbor if someone will be sitting there.

“No,” says the neighbor. “The seat is empty.”

“This is incredible”, said the man. “Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the AFL Grandfinal and not use it?”

The neighbour says “Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first AFL Grand final we haven’t been to together since we got married in 1967.”

“Oh … I’m sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. But couldn’t you find someone else, a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?”

The man shakes his head “No, they’re all at her funeral.”

I do have fairly strong feelings about the inadequacies of “open plan offices” for IT workers [or more generally, “knowledge-based workers”.] To give you a better idea of what I am referring to:

• Peopleware – possibly the single-most important reference on working conditions for tech workers. It shows comprehensively how people with fewer distractions get more productive work done than those who are constantly interrupted^[1][2]:

  “The people who brought us open-plan seating simply weren’t up to the task. But they talked a good game. They sidestepped the issue of whether productivity might go down by asserting very loudly that the new office arrangement would cause productivity to go up, and up a lot, by as much as three hundred percent. …The only method we have ever seen used to confirm claims that the open plan improves productivity is proof by repeated assertion.”

• Joel’s [Original] ‘Bionic Office’
• Joel’s Updated Offices – keep in mind this is Manhattan office space, so getting the best people on board requires the best environment. Contrariwise, you may not get the worst people in the worst environments — but the “best” IT people will usually move on to better, more productive environments fairly quickly.
• Open plans make establishing “Mutual Interruption Shields”^[3] almost impossible.
• Tom Limoncelli also makes the following quote here:

  The biggest time management problem for system administrators is interruptions.

  I tend to think that the same problem applies to software developers – it’s sometimes referred to as a “mental context switch”, and can cut the productivity of your IT workers in half – or worse. Open plan offices are, generally speaking, the epitome of evil when it comes to protecting your IT employees from interruptions.
• A Field Guide to Developers – some interesting observations about what things are [and aren’t] important to IT workers [the article was written with software developers in mind, but in my experience systems administrators are quite similar in their expectations and ideas about “good workplaces”.] From the Field Guide:

  “One thing that programmers don’t care about – They don’t care about money, actually, unless you’re screwing up on the other things. If you start to hear complaints about salaries where you never heard them before, that’s usually a sign that people aren’t really loving their job. If potential new hires just won’t back down on their demands for outlandish salaries, you’re probably dealing with a case of people who are thinking, ‘Well, if it’s going to have to suck to go to work, at least I should be getting paid well.’
  
  “That doesn’t mean you can underpay people, because they do care about justice, and they will get infuriated if they find out that different people are getting different salaries for the same work, or that everyone in your shop is making 20% less than an otherwise identical shop down the road, and suddenly money will be a big issue. You do have to pay competitively, but all said, of all the things that programmers look at in deciding where to work, as long as the salaries are basically fair, they will be surprisingly low on their list of considerations, and offering high salaries is a surprisingly ineffective tool in overcoming problems like the fact that programmers get 15” monitors and salespeople yell at them all the time and the job involves making nuclear weapons out of baby seals.”

• From The Practice of System and Network Administration, Chapter 35.1^[4]:

  The hiring process can be simplified into two stages. The first stage is to identify the people whom you want to hire. The second stage is to persuade them that they want to work for you.

  Making a persuasive argument with a poor workplace environment is always going to be difficult, regardless of salary or any other factors. Many people in the IT industry can be “unique” in this respect – they find roles that keep them interested and excited about each day at work – and that aspect is far more important than work that pays a top-dollar salary but is rote and monotonous.

Some things I noted about the place where I interviewed (either from observation while I was waiting, or during the interview):

• Almost all IT staff in one open plan area. Think of a 1950’s newspaper bullpen, and you get the idea. There was one area to the side where where some of the more senior staff seemed to have their own bullpen.
• Not even cubicles for some semblance of privacy. I’ve worked in a place where even the telephone operators in the call centre had more privacy and insulation from distractions.
• Apparently this “extreme open plan” was a deliberate decision — it was apparently part of an ongoing attempt to fix some ingrained cultural deficiencies. [How exactly this was expected to achieve their goals is still unclear to me…the actual problems weren’t fully disclosed.]
• Some people were trying to work while others carried on in one corner of the room in a fairly noisy discussion – from what I could see and from the information I was provided in the interview, there was no separate meeting area or room for ideas to be brainstormed. Not seeing the impact of that on overall worker productivity completely escapes me.
• The interview itself was conducted in one of the few private offices [presumably because privacy is important for an interview, and without a private meeting room, what else will you do?]
• From what I could tell, only very senior management were allocated the few private offices. Apparently parking was allocated on a similar theme…only for the very senior.^[5]
• No space for individual whiteboards or reference libraries. No, Google doesn’t answer all questions, and the two whiteboards I saw seemed to be shared by all staff.
• Two excessively noisy airconditioners — not a ducted or even split A/C system, and the compressors were completely underspecified for the office space/volume [making them run at or above capacity by the sound they were making – and it wasn’t even a hot day.]
• Very large space with large windows, but using overhead lights instead of lots of natural light — opening the blinds and letting more light in seemed like an easy fix, but one that seemed to be overlooked by a lot of intelligent people.
• The space could actually quite easily be converted into a two-storey, split or lofted area, providing significantly more workspace area and worker privacy. But I expect that would be too much money spent on IT workers [hmm, wait, apparently that’s the thinking that caused many of these problems initially! Meh.]
• Non-ergonomic chairs and desks. If you’re putting people in chairs for 8 hrs per day, those desks and chairs had better be comfortable and compliant with occupational health and safety regulations.

• Multiple monitors – if you’ve got 4 different 19” monitors attached to a single machine – maybe, just maybe, you should consider using those monitors elsewhere and buying two 24” monitors. You get 13% less pixels in a typical scenario, but only two monitors with more actual pixel real estate. Two monitors that use less power, are easier to manage and there’s only one break in your overall screen real estate. You’re also less likely to waste time juggling windows from one screen to the next – which is another productivity win. Sure it’s a small detail, but lots of small things over a long time actually add up pretty quickly.^[6]

Recruiting new staff for such poor environments is going to be difficult. Not impossible, but definitely difficult:

• If you’re planning to build a team – changing the environment to attract good candidates is critical to your prospects of building a top-notch technical team.
• In a place where salaries aren’t really competitive, and office working conditions are assessed with a low priority, people are going to want you to offer other remuneration options.
• Options you ask? Such as a subsidised mobile phone, PDA and broadband^[7], telecommuting, higher than standard superannuation, salary packaging/salary sacrifice options, free or subsidised parking, regular technical training, flexible working hours, less restrictive dress codes, and of course the aforementioned things like private offices and quiet work environments.
• Given the current economic climate, and the tight budgets most businesses presently have, flexibility on “alternative” remuneration options seems like an easy option to consider, yet seemed like “a bridge too far” for this place.
• The poor economy isn’t going to last forever – when that happens, employers are going to find themselves on the back foot due to staff attrition: “the grass is always greener”, and when you’ve put up with poor conditions for long enough, it doesn’t take much to say “hey, I can do better – I’m out of here.” All it takes for that is a slight salary bump. If you provide a great work environment, better salary isn’t always going to compensate for that. [If tell you you can work in a great IT job with a great team for $70k p.a., then offer a crap, boring job with lousy conditions for $95k p.a. — how many IT people will take that? The number is a lot lower than you might think.]

• So – bad conditions, non-competitive salaries and lack of alternative remuneration options all add up to “don’t work here unless things change”.

I’m lead to understand that the role I interviewed is a new role, paying OK^[8] with significant responsibilities and strong prospects for advancement, yet it has gone unfilled for some time. I’m not completely surprised. If something was to change and I was offered the role, I’d still feel “80% positive, 20% negative” about it – but that 20% could easily make the difference between a 9-12 month stop-gap tenure and a 3+ year team-building role. It simply would depend how committed they proved to be about making real change, and providing a top-notch workplace experience.

My $0.02 for today.

P.S. If you’re going to comment, please refrain from mentioning names, if only to protect the guilty

1. Peopleware pp. 52-3.
2. And yes, I’m aware that the authors of Peopleware aren’t against all shared workspaces – but those who share workspaces should be working on similar tasks or projects
3. From Time Management from Systems Administrators
4. The Bible for System Administrators IMHO
5. Everyone else was expected to battle for the limited public parking available in the precinct. No subsidisation. I got the impression that since there was a train station very close by that there was an expectation staff would use that option. Never mind that public transport would actually cost me the same or more than driving and parking.
6. Kudos where due – actually having multiple monitors for tech workers is almost a given these days, but I’ve still seen places where it’s not done, despite being de rigueur for programmers/sysadmins.
7. Yes, accessing systems from home is important, even if you’re not offering any sort of telecommuting.
8. Although I was offered $5-$10k less than what I would expect for a comparable role at a similar employer
9. The stock market may take 2-3 years to regain lost ground, but that doesn’t reflect the health of an economy – continued growth does.
10. Yes, I see the irony between my statement and the fact that I’m still looking for work. Am I a quality IT worker? Yes. Am I selling myself properly? Maybe not. Am I possibly overqualified for some roles? Maybe. I’ve really never been out of work for long enough to care, so maybe job hunting is one area where I need to learn a few more things. I’d much rather be improving my tech skills and working on interesting things however.
11. Sometimes multiple backup plans.
12. And yes, I’m being deliberately cryptic.
13. Some might say it doesn’t matter where you are.
14. Say, for instance, a lunch with former colleagues who happen to know a lot more than you ever expected about the environment you were considering.
15. As a historical reference, I was only earning about $63k (all up) when I was working at $JOB-2 — money wasn’t everything. I left mainly because of two things:
    • The offer of a more challenging position with better conditions
    • The prospect of the existing working conditions at $JOB-2 being sharply compromised was becoming very real. [After I left, that “prospect” did in fact become a reality.]
    There were other, less significant factors – but those were the two main ones.

Monday June 8 – Friday June 12

I wouldn’t go booking flights or hotels just yet, but that’s when I’m planning on being in SF again…i.e. nothing’s definite until Apple makes the announcement, but that’s the info I have from a previously reliable source.

Will update info if I get any more news.

Belated Update: I was in Melbourne for the footy when the announcement was made last week, so I forgot about updating this post. Dates above are confirmed. See WWDC site for more info.

Note: if you’re not reading from Oz, then you probably won’t have seen the Freeview ads – but you should still be able to get a laugh out of it…network TV programmers worldwide pull the same crap whatever country you’re in.

Edit: Turns out Freeview didn’t like this being on YouTube. I believe there’s another way to get the video; will update when I find out more…but for now the link below doesn’t work.

Freeview – The Real Advert

Edit 2:
Updated TV Tonight article about the video.
Reposted: YouTube – repost.
Downloadable movie version available from DownWind Media.

Apparently there was a huge crowd of supporters

Hiring For IT: What We’re Doing Wrong & How To Fix It

Favourite quote is from the introductory paragraph:

“The key issue is that HR cannot realistically be expected to hold all the technical knowledge necessary to appropriately evaluate and filter applicants based on technical criteria. Many resumes are thus evaluated off keywords alone, or ridiculous automated online exams that supposedly quantify a candidates [sic] abilities based off asinine declarative factoids.”

‘Nuff said.

Update [16 Feb]: So I’ve been having a little more success with the hunting, and so my feelings towards HR people and/or recruiters are a little more tempered. Having said that, I don’t think my improved success rate invalidates any of Preston’s comments. Unfortunately, with the job market being the way it is at present, I can’t see any major “reforms” coming anytime soon – it’s an employer’s market at present.

I do know that wherever I end up…if that appointment comes via a recruiter, I will [a] be referring them to this article to see what they think, and [b] will also be keeping the recruiter and/or recruitment company in mind for when I need to hire teams of IT staff. That may be 3-4 years away…but I remember stuff like that.

So I download the 3.15GB file…and I get this:

Microsoft download system – FTL. [I’d go looking on Bittorrent, but then it’s hard to trust what you’re getting…even if it does have hell-better integrity checks when downloading.]

Oracle of Omaha offers words of wisdom

I think my favourite quote is item #2 in the following list of “things to know” when you invest:

• A stock is a piece of a business. If you don’t want to own the business don’t buy the stock
• Market is there to serve you not to instruct.

  The market is a psychotic, drunk, manic depressive selling 4,000 companies everyday. “If you buy a farm, you look to the farm to determine the value of your interest, not to some guy coming by giving you a quote everyday.”

• Know your “Margin of Safety” with every investment.

If you don’t like DST – watch this:
A Message for Those Against Daylight Savings

Again, a NSFW reminder. Or if your Mum’s watching.

I was going to add another quote here, but I might offend the sensibilities of some who read this…meh.

FWIW it has particular implications for OS X security. The recent hubbub about the trojaned iWork installer highlights one of the problems with OS X Leopard supporting both current (Launchd) and deprecated (Startupitems) startup mechanisms. Snow Leopard will apparently finally deprecate everything except Launchd – so finally there’ll only be a single startup mechanism on OS X that sysadmins need to exercise vigilance over.

See it here: Technical Note TN2083: Daemons and Agents

On a completely different note – if I ever get to know even 10% of what Quinn knows about code and programming, I think I’ll die a happy man. I don’t want to wax lyrical, and I know it’s kinda his job to know all that stuff, but damn…sometimes I do wonder if I should specialise more rather than trying to be a generalist on most things, and instead specialise in one or two areas. Food for thought…

I think I’ll leave this post as simple as possible.

Yep. Global economic downturn and all that jazz, and I’m looking for work.

Still it could be worse – there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of IT positions out there and I’m fortunate that I have a reasonably healthy résumé. The biggest disappointment in some respects has been that the two positions I’ve seen that I reckon I’d be perfect for [without considering whether they’d be perfect for me] have both been interstate – one in Melbourne, and one in Brisbane. I’ve considered relocation in times past, but moving away from family and friends just seems a bridge too far after the last few “eventful” years. Ho hum.

I’ll hopefully post further updates as the hunting progresses over the next few weeks. Wish me luck…oh, and if you hear of anything I may be interested in, drop me a line

Often regarded as one of the (if not the most memorable opponent) of James T. Kirk, his works spanned not only the big screen, but also a notable body of work on the small screen.

Thanks for the memories, and I might just have to pull out my Director’s Cut of STII:TWOK this weekend.

R.I.P.

Links: TV Tonight – Vale: Ricardo Montalban

So when I hear about things like this [from Blog O’ Matty]:

The long awaited IPMP rearchitecture bits just got included into the crossbow integration in OpenSolaris build 107. A new command, ipmpstat has been introduced.
…
That is, all of the IP data addresses associated with the IPMP group will instead be hosted on an IPMP IP interface, such as ipmp013. With this new model, data addresses will no longer be associated with any specific physical underlying interface, but instead will belong to the IPMP group as a whole.
As will become clear, this addresses many outstanding problems and vastly simplifies the implementation. There will be a one-to-one correspondence between IPMP groups and IPMP interfaces. That is, each IPMP group will have exactly one IPMP interface. By default, each IPMP interface will be named ipmpN , but administrators will be encouraged to specify a name of their choosing, as described in section 4.1.5. Since an IPMP interface’s name will not be fixed, the system will set a new IPMP flag on all IPMP interfaces to indicate that the interface has special properties and semantics, as detailed throughout this document.

OpenSolaris already has killer features like ZFS and DTrace [yeah they’re in Mac OS X 10.5, but I, er, learned the hard way in the past about using OS X Server for real work, and I don’t intend to let it near any data centre that I have a say about.] So another feature like IPMP added to Crossbow [Sun’s name for their network virtualisation technology] just keeps making OpenSolaris more and more compelling for Unix sysadmins – at least in my book.

If you’ve ever had a need to use link aggregation/trunking/bonding/IEEE 802.3ad with multiple ethernet connections on any OS, this stuff will probably blow you away. There’s no longer a necessity for there to be a 1-to-1 correlation between the physical interfaces (NIC) and the logical interfaces (e.g. eth0). VMware does this in its own way [don’t know about Xen], but this is AFAIK the first time it’s really been adopted in a mainstream OS, rather than in a virtualisation solution.

All that now remains for me is to find consistent employment so I can buy new toys equipment to play with research new technologies. Updated CVs being digitally thrown at multiple parties in the coming hours…if you know me and you know of work that might suit, give me a shout.

Update: After a query from a mate, I’m clarifying my statement about Mac OS X Server – I’ll only use it where it’s the only option for certain tasks. For instance, AFP file sharing and running a NetBoot/NetInstall environment are quite simply no-brainers for OSXS…you can use other OSes+software to do it, but it’s pretty damn fiddly. If your time is worth a non-zero amount, then using the right tool for the job – whatever it is – is almost always the right way to do it. (The only exception I could possibly see was if you had some weird constraint to meet, or were doing something for your own education/edification.)

Update 2: More stuff in the following article…“IPMP Re-architecture is delivered”.