I remember and recall


Open, Book, Page, Pages, Books
Being recently given the gift of time [euphemistically speaking...] and the opportunity [ditto] to revisit my career so far, I go back [more years than it's prudent to reveal] to a professional experience that experts in resume building and outplacement say is "unmentionable". But this very fall marks an anniversary of sorts and, oblivious to their sound advice, I'll go there, because while technologies come and go, human "typologies" are here to stay. So these many years later, I resurrect this older article of mine about good people managers [to you, Jeff!] and bad ones [names forsaken].

Oct. 2019

https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/07/18/14/56/open-163973__340.jpg

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The English Language as an IT tool (2006)

Image
The English Language as an IT tool   By Tatiana Andronache, I.S.P. Published in ComputerWorld Canada 2006 “Grace, no execution”, the emperor decided. But his handlers wrote the order down as “Grace no, execution”. The emperor signed without a second look, and a head rolled needlessly because of a misplaced comma. Or so the story goes. In our era, we are more than ever under the tyranny of words, commas, dashes, slashes and dots - in our invented languages as well as in our natural ones. Experts tell us time and again to watch our grammar and spelling on resumes if we want to have a chance at that coveted IT position. Or so the story goes. Why is it that once that perfectly spelled resume has landed its author the targeted position, all of a sudden spelling, clarity and style become the Cinderella of the IT profession? Maybe resumes do get turned down because of this kind of flaws, but the same rarely happens with technical writing. When was the last time you or y...
Read more

Retirement rituals: parting (not partying!) with a gift

Image
A retirement gift can make one's exit from working life a needlessly embarrassing memory. If a contest were held for the most idiotic retirement gift, I am convinced that a pillow will make it to the top! Which makes me a winner of sorts. Welcome or feared, retirement is an end to an essential chapter in one's life; undeniably it is a big milestone. With life-long jobs no longer the norm, I am among those increasingly fewer people to experience an official retirement ritual. I get that; I didn't expect an golden watch. I didn't expect anything. But when the corporate formula decided my time to go into retirement had come, the colleagues with whom I shared almost two decades of good work, good spirit and mutual support, decided on a little something to mark my departure. So, at the beginning of the last team meeting I was a part of, they presented me with a gift. It was a surprise and I was prepared to be moved and grateful, knowing that such gesture was totally on their...
Read more

How not to do Cloud Testing: a real life experience

Image
 How not to do CT: a real life experience This article eventually was not published, as the body for which it was destined deemed it too negative. Well, everyone knows we learn more from mistakes than from successes. In my opinion, it is better to publish a "negative" story once in a while rather than yet another positive platitude that will not offend anyone but won't engage the readers either. https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/10/23/13/47/cloud-server-not-working-4571660__340.png Migration to the Cloud was sold to our client as being the silver bullet to their cost-cutting efforts [Big Mistake #1] and the basis for their continuous business with our firm. A cross-divisional, cross-functional and cross-country team was assembled for this task. I was on the application testing side of things, together with the other co-located developers-cum-testers who had been the steady stewards of this application for many years. Our mission was handed down to us from higher above:...
Read more