A week or so ago I installed the Close Old Posts plugin to try and combat some of the comment spam zanshin.net receives. The plugin closes comments on any posting older than 14 days by default “on the fly.” No database queries are used, the postings are updated as they are viewed.
The plugin is working fantastically, from my perspective. Nearly all the comment spam I got was to older postings, and now that they are closed for comments, I’ve only had one spam make its way into the Akismet net.
I almost miss my daily ritual of deleting all the comment spam. Almost.
For the past six weeks or so I have been participating in a placement program at my employer. My position was eliminated and this program is designed to locate a new position for me within the company. While I applaud the thinking behind the program - that it is better to retain employees than to release them only to hire others - there are some aspects of it that have been stressful for Sibylle and me.
The most difficult thing is how offers are presented. Assuming that an interview results in an offer I have to accept that position or decline. Should I decide to decline, the position is gone, removed from consideration permanently. If more than one offer should be made, I will only know about the first one, as they are filtered through Human Resources.
In other words, we are playing a form of “Let’s Make A Deal” with my career. At some point I may have a job offer in my hands. And the internal dialog, with my doubts and curiosity playing the part of Monty Hall, will be saying, “Hm. But I had that other interview that went really well, I wonder if they will make me an offer?” If I let go of the first offer and take a chance on their being another one behind door number one, I may strike gold, or I may find myself unemployed come the end of the placement program.
This facet of the program has required that I do some serious evaluating about the merits of potential outcomes. The positions that I am interviewing for are somewhat varied: IT project leader, non-IT project leader, server administration, and mainframe developer. Two are at my present employer and two are at the much larger parent corporation. There is simply no way to compare them, and in the end I think comparing and contrasting them is fruitless. Having a favorite or favored position does me no good unless I receive an offer for that position first.
Twenty years ago I went to work for a utility company, and in the course of the nearly nine years that followed I held a number of positions within that organization. Some were more to my liking than others, but ultimately I was employed and liked my employer. I feel some of the same affinity for my current employer. I’d like to stay, and if that means my title and day-to-day responsibilities change occasionally to something new, then so be it.
No, I don’t care for the “Let’s Make A Deal” aspect of the offer process, but I do, very much, like that I am being given a change to make a deal at all.
The recent upheaval in my employment has knocked me off my emotional center; it is hard to think coherently about my upcoming choice.
Sometime this week, or early next I will be presented with one or more opportunities to accept a new position. The choices as they stand today are, in no particular order:
Like shopping for a new car, each of these seems like a good idea in isolation. Fresh from the test drive of an interview, I’ve been satisfied that I could do the job, that I would like the job, and that I wanted the job.
With the passage of time, or another interview, doubts begin to creep in to my thoughts. That job would have me working in a completely brand new area, technology would change. I’d be in a different building. Adding to the doubt process is the selection process.
Any offers that these interviews generate will come to me on a first come, first served basis. And I have to say yes or no, not knowing if there are others waiting in the wings.
Like a gambler who sits down at the table knowing exactly how much he can wager, and under what conditions he will withdraw from play, I need to have some yardstick, some set of parameters that will allow me to navigate the choices ahead of me. And, like a cautious gambler, I need the resolve to stick to my parameters in the heat of the moment.
I’ve ordered the positions from choicest to least desired in my mind. The ranking was a combination of emotional and intellectual, subjective and objective, factors. But what I haven’t yet come to terms with is the tremendous roll of the dice, should I chose to pass on the first offer made if it is lower in my preferred ordering.
My preferred outcome is that choice number 1 makes the first offer, and that the compensation is within my range. Then the decision is easy. There really aren’t any clearly defined 2nd or 3rd choices as there are too many variables, variables well beyond my ability to control, to list all the combinations.
If my 2nd choice makes the first offer and their compensation is within my range, I think it’s a go. If the compensation is outside of my range, then I don’t know. What if no other offers are made? If I say no, then I have well and truly let go of the bird in the hand for one in the bush - one that got away. What if my least favorite option makes an offer that is in the right compensation range? Even the least desirable position is better than unemployment.
Try as I might, I don’t think there is a strategy that leads me through this process without an element of emotional uncertainty. Each choice has merit, each has some risk, and each has a potential downside. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks at length about the power of making a decision in an instant, relying on instinct and your subconscious, over spending lots of time weighing your options. I think sometimes the best decisions are made with a combination of weighing and instinct. By weighing my options I’ve given my subconscious the data it needs to decide. Now I just need an offer to trigger that instantaneous yes or no reaction.
Throughout my career I have been fascinated with process. At a certain level of abstraction my job is nothing but implementing processes, big and small, to achieve some goal. After spending twenty-five years examining existing processes to understand them, and designing new automated processes to replace or augment them, I tend to see processes everywhere.
The best processes are the ones that you don’t see, that fade into the background. The worst are ones that constantly jar and batter you as they run counter to your goal. Most fall in the middle ground somewhere; they work well enough to not require updating or change, but they are at times cumbersome or annoying.
One pitfall a number of processes seem to fall into is what I call the “two minute warning syndrome.” American-style football is played for 60 minutes, and with just two minutes remaining on the game clock a warning is sounded. Many teams shift gears into a hurry-up offense, or “two minute drill” at this point in the game, trying to catch up or win the game.
To my way of thinking this is wrong. Why wait until the last two minutes to catch up and win? Why not come out and play the first two minutes to win, and then the next two, and then the next, and so on?
The most recent example of this “two minute warning” thinking I have seen is a placement program I’m in at work. My position has been eliminated and the organization is searching for a new assignment for me that matches my experience and compensation level. The program is six weeks in duration, with a possible extension should there be a placement pending when it expires. The announcements sent out to over two dozen managers made no mention of the deadline involved. Few, if any, response trickled in during the first four weeks. Now, in the middle of the fifth week, HR has started calling managers to inform them that the opportunity to interview me ends next week. Suddenly there have been several inquiries about me, and I have three interviews lined up, with one or two more potential interviews pending.
When HR sounded the “two minute warning” on the placement program everybody shifted gears and the placement process actually started to move. Had that kind of motivation been brought to bear in the first week, I would have been placed weeks ago, and all this stress and confusion these last minute efforts would have been eliminated.
The two minute warning may make for good football games, but it is a lousy paradigm to model (consciously or unconsciously) your process after.
After some poking around on Google, I found a Wordpress plugin that closes the comments on posts older than 14 days, automatically. Since most of the comment spam I get is on older postings, I am hoping that Close Old Posts will reduce the amount of spam Askimet has to filter for me.
On our trip to Europe this year, Sibylle and I will be doing some travel by train. Our flight to Europe lands in Zürich, and we are taking the train to Stuttgart from there. Wanting to take advantage of some special rates for trains starting or ending in Germany we went ahead and booked our seats. Today’s mail brought an overseas envelope containing our seat reservations and tickets.
We still need to reserve and by our tickets between Stuttgart and Bressanone Italy, where we are spending a week of our trip. Once those tickets have been secured we’ll be largely set, transportation wise.
On Sunday, Sibylle and I purchased two new Eddie Bauer backpacks to use during our trip to Europe this year. We gave them a “Dry run” yesterday during our trip to Chicago; one that they both passed with flying colors.
One of our concerns was their size when filled. All the airlines publish the size limits of your carry on luggage, and they all restrict you to one carry on and one personal item. Of course these restrictions and limits rarely seem to be enforced.
The outward size of some of the wheeled luggage on our flights was clearly beyond what would fit in the little sizing stands by the jetway doors. And many people bring two or three pieces of luggage each onto the plane. The problem isn’t the standard, but rather the expectation of the airline that the person or persons working the gate be the “bad guy.”
Unless the gate agent is willing to force each person to test the size of their bag, and to force each person to their one carry on plus personal item limit, then there is no hope for the rules to work. The gate agent can’t easily single out the egregious offenders, as those people will then point to the less egregious, but still over the limit offenders. Increased security, long lines, short connection times, weather and mechanical delays have already increased the stress level in the crowd of people waiting to board a plane. A gate agent who tries to enforce the carry on policy risks getting an earful or worse.
I certainly don’t want a job that requires I be respectful and polite to a potential stressed or angry customer, much less a job that requires I do this for hour after hour, day after day. My hat is off to those people who work in those customer facing positions; by and large they do so with courtesy, professionalism, and often a smile. That the airline expects these people at the front line to bear the brunt of whatever ill-will policy enforcement may generate says a lot about the gap between management and employee.
What the airlines need to do is setup, between security and the first gates, a luggage check station where travelers can quickly and easily measure their carry on items for proper size, and check any that are over the limit. Then the gate personnel can, and should, turn away any luggage that is outside the published limits. Until the airlines enforce their requirements across the board and without fail, people will take advantage of the possibility of getting away with one extra bag, or a bag that is too large. And until the requirements are enforced well before boarding time, the gate personnel will have to deal with the rudeness of people lashing out when caught doing something they new was in the wrong all along.
Using the “Create a Map” feature over at Wayfaring.com, I made this map of our walking route through Chicago yesterday. All told we covered about four and a half miles on foot.
(You can hover your mouse over the waypoints to see what they are.)
In order to renew her passport, Sibylle needed to travel to Chicago, where the nearest German Consulate is located. We debated several options for getting her to the city and back again. Flying by herself, the pari of us driving, or the pair of us flying.
At the start of the weekend we were prepared to drive to Chicago on Sunday, visit the consulate first thing Monday morning, and then drive home. At 550 miles each way, we were looking at 16 hours in the car in two days. Needless to say our enthusiasm for that much driving was rather low.
Sunday morning we finally decided to fly, together, rather than drive or her fly solo. Southwest has direct flights several times each day, and we could get their “Anytime” fare, which would give us some flexibility on our return flight. After scheduling the flight we ventured out to the mall to see if the Eddie Bauer store there had the backpacks we wanted.
We have been talking about getting one or two good travel backpacks, which hip belts, to use in Europe this year. Last weekend we saw some at the Eddie Bauer store downtown that we really liked. Moreover they were on sale through the 4th, and we wanted to take advantage of the $20 on each backpack. Being out in the mall, and doing some window shopping was light and carefree, in large part due to our decision to fly rather than drive. It’s not that we were in a bad mood prior to making the fly decision, but making it certainly made us feel more in control.
This morning we got up at 3:30 am, in order to be at the airport shortly after 5:00. Our flight, which was surprisingly full, left promptly at 6:05 am. By 7:25 we were on the ground in Chicago, and shortly before 9:00 we had arrived in downtown, having taken the CTA “Orange Line” from Midway to the Loop. It took us perhaps 30 minutes to walk to the consulate, and we were third in line once we arrived there.
The consulate passport clerk was efficient, if a bit humorless. Sibylle’s expedited passport renewal was completed and we were back on the street shortly before 10:00. With our new backpacks on, we walked out to Navy Pier and then took a trolley back to Wabash for lunch at Pizzaria Uno. After lunch we walked up Michigan to the Water Towel shopping arcade, and then made our way back to the Loop and our train to Midway.
Our flight home should have us back in Kansas city by 6:30; we’ll be home by 7:30 at the latest. All in all, not a bad day. As a bonus to getting her passport renewal in the mail, we also got to test the new backpacks, and to try out some walking shoes. The backpacks are superb; having a good hip belt makes all the difference in the work when carrying any kind of weight. The shoes I wore, while okay for work, were not good for extended walking. Even with a good leather arch support added, my fallen arch was painful most of the day. I’ll definitely be taking my boots to Europe; they were excellent for walking last year. Sibylle tried out a new pair of sandals today, and wasn’t too happy with how the right one pinched her foot. She may take them to Europe, but will definitely have an alternate pair of shoes to wear.