One of the best quotes about software:

“Software can easily rate among the most poorly constructed, unreliable and
least maintainable technological artifacts ever invented by man — with perhaps
the exception of Icarus’ wings. “

You have to check this Dilbert cartoon. Another PHB stroke of genius.

Gee, I always waited for the day when my mom will call me to put a service pack to her fridge. Oh, joy the day is here.

With very few dragons and no “damsels in distress” modern knights faces a serious challenge: finding a challenge.

Pieter Hintjens is a happy knight: he found his challenge. Peter fights to retire the CAPS LOCK key.

Peter says: “And so I have launched CAPSoff, a campaign to change the world, one key at a time. We’re going to start with the CAPS LOCK key, which is fat and useless and has no friends, so should be an easy target. Maybe after that we can gang up on the SysRq key.”

Yes, we have to change the world, and we have to start one-step at a time. And getting rid of CAPS LOKS key looks like a good, small starting point.

I wonder how many moths (or days) would last a company managed like public administration before going bankrupt?

It looks like the last century of management research pass through public administration without leaving any traces. There are so many low-hanging fruits to be picked!

I compared the web dynamics for CIO and Romania. For the general interest I use Google Labs Trends and for the blogs I use IceRocket.

While in web searches “Romania” tops “CIO” (see this page), in blog posts it is almost a draw: in the last 3 months there were 22,545 posts with CIO and 25,658 with Romania (see this page). Only a 14% difference!

I prefer to post only the link to queries, due to possible copyright issues with the original charts.

Thanks to Dragos Manac for pointing me to this excelent 1946 article of George Orwell: “Politics And The English Language”. Everything is still perfectly true. The article is the best short manual for the young writer.

In management there is a pair of theories: Theory X and theory Y

Theory X management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can. Because of this workers need to be closely supervised and comprehensive systems of controls developed.

Theory Y management assumes employees are ambitious, self-motivated, anxious to accept greater responsibility, and exercise self-control and self-direction. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work activities.

I have managed people for more than 12 years and in my opinion both theories are self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you believed in people they will reward you for your trust. I always said the people are “innocent unless proven guilty”. When I meet someone I start by trusting him and in 12 years of work experience I was very rarely wrong. It’s like your trust shape people behavior.

What you give is what you get.