Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Kudos again to Caufman for his good links. Part of a public Q&A with Jack Welch, and his thoughts on corporate culture:
That was the subject that made the anger blaze: bosses who nitpicked, meddled, muddled, and never let people working for them be in a position to have a voice in what they did or why they did it, and denied them the chance to embrace the dignity that involvement, achievement, and commitment bring. His eyes flashed and the veins in the neck and head tensed as he spoke of these cowards and horses' asses and gutless wonders. When asked about his biggest disappointment, he said it was not having rooted out more quickly and more vigorously all those managers who delivered the goods but never embraced the high character and ideals of the organization--in short, the ones who treated people inside and outside their companies dishonestly and unfairly.
AmphetaDesker #1.
Scott Reynen: "on mark pilgrim's suggestion, i started using AmphetaDesk. i'd used radio before, but i like amphetadesk better." Have you tried AmphetaDesk yet? C'mon, it's only 2 MB. And it's free. Not "free for 30 days". Not "free with ads". It's Free Software -- install it on all your computers, use it for whatever you want. You can even use it to read the New York Times.
[diveintomark]Didn't get any of my to-dos from last night done, because I left my laptop at work. But I think I will be looking into amphetadesk.
Accurate estimates are important, but managing expectations, building trust, and being flexible with changes, will ensure that your project hits the mark, regardless of your initial estimate. That way you won't have to "give away" hours because you and your client share an understanding about the flexible nature of custom application development.
Another UGH: developing complex web-based reporting applications for users who
(1) keep screen resolution at 800x600 to view reports that
(2) have more columns of data than available screen width and
(3) still want everything to appear onscreen all the time.
Amazing the hoops you need to jump through sometimes in order to make your customers happy. Now we get to write some javascript to detect screen resolution, so our style sheet can use a smaller font on the smaller resolution, but always prints using the standard font for the larger screen resolution. Yikes.
No wonder we have a hard time hitting our estimates...
Hrm. Here's a sticky wicket. Company has a bonus policy that boils down to over and above a certain number of hours billed per month, consultants receive a certain percentage of the revenue they've generated over that number. Simple formula (for example):
IF HOURS > 100 THEN BONUS = (HOURS-100) * RATE * .25
Works out nicely in most cases, although I won't even delve into the issue of giving bonuses in the first place.
Actually, maybe I will, becomes here comes the sticky part: there's something implicit in the formula that you will have generated some revenue, and that you're getting a percentage of that revenue. What happens if the client decides not to pay? Do you still give your consultant their bonus? They DID do the work, after all. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, there's no revenue in the door.
So it kind of makes sense, doesn't it, that you don't get bonus if there's no revenue? Except the plan above only implies revenue. What you're really incenting (and rewarding) is hours. Hours times rate times percentage equals bonus. But without the revenue how do you pay? But you didn't know the client wouldn't pay (or that you'd be in a position to "give back" hours) when you started the work.
Like I said, it's sticky. Guess which side I'm on?
Copyright 2002 © Robert K. Brown
