A recurring advice for job seekers is to show how they helped in improve a company’s profitability. That may work in sales, but is a bit more difficult in IT. IT – like construction – usually works against moving targets. Specs change. The effect of spec changes is sometime indirectly proportional to what project manager’s estimate is. The ‘little’ change that requires a re-design. On the other hand, I have often encountered changes that were rather trivial, would have improved a system, but were not implemented, since they were outside the original scope of a project.
Target and Canadian Shopping
I once read that 90% of Canadians live within a 2 hour drive to the US (or something like that). Target is just the latest American company with a failed attempt to make it in the Canadian market. Many people mentioned the fact that their US Target experience was very different from visiting a store in Canada. I know people who preferred the 2 hour drive to Buffalo every few months to enjoy the US Target experience and the US prices rather than shop at their local Canadian Target store.
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Things Programmers Say
- Analyst says this should take about an afternoon to code
- Analyst says the users signed the specs. He forgot to ask them if they also read the specs
- Manager told me that this is how users get their work done. Apparently the users did not know that
- I have like 59 versions of this program, maybe I should delete some
- Oops, my USB drive is learning how to swim in coffee
Job Titles in IT
Here are a few I found in job ads:
Programmer: genius or room temp IQ and we’d like to replace you with a bot. Even though programmers were supposed to be replaced by programs writing programs we are not extinct just yet
Software Architect: programmer who uses flowcharts
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Deliveries
Toronto is enforcing towing laws. Bad news for couriers other than the ones on bikes, and every company that delivers something. How to deal with it? Some people suggest having deliveries during off hours. For Toronto and most major North American season the ‘off hours’ would be between 1am and 6am. Hardly anybody’s favorite working hours. And yet, maybe a chance to rethink how we do business.
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