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
Complexity and Design
My favorite example is the military. Generals always want something for the future. So we end up with a helicopter that has all the weapons systems available, but it does not fly because it is too heavy. On the other side there is the Kalashnikov. Most successful gun ever. Very good at shooting and killing people even when wet (the gun not the people), muddy and in situations when more advanced western weapons malfunction.
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