Category: IT

Posted on

Job Requirements

workreqIs HR actually a science? Or is it more like Project Management, where no public (federal, provincial, municipal) project ever comes in on time or budget. I took a random job requirement listing sample and looked at the specific requirements.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Management Systems, and Business Management, Statistics or equivalent work experience: Which means exactly what? 3 years of coding, report writing? Does a BCom count? How about an MBA or no degree, but coding experience (sort of like Bill Gates). Store manager for Staples?
• 3+ plus years of work experience programming, business intelligence report writing, report development tool usage and business requirements gathering: Ok, someone with actual coding skills, not just Word or the all-time favorites Excel and PowerPoint. Though programming in what?
Continue reading “Job Requirements”

Posted on

Testing, Testing, Testing

qa

“Problems flow from issues such as inadequate training for users and computer coding that isn’t a suitable match for the “discretion” required to manage complex Ontario Works, and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) files”

As in the product did not fit the need. The problem is that the real customer is not the Ontario government, but the end users who use a system on a daily basis.

Continue reading “Testing, Testing, Testing”

Posted on

Programming Then and Now

  • Statement on line 4: ‘select’. Great for debugging. Code has about 400 lines. Some error statements are still as misleading or useless as WBT. Error was actually in line 187 where I forgot a ‘,’
  • Looking in all the wrong places when debugging. Nothing has changed
  • Need a beer to make your brain slow down? Way back then: 300 baud modem. Now: Customer help lines in wherever. After 1 (English) ,1,3,2,2,1. “Yes, the green power light is on”
  • Then Customer help lines: wait, wait, wait: help. Now: “we are experiencing a high volume of callers” Please call back never or be prepared to answer 25 questions to prove your are who you are and are not just calling because you love help lines

    • Continue reading “Programming Then and Now”

Posted on

Product and Productivity

dilbertproductivity
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.

Continue reading “Product and Productivity”