Burnout and the Technology Professional

Static, distraction, and stress are present in the lives of technology professionals. To stay relevant in the industry, you are active in internet culture, learning about new technologies and ways of doing things. This dynamic online lifestyle feels like staring at a disconnected television with its black-and-white static pattern. At the same time, you need to concentrate on getting work done while forces outside your control view for your attention. Meetings with senior leadership, instant messages from Slack, and even the dog wanting a walk interrupting our need to concentrate on the task are the battles we face with distraction. Finally, deadlines are cruel in the business world, and there are never enough people to do the job correctly. It creates a level of stress which do not exist in other professions. Combined static, distraction, and stress are adequate conditions to lead to professional burnout, and I would like to discuss that today. 

Global business culture makes it challenging to cover the topic of leadership burnout because it focuses on strength, competence, and confidence. Failure is for the sick and lazy. If you are not succeeding in business, you are not working hard or talented enough. The business press amplifies this attitude and the information ecosystem that thrives around it. Turn on Fox Business News or CNBC and watch it for any length of time, and you will notice that it resembles sports programming with winners, losers, human interest stories, and scores rolling by in the form of stock prices. Executives parade on the screen like celebrities, and nothing is worse than a network anchor pointing out less-than-expected revenue figures. 

The business world is about triumph, wealth, and success, but the business press often ignores the lonely wilderness that leads to that success. It is late nights, missing time with family, red-eye flights to meet clients, and dealing with sef-important jerks who often pay the bills. It is a world of rejection and loneliness where you can hustle for forty years and have nothing to show for the struggle. Talk to any business professional; they will have stories about their sacrifices to stay relevant and employed in this ruthless environment. 

It is why two recent blog posts from people I know and respect inspired me to consider my professional burnout and direction. Alan Dayley is an Agile coach and instructor whom I met on the old Google+ social media platform. He was talking about leading a training session with a group of executives, and a director of engineering boasted, "Engineers are like batteries. When they are exhausted, I replace them." Without skipping a beat, Alan said, "Then I am glad I don't work for you," before continuing the training. I am sure he did not receive an invitation to do another training with that client because he spoke truth to power at that moment. When leaders see human beings as expendable and replaceable, we have moments like that with Alan Dayley.  He was invited back to do more training for the client company. The executive with the "just replace them" attitude was from a partner company working with the client. The director sponsor of the training supported Daily in that situation.*   The attitudes of some leaders explain why burnout is so common in the professional ranks. 

Another person I respect, Angela Dugan, suffered a health scare while in the middle of being acquired by another company. She asked for time off to recover and was told no. Fortunately, she had the option to quit to focus on her health. She calls this intermission in her career her "sabbatical," and she uses it to refresh and recover. I have known Angela for over fifteen years, and she is a competent, empathetic, and results-oriented leader from experience. This reality did not matter to her new bosses when she asked for time off when her body and mind began to break down from the responsibilities of leading technology professionals during a pandemic and acquisition. 

These stories could make you cynical and jaded about the technology business, but I see it differently. People like Angela, Alan, and myself are out in the business world fighting the lonely fight of making business better, one project and person at a time. We sacrifice our youth and sometimes our health to provide for our families and improve the world. It is not a heroic life like the one popularized by the business press but one we should respect in our everyday work experience. 

I suffer from burnout from time to time. Unfortunately, I must muddle through the experience to support myself and my family. It is not fun, but I have come out of the experience stronger and wiser. Others are not so lucky, as they have suffered from heart disease, addiction, and mental health breakdowns. Businesses have gotten so big that they neglect that it is people who keep the global economy spinning. 

I wish I had easy recipes to avoid burnout. I do not. Instead, I have a few strategies to keep it at bay. First, I try to get a healthy amount of sleep. Sleep deprivation has the same effect as intoxication, so getting sleep is an intelligent way to approach work. Next, practice moderation with food and alcohol. I used both to help me cope with stress, and all it did was make me fat and miserable. Drink a glass of wine or a Negroni occasionally, but remember that most of life's problems will not be solved at the bottom of a glass. Often, new issues will appear. Finally, step away from work. Set firm boundaries and avoid answering e-mails during time off. Enjoy the company of your significant other and children. Go to a concert or dance the night away with friends, but do something, anything not related to the office. 

Burnout is real. A combination of perverse incentives and unhealthy expectations causes it. We must admit that it happens and that even the best people suffer. In an environment of static, distraction, and stress, it is surprising it does not occur more often.

Until next time. 

*Correction -  Alan Daily provided an updated account, reflected in the blog today, 6-September-2023.

Decisions are Better Than Dithering.

One of the most amazing things in my experience in the business world is the people responsible for millions of dollars of business and hundreds of people but incapable of making a decision or setting a priority. It is so common that it has become a cliché in business writing and the popular imagination. Decision-making and prioritization are central to success, so why are many business leaders so bad at it? 

In college, I was eager to graduate because I wanted to work with the mature grown-ups of the business world. I was deeply disappointed by some businesspeople's emotional maturity and self-reflection. In fact, I soon discovered that a contemporary corporation has many of the same characteristics as a high school. You have jocks as part of the sales force and leading important teams because they look the part. I have experienced plenty of mean girls who become awful women in marketing and human resources. Band and theater kids gravitate to customer-facing roles, while the more nerdy contingent makes a living among the technology staff. If he were still alive, John Hughes could make a great movie about the contemporary office. 

Unlike high school, a corporation does not have teachers or administrators to reign in bad behavior and raging hormones. The students are running things, so tribal and personal bias plays a big part in who succeeds and who fails. Leaders prioritize being likable to their peers over getting things done. A popular person is likelier to be promoted than someone despised. It forces ambitious people to be uncontroversial. It means saying yes to everyone they can above them and being pleasant to a fault. It is the behavior known as "kiss up and kick down," which business professor Robert J. Sutton defines as an asshole. 

These individuals do not need to make decisions; they must be cute or charming to their superiors, keep their peers from hating them, and keep the people they serve busy. As time passes, they rise in organizations and act like cholesterol, slowly choking the life out of the organization. When asked to accomplish something, they often take credit for someone else's work or find a helpful scapegoat for failure. Being in an environment like this is why productivity is low and worker engagement is poor. 

The harsh reality is that Collin Powel is correct when he says leadership means you will piss people off. Deciding to do something or setting a priority for work will make enemies. Unfortunately, skillfully getting the job done is not enough; you must be likable. Thus, these ineffectual people wind up in leadership. 

The good news is that agile forces an organization to see itself as it is and confront ugly truths. It is then up to the organization to decide if these ineffectual people should remain in leadership. Nothing is worse than two equal priorities colliding and creating an organizational train wreck. So setting priories is the first skill that all leaders need to perfect. It is simple to do in practice; develop a list of things that need to get done and then number them with no two items having the same number. As items get completed, then review the list and re-prioritize it. It provides you with flexibility and communicates what is getting done. It will still create enemies and cause conflict, but the information's transparency ensures that all controversy will be out in the open instead of getting whispered behind your back. 

You cannot change business people's feckless and immature nature, but you can create incentives where people set priorities. A workplace where work gets completed is better than one mired in dysfunction. Each of us in the agile profession needs to be transparent and clear about priorities and decision-making. Otherwise, we are reliving the worst aspect of high school. 

Until next time. 

Software is NOT transcription!

One of the most challenging things about working in technology is explaining what I do to others outside the business. A chemical engineer at a food company can explain they help create flavors or ensure the potato chips we eat are consistently crispy. A petroleum engineer transforms crude oil into gasoline and other valuable petrochemicals, making modern life worth living. An agile coach, scrum master, or software developer has difficulty explaining what they do. Sometimes it looks like magic, and other times, it resembles tedious bouts of frustration. There are plenty of ways to describe my profession, but today on the blog, I want to explain what it is not. 

Nothing is more frustrating for me professionally than interacting with executives who earn their leadership in their organization by mere survival. These people look like leaders but do not exhibit leadership characteristics because survival in a dysfunctional organization is the only accomplishment they can proclaim. They were mediocre people who were unremarkable employees. Eventually, these people are promoted by someone because they do not threaten the status quo and the leaders above them. These executives are allergic to risk and innovation because it would threaten their position.  

Countless times I have been in the office of these individuals and their faux leadership. One ordered me not to speak to other departments because he did not want the different departments to learn about our challenges with software releases. Another explained that we were not a technology company, so to expect us to behave like a technology company was foolish. I even had a vice president pat me on the head and call me ‘son’ before explaining how I did not understand modern branding. Naturally, when layoffs came, these paragons of leadership remained, and I was made disposable. 

These leaders are toxic and insulting to the professionals who keep the global economy spinning. By far the worst was a salesperson who said, “Software is easy; you just transcribe our order forms into the inventory system.” At that moment of emasculation, I knew it was a matter of time before I would quit the organization to do something else. Software development is not transcription! It is a complex process of taking business artifacts like forms and turning them into strategies that deliver value for the firm. It is not a transcription but countless creative decisions that developers make that have numerous implications for the business and the software development process.

The dismissive notion that software is just transcription is self-defeating. For example, how does an order form behave once a customer fills it out? Developers will ask about the impact of the order on the inventory and accounts receivable system. Software engineers worry about what happens if an item is missing from the warehouse. Can a data team use the inventory to track trends and determine how to serve customers better? Finally, what else should the ordering system do to deliver value to the business? It is a game with thousands of questions, and developers need to answer them to make the software work.

The technology world overflows with intelligent and talented people. Despite layoffs, the technology world has an over-abundance of work and needs more people to do it. Business leaders want to throw as much work at employees as possible because their labor is expensive. It is this crazy ratio of supply and demand which drives much of the dysfunction in the technology business. Instead of creating a cycle of productivity, there are episodes of burnout and failure to deliver. 

Over the years, I have been profoundly disappointed by business leaders who do not understand technology or how to lead others. I joined the agile reformation because I know that there are better ways to lead others and deliver working software. The business world needs reform, and it is up to people like me and you to speed that process along, so now, when a toxic leader says software development is easy, I know what to say to convince them otherwise.

Until next time. 

Some Reasons Why We Are Less Productive

This week's big news in technology is Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. He has terrorized the staff quickly, made changes, instituted an 85-hour work week, and laid off half the team. I would love to talk more about this, but Musk already receives too much attention, and I firmly believe in denying trollish people the attention they desperately seek. I will wait for Elon to explain himself to a bankruptcy judge before commenting on his leadership style. Today, I want to concentrate on something which popped up during the week: the decline in productivity among the global workforce.  

The Washington Post featured headlines that productivity is down among U.S. workers. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the headline, and it is clear that a combination of factors is creating a perfect storm of low productivity. I will blame three main elements; inflation, fatigue, and poor leadership.  

It is no secret that inflation is driving plenty of angst in the economy. Supply-side problems and a tight labor market are making prices for gas, food, and rent a significant burden. Pay rates are not keeping up with the inflation rate, which means that as of November 2022, a person's wages can purchase six percent less than one year ago. It means that if you are earning a paycheck, your labor provides less money for you and your family. It creates a cycle of despair where you work each day and fall further behind in your commitments. It is no wonder that people are not working harder because they do not see any benefit from that effort. 

Next, I want to point to an article by Mary McNamara,  who correctly observes that American workers are tired. Fatigue is hallowing out the American workforce. COVID-19 tested American workers and businesses; in the aftermath, people lost their businesses, careers, and lives. Combined with the loss of life of over one million people in the United States, it creates a mourning situation where people must process the things lost during the last three years. Unfortunately, business does not take a break for anyone and relentlessly demands that we set our issues aside and get to work. It is why the World Health Organization has said that the pandemic created a 25% increase in depression and anxiety. Combine this emotional exhaustion with the daily cultural challenges of political polarization, climate change, and concerns about a recession triggered by rising interest rates. Most of us are not right emotionally to be at our best. You have a particular type of demotivation.  

I also suspect a final factor involved in the lack of productivity: the poor leadership of many people in the business today. It looks like plenty of incapable people in leadership roles are using their positions of authority to hurt others. The results show companies that could do no wrong in the past are now losing value with shareholders because their leadership will not face market realities. It also does not help when leaders behave like monarchs and treat their employees like peasants. Working for a bad leader is another factor hurting productivity because people hate working for a jerk.  

As an agile coach and consultant, I take these things seriously. Often, I feel like the kid who points out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Work should not be a source of alienation or drudgery. Instead, it is a vehicle for change, empowerment, and value if we allow it. It means recognizing the impact of inflation, fatigue, and poor leadership on the workforce. The entire global economy is counting on us. Once we have that recognition, it is time to take action and prevent it from falling further. 

Until next time.

Radical Candor is the New Way of Leadership

My mentor at CAPCO Financial says, "Each day, everyone gets up and delivers value." This aphorism provides me with the desire to persevere in my darker moments. As a leader and agile coach, it has become apparent that most of my job is helping others navigate difficult moments. The pressure of working in the global economy is enormous, and everyone cracks under strain. Their ability to deal with daily adversity during work makes people and teams successful. Today, I want to discuss why you should learn the techniques of Kim Scott's popular book "Radical Candor." 

Scott has a simple thesis in her work. For a leader to be successful, they must care personally for the people they serve and challenge them directly to do the best they can. It is not a difficult concept to understand but hard to put into practice. Mistakes cost money, and careers rise and fall based on small details. The demanding needs of customers are exhausting, and business relationships years in the making can disappear overnight. Being a business person requires a certain amount of toughness. The challenge is to exhibit this mental toughness without inflicting it on the people who work with you.  

It is apparent when you challenge people to improve performance or adjust to changing situations. Speaking up is problematic because many people want to be well-liked by others, and telling someone they are failing risks rejection. Scott understands this, so she comes up with strategies that help leaders correct the conduct of the people they serve. In my experience, people want to know if they are doing good work or how to do a better job. To make this approach relevant, you need to care about the people working with you.  

When we talk about caring for people, it means learning about their families, what they enjoy off hours, and listening to what they have to say. I struggled with this skill, and only in retrospect did I realize that not caring personally about the people under my care creates a toxic type of management known as obnoxious aggression. It is when you challenge others but do not care about them. After some time, I had one team member in open rebellion and another dissociated from the work. I was determined to be different in my next leadership role. 

This humility is hard-earned thanks to numerous failures and false starts during my career. Today, I accept my failures and use them as valuable lessons for my next leadership role. Vulnerability is a superpower in today's business world because it helps you connect with other people and proves that when you must be firm, it comes from a place of empathy instead of malice. The world contains plenty of talented jerks, be the radically candid leader. 

Until next time. 

Agile defeats Brutality on the Battlefield

War isn't about the brutality

Since the beginning of this blog over ten years ago, I have been an advocate of working differently.  The IT world was and still has plenty of talented jerks.  Women and people of color are underrepresented in the ranks of Software Engineers.  Finally, LGBTQ people labor under a cloud of etiquette in the technology business, which is a shame because much of the business would not exist without the contributions of Alan Turning.  Over my career, the situation has improved, but we have significant improvements yet to achieve.  I have fought for this change my entire career.  Reform is difficult in the best of situations.  Even so, it's even more complicated when people fetishize the past that did not exist or feel threatened by people involved in decisions or creative processes.

The most exciting thing to happen in the last fifty years of American history is the gradual acceptance of the variety of people who make up the United States.  The law and public opinion witnessed the approval of the religious and those who do not believe.  Gay people can live their lives openly, and that acceptance has led to a debate about the commercialization of the gay rights movement.  Technology workers from India and Pakistan have exposed American to Muslim and Hindu cultures.  We even see women participating in politics on a level not seen before.  

The progress generates a vocal and sometimes violent backlash.  Individuals in our society struggle with dealing with different types of people with who they do not understand or identify.  Both politicians and media figures have embraced this backlash to make money and gather political power.  This week pundits Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson lamented the state of our military for being too 'woke.' Never missing an opportunity to call attention to himself, Texas Senator Ted Cruz joined the public debate.  The conversation was so disingenuous that republican representative Adam Kinzinger decided to call out Shapiro's bad faith arguments.  I decided to share the tweet below.  

Good point Ben. What branch were you? https://t.co/DA8o17zY90

— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) September 25, 2022

I am not a military veteran and do not even understand the daily sacrifices our service members experience.  I do have a strong background in military history and war gaming.  It gave me some insight into the changes which happened to the United States military since the war in Vietnam and the shift to an all-volunteer army.  Shapiro, Carleson, and Cruz are wrong.  Brutality and firepower do not make a military successful; instead, it is diversity, intelligence, and agility.  I have first-hand knowledge about this subject because I am hosting two Ukrainian refugees in my home.  The stories they tell about the brutality of Russian troops are chilling.  There is also widespread evidence of war crimes committed by entire Russian units.  

A modern battlefield is a place that demands grace under pressure, the ability to improvise, and finally, a will to fight, and based on what we see in Eastern Ukraine, the Russian army lacks those values and skills.  The reason is that the Russian military still thinks it is fighting the Second World War despite its tanks, artillery, and planes. 

While attending training as a product owner, the instructor said something interesting to the class.  He said, "The largest agile organization is the U.S. Army." I chuckled a bit at that notion, but he reassured the class that it was true because everyone spends time in training to do their job.  Soldiers in the field are constantly tinkering around to do their jobs better.  Finally, after a mission, military people have "after-action reports," where they attempt to understand what they can do better.  "There is no way you have a volunteer army without an Agile mindset," he said. 

It brings me to a few articles on the web.  The first is from the Atlantic this week from Phillips Payson O'Brien.  I will include his article here, but he points out that the brutal army of Russia is getting its head handed to it because the Ukrainian military is more flexible, technologically conversant, and willing to learn.  Additionally, unicorn soldiers prove that LGBTQ troops are as deadly and heroic as heterosexual troops.  

The more informative article is from agile coach Dmytro Yarmak who became a Ukrainian Military Officer overnight and February 24, 2022.  Commanding a Ukrainian artillery battery, Yarmak says many of the skills he has as an agile coach make him a better leader of troops.  Empathy, pushing decision-making down to ranks, and giving people purpose and mastery instead of orders is how he runs his unit.  It is a powerful lesson that victory belongs to the agile instead of the brutal in war.  

This blog is a bit of a departure for me.  I do not like to talk about current political events and would instead focus on the ups and downs of the business world.  The Ukraine war has lasted six months, and I can no longer ignore it and its impact on the planet and my family.  It also reinforces my belief that we can have a more sustainable, sane, and satisfying work world if we abandon notions of brutality and ignorance for something more agile.  

Just as the Cultural Support teams of the United States Army proved that women have a role in combat during the Afghanistan War, it is evident that agility on the battlefield is more critical than brutality.  Something I doubt Shapiro, Carlson, or Cruz would understand.  

Until next time. 

 

A Few Life Lessons for the Class of 2022

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  Over the years, I have gained competence as a scrum master, product owner, and agile coach.  It is not an easy path to follow.  My professional life contains many failures and setbacks, but it makes me better at my job.  Each day, I attempt to help others avoid the struggles and mishaps I experience in my life.  I am a veteran technical professional, and it means you take pride in showing off your earned scars. 

This week my alma mater, Illinois State University, is having its commencement ceremony.  I walked during my graduation for my parents being proud of my accomplishment and feeling overwhelmed by the rush of final examinations.  I was twenty-two years old and one hundred and fifty pounds lighter when I made that walk.  Today, I want to share a thing or two I have learned along the way with the class of 2022.  

Never Quit Learning – 

Technology moves so quickly that you will become unemployable if you do not keep your skills current.  Successful technology professionals must relearn their careers every eighteen months.  I seek out books, experts, and blogs when I don't understand something.  I still practice coding and the forbidden secrets of open source like .git source control.  

A man I respect, Craig Cutbirth, says that everyone should have an intellectual curiosity about the world.  Curiosity should guide you in your learning and your career.  Soon you will develop a humility about your knowledge and expertise.  At your worst, what you have gathered in your head is what makes you valuable to your fellow humans.  Never squander the gift of learning.  

Be Yourself –

The most surprising thing I have discovered working as a business professional is how much people sacrifice to seek the approval of others, especially those with power.  I have seen people change how they dress to better conform with others in the office.  Moral principles and values are sacrificed for promotions.  Finally, I have seen individuals kiss up and kick down to get ahead.  We have a word for people like this, who are called assholes.  Be yourself at work and be your whole self at work.  Some people may not understand, but it is their problem, not yours.  

Leaders are beginning to understand that bringing your whole self to work makes you happier, more productive, and provides value to the organization they could not imagine.  Ignore the trolls who say otherwise; diversity of background and perspective is a force multiplier in business.  I am very proud to work for an organization, CAPCO, which understands this and supports it at every organization level.  

Say No –

Many people in the business world want to exploit your youth and enthusiasm to bolster their wealth.  Taking on an additional thirty hours a week is wage theft, and a promotion is often an empty promise.  Say no, and say it to set clear boundaries.  Answering e-mail on your phone over the weekend is a symptom of a business that does not respect the people who work for them.  

If you are not learning and feel disrespected by your employer, say no and quit.  Life is too short to work with jerks and organizations who treat you like dirt.  The great resignation is the realization that work must provide financial and personal compensation.  Businesses that do not understand this reality are discovering they are having difficulty finding employees. 

Failure Happens –

Young people, since middle school, are taught that we must pursue success at all costs.  The reality is the business world is going to humble each of us.  Each of us will fail, which is the actual test of who we are.  Failure is pure, and it educates like no other experience.  When you fail, you will do everything not to repeat the experience.  Failure provides you with an incentive to show the people who witnessed your collapse that you are tough and can overcome adversity.  

My failures were like bruises that healed over time rather than tattoos which were marks of shame.  Each of us will fall down, but how we get up is more important.  

Currently, the world is unequal, cruel, and uniquely stupid.  I am doing my part to make it a better place, and I hope you join me in this endeavor.  Enjoy your graduation and take some time to think about what you believe and value.  The real journey begins now. 

Until next time. 

Send Talented Jerks Packing with Agile and SAFe

One of the biggest stereotypes in the business world is the talented jerk who leads by pure force of will.  Through bullying behavior, intimidation, and promises of advancement, these individuals create an environment of fear to forward their business goals.  It is often an exploitive process where your enthusiasm and eagerness to please often are transformed into a weapon.  I have spent plenty of time working with these individuals as a professional.  As a coach or scrum master, it is up to you to call out the toxic behavior and strive to do better.  The contemporary office should be less “The Devil Wears Prada” and more humane. 

The Agile manifesto principles and the SAFe Lean-Agile principles explicitly state that domineering jerks are not the way to lead teams.  The Agile manifesto recognizes that organizations should “build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” SAFe says, “Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers.”  These statements are an open repudiation of the top-down command and control approach championed in popular culture. 

I have had plenty of misfortune working with awful people.  They were emotionally erratic, and you spent your time in the office waiting for an explosion or a well-directed torrent of abuse.  Power is misused, and when something goes wrong, they are the first to deflect blame.  You are right if it sounds like abuse.  Office workers and blue-collar folks suffer through the experience of potent jerks, which changes them.  Instead of enthusiasm and professional pride in what they do, abused workers slog along doing the bare minimum to collect a paycheck.  

Forbes magazine points out four possible paths to power in organizations:

• Dominant-aggressive Behavior: using fear and intimidation.
• Political Behavior: building alliances with influential people.
• Communal Behavior: helping others
• Competent Behavior: being good at your job 

I think organizations that promote based on helping others and being competent will be more successful than those that concentrate on power and politics.  It is also why both the Agile manifesto and the SAFe lean-agile principles use similar language to describe how organizations and teams should operate.  

I have rallied against talented jerks my entire career.  It is a natural response to being their target for most of my life.  As I have grown older, I have discovered there is not much intellectual difference between the mean girl who treated you like a grub in geometry class and the marketing professional who expects the web developers to write content for the website with multiple revisions.  It is best to sideline and expose these people because they will undermine the organization in the long run. 

We see plenty of cruelty, inequality, and denial in media, business, and politics.  The only way to fight it is to be kind to others, competent at what we do, and provide an environment where those traits are discouraged.  I am not perfect at this, but I strive to get better each day and be an example for others. 

I joined the agile reformation because I felt there was a better way to work.  Today, I feel just as strongly, and the first step is to create an atmosphere of kindness, cooperation, and competence at the office.  Next, it is exposing talented jerks.  Finally, breaking the cycle of abuse we all experience in a typical business environment.  I will take that any day over a Prada suit.  

Happy Easter and until next time.

Let Your Employees Work from Home

From time to time, I like to call out bad behavior in the business community.  I don't particularly appreciate doing it, but when people behave poorly or say things that need challenging, it is the responsibility of people like me to call attention to it.  This week, billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin gave a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago and said young people are hurting their careers by not returning to the office.  I respectfully disagree and want to point out that a net worth of 21 Billion dollars does not equal wisdom. 

Mr. Griffin is hugely successful, and he has offices in Chicago, New York, and across the globe.  He has one of the most significant hedge funds in the United States, so when you have that level of wealth and power, people like the Chicago Economic Club are going to give you a forum to speak.  According to Bloomberg News, he said, "So for our youngest members of our workforce, I'm gravely concerned that the loss of early career development opportunities is going to cost us dearly over the decades to come." I disagree; if we work in the global economy, we need to think differently about asking people to work at a corporate office.  

Workers are going to time-shift working with teams in India and Asia.  Thanks to tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, they do not need to come into the office to have those meetings.  In addition, people who work at home can avoid commuting expenses, and the savings in both time and money tends to increase productivity from the workforce.  Finally, the last 18-moths of work have proven that professional workers can do what they do from anywhere in the world.  

I suspect that Mr. Grifin is more interested in exercising control over his workforce than the personal development of younger people in his organization.  Why?  Because he runs a multi-billion dollar hedge fund and thinks it gives him absolute power over the people who are delivering value to his organization.  It is a common form of arrogance that the wealthy have regarding the people who work for them.  

Griffin can run his business, however, he chooses, but it is clear that it is a conformist place that stifles innovation and creativity.  I am confident he enforces a dress code in the office and likes to keep up appearances for his clients or competitors.  The offices he is eager to populate with his workforce are a stage to show off his wealth and power to future investors.  

Mr. Griffin then chides other CEOs for being soft because they are not mandating their workers to return to the office.  The reality is companies are struggling to retain workers because they want to work from home. The great resignation is a reaction to businesses that will not allow them to work from home.  Workers are voting with their feet, and CEOs are not being scared; they are smart.  The global talent competition is such that if you do not offer a hybrid model for working, your competition will poach talent from you.  

I have repeatedly said that workers are not resources, and treating people like machine tools who can be used up and thrown away is a recipe for failure in the 21st century.  Mr. Griffin's wealth insulates him from that reality, but that does not mean people like myself cannot call out his lack of vision.  It will only be a matter of time before that reality catches up with him or his descendants.  

Until next time. 

Ten Years Ain't What It Used to Be

Yogi Berra, the beloved manager of the New York Yankees, was a great baseball player and a reputation with the press for providing entertaining quotations.  Reflecting on previous Yankee teams, Berra observed, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be." Once the joke sank in, everyone at the press conference had a good chuckle and moved on with their lives.  The quotation survived to be recycled in commencement speeches and by numerous writers, including me.  I have been thinking deeply about the past, and it occurred to me I have been blogging for the last ten years.  Along the way, I have learned a few things.  Today, I think it is good to examine this blog's long strange trip, and I have traveled.  

I started this blog in response to some sad events in my personal life.  I was going through a divorce with my spouse.  Confronted with career frustration and my personal life imploding, I decided to found a software as a service company E₃ systems.   The blog would promote the company, and in a few years of struggle, I would become a full-time entrepreneur and big shot.  I wrote some great software, and people liked it. The downside is everyone would not pay me for my services.  

If an entrepreneur cannot get paid for their efforts, they are behaving like an amateur.  My business would become another example of the over 90% of the startups who fail.  Along with the title of software developer and scrum master, I would distinguish myself as a failed entrepreneur.  The social media presence I created was promoting a company that had no paying customers.  The company still exists, but I now use it for personal consulting rather than a vehicle to become an internet unicorn.  

I have mentioned that failure is the best educational process a person can experience.  The adventures of the last ten years have exposed me to plenty of failures and given me the chance to share the wisdom I have gathered along the way.  As I see it, I have the battle scars so you can avoid injury.  The blog becomes a pivot where I shared information about agile, coaching, and technology.  It was a natural reaction to disappointment.  

I migrated from promoting my business to fostering more participation in the agile reformation.  I highlighted controversies and talked about my journey as I strove to become a better scrum master and agile coach.  If you pay attention to trends over the last ten years, you discover a few things.  

• Agile is not a fad:  It is becoming the dominant way to manage an IT business but suffers from bad agile implementations.
• Corporate environments are overwhelmed with fear:  Fear of failure and fear of change are the dominant emotions in corporate cultures.  Only the creation of psychological safety by business leaders will change these situations.  
• Technology is eating the world:  We don't have enough workers to feed the beast.  Something will have to give.  
• Microsoft has evolved from an evil empire to your cool uncle:  I am glad I got to witness this change.  
• Talented jerks still linger in this business:  If we want a better and more diverse technology sector, we need to expose these individuals to sunlight.  
• Finally, dedicated professionals will continue to lead change:  I have met plenty of great folks in the last ten years.  All of us committed to making work less awful. 

Failure and tragedy happen.  In business and technology, when a failure occurs, it costs people their careers.  The days of a straightforward career path up the corporate ladder are gone.  For people who make their living in this unforgiving world, each of us must share our experiences and help others learn from our wisdom.  It makes this blog a travel log of the emotional and technical labor it takes to keep the global economy spinning.  I hope you have learned a few things along the way.  I know that I have.  

Yogi Berra was right; nostalgia is not what it used to be.  Looking back at the past should be clear-eyed, honest about our failures, and ensuring we strive not to repeat those failures.  I have attempted to do that during the last ten years on this blog, and I am deeply grateful for everyone who has joined me along the way.

Until next time.  

Call out Trolls Before They Destroy Your Business

Spot trolls before they hurt your business

The biggest challenge in Servant leadership is working with the disinterested, dishonest, and disrespectful.  Each organization harbors these individuals like weeds in a field of grass.  People like this seem to revel in their bad faith efforts to undermine others, avoid work, and act as parasites to everyone around them.  Throughout my career, I have confronted these individuals, and it never gets easier.  We should be brave enough to call out poor behavior.  

I spend plenty of time on LinkedIn. It is an excellent service because I can catch up on colleagues, get the latest news from the business community, and many of my fellow travelers share information about what is new. I was surfing along and read the following post from a coach and scrum trainer. The emphasis is mine.  

“I am a project manager having 15 years of experience and 5 years exclusively in project management. I do hold a PMP certificate too. My company is adopting Scrum-based delivery and it seems there is no role for the project managers. There are 3 roles in Scrum but none of them is for me. 

I can’t be a Product Owner because it will get filled from the business/customer side. I am not hands-on so I can’t be a part of the Development Team.

Scrum Master seems to be a very junior role for me. Many Scrum Masters are just a part-timer or working previously as Team Lead/ Tech Lead etc. There was a point when these people were reporting to me on my projects.

I also have an issue with the Servant Leadership style. It is not that I am a command & control person and you can ask my colleagues. Everyone will say how good I am with empathy, situation leadership, and self-reflection. But servant leadership sounds to me either head of the Servant or becoming Gandhi and Mandela. 

What will you suggest? Should I look at some different roles if yes then which one? I have also heard a lot about Agile Coach though I don’t know much how is this different than Scrum Master.”

I had a lot to unpack in this message.  It is an excellent example of how NOT to do Servant leadership.  I have said in the past, that ego is the enemy of good leadership.  Additionally, Servant leadership is more about leading by example than attempting to behave like a saint.  Scrum mastery requires kindness, and it often requires going beyond the call of duty. 

Being a scrum master is not a junior role.  It is a managerial role with tremendous responsibility and little authority. You are the person in the Taupe blazer who must inspire others to get work done.  At times you are a therapist, and at others, you are doing code reviews.  Often you are a square peg in a round hole.  Scrum masters are not junior; instead, they are essential to the success of your organization. 

The arrogance associated with the post was very telling.  What made it shocking was that it came from an instructor from Scrum.org.  I could expose this individual, but that would make me no better a coach or scrum master.  I am sensitive to harassment and doxing concerns on the internet.  I want the satisfaction of calling out a troll and exposing them to shame and ridicule.  The reality is they do not care.  A troll does what they do for the attention and outrage.  Instead, I would rather point out the attitude of these people so that we can be on the lookout for this behavior.  People like this are going to hurt your organization, so it is best to make you aware of them and not give them a chance.  

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  As I continue to advance my career, I do not want to forget where I came from and the lessons I gained along the way.  Being a scrum master and product owner is hard work.  Developers and people in the organization are under tremendous pressure to deliver value to their customers and organization.  In the global economy, we are all servants, whether we like it or not.  Insulting other professionals as junior or beneath you is not how you participate in the agile reformation.  It is a form of elitism that has sparked backlash around the developed world.  

Today, I wanted to call attention to an attitude that will hurt your organization.  It is elitist, and it comes from a position of arrogance.  Do yourself a favor, find these people, and make sure you never hire them.  

Until next time. 

Getting started the Agile Way.

Getting started is hard.

One of the sayings of the Scrum Alliance is, “Scrum, easy to explain; hard to implement.”  When I first saw it, I thought it was a concise way to sell the concept to others.  With experience behind me, I understand it was a clear warning.  Scrum is hard to implement but it is a way to deliver more value to customers sooner.  How do you get started?

I am what Bloomberg Business Week called “The Man in the Taupe blazer.” I have a wrinkled suit and an eye for continuous improvement.  I look around the organization and find a way to make things better.  Over my career, I have discovered that people do not know how to manage projects.  Skills like prioritization, time management, and breaking work down into smaller pieces are rare in the business world.

I suspect lousy project management happens for two reasons — first, many of us to learn to create by ourselves.  The use of teams to educate students and develop teamwork is a recent trend in education.  It means people learn to work on their own instead of with others.  I also attribute this to the glamorization of what I like to call “asshat leadership.”  Gifted people like Elton Musk, Steve Jobs, Carly Fiorina, and Alex St. John lead organizations and behave poorly to others.  The “asshat leader” is someone who thinks being rude, insensitive, and authoritarian is leadership.  It is not and Robert Sutton’s book, “The No Asshole Rule,” makes it clear that being an “asshat leader” has serious implications for the business.  The style of leadership is colorful and media-friendly but, in the end, it often leads to adverse outcomes.  For those two reasons, I think it is hard to lead and manage projects.

So, where does a rookie coach or scrum master begin when they introduce scrum in an organization?  I say before you do anything, talk to people doing the work and listen to what they have to say.  Many people like talking about their jobs, so when you ask, they will be happy to share with you.  Ask them about what is working for them.  Ask them what they feel needs to be changed.  You will be surprised by what you learn.  Only when you have learned what you can will you be able to move forward.

The next step is to teach and practice the basics.  Show a development team the process of scrum.  Show them the rituals involved with a sprint and practice them always.  Repetition is an excellent teaching tool.  Eventually, the team will treat the sprint cadence like a routine.  If a team masters the basics of sprinting then they will be able to focus on more advanced topics.

Once the team is sprinting, track your progress and ruthlessly inspect and adapt.  Measure how you are doing and then make changes to each sprint to improve.  Team members need to feel like they have input into the changes and are respected.  I remember a quotation from Will Durant, “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then is not an act but a habit. “

Help people develop good habits and then watch them succeed.  I did not realize this until I worked with an organization that stressed excellence daily.  Soon, we considered it reasonable to achieve daily and when we did fail to be able to cope with the disappointment and do better the next time.  Now one will ever be perfect but we can all strive for excellence.

So, if you are beginning your agile journey, practice the basics of scrum, listen to others, inspect and adapt regularly to change, and make excellence a habit.  It is not easy but it will be worth it.

Until next time.

Why Healthy Ownership

"Healthy Ownership" created to fight abuse

I have been in deep thought about what we in the agile community need to do to make businesses more responsive to market demands.  The reality is that many relationships in the technology world can be abusive; this why I want to talk about the reasons why I have been working on “Healthy Ownership.”

It is not a secret that software developers can be jerks.  It is also not a secret that there are plenty of raging asshats in the technology business.  Finally, if you work in a shrinking industry, the pressure to do more with less can be absurd.  With all of these realities, there is no reason to be involved in the following behaviors.

Questioning the estimates of a development team.  

I have written several times about the underlying social contract of agile.  Product Owners set priorities and development teams to estimate how long it is going to fulfill those priorities.  I had a product owner question those priorities saying, “You did something similar last sprint so I thought you could do it faster this sprint.”  All user stories should be negotiable but for things like scope and acceptance criteria.  When product owners start questioning how long it takes to complete that scope you break the social contract of agile.  It is this kind of conduct which demotivates the development team and gives them license to question the judgment of priorities of the product owner. 

Not writing a unit test or chipping in with QA work.

I have known developers who have looked down on quality assurance people.  Experience tells me that these individuals are not very good developers.  Software development is complicated, and the process of authoring it creates intellectual blinders.  Quality assurance people guarantee that those blinders are less convincing.  They ask uncomfortable questions, probe weaknesses in logic and are willing to take a sledgehammer to a sink to make sure that everything works as promised.

Quality assurance people help developers improve, and developers help QA people understand what they are testing.  A recent blog post mentions a professional golfer is not finished with a hole until they put the ball into the cup.  For weekend beer league golfers, it is good enough to get it close to the hole and “pick it up.”  Writing unit tests and doing QA work separates professionals from beer league developers.  Refusing to do this means you are rejecting the professionalism of your craft. 

Ignoring refactoring and technical debt

Technology is a brutal business.  It is unforgiving and humbles the best of us.  It changes so quickly; a developer needs to relearn their job every eighteen months.  It means that code they are working on needs continuous refactoring.  What is working in the short term may be hard to maintain or adapt to changing business needs.  It is why technical debt and refactoring matter.

Many people in leadership roles have a, “if it is not broken do not fix it,” attitude.  Neglecting technology is like ignoring your household plumbing.  It may work now but when it does break it is going to create a tremendous mess.  Paying attention to technical debt and refactoring is common sense like changing the batteries on your smoke detectors. 

All three of these pathologies brought me and others together to create “healthy ownership.”   These behaviors are abusive and counter-productive to any team.  Only be addressing these dysfunctions will the practice of software development improve.

Until next time.

I would have fired him too!

Freedom of expression is not a license to be an asshole.

Plenty of pixels have been expended on the diversity memo from a Google engineer who argues that efforts to improve diversity were a waste of time.  I have been following the arguments and spoken with friends about the dust up.  It dawned on me that this is not a question about diversity versus political correctness.  The entire affair is really about teamwork and being a jerk to you colleagues.  The author of the memo is not free thinking but using pseudoscience to justify biased views.  As an agilest and leader, there is no room for these individuals in your organization.

Over the years, I have been critical of the “brogrammer” culture.  I have also been critical of engineers who think gender is a disqualifying factor to work in technology.  Last week, I further bemoaned the lack of women in the development profession.  I placed much of the blame on a feedback loop of men pursuing computer science careers and providing a leg up to other men in the industry.  It is also apparent to me that working in technology gives certain individuals the license to be an asshole to others.

One of my favorite business books is “The No Asshole Rule,” by Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D.  Sutton does a fantastic job providing a scholarly definition of what an asshole is and reasons why you do not want them in your business.  I think it should be required reading for any business person along with the “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” by Partick Lencioni.  

According to Sutton, an Asshole has two traits:

• Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the “target” feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person?  In particular, does the target feel worse about him- or herself?
• Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather those individuals who are more powerful.

Based on the above criteria, it is evident to me that the author of the Google memo is an asshole.  The author considers himself and those like him intellectually and morally superior.  Since they are superior, they should not have to debase themselves by having to educate, mentor, or collaborate with those people.  This"other" could be women, ethnic minorities, and people living different lives.

A modern office is not an environment for this kind of thinking.  Women make up a large percentage of the work force and are filling senior leadership positions.  There are also countless people of color working as professionals.  Finally, individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender are collaborating with those who are not.  Anyone who considers themselves superior to others not like them is going to create tension and undermine collaboration in the office.  Eventually, behavior like this is going to trickle down to the bottom line.  From an agile perspective, individuals who feel this sense of superiority are going to be resistant to continuous improvement.  It is not a surprise the author of the diversity memo wrote this after attending a workshop on the bias.

As a manager and agilest I would have fired the author of the Google memo.  He was a distraction to the firm and advocating for a direction that the company had openly rejected.  Finally, his attitude to co-workers different than him would undermine any project he was assigned.  Better to remove a polyp than deal with cancer which could kill your organization.

Until next time.

I am taking next week off to attend the Gen-Con game fair. 

Software Development needs Women

We need more women in Technology.

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  Being a scrum master is difficult but it has plenty of intrinsic rewards.   As I have muddled through my career, I have noticed the technology business is diverse.  I have worked with Indian, Pakistani, Russian, and Latino developers.  I have worked with every possible religious group from atheists and pagans to evangelical fundamentalist Christians.  The only criteria in the technology business I have encountered is could a person write good code.  Race, creed or color never disqualified a person from being a software engineer.  Unfortunately, gender is not diverse in the technology business.  We need to do a better job having women represented in the ranks of coders and agile practitioners.   This week, I want to formally provide my support for efforts to get more young girls to join the profession I love.

In the early days of software development, women and men were equally involved in the trade.  These pioneering software developers were business people first who learned how to write software without a formal collegiate curriculum.  One of the best depictions of this period is the film “Hidden Figures” which shows women of color working for NASA.  The 1950’s and 1960’s were not a golden age of diversity in American Business, but in the early days of software development, there was less gender disparity.

I believe that this changed as colleges began accepting undergraduates for computer science course.  Men began to dominate in this academic major, and it created a feedback loop of men helping other men get into the profession.  As women retired from the occupation, men replaced them.  These individuals knew how to code but did not understand the businesses they were working. As the business of software development became more lucrative and prestigious, companies pushed more women out the activity.  With fewer women in the occupation, the “brogrammer” culture began to grow, and software development teams became hostile work environments.  With the rise of Silicon Valley software shops, this trend became more pronounced, and it has been severely parodied in popular culture thanks to the HBO series. 

I am glad to report that over the years, I have run into plenty of exceptional women who walk a lonely road and work in this profession.  It is also good to see the rise of organizations like Girl Scouts and Code Like a girl encourage young people to get into the profession.  There is plenty of toxic masculinity in this business, and only with the addition of more women, a means to discourage it.  Finally, it is important that men support women in this craft.

Software development is a diverse profession, but it could do better with gender equity.  It is up to all of us in the business to recognize that girls can code and they are welcome in the profession.

Until next time.

All about forgiveness

Talking about forgiveness.

It is evident to me that 2017 is the year of messiness.  Software is a messy activity.  The clutter is caused by the human emotions of foibles which are part of the creative process.  As a scrum master, you are the servant leader of messy people who write software.  You are supposed to live the agile manifesto and principles.  You set the example.  As a scrum master, you set the tone and help the team succeed.  It is rewarding work, but I have my moments where I am not very proud of the example I am setting.  Continuous improvement means striving to get better.  It also means you need to be able to forgive others and yourself.

My professional career has was shaped by my training in journalism and engineering.  The world of mass communications is very judgmental.  We criticize television anchors for hair color choices and how good their dentition looks on camera.  Radio disc jockeys are slaves to ratings and program managers who can crush your career.  Ratings mean money and if you provide ratings, people will ignore some of your worse personal faults.

Engineers are also a judgmental bunch and are willing to back up that judgment with the scientific method.  The code could run a few nanoseconds faster.  The class could better use the Liskov Substitution principle.  Finally, you could always tighten up the code to make it less error prone.  There is additional machismo where team members compete to assert dominance using their intelligence or programming skill.  It is brutal, and these environments discourage vulnerability and innovation.

As a scrum master, you are encouraged to help remove these dysfunctional behaviors.  Sometimes a scrum master gets caught up in these bad practices.  When you do, you are going to hurt the team.  When you hurt the team, you are undermining your credibility in the organization, and with the people, you are supposed to serve.  The first thing you should do when you hurt your team or someone on it is making amends and apologize.  Asking for forgiveness is hard, but it reinforces the agile values of respect and openness.  A team which can forgive each other when they make mistakes is going to be higher performing than one which is not.

Forgiving yourself is a much harder skill.  We know ourselves better than anyone else.  We are also the least forgiving of our mistakes.  We can feel like frauds to ourselves, and this is imposter syndrome.  Our emotional intelligence may be below average, and we find ourselves in situations which would puzzle others.  Finally, emotional control can be undermined by people who just do not want to improve.  You become a tangled bundle of rubber bands, and you feel like you can snap at any minute.  You do snap you feel riddled with guilt and self-loathing.  Over my career, I have spent a few mornings thoroughly hating the person I see in the mirror.  These feelings are not rational or objective.  These feelings just are, and you cannot escape them.

I have been leaning on friends and family for the last few weeks to receive relief.  I am seeing a doctor in order understand if the stress of the role is contributing to my emotional recriminations.  Finally, I have been avoiding alcohol and caffeine.  My brain chemistry is bad enough, and I don’t need to make it worse with outside stimulants and depressants.  I am making a conscious effort to try and forgive myself for past mistakes.

From the outside, this process is not going to look beautiful, but I need to do it if I am going to improve as a scrum master.  Everyone deserves a dose of forgiveness now and then.

Until next time.

When your office resembles high school

We grow up but never out of high school

When I was a high school student, I had an irrational fantasy about being an adult.  I truly believed when I left school, I would enter an adult world and be surrounded by grown-ups acting in grown up ways.  In the thirty years since high school, I have been bitterly disappointed. This week a few thoughts about how your office resembles high school.

Any American who attended a public high school knows that the students live in a social and cultural limbo. Over achieving strivers are wedged together with cheerleaders.  Hard rock students in black concert shirts walk the hallways with people into hip-hop wearing track suites.  The public high school is one of the few places where people from different economic circumstances, races, and levels of educational acumen are forces to interact with each other.  Naturally, they self-separated and create tribes.

As a dorky kid, I was both outcast and court jester for the insular and sad world.  Eventually, I found a niche in forensics to develop my public speaking and in JROTC to improve my self-discipline. The formative time shaped me into what I am today.

To my surprise, the mean girls who tormented me in school would resurface as marketing, human resources, and project management professionals.  The homecoming kings and athletes would transform into sales professionals and executives.  The dorky people who said not to drugs, studies hard, and developed insane technical skills.  We still answer to these monster in corporate environments.  No wonder so many of us become entrepreneurs.

The first thing I have learned is that mean girls grow up to be mean woman.  I have also learned that mean people are not worth your emotional energy.  They are going to remain mean so the best strategy is to ignore them or treat them with the contempt they deserve.  Telling someone they are being a jerk is the first step in getting them to change.  It is also good to point out to their bosses that the mean person’s attitude is why projects are not getting done on time or on budget.  You will be pleasantly surprised what happens next.  A good leader will fix that situation immediately.

As for the athletes and popular people who become executives, I have found listening to sports radio and watching ESPN sports center gives me enough knowledge to talk sports without sounding totally clueless.  It also allows you to use sports metaphors to describe technical situations.  For instance, I was building a web site and running into problems with the corporate active directory.  I told a boss that the situation was like a basketball team with a player who won’t pass the ball.  A few phone calls later my issue was fixed.

I am not suggesting that you become a tattle tale but I have discovered that when interpersonal issues prevent a project getting completed leaders behave like a high school principle and step in.  It is not pretty but in a world where dollars and cents count.  The person who gets work done is always going to receive preferential treatment over the person preventing that from happening.

So none of us really escape high school but hopefully as adults we can deal with the people who act like they are still in it.

Until next time.

Reputation is not licence to be a jerk

We know lots of people like this.  A few of them 
 set the conversation of the technology world.
 Image courtesy of Slate.com.

The world of technology is filled with plenty of smart, talented and colorful personalities.  This dynamic was one of the reasons why I was drawn to the business.  This week I want to talk about of these colorful personalities and how he represents some of the worst impulses in the technology business.

There are plenty of stereotypes in the technology business.  These are reinforced by popular culture in productions as diverse as James Bond movies, the Fox series 24, and the HBO program Silicon Valley.  Having over 18 years’ experience in the business, I have seen many of these stereotypes in real life.  I have also met plenty of great people who are unique and innovative in every way.

By any standard, Alex St. John should be seen as one of the leading minds in the technology field. He was self-educated and self-taught.  He created the DirectX technology which powers Xbox and just about every PC game on Windows.  His work helped make Microsoft the power house it is and he earned further accolades founding his own company.  This kind of achievement should make St. John a good will ambassador for the technology field instead, he is coming off as a colossal jerk.

I can provide numerous examples which have already been articulated elsewhere on the web.  These offenses break down into three categories.

• He does not see the value of women in technology.  Exhibit A.
• He thinks that exploitative work conditions in the software business, particularly, the game business are acceptable.  Exhibit B.
• Finally, anyone who disagrees with him is a “whiner” of not willing to work hard.  Exhibit C.

I have stated repeatedly, technology needs more women.  The fresh perspective they provide to technology is essential to improving product quality.  It also makes the office less like a Mongol raiding party and more like a 21st century work place.  The less testosterone in technology the better.

Next repeated studies have shown that long hours are a hindrance to productivity rather than a boon.  Notions of “crunch” time and working eighty hour work weeks are exploitative and boarder on the illegal practice of wage theft.  Additionally, the twelve principle of Agile discourage this mindset stressing development should sustainable.  To St. John and others developer burn-out, turnover, and alienation are the cost of doing business.  Technology workers are not different that sweatshop workers and they should be grateful for the conditions.

Finally, St. Jon has ridiculed people who disagree with him about issues of diversity and exploitation of tech workers by claiming they are not ambitious enough or smart enough to understand his arguments.  In St. John’s world, I would have died of a heart attack because I would be living on steady diet of caffeine, pizza, and stress.  The technology world has undermined two of my marriages because of high stress, turn over, and uncertain employment conditions.  It is hard to keep good employees if they don’t see or sleep with their significant others.  I consider myself a valuable professional to any organization, but to St. John, I am just a pencil to be ground down into a nub to be replaced by someone else just as disposable.

Bottom line, if you do not agree with St. John, then you are neither smart nor talented enough to work in technology.  This may explain why he is spending more time coaching CEO’s and HR professionals on how to recruit technology talent than actually managing technology talent.  I have worked for people like St. John who are convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority. It is not fun and I consider those periods the low points of my career.  Technology is changing thanks to agile and efforts to improve diversity.  Faced with the changing environment you can, lead, follow, or get out of the way.  I think that St. John is about to get trampled to death.

Until next time.