Looking for Work

About a month ago, the layoff wave finally caught up to me. Everyone at Skyway was gracious, saying repeatedly that they wish they had the money to keep me on board and that they'd really like to bring me back when the economy starts to turn around. But obviously I'm not holding my breath.

Here is my LinkedIn profile, including plenty of recommendations from colleagues and supervisors.

So if you know of or hear about any Eclipse-related positions, either contract or "perm" staff, please keep me in mind. For now I'd really like to try to stay in the Eclipse development world (designing/writing plug-ins and RCP-based applications, mentoring, training) but I'm open to just about anything to involves Java and Eclipse.

Micro$oft pulls a SCO move

Out of ideas, the Redmond Giant has resorted to stealing ideas from maligned SCO.

Let's listen in on a high-level strategy meeting on location in Redmond, WA, USA....

SteveB: "OK, we are getting creamed by all this damned high-quality open-source free software."

BillG: "Why don't we give another try a making at better product, Steve?"

SteveB: "Huh? What does that mean? Bill, you're so out of touch with my company...
So anyway, we're turning to you, our attorneys, to solve the problem for us. What have you got?"

AttorneyA: "Well, sir, we could try to bomb their offices with smelt-flavored pudding. That would slow them down from making and marketing the good software."

SteveB: "No, that won't work you idiot - they don't have offices."

AttorneyB: "How about sending them all free copies of Windows Vista and asking real nice to stop making us look bad?"

Tech VP: "That won't work either - nobody can afford the hardware to actually run Vista with any useful features enabled. Except our development team, that is."

SteveB: "C'mon numbskulls! If you don't come up with a strategy, you're all fired!"

AttorneyC: "Um, Mr. B, sir? I have an idea. What about we 'pull a SCO' on the world and launch a FUD campaign. We could use the empty threat of litigation for 'stealing' our technology. And the best part is, SCO showed that we don't even have to come up with real details - just the innuendo about infringement is enough to make the world doubt those evil good-software makers."

SteveB: "Hmm, that just might work. Yes,... I like it! Let's see now, how many 'violations' can we get away with?"

AttorneyA: "I don't think it really matters, sir. Make it in the hundreds."

Tech VP: "We can write software to generate a random number to use for the campaign. I'll get our offshore team working on that right away, sir!"

SteveB: "How long will it take, Mr. TechVP?"

TechVP: "Initial estimate is... 265 man-months for development, sir. As usual, testing will be allocated 0.25 monkey-days."

SteveB: "OK, well we'd better get some funding for that effort. I'll talk to SalesVP about forcing another enterprise-wide upgrade on Mega-Customer. No, better yet, I'll just have him use the auto-disabling feature of Vista to force all the grandmothers to buy the new Office version. Yeah, we don't want to piss-off Mega-Customer any more this year, and how gives a rat's behind about the consumers anyway...
OK, men - we have a plan - let's execute!"

AttorneyB: "Sir, didn't SCO fail miserably with this strategy and end up taking the throne from us as the most hated company in the tech world? "

SteveB: "Who's SCO? And besides, Nobody hates us..."

And thus the FUD campagin begins and the ever-so-predictable reactions...

Why not Casual Monday?

American workforce culture is already too focused on getting to the weekend - Casual Friday makes it worse.

So I'm in the second week of working at yet another new job. It is a pretty good sized company (though nothing like the behemoth that was HSBC), and as is the norm they observe a "business casual" dress policy, including "casual Fridays " where jeans are acceptable. It got me thinking this morning as I donned my most comfortable denim: why is it always Friday that companies (the ones that are still enslaved by the idea that dressing in khaki's and golf shirts 4 days out of the week somehow makes people better workers) designate for "casual" attire? Why not Mondays?

I mean, it is already the sad state of the typical American worker mentality that so many see Friday as a kind of Elysian Field , a reward for surviving the rigors of the work-week. I find that "work for the weekend" attitude very revealing and pretty pathetic; it says a lot about the typical worker's attitude towards his job, satisfaction with his work, and the typical company's treatment of employees, that so many people are so focused on the nearing reprieve (Friday) instead of on what they can accomplish during the week. So when I see Friday accentuated as a partial release of our workplace burdens (in the form of a relaxed dress policy), I can't help but think it is just reinforcing the "work for the weekend" attitude: "I can't wait until the weekend so much that getting to wear casual clothes on Friday is a big deal."

Thus, I wonder why companies don't use the carrot of Designated Casual Dress to entice workers to look forward to Monday or even Wednesday. Who among us does not regularly loathe Mondays, dreading the return to the drudgery of the work week? Alternatively, how far would Casual Wednesday go towards wiping out the thought of Wednesday as Hump Day ? If employers offered Casual Monday (or Wednesday), would that not make those otherwise barely tolerable days that much more palatable?

Imagine waking up on Monday morning and being able to slip into those old comfy jeans and tee-shirt. Doesn't that make Monday at least a little better? Wouldn't that help fend off those draining attacks of Mondayitis ? I think it would.