Archive for the 'General' Category

6 Phases of Being Employed in the Insurance Industry

Published
by
Ben Sanders
on September 11, 2009
in General
. 8 Comments

Phase 1

You are listening to jazz — Your first day at work is great. Your fellow co-workers are wonderful, your office is cute, you love your agents, and your manager is the best!

Phase 2

You are listening to pop music — After a while you are so busy that you are not sure if you’re coming or going anymore.

Phase 3

You are listening to heavy metal — This is what you feel like after ONE month.

Phase 4

You are listening to hip hop — You become bloated due to stress, you’re gaining weight due to lack of exercise because you are so tired and have so much work to do and, when you do get home, you feel sluggish and suffer from constipation. Your fellow co-workers are too cheerful for your liking, your agents don’t understand a word you say and the walls of your office are closing in.

Phase 5

You are listening to GANGSTA RAP — After more time passes, your eyes start to twitch and you forget what a ‘good hair day’ feels like as you just fall out of bed and load up on caffeine.

Phase 6

You are listening to the voices in your head — You have locked your office door to keep people out. You wonder WHY you are even here in the first place and WHY you became an insurance professional!

Developer Death Marches

Published
by
Ben Sanders
on May 25, 2009
in General
. 1 Comment

I’m done with my haitus from blogging…until I need another haitus ;).

What I wanted to write about is the typical, ever more frequent now, developer “death marches.” From my experiences, as well as those told by friends, occur when some executives get something in their head that must be done by a specific date with arguably shakey business reason and rationale. Then the IT manager realizes they have no real authority as they are instructed to literally kill their team by making them work mandatory overtime, weekends, and holidays. This typically leads to the developers to be stressed, zombie-like (no headshots please), and ready for revenge. {Imagine the retaliation effort here}. After the unsuccessful uprising of developer sarcasm and/or poor code…the inevitable almost always happens. The…saving grace, if you will - some executive realizes that the requirements and testing efforts are not ready, and they really had not been from the start. So the project gets delayed, shelved, or worked on at a slower pace.

I spoke with a friend of mine last week - learning that they were grinding away, now addicted to caffeine, and affecting their health only so that they could have the 3-day Memorial Day weekend to their family. I know of some others who last year had the Christmas season, but at the expense of their January thru May.

I believe companies are doing this due to higher turnover and the current economic situation. They see this as a cost-saving measure. It clearly is not. Not only does one’s codebase suffer, but their other employees see this and company-wide morale erodes. Then comes the turnover - which usually occurs during a hiring freeze (for added smite and dramatic effect). And the project, which may have even been very good for the company’s business and future, suffers to a point it either gets canceled, shelved, or redesigned by some astronaut architect.

So IT managers and executive, if you value your livelihood, and that of your developers, please, do not send them through a death march. Developers have this embedded sense of justice - and one way or another, they will win - you can bet your overpriced mocha on it…mwahahahaha…ahem…seriously…they will win. Serious.

Ben.Says(@”Hello World”);

Published
by
admin
on September 27, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Welcome one and all to my pirated copy of WordPress blog! For those of you laughing - you got my humor. Everyone else should Ctrl-Alt-Del right now.

I have lived an interesting life - and want to share that with friends and countrymen! In these blog posts, you’ll catch up on recent events, reminisce on fond and painful memories.