Had a moment the other day that I can only describe as Jenga coding. Having spent the day working on a difficult problem, designing, coding and testing the first part of the newest feature of my behemoth, I still had an hour to go on the day. I pondered: what could I do, what could I test further, what further step could I accomplish in the time remaining? I suddenly had a vision of a Jenga tower. Rather than the typical beer-drinking game version of writing various drinks on the sides, my Jenga blocks had class and method names, the classes and methods of the solution I’d built so far. That tower was looking mighty precarious. So, I went home. No sense breaking something just before heading out the door.
Month: April 2003
Tattoo Parties??
Waiting at the doctor’s office yesterday, one of the nurse’s daughters came in. Turns out she’s 17 and her mom had made her come in for this appointment. While she was waiting her turn, she went back to the office area to show one of the receptionists her new tattoo. Apparently she had just had it done this weekend, and it was still very tender.
Curious, I asked her at what studio she had gotten it done. To my surprise, she said she hadn’t gotten it done at a studio, she had gotten it done at her aunt’s house. Her aunt had had a tattoo party, and she was one of ten people who had been tattooed that evening. If the other tattooes were as large as hers was (hers was on the base of her back and was probably 10 inches wide by 6 inches tall), then that tattoo artist was busy for quite a while!
Now, I’m both a fan of tattooes and a fan of “buy stuff” parties (think Pampered Chef kitchen ware, PartyLite candles, Longaberger baskets – all of which have sucked me into buying something at least once), I’m trying to imagine which of my various friends and associates would attend a tattoo party. How do you decide the guest list?? Who’s your target customer? And then the time-honored munchies at a “buy stuff” party – how do you adjust them for folks who might be squeamish at the little bit of blood you might see as someone else’s tattoo is getting inked? I assume the beverages end up being a little bit stronger than Coke…
Somehow this seems quite the Martha-Stewartish suburbanite twist on the typical group of girls/guys getting themselves psyched up some weekend evening and daring each other to get a tattoo. This is something you put in your DayTimer and leave yourself a reminder to bring a casserole. Too weird! (But worth an experiment if I have enough like-minded friends! Kel, Miche, Vanessa, Sheri, Denice… want to try a different kind of party??)
Korean Culinary Adventures
Yesterday my brother-in-law, Brad, presented me with an assortment of Korean foods that he purchased during his travels. Feeling somewhat adventurous, I brought one of the soup-bowl-looking things to work for lunch today. The packaging is reminiscent of something we’d buy here, with a pretty picture on the front, bold colors to attract your eye, a bar code, and what looks like an ingredient list, cooking directions, and even an evaluation of its nutrition. None of that is useful to me, though, as all of the text is in Korean. I do get the idea that I’m not supposed to microwave the packaging (its a Styrofoam bowl), and that I shouldn’t spill it on myself due to hot liquid contents, based on some icons that seem to transcend cultural boundaries.
The packaging did provide me with one useful clue, though – a web address for the company that makes the product. Luckily, they even provide an English version of the site (Russian, too, apparently, though that’d help me about as much as Korean). Doing some hunting, I think my lunch is the Spicy Soya Ramen, as I do have two packets included with my ramen noodles.
And now the taste test: I’m afraid of their description of “spicy”. In past foreign food adventures, I’ve discovered that one culture’s idea of spicy may be magnitudes greater than my threshold for spicy, even though I generally like spicy foods. This stuff is pretty good, though. It’s got a bite to it, but nothing that leaves me fearing that I’m searing my tastebuds.
Neat change of pace for my day, between the food itself, and the wondering what exactly it was I was going to end up with. Can’t wait to try some of the other goodies Brad brought back… I remember seeing seasoning paste for kimchee (salted spicy cabbage), as well as some other spicy sauces. I’m going to have me some fun in the kitchen!
Non-billable business in the mix
I’m a services software developer, which means that my company makes money by building custom systems for organizations that need systems’ solutions. These projects are typically priced based on man-hours required to build the system, so the billable hour is king in a company like ours. The philosophical problem is determining what value a non-billable activity brings to the company and/or the employee performing that activity, and how (and whether) the company should incentivize or dissuade employees from performing those activities. (I was an economics major among other things in college, so this philosophical question holds particular interest for me.)
Three somewhat concrete examples: taking training, writing proposals, and participating in technical leadership communities. No client is interested in paying for these activities, as they don’t benefit them directly, so any hours spent here are non-billable. In each of those cases, the company receives some benefit from its employees spending time in these non-billable activities. In each of those cases, the employee receives some benefit from spending time in these non-billable activities. In the case of training, I’d say the benefit lays most heavily on the employee’s side; for proposal writing, more heavily on the company’s side; and for technical leadership, it’s more of a mix.
Our company’s policy, given its reliance on billable hours for cash flow and profitability, is that non-billable activities occur above and beyond billable hour activities. For an employee that’s fully tasked (e.g., 40 hours a week are billable), that means any of these other non-billable activities occur “on their own time”. The company retains the maximum revenue benefits of the employee’s time. Since employees are salaried, there’s little additional cost incurred by having an employee work beyond their regulated work week.
The problem I see here is that any individual employee believes that their “own time” is valuable. Whilst I’ve heard of companies where the pursuit of geek nirvana rules (Microsoft), ours isn’t one of them. We are all, for the most part, very interested in being great developers/architects/project leaders/managers. We are also interested in being great parents, great friends, great volunteers, great people who spend time pursuing their various interests. The presumed rewards for doing these non-billable tasks, and thus taking away from our own time, are opportunities for professional advancement and challenges. But those opportunities and challenges aren’t guaranteed: they’re our visions of a probable future. As any little kid can tell you, though, a pleasure enjoyed today usually beats out some promise of a potential unknown reward in the future.
So, weighing the balance, the employee chooses to avoid the non-billable work, knowing that its load takes away from his or her current enjoyment of things outside work. But that non-billable work benefits the company, and so if the non-billable work doesn’t occur, the company doesn’t get those benefits. The employee hasn’t really lost anything – they’ve enjoyed today, and there was no guarantee of tomorrow’s reward – but the company has lost. In the short term, the company benefited from the single-minded focus on billable hours, but at the expense of the benefits brought by an investment in non-billable hours. (Those were also future benefits, so not as tangible as current benefits, but presumably a company managing their investments in non-billable can presume to be getting a good return on that investment.)
I need to learn more about financial models. It seems to me that there should be some way of figuring out the best mix of billable/non-billable activities, and the necessary incentives to accomplish that mix. Presumably, activities that benefit the employee more would need to be incentivized less than activities that benefitted the company more. But I haven’t figured out how to express all of that in a business case – all I’ve been able to do so far is comment that I don’t think we’ve got the mix quite right. Not nearly so constructive as “and here’s what I think a better mix would be, and here’s why”. Boy, wouldn’t I be the cheese if I could solve that problem!
Hmmm…. muenster or cheddar or swiss – which should be on my business card??
Your aunt’s life clock, as interpeted by Nia Vardalos
From an interview with Nia Vardalos (of My Big Fat Greek Wedding) fame in Border’s bookstore’s “see-all-of-the-stuff-you-can-buy” magazine:
What’s your take on romance and weddings in general? Are you a romantic at heart?
NV: I am. I think the only thing that I caution is, don’t get married before you’re ready because there’s this life clock that everyone else seems to think we should all live our lives by. We all have that aunt saying to us, “When are you going to get married?” and as soon as you get married, “When are you going to have kids?” and you have kids and they go, “When are you going to have another one?” And in terms of that life clock, you want to turn to that aunt and say, “When are you going to die?”
I haven’t yet seen MBFGW (though I have seen the TV show spin-off and enjoyed it), but it’s definitely on my gotta-rent-it list now.
(BTW, the answer to the set of questions is, “we are”, “we have”, and “very soon”. As far as the question for the aunt, I wish I were the type of person who had the guts to say something like that, were it warranted, though I also hope that I’d have the restraint to clamp down on that impulse in the spirit of kindness. Those strangely opposed wishes probably deserve an entry of their own, but I’ll let that pass for now.)