Luigi, one of my coworkers was redoing her list of todos yesterday. One of those lists is so clever that I thought I would share it here. She called it a ‘get back to me’ list. She records all of the people’s names that she communicates with and expects a response from, then checks them off. I can remember several times where I began communication with someone, but did not get a response and ended up getting bit on the butt by it. So there it is, I share the best productivity tip I have gotten in a while… got any?

I never really became a hacker, I used to hang out with some people in college that knew how to get around some places but were mostly not really dangerous or malicious. However, recently I have been wanting to just start all over again and just take down sites… which ones, the ones that take over my browser.

One of the most annoying things that a website can do is resize my window. I know I can prevent it, I know its not the end of the world, but I dislike it more than being bombarded with adds or music.

I am not sure why they are lazy enough to not do something that works with all resolutions, but even if they do want to do that then launch another browser window. Why resize my current browser window and make me to through extra clicks just to get my interface back to normal?

Most websites are designed to transmit some kind of message, and the ones that are advertising or selling a product are the biggest offenders. Why would I ever want to buy a product from a company that is already making decisions for me on how to set my home computer resolution?

So what are some of your web annoyances?

Should you be impressed by those numbers? I think not. I feel that 90% of them are spiders crawling the web. I really don’t think that stats mean much, at least not to me because I don’t try to make money of my blog (even though I do use google adsense and amazon links sometimes) and I do this blogging for totally selfish reasons. Sure it has been kind of cool to have a higher google page rank than most of my employers, but in reality it does not do all that much for me.

I have talked about the subject of why I blog before, but it boils down to two reasons.

Blogging is way better than therapy and I use it to practice my writing in English.

Recently Faith wrote a pretty good post, fueled partly by XO asking why any of us bothers. While the nicest side effect of the blogging world has been the friends I have made, one actually staying with us this weekend, I bother because in the back of my head I think I am doing something good. I hope I am sparking some people to look at a different point of view that their own.

When I started blogging I had no clue that it would actually get as many visits as it started to get. I think by my second year blogging I had become a total stats whore. I would go to other sites just fishing for more readers. Then life kind of made blogging take a different direction and it became my only outlet. I forgot about stats completely, I did not think anyone would care for vague posts that talked about almost nothing.

Moving to KC changed all of that. I had the chance to begin a new life and a lot of changes came about. Blogging was once again as fun as it used to be when I started. However, I never picked up the whole stats whore ways. I really don’t have the time, I barely get posts in when I want to… and have way too many (57 to be exact) half written and saved for another day.

If you want to be impressed by stats check out TKC. While Faith even put it simply as posting half naked woman and news links will get you there, I disagree. Even though I DO NOT share his views on many topics and he has ticked me off more than a couple of times with his borderline personal attacks (alas never on me) I do give him the credit that his writing style and good sources is what put him on the top of list of most visited sites in Kansas City. Anyone that is a stats whore would be jealous of the numbers of hits he gets. I just want to get to meet him some day, hopefully at one of our meet ups… I think Chimpo and I can do crowd control if things get out of hand. We almost thought he had shown up unannounced to our last meet up, but it was just a shy Mexican dude that sat at the bar.

Not too long ago I saw a TV show about video games. It highlighted that new multi player games that allow a user to be part of a team with specific tasks helps build the teamwork mentality.

I started to think of my corporate world experience and the more and more I thought about my past experiences the more I saw that teamwork is often talked about but seldom really implemented.

We live in a very individualistic society, and no matter how much corporate America tries to sell us the idea that there is no “I in teamwork” we still don’t get what that really means.

At the first opportunity people try to make themselves look better, or when there is blame to be passed around the finger pointing begins. There is the exception of the person that for some reason likes to take the fall, but because of their strong character they get a get out of jail free card every single time.

I think the breeding ground for teamwork is sports, but this country has diverted from actual keeping score for kids to everyone is a winner. I think this further enhances the notion on every kid that they are the best and they have to fend for themselves.

Life can be cruel at times, as can work environments, but a good team behind you is what gets you through. In life it is your family and friends when they selflessly rally around you when you need them. In the corporate world when something goes wrong and the team does the best it can to make the project work.

Maybe multi player video games will help people understand that every role in a team is important and it is ok to just be good at one thing. Maybe sports at the little kids level will start keeping score again; Because in a society of only winners, everyone ends up being a loser.

I dislike the fact that many people think that computer programmers are hermits that like to live in little cubicles under the fluorescent lights. What does not help is that there are plenty of them that do think that computer users are just the enemy trying to break down the precious system.

The reality is that programming is something that requires concentration. To truly solve a problem with good logic you need to use your brain power to make sense of the steps that have to be taken. It sometimes takes time and then peace to be able to translate the thought into actual code.

Some programmers are always coding in their heads. I have actually woken up in the middle of the night with the solution to a problem and if I have remote access I log in and either solve the problem or send an email to myself. Trying to remember the next day is kind of difficult. Some programmers like to walk while they are solving some logic issue in their head so to other it looks like they are in a completely different world. I don’t pace when I think, however I do listen to music a little too loud and the more input the more I am able to work out a problem, but I am not the norm.

I think that this is where the problem with communicating with the mythical creature the programmer is comes from. You see a dude walking down the hall that does not acknowledge the world around him as a rude person. I think both sides feed off each other and the disconnect just becomes greater and greater. I have seen it in several organizations.

One of the most frustrating things as a person is to be ignored. While users would probably think that they are ignored the most on the equation, programmers are also only approached when they are needed for something. Like Milton in Office Space, they are the lasts ones to get the piece of cake if they even get any.

I will never forget the day that a user had a problem at one of my previous employers and I showed up at her desk. She was a middle age woman that I later found out was actually married to a programmer. When I said hi to her and asked her for more details on what was wrong with her report she looked almost scared. She then said, a programmer never talks to us. I later found out who the worse offender was in our department who even refused to talk to the help desk people.

I cannot solve the problem for everyone but I did find out how to make it better, at least for me. Start communication with people on a regular basis. I am not talking about full on water cooler talks with people but just saying hello in the morning when you walk in the office. I have observed that most people do not do this, or don’t like it. A good morning goes a long way into making you look more personable, specially for a programmer.

Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems is probably one of the biggest pieces of wisdom to come out of a rap song. Even thought not many people will come out and ask you, how much money you make, plenty will start the getting to know you process with what do you do for a living. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that, the reality of relationships is that they all have some kind of basis in also economic principles. If I cannot afford to go to a luxurious vacation, or the trendiest night club where a bottle is over 100 bucks I am going to have to decline invitations. However, it is all personal choice and not a rule. I know people that have plenty of money but still prefer to go to the local watering whole.

Most employers have a do not talk about your salary policy. I completely agree with that notion and never want to find out what my coworkers make. It is bad every single way you look at it, if you make more they feel bad, if you make less you feel bad, if you make the same probably both of you are going to feel either more qualified or harder working than the other. I also saw how a company finding out the IT department’s salary wreck havoc on many relationships there.

My first job out of college I was lucky enough to have landed before I graduated. At graduation I had a job and an above average salary for a recent graduate. While this was not the best job I have ever had it did teach me a lot about what it is to be a professional. I learned many lessons that I apply even today, and even though at the end I felt like money wise I was getting the shaft, I still have to thank them for the opportunity and experience I gained in my years there. We supported a sister company with their system. It was a call center and many of the people that work there became friends with us over time. We would go there to set up something new on their computers or just to install new servers. I used to go there a lot because of some sales call where they needed technical people as well as doing some business analysis for new reports and features.

The president’s secretary was a chatty girl that always wanted to know more about you than what was really appropriate for a professional setting. I did not dislike her but I always had my guard up when I was around her. For corporate reasons the company decided to merge health plans, our company had 10 employees the call center about 100. The little snag came about when a report with our salaries came through the front desk before being handled by HR. The president’s secretary took it upon herself to disseminate our salaries to certain people and before the end of the day we were the talk of the call center.

Our next visit there was not pleasant. Some people had looks of resentment on their face, others were right out rude towards us. “You make too much money seemed to be the theme.” Nobody wanted to exchange pleasantries and we became relegated to only communicating to the people that were at “our level.” It was sad, but it was a reality I had to learn, some people cannot handle the thought of you having something they don’t. Envy is a powerful demon to have descend upon you… it can override even knowing a person for months, even years.

Since leaving that first job I worked on consulting and made almost triple what I made on that first job. I was never completely happy with consulting for a set firm because at times they put their needs before the client’s needs. I have enjoyed consulting independently a lot more, but what I truly love is working for a set company where I am part of the staff. I do not make nearly as much as I could have if I consulted but I am very happy… more money means a lot more pressure plus a lot more traveling and that gets old quickly.

One of the past companies I worked for I was making good money but not my best paid job. I tried not to think about what other people made, we had a pretty large department and I had made some personal relationships there. My boss ruined that when he informed me while giving me a review that I made a lot more money than the other people that worked there. It was a strategy to make me swallow a 3% raise when I was really expecting something around 6%. After the speech of insurance and other potential bonuses he dropped that nugget on me. It weighted heavily on me that I made more money than others. While the biggest reason for me making more money was because I had some very specialized certifications the company need to be supported, it did not feel fair. Some of the people working there had been loyal to that company for more than 5 years and now I knew what range they were on. One of my friends there told me he was interviewing and I was happy for him until it did not pan out because he was not going to make much more money and the move meant more drive time. He told me how much he was offered and even that was about 20K less than what I made… it made me feel pretty horrible because he was a very hard worker that was dedicated to doing a good job… maybe he did not have as wide range of skills than I have and some of the technologies he was working on were outdated, but overall I felt we should have been closer in range.

Many companies clean up their IT department as soon as they are getting too expensive. It is not an uncommon practice that almost fuels the job hopping IT professionals are sometimes famous for. You get new unexperienced people and pay them very little and let got of your seasoned people that are costing you too much. I am lucky that I don’t have to worry about these kind of problems anymore and that I have no clue what the other people at my company make. Ignorance is truly bliss when it comes to how much other people make.

One of the blogs that I enjoy reading the most is HitCoffee, partly because it is very well written by a fellow geek, but mostly because I can get several topics sparked by just one of the posts there. A recent post about the tango that developers, QA and project managers dance, made me think about what I have learned about software development during my career and I commented…

Every programmer that I have met thinks that they are awesome software designers, however I would venture to say that only about 10% are truly good at it.

Will replied…

Software developers have an amazing capacity for arrogance in general. They really seem to believe that everything would be better if they were running the company. I’ve met MBAs with more humility than a lot of programmers… and I’m thinking of some programmers around here that I really like!

I wrote my first line of code when I was about nine years old. Now it is probably pretty common that a kid that young will customize their myspace or even write a full html page, but back then it was not that common. I was lucky that I went to a school that had IBM clones that we were taught how to use. One of the surprising things about the U.S. education system to me was that even though they had the resources, the computer classes I took here were actually way behind from what I learned in Colombia at a high school level. I will some day write more about that disparity, but I just wanted to give myself some credibility here, when it comes to computers and writing code, I have been around it for quite some time.

We all think of doctors and lawyers as the ultimate arrogant professions, and while some of them probably are, a lot of people in the IT field have a god complex. I have met several programmers that like to use the term programming god. Some of them truly think of themselves as better than others simply because they can read computer code, or have memorized every single intricacy and function of a programming language.

I have no idea why I was spared that faith of becoming arrogant about programming. I do think I am above average when it comes to programming and I am also excellent at bug tracking and solving. That does not make me a better person, just someone that has patience and good logic. I however respect people in other professions inside and outside of my field.

The challenge that companies face is that communication breaks down as soon as their departments stop talking to one another. I was hired at one company because I could potentially bridge a broken relationship between marketing and development, and while I was able to facilitate the running of the projects I was involved in the relationship never seemed to get better. You had web developers trying to be designers and vice versa.

The good software architects that I have met were actually poor programmers. Big picture people tend to either forget about the details or the users. Teams of people seem to make this issue less painful, but all parties need to be truly involved and willing to comprimise.

I learned early in my career that the more I simplified the software I wrote, the more people like the features I implemented. Color coding things has always been something people respond to because it gives them another way to memorize things. I also try to apply a the little principle that computers are better at remembering things, but humans are still superior at make decisions. When I have to leave something up to the user I balance it on that scale.

Almost every programmer that has been in a company for a while thinks they understand the business side of things. However, the business side of any company is a living entity that constantly changes, the bigger the company the bigger the changes. Users are very clever and will use features in ways that they were not intended… do developers then adapt them to do the right thing or remove them?

That is when I think some of the disconnect happens. In situations like this it should be a consensus between the development team and the business that ultimately dictates the direction. Most of the times it is only one of the sides that dictates the direction and that leads in the best scenario to friction and in the worst it least to lost company productivity.

Software development is a lot of times like single life, you date different companies and try to do your best for a while but eventually you want to move on. You feel like you have so much to offer, but you are not appreciated, listened to and could do so much better. The good relations come when you have commitment and truly want to marry a company, truly start to think about what would be best for the company and not what is going to make you seem smart and clever. A programmer can be revered as a genius, but if the software they write is not usable or does not solve the problem it the end its a failure.