Management

People, Authority and Profits..

A couple of weekends ago, I had to buy some tablets for work. So I stopped by the trusty neighborhood microcenter and told the salesguy that I wanted to buy 3 iPads. The guy says “hmm.. I don’t know if I can do that, you see, we restrict each household to one iPad because there is so much demand”. I think.. fair enough and go on to tell him that I actually need to purchase a total of 9 tablets. 3 iPads and 6 Android tablets. Assuming that he will understand I am not your typical household, but a business. He goes into the “back room” to confirm with his supervisor and comes back saying.. a policy is a policy, we cannot do it. At this point, I am a bit ticked off.. I mean, don’t these guys want to actually sell these devices. I am on my way out to find another store and see a “manager” walking the aisles. I stop him and explain the situation, assuming he would be smarter and have the authority to “break” policy. Again no luck.. the guy kept repeating,”it is our policy to restrict each household to one iPad!!!”. Totally missing the point that I want to buy 6 more Android tablets too!!

I go to the competition across the road, TigerDirect and tell the first sales person that I need to buy a total of 9 tablets, 3 of them being iPads. The guy says “hmm.. we restrict iPads to one per household, but let me check with my manager”. The manager stops by assesses, the situation and “breaks” the policy and approves the purchase. I walk out with 9 tablets under my arms and making TigerDirect a couple hundred dollars richer (hopefully!! 🙂 )

Same policy in two different stores, but the fact that the manager in TigerDirect was able to asses the situation and go against the policy was a win-win situation for both the customer and his company.

Morale of the story? Hire good people and give them the authority to make decisions. Good things will follow :).

November 2, 2011 by Management Uncategorized 0

Inspiration..

I love my “work” to the point that most people that know me think that I am a “workaholic” :). One of the reasons, I love my job is the ability to share my passion for technology. And I know that I am on the right path (despite the long hours), when I receive notes like this (from an ex team-mate)

Hi Vinay,

I hope you are doing great. I would like to take this opportunity to express my thankfulness to you, for introducing us the Modular approach in Perl Scripting during the tenure at TravelClick.

Without your support, I probably wouldn’t have gained confidence to develop script which runs more than 500 lines. Hence I wish to dedicate this script to you.

Btw I started writing a Technical Blog over a year “http://ashok-linux-tips.blogspot.com”. I request you to have a look.

I must admit that the idea of sharing technical solutions via Blog was mainly inspired after seeing your https://kudithipudi.org J

Once again, thanks for all the support extended to us.

Regards

Ashok

Nice job Ashok :).

September 8, 2011 by Management Technology Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Playbook for creating an effective IT team

Tom Limoncelli put together a list of questions that are essentially a cheat-sheet to creating and running a very effective IT team. He called it the Limoncelli Test (as a tribute to the Joel Spolsky‘s Joel Test) and it can be found at http://everythingsysadmin.com/the-test.html.

The only additional thing I would add to the list is to have a roadmap for the function you provide and ensure it is updated quarterly. A lot of teams spend a lot of time on what they do now, but don’t focus on what they “can” do. This is similar to IT functions spending more than 70% – 80% of their budgets on maintenance rather than innovating.

August 22, 2011 by HOWTO Management Uncategorized 0

Overheard : Comment about perception

Comment by Mark Horstman on his recent podcast regd managing a massive workload increase

We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are

I believe this a famous quote.. don’t know who the original author is. But wanted to note, since it is a pretty deep :).

I highly recommend Mark and his partner Mike’s podcast “Manager Tools” and “Career Tools” to every professional. Well worth the time.

March 2, 2011 by Management OverHeard Uncategorized 0

Overheard : Comment about being a true Motivater

I was interviewing a candidate for a job opening at my work. I asked him how he motivates his team and he made this comment about how you truly measure if you can motivate a person

Think of a 16 year old working part time at a retailer. She is just working to earn money to buy some lipstick or perfume. Think how you can motivate her to work on a thanksgiving weekend!!

February 4, 2011 by Management OverHeard Uncategorized 0

Cloud Computing and your company's infrastructure

Bold forecast :).. But in 5 to 10 years, I predict the majority of a company’s infrastructure will be hosted in a “cloud”. If you recall (circa 2000..), most of the companies were hosting “anti-spam” services in house. If anyone suggested that we can outsource that service, you would get a “are-you-crazy” look :). And now, you will get the same look if anyone suggests they run the anti-spam service in house. I believe the same is going to happen for infrastructure. You might still be running some components in house, but it will get smaller and smaller. Companies will be forced to focus on their core competency rather than try to maintain an army of engineers to perform tasks that someone else might be a lot better at.

Speaking of being visionary, apparently Netflix operates most of their infrastructure in the cloud. If Netflix can operate in the cloud, a majority of us can too :). Here are some links regd their lessons from moving to a cloud.

http://blip.tv/file/4252897 (Video of Netflix Director of Engineering explaining their move to the cloud)

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxwcmFjdGljYWxjbG91ZGNvbXB1dGluZ3xneDo2NDc2ODVjY2ExY2Y1Zjcz&pli=1 (Write up by a Netflix engineer about the move to the cloud from a storage and DB prospective)

October 30, 2010 by Management Technology Uncategorized 2