Expert Opinion

Well well, I barely get my first major rant out the door and there's a couple of articles in this week's weekly IT magazines talking about related issues.

Paul Glen writes To Motivate, Don't Demotivate in Computerworld (2 May 2005). Pay attention to the part where Glen refers to "excessive monitoring" and relate that back to the last The Burning Ends entry. Also note his mention of internal versus external motivation. Great job, Mr. Glen, and well-timed to keep my last rant from making me look like a complete idiot.

Chad Dickerson of Infoworld asks Does IT demand too much commitment? in his weekly column (2 May 2005). I think IT does indeed ask a lot of people, but there are different inflections of overtime:

• Forced, to meet a deadline
• Forced, not for deadlines, but just because someone (a jerk) thinks it will improve productivity
• Forced, because of an emergency. IT guys do this all the time when a system breaks at odd hours of the night
• Self-imposed, where a dedicated worker does it either because he's trying to make things happen faster, or he's just crazy

More discussion on that in a future rant.

I like both of these magazines. Neither really has any deep technical information like the stuff I used to get from Sys Con Publications (like their various Developer's Journal series for Java, PowerBuilder, .Net, etc.) but they do a decent job of skimming the headlines for things pertinent to IT folks. Strangely enough, I don't always read every news or tech piece they print...my favorite section, the one that always seems the most useful to me, is the management section in Computerworld.

I try to keep up with these magazines, along with other freebies like Software Development, and they'll make for some good conversation points in future blogs.