Tag Archives: management
Evaluating an offshore team
There are five things I look for in evaluating an offshore team: Language – How well do they speak your language. Most can read and write (at times with the help of Google translate) but struggle with verbal communication. If … Continue reading
Individual MBO for Engineers
There is plenty of information of what comprises a good goal (SMART). However, creating good goals for creative roles is something I’ve always struggled with. I’ve broken the goals down into 4 main categories. Professional Development Present one topic for … Continue reading
Video Chatting with Distributed Teams
I always prefer face-to-face meetings to teleconference meetings. In preparation for out next Sprint Planning Meeting, we tried to establish a reliable, decent quality, and free video conferencing solution between a PC and a MAC. Here are the results from … Continue reading
You can’t measure what I do
I can’t imaging anyone investing in a fund that they would not be able to measure the performance. Employees are no different. Every employee must be measured. We’ll get into how to measure them in subsequent articles, but for now, … Continue reading
New Hire Incubation Program
We have 4 new people starting on Monday. Each new employee places a burden on the organization. The new employee is like a new baby, where the parents (current employees) need to dedicate time and energy until the newborn is … Continue reading
Negotiating with Contingency Recruiters
Recruiters can provide a great value to the organization if you use the right ones and have good contract terms. Here are some of the must-have items I include in my contracts: Fee – This is a percentage of the … Continue reading
The 3-Hour Work Day
I just got finished with The 4-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss. The basic premise of the book is to cut the interruptions out of you day-to-day job (allowing you to work less), work from home (allowing you to work … Continue reading
Cost-To-Serve
Having an accurate cost-to-serve (CTS) metric is a critical part of running a website. This should be used as the overall mesure of how efficiently customers can be served. The technology team should have goals to continually lower that CTS … Continue reading
Evaluating Candidates
I seem to have spent much of my career interviewing candidates for engineering positions. Interviewing is an art that I have tried to make as objective as possible. I grade each candidate in the following five areas (these are in … Continue reading
Corporate Vision vs. Mission
Today we had an executive offsite where, among other things, we reworked our company vision and mission. We had a good discussion on the difference between the two and after a fierce discussion were left with a very clear vision … Continue reading
