Q1 Media Universe Map by Evan Shapiro

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The Exceeding Banality of Burning Projects

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Listening to a podcast recently I heard a project manager say of himself that he is often given the project that are "already on fire." I cringed, because I have made that comment myself quite a few times. Too often it was in interviews that I made the boast. It's not really that remarkable for a project manager to be handed a project on fire and asked to make something of it.  There are many reasons for a project to be "going south," and it's going to show time, cost, scope, and possibly, ultimately, quality. One such project for me was a cloud migration. A major data center was being shut down and all the services hosted there had to be migrated to the cloud. When I got involved it was already badly behind schedule, and extra cost had been incurred in renewing the lease on a data center's space while also paying for cloud services. What had happened was a project manager had laid out a very solid plan for doing the migration in waves. It was going to i
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Changing Jobs Every Two Years

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In today's job market, it's becoming increasingly important for employees to take control of their careers and maximize their profits. One way to do this is by changing jobs every two years. According to research, staying employed at the same company for over two years on average will make an individual earn less over their lifetime by about 50% or more. This is a conservative estimate assuming that your career will last only ten years, but the longer you work, the greater the difference in earnings over your lifetime. In 2014, the average raise an employee can expect is only 3%. Even the most underperforming employee can expect a 1.3% raise, while the best performers can hope for a 4.5% raise. However, the inflation rate is currently 2.1%, meaning that your raise is actually less than 1%. This can be sobering news, and it's unlikely that management will change their decision. Furthermore, loyal employees are often punished for their dedication, while those who jump ship ar
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The Law of the Instrument

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Jeff Geerling (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) It's been said that "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." That's a cognitive bias called the 'Law of the Instrument,' and one that I've encountered in the workplace a number of times. It might sound familiar to you as well.  The worst example I can give is of the time I worked in a division of a company that used Power Point for pretty much everything. All reporting took place through Power Point slides, which is fine for high level presentations but not great when you need to get into details. Not long into my employment I was told emphatically that I had to create a 'detailed project plan' in Power Point. On one occasion I joined a meeting to discover that the person running it had used a one slide Power Point deck for the agenda. It was as if no one could imagine there being a different way to work. Honestly, I don't know how it gets this bad in an organization. That it becomes a hidebou
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