Thoughts

HP to cancel telecommuting for its IT division

In a move that stunned its IT workforce and the public, HP’s new CIO announced it will eliminate telecommuting for most of its IT folks. They’ll be forced to come to work at some 25 offices in various locations around the world. If they don’t, they’ll be out of a job without severance pay. Due to its previous policy of encouraging telecommuting, HP now has employees spread as far apart as the East coast when the job is on the West coast. If such employees want to keep their jobs, they’ll have to uproot their lives and families, which is just plain silly.

As a past IT Director with change management experience, I can say the following:

  • 180-degree turns are traumatic, and don’t turn out well. This is one such change, and it will be messy and painful. It will alienate a lot of bright folks. From a management standpoint, it’s not right. Change is best done gradually, and by co-opting people.
  • Making the bright people come into the office in order to straighten out the poor performers, as HP’s CIO hints, is yet another silly decision. Yes, I can tell you certain IT personnel should be on-site, but not everyone needs to be there. If HP’s IT workforce is peppered with poor employees, this is a recruitment/management issue, not a telecommuting issue. The decision is a non sequitur. If your tire is flat, plugging the exhaust pipe won’t solve the problem. Seems to me a much better solution would be to pair up the poor performers with good performers who live in the same area, and have them work together on issues, whether it’s at someone’s home or my IM/phone. Training would also be another solution.

Overall, I think this is a pretty rude change in policy, and not well thought out. It was done namely for the sake of shaking things up, not because a specific goal needed to be accomplished.

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Thoughts

Microsoft will drop PDF support as a standard option in Office 12

After whetting my appetite for Office 12 by talking about native support for PDF formats last year, Microsoft now disappoints once more by announcing it will drop the option. Interestingly enough, it isn’t to blame. Adobe’s up in arms about this – they’re unhappy that Microsoft will not charge extra for the option to save to PDF – which sounds hypocritical at first look. After all, the option to do so has been standard on the Mac through OS X, and is available through a slew of apps on the Internet (free, nonetheless) which let you do that very same thing on Windows.

So why has Adobe jumped up about this? I think it has to do with the following two issues:

  1. Microsoft’s market share: if saving to PDF becomes a standard option in Office, it will obliterate Adobe’s profit from Acrobat, which is its most popular software package.
  2. Microsoft wanted to include the ability to save to PDF as a fully functioning feature – in other words, hyperlinks and other special formatting would be preserved. Typically, with the free products out there, and with the Mac, when one saves to PDF, it’s essentially a print to PDF function, where special formatting and tags aren’t preserved. If you want the full-featured save to PDF function, that has usually only been available with the paid Acrobat product.

I have a feeling the months of negotiation between Adobe and Microsoft centered around these two issues, and neither wanted to budge from their position. Microsoft wanted to include the feature because it wants to dominate the market and please users, in that order, and Adobe can’t just give away a star product. I have to side with Adobe on this one.

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How To

100 Potential Interview Questions and other great resources

Monster has put together a great list of 100 potential interview questions. If you’ve ever had an interview, and I’m betting you have, you’ll have encountered at least a few of these beauties. Take a peek at number 7: “Where would you like to be in your career five years from now?” Yuck! But, you’ll get asked these questions, so you’d better have an answer ready.

After you review the questions, take a look at the top right corner of that page, because they’ve got links to other great articles about job interviews, like how to make a great first impression, how to prepare for an interview even if it’s tomorrow, the answers that interviewers are looking for, nonverbal communication, job interview pointers, a podcast with interview tips, how to assess your skills, and how to get ready. Good stuff!

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Thoughts

AMD plans "4×4" platform computer

In a move that’s sure to make other computer makers uncomfortable, AMD revealed it’s working on a 4×4 platform, which will pair two dual-core AMD chips with two dual-GPU graphics cards. This will be a boon to gamers, and I’m sure it will give the new Apple Power Mac successor a run for its money when it comes to graphics and video-crunching power. Engadget has the details.

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Thoughts

The new water projects bill, S. 728

Senate will soon consider S. 728, a new bill that encourages massive spending for real estate development in wetland areas which are low-lying and prone to hurricane damage, like the areas that got hit the hardest in New Orleans. Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain are considering putting forth amendments to the bill that would discourage this by making sure our public money gets spent on the true priorities, requiring an independent expert review of any plans, and strengthening environmental standards.

Environmental Defense is running a campaign to make senators aware of this bill and the changes it needs to go undergo before it can be approved. They’ve also got a full report of the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, which is an instructive read.

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