Brent Sordyl's blog » management

Low-Cost Ways To Show Employees They’re Highly Valued | Fast Company

Brent Sordyl — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:22:42 +0000

1. Flex time. Some organizations require employees to be at work during core hours, and employee can set their schedule around this. Others allow employees to put in hours at their own discretion. Most require employees to have a set schedule so managers can plan for coverage. The schedule may be adjusted to accommodate personal matters like doctor’s appointments.

2. Innovation days. Set aside several days a year to allow employees to step away from their usual responsibilities to tackle projects related to the way they work and the spaces they work in. Results are shared in a company meeting the following morning.

(Full Story: Low-Cost Ways To Show Employees They’re Highly Valued | Fast Company)

Results of Joel Spolsky’s “What Programmers Want” Survey

Brent Sordyl — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:52:08 +0000

1. Room for Growth of Skills
2. High Caliber Team
3. Positive Org Structure
4. Opportunity to Use New Technologies

(Full Story: Results of Joel Spolsky’s “What Programmers Want” Survey)

Former IronPort CEO on Management

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:02:21 +0000

Work your ass off by example. A leader who is always present, ridiculously responsive and contributes real, hard work sets the right pace and tone.

(Full Story: Former IronPort CEO on Management)

Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent – Forbes

Brent Sordyl — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:00:43 +0000

1. Big Company Bureaucracy.
2. Failing to Find a Project for the Talent that Ignites Their Passion.
3. Poor Annual Performance Reviews.
4. No Discussion around Career Development.

(Full Story: Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent – Forbes)

Don’t Sweep Feedback Under the Rug

Brent Sordyl — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:06:59 +0000

Don’t send it in advance. Don’t have them read it and get back to you. Your goal is to deliver the news face-to-face. Good news should be delivered in person, bad news should be delivered in person. You need to judge the person’s reactions on the spot. Are they pumped up by what a great employee you told them they were? Are they pissed off because you mentioned that they need to focus more on delivering error-free work?

I like to print one copy – the one in my hand. I read each paragraph to the employee. I stop after each paragraph to have a discussion. Does this sound like what you would expect? I start with the positives. I remind people how important they are to me and how much I appreciate all that they’ve done during the year. Put it in writing. Say it.

(Full Story: Don’t Sweep Feedback Under the Rug)

It’s official: developers get better with age

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:32:44 +0000

- Number of coders drops significantly with age. Top developer numbers, at age 27, drop by half every 6-7 years.- Developers in their 40s answer roughly twice as much and ask half the questions compared to colleagues in their 20s. It seems younger generation learns and older generation teaches.- Quality of posts, i.e. upvotes earned by post, only slightly increases with age.- Seniors earn their high reputation by being more active than younger developers.

(Full Story: It’s official: developers get better with age)

How to succeed in IT without really trying

Brent Sordyl — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:21:43 +0000

The other way to succeed in IT is with little effort or proficiency at all. I hate to say this, but a number of people in IT positions work harder to make it seem like they’re busy as beavers than doing actual work. Quite often this dysfunction starts at the top: When an IT manager doesn’t know the technology very well, he or she may hire folks who have no idea what their job is other than to show up every day and answer the occasional email, passing questions along to others with more technical abilities, or to their contacts at the various hardware and software vendors. People like these populate many consulting companies. They rely almost completely on contractors to perform the actual work, serving as remote hands in a real crisis and as part of a phone tree for less pressing issues.

(Full Story: How to succeed in IT without really trying)

The Curve of Talent – Anything’s Possible

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:27:04 +0000

Large companies fire those who get F grades, because they are not at all productive. They accept C players, because they are somewhat productive with guidance and B players are hard to find. It is very easy for a C player to seem moderately successful when progress is largely based on inertia. Large corporations celebrate B players who can competently complete their job with minimum coaching and maintain inertia. These are the heroes of large corporations. A players don’t want to be at large companies because, more often than not, corporate bureaucracy and process not only fail to reward, but actually punish A players. By putting the objectives ahead of process and politics, A players step on bureaucratic toes and don’t retreat based on false territorial claims. It’s not fun trying to innovate at a large company when co-workers feel that you’re threatening the core inertia on which the business is based.

(Full Story: The Curve of Talent – Anything’s Possible)

Leveling Up: Career Advancement for Software Developers

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:14:59 +0000

Pillar 1: Technical CompetencePillar 2: Professional CommunicationPillar 3: Getting Credit for What You Do

(Full Story: Leveling Up: Career Advancement for Software Developers)

CEOs Should Be More Like Quarterbacks – HBR

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:14:54 +0000

Pittsburgh would never attempt an on-side kick with a four-point lead and 35 seconds left in the game. Such an action would be certifiably crazy! In sum, the imaginary press conference apology and the late-game attempt to beat the point spread are inconceivable, nuts, loony-tunes.
But in the business world, their precise equivalents are standard operating procedure. CEOs routinely go to the microphones to apologize or make excuses for missing the analysts’ consensus earnings estimates — even if their real results are substantially up. And executives routinely take extreme and risky actions at the end of fiscal periods in order to juice results to hit those consensus earnings estimates.

(Full Story: CEOs Should Be More Like Quarterbacks – HBR)