Learning from Failure, or There Goes My Golden Week Vacation

As a systems architect, I must concern myself with project management issues. Every now and then, I like to check my head and reread a wonderful blog post from Reg Braithwaite on What I've learned from failure. I printed up a copy and keep it in my notebook so that I can pull it out and read it on my train ride.

This is a timely topic for me as I now find myself only a week away from the big Japanese Golden Week holidays facing the ugly and imminent possibility that I will have to drag my carcass into the office during the holidays to assist another project team that are in the unenviable position of being smack dab in a "project out of control".

This project is rather high-profile and very important for my current employer. Being an outsider to this project, I don't know anything about how it got to this state. Only three weeks before going public, with a large string of national holidays right at the end... Doesn't that sound like project management wasn't working properly? And it always just slays me when I see that the only solution upper management can come up with is to toss more people at the problem by asking them to come in over the vacation. Urgh, I am having flashbacks of Lumbergh in Office Space: "m' yeah, I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday..."

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat this mantra after me: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Fred Brooks is spot on there. I feel like I should bring my copy of The Mythical Man Month in to the office and start whacking people across their faces with it.

So here's the punchline for today... what have I learned from failure?
People just never learn, that's what.

Closing note: It just so happens that there was a recent thread on /. on project management. Great comments, especially from myvirtualid.

Python: Very Pleasant Language, Indeed

Time.com 100 Most Influential People of 2009 Poll Hack

Great bit describing a hack to write out a not-so-hidden message in the Time.com 100 Most Influential People of 2009 poll.

As of 10:30, 2009/04/21 Tuesday, the message was being garbled --- check it out here ---, but the hack is still pretty funny. At the very least, don't allow HTTP GET for any sort of non-idempotent operation.

Google Researchers Propose New-and-improved CAPTCHA?

Well, here's an interesting article on Google researchers and their new proposal for improved captchas.

I really hesitate when it comes to captchas, whether it be from the user's perspective or the architect's. Present-day implementations are often too difficult or troublesome to deal with, and on the flipside, are all too often easily defeated by employing underpaid serfs in a sweatshop. But the gist of the article is that the new proposed captcha is image-based, which is great since text-based challenges have many shortcomings (language-dependent, requires text input).

I hope that Google can roll out some kind of library or package for this idea, it sounds pretty solid.

Tsubaki Shampoo and Sex... Wax

Ah, my memories are all coming back to me now. I know why I like Shiseido's Tsubaki Red shampoo so much...

It brings me back to the day I bought my first bar of Mr. Zog's Sex Wax!

XKCD: Students

Can you believe, I actually still see this dream every so often?

Skinny Times Are A'Coming

I am sitting at the dining table, pecking away at this post while wolfing down some instant noodles. I just got back from company enkai where I really understood for the first time how grave the situation is at work. What with the grim economic circumstances unfolding worldwide, even here in Sapporo, skinny times are a'coming.

It is time to bear down, re-evaluate your skills and knowledge, tap your social networks, and plan for the worst. With the sinking of Lehman Brothers just the tip of the iceberg, soaring fuel and food costs and the coming winter mean that I will have to work a bit harder and a lot more smarter to protect my family.

S0, just how do I know that my company is in for some skinny times and stormy weather?

Tonight's party menu, that's how. Or rather, the lack thereof.

Normally, an enkai for welcoming new employees should be a fairly filling affair. It is fall, so that should mean a nice, hearty nabe hot-pot, with extra dishes of skewered meats or sashimi, salads, and the like. But tonight? There was only:

• a small nabe hot-pot, 1 serving per person, with cabbage, mushrooms, and ground chicken dumplings
• 1 yakitori skewer
• 1 tsukune ground chicken skewer (very tiny)
• a sparse green salad
• tiny, tiny fried chicken nugget-lets (I mean, tiny!)
• vinegared sushi rice (w/out much in the way of anything added to it)
• a dry piece of cake for dessert

Granted, it was an all-you-can-drink-for-2-hours sort of deal, but after a hard day coding, I was looking forward to sitting down to a real meal. Seeing as how such a meal could not be afforded given the financial situation, I fear that expanding the staff at this point is probably folly. And any grandiose ideas for transforming the company from a software sweatshop into a real service-oriented enterprise should have been put into execution last year.

Already, there is blood in the water for IT in Sapporo. A local Sapporo IT company called Den-nou (電脳, but their website is already down) just sank last week, and I reckon that it will not be the last. As far as I can tell, practically all IT in Sapporo have the same weak business model (bid as low as possible on jobs in Tokyo or Osaka, agree to unrealistic schedules, and work the crap outta your staff; lather, rinse, repeat). With practically nothing to discern one company from another, I expect that the same fate that befell Den-nou is what await many other Sapporo IT shops, including the one in which I am stuck.

But I am a chameleon when it comes to careers, a trapeze-swingin' kind of guy. I think it may be time to reinvent myself. Of course, I love coding way too much to give up that easy. But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Be prepared. Skinny times are a'coming.