Friday, January 25, 2008

John Dvorak says "Promises of Productivity Are Often BS"

Or at least that's the headline his editor came up with.

The last paragraph in the article:

I'm almost tempted to do a book on the whole notion of productivity, since I find it to fraudulent in too many instances. Exactly how do you measure worth in today's white-collar workforce? It's a total crapshoot.

Promises of Productivity Are Often BS - Columns by PC Magazine

The opening paragraph:

I have forever been amused by sales pitches that a product or service will pay for itself within so many weeks, months, or years. Generally speaking, if "pay for itself" means the product or service will actually increase cash flow and sales to an extreme, then I'm in. But if "pay for itself" means an increase in productivity, then the red light on top of my BS meter immediately goes off.

In between he talks about experiences with devices that are supposed to enhance productivity, the faulty metric of time saving because people don't actually work 100% of the time, so a few minutes saved are as likely to be absorbed by IM as by being able to do more work.

Now, I've been touting these themes in TCO analyses for a while, so the article touched home. But the fallacy in the discussion isn't that people don't work 100% of the time, but a misapplying of productivity metrics to work done. For me, being more productive means workers get more done in the same or even less time than before. While a business might gain by increasing the total volume of work product through productivity gains, as John says, these gains are mostly manifest in manufacturing and other repetitive task industries.

An office worker may or may not produce more total work product through the use of higher productivity enabling tools, but other factors will probably have enough affect to limit those gains. OTOH, a systems administrator will definitely be able to handle more devices through productivity enhancing tools as his or her repetitive tasks will be simplified or otherwise be made more efficient.

Ultimately, productivity claims are BS. Usually, as I've stated elsewhere, the problem is claiming a productivity gain because fewer people are producing the same work product. They just work longer hours. Often much longer hours. That's not a true productivity gain. Its a labor rip off by the employer. A true productivity gain is when the same number of employees can produce more work product in the same number of hours.

Now John, in his professional curmudgeony way, is right about the nature of office work and in picking on the marketing around productivity. But the biggest productivity enhancing office too has to be the networked PC/Word Process/Laser Printer combination. The amount of time saved by the use of these three tools is almost incalculable.

Personally, if a better tool enables me to get some kinds of work done so I can write this blog; how bad can it be?

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Geeks Unite!

According to AP, IBM is playing fast and loose with employee pay:

BOSTON (AP) -- Even as IBM Corp. reports record profits, thousands of its U.S. employees are staring at pay cuts.

It's the result of IBM's response to a lawsuit in which the company was accused of illegally withholding overtime pay from some technical employees. IBM settled the case for $65 million in 2006 and has now decided that it needs to reclassify 7,600 technical-support workers as eligible for overtime.

But their underlying salary - the base pay they earn for their first 40 hours of work each week - will be cut 15 percent to compensate.

Wired News - AP News

Basically, IBM is reclassifying people who were on salary as hourly workers to whom overtime applies. It's then cutting their base salary to compensate for a supposed 15% expected overtime for all of them. That's five hours per week. Only some of the 7600 will actually get that overtime, and is seems that the majority expect their time to be cut back to 40 hours regardless.

Perhaps IBM managers will follow in Walmart's footsteps and force these workers to clock out and then work the overtime for no extra pay. Seems reasonable. After all, profits need to go up and these workers are competing with folks in India and China who get paid much fewer dollars per hour.

I've been saying that technology workers are horribly exploited and they've been glad about to be so as they're under the delusion that sweat equity is worth money. It's not. It's worth a shower. Though their employers will take them to the baths.

If you work on salary for a technology company, what's your hourly pay? Making $120,000 for a 40 hour week comes to about $57 an hour. That's pretty damn good. But if you work 60 hours it comes to about $38 per hour. If you were an hourly employee making the same base salary - $57/hr and got that $120,000 for a 4o hour week (besides being paid better than almost everyone on the planet - except lawyers) and you worked an extra 20 hours every week you'd make an extra $60,000 per year.  So regardless of your salary, you're taking a major hit compared to an hourly worker.

Obviously, the hourly worker is unlikely to be paid $57/hr. A more likely sum would be $30 to $35 per hour. But that person, working 60 hours would make an extra $56,000 per year for being paid overtime. That would be more than the salary worker's income even if the hourly person didn't get all that overtime.

The point I'm trying to make is that IT folks work far more hours than they should for the money they get. The problem is they think they're doing great, but in fact they're being ripped off. Several times - not only are they being exploited for the time they work, but they're constantly under the threat of being outsourced to Asia.

It's a shame.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Mac in the Enterprise

Back in the day, when I was selling Apple Macintosh computers into corporate accounts, Apple actually had a corporate or enterprise computing message. This was when built-in Ethernet was a revelation of a personal computer. Back then (1990-91), a Mac was actually a better network citizen than a PC with Windows. PC's usually didn't have enough memory space to support the operating system, the Windows shell, the expanded memory drivers, the NIC drivers, the Network login client and so forth and still be able to do useful work. Especially if you wanted to run a client/server application at the same time as Lotus 123 and WordPerfect.

For those of you who weren't around then, PC's ran in the lower 640K or RAM (that's Kilobytes, not Megabytes or Gigabytes) and typical business PC was lucky to even have one Megabyte or RAM installed.

For those not totally locked into Microsoft or more likely Novell Netware back then, the Mac wasn't that bad a business computer. In '91, you could get a Mac IIci with a 12" (13"?) monitor, extended keyboard, up to 4 MB RAM, built in Ethernet and more for about $3000. A Compaq DeskPro 386s with the same features cost a bit less, but was much harder to setup and connect to the LAN (with Windows) and had only 1MB RAM.

Selling a Mac to a company that was open to the possibility was essentially a TCO argument.

Since those days, Apple has all but abandoned efforts to sell their products as enterprise computing tools. Sure, Macs are in offices all over, but they've mostly stayed in the content creator niche.

But Apple has been making in-roads over the years through stealth. I think it started with the first OS X laptops. When these appeared, the PowerBook was the first commercially available and supported, reasonably priced laptop computer running  UNIX. And it ran UNIX while also supporting Microsoft Office. This immediately made these laptops popular with UNIX administrators who needed mobility and the ability to create reports and so forth using Microsoft Office file formats.

Just by becoming comfortable, indeed happy, with OS-X made system administrators more open to the Mac.

Then came the iMac. Especially, the LCD screen models. Any company that wanted to have their publicly visible offices look cool, modern and up-to-date had to have them. That they machines also took up less desk space and could run Office app's, made the iMac a much less risky choice.

(I don't know what the current stats are, but a year after OS-X was released there were more Apple computers running UNIX sold than all desktop UNIX sales for all versions of UNIX combined.)

Next came the iPod. Not  a business device? Maybe. But almost everyone had one. So Apple was now a friendly face to even the most belligerent Apple hater. Even Bill owned one!

Now comes the latest assault on staid enterprise computing. To quote ZDNet:

What’s great about the MacBook Air is that this machine appears to be a new twist in Apple’s stealth campaign into the enterprise. The MacBook Air is all about switchers.

Who will be customers of this classy machine? Captains of enterprise and commerce. Traditionally, these customers have been Windows users. But now they will buy Apple’s new ultralight and join the ranks of switchers.

Read related story: Do switchers now rule the Mac?

These executives are helping to drive the adoption of the Mac in the enterprise and mid-market companies.

» Why does the MacBook Air make so many so dumb? | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com

 

If you don't think this is the driving force, just visit places like Gizmodo. For instance this thread about what Sony has said about the MacBook Air. Besides all the stuff about how the Air isn't a power user computer, and it doesn't have this or it doesn't have that - the usual geek parade of complaints - the same point about stealth adoption is made by several folks.

BY CHINHSTER AT 01/16/08 11:49 PM

@nachobel:

Before the MBA was announced, I told my boss what the rumored ultra portable was supposed to be like and that if the rumors were true, it would be too expensive for most people. He travels first class and told me he has observed that there's no shortage of people who would pay for something like that in business/first class regardless of cost. The MBA would be perfect for him because he never uses the optical drive or a wired network, travels often, and doesn't use much local storage space preferring online storage instead, and carries his laptop everywhere he goes.

After the keynote, I got a text from him saying he ordered the MBA... the $3100 one.

This is the real purpose of the MacBook Air. When you start seeing the fashionable folks with them everywhere, including in Vogue, on TV and in the Movies, people are going to want them. A lot.

You don't think turning the Logo upside down on Mac laptop covers was an accident do you?

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Does the Net bring Freedom or Control

 

Nicholas Carr quotes Alexander Galloway:

“the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom - control has existed from the beginning.”

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog

Mr. Carr is driving at the fact that it's no longer the World Wide Web, it's the World Wide Computer. I agree with Carr's history - the personal computer started as a tool for working outside the control of centralized mainframe computing, but computing was re-centralized with LANs and networks. Then the WWW came and broke it open again, but control is back.

I've spent my career at the fulcrum of this issue. I'm strongly committed to the personal computing paradigm, but I'm a control freak, especially when it comes to how business data is created, used, managed, searched and analyzed. I've therefore specialized in applications that enable collaboration in the creation of content empowering users to do their own thing, while working within tightly managed bounds of policy or other structures.

We're now entering a new phase in the constantly shifting personal vs. control seesaw. Cloud computing, to use on popular label, leverages controlled, centralized servers with end user (or at least IT provided) gadgets that enable work to be performed anywhere, anytime on any device. The interesting paradox is that to enable maximum end-user freedom, very strong control over resources is required. These resources may be decentralized and even from disparate and even competing sources, but each "server" is itself tightly controlled.

I don't disagree with Carr's assessment, but I'm more hopeful about how it will pan out.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Using Collaboration Tools Wisely?

Analyst firm claims that collaboration overload costs $588B a year! Among other points made in the article:

Beyond the interruptions and competitive pressure, the different modes of collaboration have created more locations through which people can store data. This makes it harder for users to find information, prompting users to "reinvent the wheel because information cannot be found," Basex said.

Basex' conclusion is that the more information we have, the more we generate, making it harder to manage.

Claims Collaboration Overload Costs U.S. $588B a Year

 

We've all experienced this. Whether it's being unsure of the whereabouts or even existence of a "master" document that's being collaboratively developed, or having to spend the morning just going through e-mails, several of which merely contain an acknowledgement of a previous message, the tools we have for collaboration, especially the one's focused on in this article (e-mail, IM) are definitely costly distractions.

It would seem that the very act of working with others - or at least the tools for communications - can get in the way of actually working.

The article points out:

… Basex proposed several steps to mitigate information overload. With e-mail as the biggest offender, Basex said users can save time by not e-mailing someone, and then following up with a phone call or an instant message two seconds later (a no-brainer perhaps, but a trap many of us fall into).

Basex also said users must not combine multiple topics or requests in a single e-mail; make sure the subject clearly reflects the topic and urgency of the message; read their e-mails before sending to make sure they make sense; and will not hit reply-all unless necessary or reply with one-word e-mails such as "thanks."

I would add a couple of points:

  • If someone sends an e-mail responding to a previous request there's no reason to reply unless further clarification is needed. Sending an e-mail saying "OK" is a major waste of time. For you and the recipient.
  • Multiple topics are definitely a bad practice, but if you can send a subject line that reflect the multiple topics, perhaps that's OK. The problem is replying:
    • Always endeavor to have clear subject that describe as much as possible the contents and the source. An e-mail subject such as "Tuesday's Meeting" may make sense to you when you send it, but without knowing which Tuesday (past or future), the meeting subject matter and possibly some project or client identification makes addressing the message in a timely and appropriate manner difficult and perhaps will also waste time

It's also important to change the subject of a message thread if the topic changes. Don't keep using the same subject when the contents no longer relate to the topic at hand. You should also delete all the thread content that's no longer important to the new subject.

To quote the article:

For all communication, Basex wants to remind workers to be as explicit as possible because their readers are not mind readers. While the statement may seem like an obvious mantra, it is also easily forgotten.

When discussing the choice of medium, the article points out:

Basex also urged users to choose the proper communication medium at the proper time. The researchers suggested instant messaging is better than the phone when multiple parties need to be on and do the talking, or there are a number of many-to-many conversations taking place.

Instant messaging is better than e-mail when an issue demands an immediate response, or trivial, such as lunch plans. E-mail trumps instant messaging when a note must be blasted out to multiple people and when a message must be archived.

One thing the article doesn't point out here is that the use of a collaborative environment such as SharePoint can also be an excellent tool for maintaining knowledge threads. Just by making sure that e-mails are copied to a project document library and insure that all discussions pertinent to a collaborative project are available to all participants.

Regardless of the choices made, it would seem that there are no easy solutions. My personal recommendation is to go beyond the e-mail/IM paradigm and use threaded discussion sites whether on a SharePoint like portal, a Wiki, or even a group blog whenever possible so that content of collaborative efforts be available. The ideal solution would support the delivery of content created via e-mail, IM, word processing and even phone conversations (transcripts or recordings) to a central repository for future reference. That way the creation tools could be chosen for their appropriateness to the situation, while the results of the effort can be shared for use in the collaboration.