Thriving in the 21st century workplace
May 13th, 2008 — Management
“But what do you actually do?” I hear this a lot, usually from family or friends who aren’t in the high-tech industry. It’s hard enough to explain what Storage Resource Management Software does, but explaining what I actually do relative to that is even tougher.
I thought I’d take a nice busy Monday and try and find time throughout the day to scribble in notes about what I’m actually doing with that time, and post it here for people to see.
May 5th, 2008 — Management
Before I became a manager, I took an excellent class offered internally at EMC called Exploring a Career in Management. The high point wasn’t the content, but rather the frank discussions that took place between the attendees and the instructor (I’ve found this to be true of most “soft skills” classes).
One topic was that as a manager, you are the face of the company (in this case, EMC) to the people on your team. And that requires, if you’re going to have any sort of personal integrity, some amount of buy-in on your part of what the company stands for.
Well into my second year as a manager, I tell you this comes up all the time: at review time, during compensation discussions, during conversations about product strategy, and more.
