"Can you summarize that for me?" I've been hearing some version of that my whole career. You write up a problem — the background, the angles you've considered, what you think ought to be done about it — and back it comes. Too long. Don't have time for all that. Give me the high points. … Continue reading The Warehouse
Category: Work & Data
Thirty Copies
Around 2013 I was very good at Excel, and Excel was slowly ruining me. The job needed SQL. I had built SQL up in my head into a wall — I'm a business person, I'd say, not a technical person, and they've got me doing technical things. It'll take too long. It's too hard. I'm … Continue reading Thirty Copies
Left Click Or Right Click
This week I spent fifteen minutes finding a bug. Records were dropping out of a data pipeline somewhere between where they started and where they were supposed to land, and nobody could say where. Finding it meant tracing the path through somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand lines of code. I could do that by … Continue reading Left Click Or Right Click
I Knew The Guy
In my twenties I worked with a man who got fired over something he said. I'll leave it there — it was his to carry and it isn't mine to publish. Today it would be called an HR violation. We both worked for the owner of the company. A client told the owner the man … Continue reading I Knew The Guy
Ten Cents
In my mid-twenties I was the office manager at an insurance adjustment firm, which is a title that meant almost nothing. What I actually did was accounts receivable and accounts payable, and errands, and whatever anyone needed, and on some days taking care of the dog. Ten dollars an hour. The owner smoked cigars at … Continue reading Ten Cents
