The Dude is sipping his Cafe Latte, and pondering the meaning of life. For those who don’t recall, The Dude has recently returned to the fold of scientific instrumentation, working for a true giant. It is a comfortable place, and he is about to dive into deep technical training. But the first couple of days [...]
The Dude often has scratched his head at the insanities of what he has seen called Business Development. Today, a Quora update came across his email, and the question was “What are the typical responsibilities of someone in the role of Business Development“. It was followed by some up and at-em answers that just don’t [...]
The Dude is going to take on a sacred cow. Many companies have a role called “Business Analyst”. Now, the Dude knows that the role varies in responsibilities, and where it reports to, but in his experience, it is a person who has access to the BI Cubes, the CRM data, and unlimited access to [...]
The Dude has long been a Mac user. His last laptop, a late 2008 vintage MacBook Pro had served him well. It originally shipped with Leopard, was upgraded to Snow Leopard, and last summer, I took the plunge and upgraded to 10.7 (Lion). Clearly the Core2Duo processor was showing its age. Since The Dude [...]
The Dude here wondering whether all PS orgs write crappy code. At Dysfuctosoft, we make an out of the box product that it pretty awesome. It is flexible, integrates well, has well designed and documented API’s, and with 25 years of experience, it quite honestly kicks major ass. The Dude is proud to be associate [...]
The Dude here. One question that I have revisited throughout my career is “What would it be like to be a product manager for a company that makes <insert something awesome>?” An example: The Dude plays guitar. He has played for almost 30 years. He owns several (including a really kick-ass Tom Anderson). When the [...]
The Dude here. If you haven’t noticed by my tweet referencing “short timer’s” syndrome, I have received and accepted an offer at a different company. My days at Dysfunctosoft are drawing to a close. Will I be going to a place that will reduce my impulse to “snark”? Time will tell. But today, I would [...]
The Dude here. Last Friday, the Dude accepted an offer of employment. It is for a kick ass company, and working with a great team of very talented, very motivated, and great people in general. He will have to make a (short) move, but with housing the way it is in Arizona, he should be [...]
The Dude back for a daily dose of insanity. Dysfunctosoft, where The Dude is a Product Manager, has a central, corporate entity that generates part numbers (called “SKU”’s in our parlance, SKU = Stock Keeping Unit, in itself an oxymoron when dealing with software). This group reports to some mythical “product management operations” organization, headed [...]
The Dude is sitting through that inevitable requirement of a middle manager, “management training”. Having been a denizen of corporate America for a long time, this is a predictable requirement. But that doesn’t make it any less painful. Inevitably, you get some perky HR person to instruct you. Lately, they are handled by webcast. Often, [...]