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"Create strategic and usable strategic plans that can guide your organization toward mission fulfilment"
I do so hate it when those other tools generate non-strategic strategic plans.
On Feb 19, 2012 9:20 PM, "Bill Burcham" <bill.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> from http://www.dot-orgstrategicplan.com/
>>
>> "Create strategic and usable strategic plans that can guide your organization toward mission fulfilment"
>
fulfillment needs another l
>
> Sam wrote:
>>
>> I do so hate it when those other tools generate non-strategic strategic plans.
>
>
> Yes and unusable ones too!
>
> We're on a roll.
>
On 2/19/12 9:52 PM, John Wilger wrote:
> Beating up recruiters on the list is one thing; how about we not let
> that slip into discouraging entrepreneurs? Could we maybe keep this
> kind of criticism on the constructive side?
>
> --
> Regards,
> John Wilger
>
--
-/matt/-
http://youell.com/matt
I offer my apologies, both to you and to the list in general. I ought
to know better, especially since part of the reason I instigated our
beginners' meetups was because I thought we might be discouraging
newcomers from participating. *facepalm*
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 11:51 PM, Skip Spitzer <sk...@rootaction.org> wrote:
> wow, does this kind of disregard for others (especially new members)
> typify this group? social skills, fellas, social skills.
To some extent... yes. We've even had a survey about it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFBoazg4YTZocGEwNWdMb1BrNGRFbmc6MQ
[snip]
> by the way, your commentary is based on a lack of understanding of the
> market: in nonprofit planning it's nearly universally understood that
> strategic plans frequently end up not being particularly strategic nor
> terribly usable.
That's... more than a little bit sad, actually. Given how overworked
people in the nonprofit world tend to be, it seems a shame that any of
their efforts should go toward activities that aren't actually useful.
-Sam
Not surprising, though. People in the not-for-profit world are
generally motivated by a desire to address direct needs and typically
use something very much like what we call agile. They live at in a high
feedback tactical world, and are often exceptionally good at it. But
when required (by a funding agency, say) to produce A Strategic Plan
they fair no better than most agile developers would if forced to
produce a Product Lifecycle Document or some other waterfall artifact.
If you had to produce Flowcharts or even UML for your code, would you
want to take it on bare handed, or would you want some tooling support?
And, though it can be annoying, it often turns out that pushing people
into looking at things that are familiar to them from a new perspective
can be beneficial in the long term, even if it is painful in the short.
-- Markus
> Thanks for this, Sam. I see from the survey you guys have some sport
> or something going on with job listings. I was surprised, but not
> discouraged--and I enjoyed writing my reply about your social
> skills :)
To be fair to the people on the list, this is a forum for discussing
ruby, not a job board, and some of the recruiters who have posted to the
list in the past have been so off topic that it was, really, just spam.
They were (presumably) being paid to find people qualified to fill a
certain job and, instead of working to earn their fee, we simply sending
out gibberish to every list that they could find.
Thus you are sort of in the position of someone who cold-calls a
household with an offer they may actually have had an interest in, but
happens to call shortly after twenty other telemarketers have called.
-- M
On the flip side of this, I'm looking to re-integrate myself into the
Portland scene after having been on the other side of continent for a
few years; I appreciate seeing the non-spam offers. The luxury of
criticism is made more apparent for the relatively low traffic of this
list. (Not being able to attend meetings, my perspective might be
skewed, I admit.)
> I find recruiter spam as frustrating as most people in the industry, but I
> generally try to be polite. It can be hard to say with certainty what the
> future will hold for industry demand and I'd prefer to not burn bridges by
> being snarky. Our monthly meeting room is sponsored by a consulting firm,
> Robert Half Technology. It would suck if they got tired of us.
>
> That said, I would not want to see this email group fill up with recruiter
> spam.
No disagreement. Having a specific mailing list for this purpose would
reduce the offers posted here, but would tend to make pdxruby-jobs
into a wasteland. I can't imagine that few responses would encourage
local folks to keep posting to a jobs-only list.
I submit that it's best to treat job mails as we would any other;
those seen to be wildly counter to prevailing norms should be
_politely_ chastised (probably off-list), those inline encouraged and
discussed. The recent Revisu thread is a fine example, both for
potential job-posters and of community reaction.
--
Brian L. Troutwine
I've got an idea - lets start a new list -- pdxruby-jobs-mockery.
Everybody wins then!
-k-
I can recall 2003 when you'd go to a PDX.rb meeting and 1/2 of the people didn't have any job and the idea of getting paid to code Ruby was still rare...
Too many job postings is a good problem to have.
I’ve noticed a few interesting things about job posts of late. First: there’s a ton of opportunities for ANY kind of programmer. Also, it’s interesting and refreshing to see companies selling themselves as a good worker knows he/she is hiring their employer in a sense (especially for fulltime work). Perhaps the one thing that strikes me as odd (maybe it’s not that odd) but I see a lot of very specific requirements. If I were hiring a programmer for the long term I’d care little about what “stack” they use and more about how they solve programming tasks. I realize you don’t call the doctor to fix your car—but still… for fulltime especially, do people really need that much specialization? I haven’t had one project in 20 years where I wasn’t having to learn something new just for that project. Maybe I’m in the minority in this feeling.
Thanks,
Phillip
I've seen this enough to be used to it, but it *is* odd when I stop to
think about it. (=
As a developer occasionally involved in recruiting, it makes sense to
me to say, "hey, here's what we use," because one of the things I like
about the Ruby community is that we obviously care about our tools.
(For example, knowing that a shop uses HAML tells me something about
their culture, values, and team composition.) However, when this gets
communicated outside the dev team, it quickly turns into a game of
"telephone".
People without technical backgrounds who are involved in hiring
technical staff are often working at a severe disadvantage. The most
clueful ones ask questions and develop a feel for what different bits
of jargon mean, but a dismaying number of recruiters will say things
like "I'm looking for two Ruby contractors with JQuery and RubyMine"
like they're shopping for groceries. (See also:
http://youtu.be/3XGJq8wrw5I )
In a way, though, I find this quite useful: the more rigidly worded
or nonsensical a job posting is, the more likely (IMO) it is that the
company has lots of layers of bureaucracy. The best dev team I've
ever worked on was put together by a manager with a strong development
background who was able to assess candidates' talents and skills, and
actively worked to insulate us from the administrative BS of the
larger organization.
-Sam
@jc00ke http://jc00ke.com
On Feb 24, 2012 1:13 AM, "Sam Livingston-Gray" <gee...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 11:51 PM, Phillip Kerman
> <philli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > [...] Perhaps the one thing that strikes me as odd (maybe it’s
> > not that odd) but I see a lot of very specific requirements.
>
> I've seen this enough to be used to it, but it *is* odd when I stop to
> think about it. (=
>
> As a developer occasionally involved in recruiting, it makes sense to
> me to say, "hey, here's what we use," because one of the things I like
> about the Ruby community is that we obviously care about our tools.
> (For example, knowing that a shop uses HAML tells me something about
> their culture, values, and team composition.)
What, that they are AWESOME?
> However, when this gets
> communicated outside the dev team, it quickly turns into a game of
> "telephone".
>
> People without technical backgrounds who are involved in hiring
> technical staff are often working at a severe disadvantage. The most
> clueful ones ask questions and develop a feel for what different bits
> of jargon mean, but a dismaying number of recruiters will say things
> like "I'm looking for two Ruby contractors with JQuery and RubyMine"
> like they're shopping for groceries. (See also:
> http://youtu.be/3XGJq8wrw5I )
>
> In a way, though, I find this quite useful: the more rigidly worded
> or nonsensical a job posting is, the more likely (IMO) it is that the
> company has lots of layers of bureaucracy. The best dev team I've
> ever worked on was put together by a manager with a strong development
> background who was able to assess candidates' talents and skills, and
> actively worked to insulate us from the administrative BS of the
> larger organization.
>
> -Sam
>
Ah, but the key phrase here is "for the long term". I don't think mot
of the job postings I'm seeing here are "for the long term". They're
contracting gigs. The poster needs to get some kind of job done in the
short term.
Phil
> I realize you
> don’t call the doctor to fix your car—but still… for fulltime especially, do
> people really need that much specialization? I haven’t had one project in
> 20 years where I wasn’t having to learn something new just for that
> project. Maybe I’m in the minority in this feeling.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
> Phillip
>