Blog

Things are starting to heat up again… Or they’re just starting to heat up. We got to the point where we have to make decisions in order to make progress. I have to make the decisions.
I don’t know a lot about Connex yet. There are SO many things that I don’t know about. There are so many things that I don’t understand. I don’t see how I can manage this project and this team effectively if I don’t get to the bottom of all of these things. I just have to really dig and dig deep in order to understand and deepen my knowledge about the systems and about the projects. If not, then I should either move somewhere else, or go to a different company.
Things are not easy. Did I expect them to be easy? Absolutely not. Did I expect things to go this way? I think so.
But I have to work hard to succeed. I have to really focus on getting things done and moving the project forward. If not, we will be struggling.

I like being a manager. But I don’t know whether it is such a good idea of being one here at Markit.
The product we’re working on is a really complex and challenging one. It works, with occasional issues, but trying to make changes to it and trying to make it better is proving to be a difficult task. It might even be an impossible one. 
But in either case, I think I am starting to like the position more and more. There is something to being a manager that is really cool. It’s just that I don’t have time for anything. Reallty! I am so inclined to do work on the projects that I am in charge of that it is taking all of my time off.
I think I have to change that, eventually.
I want to have a job where I’m not stressing all the time. There is going to be some stress occasionally. But I have to make sure it is just an occasional stress. If it is persistent, then maybe it’s not a good job for me. So far, I have handled it OK, and the stress has been occasional, which is good.
I have to make time to practice new technologies. I still read for an hour at home everyday. I have to find time to put some of that knowledge to actual use at work and at home. Otherwise I am not going to learn. I can’t allow that.
I think things will settle down. I think I will have more time to relax and more time for my own development tasks. And at that time, I am going to enjoy it even more!

We are not having much success releasing the new version of Connex under Jboss. Clients are having issues authenticating… It does not really look too good. We will have to try several more times to get this thing going, and even with that, we’re not sure we’ll get it working… Fun, fun, fun!
I am doing my first phone screen tomorrow. I think the guy I’m going to interview is a pretty good one. He seems like he is a detail oriented and looking to always improve. I’ll test his skills tomorrow.
Fabian is becoming bigger and better, I think. He likes it a lot now when we read to him. He likes to play a lot. And he also likes to/is starting to talk a little more – most of it is mumbo jumbo, but he’s trying.
As far as Samir is concerned, I am a little bit concerned. I am concerned because he is not quality oriented. Most of the tasks he completed were very sloppy. I just have to watch him very closely and make sure he does a very good job. There is no other way around.

A much better day at work today. I told Samir that I don’t like meetings like yesterday. It’s tough on me and tough on him. I would much rather praise him. It’s so much easier for me. I think he understands. He told me so. I think he’ll adjust. He was working hard today. Things should improve a great deal. How long will it last? Good question. I still think that things will work out and we’ll be able to work together and be productive. I really do. We’ll see.
Fabian is 14 months now. He can walk. What? He can run! Yesterday he bitted Marta really hard. He stopped doing it for a while but he did it yesterday. I held mommy and we did not pay attention to him (a technique that actually works, I think). He cried a lot. It was painful for him. We did it for around a minute. We’ll see if this worked this time or whether we’ll have to do it a little more.
Tomorrow is Halloween. We have a nice pirate dress for Fabian. He is such a good looking boy. He looks great in that dress.

I had a very tough day today. Right from the beginning, things did not look too good. But I think it’s going to turn out to be a very beneficial day for me in the long run.
I was very disappointed with Samir on Friday. I asked him to give me his best effort and try to make our QA environment working, but he barely even tried. Then he leaves at 5:30PM (and he started at 9:30). Today, he comes in at around 10AM. Of course, he did not complete he tasks. I told him straight out, it’s discouraging to see a lack of effort. It’s unacceptable, I told him. I want to spend his time on work-related stuff and development type work.
He did say that he’s going to try to work harder. It remains to be seen.
Then we released a new servers and things started to fail. At least it looked liked that. But because we made changes on the old servers, people at Citi could not log in. I had to take the servers offline. Then I made the changes to the properties file, but it looked like they did not take effect. Actually, they did, but the test script did not reflect that. It was very stressful. I was under a lot of pressure.
It’s a tough day. Tough day for Samir and also a tough day for me. I don’t like to scorn anybody. But I have to motivate him to do a better job. If not, I’ll just have to find somebody else.

I had a very busy and a productive day. I worked on a lot of things. It’s fun. I am doing things for myself so I can work hard and feel good. It really does feel good.
On the other hand, I have a guy who works for me and who just does not care. He simply just does stock research, etc. I cannot put up with that. I told him to create a QA environment today. I asked him to give his best effort. What did he do? Probably spent an hour on the task! I cannot take that. I will talk to Tim and ask him to give me somebody new. We just can’t hold on to a guy like this. I gave him prompts. I tried to motivate him. Did not really work.
Am I giving up? Not yet. But I think as soon as we find a different guy, he’s gone. I will still try to get him going, get him motivated. If that’s not going to work… well, I already made this decision, no?

I think I had a fairly productive day. Things are flying here now. I just get so busy working on stuff. I don’t have time to do anything. I don’t have time to do any personal things. It’s just amazing how things are flying now. It’s happened ever since I became a manager. It’s amazing.
It’s not easy, that’s for sure. It is challenging, but that’s what makes it run so fast I think.
Samir got frustrated today. He does not feel like making hourly changes to the schedule. He thinks it is silly and hard to quantify. I am not giving up on the schedule, though. At least not yet… I will push on him to get it completed because I know it acts as a motivating factor. It makes me see what he works on. I think it makes him work harder. I will continue doing that.

I feel that my communication skills are getting better. I held a pretty good status meeting today. I feel no stress at all. I have a good vocal variety and I’m not afraid to raise my voice. There is only one problem… I do it when I have everyone in the room that I know. If there is somebody new, I think I feel intimidated or scared in some other way. I can’t really explain. Or it could be that I just don’t have anything to add… could be.
I love being a manager so far. Things are just flying. I feel that I am in charge and whatever I do pays off. It’s just a pleasure to work on my own things.
There is the downside, of course. And it it… the product itself! It’s just a beast. I don’t understand it all. It’s very complicated. But on the other hand, it’s a challenge!

Things are very hectic here at work lately. We started the Apache/Jboss project. We put it in production for an hour or so, but things started to fail… Things did not work smoothly. It just started to fail when users tried to authenticate. It just did not work at all. This is not good. We had to roll back and now we’re trying to figure out why this happened and how to resolve it. It is not the best way to proceed, but that’s what we have right now.
The whole connex project is very complex. Things are so complex that I probably only understand around 10% of how things work. There are so many different pieces. There are so many different tools that I did not even touch. How am I supposed to be in charge of running it? Not sure. It’s definitely not easy. It is very hard actually.
My other problem is with the guy we hired for the team. He is just not delivering. He does not really care about the environment that much. I think it’s probably best if we let him go. He is just very slow in finding the real issues. He is slow in getting things resolved. I want a quick guy that gets into things right away. I want somebody that gets things done. This is not happening now.

Things have settled down a little bit today. It’s been mostly quiet. It’s a good thing. But I am finding more and more that I still don’t really know how the project works. I have to do a better job doing that. I have to do something everyday that would increase my knowledge in the product. I have to do that. Otherwise, I’m going to struggle and we’re going to struggle as a team.
I also have to be more vocal. I am still hiding sometimes. I am still afraid to talk when I have an opportunity. I don’t know if this is a real issue. When I have something to say, I say it. If not, I don’t. But in situations where I’m not sure if I should ask something, I should just go ahead and do it. I should just ask questions. I should be bold. I should be brave. I should do something that scares me every day! Put myself in a bad, challenging situation. That’s how I will improve!