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Category Archives: General
Is Work Supposed to be Fun?
Well, it’s almost the end of January and I do want to get something posted before the month’s out. Let’s see if I make it in some time zone, at least. Our work recently had an employee satisfaction survey taken, … Continue reading
Another advocate for Openness, Transparency, and Accountable Management
Somewhat recently, I finished reading Employees First, Customers Second by Vineet Nayar. It was a very easy read since the techniques the author talks about using to restore his company to an industry leader agree a lot with what I … Continue reading
Working with academic vendors…
In my previous post, I made the outlandish statement that not all vendors are well-versed in the skills needed to properly handle large, fixed-price, contracts for one-off products. Now, I want to discuss some ways to effectively work with such … Continue reading
Why are we surprised when vendors can’t keep projects on time and budget?
It has been occurring to me lately that there is a fundamental mismatch between how some astronomy projects select and manage external vendors and their expectations of these external vendors’ performance. In our case, we require competition and fixed price … Continue reading
One year later …
Well, it’s been a year now since I started this blog. I thought I should commemorate the occasion by writing something deep and reflective. The problem is, I’m not very good at deep and reflective. So, you’re stuck with this … Continue reading
Healthy Conflcit
I recently picked up a copy of A Grand and Bold Thing by Ann Finkbeiner. It’s a book about the original Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). I actually haven’t read it yet, so I’ll probably say more about the book … Continue reading
There’s more than one set of reasons for not communicating well…
There are some other topics I’ve been wanting to write about lately, but this one just keeps on giving… I received an anonymous private reply to my previous post here on communications and the recent lunch meeting suggesting there are … Continue reading
To fix a problem, first look in the mirror, define it, and own it
There is an interesting discussion starting from a post I made on an internal work blog. So, I thought I’d repost a slightly edited version of it here. I attended a rather disheartening informal lunchtime meeting recently at work. One … Continue reading