We aggregate a lot of blogs internally in the Galactic Empire - mostly to stay on top of various planets and their rumbling. It takes awhile to get a Death Star in place, so when we detect uprisings about to occur - instead of a long drawn out battle, it’s just easier to blow it up…

We came across a posting by Mike Britton, who writes about what’s important in hiring a software programmer. Skills play a role, but as Mike points out - with the wrong attitude, it’s all for naught. There’s a class of uber geek that is so incredibly talented that what they are CAPABLE of is VERY attractive - but if it comes with an enormous amount of management, are you really getting your values worth?

If you have to spend 40% of your time as a manager keeping things politically stable, or the team stable… you have to factor in that the cost of this guy is his salary plus 40% of yours. The uber geek doesn’t think in business terms - they don’t relate that there has to be a net return on investment, otherwise you’re losing money… and eventually will run out of it.

There are those that only want to win as an individual, but those who realize that winning as a team yields greater rewards. From a management perspective, whether it be your top coder, or top sales guy… if he/she is de-motivating the rest of the team, the price is too high.

The Sith have found that it’s far more productive to have a group of people with the right attitude, and generally high skill - and totally not worth the egocentric uber geek.

Quotes:

• “You can be the most prolific blogger and consultant in your field, but if you fail to come through, people will understand and remember” - Results, Results, Results!

• “Approach life with the assumption you are without knowledge and you’ll be far wiser than someone who thinks they know everything”
• “Approach your work with an open mind, and ask questions of people you may feel are subordinate.  They’ll appreciate the feeling that their experience matters, and you’ll be more likely to learn something.” - Collaborate!
  
• “Avoid gossiping and backstabbing.”
  
• “Understand that your goals are not always going to be in line with those of your company.  Your job as a developer is to write code that addresses a problem domain.” - You’re paid to to support corporate objectives, not yours.

Whenever your underlings complain about the workload or deadlines, remind them: “We all answer to a Dark Lord”, implying your simply doing what your manager requests of you, simply responding to the pressure placed on you. Even the top executive has Dark Lords, whether it be shareholders or the greatest Dark Lord of all: profit.

The formula for a great employee is actually quite simple, you need a positive and winning attitude, and you need the skills (aptitude) to go along with it.

If I’m taking on a new apprentice, he may be a really positive dude, but if he has no sense of The Force, then it’s game over. And vice versa, you can have someone who has strong powers with The Force, but with the wrong attitude it’s a management nightmare.

That doesn’t mean that these two things alone will equal success, it just means you’ve got someone with massive potential. It’s still up to you to provide an environment or framework to enable them to succeed.

The attitude is going to give you someone that’s open to constructive criticism, change, and self improvement. It’s going to give you someone that’s naturally into knowledge sharing and collaboration. They’re empathetic, care about other people, and know that there’s more success in winning as a team vs winning as an individual even though the team loses.

Having the right attitude paired with the skills to back it up is going to get you the results. Whether it’s hardcore skills in technology, or in the ways of the The Force… they’re innovative, fast, and at the top of their game. They can isolate and resolve issues, and have the intellect to absorb a lot of information and assess the situation. They have expert level skills in their areas of expertise, and are well known for it.

These are the types of employees you want to have, but they’re extremely difficult to find. It’s easy to find people with lots of positive attitude, but are technically weak or slow. And vice versa, you can find some extremely brilliant and talented folks within the Empire, but with a negative attitude… you’re constantly having to fight that and institute processes to work around it.

So, if you ever do come across one in your walks of life… steal them. Whether they’re in another Department, or from other Empires (including vendors, partners, etc…). Do what it takes to lure them over. If you’re interviewing, you do what it takes to make it happen.

Deadlines, target dates, call them what you will, but every project has dates and deliverables. When deadlines are tight, I often see underlings commit to a date, and when that date arrives, they quick add the infamous caveat “Monday… end of day Monday”.
Monday becomes EOD Monday, which then becomes midnight, which then becomes Tuesday morning and so on.

A company should have a unified policy as to what due dates mean. The 1st, doesn’t mean end of day, it means that morning. It means the deliverable is ready for demonstration, testing, release or whatever the case may be.

Many people view a degree as a worthless piece of paper that doesn’t prove anything, and that the true test of someone’s ability is their performance on the job. Sure I’ve seen Imperial Guards with little formal education who were just as proficient as those who went to Ivy League Imperial Guard schools. Real-world experiences trump academic any day.

But a degree is important in the sense that certain assumptions can be made by those who have one and those who do not. It’s true, a degree doesn’t guarantee any level of proficiency, but those who do have one have proven that the can stay committed to a goal long enough to complete it. They also tend to be more structured in their work and personal life, and took their career seriously from a young age.

Though those who have achieved a moderate level of success without a degree says something too. They’re passionate about what they do, and do what they do is out of passion (vs. just a job). Though because they don’t have the formal training, learning is done through hacking and a lot of trial and error - where as the educated person would approach it in a methodical manner.

One isn’t necessarily better than the other - but you’d be wise to make sure you have a good mix of both and not let yourself become overweighted with just one type.

The Imperfect Perfectionist Employee Type is often a subset of other negatively oriented types that carries this unique personality.

This type of person is obsessed with finding imperfections with everything, and their personal results work flawlessly. But, the work itself is imperfect, meaning that the flawless results are achieved through painstaking testing and regression analysis… They check, double check, and re-check the output, information, and requirements.

But they are often resistant to change, because change requires admitting to ones own imperfections. And to the Imperfect Perfectionist, your life is built on pointing out everyone else’s faults - so how could someone like this ever come to terms and deal with their own?

So even if change is good for them, for example if they adopted a new technology, process, architectural approach, or methodology they may be able to cut their testing time in half.

What’s interesting about this type of character is even though they’re resistant to change, they campaign for *DRASTIC* changes at the same time. Wouldn’t that be a conflict of definition, or a major inconsistency in the observation of this Employee Type?

There’s a good reason why they do this. They view everything and everyone around them as imperfect, so the reasons they’re not able to achieve perfection with parts of their craft is never their fault (in their eyes), but the fault of the technology, tools, people, etc… Therefore completely abandoning such faults is the only logical way (in their mind) to rid themselves of what causes the imperfection. But the reality is that it’s a subconscious move to deflect the inner realization of their own perfections.

Say you’re in a team that specializes in using the Force to electrocute captured rebels, or run a Network Engineering team. When it comes to hiring your instinct is to focus on the obvious and primary skill of the team.

Need to fill in an electrocutioner position? Then you’re probably looking for someone who’s learned how to channel the powers of the Force into electricty. Need to fill in a Network engineer position? You probably are looking for a hardcore networking/router/firewall guy.

But look beyond the obvious and evaluate the skill sets that the team has as a whole, and identify where you are weak, and where you’re strong at. Sure it’s great to add even more firepower to what you’re already strong at, but don’t let that lead you into becoming unbalanced skills wise.

What skills you need depends on your long term staffing plan, which is related to your long term department/company/empire goals. If you want to grow, what skills will you need in the future? Growth is only possible if you have people will the right skills and personalities to achieve it.

Hiring ONLY for your needs of today is great if you never want to progress beyond today. We’re not saying ignore the needs of today, there are short term needs and they’re important, but keep the future in mind.

To assist you in this, put together a skills inventory list. It’s just a simple table of all skills needed by today and in the future, along with your staff and how strong they are in those skills. It will help you highlight where you’re really strong at, and where the weaknesses lie. So, you’re hiring strategy should try to fill in for those areas where you are vulnerable. E.g:

When a department is in charge of creative or analytical activities, imagination and innovation is vital for their success.  Over time employees get to know their manager, and what their manger likes and dislikes.  Employees know that their manager dislikes X, Y, Z and since their ideas will be nixed, they will stop proposing innovative solutions and simply provide what their manager expects.  This leads to all ideas being limited to 1 managers’ belief system and does not allow innovative ideas to surface.

Only the manager themselves can combat this issue.  When a manager chooses a solution, they should explain clearly to their staff why that solution is being chosen.  They should recognize and encourage innovative solutions, regardless if they are used or not.

If upper management thinks a department isn’t innovative, they should interview the department individually, presenting problems and see what solutions employees will offer on their own, w/o their manager being present.  Even this may not lead to much, as employees are well aware of the retribution that will occur if they suggest concepts their manager has already killed internally.  Another method is requiring 3 different solutions for a problem, which will force the manager to present other concepts, and not just their own narrow view.

2 per year. The flu only hits once a year - and worst case you’ll get hit with a fever, the peak of which lasts for only a day.

Parents however will have kids who get sick all the time, and use up sicks day for that.

So what is sick enough? Well a 102F fever or more is. Anything else, the employee can work at home if they need to. Otherwise coughing, upset stomachs, back pain, and all that… please, get back to work.

That’s why the Sith believe in the PTO system. You get a lump sum # of days, use it however you want. Otherwise allocated sick time gets abused.

Successful teams allocate quite a bit time to planning. They plot out in as much detail how they plan for something going down; they factor in what the potential risks are and how those risks will be mitigated.

They plan out all kinds of potential scenarios, whether they’ll happen or not, so that in case it does happen - they have the plan ready to go, all the thinking has already been done up front, everyone knows what to do… and it’s just execution at that point.

For example a Network team may plan out all possible risks - denial of service attacks, virus outbreaks, etc… and have all the plans ready if they do happen. They also make plans to prevent it from happening in the first place - but if it doesn’t happen, no one is panicking, they know what the game plan is.

We have our fleets of Storm Troopers practice our plans. Whether it’s an attack from the Jedi, or Ewoks whipping rocks at them… they’ve been ingrained with all the standard plans for all these things so when it does happen, all they do is execute (and we mean execute literally).

Listen. If you’re prepared to the best of your ability - whether you win or lose, doesn’t matter, because you’ve prepared to the best of your ability. The BEST of your ability, meaning there’s nothing more you could possibly have done, so the result (bad or good) is going to be what it’s going to be (of course, you should always be in a state of learning and improvement so that your best is always increasing).

Luck is being prepared for an opportunity…