Harry's Ruminations

A letter to myself in July 2015 from July 2016: Dear sir, This is your future self speaking.  Don't question and go all 'Dr Who' on me, just listen .   Your life is about to change.   You've worked at Lexmark for 16 years unofficially.  You're looking forward to that congratulatory "15 years of service" email you'll get on June 4th, 2016.   You'll never see it.  Let me explain a bit what's going to transpire: The company will "explore strategic alternatives" beginning in October.  I still can't tell you much about what happens after that, legally.   You'll start getting signals it's time to go from above. The company will announce a voluntary exit program with 'N' weeks of pay and benefits. You will accept this offer on the last possible day you could, March 4th. You will exit the company on April 1st. You will have job offers locally, but you'll turn them down in favor of rolling the dic...

So, I've had a few rants   thoughts   on process in the past . I'd like to revisit those with my Big Boy pants on.  For one thing, during my current job search process, my experience in Agile in the past 4 years always comes up, so I thought I'd parrot here what I generally say in the interviews, on why you'd choose one versus another. If you'll allow me, I'm going to argue that both are valuable, and both should be in your organization. First, let's define our terms.  When I say Scrum , I generally mean the process that arose in the early 2000's employing same-size sprints, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and backlogs.  See the wiki link for more detail.  When I say Kanban , I mean the process employing same-sized units of work in a continuous delivery stream with a strong focus on Service Level Agreement (SLA) for a given team. Things I'm explicitly not  discussing: XP or "Extreme Programming" Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Any...

Well, the goodbye echos are over, the severance check is safely in the bank, and the initial supernova of Job Hunt Hysteria has died down. Yep, I'm just unemployed at the moment.  Nothing terribly special...just a guy looking for his next gig, like millions of others. The first week of "not going to work" didn't go so well.  I was completely off-schedule at home, and an person with my brain chemistry devoid of structure tends toward anxiety and acting-out.  I did act-out on Wednesday, so the road back there continues.  I have calmed down  considerably, and I feel like I'm through the change curve to the point of "Yep, I don't work at Lexmark anymore." I have two sorts of days now:  Days where I'm at home, and days where I'm on the hunt.  "Home" days like yesterday are really nice--I get to take some of the burden off Whitney and do things around the house, deferred maintenance and errands mostly.  For example, I finally close...

Double entendre....on darn, already off to a poor start . So, as 1 1 month ago, I took the leap, signed the papers, and volunteered  to leave my former employer.  This came with some stipulations.  For one year, I may not: Try to recruit anyone actively employed at Lexmark or assist any new employer in same. Besmirch or otherwise criticize Lexmark. Return to work there. That's right.  In the course of one afternoon, I went from a a fully-employed Software Architect at a (nominally) Fortune 500 company to 4 weeks from out-the-door on the job market.   Today marks my first day of official unemployment.   As it stands, I have no job offers outstanding, but that's certainly not been the case through the past 4 weeks.   So, the first week, I got offered a job at a startup.  No interview, just say 'yes to the dress' as it were.  I was so excited I nearly leaped out of my skin.  A STARTUP!  There's nothing more exciting f...

So, I've been at Lexmark longer than: I've been married (10 years) I've had kids (10 years) I knew what autocross was (13 years) I could swim a full lap in a pool (1 year) I've known the Java Programming Language (in all its 1.1.8 glory) (15 years) I've lived in any one place continuously (13 years) The only thing I've done longer than have the email address hcombs@lexmark.com and the same strangely 4-digit employee ID (they recycle them) is: Breathing (37 years) Driving cars (21 years...legally) ...so yeah, I'm leaving. Nobody saw it coming.  We had a "Voluntary Reduction Program" in which they'd pay me to take my services elsewhere.   So I considered my options and decided to take it. It's really not much more complex that that.  It was time to go.  Perhaps it was time long ago, but that will be a post for 1 year from April 1st.

To quote Donne: Never ask for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. The South Carolina primary will likely be the end of Jeb Bush's run for the Whitehouse .  I'm on the record decrying the idea that we'll have yet another  member of either the Clinton or Bush family lead our nation. Still, I'm struck by what this means, not only for Jeb and his personal legacy, but also for the Party and our nation as a whole.  The saddest part of the slow-motion denouement of  Jeb Bush 's campaign: This is not who Jeb is. He's a sane, credible, thinking man. He cares about immigrants and working people. He was an able leader and governor. He wants government that helps people succeed, not people that help government succeed--that is, he's what the Republican party OUGHT TO BE. This campaign has thrown him into the modern equivalent of an Elizabethan bear-baiting, amid a radicalizing party tearing  itself apart. He's had to lower himself to the same mean...

It's been a fascinating, sometimes frustrating year.   Today's my last official workday; I'll probably check email from here on out. Some highlights to share: Code activity That pretty much tells-the-tale.  Up through July I was hot and heavy on of our projects, then I had a week of vacation (which was awesome...I really recommend Nags Head, NC .)  Throughout that time, I was working with a very sharp team, and we had a go-live with our changes on April 23d.  I didn't sleep much that night.   Things would go downhill from there.  I can't go into much detail, but from April -> August, we were on an effort to move the hosting of our solution, and it got aborted when the company made a switch in strategy and the entire Ops group supporting us left.  This left us high and dry, and we eventually retargeted on another path that delayed us 6 months. In early September, I got shifted from my previous position to one with our Retail Publis...