Latest News from Salma Saad

Loving Your Work = Losing Out on Life?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:14 EST

Many companies, particularly consultancies believe that anyone who works an eight-hour day is a serious slacker. In my opinion, having people chronically work excessive hours is a sign of poor management. In this article I will share my thoughts on what we should and should not be doing to avoid letting demanding client work take over our lives. I started thinking of this issue while working for a previous employer. Lets call them IniTech (If you’re not a geek and aren’t familiar with Office Space, I apologize). At Initech, I learned how not to manage projects and people.

Do You Translate Well from Geek to English?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:28:06 EST

My son took a bite of his hamburger and immediately exclaimed "it's too spicy!" I knew there was no spice in the burgers (okay there was some black pepper) as I had made them from scratch. I ate some myself and said, "See, not spicy". He took a long hard look at me and then he said "YOU don't think it's spicy, because YOU are not a kid!" Yes I am not a weirdly picky kid who loves seaweed but won't touch his hamburger. I am just the exasperated parent trying hard to figure out the most efficient strategy to getting from a defiant to a compliant five year old. I do realize that to get there I'll have to exchange him for another kid. As a technologist I suffer from the fallacy that others (adults and five year olds) will see things from my point of view and easily get on board to follow my lead. I might get really excited about something but my audience will not get on board if I am not able to relate it to their point of view.

Feeling Valued as a First Line Manager

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:00:57 EST

You were an individual contributor and you were good at your job. Now you're a manager and you've stopped producing something tangible. So what good are you? Why would your team respect you? Aren't they better at the work than you are? The manager job description has a concrete list of things you should be doing. These include some very important activities such as conducting reviews, suggesting training etc. Personally, I need more than what's in the job description to feel like I am providing value to my team. In addition to managing I also need to lead. Leadership is an art more than it is a science and best learned by example. I am going to take a shot at explaining what leadership means to me by using the example of my father.

Be Nice and Share - Ten Tips for the Shared Services Team

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:30:00 EST

Sharing code across teams poses many challenges. Each team will have its own release schedule and agenda and will not be aware of each other’s day-to-day activities. Sharing code successfully across teams requires proper planning and infrastructure. In this article I share ten suggestions that have come from lessons learned from my real world experience as the lead on a large-scale infrastructure project.

Custom Debugging with WebLogic JMX

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:15:00 EDT

Maintaining complicated legacy applications is a challenge, which is often made worse by lack of documentation, nonintuitive design, and coding practices. Unfortunately almost all software developers will find themselves with such an assignment at some point in their careers.