Sunday, July 30, 2006

What are lunches like...

Local Seattle startup (if you can still call it that), Jobster, just put a new feature into place where they can ask a question, and the users of the site answer. Its actually really fun... and it seems like it may give me inspiration for blogging material. The most recent question is: "What are lunches like..." So I answered with my observations of lunching practices at Boeing.
What are the lunches like at The Boeing Company?
Answering this question "for Boeing" is kind of weird... but here are some observations about the types of lunch-people.
a) Sack-Lunchers. They eat at their desk, and leave work 30 minutes before everyone else.
b) Cafe-Goers. They eat every lunch (and/or breakfast) from the cafeterias unstrategically placed throughout the Boeing sites. I can't imagine this lunching-style scoring well on their blood-pressure test.
c) Too-Good-To-Eat. These people usually go on speedwalks during lunch... it blows my mind. I love food.
d) The Go-Outs. (this is me, for the most part). find 3 or 4 people to drive to a local eatery. Gossip about the non-attending Go-Outers ensues.
e) Sleepers. These people go out to their car and sleep. Why not just sleep in 30 or 40 more minutes in the morning? Still... I envy the people that can do this.

Don't forget you can vote for this blog over at NWSource.com People's Picks. And just FYI... you can vote once per day :-)

Friday, July 28, 2006

Seriously?

I was just looking at the referer log to my site, and found an interesting place that people have gotten to my site from:
http://www.nwsource.com/peoplespicks/2006/vote/?lid=509122§ion=entertainment

Thats right. My blog is on a voting site! I'm not going to ask you to vote for me (but you should), I just think its really neat that people like this site enough to nominate it for something.

You want to know the cool thing? Almost every other blog that is "in the running"... I already read. That said, I still voted for my blog.

--Update (30 seconds later)
I'm not sure my blog comes up every time as a voting option... try refreshing the voting page a couple times.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

A Non-Value-Added Kind of Love

My friend, Peter, and I started writing a song using business slang. We went back and forth a couple times, then decided other people are better than us at writing songs. So, here is our start... feel free to add to it.

I met you in my morning stand-up meeting
And you talked about the new metrics website
But does this new tool track my heart beating?
Or is it, again, for my manager's delight?

The red light flashing on your status chart
Says you and I should take this offline
Your go-forward plan is melting my heart
And your metrics drive me out of my mind

We've got a non-value added kind of love baby
A non-value added kind of love

This morning I sent you a meeting invite
Hoping you would accept by the EOB
"You want to go to happy hour on Thursday night?
I'll leave work early, and get there at four-oh-three"


And, stay tuned for more business-mocking-media. It'll take a while to produce, but I hope the forthcoming audio track will be as good as the forthcoming sketch video.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

The N


When I left my internship at Boeing, I had no idea that when I came back that I would visually distinguishable from the other Boeing employees (minus the fact that I'm about 20 years younger than most). In my absence, there had been major alteration to the Boeing badge; if you've worked at Boeing for less than three years, you get "The N."
If it wasn't bad enough to be the FNG, I was labelled so. I'd been at work for exactly 0 hours, and I already felt ostracized from everyone, save the other N's.
Most people in the company hadn't seen "The N" before, so I got lots of questions about it. "What is 'The N' for?" My standard answer was "because I'm the son of a Nigerian president." That got old. Then someone came up with the slogan: "The N isn't because we're new, its because we're needed." I'll let you form your own opinions about this tagline, but my silence should let you know how I feel about it.
Then one day, I noticed I was looking at people's badges to try to see if they had "The N." Why though? Its because I like the new people. If you're new to Boeing, you're less likely to be tainted with some of the things that bother me. You're not going to try to tackle me with process. You're not coming into the meeting with "what we used to do." You're less likely to use words like "core competencies" or "value-added." You won't drop a manager's, director's, or VP's name to try to impress people or make me think I have to do what you say. And innumerable other things.
These are all traits that I hope that I have and always will have, so when it comes time for me to drop "The N" from my badge... I'm going to fight it. I'm new forever.