VMware

corporate culture

Corporate culture is a sticky thing.  VMware, like many other companies, has a whole page dedicated to its culture.  But the official statements about corporate culture, such as VMware’s statement that we have a “culture of excellence”, don’t really do a lot to tell you about what the culture is really like.

One piece of the culture that I’ve noticed is that everyone just uses first names to refer to executives and senior management.  If someone refers to Paul, they’re usually referring to Paul Maritz, our CEO.  But it’s said casually, making a newbie like me wondering if there’s a Paul on my team that I just haven’t met yet.

This is quite different from Microsoft, where many people are referred to by their email address.  For example, if Steve Ballmer comes up in conversation, he’s called SteveB.  Even Bill Gates is called BillG.  It’s so ingrained in the culture that people will often sign their emails as “NadyneR”.  I know another ex-Microsoftie who’s said that she still trips up and signs her emails like that instead of just with her name.

I’m sure I’ll get used to just referring to everyone by only their first name instead of using a surname or at least an initial as a differentiator, but I’m not quite there yet.

Nadyne, VMware

one month!

Today is my one-month anniversary at VMware.  So far, other than the usual housekeeping sorts of things like getting my benefits and 401(k) going, I’ve met dozens of people from all corners of the company.  I’m immersing myself in all of our applications.  I’ve even started to earn my keep around here, and have completed my first project (a heuristic evaluation).

Happy anniversary to me!

Nadyne, Outlook

the evolution of my category list

I started using Entourage:Mac when I joined the MacBU in 2005.  As my mail changed from a steady stream to a rushing river, I evolved some techniques in Entourage (and later in Outlook) to handle it.  One of my techniques was the use of an extensive set of server-side rules to filter my mail.  My goal was to have only mail that was sent directly to me in my main inbox.  Anything that was sent to a list of people would go into a subfolder.

The other technique was to use colour-coded categories.  My category list evolved over time.  When I left Microsoft, I had one category for my user experience team, one for each application team, another one for general MacBU stuff, one for colleagues on the Office for Windows team, one for travel stuff, one for my personal contacts, and so on.   I had about 20 categories.  The categories were all colour-coded (for example, my PowerPoint category was orange and my Excel category was green).  This allowed me to tell, at a glance, what’s in store for me.  If I opened my inbox and saw a lot of yellow, I knew that there was something going on for Outlook.  If I opened my calendar and saw a lot of magenta, I knew that I was going to be heads-down working on user experience stuff.

I’m still using Outlook:Mac (of course!), and I imported my contact list.  But suddenly I don’t need all of those categories anymore.  All of my old categories for my work at Microsoft don’t apply any more.  I collapsed all of my old Microsoft contacts into a single category.  I created a new category for my new user experience team, as well as a general VMware category for all of these people that I don’t know yet how they fit into everything.  Now, my categories are: business, personal, services, SPLASH, travel, UE, and VMware.

I tried to go category-less when I started here to see what it was like, and that lasted for all of two weeks.  Categories help me keep track of and easily find things.  It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t glance at my inbox and tell the difference between mail from the people on my user experience team and mail from a developer on vCloud.  I couldn’t filter my calendar to only look see my flights.  I felt lost, and so the categories came back posthaste.

My category list will continue to evolve.  As I meet more people and learn more about the applications that I’ll work on, the list will change to accommodate all of these new relationships.  It might even be time to add a secondary category, “holiday”, to my list so that I don’t have to go through all of my contacts as I send my holiday cards this year.  (Which reminds me: I love sending holiday cards, so ping me if you want to be added to that list.  It’s somewhere between possible and likely that my holiday cards will be postcards from Sydney this year.)

Nadyne

help me set up my desk

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The hardware fairy gave me lot of hardware: a MacBook Pro, a Windows Server 2008 box (sitting under my desk), and a matched pair of 22″ displays.  I’ve also got an Apple Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad.  But I haven’t yet figured out the best way to make it all work together.  Here’s how my desk looks right now:

my desk, today

My MBP, which is my primary machine, is connected to the screen in the middle.  My server is connected to both screens.  The MBP has one keyboard/mouse connected to it, my server has another, which is annoying me.

I know that there’s hardware that can enable me to run two external monitors off of my MBP.  I had been dreaming of having three screens all together, so I put my laptop up on risers.  This is not working: with my MBP open, I can’t have it right next to my two monitors because the bottom of the laptop blocks the screen (and, conversely, the screen blocks access to the disc drive).  But having it separated from my monitors defeats my idea, and is annoying me in that I’m constantly turning my head to see what’s on the MBP’s screen.

I’ve got my server hooked up to both monitors, and that’s been nice to use.  I’m used to running Windows headless, so this is a bit of a surprise to me.  I’m going to be doing more on the enterprise side of things than I have in the past, so going fully headless doesn’t seem like it’s the right thing to do.  I’ve also been playing with integrating OneNote into my life 1, and that seems to be fitting into my workflow well.  So maybe I want to keep on using two monitors on my server.

Thoughts, dear readers?  Y’all are pretty smart, so I’m sure that someone out there has a good idea at how to best set up my working environment to totally rock.

  1. I’d started to use the web version of OneNote via SkyDrive, and I’ve really been liking it. ↩
Nadyne

the network effect

Living and working in Silicon Valley means that I’ve got an immense network of friends at the various companies here.  I came to VMware on a friend’s recommendation, so I started off knowing someone in the company.  I soon discovered that a couple of other people whom I’d fallen out of contact with are here.  Of course, there are also friends of friends.  I even got a Twitter introduction to someone on the Fusion team.  The network effect is immense.

I’ve been leveraging my network to help me acclimatize.  There’s a lot to learn, and much of what I need to learn isn’t something that you pick up through online training or in a meeting.  The real learning, about what makes the company tick and how everything fits together, happens in hallway conversations or over lunch.

They say that most people find a new job as a result of networking.  This is true, but it only goes so far.  Networking doesn’t stop when you get the job.  You learn about your new job through networking too.  The first few weeks at a new job are about extending your network.  If someone says that they want to have lunch, I take them up on it.  If a friend offers to introduce me to someone here, I follow through on that.  In these conversations, we figure out how our networks already collide.  We strengthen these ties, and create new ones.

My theory is that networking makes it easier to become a productive member of a new team.  I’m trying to execute on that theory now.  Check in with me in a few months to see how my theory stood up to reality.

travel, user experience

the user experience of lost luggage

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Last week, I travelled to my hometown to visit my family for Thanksgiving.  On the way home, the airline lost my luggage.  Lost luggage is a bad experience all around.  It’s been some time since my luggage has been lost (of course, I also usually don’t check bags), so I was surprised at how bad the user experience is for this occurrence.

There’s no status indicator for the luggage coming off the plane.  You’re left to guess whether all of the luggage is off of the plane.  This is especially difficult when you’re directed to a baggage claim that’s in use for multiple flights.  It’s not really a lot easier when it’s just a single flight, though, since luggage appears in fits and starts.  In any event, you have to guess whether you’ve waited long enough for your luggage to fail to appear.

Then it’s time to chat with the lost luggage guy.  I consider that job to be akin to tech support, since you never call tech support when everything’s going well.  There’s probably a queue, and it’s slow-moving.  But this guy at least has some status information to share.

Problem is, his status information isn’t necessarily correct.  In my case, he said that my bag had been placed on another flight.  That other flight had originally been scheduled to leave before mine, but had mechanical issues and would instead land 45 minutes after my flight.  I elected to wait to get my bag, learning an hour later that his status information was wrong.  My luggage wasn’t on that flight, either.  After checking again, his status information said that the luggage was lost.

Then I was directed to a kiosk to enter in my information for the bag to be delivered.  I was appalled at how badly-designed it was.  Amongst the questions that it asked was whether they could use a courier service like FedEx or UPS to deliver my bag.  My reaction to that was that it meant that I wouldn’t see my bag until the next day, since the fastest shipping that they advertise is next-day delivery.  I selected “no”, but then it didn’t tell me how or when my bag would be delivered.  I was just prompted to enter my name, address, phone number, and email address.  All of this is information that they already had on file.  Instead of making me suffer through entering all of that data using the on-screen keyboard, it would’ve been nice if they had simply displayed the already-known information and asked me if that’s where I wanted my bag delivered.

At home, the bad experience continued.  The website showed that my bag’s whereabouts where unknown.  I finally got a call from the courier company, 6 hours after I’d landed, saying that they could deliver within a couple of hours.  They did.  Even after I had the bag, the website continued to show that my bag’s whereabouts were unknown.

In short, the lost luggage experience violates several user experience principles:

  • show status information
  • (corollary: show correct status information)
  • provide accurate progress indicators
  • minimise the amount of data entry required from the user

While none of these will make my luggage appear any faster, at least this would make me feel more confident in the ability of the airline to recover from their error and deliver my luggage to me in a timely fashion.

books

book review – “Being Geek”

I’ve been reading Michael Lopp’s blog, Rands in Repose, for some time.  Lopp has a pretty good geek resume, with experience at Symantec, Borland, Netscape, and Apple.  His blog is one that I always read.  He’s got a great gift for distilling lessons out of his experiences.  Being Geek: The Software Developer’s Career Handbook is mostly a compilation of his blog posts, with some new essays added to help define the overall arc of a geek’s career, from starting at a new job to deciding to move on to the next one.

Looking on my own experience in tech companies, I think that his advice is often spot-on.  There have been times when I’ve read one of his blog posts after a difficult situation and found myself understanding it better.  He’s got a keen eye for detail and for understanding the nuances of geek behaviour, as well as all of the interacting forces that come into play when you’re working for a big geek company.  I’ve gone back to read half-remembered posts that I felt were pertinent to a given situation.

I found it amusing that Lopp says in his introduction that he’s not writing a book that gives you ten steps for anything, or that will define the five characteristics of a top leader, but most of his essays are structured in just that form: distill a situation into some archetypes, identified by Capital Letters or catchy names for people and their foibles.  For an occasional blog post, I don’t mind this style; as a book, this structure got rather repetitive.  While I love the blog, I found that I couldn’t read the book for more than a half-hour without losing interest because the style just didn’t work for an actual book.

Honestly, I was hoping for more.  The blog is excellent.  I hoped that a book would use the blog as a starting point and give more consideration, more depth, to the topic at hand.  But it’s not there.  If, like me, you’ve been reading his blog for some time, I can’t really recommend this book.  You’ve read most of it before, albeit in a different order.  The new pieces don’t really add that much.  If you’re not a reader of his blog, this book is a good look at moving through your geek career.  I’d recommend adding his blog to your reading list while you’re at it.

Here’s a list of the blog posts which are included in the book.  I think this is complete, but I might be wrong if something got re-titled or my search-fu was weak.  Also, I didn’t do more than a cursory glance when looking for the blog posts, so it’s possible that blog posts were updated for inclusion in the book.

Now that I’ve catalogued the posts that made it into the book, I see that the book has 41 essays, of which 27 are listed above.  That means that 14 essays are new content, about 1/3 of the book.

Nadyne, VMware

acclimatizing

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Everyone, from friends to family to previous colleagues to new co-workers, asks me the same question: “how are you acclimatizing?”  Having been here for not even two weeks yet, I’m never entirely sure how to answer that question.

So far, life is mostly about figuring my way around.  I’m learning about VMware’s extensive portfolio of applications, like vSphere and vCloud.  I’m learning more about the applications that I already knew, like Fusion.  Part of learning is both about where the applications stand now, and what their roadmaps look like for the future.  While this part is time-consuming, it’s also pretty straightforward.

Another pretty straightforward task is learning about the new cadence of my day and my week.  Humans are, after all, creatures of habit; all of my habits are now broken.  I haven’t yet figured out the best route to drive from my home to campus, although I have figured out the best train/bus combination that gets me here in a half-hour.  Thursdays seem to be given over to team meetings, although Wednesdays are entirely meeting-free.

Somewhat less straightforward is figuring out how everything fits together.  VMware is a company that has seen staggering growth in the past few years, so I’m probably not the only person trying to figure this out.  The company has grown in size (this page says we’re currently at 8200 employees) and grown the number of applications.  Some of this growth is organic, some has come through acquisitions (such as Zimbra).

Thus far, acclimatizing is about gathering information.  As a researcher, this comes naturally.  The more interesting question will be in six months, to see how much I understand this company and my place in it.

Nadyne, VMware

week one at VMware

The first week of a new gig is a lot of hurry up and wait.

First of all, there’s the hurry-up-and-wait of setting up new computers.  I have two: a MacBook Pro and a Dell running Windows Server 2008, both of which needed software to get going.  I installed Office:Mac 2011 on my MBP, and I have to tell you that it was a weird feeling to be using the official 14.0.0 build instead of a daily build or a private build from one of the developers.  I haven’t run Windows Server in ages, so there was a lot of installation necessary so that it would run the apps that I want (such as OneNote (hi Dan!)).

Second, there’s the hurry-up-and-wait for access to everything.  There’s systems, networks, and mailing lists.  There’s benefits, business cards, and the gym.  There’s even little electric cars available to drive around campus, which requires a driving test from one of the receptionists.  Plus I’ve learnt that there’s a beer bash every Friday, so at least a little bit of Friday was spent waiting for that to start!

There’s also a lot of hurry-up-and-wait to try to figure out who is who on my team.  Before I started here, I had plenty of contact with my new manager.  There’s her manager, and another manager at the same level as she is.  There’s the other user researchers.  There’s the team of interaction designers (have I mentioned that we have some openings available for interaction designers? search our jobs site for “interaction designer” and ping me if you’re interested … ), all of whom have different projects that I need to learn about.

This week is about settling in some more.  I think I’ve got my computers set up with everything I need to work, although I’m sure that I’ll stumble across more things that I need as I go along.  I’m starting to meet with teams.  I’ve got lunches scheduled with various people across the company, some of whom have worked at MacBU in the past.  I might even get some real work done.

Of course, this spurt of potential productivity happens just when VMware is going to be shut down for the week of Thanksgiving.  I’ve timed this pretty well: I work for two weeks, then take a week off (wherein I’ll visit Michigan to see my family for the holiday).  Then I work for another two weeks, and then take about four weeks off (wherein I’ll visit Sydney to see my husband’s family).  And then it will be the New Year, and time to really get down to it.

Nadyne

the gender language of recommendation letters

Having just gone through the process of getting recommendations to join VMware, I was very interested in this news out of Rice University: Recommendation letters may be costing women jobs, promotions.  The researchers found that, in letters of recommendation for academia, women were more likely to be described in communal terms (helpful, tactful, kind, agreeable) and men were more likely to be described in agentic terms (aggressive, confident, ambitious, intellectual).  Further, when scrubbing these letters of recommendation for names and pronouns, and controlling for other variables important in academia (number of publications, postdocs, etc), the letters that were more agentic were rated as stronger.

I’m trying to get my hands on a PDF of their peer-reviewed article to learn more.  In the interim, this brings to mind plenty of questions.  I wonder what would happen if you were to take these letters of recommendation and swap the genders.  We know what happens when you remove gender from them, but I wonder what happens if you take a woman’s recommendation letter and replace Jane with Jim.  If a man’s recommendation letter says that he’s “helpful” and “tactful”, how does that impact the perception of him as a candidate?  If a woman’s recommendation letter says that she’s “aggressive” or “intellectual”, how does that impact the perception of her as a candidate?

The researchers say that they’re going to next consider letters of recommendation for medical faculty positions.  I hope that they, or someone else, continue to extend this research to other fields.  Academia surely has a shortage of women, but speaking as a software engineer with degrees in math and CS, they’re not the only ones.  There were only a handful of women in my upper-division courses, and even fewer female professors.

a Macintosh girl in a Microsoft world

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