J – Page 16 – BLOG:JUEL:ME

18 May 2012

Ny direktør skal fyre op mod 35 i dansk it-firma

This one feels a little weird I must say. Much more later.

It-virksomheden Evenex skal ifølge Version2’s oplysninger fyre hver fjerde af sine godt og vel 150 ansatte på grund af manglende omsætning. Det sker kort efter direktørskifte.

Den danske it-virksomhed Evenex må inden længe sige farvel til en del af sine over 150 medarbejdere.

Ifølge Version2’s oplysninger skal omkring 25 procent af de ansatte fyres på grund af manglende omsætning i virksomheden, der sælger løsninger til digitale betalinger og transaktioner. Det tal er dog endnu ikke officielt bekræftet.

Virksomhedens fungerende, administrerende direktør, Ole Pedersen, bekræfter, at Evenex skal skære i medarbejderstaben. Men han vil ikke i skrivende stund kommentere på antallet af afskedigelser, fordi der stadig er en dialog i gang med de ansatte:

»Det kan jeg ikke sige noget om endnu af respekt for medarbejderne,« siger han til Version2.

4.000 offentlige og private kunder

Ole Pedersen tiltrådte som fungerende, administrerende direktør i marts på grund af tidligere direktør, Niels Stenfeldts, skift til samme stilling i Microsoft-huset Columbus Danmark.

Evenex har ifølge egne tal flere end 4.000 private og offentlige kunder og håndterer årligt 360 millioner forretningsdokumenter i virksomhedens løsninger.

Evenex flyttede i efteråret 2011 sine it-opgaver over til NNIT på en femårig kontrakt til en værdi af et trecifret millionbeløb.

Evenex beskæftiger flere end 150 ansatte fordelt på kontorer i København, Norge og Indien. Virksomheden er en del af den globale MACH-koncern, der har hovedsæde i Luxembourg.

Source: Mikkel Meister @ Version2

7 May 2012

Blogging from my phone

So, I am sitting here waiting for a meeting to start, and since no one is here, I thought I would give WordPress for windows phone a try.
I want to blog a bit more than I actually do these days, and hopefully the mobile app will give the opportunity to do this. The posts are probably going to be pretty short, but with my attention span it makes a lot of sense 😉

25 April 2012

Uninstalling Google Drive

I am a big Skydrive user, but after Google released their Google Drive, I had to give it a whirl on the old PC. It works just like Skydrive, but has a lot less storage and opens files in Google Docs, which I do not use. However, after I read the privacy statement I quickly uninstalled the application, and here’s why:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

The Skydrive version sits much better with me:

Except for material that we license to you, we don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don’t control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service.

You control who may access your content. If you share content in public areas of the service or in shared areas available to others you’ve chosen, then you agree that anyone you’ve shared content with may use that content. When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don’t want others to have those rights, don’t use the service to share your content.

You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.

Please respect the rights of artists, inventors, and creators. Content may be protected by copyright. People appearing in content may have a right to control the use of their image. If you share content on the service in a way that infringes others’ copyrights, other intellectual property rights, or privacy rights, you’re breaching this contract. You represent and warrant that you have all the rights necessary for you to grant the rights in this section and the use of the content doesn’t violate any law. We won’t pay you for your content. We may refuse to publish your content for any or no reason. We may remove your content from the service at any time if you breach this contract or if we cancel or suspend the service.

Google is getting creepier and creepier by the moment these days.

23 April 2012

Wise words indeed

16 April 2012

Playing around with Wordle

I ran my blog through Wordle the other to get an idea about the words I use on my blog. I must admit, it looks really boring. I need to spiff it up a bit it seems.

10 April 2012

Trying Windows 8

When the Consumer preview of Windows 8 launched I wasted little time downloading and installing the bits on a spare partition. I admit that I did not have the stones a to jump in with both legs, so I still retain a Windows 7 installation no my primary hard disk.

The installation process was very smooth, and all my peripheral devices work without any problems. That includes a scanner and a Windows phone as well as a LifeCam, so no complaints there. I didn’t expect any problems either, and it is not really the most exciting feature of the new Windows OS.

For me, the Metro UI was the most interesting, mainly because I am a huge fan of the Bauhaus inspired UI that is used on Windows Phone. However, I must admit that I am having some difficulties getting used to it on a conventional mouse and keyboard set up. Although it is a lot of fun to use the Metro UI on Windows 8, I am not sure I will be using it a lot once I upgrade fully. I tend to have a whole bunch of apps open at the same time, and Metro does not really support my personal usage scenario. However, I am really looking forward to getting my filthy hands on a Windows tablet, since this UI is perfect for touch – no doubt about that. I think the tablet experience will be really good not only because the UI is fast and fluid, but also because it ties in very nicely with the web services that I use. Considering the technologies used to create the Metro UI I am wondering if Windows 9 will be some sort of shell that will tie all our web services together. Windows 8 does this really well already. There is a seamless integration with Skydrive, Flickr and Facebook to name a few, so all in all the future looks really exciting. Much more exciting that what Apple is doing these days at least.

Hopefully there will be a Nokia tablet, that can compete with the iPad; rumors are certainly plenty around the interwebs.

2 April 2012

The perfect job

I have been saving this picture for many years, but for some reason I have never included it in a blog post. These past couple of week I have been thinking a lot about the nature of work, and what really makes me tick in a professional context, and this is where I think this illustration fits pretty well.

The real question, I guess, is which company offer you the option to have you dream job, or at least come as close to the dream job as possible. As far as I am concerned that company does not really exist and here’s why. No matter what you do, you will always be constrained by the overall goal of the company, which is making money. Now, this is not something new, the number one reason why companies exist is to make money, not to make employees happy. When you sit in a position like mine, your reasoning is based on different variables compared to what might hold the interest of top management. Inevitably, this creates a conflict of interest, which the employee will always loose due to the power structure.

If I am right, and I might not be, we should question the general notion of the principal-agent relationship. This relationship stipulates that the manager is hired by the owner to look after their interests, however, if the management’s interests differ from what is in the company’s interest the management might actually benefit from running the company into the ground.

18 February 2012

How I work

Now, I know I am not a unique little snowflake in the way that I normally do my work, but I saw an interesting blog post Mikkel Hippe from Tradeshift, that made me think about how I work. TRadeshift is a fierce competitor of ours, but that should not keep me from pointing out things that I agree with now should it?

The blog post is basically about the advantages of remote workers. I am not a remote worker as such, but since most of my team is located in Manila, and since I sometimes have to work out from outside the office, I rely heavily on various communications tools, many of which are mentioned in Mikkel’s blog post.

For me, the biggest issue is being as close as possible to my team. Normally I would use Skype or Windows Live Messenger, but since that is a no-go due to foolish corporate policies, I rely on go-to meeting most of the time. This is not a very good solution for keeping a 1:1 relation with your developers, so I make sure to use Office communicator as much as possible. Hopefully we will get the upgrade to Lync, which should quite a bit better. The voip in Communicator is not that good, and the webcam support makes everything too slow. I have a sneaky suspicion that it has something to do with our network, but I can’t be sure.

The thing about Lync is that I can use it on my Windows Phone and my iPad. Because of the time difference between Copenhagen and Manila, I have to be pretty flexible when it comes to my work hours. And since I am not always on the computer, it makes sense to use the phone and the tablet. The same thing goes for email. I have my Exchange mail on my phone and iPad well, which as me to respond quickly to emails, essentially making sure the team does not momentum because they are waiting for me. Especially the Windows Phone experience is really good. Actually, it is probably my most important tool these days.

The downside to all this is of course that I am “on” most of the time, which pretty much sucks. However, it affords me some more flexibility on terms of work/life balance and the time I spend in the office. For me, being in the office actually means that I am less productive, because I get interrupted so much, and because I keep my calendar open, people have no problem booking for half days at a time. Being remote some of the time makes it possible for me to manage my time better and ensure that I meet my deliverables according to schedule.

11 February 2012

Loneliness of the long distance traveller

I returned from a week long trip to Manila two weeks ago. While it was not my first business trip, it was by far the longest. In fact, it was the trip I have ever taken in my life. Granted, the trip was fairly comfortable, even for a guy with my long legs, however, it was also a very educational trip in so many way I have lost count.

Normally I go to Sweden or Norway to talk to customers, but this time I went to meet my development team, who I only know from communicator chats and Skype calls. Of course I had a pretty good idea about who these people were, but as any product manager, hopefully, will tell you, nothing beats sitting with your developers and work closely with them. The funny thing about this trip is that I actually met a Danish developer from Saxobank in wine bar in Dubai. It was really great sitting there sipping wine and talking about software development. The really interesting thing was that we shared the exact same views on pretty much everything related to software development. It leads me to believe that I am not completely wrong when I argue about how I think software should be developed. But that is another blog post I guess.

Living at a five star hotel and enjoying the warm weather on my employers bill is needless to say exceptionally nice, however, I still think the work experience was the most stimulating aspect of the trip. I got to sit with my development team on the 24th floor of one the high riser in Makati city and work on our solution. Despite a pretty bad change of plans regarding the purpose of my stay, we still managed to get some things going, and more importantly, we got to establish a good working relationship. I am lucky that I have a really good team to work with, and I am lucky to have a good architect who is sharper than most. However, the trip also highlighted some the issues with outsourcing development. Even though I talk to my team on Communicator and Skype, nothing beats the face-to-face contact the I experienced that week. Small problems were solved much quicker than they normally would, and we were able to make smaller changes to the application on-the-fly without having to wait out the time difference or cumbersome decision making processes. I hope we will be able to keep that pace up now that we are on different continents, but I have my doubts.

The most profound experience though, was seeing my own company from the outside. Working from Manila gave me the opportunity to see how we act towards our partners as well how we come across generally. My wife has travelled a lot, and she told me that once you get to see your company from the outside you either fall completely in love with place, or you realize that you cannot get behind it at all. It is almost like being on the inside of a cult that defines your every day and then suddenly be let out in the world to see what other people see when they look at you. I can really only agree with her on that one. I most certainly had that experience…