This matter about professionalism at work was raised recently, and I thought I have some 2 cents to share about, particularly to people who are just starting out their work life. This is not about professionalism in the context of your job specification, but about the work itself that you do for your company. They are not the same thing. For example, a real estate agent could be very professional in his conduct with his customers, but could be lesser…
I’m attending a course again this week. I looked at my calendar and realized that in this period of approximately six weeks, I seem to be involved in far too many courses. Nine days for a Lean Sigma course spread across two weeks, also eight days for two CCNA courses spread across two weeks, and another accumulated total of four days on other in-house courses. That’s 21 days in all.
I hate appraisal time. Not just about me getting appraised. But also about me appraising or giving input to appraise others. The “system” sometimes (or often times) fail to capture pertinent performance markers. The system wants to work on indices, scales, bell curves. But reality is a lot more complex. Appraisal is complex, I suppose, so someone had to design a system in an attempt to simplify things. In the system, imperfection is okay, just so long as it makes…
Some folks at work have become somewhat paranoid over the EMF levels in their workspace. Apparently, they have found levels to be “unsafe” for prolonged continuous exposure, according to some literature that they’ve dug out. It has spun off many activities, including professional EMF testing by an independent company, call for action by relevant departments within the organization, etc. Yet, unsurprisingly, the official interim standing on the matter is that, according to in-house EMF experts, there is no cause for…
Sometimes, I think “work-life balance” is just an excuse for some people who want to work less. Push away their work. Shirk responsibility. I’m not against the idea of needing some balance, in principle. But one must also realize that every person is a valuable resource in an organization, and they need to do their fair part. It’s not a question of working “over time”. I recently spoke to some people who talked about how they come on the dot,…
I wouldn’t say I’m really that much of an expert in IT project management. But I’m not fresh out of school. I’ve been working for enough number of years to have seen many things. So it is really annoying when a bunch of non-IT people want to interfere with my project planning, because they think that I’m doing it wrong, and they think they know better how to run IT projects on the basis that they know how to run…
Sometimes, I think about how silos are formed in organizations. You know, the sort of situation where fellow colleagues are divided into organization groups that are oblivious to the existence of the others. Or, they compete with great hostility. They might as well have belonged to some other company altogether. It’s related to politicking, but it isn’t quite the same thing.
Today, and this time of day particularly, is one of those special moments in time where the day, month, year, hour and minute are all the same. It seems like a good time to post some rant at this auspicious minute. Yeah, I missed 08/08/08 08:08, but I’m sure this will do just as well. It will be a busy day (like any other day of course), but I’m sure I can find a few minutes to gripe about something.
Yes, President S R Nathan came by today, not to visit me, but just to visit my workplace. I’m not important enough, so I had to sneak a photo shot from far back, behind a glass wall. Hence the strange reflections you see in this photo.
Yeah, the cat has finally been let out of the bag. Actually, it became officially announced many days ago, but most people seldom read official news. I would have missed it myself too. So it took an email announcement for the news to really get out, and I became deluged (happily no doubt) with a big bunch of emails. Thank you everyone, I am indeed honoured. Heh, if this sounds cryptic, then let it be so.
