work - Leonid Mamchenkov

On organizational structures

The company that I work for is going through an amazing growth period right now. As a result, quite a few things change, re-shape, appear and disappear. Starting to lose the grasp in some areas, I decided to read more about organizational structures. Before reading, I thought about it for a bit. I tried to summarize everything that I know about the subject – both from personal experience and from the long forgotten textbook paragraphs. Once I started reading, I realized how little I actually know about this stuff.

It’s actually a fun little exercise. Pause for a minute and try to list as many different organizational structures that you can think about. Think. Think. Think. List. Hierarchical is the first one on the list. Right? It was for me. Then I spent some time thinking about all possible modifications to a hierarchy. And than my mind went empty.

That was too early to give up. Suddenly I remembered Google and that I read in quite a few places that they actually use a matrix organization. I knew that I read about it before, but couldn’t remember what it was and how it worked. Just in case, I added matrix organizational structure as number two on my list.

At that point, all clear thoughts stopped. As the last resort I remembered a well-known book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” that I read a few years ago (the book is free and I strongly recommend you read it, especially if you have anything to do with Open Source Software). The cathedral is something very similar to a hierarchy that I thought of first. But the bazaar seemed like something that I didn’t have on my list. Even though the “organizational” part of this structure is questionable. I added it anyway. So my list got to three items.

And then I gave up. It was too much of an effort for too late of an evening. How many did you get? Did you get the same ones or different? Are you a business administration major? And if you are, what the heck are doing on this blog? Oh, no, you are welcome to stay – I am just surprised that you are here.

Anyway. It’s time to educate ourselves on this fascinating subject. And when it comes to quick education, Wikipedia is at the top of my list. Together with Google. There is a page on Organization, which provides a useful overview, with few more structures that I haven’t thought about. Of course I knew about committees and juries. It just didn’t come to my mind. And once I read about ecologies, I understood what they are and even remembered a few examples. So, I sort of knew about them too. Then, for even more details and examples I read the Wikipedia page, which is dedicated to the subject of Organizational Structures. That’s a bit difficult to process if you are sleepy, late in the day.

While I’ve definitely learned something today, the biggest benefit of the above Wikipedia pages is that they will provide me with me enough confidence to argue with my friends for hours upon hours over pints and pints of beer. Hopefully, that was as useful for you too.

Résumé vs. Curriculum Vitae

While searching for a correct spelling of the word “résumé“, I ended up reading Wikipedia, where I found an interesting clarification of the difference between curriculum vitae (aka CV) and résumé:

A curriculum vitae (loosely translated as course of life) provides an overview of a person’s life and qualifications. It differs from a résumé in that it is appropriate for academic or medical careers and is far more comprehensive. A CV elaborates on education to a greater degree than a résumé. A résumé is tailor-made according to the post applied for. It is job-oriented and goal specific. One of the key characteristics of a proper résumé is conciseness.

Also, here is the bit on how to write it properly, from the same page:

Curriculum vitae is Latin meaning “course of life” and résumé is French meaning “summary”. In the business world, the word résumé, also spelled resumé and resume, is used in the United States and in English Canada. Curriculum vitae and “CV” are used in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and New Zealand in all contexts, with résumé having very little currency.

and

The term curriculum vitae means “course of life” in Latin. While it is appropriate to write either curriculum vitae or just vita, it is incorrect to use the phrase curriculum vita, the form vitae being the genitive of vita. The plural of curriculum vitae is curricula vitae.

Hmm.

Corporate slavery

I’ve heard an excellent phrase today – “corporate slavery“. The moment I read, it made all the sense in the world. A brief and clear description of something, straight to the point. Here is how I heard it on Twitter:

Corporate slavery begins Thursday

But aparently the term is in use for a few years. Here is an excellent photo set on Flickr. And here is a gaping void back of a business card.

Perfect.

Second monitor

Being so much at work during the last few month, I’ve noticed that many IT guys enjoy working with a two monitor setup. I never paid much attention to that fact and thought that those really need a second monitor are a few and that its mostly the show off for the rest.

Last week, in a very spontaneous move, I decided to try it out. We had a few of those 19-inch AOC monitors around, so I wasn’t exactly robbing anyone or anything like that. Within minutes I had unwrapped, connected, and configured in my Gnome, and I have to say that that is one of the best technology experiences I had in the last few years! It’s totally awesome!

Now, having two monitors configured as one huge desktop, I can either keep my browser separated from my consoles, or more code than every before in front of my eyes without switching virtual desktops, or have all my instant messaging at hand without polluting my main workspace. That’s brilliant, I tell you.

Downsides? Yes, sure. I haven’t yet learned to handle the setup properly, so I have to logout of my graphical interface and log back in every time I take my laptop home. It would have been so much easier if just plugging the monitor in would work. I hear that a docking station might improve the situation, but that remains to be seen.

And what I want now? More monitors. I’d love to have another monitor at work, and I’d really want to have at least one more at home. But there is no place to put it at home (I’m working on a dining table), and I’m not sure there is a way to connect two additional monitors to a laptop at work. But overall, multi-monitor setups is definitely an area I need to investigate more.

Back from work

I have been really silent on this blog for the past three month or so. That’s because I was totally consumed by my work. The team in the office is growing, and we are having more stuff to do than ever. But to add to the usually routine, we were doing some really huge restructuring. When I started at the office back in April, the IT stuff was one huge mess – everything was chaotically interconnected and it was practically impossible to change something without affecting something else. We’ve been working hard to separate things ever since, and last week we deployed the last changes to the structure.

Now we have our internal CRM system separated from the web site and from the customers’ tool. All three parts are on their own now and we can make changes to each of them separately. There are, of course, a few minor things still left here and there, but overall I am quite happy with how it turned out to be.

Two things that we deployed last week were our new web site and customers’ trading room. We didn’t have much control over the web design part of it, user interfaces, or the deadlines for that matter, so the results aren’t as glamorous as we’d wanted them to be. Check them out for yourself – https://www.fxpro.com and https://www.myfx.pro . Both of these projects are in a very raw state right now – poorly localized, styles are off the limites, user experience is close to horrible, and both of these weight quite a lot. We will be working on addressing all these issues in the coming month, together with some new and interesting developments.

In the mean time, I think I’ll have more time for blogging too. There has been quite a bit going on that I want to share, and I’ll try to utilize the slow Christmas time to unleash all of that and clean up the backlog.