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As we discovered in last chapter, it’s almost a miracle when the phone rings and a recruiter wants to set up a phone screen. The fact is, someone, somewhere in the organization has successfully mapped you to an open position. This is a really big deal because, in my experience, the chance that you’ll get this job has improved logarithmically. It’s not 50/50, but it’s vastly better than when you were a random résumé sitting on my desk.

When you accept a new job, you don’t know who you are going to work with, what you are going to be doing, and how much (or little) you’re going to like it. Call everyone you want. Ask their opinions. Trust the fact that a good friend referred you for the gig. Revel in the idea that the company has a good pedigree, but don’t delude yourself that in a smattering of interview hours you’re going to have anything more than a vague hint of your new life.

Let’s start by not deluding ourselves. Hiring anyone is a risk. Google is famous for the intense and lengthy scrutiny they put their candidates under. The Google interview might be intense, but when they decide to hire, they’re rolling the dice.

The gist of the book is straightforward, yet odd. What if, during the Civil War, the South became equipped with a lot of AK-47s? Long story very short, they would have won. Handily. The author, Harry Turtledove, chose not to focus on time travel or other delectable science fiction tidbits; he spends the time on, “Yay! The South won! So, uh, what are they going to do about that whole slavery thing?”

The first few days of any significant overseas trip, I’m a jerk. It’s not just the jetlag that’s poisoning my attitude; it’s the lack of context. I get twitchy when I don’t know where my stuff is. Combine that with the fact that no one is speaking English, there are two toilets in the bathroom, and I have no idea what time it is, and you can begin to understand why I’m in such a foul mood.

Worst meeting ever. It’s not that the attendee list is wrong. All the right people are there and they’re bright and they’re the decision makers. It’s not that the topic is boring or poorly defined. It’s a big deal. The problem with this meeting is that it’s never going to end.

I recently got into a war of words with a coworker regarding the proper solution to a problem with one of our products. As an aside, let me say that e-mail is never ever ever never ever the right way to resolve controversy. Too much subtlety is lost when you’re YELLING IN ALL CAPS at your program manager. Don’t waste your time solving problems in e-mail. Stand up. Walk down the hall. And look the person in the eye. You’ll live longer.

Stop. Grab a pencil and write down the first and last names of your past three managers. Stare at those names for a bit and relive those months or years of reporting to this person. I want your off-the-cuff opinion about each one.

There are all sorts of intimidating titles surrounding the management caste. Engineering manager, senior engineering manager, director of engineering, vice president of engineering, chief technology officer. While these names are useful in determining where a individual lies in the organizational chart, the names are merely hints as to what that person actually cares about; and you should care what they care about whether you’re a manager or an individual contributor.

Back in my Borland days, we were working hard on Paradox for Windows. I was a QA engineer testing the database creation and modification functionality. Jerry, my counterpart in engineering, was working hard, but getting absolutely nowhere.