• As I See It: The Good, the Bad, And The Mistaken

  January 30, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Writing a comprehensive history of IT would prove daunting if not impossible. The milestones are well documented, but not the steps between. From the legions of unsung programmers who developed the systems we take for granted, to the effects of social media that are both private and collective, IT is a complex swirl of the good, the bad, and the mistaken.

  Since hindsight lends itself to clarity (albeit flavored with arrogance), let’s start with the mistaken. The grandest of all IT prediction fails belongs to none other than IBM’s legendary Thomas Watson. Back in 1943 he opined that, “There is …

  Read more

• As I See It: Ghosting Productivity

  December 12, 2022 Victor Rozek

  Recently, the Department of Labor announced that worker productivity fell to a level not seen since 1947. Like the proverbial fart in the elevator, it got everybody’s attention but no one could identify its source. Economists, CEOs, and government officials were all frantic for a fix but, speculation aside, nobody could identify the precise reason for the precipitous drop.

  All the usual – and some unusual – suspects were trotted out. The pandemic, the shift to working from home, the Great Resignation, quiet quitting and, when in doubt, blame the wobbly work ethic of Gen Z. But these unusual factors …

  Read more

• As I See It: Different Yet the Same

  September 19, 2022 Victor Rozek

  For all of you who must discover,
  for all who seek to understand
  In having left the path of others,
  you find a very special hand

  — Christy Moore, Bright Blue Rose

  It is among the most common of human yearnings: the desire to see oneself as special and distinct from the herd. Individualism, coupled with exceptionalism has long been ingrained in American mythology. The model endures, even as it evolves over time, as each generation rebels against the prior in an attempt to create its own unique identity.

  But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to claim uniqueness when we live …

  Read more

• As I See It: Thank God It’s Thursday

  August 8, 2022 Victor Rozek

  The five-day workweek is generally attributed to Henry Ford, although it actually originated some 18 years earlier. In 1908, a New England cotton mill adopted the practice so Jewish workers would not have to toil on their Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Ford, who ironically was a virulent antisemite, not only embraced the idea but made two notable improvements: His five-day workweek was limited to 40 hours; and, employees did not suffer a decrease in pay.

  At the time Ford was paying $5 per day, which doesn’t sound like a princely sum, but his employees were actually able …

  Read more

• As I See It: Transitions

  April 18, 2022 Victor Rozek

  Over the past two years, as many of us sequestered, masked-up in public, dodged strangers, and kept friends at arm’s length, our socially distanced conversations shared a common, oft-expressed yearning: “I just want my life back.”

  Now that we’re in a lull between variant fronts, millions of us are anxious to reclaim our old, comfortable and predictable lives. They may not have been perfect, but they were at least manageable, set in a world we knew how to navigate.

  Beyond familiarity, our old lives were even more central to our identity. As sociologist Anthony Giddens notes: “A person’s identity is …

  Read more

• As I See It: Two Front War

  March 28, 2022 Victor Rozek

  History records that the Second World War began when Germany invaded Poland, breaching its western border on September 1, 1939. For the Poles, however, that accounted for only half of their unfolding misery. Largely forgotten, 16 days later, the Russians invaded Poland from the East.

  Being situated between Germany and Russia in the war-ravaged 20th century turned out to be geographically inauspicious. Long after the Germans were defeated, the Russians stayed. Opportunistic invasion turned into long-term occupation.

  A similar story is unfolding in Ukraine, where a two-front war is being waged: one analog, the other digital. Weeks before tanks and …

  Read more

• As I See It: The Ideal Workplace, Part 2

  January 24, 2022 Victor Rozek

  New year, new possibilities. And what better place to start than sharing the experiences and aspirations of IT professionals.

  Last month, as 2021 was coming to an end, I asked readers for feedback on how they would describe their ideal workplace; the issues that were important to them, the quality of their working environment, and how they wanted to be treated by their company and its management. I offered a list of issues for consideration, and below is a summary of their responses.

  The first question was a variation of the classic “paper or plastic” dilemma. Would you prefer to …

  Read more

• As I See It: The Ideal Workplace

  December 13, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Traditionally, at yearend, I would write a predictive article about IT trends and prospects for the coming year. But if you’re not among the lucky few who have been abducted by aliens and kept closeted these past two years, you doubtless already know that our foreseeable future will include more dreck and disruption, liberally peppered with stress and uncertainty.

  Of course, computers could care less, but the people who work with them do, so writing about anything uplifting was preferable to another dose of dour reality. I wracked my brain to find it, failed miserably, and was about to settle …

  Read more

• As I See It: The Management Challenge

  October 18, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Imagine coaching an athletic team under the following conditions: Some percentage of your players do not practice in your facility. You have minimal contact with them, and even less influence over how, when, and how long they practice. Building and maintaining team cohesion is almost impossible. There’s a chance some of your players may be unavailable at some point during the season, and your training facility could be closed for an unspecified period of time. Yet you are still expected to win.

  That’s roughly the situation in which managers find themselves. Some percentage of their employees probably still work from …

  Read more

• As I See It: Anatomy of Failure

  August 30, 2021 Victor Rozek

  Decades before the term “woke” became a thing, a couple trained in psychology expanded their portfolio to include corporate consulting. Among other offerings, they taught a seminar called “Conscious Business Practices,” during which they identified three principal reasons why corporations fail.

  Their names are Gay and Katie Hendricks, and they are book-writing machines. Those who actually still read books may recognize some of their enduring before-the-turn-of-the-century offerings: Conscious Living, At the Speed of Life, and The Corporate Mystic.

  I first wrote about their work over 20 years ago, a time barely recognizable now. And I was curious …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles