Job Offer - What Goes Around

The old expression "what goes around comes around" came around.  Ten years ago I had a contract consultant, a very qualified network engineer, working for me.  My guideline in most management responsibilities is to treat people like you'd like to be treated, know something about them personally and ensure that you help with their growth and be fair.  At the moment I don't remember why he left but it probably had to do with money.  He's bounced around a bit but strangely enough about two years he wandered into my wife and daughter's small business.  We "caught up" on children, spouses and a few other topics of shared interest.  Yesterday he stopped in to make a purchase and I happened to be there.  One thing led to another as we discussed his current employer and my transition.  I described what I wanted to do next.  "We have a job exactly like that.  You would be perfect and you could do it part time."  My response: "Awesome."

Other Thoughts on Work
In my past 27-year gig the user community had gone a big gadget crazy.  As an employer we paid for cell phones, cell phone plans, laptops, tablets and tablet data plans and once in a while we'd also pick up home internet service.  My position had always been to follow what I interpreted from the owners to take a conservative approach in doling out the gadgets.  The conservative side of my thinking was that everyone already has a cell phone and internet service, bundled or separate.  Paying all of this seemed a bit like paying some someone to have electricity or indoor plumbing at their house.

Looking backwards I suppose there was a time that there were people with and without home telephones (~1940) and I guess I might have been inclined to hire the person progressive enough or advanced enough or reachable enough to have a phone over someone without.  If you follow the work of Nicolas Carr he makes the premiss that IT does not really matter and that it's becoming a commodity and the cost for all companies will decrease as standardization occurs (via the cloud) much as costs were driven down as electricity production was consolidated.  The recently torn down Ford plant in St. Paul had it's own Mississippi driven power production.  Companies located near power sources or the resources to generate power.  At point during the gig we actually gave preference to people with experience in "Windows."  Now I would look for employees who were totally self-sustaining and self-funded on technology.  Paying your own way ensures knowing how to do things and be productive.

Cisco allows all their sales people and system engineers to purchase whatever endpoint technology devices they wish.  All access is via highly secure portals to corporate applications (e.g. ERP).  It's a huge cost saving and raises the bar on expectations of companies.  We had an overworked Support Center that was overwhelmed with calls about how to do simple smart phone tasks or challenges like understanding a worksheet formula.  It might be the case that progressive companies should not have support centers or help desks.

Observation Over Coffee
This afternoon's visit to Caribou for a coffee affirmed my position that we spend a lot on personal technology without really doing much with it.  There were about thirty people there, most with Apple notebooks.  About three people seemed to be doing something real.  The others were chatting or watching YouTube.  I remain convinced that unless someone is heads down reading online or typing they're probably not really doing much at all.

The more I did into affiliate marketing and monetization of blogs and other web pages I am convinced that the mainstream venues are far from the "people's internet" vision of  a few years ago and much closer to the the marketing and sales driven influence of big money.