University-Life

A few years ago, I participated in a six month program to train leaders in information technology. I learned a fair amount, perhaps enough to be disillusioned, and ever since the program, I can’t help but look at organizations in terms of their leadership. Case in point, the grapevine of ex-employees from my former workplace says that three employee resignations were announced last week. One person only gave one week notice. By my rough count, that’s about 20 people leaving since January – or approximately 8-10% of the work force. Ouch! ...

The CTO Project makes an interesting observation that faculty are a bit like some corporations. They feel obligated to use Web 2.0 technologies in order to engage student interest and actually make some token effort to be up to date. But that they only want these technologies if they can exert complete control. Trust me, I can relate. We’re currently contracting with a part of the government that wants to do something similar. They want to make use of the knowledge of a number of experts to produce an encyclopedia of a given technology. Of course, this has been dubbed the FOOpedia (where FOO is the technology). ...

Few people have been on top of the extension of FISA like Glenn Greenwald. As a quick overview for folks that haven’t been paying attention to the issue: Late last year a real potential problem with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (as written in the 70s and amended after Sept 11) was recognized. Namely, communication between two foreign entities that was routed through the US was subject to the law’s requirements for a court order. This was never the intent of the law and largely crept in due to the routing of Internet traffic through major US networking hubs In addition to correcting this, the Whitehouse and the Republican congress pushed for a change to FISA that went beyond correcting the oversight and significantly extended the ability of the government to spy on citizens. Congress couldn’t pass this permanently, but did pass a six month bill before the August recess, in large part because of scare tactics used by the FBI (releasing warnings of predicted attacks in DC) Six months was up last week and the Whitehouse was pushing to: a) correct the known oversight, b) extend its ability to spy on US citizens without court order, and now they’ve added c) grant retro-active immunity to the telecommunications companies for illegally helping the government spy both before and after Sept 11th. And of course, if they don’t get all of this, we’ll die in our sleep, murdered by terrorists. The Senate caved and gave the Whitehouse everything it asked for. Surprisingly, the House didn’t and we’re now seeing extra pressure claiming that we’ll all die and it’ll be their fault. This is of course BS, but that’s the state of discourse in the country. I don’t have much to add on the spying per se, but I will admit to being particularly offended and disturbed by the telecom immunity issue. Essentially, these companies started helping law enforcement to monitor calls, read emails, etc. well before September 11th. Their actions were not scared or patriotic, they were largely motivated by greed. ...

I’m up at the university yesterday, tying up some loose ends from my job there when I ran into the executive vice president. Essentially, this is the guy under the president who runs everything administrative for the campus. I used to see him every month or so as a part of my job responsibilities and we always got along reasonably well. So, I’m talking to him and he tells me that whenever he sees someone who has left the university, he always tells them that he hopes they made the right decision… because they aren’t coming back (implying that he will prevent them from returning). He then goes on to say, but you are welcome back if you ever want to return and that this puts me in a very small group – three in twelve years. ...

It’s been a bit strange changing jobs. My former responsibilities as the security officer for a university are so different from what I’m doing now. A few idle thoughts: Life at the university, particularly for management, is entirely interrupt driven. Between the phone calls, urgent emails and meetings, I seldom had time to stop and think. Unfortunately, that meant that a lot of work was done at home. At the new place, work is nowhere near as disruptive. I’m in the office for eight hours and I get eight hours worth of work done. No meetings. No phone calls. Few emails – none urgent. The change has been a little jarring. The biggest advantage is that I’m not trying to actually do all of my work at the end of the day, so I’m leaving and getting home at a reasonable time. The university structures its benefits to the advantage of the highest paid. Everyone has to pay for a share of their health insurance. The 403b, which is incredible, pays progressively more for people at the high end of the pay scale. IIRC, if you put in 3%, they put in ~8% for the first $50k of salary and then ~13% for anything above that – assuming that you are in the better paid category of staff. Hourly employees receive less contribution and have a 5 year vesting period. At the new place, they cap at 4% of your salary, so it’s nowhere near as much in retirement. However, they also pay full health and dental. The upshot is that everyone receives health benefits, regardless of income. Retirement benefits which are typically only used by people at the high end of the income scale are less generous. Overall, a far more equitable system. I’m finding that I’m much more relaxed. I am responsible for the implementation of a decent sized project, but because it’s only one project, there is much less stress and I’m not working in the evenings. Which gives me time to find great things online. Like the following from Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s: “via ovicipitum dura est or “the way of the eggheads is hard.

Done. Finished. That’s all she wrote. Yesterday was my last day at the university. Sometime before I left, I started thinking about what, if anything, I wanted to leave on my whiteboard. The obvious came to mind: “So long and thanks for all the fish. But that’s a little too obvious. My next thought was to crib a few lines from Jonathan Coulton: I fear nothing Anymore See you all in hell ...

Well, it’s official now. I’m leaving the university to go work for a private company – my last day will be August 10th which gives me all of a 4 day weekend before starting full time for the new place. FWIW, I’m definitely looking forward to the change. I’ve been in my current job for about 6.5 years and in the tradition of my family, that means that I’ve been doing the same thing a year and a half too long. ...

I was in a longish meeting today when it occurred to me that it is a military truism that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Moreover, as Walt Kelly’s Pogo noted, “we have met the enemy and he is us. This suggests that no plan survives first contact with its creators. Most of my meetings bear this out.

The Chronicle of Higher Education (and others) are reporting the largest cheating incident ever at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. 34 students were caught having very similar answers on a take home exam. 33 were convicted of cheating, one of lying to the judicial board and four were exonerated. Cheating by students always amazes me. Back when I started college, an old engineering professor explained to the class that the most benefit you were likely to receive from cheating was, maybe, an increase of one letter grade. However, if he caught you, and he was likely to catch you, you would receive an F and be suspended from school. He encouraged us to “do the math and understand that it wasn’t worth it. I think this may be the right approach. Rather than trying to drill an honor code into students, we need to do two things: 1) encourage them to think about it as a risk management exercise; and 2) have all students grade a set of 30 papers. ...

I never planned to comment on the Duke Lacrosse rape case, but one observation keeps running through my head and it’s probably best to get it out. Back when I was in high school, I remember being told that, in a Shakespearean sense, tragedies were uplifting and comedies were depressing. That struck me as backwards for a while until I had watched/read more plays and understood that the tragedies, where the protagonist dies, often display the best elements of human character. There is nobility or love or honor in the characters as they face a universe that is, not hostile, but merely indifferent to the concerns of mankind. On the other hand, a comedy, where the main characters survive the play, often shows the pettiness of people: the bitterness, the backstabbing, the prejudice, the lying, etc. ...