Notes from a Performance Review

I've been going through some old paperwork this morning, and I found a copy of the only formal performance review I've received in the past 2-3 years. Some comments are particularly notable, and I want to emphasize and remember them here.

Potential

• I received an Above average potential rating, which indicates "demonstrated ability to perform a higher number of tasks at a higher level of difficulty"
• "Dan has been an invaluable asset to the IT department and the company. His development and implementation of various software solutions has allowed numerous payroll and risk management functions to be streamlined, allowing for more efficient company operations. He has the potential to handle even greater responsibility."

Strong areas of present performance

My manager had these comments:

Focused. Expert in area. Responds well to suggestions. Able to grasp organizational needs. Possesses a humility and thoughtfulness that most often attracts good will from others. Able to learn new techniques on own.

Thoughts on social media etiquette

Chris Brogan has many of us thinking about social media etiquette today, especially with respect to Twitter. I definitely recommend reading his post so that my comments here make sense:

As an early adopter of Twitter, I used to get uptight when I saw the proliferation of '@' messages. Now I get it.

My purpose in using Twitter has changed over the months since I started using it. I now use it to participate in conversation, let others know what's going on with me, point to content too large on Twitter, and make/keep in touch with friends.

I've especially enjoyed finding people in my own geographic area through TwitDir.com, and I hope that I can connect through other online means and even meet up with more friends locally in person.

I've decided to use Twitter and other social networks to for relationship-building and personal branding, so knowing how to "take the pulse" of the current climate of a social network is something of value.

Knowing where to fix a problem pays off in quick response

I was on the phone with a Payroll Specialist about 30 minutes ago. One of the company's biggest clients is a trucking company. We set them up back in January with a bridge application to facilitate payroll entry. The client emails their payroll in a spreadsheet with a consistent layout that I and my coworker mapped with the program, and their payroll needs to be done early Monday morning for a Tuesday check date.

Last week, the client left the first column blank for one of their employees, and the payroll specialist didn't find out he wasn't paid until the day after the payroll went out. She called me this morning to have me check to see if the program would do that again. In less than 10 minutes, I was able to diagnose and fix the problem so that it won't happen again.

The code looked for something in that first column before mapping the columns into specific payroll items. In this case, the data in the first column isn't as important as that in, say, the third column. I changed the code that does the test to check the third column instead.

I'm pleased that my knowledge of how this program works lets me respond so quickly and adeptly to a problem like this.

Yet Another Social Media Network?

It looks like the buzz on Twitter this weekend is about Pownce.com. Chris Brogan put up a post a short while ago entitled, "Why Join Another Social Network?"

Here are comments to what he said:

In the early days of blogging, before Blogger had its own commenting system, there was a commenting system called YAACS. YAACS stood for Yet Another Commenting System. Probably still exists today - I wouldn’t know.

I keep waiting for someone to start YASMN - Yet Another Social Media Network. All of this talk of more places to put oneself online is frustrating. I can definitely understand how it would feel cliquish.

I haven’t yet decided what to do with my Pownce invite yet, nor how to develop my Facebook profile. I feel okay about holding off for a bit and using the current tools I’m using.

I think it's interesting that, in an attempt to reach more outward and gain a wider audience, it can also come across as being exclusive. What I mean by that is the same situation that many of us in the blogging, podcasting, twittering community find ourselves in - only associating with each other. The fishbowl. The echo chamber. We're only talking to ourselves.

So I guess I don't see social media networks as a bad thing in and of themselves if it widens one's circle of influence. For me, I have a rough time of continually fragmenting myself over and over. Something I'm still trying to manage.

Microsoft Great Plains - Integration Manager in action

The company uses a version of Microsoft Great Plains (GP) that's been customized for the PEO industry. One piece of that is Integration Manager (IM). I've talked about the bridge application a number of times before. With an Excel file from a client and, with some sophisticated programming, we create a tab-delimited text transaction file for Integration Manager. We've set up some profiles in Integration Manager to upload payroll transactions into a batch in the Great Plains system, saving a lot of time and money. In some cases we've seen a 91% drop in the amount of time it takes to run a payroll.

Over the next few weeks or so, I'll be running Integration Manager for the Payroll department. Here are some numbers for today:

Industry	Transactions	Emps
Trucking	149	51
Trucking	168	90
Restaurant	86	43
Restaurant	94	48
Restaurant	72	39
Restaurant	82	34
Restaurant	94	40
Restaurant	97	40
Restaurant	87	47
Manufacturing	173	98

1002 transactions, for 530 employees of 10 clients.

Every programmer should be on a testing project

I think every programmer should get a chance to be on a testing project because it will make him or her a better programmer. On one project I supported the complete software development lifecycle process to develop a multi-tiered, Intranet-based, Product Data Management System from a software quality assurance perspective. The company is a global consumer products company, and they were creating a system to manage information about their products.

To do this the testing team, of which I was a part, analyzed business requirements and functional specifications, and designed test cases. Then we built test data and executed the test cases. For the most part, each of us would concentrate on a specific aspect of the system.

Since my time on this and other testing projects, I've found myself approaching development from the perspective as a tester, and it's helped me be a better programmer. I wish the same for every programmer.

At a Conference in Downtown Cincinnati

Over the next few days I'll be attending a conference in downtown Cincinnati. I'm really glad that I'll be able to catch the bus instead of driving the hour commute to Dayton.

The conference is being conducted by Thinkware, a vendor that has -- and I'm probably oversimplifying this -- customized Microsoft Great Plains for Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs). I look forward to learning more about the latest versions and seeing how I might be able to use it on my job.

I may or may not provide updates here.

June 7th Update: I found out it's not until today. More to come later perhaps!

Helping company take advantage of a tax credit

I found out last year from the Accounting department at my current company that employers with tipped employees can get a tax credit based on how employees have reported their tips. I guess it's the IRS's way to encourage employers to get their employees to report tips so that they can get the tax from it.

The PEO model is one of co-employment: the client employs someone to do the work while the PEO employs the worker from an HR perspective. If the client doesn't take the tipped employee tax credit (or whatever it's actually called), then the PEO can take it.

For me it has meant developing yet another report from the SQL Server database. The business, of course, wants the report as soon as they can get it, and I and my boss help them understand that it cannot always happen overnight or even in a week.

The report, as many of these I develop lately, involves looking at the transaction history on employees' paychecks to identify reported tips. It sounds simple, and it really is, as long as you know where to look.

Over the past year or so, I've gotten better as I've come to understand where the types of information are stored - the database and the front-end are a modified version of Microsoft Great Plains, and the tables are not always intuitively-named.

I probably should push this application out to the Accounting department, since all I did was run it for last year and the current year. The upper management was certainly surprised at fast I'd turned their request around.

JIMM 85 - Super THRILL Mix

Memorial Day is just around the corner, and we're getting ready for a vacation to Fort Worth, Texas. I created this Super Thrill Mix of independent music for the occasion. Head on over to the shownotes page for the "warm, juicy goodness". Feel free to burn to a CD so you can enjoy it, too. Please support the artists who make their music available to be shared on shows like this one.

Programming for Good to Reduce Necessary Evil

A few weeks ago I mentioned a project I'm working on to streamline the benefits auditing reports. This process involves verifying premium payments for health insurance with what is taken out of employees' paychecks. As I mentioned in the previous post (via the Twitter photo, no doubt), the application I'm working on will save 2-3 weeks' worth of work and many trees' lives.

I just met with the HR department to discuss the status, and the HR Specialist who does this work mentioned that the current process wastes a lot of time. But needed by the business, I said.

"It's a necessary evil," the HR Manager replied.

"Well, hopefully we can make it for something good," I said.

Programming for Good to Reduce Necessary Evil. That's what I'm about.