Saturday, March 30th, 1996 Dear God, You found me praying at the table in Ernies this afternoon. My friend Diane came to visit with me (?) and to have some breakfast at Ernies. Melania said she would show up noonish, but didn't. And Diane listened to me, remarking about Carfax work, about ... had the new Maya Angelou book with me, and the book I'm borrowing from the Boone County Library "Promise-Keepers," and the book about ... about ... leading a spiritual life on the run, on the go. She wanted to see all of them. It is a mystery to me why Melania didn't show and Diane did. I could worry this mystery, but I won't; will just be grateful that I had any company at all. And I got to talk a little bit with a lady who I believe is Linda Mazuranik(sp?). ... She seems a kindly enough woman, but I tend to avoid her because of what a friend said. Right now a couple of people (your servants?) are continuing a work- shop to develop the talent of channeling-- or they are at least supposed to be. Got a phone call from them last night to remind me that they were in town. They need money and I need spirituality. They can give me spirituality of a certain nature and I can give them money. But I'm not allowing it to happen, not just yet. Have given a promise that this weekend I am to be working on Canada stuff for Carfax. Did so just a little while ago in an email note to Kris and Craig and Ewin. My goal is to have sample VRH reports available for review by Monday on the data that I currently understand from Can. There is a job offer in the works that I am probably going to accept. Although it doesn't have everything that I want... I may. Diane sug- gested that I need to: * make sure I know what their expectations are, * make sure they know what mine are, * understand what salary I am supposed to be getting, * come to some kind of understanding about those items they cannot or will not provide. My needs: - to know and understand all the perquisites available to full- time employees; - to find out which, if any, of those perquisites I am to be availed; - to get more training, and to get the company to pay for it; - to visit the Fairfax, VA, office within the first six months - to know exactly how Craig, Ewin (& Dick?) are viewing the company's growth, what jobs are going to be created, what teams are going to be created, and - to understand where I am going to fit among these teams; - to understand what kind of communications mechanisms are going to be created between the teams of a formal nature (not just the "smoker's lounge" kind of communications) - to find out if they are going to provide mobility -- can I elect to be part of a team which I am currently not part of? - to understand the nature of the job descriptions (and hopefully get printed copies of the job descriptions) of those positions which are being created now to see if I may be eligible for any of the newly created jobs and find out if I may request transfer to new duties, if I so desire; - to understand the responsibility divisions that are being created as the teams are being created, and what kinds of overlap will be tolerated or encouraged; - to understand why we may be choosing to grow the way we are now, versus other ways we could also choose to grow. What are the trade-offs? If the answers to the above needs are something like, "Dave, you don't really need to know all of these things in order to do your job. You don't even need to know but a few of them," then I must say that is an unsatis- factory answer. When I understand exactly what it is I am to do for the company, and the *reasoning* behind it, I do a much better job of doing the work. That is because the work I do then makes sense to me. When I understand where I stand I then have the power to adjust where I stand with relation to the rest of the company. Compared to who I was with relation to the rest of the company, I now feel significantly disempowered. My feel for the position that Craig Hamilton has now filled for about a year is a feeling of continuous but subtle disempowerment through standard management practice which has the unfortunate effect to discourage and distance at least me but perhaps all programmers from direct relating to others in Carfax's Virginia office. My feel for the position that Craig Hamilton now occupies is a feeling of continuous but subtle disempowerment by his making himself an information switchboard with the power and authority to release or deny the flow of important product development information and news to software developers. My feel is that Craig has not been alone in acting as such a switchboard, but that regulating the flow of information to and from software developers has also been practiced by Kris Knutson and Ewin Barnett. My feel is that neither Kris nor Craig end up being good note-takers nor are they devoted to being conscientious about disseminating important information to all software developers through the creation of minutes or memos when important meetings take place. It is my contention that in order to be fair, summaries of what decisions are being made and of the reasoning behind the decisions that are being made about - new data sources, - current data sources (such as Polk & Denny), - new product development items, - or any of a myriad of things that are discussed (including proposals that may never make it to the programming or database development table) should be created and disseminated to our development staff. The absence of such information in written form creates what I call an "old-boy" management infrastructure that is not fair to those of us who are less social or who are more inhibited about hanging out on the front porch a number of times per day. It creates an information vacuum, I feel, that does not help your software development staff in the per- formance of their duties.