Work on Og Maciel's Journal

Sorting Through a Hard Week

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sorting Through a Hard Week

This Saturday, I’m accompanying my wife to a workshop she’s helping put together here in Hillsborough, North Carolina. The event is at the public library, and while she’ll be busy for a few hours, I decided to carve out some quiet time for myself—find a corner, gather my thoughts, and get some reading done. I’m nearly finished with one of the books I’ve been slowly working through over the last few days, but my mind has also been very preoccupied with work. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been reading my posts lately.

The Quiet Side of Management

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Quiet Side of Management

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

April 22nd, 2016.

This was the first time in my career, as a manager of software engineers, that I had to let someone go. Not that I hadn’t dealt with performance issues before—there had been engineers and associates who struggled, and a few who ultimately decided to leave rather than continue on a performance improvement plan—but this was the first time I actually had to make the call to terminate someone’s employment.

Locked Out of the Kitchen: A Software Engineer's Tale

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Locked Out of the Kitchen: A Software Engineer’s Saturday

Photo by Taylor Grote on Unsplash

It’s a Saturday afternoon in early November, and instead of daydreaming about the holidays or planning what I’ll do during our annual office shutdown—a much-appreciated week off right before the end of the year—I find myself working. Babysitting, really. I’m watching over our build system for one of the projects we’re trying to wrap up in the next few days.

My Origin Story: Baptism by Fire

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

When I walked into Synaptic Pharmaceuticals for my first official software developer job interview, I had never written a line of professional code. I had no GitHub profile (it didn’t even exist yet), no computer science degree, and just a vague idea of what a design pattern was.

But I had something far more dangerous: momentum and an unlimited supply of hubris.

A few weeks earlier, I had built a working software system from scratch in a pharmaceutical lab despite having zero formal training. If I could do that, what couldn’t I do?

My Google Calendar Tried to Kill Me Today

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today was one of those days when I barely had time to get up between meetings — to use the restroom, grab a cup of coffee, or just breathe. It was meeting after meeting after meeting, and even during the few blocks when I didn’t have anything scheduled, I still found myself hopping on calls to help someone who needed support.

I’ve been working from home since 2012, and before COVID, there was always a bit of a buffer between meetings — time that actually allowed me to get work done. As a senior manager of engineers, I do spend an enormous amount of time in meetings, but I’m usually the first to suggest canceling one if a Slack message or email would do the trick.

Oops… Did I Really Say That?

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever had one of those days when you say one thing, hear yourself say that one thing, but later realize that you had been saying something completely different all along?

A Gloomy Day, A Bigger Mistake

Today, another gloomy and rainy day, and after my morning routine of exercising and showering, I was full of energy and ready to go carpe some diem, right? Well, let’s just say that things took a weird turn when I realized a deadline I had been communicating all along (this is the thing I heard myself verbally telling everyone) was off by eight days (the thing everyone else heard me say). Eight days off.

Just What Is A Quality Engineer? Part 2

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The last time I wrote about Quality Engineering, I mentioned that some of the reasons why people are not familiar with this term are, in no particular order:

'Quality' is usually something that is added as an after thought and doesn't really come into the picture, if ever, until the very end of the release process
Nobody outside of a QA team really knows what they do. It has something to do with testing...
Engineering is usually identified with skills related to writing code and designing algorithms, usually by a developer and not by QA

A quick search on Google shows the following results:

Just What Is A Quality Engineer? Part 1

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Whenever I meet someone for the first time, after we get past the initial niceties typically involved when you meet someone for the first time, eventually the conversation shifts to work and what one does for a living. Inevitably I'm faced with what, at a first glance, may sound like a simple question and the conversation goes like this:

New acquaintance: "What do you do at Red Hat?"
Me: "I manage a team of quality engineers for a couple of different products."
New acquaintance: "Oh, you mean quality assurance, right? QA?"
Me: "No, quality engineers. QE."

What usually followed then was a lengthy monologue whereby I spent usually around ten to fifteen minutes explaining what the difference between QA and QE is and what, in my opinion, sets these two professions apart. Now, before I get too deep into this topic, I have to add a disclaimer here so not to give folks the impression that what I'm talking about is backed by any official definition or some type of professional trade organization! The following are my own definitions and conclusions, none of which were pulled out of thin air, but backed by (so far) 10 years of experience working on the field of delivering quality products. If there are formal definitions out there, and they match with my own, it is by pure coincidence.

Three Years and Counting!

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 10:49:00 +0000

Making a quick pit stop to mark this milestone in my professional career: today is my 3-year anniversary at Red Hat! Time has certainly flown by and I really cannot believe that it has been three years since I joined this company.

I know it is sort of cliche to say "I can not believe that it has been this long..." and so on and so forth, but it is so true. Back then I joined a relatively new project with very high ambitions, and the first few months had me swimming way out in the deepest part of the pool, trying to learn all 'Red Hat-things' and Clojure for the existing automation framework (now we are fully using Python).

Living In A Movie

Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Kinda scary when you can relate your job to a movie:

BOB SLYDELL Y’see, what we’re trying to do here, we’re just trying to get a feel for how people spend their day. So, if you would, would you just walk us through a typical day for you? PETER Yeah. BOB SLYDELL Great. PETER Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door, that way Lumbergh can’t see me. Uh, and after that, I just sorta space out for about an hour. BOB PORTER Space out? PETER Yeah. I just stare at my desk but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d probably, say, in a given week, I probably do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.

About To Get Rough

Thu, 19 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today all consultants working for my current employer received the email below (contents changed to protect the innocents):

As the old-timers among you know, I periodically ask the IT consultants the gross annual or hourly pay you receive from your respective consultant firm. This information helps us determine the salary range and level of equity among the consultants of each work type/skill set; check that the consultant firm margins are somewhat reasonable, etc. Please return e-mail (to me only) the following info:

What Does It Mean???

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What does it mean when your direct supervisor keeps asking you to do some of his tasks and you know for a fact there’s no promotion involved? I guess my biggest “beef” is the type of stuff he asks me to write about:

What is .NET and what advantages does it offer?
What are the advantages of using Microsoft Visual Source Safe (VSS)?
What are the requirements for working on the code library we just purchased and have no documentation on???
What is ADO.NET and how can we use it?

This wouldn’t bother me as much but I was told (by my recruiter) I was joining a team of talented .NET developers when I took this job!!!

Where Do We Get These People?

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

While typing my last post I was interrupted by a so-called “.Net Developer who just earned his PMP.” He’s been “featured” here before for asking “very intelligent questions.” =) This time he told me he had just bundled some application and given to a DBA to run it when they received an error message: Oracle[blah blah blah].dll not found!!!

"So this program you wrote is trying to connect to an Oracle database?", I asked. “Yes”. “And what technology are you using to connect?” “Huh???” “Are you using ODP.NET?” “HUH???” “Are you using Oracle Data Provider for .NET?” “Yes.” “Does the client also have it OR have you included it with your application?” “HUH???”

Dragging My Carcass

Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Been really busy attending the Project Management class these last 3 days. It’s been very interesting but there’s a lot of material and concepts to absorb. The end product of this is that I get home completely drained and just pass out! Been “running” off of a million cups of coffee and caffeinated snacks… Still haven’t had a chance to play with Perforce and have 4 new books awaiting for me at home. Hope to be able to do some hacking over the weekend since my new toy/hobby application (RssReader.NET) has been neglected for some time now… Damn it!!! Class started…

Away From My Desk

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Starting today I will be stuck attending some training class for work. These “classes” start at 9am and end at 4:30pm, all through Friday! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to grab a cup of coffee in the next 5 minutes. Managed to update this blog to WordPress 1.5.1. Since this was a bux-fixing release, don’t expect to find anything changed here.

As a side note, am looking forward to some WoW playing time with Vinny tonight! Go, Ghost Force, Go!

Primavera Project Management Class

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I was told to attend “a class” at work starting today. To be honest, I wasn’t very thrilled about the idea but since I didn’t think I had a choice, I prepared myself to spend some long, boring hours at the “class room.” Well, it turns out that besides learning to use a project management tool called Primavera, we are also learning what it takes to professionaly managed a project (from the IT perspective). I am actually completely awake and really enjoying the experience of “playing” the software manager for a ficticious company. I’d say this is the closest I have ever gotten to learning how to properly manage something. It has got to be also the first time I didn’t fall asleep during any type of training I’ve been to in a long time! By this Friday I should be in good shape to add this as a new skill under my belt and my resume.

A Hazy Shade Of Freedom

Tue, 10 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

After battling for a few days with a certain free (as in non-proxy-ed) wifi AP, I experienced approximately 5 minutes of unlimited freedom right after lunch. My friend Kelvin and I had spent a good chunk of our morning trying to figure out why the connection was dropping all the time but to no avail. I did some “googling” around and saw that some people have been complaining about the same problem but for me this only happens at this certain AP. At home the connection is rock solid! I got the suspicion that the problem is that the AP is now using WEP authentication but some other type (maybe Cisco’s LEAP?) that keeps fluctuating the WEP keys. That could explain why I sometimes get the connection and then it just drops! Anyhow, for 5 minutes today I experienced sheer joy when I was able to get a signal and listen to my favorite internet radio station… I need to spend some more time trying to figure out the solution to this mystery.

Amazing...

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes I wonder how certain people get employed… really! I usually get drilled with a bunch of technical questions in every job interview I’ve gone to (with the exception of a couple where the hiring manager had absolutely no clue about IT… this re-enforces me original point!) and feel that I really have to show “what I’m made of.” In the meantime, some people get hired and surprisingly manage to keep their jobs whilst they lack (IMNSHO) the knowledge and skills.

The Good Stuff

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Wow!!! It is amazing how great this whole week has been for me so far at work! Been churning out code for my very simple data to xml application and sometimes (the horror) I don’t even want to go home so I won’t interrupt the grooviness! Tomorrow I’m scheduled to give a live demo to the rest of the group! I’m ready to blow them off their socks! For such a simple and small program, I think I’ve done a pretty good job at making it usefull and stable! It’s almost quitting time and I’m already looking forward to tomorrow… ;)

One Voice

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday our recently elected CIO paid us a little visit for the first time. The entire IT team attended the hour long meeting where the CIO very eloquently explained his plan for the entire IT organization (which is actually made up of several smaller IT groups throughout the Board of Education). In the end he “opened up the floor” for questions and/or comments. For a grueling 10 seconds nobody uttered a word. Being that I was genuinely interested in what he had just said, I stepped up to the plate and fired my first of three questions. Basically I challenged the current state of our policies and standards governing the development of software within our group. I told him they were very obsolete and inadequate, often causing a lot of distress amongst the developers around here. Sometimes something as simple as adding a new feature to Crystal Reports (for instance, the functionality of exporting existing reports to PDF format) could take 2+ days coupled with several emails for request and approval. By the time said feature was installed I had already forgotten the original reason for installing it in the first place! He was very diplomatic on his response and acknowledged that some actions will be necessary in order to bring our organization up to speed with technological advances, but always keeping in mind our standards. My following questions were about the availability of any document generated by the newly created IT steering committee (with the sole purpose of investigating, proposing, and implementing the necessary changes to improve our organization) and if the organization had ever considered Open Source as an alternative to some of the outdated systems we have.

Groovy

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today I actually enjoyed work!!! Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to mention “work” and “enjoy” together? I haven’t done it since early 2002 when I worked for the now defunct Synaptic Pharmaceuticals!!! I spent most of the day working on a new VB.NET application for work (something very small and simple for XML generation) and my C# (soon to become Mono) rss reader. It feels absolutely great to be back in the groove of coding! I only wish everyday could be like this… Hope this will last for a while…

Red Storm On The Horizon

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What a week this has been… and it’s only Monday!!! After putting up with a lot of infantile abuse from my upper management things seem to be heading South. I used to feel that the entire organization was plotting against me and wondered if it was just me. But now, I have definite confirmation that my sanity is still somewhat intact! My new co-worker (and I think she was also hired to be my supervisor) has been experiencing all the abuse herself for a few weeks now and seems to be in the brink of walking out of here! I had somewhat managed to contain my frustrations and turned myself into “one of them” (as I call most of the employess around here who act like complete zombies) so as to avoid getting an ulcer. I even managed to enjoy my days as long as I had my MP3 collection and a good set of headphones at hand. All my zen-like concentration has now been flushed down the drain, thanks to the latest paranoia from upper management: military-like schedules, no flexibility what-so-ever! Now, I drive 1.5 hours each way to work every day, passing through the George Washington bridge, F.D.R., and Triborogh bridge. Assuming that traffic is standard or even controllable is very naive. Assuming you can garantee someone you’ll arrive day in, day out at the same time is also naive. Even when I leave 1 hour earlier I still can not make such claim. Well, the latest paranoia revolves around their demand that we, lowly consultants, be here on time and not a single minute later or else… The else part was not explained yet. I have been “pretty good” these last few months, managing to arrive if not before 8:30am at least no later than 8:50am. I have also stayed after 5:00pm to make up for any missed time. Obviously they don’t have to be flexible with me (or anyone else) and someone could even tell me “tough luck” as has my manager told me today. But is it really unreasonable to be 5-10 minutes flexible? Is it really worth the trouble of making your employees feel like slaves? So much for wanting to be part of a team!

Cute Visitor

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

My daughter’s daycare was closed today due to the weather. Eventhough there’s less than 2 inches of snow on the ground they decided that it was safer not to open today. I think they just used a very lame excuse to have a day off and since they get paid no matter what, it doesn’t hurt them in the pocket.

So today I brought my daughter to work with me for the first time. The poor thing was completely overwhelmed by the number of people who crammed my cubicle to say hello. The plan was to keep her entertained for 8 hours and do my job at the same time. Less then 3 hours later she had drawings all over the place, together with cookie crumbs and a thin layer of apple juice smeared over my desk. That’s when she said the words I had feared all morning long: “I wanna go home.” I tried, in vain, to convince her to stay but right about then she started to cough really bad coupled with a persistent running nose. Ten minutes later we were both out the door on our way home. I think it was the best decision after all for she was in need of medication and a cozier place to hang out than my co-worker’s chair. We’re home now and after lunch and medication she’s peacefully sound asleep next to me in the couch.

Sharp Turns

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today was my first day back to work since last Wednesday when I flew to Boston to attend Linux World Expo. It started out just like any other day: woke up early, drove daughter to daycare, crawled through traffic on the FDR Drive, parked across the street and coughed up the $11 daily rate, signed in at 8:25am, walked into my cubicle, said hello to my co-worker… Only there was no reply… there was nobody sitting there… in fact, the space previously taken by my Russian friend was empty! “He quit?!?!?!?” I thought. Immediately, as if sensing my disorientation someone from the cubicle “next door” approached me and told me that “they” had moved my friend so as to make room for the new consultant that is starting today. I haven’t been given the facts yet and what I know right now is mostly based on rumors circulating the office. There’s a great possiblity that the new consultant (a woman from India) was hired to be my direct manager, adding yet one more layer to the current hierarchy.

Jail Life

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

No word about getting a copy of my database backup yet… In the meantime, here’s a (mug) shot of my at my so called “prison cell.” Been here for almost 6 months and haven’t gotten used to living in this “cubicle forest” yet. The inhabitants are a bit edgy and can turn to cannibals without any warning. Boy, am I glad that Tux is here to protect me (that’s him sitting atop my pc).