August 2020 -

Why Do Customers Demand Stupide Reports?

26.08.2020 Alex Orlov Career

A comical incident occurred at one of the conferences. One of a listeners came to me and asked: – Alex, there is such a question: how can we increase the level of trust in relations with the customer? – What is wrong with the level of trust now? – Well, we have a team, we have a manager. And we want the customer to trust the team and communicate only with the manager. And he appeals directly to the engineers… – Why is that bad? A person immediately gets answers to his questions, quick communications and all that stuff. –[…]

How to Explain When you Have a Gut Feelings ?

22.08.2020 Alex Orlov Motivation

Have you ever had such a thing that you thought for a long time about a work (or personal) situation, and then whoops! and everything seemed to be laid out on the shelves? We have this happened more than once. Moreover, in some sense, this is our profession – to sort out difficult situations on the shelves. Because for the past 12 years, my colleagues and I have been training IT specialists and managers in people management skills and what is called soft skills. During our work, we have accumulated a large number of tools that we use to solve[…]

29 Mistakes of Programmers Manager

19.08.2020 Alex Orlov IT

If you have already managed to lead programmers a little, being a manager, a team leader of a small team or even a director of a software development company, then you probably know that this is not such a simple matter. ??? ?? ?? ?????????? ????? ??? ???? ???????. First, former programmers often become programmer managers. And managing people is not at all the same as managing compilers, debuggers and profilers. If you’ve been adept at applying design patterns, there is no guarantee that your people will immediately become a productive team. Second, many management books provide models of the[…]

3 Facts about Professional Orientation

18.08.2020 Alex Orlov People Management

When my colleague Slava Pankratov and I launched our yearly educational program, at first we were going to make individual education plans for each student. So we resorted to Slava’s second degree in practical psychology, chose two very detailed tests (one of them consisting of 580 questions) and started asking each student to take them, and also write essays about their stories, goals, and plans. In a couple of months, we launched professional orientation as a separate service, entirely digging ourselves in the students’ questionnaires and essays. Within three months we managed to process over 500 feedbacks that made us[…]

4 Reasons Why People Don’t Do Something

17.08.2020 Alex Orlov Motivation

So it happened that my father-in-law and mother-in-law are Doctors of Education. Which leads to the fact that willy-nilly you start comprehending various useful techniques One day, after some academic council, my father-in-law asked me: “Alex, what do you think, why do people not do something?” Honestly, his question caught me cold. I started fantasizing: well, the reason may be some interfering circumstances, traits of character, lack of experience… No, no, no, he said. It’s not like that. If people do not do something, there are only four reasons. That’s when my arsenal of management tools increased by one more[…]

5 Symptoms of Being Ill As a Professional

03.08.2020 Alex Orlov Career

The problem with career and professional growth is that nothing hurts. It is a terrible and mean disease: everything is OK, nothing hurts, you get paid, some current issues are being resolved, and you are slowly climbing up the steps of the Maslow pyramid to the level where food and comfort are no longer the main tasks in life. The vacation is arranged, the mortgage is being paid, your children go to a good nursery/school… or you have skilfully convinced yourself that this level is enough for you. And your progress gradually flattens out, the tasks, responsibilities, and therefore revenues[…]