Link Round-Up for 8/16/07

August 16th, 2007

Here are some links to some useful articles, links and blog posts I came across this week that relate to VB.NET and software development teams.

First of all, there were a few articles I ran across about bad managers. If you have a bad boss you may wonder why he or she hasn’t been fired due to their antics, this Reuters article, Bad bosses get promoted, not punished?, offers some insight based on a survey. It seems that making your subordinates miserable or even sick helps some bosses get ahead. I don’t know if they full survey results will be made available online or not, I couldn’t find them right off, but it would be interesting to see the details of this study.

Along the same lines Ramon Padilla at TechRepublic has this article, Seven traits of fearful managers, that raises some good points about what can cause a manager to become fearful and, thus, an ineffective leader. A lot of his points tie in well with my series on Marine Corps leadership and some of my other articles that discuss toxic workplaces.

Also in the article he brings up this very important personal finance tip:

The workplace, as is the world, is a very unpredictable place and hardly ever fair. Never get so settled in a position that you become complacent. Always plan for your next move. Put away some money in an “emergency cache” that can fund six months of unemployment. It may take you awhile to build it, but having it gives you the peace of mind that your world hasn’t completely fallen apart should you find yourself out of work. That peace of mind also works to reduce anxiety about being let go.

I highly recommend this strategy for anyone working in IT, manager or non-manager. Employment in the IT workplace is usually very unstable and complacency coupled with lack of savings is quite risky. Having this safety cushion, even if it isn’t a full six months at first, will reduce your job stress and anxiety significantly.

Over at CodeBetter, Jeremy Miller has this article, On Software Teams, where he gives his view on development teams. I found myself agreeing with his points a lot, particularly the main one, “Happy developers are productive developers.” He has several other good software team articles in his blog as well so check them out too if you get a chance. They’re linked at the end of the article above.

On the VB.NET front, check out this video interview with Lisa Feigenbaum, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Editor, over at Channel9: Visual Basic Intellisense Improvements in VS 2008. If you’re wondering what improvements you’ll see in Visual Studio 2008’s rendition of VB.NET, you’ll want to watch this video. It looks like a good job so far. I just hope it isn’t too Vista-ized. If you want to keep up with what’s going on inside the VB.NET development team, check out their blog: The Visual Basic Team.

That’s it for this week. If you see a good VB.NET or general programming article or web site let me know about it by leaving a comment.

Entry Filed under: Link Round-Up

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