My Pet Questions during an Interview

a) Tell me about yourself.
The question opens up a huge can of worms which you can dig deep and explore further. Between, megalomania, shyness, a total lack of enthusiasm or someone with a temper problem.

b) Tell me about the biggest and hardest project that you've worked with
How detailed the person gets and the kind of topic he covers will let you know whether he's

• A people person
  Talks about the stakeholders, the team, the challenges with the customers
• A techie
  Jumps right into the how many components the solution has, but before he/she can move to the next component, you've already got a huge gobbledygook of why the 64bit processor driver couldn't work with the HBA drivers.
• A faker
  Everything stops at level 1, you just can't prob him any deeper.
  

c) Tell me about the most difficult situation you've been in.

• A liar or someone who just forgets easily
  "I've never been in any difficult situations". Potentially a good/dangerous sales person
• Highly committed but sarcastically jaded and cynical
  May be a whiner, or someone that will put in a lot of effort. Be wary of whiners as they tend to give 1001 excuses why something can't be done.
  

d) Tell me about how you solved it

• A quiter
  The problem was never solved, but he's resigned, or decided that it's too dangerous to proceed
• A good guy
  Probably doesn't exist, unless the company went bust.
  
  
  

Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales

There's very rarely presentations that makes me go WOW! Bjarke talks about how architecture rocks!

EDS loses lawsuit to BSkyB - 709m pounds!

BSkyB's lawsuit against EDS may just be the wake up call that IT Outsources need, or rather IT management in general. Here's some tips before pushing any IT Outsourcing deals.

1. Hire a realist.
   IT Sales person should stick to selling commodity IT equipments. A realist can tell you at least 10 things that can go wrong with the project and how to get it to work.
   
2. Hire a realist that has a solution
   Some realists happen to be perfectionists that requires the gates of Valhalla to be opened before a project can proceed. There are workarounds and sensible percautions without having to pave the road with gold to get to your goal.
   
3. Never have a Sales Director lead the brokering
   Sales Directors pretty much get to where they are after achieving a deal that's so big, they can't possibly fathom ever eclypsing it; end result. They quit the job 3 months later, having padded their resume with the results.

The thing about gargantuam deals is that, no sane company would sign on to it unless "sweeteners" are put in place. Secondly, those come in many forms and apply to many entities, like the people making the decisions or perks to the organization.

In short, if you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Better just shut up, and let the IT Realist do the talking. Some deals are just not worth the bullshit.

Actual news from ComputerWorldUK here.