Been Nice Working With You

LinkedIn sent me an automated email recently detailing that 7% of my 215 “connections” had changed jobs in 2012. (As an aside, consider those 215 LinkedIn connections compared to 65 or so Facebook Friends. As if more evidence was needed to illustrate that Your Faithful Servant has been challenged forever with that whole Work/Life Balance thing.)

The 7% figure was frankly a bit surprising when I chewed on it a bit – I would have thought that percentage to be quite a bit higher. 2012 was quite a year of personnel churn at work with a number of colleagues from both my current and previous projects moving on to different jobs. Some moved to other work within the company. Many moved to entirely new companies. Common external destinations in RTP for folks leaving the company seemed to be SAS and NetApp. A healthy job market for software engineering is A Good Thing (selfishly speaking of course), even if the folks departing left some big shoes to fill.

Marshall Amps It Up

You might have already come across the above video, as it has gone viral over the last couple of days. It captures Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson taunting the Auburn student section moments after hitting the game-winning free throws in last Saturday’s SEC tilt. The accompanying description of this scene from CBSSports.com College Basketball blogger Jeff Borzello here is just so sweet – well done Jeff - simply superb LOL stuff.

I have to admit that Sunday afternoon, when I came across this clip, I was already through 5 bottles of a 6-pack of Sam Adams Winter Lager. I proceeded to spend the better part of the next 15 minutes watching the clip and howling.

Rivalry Week

The Monday before Thanksgiving, a few of us at work took our co-op James out for a lunch before he returned back to Michigan where he attends the University of Michigan studying Computer Science. James was part of my Scrum Team since June or so – really bright, with a good attitude and easy to work with. 

James was planning to leave after work on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and drive straight through from The Triangle to his home In Grand Rapids – with his entire collection of personal possessions from his apartment stuffed into his mid-size sedan. Grand Rapids is about 800 miles from RTP – in Thanksgiving traffic. Ahhh, the boldness, energy, and optimism of youth!

Match Game

In December, The Mother ship sent out an email to all US employees highlighting a change to the manner in which the employer match on 401(k) tax-deferred contributions would be handled. Previously, the company match was disbursed each pay period (twice a month) with the effect that the interest on the matching funds was thereby accrued by the employee.

With this new change, the company match will be made in a single lump sum disbursement on December 31 (with the company accruing the interest). The IBM match is up to 6% – which is nice – free money. I am thankful that we have the match, but I am not lying when I say I would prefer to have the interest on the match (accrued during the year) deposited in my account. Oh well. As a former manager told me once, “Joe, it’s an imperfect world”.