About 2.5 years ago, I got interested in the writings of Thomas Friedman. Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist of The New York Times. He writes about US foreign affair policy, Middle East conflicts and recently, to a lesser extent, globalization. In his most popular book, The World is Flat, Friedman writes about the emerging economies of India and China and how, in India, often there are people willing to do work at half or less the price Americans or Canadians would pay. Such things as accounting and Information Technology are skills that are easily obtained and also a commodity that people in India and China will do for a lot less.
The book itself is quite long and Friedman uses a lot of words to say basically that the world has changed and outsourcing to save money has arrived here in Canada and in the United States. I believe in pockets of industries outsourcing has been occurring for a while and Friedman, while enlightening, is late to the party.
The impact that it had on me, though, was thinking about my own skills and career and how I can differentiate myself from the pack when trying to achieve my career goals. Just knowing how to code a software solution is not enough: you have to be able to present the solution and look for ways that your solutions align to the strategic mission of the organization. It’s not enough to be an expert in Java or C#, you have to bring business skills and smarts to your roles.
Before reading The World is Flat, I had completed a Commerce Degree because I felt the same way: you can’t just be a technologist; you need business skills and smarts. You should read the strategic plan of the organization you work for (if it’s available to staff). You have to think how does this solution 1) reduce costs; 2) add new customers; 3) increase profit. You need to be able to present the entire solution and understand it from both a technical level and from a business side.
It seems these ideas of Friedman are not new. Outsourcing has been here for 10 years but, yes, it has become more prevalent.
For myself, I continue to try and develop both my business knowledge and skills and my technical knowledge and skills.
Since leaving a software company in Vancouver and moving to Calgary, both companies I have worked for outsourced their IT operations. I feel that sometimes this is justified as IT skills are not relevant to the business focus of an organization. From stories I hear, though, sometimes organization are not happy when they outsource as they lose a level of contr0l over their operations. Their are obviously good and bad points to outsourcing. From a cost perspective, if you can fix your IT costs better by outsourcing, I see this as an advantage.
On a conscience level, I am fully aware that my Mom has passed but it’s very hard to accept and to process. My Mom was my best friend. After my father died in 1995, she moved out to Vancouver (where I was living at the time) and we were able to see each other a lot. She loved Vancouver so much and it was so great she was able to rebound after my father’s death to build a nice life for herself. She had arthritis so the Edmonton winters were so hard on her joints and Vanc0uver’s weather was so much better for her. She would walk a lot, sometimes 20 blocks a day in Vancouver and was always on the move. Her illness started a year ago when she just started feeling unwell. The last year has been very hard and rewarding at the same time. After we were told my Mom’s time left was short, my sisters and my Mom spent as much time together as possible. She was doing quite well until about mid-May. I know my Mom knew she was dearly loved and I know life isn’t forever but losing someone who raised you and put everything into your wellbeing is devastating. I loved my Mom dearly and will miss her so much. We would talk everyday and now that’s gone. I love you Mom and I will forever miss you.
Is it better to a generalist or specialist with your skills and career?
For most of my 18 year career, I’ve been a specialist. I worked for a software company that had a proprietary development language and a client/ server retail banking product. I did really well at this. I was part of teams that worked in projects in Japan, Europe, Canada and the US. I had deep technical skills in a banking product and was paid well for my services. I did with most of my career.
About 5 years ago, The Project Management Institute (PMI) successfully marketed the Project Management Professional certification (PMP). The company I worked at got on-board with this methodology and this seems to be a good career path for me. Plus, the skills can be generalized to apply to different industries.
In order to attain the PMP certification, one has to have “x” number of years as a Project Manager and having a degree lessens the time required to get the certification. I had a Diploma and thus decided to go back to school and I graduated in 2005 with a Degree in Commerce.
Since then, there has still been demand for my knowledge in Banking Software. I consider this knowledge “specialized knowledge” and the knowledge was pretty much specific to the banking product being built.
I recently left a Bank that was using my specialized banking knowledge and am now a free agent.
I want to move to being more of a generalist; having transferrable skills. The Business Education was a step towards that.
Is it better to have expert knowlegde in ASP.NET MVC, Dependency Injection and Ruby on Rails or stay as a generalist that can apply your skills in a more general way? I am aiming towards the latter. I want to understand what your strategic goals are as an organization and design – not just IT Solutions – but processes, too, that align to that strategy.
Not sure which is better but I’ve done the specialist role and did well with that but now want to go the generalist route. I guess I will find how how lucrative this path will be. Maybe it’s an age thing. I am 40 now and have a l0t of knowledge - I want to apply it across problems.
So, here’s the scoop: As I posted, I left Bridgewater Bank where I was a Systems Analyst. I am now a free agent and looking for a new gig.
I’ve worked almost exclusively in either Financial Institutions or for companies that develop software for Financial Institutions.
I started out in Edmonton and in 1994 moved to Vancouver, BC where I took a job in Richmond Savings Credit Unions IT department as a Programmer/ Analyst.
In 2005, I moved back to Alberta. My sister with her 2 young children are here in Calgary and not having any kids of my own, I really enjoying being around my sisters kids.
I start in Calgary with First Calgary Savings Credit Union and they were taken over by Envision Financial so I moved over to Envision Financial. I left Envision Financial in Feb 2008 and started with Bridgewater Bank. I was a Systems Analyst and using .NET developed applications, wrote SQL queries to get banking data for users, did some testing and other programming.
Combined experience in IT is 18 years. When I moved to Calgary, I was eying the Project Management track. In 2005, I completed a Commerce Degree to augement my technical skills.
Also just having technical skills is not enough anymore – you need to offer business smarts, too. The Commerce Degree was excellent as I learned a lot.
I’m at a bit of a cross roads now as I have some .NET experience and do love .NET programming but want to move into a non-technical role. I want to be a Business Analyst. I have deep experience in Financial Software but am open to other industries.
At Fincentric Corp in Vancouver where I worked for almost 9 years (left in 2004), I was a Solutions Architect and would get involved when the company sold their banking software to a new customer. I would work with the development team getting their custom pieces developed. The core product is what the customer would buy but there would often be “gaps” – areas where the regional market had functionality the core product did not. Often this would be regulatory issues like state taxes or different ways of calulating loan interest or different term products.
Since I’ve been in Calgary (since 2005), I’ve done Business Analysis work. First Calgary lauched a new banking system and I was involved as a Business Systems Analyst in that project.
At Bridgewater, it was .NET development, SQL queries, reviewing new features from the vendor (Open Solutions) to determine if the new feature is applicable to Bridgewater Bank. I felt I worked hard the last few year and was a part of some successful system conversions.
Where to next? I am eyeing a role as a Business Analyst using the skills I learned in Business school to broker solutions that match the short and long term strategic goals of an organizati0n. What is the strategy of the organization? Then recommend and design the IT solutions that are in-line with the strategy.
I am also interested in Business Intelligence. By this I mean, empowering users with the data they need to identify trends and markets to expliot to grow market share.
I am also interested in Process Improvement. This entales documenting current processes and then improving these processes.
I am also interested in a management position as I feel I have good management skills. I believe leadership is about teaching and empowering people to do reach for higher goals and surprise even themselves with how much is possible when you believe in yourself.
I’ve not posted for a while but still intend to keep the blog alive. One has to respect bloggers that regularly post. It’s a goal of mine; I’m just not there yet.
I recently left my position as a Systems Analyst for a Financial Institution here in Calgary, Alberta and am looking for a new gig.
I started a on-the-side consulting company called “Red Kite Consulting” but it’s no where near being a full-time endeavour. My first client needed a web site for her business and I started looking at DotNetNuke. I spent the better part of a week assessing this ASP.NET open-source CMS. I’ve changed plans, however, and am not going to be using it. I found it slow and, because I am not a graphic artist, there are limited themes to choose from (yes, I know about SnowCovered).
So, I decided to look at Expression Web because I have a purchased copy of this software one can buy a lot of themes and templates for Expression Web and customize.
I started taking Business Analyst courses at Mount Royal University as I want to use more of my business skills in my next position and move away a bit from being a technology expert. This is a whole topic in itself but with so much outsourcing going on in IT, it’s better to develop some business expertise.
I completed a Commerce Degree from Royal Roads University in Victoria in 2005 and loved the program. Truth be know, when I was 18 and completed high-school, I had my sites set on being an economist. Unfortunately, I was not as motivated a student back then and did not have the required 80% average to be accepted to the University of Alberta. It’s a bit of a regret but going back and completing the Commerce Degree made up for it.
So, I am now looking to move into a full-time Business Analyst or Business Systems Analyst role; something where I can use both my information technology skills and my business knowledge. I would like to get into a management position but accept I may have to move into that eventually.
The Mount Royal course seems pretty good and focus on delivery strategic value to an organization – this may or may not be IT related. Focus on the organization’s strategic goals and objectives and ensure you identify and deliver on the business value of IT.
Been also thinking along the lines of getting an MBA, even though some people feel they are useless degrees. It’s a strong area of interest – strategic management and executive management – 0f mine but I want to get some management experience, first.
If you know of an organization based in either Edmonton or Calgary that needs a smart, high potential, process advocate and motivated Business (Systems) Analyst, drop me an email. I have 18 years experience, mostly in Financial Institutions but am open to working in a different industry.
I want to show an example of the 3 tier architecture that the book I am reading and what my studies at SAIT taught me. Basically, it boils down to a layer architecture is superior to using Table Adapters and especially superior to embedding logic in the presentation layer.
Visual Studio Projects
In this example, there is a Visual Studio C# project for the Presentation Layer and a Visual Studio C# for the Data Layer. You need to add a reference – under References – in the Presentation Layer Project to the Data Layer project.
This line in the Presentation, Form1.cs, C# code calls the Data Layer to populate a C# List collection (using Generics):
invoiceList = InvoiceDB.GetInvoicesDue();
The result is a list of invoice objects with a balance outstanding bound to a ListView Control.
The full code for both the Presentation Layer, Form1.cs, and InvoicesDB.cs, is shown below. The code retrieves and populates a C# List of Invoice objects.
Over at ASP.NET, there are hundreds of learning resources for aspiring .NET developers. I recently completed a five course certificate in .NET Development as SAIT but realize now, this is just the *start* of learning .NET.
At work, I am finally getting some hands on exposure to .NET development and I couldn’t be happier for that.
One area that is debated in the .NET community is the use of Table Adapters. I used these in my solutions at work recently but have been reading up on some better techniques.
TableAdapters, however, make it very easy to access data and display on a web form. With the below code, I can display all the employees in my Employee Table.
I am currently reading an ADO.NET 3.5 Book that describes different, more scalable ways to access data. I will post on these techniques in a different post.
The below code displays records from the Pubs Database Titles Table and the Pubs Database Employee Table.
I picked up the book Accounting for Non-Accountants by Wayne Label (himself a Chartered Accountant) and really got a lot of value from this book.
I am a graduate of Royal Roads University with a Degree in Commerce so I have some background in accounting. However, I wanted a bit of a refresher and this book fit the bill perfectly.
The book covers a lot of ground in its 11 chapters. Starting off with the four main financial statements: The Balance Sheet, The Income Statement, The Statement of Cash Flows and The Statement of Retained Earnings.
The author assumes you know some basics of accounting such as Assets = Liabilities + Owners Equity.
Some of the details:
No one Financial Statement can show the Financial Health of the company. All four financial statements must be viewed together.
The Balance Sheet is akin to an organization’s Net Worth Statement. Your Assets – Liabilities = Your Net Worth. Said another way assets equals liabilities plus owners equity. Assets are either financed or equity it take to pay for them. Owners Equity confused me when I studied accounting but after all liabilities are paid, owners equity is the remaining interest in assets. It can be broken down as the Owners investment in the firm + Retained Earnings = Total Owners Equity.
The only things that affect Owners’ Equity is:
– owners invest more in the firm
- the biz makes a profit or loss
- the owner(s) take assets out of the biz.
Owners Equity represents what the biz is worth at the end of the period.
The Income Statement is a report for period of time (whereas the Balance Sheet is a point in time).
Profit = Income – Expenses.
Expenses reduce Owner’s Equity
If, soon after the “purchase”, that which was expensed holds no value then it is usually identified as an expense. If it retains value soon and long after the purchase, it will be viewed as capital with life that should be amortized/depreciated and retained on the Balance Sheet
Because of the relationship with Net Income on the Income Statement and Retained Earning on the Balance Sheet, any time net income is changed, retained earnings is changed by the same amt.
An important issue in accounting is whether a particular expenditure is classified as an expense, which is reported immediately on the business’s income statement; or whether it is classified as a capital expenditure or an expenditure subject to depreciation, which is not an expense. These latter types of expenditures are reported as expenses when they are depreciated by businesses that use accrual-basis accounting, which is most large businesses and all C corporations.
The most common interpretation of whether an expense is of capital or income variety depends upon its term. Viewing an expense as a purchase helps alleviate this distinction. If, soon after the “purchase”, that which was expensed holds no value then it is usually identified as an expense. If it retains value soon and long after the purchase, it will be viewed as capital with life that should be amortized/depreciated and retained on the Balance Sheet. Because of the relationship with Net Income on the Income Statement and Retained Earning on the Balance Sheet, any time net income is changed, retained earnings is changed by the same amt.
The Statement of Cash Flows is a very important statement because cash is the lifeblood of an organization. The Statement of Cash Flows shows the cash flow of the company divided into categories according to three major activities: operating, investing and financing. It tells the type of transactions that give rise to each of these flows.
If you remember the following tips about accounting, it will help so much with your understanding:
- Accounting Equation is A = L + OE
- Assets are increased with debits and decreased with credits
- Liabilities & Owners Equity items are just the opposite; they increase with credit and decrease with debit
- Assets Increase -> Debit
- Assets Decrease -> Credit
- Liabilities Increase -> Credit
- Liabilities Decrease -> Debit
- Revenue (Owners Equity) Increase -> Credit
- Expense (Owners Equity) Increase -> Debit
I could go on about this book but if you are at all familiar with the 4 main financial statements and just want to brush up on your knowledge, I highly recommend this book.
Do you believe your intelligence is fixed at an early age or that we can -with focused effort – continuously improve your intelligence?
Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, lays out in this book how the “Fixed Mindset” result in less rick taking, less personal growth, ineffective management and leadership styles. By adapting what Dweck calls a “Growth Mindset” you can improve your outlook and take situations as opportunities to learn and grow. Even failure can be seen in the light as growth opportunities. Nothing ventured nothing gained; don’t think you as struggling or failing – think you are learning. The view your adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.
Dweck writes, “believing your qualities are fixed in stone creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over again. If you have a certain amt of intelligence, a certain personality, a certain moral character – well, then you better prove you have a healthy dose of them. It simply won’t look good to feel deficient in these most basic characteristics. For the fixed mindset, every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality or character. Every situation of evaluated: Will I succeed or will I fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I fell like a winner or a loser?”
In contrast, Dweck says, the growth mindset asserts that the characteristics you are born with are just a starting point for your development. The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Instead of hiding your deficiencies, by working on them, you can overcome them. The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it even when, or especially when, things aren’t going well is the hallmark of the growth mindset. Challenge yourself and don’t underestimate the importance of effort in achieving your goals.
Interesting read and I agree that by believing you can achieve your goals and taking concrete steps to achieve them, you can. I found, however, Dweck takes vast leaps in saying the downfall of Chrysler is due to their “fixed mindset”. Dweck also postulates the failure of Enron can to attributed to their “fixed mindset”. These are huge companies and I feel there is a lot more to it than the psychology of their CEO.
Dweck points to to Japanese and the success of Toyota as having a “growth mindset”. I could agree that Toyota is a more healthy organization that appears to value the contribution of all staff from the assembly line worker to the plant manager to VP’s and CEO’s. It’s not, though, all about their “growth mindset”.
I thought the parts about teaching children was good and the advice to “praise the person and praise the effort not their smarts/intelligence/personal attributes”. Praise the study habits, the strategies and persistence in sticking to goals. Dweck found that kids react positively in the teaching environment when they hear skill achievement comes from commitment and effort (not pure smarts). Dweck notes, great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent and are fascinated by the process of learning. They are also noted too set high standards for their students. As one teacher stated, success does not come to you; you must come to it. Challenge and nurture the student. Teach them to love learning as lifelong learning is key to a happy and healthy life.
The parts about sports and how Mia Hamm and Michael Jordan were not only the best players but the hardest workers who always worked on the game to get better (especially working on their weak points). Also, when success comes to them, they don’t allow themselves to get complacent.
Overall, this is a good book and teaches me to keep an open mind, stay flexible and, overall, not stop learning how to improve both personally and professionally.
