Eric Spiegel

Are you happy with your IT job? Do you get up in the morning raring to write that next line of code? Perhaps that is the one skill you know best – coding. But is that all there is in the world of IT? Back in the dark ages of computer science (mid-1980’s), when I […]

“They found the killer.” I had just received this instant message from our product support intern. The horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech had taken place that morning and the IM forwarded had a link to a MySpace page. I clicked through and found the owner of the page was an Asian, male Virginia Tech student […]

“He is such a micro manager!” This exclamation from one of my team members had traveled through the office grapevine, labeling me as the kind of manager I never intended to be. What was I doing wrong? I couldn’t possibly be a micro manager. Not me! I’m all about the fine art of delegation and […]

Bang, bang, bang! I was in the middle of a crucial demonstration with a large potential customer. The loud banging stopped me mid-sentence. I quickly turned my head to look through the glass panes of my office doors and was immediately disarmed by a very cute smile – of my 14-month-old daughter. She was banging […]

Did you realize it takes 25 minutes to regain your focus after an office interruption? And the typical office worker is interrupted every 11 minutes? Well, these statistics must be true because I read them in an airline magazine. Okay, maybe not, but I still wish I was armed with this information when I worked […]

[Editor’s note: this is a reprint of one of our recent reader’s favorites.] “I don’t give a sh*t what you think.” That was the answer I received the very first time I asked for a raise. It was stated matter-of-factly, as if I was just another irrelevant cog in the system. Well, I wasn’t going […]

My last article about managing teams with on-call responsibilities generated a lot of interest from readers who prompted me to find a real world example where a team had implemented a successful model. I wanted to find an instance where the team members, management, and the end-users all came out winners. I was lucky enough […]

I was feeling quite sure of myself as I walked into my manager’s office. After all, I was anticipating great accolades for the detailed research I had completed in coming up with a recommendation for a bug tracking tool. My proactiveness in replacing the problematic freeware tool we were using to track bugs was sure […]

Every time the phone rang in the middle of the night I pretty much knew that some soulless voice would be on the line. The monotonous robotic voice would state something like “JOB J-S-1-5-3 ABENDED AT LINE NUMBER 12 WITH ERROR CODE 1234.” For the thousands of IT staff that are “on-call,” this is a […]

“I hope my customers don’t read this!” This was the thought floating around my brain as I wrote this article about how companies can benefit from working with startup technology firms. I surmised I might actually be providing them with insights that will give an upper hand in sales negotiations. But the more I worked […]