Eric Spiegel

“But it’s free!” I stood in the cube of an engineer on my team as he made his case about a free software tool that would supposedly solve a recurring problem we were having with our network. Sure it didn’t cost any money to purchase the tool, but what about the intangibles? What if he […]

Comment on IT Bullies “You are an idiot.” That was how I was greeted on an already gloomy, rainy Monday morning. I had just spent the weekend trying to help my team troubleshoot a production problem, missing a family event and getting little sleep. While I had ultimately resolved the problem, it was pretty apparent […]

The whole company was buzzing during our weekly Monday morning all-hands meeting. Usually these meetings are fairly dull. I mean, how much really changes week to week? But this week, the buzz was about Jared, our well-liked customer support manager who was shown the door. Jared was pretty much told to not let the so-called […]

Allison poked her head into my office and said, “I made a big mistake.” Not exactly the words you want to hear first thing in the morning. Her frustration had been building with a co-worker, Jack, regarding his work ethic. He had just sent an email to the team saying he was leaving early again […]

If you’ve ever watched the hit TV series “24” on Fox you may understand the direction I’m going in with this article. If not, let me clue you in. The show follows the events of some dastardly terrorist attack and the intrepid federal agent Jack Bauer’s attempt to foil the bad guys. But these events […]

“Have I got a great deal for you!” As I considered the exclamation from the sales woman, who was hawking the latest whiz-bang software product, I was wondering how much of a deal this really was. We had a parade of vendors that responded to our request for information about their products. After narrowing our […]

I was in the office during the week of Christmas and not a soul was stirring, not even a mouse. To be truthful, the little rolling ball in my mouse was making an annoying squeaking sound and I really had been meaning to order a wireless mouse. But you know how the little things never […]

Tick, tick, tick. I found myself watching the clock every morning. I was waiting. And waiting. And still waiting. I was becoming more impatient by the minute. 9:05 am, 9:10 am, 9:15 am and then finally – Susan walked down the hall in front of my office. Was I being an overzealous, micromanager? In this […]

“H1B’s are everywhere!” This was the frustrated exclamation from a headhunter buddy of mine sitting across the table at lunch. He prefers to be called a “recruitment specialist,” but he absolutely does recruit “heads” for local IT companies. And these days the techie heads he finds are usually those with H1B visas. Even though the […]

I’m a total hypocrite. This realization pains me, but after many years of championing the cause of telecommuting, I’m finding reality to be different than the utopian telecommuting environment I envisioned for IT workers. I’m sure you telecommuters out there will not care much for my perspectives and you may have found different, more positive […]