In any case, I naively assumed that it would all be wine and roses, everything would work perfectly, and I would be able to easily do seemingly simple things like sharing my sweet new 3G connection over Airport with anyone else who happened to be working in my general vicinity. Upon eagerly tearing open the modem packaging and plugging it in though, I discovered pretty quickly that this sh*t is UGLY.

First of all, I couldn’t just plug in and get going. The Mac drivers for this thing aren’t part of OSX, and AT&T didn’t even bother to include them in the modem package. I had to go to some third party website and download them (support.option.com/att.) At least they took the time to write that in tiny type on page 30 of the manual.

Secondly, the third party application added a whole bunch of ugly, seemingly unnecessary network interfaces, and REMOVED all my EXISTING network interfaces. Clearly this wasn’t going to work. Not only could I not share my 3G connection with any other interface (since they’d all been disappeared,) but I couldn’t use any of my other interfaces at all until I disconnected the 3G.

[On a side note: googling the problem has indicated that this is also a major problem for Parallels and VMWare installs, which rely on adding network interfaces to get access to the host connection. Disappearing them all means that the guest OS can't access the 3G connection.]

But enough about the problem. Here’s my solution. Basically an updated version of the solution found here: Imperfect Workaround.

This works with the AT&T USBConnect Quicksilver Modem with DataConnect package, and Leopard (OS 10.5) on a Macbook Air.

1. Install GlobeTrotter software as indicated by Quicksilver manual (Download from support.option.com/att — download link is tiny somewhere in the middle of that big blank page.)
2. Plug in card and run GlobeTrotter Connect
3. Connect and ensure your card is working this way
4. Disconnect and quit GlobeTrotter Connect
5. Open System Preferences, and click on “Network” (Choose “Edit Locations” in the Location dropdown menu, then choose “GlobeTrotter Connect” and click the “-” button.)
6. Delete the “GlobeTrotter Connect” location
7. Delete all of the weird network interfaces that GlobeTrotter has added (mine were called something like ‘Icon 322 Modem,’ ‘Icon 322 Diag’ etc.)
8. Hit the ‘+’ button at the bottom of the interface list
9. Choose Interface: Icon322 Control. Call it whatever you want (mine is called ‘Evil 3G Control’)
10. In the right-hand pane, enter this information:
• Configuration: Default
• Telephone Number: ISP.CINGULAR
• Account Name: ISPDA@CINGULARGPRS.COM
• Password: CINGULAR1
11. Click the “Advanced” button.
12. In the “Modem” tab, choose:
    • Vendor: Other
    • Model: Option GlobeTrotter 3G
13. Leave everything else as-is, and click OK
14. Click Apply, the click Connect.

This should get you connected. I have found it to be very slightly tempermental, but not too bad. I’m not sure what will happen if you uninstall the GlobeTrotter application — if you try this, let me know what happens!

Leave me a comment if you got this to work, or had problems with it!

Equally surprising is how often people don’t try to solve a problem because they can’t imagine solving it alone, and hence assume it to be intractable.

It seems to me that bureaucracy flourishes largely because of these two facets of human nature. Once a policy is in place, people assume that changing it will be very difficult. And, they don’t seem to wonder how many other people are looking at that same policy and thinking exactly the same thing. Or at least, they aren’t curious enough to go and find out.

A few weeks ago, I went to talk to my boss about the issues I ranted about in my last post. As it turns out, she agrees with me on all of the points made—no discussion required. Flexible hours would, apparently, be a good thing in her books. Ditto the ability to work from home, giving employees input into workspace setup, and providing opportunities for personal growth. Even my raise request was received in a fairly positive manner.

But (and you knew there was going to be a but), it seems that in almost every case, there is some bureaucratic hurdle to actually getting it done. First of all, there’s the matter of organizational policy. Inflexible hours are, it seems, a matter of organizational policy. That means that unless I bring in a note from my mom, I’m to be here at 9.

Secondly, although things like working from home, workspace rearchitecting, conference attendance, and raises are not governed by the same hard-and-fast rules, they are subject to a request system that appears to tend invariably toward the negative. Or, at least toward the “we’ll get back to you on that as soon as we get a chance”—i.e., never.

Luckily, I am not much for letting sleeping dogs lie. Especially when someone suggests to me that “creating a groundswell” might precipitate change. Hence (to begin with), I created a little survey to gauge the general feeling on flexible hours. I e-mailed it to everyone in my department. The response was encouraging—about 60% of the department took the survey, and of those, only 1 person thought that work schedule policy should remain as-is.

Unfortunately, I inadvertently violated what I can only assume is an anti-unionization policy—and received a brief dress-down about using organization resources (i.e. e-mail) to circulate my survey.

I remain undaunted, however. This is mostly because people keep asking me about the issue. You know you’ve got a winner when that guy who’s never said a word to you before wants to know all about the status of “the project”.

It should be noted that I am not in any way trying to start a union. I don’t want to be in a union. In fact, I generally disapprove of unions. I do, however, want to do everything possible to enable changes that I think will significantly benefit me, my co-workers, and the organization as a whole.

I wrote a nice note to the CTO, apologizing for my use of work resources, and explaining my motivation. Next, I’ll have to actually create a survey report so that I can pitch flexible work hours to management in general.

It continues to amuse and amaze me that I am the only one who is bugged enough by these policies to try to change them.

Perhaps I don’t have enough work to do.

C,

The issue for me is one of principle: the timekeeping matter seems symptomatic of the general departmental attitude toward team members. Given that the department has such difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified developers, it seems it would be concerned with attempting to provide an environment in which these developers thrive. Yet there are numerous instances of Museum, departmental, and team policies and practices that are particularly onerous to the typical engaged developer.

Specifically:

• The developer is limited to working when and where policy dictates she should work, instead of when and where would result in greatest productivity (although obviously there must be caveats to provide for teamwork)
• Workspace decisions that make a critical difference to day-to-day functionality and the ability to work effectively with other members of the team (such as layout of reconfigurable cubicles) are made without developer input, developer concerns are not addressed in a timely manner, and productivity-enhancing solutions that seem as though they could be implemented with minimal effort become bogged down in endless bureaucracy
• The developer is given the distinct impression that the Museum is unwilling to invest in building her knowledge or in the general health of her career

To address the first point in more detail—being hired on an hourly basis is generally difficult for the developer, as it limits when she can work. The situation is made worse by Museum restrictions on where she can work. It may not be received wisdom, but an engaged developer is continuously frustrated if she cannot work on a project at home. This is largely because programming is a concentration-intense pursuit—in the midst of a project, productivity loss increases exponentially with the time spent unable to tinker with the project. Solutions and ideas that come to a developer in the shower are significantly more likely to be lost forever if she is forced to wait until the next morning to implement them. The effect is magnified in the case where the developer is forced by a household issue to remain at home—it is enormously frustrating to be forced to take a vacation day in order to sit around the house and wait for DSL to be installed, for a plumber to come, etc., when it is clearly possible to enable work from home.

On the related issue of timekeeping policy, it seems that as long as team members are working their assigned number of hours, and are not missing scheduled appointments or responsibilities, the importance of whether our arrival and departure times differ by an hour or two is slight when compared to the benefits of a that flexibility. Notably, all of the advantages I cited in my last e-mail on this topic would be multiplied if the entire team were allowed a bit more flexibility on arrival time.

On the second point—while bureaucracy doubtless plagues employees of every flavor, it is simply alarming that such an enormous drain on productivity and accomplishment could be so widely regarded as immutable. The reluctance to invest in realizing workspace improvements that would increase productivity is difficult to comprehend.

The last point is critical—no individual who is interested in personal growth can be satisfied in an environment that does not offer them opportunities for this, and an individual who is not interested in personal growth is probably not a very valuable employee. The argument that resources should not be expended on team members who are relatively likely to leave the Museum is a circular one: those employees would be much more likely to remain if it appeared that the Museum was actually interested in investing in them by providing opportunities for building knowledge and furthering their careers.

To conclude, I dare to suggest that the Museum could actually save money by addressing these issues—things like flexible hours, the ability to work from home when necessary, input into relevant workspace decisions, and the opportunity to attend industry conferences go a long way toward developer recruitment as well as retention—and the department gains happier, more productive employees.

I would like to claim credit for these arguments, but all have been made many times before, with accompanying real-world evidence. Some good examples:

• Information Week, Flexibility In The Workplace Is An Increasing Concern
• Enterprise Systems, Telecommuting: It Does a Body Good
• Occupational Hazards, The Key to Happiness at Work: Schedule Flexibility
• The Partnership for Public Service, Work/Life Balance and the Federal Employee
• Joel on Software, Bionic Office

I sincerely hope that the department can see its way toward addressing these issues, since at the end of the day, I simply want to be a motivated, challenged, and hence productive employee, working amongst people who share that desire.

Thanks,

Sam