Technology – Page 2 – Alessandro Rossini

I am joining PwC Consulting

26 July 2018

Today I have had my last day at EVRY. The picture shows a glimpse of my farewell gathering, where I presented the history of chocolate-hazelnut spreads. Because sometimes, you have to have fun at work!

Me presenting the history of chocolate-hazelnut spreads at EVRY

It has been great getting to know my colleagues during my time with the company. While I am excited about the new opportunity ahead of me, leaving excellent working relationships is bittersweet.

In two weeks I will start as a Senior Manager in the Business Technology group at PwC Consulting in Oslo. I look forward to learning more about new domains, about management, and about myself.

Deflating hyper-inflated job titles

1 November 2017

As an ex-researcher turned advisor, I still consider several practices of the corporate world as bizarre. One of them caught my attention as soon as I started in my new position this year: hyper-inflated job titles¹ and acronyms. Here is a list of my favourites:

Key Account Manager (KAM)
Personal Assistant (PA)
Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Vice President (VP)

George Carlin would probably have considered this list as “tortured modern language designed to soften reality, make people feel good, and in general dress things up a little.” 🙂 In this post, I aim to show how you could reduce the number of words in these titles and make a better use of the lingua franca we all agreed on.

Footnotes

For simplicity, I will not distinguish between titles, ranks, and roles. ↩

Double standards in Norwegian environmental culture?

12 June 2017

“Norway: Environmental hero or hypocrite?” was the question the Financial Times asked a year ago. As a resident in Norway for the last decade and with a background of research and innovation, I have long been concerned with the same question.

Norway has implemented a number of measures for a green shift. For example, power generation is mainly based on renewable sources, and the number of electric cars per capita is the largest in the world. Nevertheless, the waste volume in Norway increased by 7% while recycling decreased 1% from 2013 to 2014.

Anti-updaters are the IT equivalent of anti-vaxxers

14 May 2017

Unless you have been on Point Nemo for the weekend, you are probably aware of the biggest ransomware outbreak in history: WannaCry. Like any other ransomware, WannaCry could have been avoided by adopting two simple best practices:

Keep your operating systems up-to-date
Take backups regularly

IT professionals have always recommended these best practices. However, there is an increasing number of people who justify disabling automatic updates. I call these people anti-updaters.

Anti-updaters are particularly active among Windows users. They usually claim that Windows Update’s interruptions are impairing their productivity.

We’ve got an update for you