The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog

I’m Anton de Weger and this is how I work March 4, 2014

Next up in the ‘How I work‘ series is Anton de Weger, my first boss in the PeopleSoft world. Anton ran Congruent UK, the consultancy I worked at for 7 great years and I owe much of what I’ve learnt to him. Congruent was – for it’s no longer in existence – full of great consultants, not only in their technical or functional ability, but in a desire to behave ethically for the client – something that came from Anton at the top.

Not only is Anton a great leader, but he’s brilliant technically too. He possesses a ‘Steve Jobs like’ reality distortion field, where all technical tasks somehow seem easier when he’s around. He’s still the only person I’ve ever seen – when there was a network outage – fire up a blank notepad session and write an SQR from scratch.

Anton has since returned to Australia where he’s currently working on a 9.2 upgrade.

Name: Anton de Weger

Occupation: PeopleSoft Consultant / Project Manager
Location: Melbourne Australia
Current computer: Metabox (Win7, 16GB RAM, SSD, Radeon 6900M) third in a line of luggable powerhouses that can warm my lunch as well as run a PeopleSoft VM or two.
Current mobile devices: iPhone 5s
I work: I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with PeopleSoft these days.  I’ve been trying to get away from the application for a while, but it still keeps pulling me back in.  I dislike the lack of development and focus on PeopleSoft from Oracle, and I feel this is limiting the potential for new blood and enthusiasm in the market.  Also, is it just me or are PeopleSoft implementations getting harder? My personal view is that the off-shoring and out-sourcing of the project teams are counteracting the benefits and efficiency of projects. However, in the end I love PeopleTools as a corporate computing platform and I think its flexibility and structure are underappreciated.  I’m driven by solving problems and feeling like I’m making a difference to my customers and if I can link that up with an occasional good technical challenge and a good team then I’m happy.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Snag-It: There is always a need for screen shots, whether you are doing Technical, Functional or Project Management work.
Podcasts: For the commute into work, either educational or humorous.
Notepad++: moving to this as a general text editor from previous preferences for UltraEdit and TextPad.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without?
Now that I’m getting a bit older, I’m not as tied to having the latest gadget and I am quite enjoying challenging myself outside the technology field. This Christmas I was disappointed when I was able to get mobile coverage at our remote hobby farm (home to 13 beef cattle and 220 acres of grass and trees), where I like to go to escape the world.

What’s your workspace like?
Wherever the client wants me, which being a consultant is normally in the corner, or wherever they can find space. At home it looks like this.

What do you listen to while you work?
It depends on my mood, but industrial/gothic is high on the list, as is a bit of Electronica to help speed things along.

What PeopleSoft-related productivity apps do you use?
Notepad++, Toad, PeopleBooks, Google Search and 20 years of previous projects, documents and notes pretty much covers me for most eventualities. The Oracle Virtual Machine PeopleSoft installs are also pretty cool, but only rarely used when onsite.

Do you have a 2-line tip that some others might not know?
PeopleSoft Directory, allows you to connect to Active Directory and the PeopleCode behind the Test page can be used to build an Active Directory interface using the Business Interlink.

What SQL/Code do you find yourself writing most often?
Always the effective date/effective sequence joins to JOB.  I really need to sort out a macro for that.

What would be the one item you’d add to PeopleSoft if you could?
A bit better vision from Oracle, so that customers didn’t have to beg to get PeopleSoft sold to them.  Preconfigured Global Payroll templates for countries.  OK, that’s two items, but the first is just a gripe.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?
At one stage I think I had the largest SQR delivered by PeopleSoft…  I knew it was the largest, as to add an extra line of code, you had to remove one from somewhere else.  I’d probably say I’m reasonably good at working between tech teams, functional teams and the business.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
I.T. is not about the software, it’s about the people.  If projects were about the software, you would press a button and it would be done.