The Apprentice: MafiaScum - Someone Hired!

[iamausername]

As the new arrival, I think I need to prove my worth as soon as possible, so if the rest of you are OK with it, I'd like to put myself forward as PM for this task.

[iamausername]

iamausername

, what did you contribute to this task?

I gave my thoughts on the rest of the team's ideas during our brainstorming session, and I came up with the tagline "The sweetest surprise is the price" for our advertisement. I will hold up my hands and admit that this is a pretty lacklustre contribution, but almost every other member of the team gave just as little, if not less.

JDodge was our picker, and after he'd reported in with our product name, he did absolutely nothing. I think he picked the best name of the three, and when he told us the other team had chosen 'iProbe', I thought we were at a huge advantage there, and ought to have it in the bag, and looking at what the other team produced, I have to say I was right. We really should have won this task.

KMD came up with a product suggestion before we even had the name, which was not surprisingly totally unsuited to it, and that was the only thing he did. Just totally useless.

I think some of the negative comments about Max's leadership are somewhat fair, he really didn't give a lot of direction to the team. But he did come up with some ideas that were at the very least actually relevant to the task. If it was down to me, I'd fire KMD.

[iamausername]

Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Also, the results seem to suggest that we stand to gain by mixing with the other team. Voting yes to a reshuffle.

[iamausername]

I would like to recommend Porochaz as our Project Manager for the next task, as I want everyone to have equal experience in the PM role. Second choice is obviously iam.

QFT.

[iamausername]

iamausername and pickemgenius will face off in

Quadradius

(www.quadradius.com)

Just one match, no best 2 of 3 or anything, right?

peg, I'll be around pretty much all day Wednesday/Thursday, so whenever you get on, PM me.

[iamausername]

Flat to Sphere + 2x + Grow Quadradius + Kamikaze Row = MASSIVE GENOCIDE

[iamausername]

iamausername

, in retrospect, do you think you made the right delegations?

I do think I made the right delegations, given the information available to me. I'll just explain my thought processes for why I made the choices that I did:

I know I'm a pretty weak chess player, so I wasn't going to put myself in for that. I looked through the rest of the team's post histories, and found that JDodge has played a couple of chess games on the forum, and I figured that anyone who's interested enough in the game to be playing it on MS must have at least some skill. I didn't find any reason to believe that either of the other two would be better, so JDodge got chess.

I knew I was either going to assign either myself or + to Quadradius, since he played in the QR tournament, and I know I'm pretty good at the game. That left either Ultimate Bullseye or Chinese Checkers for Porochaz, and since I knew he had limited time available, Ultimate Bullseye obviously would have been the wrong choice, so it had to be chinese checkers.

So the one decision I really struggled with was which of myself and + to put on QR, and which to put on UB. And since those were the two games we won, I don't think there's any grounds to argue that I made the wrong choice there.

Who should I fire?

Between the two that lost their games, I think JDodge has been the better performer throughout the competition, so I'd have to say Porochaz should be the one to go.

[iamausername]

Personally, I would say iam; his predecessor did nothing, and

he honestly hasn't done anything worth mentioning

. In the picture-finding task, he even supplied the tool which I used to find the majority of the images for the task. He was just too lazy to use it. Meanwhile, Porochaz has mostly been busy with other things and has a 1-0 record as Project Manager.

I don't think one can have a 1-0 record and have it said they've done almost nothing for the team.

I was PM on the previous task, we won, so I had a 1-0 record at that time. So basically, you're completely contradicting yourself here.

And as far as "too lazy to use it", that's just utter bullshit. You found four of the images using the tool that, as you say, I supplied (and without which, we would have had a lot fewer images to submit). I found two that I posted, plus one I rejected based on the assumption that the size of the images had to match (and that one was one of the four you found). I later found two more images in the right size that we'd already found in the wrong size. I made a wrong assumption, sure, but I was absolutely not lazy in that task.

I think I may have a better chance at chess... but iam wouldnt have known that.

This is my point. For all I knew, Porochaz could have had absolutely no idea how to even play chess. I stand by my decision.

I never had the patience to finish a game

In fact, the only reason I was in the chess tournament to begin with was to fill out the field.

Information that I did not have. There was nothing in the chess tournament thread to indicate that you didn't sign up purely because you wanted to, and your stated reason for dropping out was that you didn't have the time, not that you didn't have the interest. I don't see why I should have assumed you were lying.

Let me ask you, how do you think I should have assigned the games? How would you have done it?

He has now failed a task as PM and honestly off the top of my head I cant think of anything useful he has done...

I've also WON a task as PM. That was pretty useful, I think.

There was also no contact or advice which would have been nice considering he didnt know how good we were at the game...

I'd have loved to contact the team before making the delegations, so that I could actually make an informed decision, but I was strictly forbidden from doing so. Afterwards, there really wasn't a lot of point; I'm not a good chess player, and I don't even know how to play chinese checkers, so there really wasn't any advice I could offer beyond "try to win the game", which would have been more than a little bit patronising.

And, for the record, when he didn't post in this thread at all the day the tasks went up, I did send a PM to + to make sure that he was aware that the task had started. Beyond that, there really wasn't anything to do as a manager; this task was about individual skills, not the ability to work in a team. But I think I proved on the previous task that I can manage effectively when teamwork

is

on the table.