An article I noticed over on Builder.com this morning is something that maybe you'd want to secretly send to your boss - or maybe, if you just don't care, slap a hard copy of it on his/her desk. The title, Lessons for IT managers: Employees will leave if they don't get recognition, really says it all...It's the human condition to want recognition for work that you've done. You've slaved over that piece of code, optimizing and tweaking to get it working just right, and all you get is a "thanks" or "good job". In this article they give you a few scenarios and some good recommendations on how you should play it out. Most of these are pretty good advice, especially when it comes to being more assertive in the workplace. I personally think too many techies are less than forceful when it comes to life in the cube. (Note: the Builder.com URLs are goofy with a session ID in them, so you might need to just go here instead)

Over on DevArtciles.com this morning they have a new book excerpt from the Wrox book "Beginning XML". As anyone who's anyone knows, XML is one of the cooler technologies to come along in years and is only just now getting the recognition and use that it really needs to stick around. As loyal readers out there also know, I love XML - and what better way to get started with it than by picking up this book. They give a good chunk of one of the chapters in this article with tons of examples...enjoy!

Last, but not least, I wanted to do something for a friend - there is a PHP Coding Contest that the guys over on CodeWalkers.com are trying to start up, and I wanted to see how much interest there might be in something like this. He tries to do this bi-weekly, so there would be some space between entries. Would you do it if there were prizes (other than recognition) involved? What kind of challenges would you like to see here? Comment below....