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Dot-Com Work Culture Making a Comeback?
jeebus writes "This week a Deloitte study has shown that high on the agenda of CEOs around the world is the shortage of tech talent. Is a shortage of talented geeks in the market seeing a return of the dot-com culture with foosball tables, beanbags, and inflated salaries used to entice talented workers? Welcome to Web 2.0 work culture, the future of yesterday. 'Global recruitment companies were telling prospecting employees that they were no longer going to be employed just because they were a technical guru. They were going to have to learn to dress, communicate, and adapt all the traditional corporate ideals that IT has been exempt from during the dot-com boom. Fast forward to Web 2.0 and while workplaces aren't as cheesy with their decor as they were were in the late '90s, and developers aren't getting paid $100K for being HTML and JavaScript jockeys, geeks just aren't chuffed with corporate culture.'"
I'm an excellent slacker... err superstar geek programmer.
yea cant wait for DotComBurst 2.0
It's going to come up, so let me save you all some time:
From The English to American Dictionary
I really haven't seen any hard evidence that all that many 'web jockeys' were getting some $100k salary, unless they lived in the valley, where cost of living is so bad that 100k is practically minimum wage unless you take the bus 2 hours to work. Does anyone have any stats to back up what the average dot-com era 'web jockey' salary was compared with today?
stuff |
You see this kind of thing happen whenever demand for IT professionals goes up because of the common perception that IT people are 'geeks/nerds' who are willing to take compensation in the form of casual wear and beanbag chairs instead of in salary... Given that the company is interested in its own bottom line, which is cheaper, a pinball machine or giving everyone a raise?
Thank God Sony gave me this great job developing games for the PS3.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I worked at a DOT BURSTER in 2000, in big wide open space in the burbs, and they had free pizza every Fridays, everyone could wear jeans, I could roll in more or less whenever I wanted, and we all had potentially millions of dollars in soon to be worthless stock options. When hired they asked me if I wanted Linux, or Windows, or both. All of our servers were named after Transformers.
Now, I have a little cubicle, a company issued notebook running Windows XP, and no stock options. All of our servers are named based on an established IBM numbering system. I get to work from home a bit more but that's only because I commute 4 hours a day.
Sure, this gig pays more, but the work environment is not nearly the same. There's no heady optimism about the future, and that, really, when you think about it, the collapse of the dot net boom and worse, the later ruling about expensing stock options, and then the war, this decade has been utterly depressing.
This is my sig.
I can get as much done as 20 Indian outsourcers. They let me work from home.
With the relaxed atmosphere we're very productive because people are just happy to work here.
Deloitte has been involved with the re-write of the Texas Health and Human Services eligibility software for the last 3 years. They were fired early on for software that did not work...the new developers have not repaired the software and are losing their contract in November. Guess who has been rehired? Deloitte.
A shortage of talent was Deloitte's biggest problem and I expect it still is...with companies like Deloitte out there you can be assured that the there will be another crash.
Sorry this is a rant against a company that is making my life hell...don't hire Deloitte if you want to succeed!
Having to wear nicer (read: more expensive) clothing is a cost, both in terms of purchasing clothes and the time it takes to put them on and iron them (it takes more time to button up a shirt and tie a tie than to toss on a T-shirt). Plus, it's more comfortable. It's probably worth 1-2% of my salary to avoid wearing such things. (Of course, it's a personal preference- it's probably worth 10-20% for my boss, who's picky about such things, and ~0.5% to another coworker, who doesn't mind dressing up, but still sees a slight advantage to not doing so).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Goodbye, pants!
I've been working in IT since just after the bubble burst (I graduated in CompSci mid-2003 and joined a corporate graduate scheme at a time when you were grateful for any IT job at all) and to be honest the corporations can keep their bean-bags, I'd just like my salary to be brought in line with those who survived the crash and are still on incredibly inflated salaries.
Here in London, a web expert (read: someone who knows a bit of HTML/CSS/Javascript and has been working in IT since around 2000) can easily be on £60k-£70k, which equates to $120k-$140k, as a result of being in the right place at the right time during the last boom. Someone just starting out in the profession with the same skills would have been lucky to get £25k after a couple of years experience until recently. The recent Web 2.0 boom and a shortage of people with the right skills means that the salary gap is now closing, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
Then there will be a corresponding increase in salaries to attract good employees... Which strangely hasn't happened, so it can't be much of a shortage.
Deleted
Was at a rising star in the .com market, we all dressed casual, company parties were beer bashes, people were over-paid, schedules were relaxed, it was great, I was stoked with my career choice.
Then the bubble burst, I was laid off, ended up consulting at various stuffy corporate entities that one could barely laugh without the PC police finding you, dressing in business/business casual with rigid hourly requirements, bosses expecting you to work late/weekend to fix their lack of planning/understanding problems...that sucked ass...
It seems jobs are ripe for the taking again, and I am now pretty happy working at a middle of the road cultured place, business casual, relaxed schedule, decent pay and fun people...not everything, but at least something I don't dread going to every day, which is nice.
dB Masters
"They were going to have to learn to dress, communicate, and adapt all the traditional corporate ideals that IT has been exempt from during the dot-com boom."
IT was never exempt from communication, as IT is all ABOUT communication. Learning to dress usually means adhering to an arbitarily strict dress code that interferes with the nature of IT work to begin with. Ever try to set up a work station while wearing a suit and tie or something similar? You end up fighting your clothes more than the probelm at hand.
And corporate ideals aren't exactly something that I feel good about taking part in. Corporate ideals, for the most part, are trying to figure out how to save the company millions while keeping your mouth shut about anything shady the higher ups are doing. If we went by what people do rather than say, most corporate ideals could be summarized as 'looking for the golden parachute' or 'going to the company picnic to weasel my way into a promotion'.
There's a good reason the dot com companies didn't adhere to most of these. One, if you're working with an open minded crew, dress code doesn't matter aside from a few very basic rules. Two, ideals mean NOTHING if they aren't followed. You can bitch about how its all for the workers all you want, but when you give yourself a nice fat bonus over your workers, all of that just went out the window.
I call it breaking tradition. Tradition is you sit down, shut up, and do your job and whatever else they can trick you into doing. You're to dress up like good little sheeple and make sure not to look any of the higher ups in the eye.
IT people by nature are used to being different. They're used to thinking for themselves, because its probably the only reason they've survived into the IT field far enough to be employed for it. We aren't used to keeping our mouths closed while being treated like shit, or putting on four layers of expensive clothes just to dirty them up by rewiring the networking cabinet.
I wish it could be a wakeup call for all jobs that don't deal with customers/clients face-to-face. Just because the person processing your invoices is wearing a suit and tie doesn't mean he isn't forwarding your account information to his shady cousin. Nor does it mean he isn't talking smack about his co-workers or fantasizing about the new girl down in Advertising. All it means is he's wearing a suit beacuse someone made a policy saying that he had to.
It doesn't even look better than business-casual.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Where are these high-paying IT jobs with fun working conditions?
Is it still the case that every job offering in IT requires "minimum 15 years AJAX experience" (or something equally stupid) as was the case when I graduated a few years ago?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
the blue collar workers nowadays. In the old days it were only coal miners, poor factory workers. But nowadays its the IT too. Not very high pay, long working hours. Very seperate sitting place, never included in most normal activities. Always stick together, etc etc.
I think going into IT was the worst decision I could have ever made.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
The reason there is a shortage is that those who were burned the first time wont go back and those that haven't been burned yet have been forewarned by those that have. Very few outside the upper echelons of the .com companies of the 90's saw any real benefit from the .com era the vast majority got hosed. Empty promises, foosball and free juice worked the first time but I can't see many falling for it again. Everyone I worked with in my two experiences with the .com era have moved out of the corporate world and are either with small companies or working as consultants, a few have left the field entirely.
I recently received a call from the Recruiter that hired me on to my last corporate job. I was told the company I was laid off from was looking to hire me back. I told me the whole dog and pony show was starting back up, that the culture had changed and this time would be different and this time it wouldn't be a complete waste of five years of my life. I thought about it for five seconds and told her that I would just as soon bathe in hot lava than go back. She sounded a little upset, and proceeded to tell me that so far she was 0-12 in trying to lure back the folks I worked with. Guess I wasn't alone.
Managers realized we would take a pay cut for the honor of wearing a tshirt and jeans to work.
Not that I'm complaining.....totally worth it.
If there's one thing that bothered me about the dot-com culture, it was all the wasted money on crap like foosball tables. I don't like corporate culture either, but for god's sake people have some perspective and MODERATE! Here are some plain truths that few people want to admit to:
1. Someone who actually knows what they're doing when it comes to computers is not a business person or an executive. A lot of people who dream about jobs in the technology sector always imagine that it somehow leads to the top of the glass tower and a corner office. It doesn't and it shouldn't. If you want that and you have middling to poor technical skills, then you're not cut out for technology. Instead you should go straight for that MBA now. Sure, there's the very rare and occasional individual who is very good with computers and also has business acumen, but you really have to look far and wide to find these strange hybrids. Most business people just aren't that good at computers other than using Office, maybe some SQL and that's about it. (This is not meant to insult anyone BTW)
2. A good software developer writes applications that are meant to be run as binaries. Sorry web folks, you're not software developers. At the very best, you are WEB application developers. At worst, you're still coding static HTML pages and trying to get that six figure job. Yes, web developers are necessary. Yes, web developers are quite talented. But web developers are rarely well versed in C or C++. However, many web developers have a leg up on software developers in the visual department though. Not always, but more often than not.
3. Everything I said about the web developers above? It all applies in reverse to the software developers. As always, there are some exceptions, but they are rare. Software developers should typically not try to write web applications. At best, you'll wind up re-inventing something some other web developer has already done that's ten times better. At worst, you'll wind up with some ugly monstrosity of a web page that isn't user friendly and while the backend might be super efficient, it won't actually do a lot. Stick to software development, it's a different creature altogether. If you are dead set on becoming a web developer, then try REALLY hard NOT to bring much of what you know about UI design (which tends to be little) to the web app side. Remember that the web is primarily a visual medium, including the text. It has to look at least as good as it works.
4. Microsoft based developers are totally different animal. A lot of you are quite talented within your own realm and can whip up some fantastic stuff much faster than your Java and Unix based C using counterparts in terms of look and feel and reusable objects. (The only possible exception being the QT/KDE folks in Unix land) And the subsets of development apply to you as well. There are those of you who develop web apps and those of you who develop applications for use on the desktop. Once again, it's a rare person who can cross those boundaries and do well on both sides. So stick to your side of the development space, unless you want to make a major career change and can actually let go of what you know and take on a totally different mindset.
5. IT computer and network admins are also not executive or "office" positions. A lot of people seem to think that working in IT means a clean office, and you get to wear suits or at the very least business casual. You're wrong. Computer and network admins tend to be the grunts who crawl under desks in a lot of small to medium sized businesses. If you happen to be lucky enough to work in a large or global business, then it's possible that your position will be considered close to but not quite "suit"-ish. Again, if that's what you want, you're better off focusing on the MBA with a minor in CS.
But the bottom line here is that people who really know what they're doing with computers are rarely business people. They are rarely cut out to function within c
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It is said that the first men to visit America believed that they had accidentally found Paradise, a second Garden of Eden. In the narrative of his third voyage, for example, Christopher Columbus wrote: 'For I believe that the earthly Paradise lies here,' and fifty years later the French essayist Michel de Montaigne was even more effusive: "In my opinion what we actually see in these nations surpasses all the pictures which the poets have drawn of the Golden Age..."
The guy who gave up $40K p.a. to go to Google is no different. And heck, maybe Web 2.0 even *is* going to be golden...for him and for many others too.
I am not an IT person but an electrical engineer and all I can say is why would you care about beanbags and pinball machines? It is more about the attitude of the people you are working with as well as the company. I would rather work hard, enjoy my work and come off with some sense of achievement than dick around all day.
I say that it's about time I got some just compensation the hard work of being a geek. It's not easy you know! If they really want geeks to work for them they should provide women co-workers in the workplace along with the beanbags and videogames.
TWD - TheWhiteDragon
Visit my weblog
Lets face it, many of the IT people were burned during the dot com bust (I still think it was the Y2K bust more than dot com's) We have grown and learned from our mistakes. Many of us have learned how business works, where things can go wrong, and just how the system works. Now it is our turn ;)
I know I have a list.
#1) Do not take options in place of pay.
#2) Do not accept the 50% of your salary now and 50% based on a bonus when the company is profitable.
#3) Do not accept titles in place of raises. Titles are useless.
#4) Make sure the company has a business plan, funding, and a clear way to become profitable.
#5) If something smells funny in accounting, RUN!!! ( If we pay you 45% of your pay as an employee, 40% as a 1099 contractor, 10% in stock options, and 5% in cash, you get to keep more of your money. Or my favorite your pay is $93,000 and your first check comes in and the math only comes up to $85,000. When you ask you find that it is $93,000 - ($1788*3 weeks vacation) - ($1788x 1 week sick leave) In other words, they are not paying for your vacation or time off but offered it when you were hired. )
#6) Do not work more than 55 hours a week unless they are paying overtime.
#7) Document EVERYTHING! Every offer they make needs to be in writing, every promise, everything.
#8) If you want it, negotiate it when being hired!
Any one want to add to this list?
What I wear is the least of my [and my employers] worries. I show up, work a mostly honest full day, and get results. All that matters. How I'm dressed, how many free sodas are in the fridge, etc, shouldn't matter.
:-)
And honestly, there is nothing wrong with perks at the office. You spend 1/3rd of your day there, might as well be a place you feel comfortable and can relax when need to.
Wish my office had an air hockey table
tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
and developers aren't getting paid $100K for being HTML and JavaScript jockeys
Yes, now they're being paid $100K for being HTML and CSS and JavaScript jockeys. What a huge difference.
I hope the author recognizes the differences between a taxi cab driver and F1 driver. Because HTML/JS has low entry bar doesn't mean you can pay 50 bucks to a random college kid and have Google maps with draggable/adaptable routes in a week.
Granted, I've never worked in the true dot-com environment...ok, we did have a foosball table but it kept getting moved because people who were working through lunch kept complaining, but why is this still important to people? Maybe I'm just a cynical old fart (sheesh...at 28?), but I'd much rather have:
1. Better salary.
2. Better defined work hours.
3. No perks like pizza fridays, wearing jeans to work (which I still do) and free soda.
rather than:
1. Lower salary.
2. Work all day.
3. But we got great perks! It's free pizza friday, so you can stay and work until 8pm!
Seriously, why does anyone who has ever worked in on at least 1 corporate job still fall for this?
They want you to know that points 2 and 3 won't be valid in a couple more years, unless you insist on writing web apps with 1999 technology.
I survived the Dot Com Bust very well, thank you. Here's what I did:
1) I only worked for Cash, not Options.
2) Keep good developers, not wanna-bees. Fire the rest, or move to a different department. If you can't do that, put them on projects that can't derail the important tasks.
3) Learn the core business you're dealing with, not just the code.
4) Ask how they plan to make money. Really. Ask. Ask the President, the VC's, everyone. If you don't like the answer, give them less of your time.
5) Stay independent. Be a contractor for several organizations. If one gets hurt, you have multiple revenue streams.
6) After things crash, companies will try to fire whole departements, not realizing until it is too late that their function is core to the business. Step in to cover the work as needed.
7) Profit.
I'm a software engineer in his late 20s who got an early start in his career during the dotcom boom. I've worked or consulted for Global Crossing, IBM, Xerox (two different contracts, two different periods, two different CEOs), Gannett, a major vision care provider, as well as a number of statups and small businesses. In 98, 99, 2000, the tech places were lax. The startups were lax. The small businesses were lax -- I know guys who slept on the couch and wore the same clothes for most of the week ... or month. IBM, however, was still a ball-buster -- shirt and tie. Xerox (non-software department, but software job) was biz-casual. Global Crossing, fairly casual, though not quite as much as the two prior.
... more, or larger, clothing -- plenty of fat hairy geek belly button on display in some dark corners. I now work for a major US vision care provider ... I was interviewed by, among others, a guy in a raggedy t-shirt and shorts, sporting a few tattoos. Some days, they want us wearing a shirt and tie if there's an on-site customer or potential customer visit. Most of the time, it's biz-casual (no jeans, except for Fridays) and summers, it's super biz casual -- jeans and t-shirts OK.
Then of course the dot com bomb and 9/11 roll through. After consulting for a small business, I ended up at Gannett -- biz casual. After a few years there, I worked a contract at Xerox for the Software Development Infrastructure team, part of Xerox Office Services - Global Services. T-shirts and jeans were practically the rule. Some people needed to wear
Here in upstate NY, I don't see a lot of change in the culture over the past eight years or so. When it comes to clothes, hair, piercings, tattoos, big companies tend to be stiffer, more conservative. Smaller companies tend to be more relaxed. It's simply the nature of the beast.
I am, therefore you think.
As a general matter of principle, I really do not see how it would matter if the employees in your 'geek pit' wear a tie or not. If they are not seen by clients or customers, then what does it really matter?
The excesses of the dot com boom were a result of companies spending money on things that did not really help (like expensive Aeron chairs that they did not really need). As the capitolists among us will happily point out, if this is a bad idea, the company will pay for it in the end.
END COMMUNICATION
The big reason for this so-called "shortage" is that there is no real career path and no job security for computer programmers.
When you throw out a programmer when he's 35-40, and he can't find a job in the industry, what kind of incentive is there to spend 5 or more years of your life preparing for such a career?
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Is paid for in cash.
Deleted
The idea of someone being "good" with HTML is hilariously outdated.
I disagree. Someone truly skilled at XHTML/CSS can make a lot of money even today. I know multiple people who are doing just that. Faster rendering, easier maintainability, and protection from vendor lock-in are very compelling reasons for having a skilled XHTML/CSS developer do the work. It's not programming, but it can be extremely important. Just ask one of the many Fortune 500 companies that are still hamstrung by reliance on WYSIWYG tools that generate table-driven layouts and spaghetti code.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I would rather work hard, enjoy my work and come off with some sense of achievement than dick around all day.
You posted this on Slashdot, at 10:15 AM.
On a more serious note - IMHO, dicking around is important to being an engineer. I can't work a problem unless I see the whole thing. Sometimes I just don't see it, and can't work until I do. And that means sitting around staring out windows for hours on end. Or posting on Slashdot. It doesn't look like work, but it is.
If foosball centers you and takes you to the place where you find your answers - go play foosball. Anything that produces a net gain at the end of the day is worth doing.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
i wonder why web 2.0 hype comes up in every piece of crap about IT.
let me tell you what i see that creates the talented tech shortage - internet is a freeing medium - it has given much opportunity to anyone.
almost all programmers, developers, techies go set up their own small, even home-based shops and work from there for themselves, after getting screwed in a corporate environment for 5-10 years and getting fed up with it. the newcomers are just taking the example of their older peers, and directly going to self-employment after short stints.
and also theres the booming internet business - everyone is wanting some internet store, some tailored cms, some web presence and stuff. it is on the increase, and even in l.a.m.p. scene where there are many 3rd world country located developers doing work for $3 hourly rates, the tech supply can barely meet the demand. more developers coming into the scene, yet more work is coming. so its not 'web 2.0' or whatever crap that is involved in making web pages more widgety and doohickeyish - its a silent, people's boom in business in contrast to company/startup boom of the 90s, which was more traditional business than the small business boom that is on the net nowadays.
no sir, the reason thats creating the shortage is in internet business is booming, and what is booming is small businesses. small businesses do not put any restraints on the contracted or full time developers they work with or employ. hence people are escaping the clutches of stuffing, stressful corporate structure and setting up their shops.
and this is going to be like this increasingly, unless the corporations understand the need to reform and change the corporate philosophy to a more human oriented one rather than a "man in black suits" / "welcome to the world of career bitches" one.
Read radical news here
The sad truth is that many businesses, including my present employer, force draconian IP ownership agreements upon their employees as a condition for continued employement. Mine claims ownership of anything I develop during my term of employment (retroactive to my start date, since the documents came out 6 years after I started), whether on my time or theirs, and extending 6 months past my termination date.
Yes, yes, I know you ardent idealists will want to deride me for signing such an agreement, but:
1) I only tinker as a coder (I have other things to do when I'm not at work), so I'm not likely to develop anything of value under the agreement.
2) In my state, employment is "at will", which means there is no implied employment contract. They can get rid of any employee at any time for (just about) any reason. Of course, we employees are "free" to do the same--quit whenever we want [hmm...somehow I think such arrangements favor only one side of the deal--you think!].
3) I have a family--and a large one at that. When handed a piece of paper at a staff meeting and told "sign and return this before the end of the month or you cannot remain employed," I did what I needed to do to keep the job. I can't afford a months-long job search, continuance rates for post-employment medical coverage, or the prospect of "starting over" at another company without planning and foresight (were it a planned, volitional move, it would be fine).
So, if you are working for a company that hasn't gone all IP-over-your-backside, be thankful and code away. I do have some fine ideas I'd like to pursue, but I'm not writing a single line until six months and a day after I leave my present employer (perhaps as soon as they finish paying for my graduate degree--a departure that would be on my own terms).
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Yeah, programmers are being offered free Chutney and the Mango-Lassies keep flowing.
Some even offer free airfare (one-way) to India.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
IT has become such a yo-yo field of late. Don't forget to save for the bad times, because they WILL come. During recessions, companies don't do any new development because they switch to survivle mode and existing software can do what it does without much service, and thus software development work grinds to a hault. You've been warned.
Table-ized A.I.
I think good server hostnames in a large shop should indicate function, production vs test environment and location. It would be miserable to create a similar system without codes. For example:i ronment], or act-den-dba-05p
- database servers - mythological gods
- test servers - trickster gods
- dev servers - evil gods
- prod servers - good gods
- atlanta servers - greek gods
- phoenix servers - norse gods
- denver servers - celtic gods
So, shit - what am I going to do when I end up with four test servers in Phoenix? There was only 1 trickster god in norse mythology. Ok, so maybe the plus side is that you get to have a lot of interesting debates about the gods while at work. But I just don't think this works as well as a simple convention like: [organization]-[location]-[function]-[number][env
I do miss that heady optimism tho. Like the way I thought I'd be retiring by the age of 50 back then and now I'm hoping to retire to working as a big box store greeter.
I've read through the whole thread up to here and have some input:
a. I, for one, don't think Suits are a bad thing, depending on your pay and your 'look.' Some people just look really dam good in a suit lol. But, requiring suits for developers and admins and whatnot is kind of like ehhh... not so good.
b. What is with people surviving on 35-40k? Where do you live? Around here (North of Boston) that's "I drive a 97 hatchback civic and live in a shitty one bedroom with no money in the bank" wages. I dropped out of college but at 21 with a few years experience or if you did stick with college at 21 with a degree in CS and some application you are lookin at 50-55k minimum.
Recently I was looking for a job, in the city I was offered 65k by two companies... for mid level Linux stuff. Now I can't comment on Microsoft IT positions, but these people in the city are hard up for knowledgable Linux people, and they were pretty "dot commish." Now I don't know if this is a sign of two dot oh, but that's what it's like here. The company I am at now tells me there is a shortage of qualified Linux people, so maybe that's it.
"If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind."
In college I worked for a company who did 10 hour days, Monday/Tuesday, Wednesday off, and then Thursday/Friday. It was pure heaven. It makes life into short little two day weeks. Tuesday night becomes like a Friday since you don't have to work the next day, and then you get a weekday to either wear off what you did the night before or get errands and stuff done during the week when things are less busy. Then Thursday/Friday and the normal weekend. The only two days that kind of suck then are Monday and Thursday.
Absolutely the best work schedule ever, plus it cuts down on commuting since you are missing the standard rush hours, and since you are already at work the extra hour or two is no big deal when the reward is a full day off. I could care less about fluffy crap and I don't need to be treated like a superstar or anything, just let me work smarter and have an equal amount of time for my real life.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
As a learned poster pointed out, it's cheaper to offer beanbag chairs and free soft drinks than it is to compensate people well, but it seems compensation is also rising somewhat. The real issue here is that quality minds detest the narrow appearance-based logic of corporate culture, and they're always cutting out toward the frontier. The same thing is true of writers, of space pioneers, and inventors as it is of computer geeks. When too many people get into the room, the job at hand becomes a secondary function to how it appears to others.
If geeks are smart, they'll channel FOSS ideology into corporate culture as a right and a demand. We want:
Right now, the corporates are hoping to buy us off with a bolt of fabric and a foosball table. Who's going to step up and articulate what all creative minds really want, which is a chance to work on interesting projects for the good of humanity, with all the fear, uncertainty, doubt and boring ties left behind?
technical writing / development
"IT people by nature are used to being different. They're used to thinking for themselves, because its probably the only reason they've survived into the IT field far enough to be employed for it. We aren't used to keeping our mouths closed while being treated like shit, or putting on four layers of expensive clothes just to dirty them up by rewiring the networking cabinet."
So, "IT people" are different, but all the same.
Yes, very insightful.
I worked IT at one place where there were secretaries making more money then IT staff. Explain that one to me.
You may want to check to see if your company has placed any H1B notices lately, or if you already see them onsite.
Especially if you're in the area these artful dodgers practice law.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
During the DotCom 1.0, knowing a dozen of HTML markup and copy-pasting some javascript functions were enough to be called a "web guru". Knowadays, with CSS, AJAX, security issues, DHTML, in order to be hired as a web developper one needs to have more expertise.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I think this has more to do with a shift in the programming market from desktop-based apps to online web-applications. In a lot of cases this makes sense, as it leaves you with a centralized point for updates and databases - independent of any individual machine - which could be accessed in theory from anywhere in the world. The advent of things such as AJAX which reduces page-loads and makes programs a little more seemless seems to help as well.
I've been seeing a decent number of jobs requiring PHP, ASP, Perl, Java, etc skills, and less so with C/C++ skills in the last while. It's not quite the same as the web-boom of ages previous, where any jack could make a wad of cash hosting sites on cheap servers, or developing HTML/JavaScript pages. Script-based languages still require a good deal of skill to program in properly, especially with the security angles and concerns of having a page available to so many people.
Yes, I know it's from 2002, but this is the same firm that hates US citizens not in their firm or in non-business form, and has a video of their deeds.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Having mainly worked part-time since the dot-com crash in order to look after my kids I recently started to think about returning to proper employment (Ive been consulting/freelancing mainly) on the 3 days a week that I now dont have responsibility for my children. You'd think that in 2007 a good proportion of employers would have worked out that family friendly working conditions (flexitime, part-time, telework) would be the key to getting and keeping skilled (20 years IT experience, 1st class honours degree) employees. However (from cwjobs) :-
- 11,607 jobs listed in London.
- 9 Jobs listed as part-time.
- 0 Jobs listed as offering flexitime.
- 3 Jobs listed as job-share.
- 0 Jobs listed as offering teleworking.
If pizzas and pool tables ARE making a comeback due to skill shortages; I'd suggest the skill shortage actually lies with HR who are unable to recognise the benifits they need to offer to get us "more mature" employees back into the marketplace.
I'm bringing Geeky back, those other Geeks don't know how to act.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I don't know about most geeks, but I don't care to compete on foosball -- I'm a loner (now a Defender box, that's another story).
I've been working from my home for three years now for a software firm 600 miles away... and I'm not just a code-hacker (in fact, I'm supposed to start weaning myself from coding all together), I'm a product manager and direct the product management group and set strategy for the company.
First off, dress code: the HQ office is reasonably casual (although they've had an anti-jeans-and-sneaks backlash lately, it doesn't get enforced), but hey it's 10:30AM and I'm wearing my bathrobe. If there wasn't a nice cool breeze and I want the windows open, I might not be wearing that (don't want to scare the neighbors).
Second, commute: I haven't calculated the carbon footprint change, but I'm sure driving less than I did three years ago. I'm sleeping later than I did at the previous job, and spending more time with my family.
Third, health: No flickering flourescents, no cube noise, I've had fewer headaches and I'm more productive. I've managed to not gain weight even with a pantry full of gourmet food downstairs. I'm also getting mid-day exercise and don't care if I come back needing a shower -- there's one right over there!
Yeah, I miss out on picnics and friday pizza (somebody's got to get on that Wonkavision stuff, or at least a pizza-capable fax -- no wait, that must be what Domino's uses already, I could skip that)
Design for Use, not Construction!
Currently I work in a place that makes office space look like a relaxing day. I hate this place, the IT staff is treated like part timers in a retail chain, they can't keep anyone for longer then 18 months. I would work anywhere where the management is nice, relaxed, and relaizes that the best way to get techies to work is to keep them happy, I know many techs that are willing to go above and byond the call for some nicness in the workplace. They could pay me half of what I'm worth if they geve me benifits, let me wear jeans and a t-shirt, and gave me a break room that I could watch my movies on my personal laptop without being yelled at. The long and short of it is they treated techs like crap for a while, they all got jobs doing anything else and now there are no good techs left which is creating the brain shortage. I'm looking forward to companies bidding for my services again.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
... in India.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Because more than likely whether you create it at work or home doesnt matter they own it. Look at the fine print on your contract. Companies don't hire you as a physical worker, they are literally buying the rights to your brain and all IP that comes from it.
I think the distinction between compiled and scripting languages being made is largely historical and cultural. Because, take a step back: Practically, is there much difference?
As you develop -- doing incremental development, testing as you go -- you write some code, and then you run it. How relevant really is it to you that there's a "compilation" step in the middle? Ten bucks says you're working in an IDE with a single button to click that compiles your code and runs it. So what's the big deal?
(Compiling does add an additional time lag, especially on large projects, but chances are you're only recompiling one or two object files and linking, so it's not like compiling from scratch; it's not bad at all.)
In the grand scheme (was that a LISP pun?) of things, Javascript and C++ are pretty damn similar. They're imperative, OO languages. They even have similar syntax. What is so hugely different about writing Javascript? Writing an algorithm in one is pretty much like writing an algorithm in the other.
Javascript lets you interact with HTML and the whole DOM, so you've got a lot of interface stuff set up ahead-of-time for you: That's the difference. But in theory, a nice library in C++ could give you the same thing. And using Qt or GTK, often in conjunction with something like (in the year 2007) Glade, even that gap is narrower now than it used to be.
The distinction between compiled and scripted languages also doesn't give, say, Javascript, its due. Javascript is a nice language; it's easy to write code in; it's Turing-complete (of course). If somebody wrote a binary compiler for it and some Unix libraries (maybe this has already happened?), it could compete in a niche similar to C++-and-Java's. (In fact, it'd almost be nicer than Java ;-) ).
I will agree that "web developers" tend to care more about the visual aspect: 'Design,' presentation, and the UI. But that says more about where they're coming from, I think -- they got into programming via writing webpages, once upon a time -- than it does about the tools they're using now. Because algorithms are algorithms.
...and hopefully never will.
.com boom, casual attire was acceptable. The only suits were upper management. I think we geeks have made casual dress acceptable in a wide variety of industries these days. Who the hell cares as long you get your job done? I'm not saying we should come to work a complete & smelly mess but, ties just suck.
Even when working for the US Govt. for several years, after the
At my current (and not exactly booming) employer, back in Silicon Valley, everyone still gets a chuckle when someone in a suit shows up for an interview. It almost works against them.
like E-mplosion 2.0 and a snazzy new web interface!
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
? Welcome to Web 2.0 work culture, the future of yesterday.
Welcome to attempts at word play that make me want to go out and randomly stab people.
What is this? Maxim magazine?
('IT Professional' != [geek|nerd])
/after/ the salary negotiation and there's generally not much negotiation about it.
On a Venn diagram, the population on the right intersects about 1% of the population on the left. When it comes to casual wear, Unix beards and unicycle parking with the lefthand folks, those sorts of things are enforced
Having worked at companies in/dedicated to/related to IT ranging from 60 employees to over 7,000 employees, I just have to firmly say that the size of the company is completely irrelevant in what sort of environment you're getting.
I've been at a 'big' company with 6k employees that was extremely casual--jeans, t-shirts, even for senior management. I've been at a 60 man outfit that actually had a mandatory shirt and tie requirement for people who did IT drudge work. They even sent someone HOME one day for not being up to dress code snuff. I kid you not. The point is that the size doesn't matter; only the desired tone and ideals pushed down from management matter.
In other words, if you work for dick heads, you'll have a shitty, miserable atmosphere. Work for nice and caring people, you'll have a nice, caring, and happy atmosphere. In twelves years of IT employment, that's the most important lesson I've learned: dickheadism is bad.
I work for a software company in eastern Canada. We have 3 locations and about 200 employees. The company is now only 10 years old but it did start in 1997 so you can imagine that it may have been like all of the other dot coms that died during the bust.
I've only been with the company for about a year and a half, but it's quite clear to me that things here are very much like things were in many other places.
I wear a t-shirt and jeans to work. We have a pool table in our common area and an Xbox in the lounge. Free BBQ's throughout the summer and even all you can drink Christmas parties and golf tournaments.
The one thing that distinguishes us from other companies is that we have an actual product that does actual work and is actually useful. Aside from that, the people responsible for hiring actually know what kind of people to look for. The reason the dot com era happened was there was a lot of money and no substance, especially at the business level.
What I find interesting in seeing posts/articles like this one is how supposedly a casual environment is such a big nono or pointer to the past when it meant all hell would break loose, and yet there are companies, like the one I work for, that are thriving and still continue to have flex hours, awesome benefits, great parties, and a great business plan.
It's definitely not Web 2.0. It's just an attitude and some reasonable business sense.
No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
yea cant wait for DotComBurst 2.0
Not like the big one of '99. There's not enough in the geek production pipeline this time and talent in formerly developing markets are managing to stay employed right where they are. IT was so out of favor as a career choice five years ago that some colleges started scaling back their IT programs. Not only a fall off in production but many schools scrapped their production capacity.
Even if they could get their IT programs back online tomorrow and overcome the still persistent perception that IT is a career where your job will be outsourced, it would still be five years before capacity caught up with demand.
In fact, in the short term, the geek world may be flush with opportunity. The hot growth markets are overseas. They started vacuuming up some of the excess of world IT talent, which I believe is what contributed to the sudden shortage here.
I still remember stuffy managers looking at a proposal and snuffing that they could outsource the development for half the cost. Fast forward a couple years...got a call from a tech company in town this am offering to contract all the hours I can spare them at a premium rate. Who's laughing now, Mr. Poopy Pants?
Okay, you're right, we shouldn't use this as an opportunity to be petty and say things like NA-NA-NA-NANAAAAAAAAAA!!! Or NEENER, NEENER, NEENER. We must be adults about this when dealing with the LOOOOOOOO-HOO-HOOOOSSSSERRRSSSSS!!!!!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'm on my second "real" job now, since graduating in December, 2001 with a Computer Science degree. My first job was for a huge, established manufacturing company. Dress code was business-casual, good pay and benefits, but few other dot-com-style perks (hours were semi-flexible, as long as we didn't miss meetings and were generally there during "core" business hours, e.g. 9--3). Cubefarm.
Since October, I've been working at a trading startup. We're slowly adding perks---just got a new TV, a nice leather couch in the "break" (conference) room, paid lunches. Dress has always been casual. I even got to bring in my own chair (a Herman-Miller Aeron). Definitely not a cubefarm. No false sincerity or "professional" behavior---people cuss like it's going out of style. And I'm making nearly 2x what I was in the previous job (though I moved to Chicago where the cost of living is arguably 2x higher than where I was).
Sounds cushy, right? I'm currently looking for a different job (BTW, the company is doing great, and if I were to stick it out, I have a real opportunity to become wealthy/retire early). The new job demands at least 10 hour days, and with an hour commute on each end, I have very little time for exercising, spending time with my fiancee, and hobbies. The job is also very high-stress, there is no training, and the hours are inflexible. Work-life balance is an old memory.
What it comes down to for me is the job and environment:
Without meeting the above criteria, all the pay and perks in the world aren't going to make someone love their job. More time with my friends and family, and time to spend on my hobbies is worth a lot of money to me. I'll give up a casual dress code and catered lunches if it means someone will take the time to help me understand the business, the big picture, overall company goals and objectives (i.e. gives that initial direction and support).
Maybe such a thing doesn't exist, but all I want is a job that pays well enough for me to be comfortable and gives me time to do things I really want to do. The first job I had was pretty close. Unfortunately, my authority did not match my responsibilities; bureaucracy was rampant and worsening. Just give me a job that typically only requires eight hours a day, lets me be creative, lets me make my own decisions, and pays enough to live in a house in a safe neighborhood. Those criteria seem simple enough, but I'm finding it really tough to find a job that meets those requirements.
As a side note, I find the whole catered lunch thing is a mixed blessing anyway. Obviously, it's convenient and saves money. On the other, it's really hard to eat healthy. I actually prefer to bring my lunch: it's much cheaper coming from the grocery store anyway, and much easier to pack lots of fruits, veggies, lean meats and high-fiber foods.
I can well believe that one guy can do the work of 20 outsourcers -- programmer productivity is so variable that it frequenty varies by a factor of 8 or more even among people from similar backgrounds.
The trick isn't to pick Americans versus picking Indians, the trick is to get the top 2% or so of any population. That's more important than 'interest in technology' and other ambient factors -- practically everyone works to make money, wherever they come from. Of course, going to the nearest big Indian outsourcing company isn't a very good way to get that top 2% that.
It's not even hard to tell who's in the top 2% -- you can often tell in a week, maybe a month if the project is sufficiently confus[ed|ing]. The problem is, you *can't* easily tell from a CV or interview. At least I can't.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
DOHHHHH!!!!!!
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
...the future of yesterday. The future of yesterday.... would that also be known as today? Or are we busting out the ol' Wayback machine?Coming to you live from another dimension.
< 80K for a job in Mountain View? I'm sure you suffered massive internal injuries from laughing so hard.
2.if answer is yes CONTINUE
else find another JOB.
3.work a little
4.GOTO1
5. PROFIT!
Thank God for evolution.
Yep. You nailed it.
It wasn't the culture that brought these places down, it was the spending. I *was* a project manager during 1997-2001 and I, personally, had hundreds of $100/head dinners during that time. I flew (mostly) first class to client locations (Chicago, LA, San Fran, NYC, Houston) and I stayed at some great hotels (W, Hiltons, Marriotts, Sheratons, etc). I just got lucky on my project assignments being in great cities but that's another story. Since I was in Dallas, we had plenty of 4-star and 5-star restaurants and we definitely used them! Del Friscos, The Mansion on Turtle Creek, 3 forks, etc.
In all of that time, I can't remember a single instance of anyone questioning how much money was being spent. As long as (some) money kept coming in the door, this cycle continued until - duh - the company went out of business. It was no shock to ANYONE who saw the actual books and what we were spending. It was truly astounding (ie: $1300 of wine in one meal at the Mansion on TC, 8 ppl attending, not including food)
I will never understand, no matter how hard you try, why someone would spend $50K to go win a project that would make $15K in profit. It's kinda like selling dollar bills for $0.95 and making it up on volume...
So yea - poor management is the reason most of these companies failed. And by poor management, I really mean "just plain old bad business decisions". There is a reason 80% of startups fail. It's not because the market can not handle the supply, rather, it is usually because of a fatal business decision made early on. And the #1 culprit is: over spending.
...are professionals in the IT field reading this /. article on company time right now...?
Gotta love doing technology "research" on the company clock, eh?
Back in 96/97, I worked at a public university. The bosses wouldn't let us name our new file servers Beavis & Butt-head. We ended up naming them Elvis and Hendrix, thereby starting a trend of naming servers after rock stars who died of drug overdoses. Ahh, good times...
In the Mythical Man Month (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythical_man_month) Brooks referenced a study that found a 10:1 difference in productivity between best and mediocre programmers on a team.
I think Gates stated that there was a 100:1 difference today - due to greater technology leverage. And Google is certainly banking on that as well.
Given that there's a large correlation between experience and expertise, and given that it is difficult to find experience developers in India, China, etc - then it isn't unreasonable to say that a given experienced programmer in country X is 20x as productive as a team of junior-college grads in country Y. Hell, the country isn't the point - it's the experience.
And this is born out in my work with teams from Russia, India and China. Not so much with France, Germany and the UK. In all cases it was the experience of the programmers more than any other single factor.
Of course, ten years from now this will probably not be a factor. Unless they're starting to move programming jobs to Africa for cost savings. Then we'll just start the whole cycle over again.
I am one of those types, as well. After being in IT for a while (CS, UT-Austin), I finally decided that getting my MBA was the way to have the most flexibility in my career. I have coded, I have team lead, I have project managed, and I have program managed -- all things near and dear to the IT world.
But as I have said before, IT is one of those jobs that has all of the responsibility and none of the authority. This makes it a crappy career path unless you are absolutely 100% devoted to IT and computers -- and if you are one of those people, you are probably not all that concerned with getting to the top of the food chain anyway. Just for fun, go out and google how many CIO's become CEO's vs. other C-level offices. You will find that CIO is an exceptionally bad way to "get to the top".
Simply put, IT is just a bad career path if you want to eventually come up through the ranks and have an executive position of somekind. Most companies only have a few, if any, executive level IT jobs. And even if you were to get one of those, you would - once again - be the low man on the totem pole (compared to CFO, CEO, Chief of HR, etc), fighting for ever-decreasing resources so your division can get it's work done.
I finally said screw it and went into an entirely different industry. I am still in a technical industry (so it's interesting) and that was the best decision I might have ever made in my life. I make more money. I work less. And I have lots of free time to do stuff on computers that I actually want to do.
It's a hard pill to swallow but the truth of the matter is that business just doesn't value IT all that much. Certainly not as much as it is truly worth. Maybe that will change in the future but for most companies, IT is a means to an end only -- and it is treated as such.
Nowadays with offshoring and different vendors to coordinate with, you need a pinball machine or pool table to pass the time waiting. Waiting to get through on the phone, waiting for stuff to get done, etc. And after you've gone through the painful process required to actually have them do work to begin with, you'll deserve (and need) a break.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant...I just spent 45 minutes, most of that on hold, waiting to get some pre-arranged work done. It's something I could have easily done myself in 1 minute - I even still have access to do it - except that it's not corporate procedure for me to do it.
So why are companies jumping through hoops to avoid hiring US workers? I assume everybody has seen that video and article by now?
It's just that by 2002 only about 100 people were engaged in it.
Punctuated equilibrium, and all that. Current Web-2.0-sters are all descendants of these survivors of that dot-com-Chicxulub.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
If you are a generation X'er whose parents were in the middle class then your father probably wore a suit and a tie to work every day (my father and my wife's father did and he worked in IT since the 70's.) I have been in the job force as an electrical engineer for 9 years now and I have never had a job where I couldn't wear jeans and a t-shirt -- and I mostly work for companies related to the defense industry. I have even had jobs where I could wear shorts (and that was while I was working as a civilian for the Army.) The days where you were expected to wear a suit to work everyday are long over. Even if you are in sales you can probably go business casual (whatever that means.) I thank the 90's for that change! It has been years since my father in law has had to wear a suit to work!
Not necessarily in person- you should be able to send him anonymous emails/leave notes on his desk that show average salaries for your area. He probably just doesn't realize what the average salary is for IT positions. If he can't take the hint, then deal with it while looking for a new job...
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Dude, he thinks for a LIVING. You think he's gonna come home and post on Slashdot and think for free after that?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
With the cost of living (COL) increases, unless s/w developers are making 140K+, the dotcom culture IS NOT coming back. My raise this year was actually less than the COL in my area -- and I work the usual 50+. Those were the days...
The typical corporate culture and the ones that make it suck, hate IT for this.
Although they will bow to these changes to attract IT talent, they silently wait for the day when they can shut it down and go back to their idea of normal which is a stifling, power driven charade designed to enforce strict classist notions of executives, mgmt and staff. (Not to mention the bigger class notion underlying it all - the employed vs the unemployed.) Work according to these people is supposed to suck just like their sucky products and their sucky customers.
If it doesn't suck then someone must surely not be doing their jobs and that must come to an end. The psychology of people making things worse and everyone else thanking them for making their lives miserable must stop. Not because we need top talent, but because human beings should come first and corporate ideals of profit should be an extension of that idea, not in spite of it.
If we are going to continue to live in societies dominated by these corporations and their greedy system, then we should as a society make these companies abide by a culture that puts people first.
The problem is we dont put ourselves first, so we wont demand it and until that changes we will never get it.
And thats alot more important than bean bag chairs and free soda...see heath care.
For example, I'm currently scoping out a position that says full time in city xxxx and I've told them I'm only prepared to telework from yyyy which is not even in the same country... and we're still talking and I expect to get an offer.
The moral of the sory is to treat the job ads as a starting point for discussion and take it from there.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Well, then, they surely don't need those golden parachutes...
Read what I said again. All I said was that the person speaking wasn't a high-productivity programmer. I never claimed there weren't differences between engineers.
God, this gets old.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
'Global recruitment companies were telling prospecting employees that they were no longer going to be employed just because they were a technical guru. They were going to have to learn to dress, communicate, and adapt all the traditional corporate ideals that IT has been exempt from during the dot-com boom. " This kind of "I give the friggin orders around here!" attitude on the part of corporations is NOT reflective of a labor shortage. You don't treat that rare commodity called "techie" by telling him how "to dress, communicate, and adapt all the traditional corporate ideals" This is the sign of a DRUM-TIGHT labor market where the employers are calling the shots in a big way. Sure, developers are getting 100K for Javascript and such, but whatta difference in work environment these days? Anyone talk to a corporate coder lately? Chances are theat they're working 10 to 12 hours a day, plus a couple weekends a month, plus conference calls at odd hours so that they can interface with the programmers working offshore on THEIR time zone. There is no worker shortage. If you want to see any worker shortage evaporate, simply pay higher wages! Remember CICS paying $1,500 a day??? I do!
Why are your uncles and aunts interested in marrying you?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Seriously, what other place in the country sounds that bad?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
1. Someone who actually knows what they're doing when it comes to computers is not a business person or an executive. A lot of people who dream about jobs in the technology sector always imagine that it somehow leads to the top of the glass tower and a corner office. It doesn't and it shouldn't. If you want that and you have middling to poor technical skills, then you're not cut out for technology. Instead you should go straight for that MBA now. Sure, there's the very rare and occasional individual who is very good with computers and also has business acumen, but you really have to look far and wide to find these strange hybrids. Most business people just aren't that good at computers other than using Office, maybe some SQL and that's about it. (This is not meant to insult anyone BTW)
I don't find geeks and execs incompatible. I think your observations are out of date, based upon the "old days" when computers were not part of every day culture. In short you are describing a generational thing, not a skills thing. The "very rare" individual you refer to is far more common today than in the past. For the last 10 to 15 years computers have been a part of every day life for children of a socioeconomic environment where buiness leaders and exec generally come from. More importantly I think you are failing to realize that individuals with lower skills exist in both the geek and business communities. I've seen plenty of programmers who generate some pretty mediocre code. I actually think the programmers are getting worse, today there are too many who entered the field because it seemed like a good career move rather than because they had some inherent interest. Personally I think managers and execs have been getting more technically proficient and that software developers have been getting less technically proficient. Also, the mistakes of executives are more visible than the mistakes of some technical folks.
FWIW, I am currently working on an MBA. I also had many erroneous preconceptions regarding business, marketing, etc. An MBA program has been a real eye opener. I have a much greater respect for business. I have used more advanced mathematics in marketing classes than in computer science classes, although not as much as in physics. Regarding my fellow classmates without technical backgrounds, I've not really had any problems explaining issues such as a Windows vs a Linux based infrastructure, how the GPL affects or does not affect a venture, how the internal acquisition of experience or domain knowledge can offset the short term cost advantages of offshoring, etc.