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'I Just Need a Programmer'
theodp writes "As head of the CS Department at the University of Northern Iowa, Eugene Wallingford often receives e-mail and phone calls from eager entrepreneurs with The Next Great Idea. They want to change the world, and they want Prof. Wallingford to help them. They just need a programmer. 'Many idea people,' observes Wallingford, 'tend to think most or all of the value [of a product] inheres to having the idea. Programmers are a commodity, pulled off the shelf to clean up the details. It's just a small matter of programming, right?' Wrong. 'Writing the program is the ingredient the idea people are missing,' he adds. 'They are doing the right thing to seek it out. I wonder what it would be like if more people could implement their own ideas.'"
Geocities in apps format.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I just need a beer...
I disagree. A terrible idea with a beautifully executed development goes no where. A great idea that is hacked together with shell scripts and kilometers of spaghetti code can make someone a fortune and (lame as it sounds) change the world.
That said I think having solid developer(s) is a really good thing. It costs less, makes for a more reliable product, and enables you to say "yeah, we can add that" vs. "hah, you'd have to rewrite everything" when further great ideas come along.
But saying that the importance of programming is on par with the idea.. it's not. Much as us programmers like to think we are _the_ critical component.. I really don't think we are in a lot of cases. The idea and the marketing are what makes the product successful. HR tends to think of programmers as production line workers.. and as much as I hate to admit it, there really is truth in that. We turn ideas into something tangible so they can be sold. If we produce better products or produce them more efficiently, we make the company more money.. but we arn't as important as the guy's who tell us what to make, or the guy's who get people to pay for it.
As for idea people learning to program.. I don't buy it. Might work for some people, but I think programming/working with technology is either something you enjoy or you don't. Most good programers I know don't care about the end product as much as the code. The end product is a necessary evil.. a reason to justify their code poetry. Learning programming as a way of achieving and end goal sounds like some bad code about to happen. And I thought the whole "managers can write code thing" died with COBOL.
If someone says that, "they just need a programmer", they haven't vetted the idea. If they really knew what they wanted, they wouldn't need a programmer - they'd need a contract fulfilled for a specific task. If you say that crap, you're just a bullshit marketing guy.
Really ideas are cheap.
A better social networking site than Facebook...
An electric car that can charge in 5 mintes, go 300 miles on charge, and costs $20,000
A no fat chocolate.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As a coder who works in a modern office, it becomes impossible to sustain creativity after long hours wearing earphones to drown out the ambient phone calls, conversations, meetings, and other noises. I just want a sphere of silence for just 15 minutes in my work day wherein I can close my eyes and hear nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ahhh...I can just imagine the feeling...
Success is 1% inspiration, 9% perspiration, and 90% marketing (of which "timing" is a significant but minority component). The inspiration is cheap (obviously, since this professor has already amassed quite a portfolio), the perspiration is, yes, a commodity, and the marketing requires Emotional Intelligence, something which, ironically enough, does not often come naturally to perspirers.
So... the real question should be: what it would be like if marketers could implement ideas (not necessarily their own)?
idea people often take the form of upper management. they always assume their ideas are workable, and if their employees are having trouble rewriting reality to make them happen, then it's due to the employees' ignorance and not their own. classic ivory tower syndrome.
If you work to produce things, get used to it. Just because you're the one providing a specialized skill set to a project doesn't mean that you are special and deserve extra praise or something.
The ideas ARE what is valuable. Having the vision to come up with something new, and figuring out the ways to aggregate all of its parts into a finished product is what makes things happen. Granted, some person that simply says, "AHA! I have it! Now, all of you, get to work!" isn't going to be as successful as the person who does the same, while also contributing and seeking all the questions and answers each of their workers may have.
The programmer doesn't get special treatment, just as the marketing person, or the graphic artist, or the supply guru doesn't get special treatment. You have chosen a specialized field, deal with it.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
We'll see how this works out, now that the Chinese are providing all the ability to get things done as it were. Maybe they REALLY do need somebody to come up with the neat idea, but somehow I suspect that the guy doing the sweating is more valuable, even if he isn't paid as much.
Really, I am already re-thinking my earlier reply. The issue here is summed up in one word - "Just". You think you need "Just" a programmer, or "Just" a marketing guy, or "Just" a salesman? You have already told me that you don't really value their contribution to the effort, and additionally that you don't really understand fully what goes in to the work they're doing. Yeah, you have a genius idea. You don't want "Just" a programmer. You want a genius programmer, preferably either with a passion for your cause, or a resume of working in coding similar things. Otherwise, your operating system is being written by "just" a database programmer, and while you will have great search times, you may find other areas coming up short.
I've met people who have excellent working software, and have had it for years, and simply aren't able to make a business out of it. They think I just need an investor! And this when it would take them hundreds of dollars to actually start their business, after which they'd have a lot more value to an investor, if they decided they still need one.
Bruce Perens.
*million dollar idea*
It would be nice if there was a website where newbs, (not noobs), and regular folk, could for a reasonable price "hire" a programmer (or 4) to make a page/script/app/whatever. Kinda like an ebay/craigslist mix, where people can post jobs (WTB), and programmers can post offers (WTS).
As far as I know nothing like that exists. But, I'm probably wrong.
I see an ad looking for an app developer from a self-pronounced idea guy who can't offer pay -- only a share in the profits that won't come -- and the ad says something like "It's like , but with a couple of cool things." As an iOS developer, the want ads for that particular platform are by far the most blatant in their stupidity.
This might be limited to universities, but on job ads posted around the campus, "computer science student" tends to stand for "cheap coder". Every now and then some hot-shot (possibly a marketing, media or finance student) with a bright idea for a new dot-com (sorry, Web 2.0 site) puts up flyers asking for "computer scientists".
It's funny because technically, we can be cheap coders (and will be, often), but it would sound less bull-shitty if the ad actually said "programmer".
We should unionize. Conservative rhetoric aside, labor unions provide training, institute quality standards and work procedures.
The partnership system in the steamfitters and pipefitters unions could be emulated as pair programming is often much higher quality than code produced by lone programmers, or ad hoc hastily-assembled teams.
Think of it as a contracting outfit, only with the hefty cut that normally goes to the contract brokers -- going directly into your pension plan -- a REAL pension plan -- which you get to take with you from job to job.
Training, standards, a partner system, pensions, health plans. All the things we could get small businesses off the hook of having to provide.
And, union labor could actually undercut the likes of TekSystems and Adecco in a fair fight, lol.
Most of these people with 'great idea', but *just* need a programmer (i.e. people who have obviously never talked to a developer about their idea and obviously know next to nothing about the nuts and bolts of how things work) have ideas that are terrible, impossible, and/or uselessly vague (many cases of do 'something' with the 'cloud').
If a developer acts as a production line worker, they will frequently turn out irrelevant product. It's one thing to read the specs handed down by someone who knows what they want and write strictly to the requirements listed, it is another thing entirely to really internalize the need and apply your advanced knowledge of what is possible to deliver a perfect fit above and beyond the specific requests. People will prescribe awkward workflows due to perceived technology limitations and/or steer clear of very sensible features they presume impossible.
Clear delineation between developer and 'idea' people just doesn't make much sense except in the most straightforward cases, and none of those straightforward 'ideas' are valuable (mostly one-off customized solutions of common setups required to work with a customers uniquely evolved system).
You really need both a solid idea and a developer who is more than just an assembly line worker to get good results of significant value.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This one will do.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I like to think of my service as a commodity.
I don't really care how half baked someones idea is (as long as it isn't illegal or immoral). If they have the money and can distill their idea down to a concise view, I will code it for them and they can pay me for it.
I'm not their coach. I'm not their sales person. I create it for them and exit.
My father is a professor at a major university who for years has been listed as a "Alternative Fuels expert". He gets calls just about daily from whack-jobs who are positive they've invented some perpetual energy source and they just need some PHD to lend them the credibility to get funding. The vast majority of the people simply don't know what they are talking about, but a fun minority is downright insane, like the hobo who wandered into his office and explained to him where to find the aliens in the early 90s.
'They are doing the right thing to seek it out. I wonder what it would be like if more people could implement their own ideas.'"
This. I've met people with great concepts but extremely afraid of doing the coding parts, or art, or whatever. It bothers me.
I have what I consider good ideas, and people I talk to seems to agree to some extent, but I found out that unless I made them, nobody would.
Having the idea and bringing it to execution is perfection.
Can't telecommute?
I know the feeling, though. Even noise-cancelling headphones aren't a substitute for actual silence.
I'll settle for relative quiet, though -- take a walk.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hunh? Did you mean hundreds of thousands? Hundreds is lunch money.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This thing would work.
I think the current situation that programmers are in industry wide is exactly the sort of thing unions are designed to prevent. And I say that as a republican.
I find I like the noise when doing slog work.. i.e. just hacking out code/flushing out designs/reviewing stuff. I almost always have music playing playing through my noise canceling headphones.
That said, when I get stuck on something, the "noise canceling" part becomes quite relevant. Flip off the music.. nothing but that damn voice in my head...
Implementation is something else. What so-called 'idea people' don't realize is that without implementation, ideas are worthless. And you know what? Implementation is hard.
Starting a business is hard work!
The intangible benefits are pretty great, of course - freedom to set your own hours (clients permitting), freedom to set your own priorities, that sort of thing. That's all great. But the costs are pretty hefty. It's not just the money - though the money is a big problem too!
It's about the stress of getting a business off the ground. It's about taking half pay, living expenses, or no pay whatsoever while the business gets off the ground. It's about hiring someone new and wondering if they're actually a fuckup who's going to pull you down. It takes grit! And after the first year, you end up wondering if you did the right thing - if working for someone else might not seem so bad after all.
I used to guard my ideas jealously, but these days I don't even care. Go ahead, 'steal' my ideas. Then, whether you fail or succeed, I'll watch what you did. And if I have the opportunity... I'll give it my best shot to do it better.
Steamfitters and pipefitters can point to the pipes in the ceiling and say "I did that. To do it safely and correctly every time in every job, I am part of the union and their work rules." Its something tangible that people "get".
As a programmer you write non-tangible stuff, that the general public doesn't "get". "Its all just numbers and stuff, you just sit in front of the computer, why do you need a union to just sit around?"
Until that opinion has been dispelled, unionization will fail.
Unionization would be complete unsuccessful in an industry where entires countries of scabs can easily cross the virtual picket line. You can't off-shrore plumbers, electricians or jobs like that, though
I have an idea for a great building. I just need a mason...
Ideas are just people who don't know better wishing for things that cannot be done to be done in a way they should not be done without any idea of the resources required to accomplish and later maintain in working order such task or slightest clue of its usefulness once it might possibly be done. If I said what I said above, anybody with half a brain would tell me: "No, you first need to talk to an architect, investor and possibly a city planer." We seriously need to make people understand there is a difference between one computer guy and the other, but most people still lump Call Desk, IT, Security, Programming, Software Architecture and Hardware Design under one big box called "Works with Computers". It is quite as ridiculous as saying that "Mason, Electrician, Carpenter, Civil Engineer, Architect, Plumber, Building Manager, Repair Man and bunch of other professions" are people who "Work with Buildings" without any distinction.
or be outsourced to India in record time. I think I know which is more likely
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
We are implementers. And like all artists, there are true innovators and there are people who just slap things together. It isn't the idea that makes piece of work great, and it isn't the method of creating that work that makes the idea great. Would the Sistine Chapel be quite as impressive if it had just been another set of paintings commissioned by some bored king instead of a breathtaking ceiling three stories up?
Both the idea, and the one who renders it are important, and both lend to the success.
- Brett
From the linked article
So the professor definitely understands the value of the idea (though if one only read the slashdot summary, one might think he didn't). IMO ideas are "easier". It takes less effort and time to come up with one. It might takes months or years to implement it however.
That said, it doesn't mean ideas are not important. An example that people here can probably understand is id Software before and after Romero. To paraphrase, Romero was the "idea" guy and Carmack was the implementor. Carmack places/placed very little value in things like design/story (i.e ideas) in video games, while Romero put almost ALL value in ideas (see: Ion Storm, "design is law").
Using this example, one can surmise that a great idea in the absense of a good implemenation may result in a bad product (Daikatana)...or no product at all (Duke Nukem Forever). However, a bad/mediocre idea with a good implementation will result in a "good", but uninspiring product (Doom 3).
If you had to choose one, better to have the latter than the former. You just have to accept that fewer people will accept your product as being "great". The trap that many programmer fall into is in translating this to mean that ideas are not important at all. Not true. If you think this, you will be passed by your competitors just as id Software has (yes, I know some people still think id still makes the best FPS, but this is the minority opinion, these days).
The programmer doesn't get special treatment, just as the marketing person, or the graphic artist, or the supply guru doesn't get special treatment.
And the "idea maker" doesn't get special treatment either, when programmers and others are involved, because they have merely provided a starting point for the design aspects of programming... providing the starting point has some importance, but it is not equivalent to "defining" the product.
Well, if the product is a piece of marketing, then, yes, the marketing person does get special treatment.
If the product is a piece of graphic art, then, yes, the graphic artist does get special treatment. As they are (essentially) the sole creator of the product.
If the product is a building design, then, yes, the architect does get special treatment
Now, if the graphic art is just part of the product, then of course, the situation varies.
Programmers, Architects, Designers, and Graphics artists all define the actual core of the product they make. Whether they get special treatment or not in regards to compensation, will depend on how good a deal they negotiate
Really good Architects, Designers, and Graphics artists are much more plentiful and easy to find than good programmers who can really execute and implement an idea, so yeah, programmers have and are expected to have special treatment.
skilled labor does not unionize. i have no desire to support you when i can make much more money off of people who fail to perform.
if they want "just a programmer", this programmer just want cash, a sexy brunette for casual sex and if the idea becomes successful a share of the profits.
My work has tried 3 or 4 times to make programmers generic glorp since 2000.
Our main system has 3 to 4 million lines. Our overall system is composed of over 10 systems this size (but the rest are owned by businesses so we don't actually code them but we do interface with them and each interface can have 300 to 500 entry/exit points).
They really just don't get it. At least a couple times a year something breaks and it comes down to 1 or 2 people who actually can fix it. It gets hard for those 1 or 2 people to maintain their skill level when they keep getting put on unrelated stuff.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Ahh.. there you go. Send even MORE programming jobs to India.
to be pulled off the shelf only when the old idea doesn't sell anymore.
We should unionize. Conservative rhetoric aside, labor unions provide training, institute quality standards and work procedures.
I wish I had points to mod this funny. Have you ever had to deal with a Union? Unions enforce the supremacy of seniority, how many times have you had a boss or manager who couldn't find his ass with both hands but he had been there forever so he still had a job? Unionizing would compound this problem a hundredfold. In technology, you know as well as I do, that Rockstar programmers are out there and of all ages. Union rules will absolutely prevent a workplace from bringing in a younger worker above an older that they are better than. You can't have thought this idea through.
The partnership system in the steamfitters and pipefitters unions could be emulated as pair programming is often much higher quality than code produced by lone programmers, or ad hoc hastily-assembled teams.
Think of it as a contracting outfit, only with the hefty cut that normally goes to the contract brokers -- going directly into your pension plan -- a REAL pension plan -- which you get to take with you from job to job.
Training, standards, a partner system, pensions, health plans. All the things we could get small businesses off the hook of having to provide.
Where do you think all of that comes from? Small businesses will be paying for it one way or the other. There will be increased labor costs and as a result, fewer jobs available in our chosen career field. It's not just rhetoric, it's economic fact. Look at Detroit. When the rest of the nation was maxed at about 10% unemployment, they were looking at 15%. Southern states that are often "Right to Work" states and they can't force people to join unions are booming.
And, union labor could actually undercut the likes of TekSystems and Adecco in a fair fight, lol.
How? By magic? For the sake of argument, let's say you succeed in unionizing the IT in a workplace. What's to stop them from offering to double the salary of your best people to become "Managers" and then having a bunch of scabs telecommute for 40% less than they were paying the rest?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Idea #1: Graphical MMORPG for PC on internet before UO came out. Even though I didn't finish, thousands of hours of code is always good for a man.
Idea #2: An online auction site. I heard of people selling stuff on usenet and thought there's room for one online auction site.
Idea #3: Instant messaging before it was on PC Internet. I was too busy writing a MMORPG to pause to do this.
Idea #4: Looking at Slashdot and Fark, I figure theres room for a general news site with unlimited voting, I tried to code something like Digg for a while before I heard of it, then gave up when I found both Digg and Reddit.com
I just assume most tech savvy programmers know stuff like this. I don't think I'm special to come up with multibillion dollar ideas and see them succeed under other people's development. I figure most people know what is gonna get big and just don't have the resources to code it all. Like I'm back on the horse to make a MMORPG, and I should have it done 2011. We're negotiating a contract with a publisher now for the single player version which is finished aside from a bug or two, and publisher requested changes. I'll be happy to post this free to play Flash game on Slashdot when we get it up on a publisher for January or February release.
God spoke to me.
No, implemented succesful ideas are worth something. Unimplemented ideas are risky stuff that might as well take you for every penny you've got as make you a profit. Telling good ideas from bad is usually harder than coming up with ideas in the first place.
You either do not live in the US or have fallen for the idea that unions here express without ever having to live by them - I have *never* seen unions here work that way. In other countries I have certainly see them do that, but in those unions have to compete for your membership (and you don't even have to belong to one) *and* compete within the strictures of the people hiring them. That is a fairly decent system and is why so many non-us workers are so confused over why the US has such a backlash against unions.
I come from a mostly blue collar worker family (like many in East Tennessee - lots of high tech white collar workers but most from out of state). Of the myriad relatives I have I know many that have tried to rely on those union provided niceties and I can count the number that have had them work better than the federal provided one (say, medicare or medicaid) on one hand and have five fingers left over. That is to say none whatsoever. In every case when the time came the money was elsewhere and the union higher ups didn't know where it went or it was coming along shortly (and 30 years later after they died it was the unions to keep).
If we were to have a European version of unions I would be fine with it, most people around would too. For most of us in the US we have seen your noble ideas crash into the dust and the reality of Big Money (otherwise known as Unions in the US) come to play. I'm highly reminded of someone at my parents camp ground that ran out of savings last year - she is wondering where all her years of savings sent to the union went, why she has to strike for things she doesn't want, and what good this is going to do when they finally reach an agreement. Unless you want a long document you can find elsewhere don't ask me what I went through at Oak Ridge National Labs with the teamsters, electricians, and carpenters with changing a simple ethernet card (short version: teamsters move things, electricians plug/unplug anything electrical, and carpenters take screws in and out - and yes they are strict about that and no it doesn't matter the purpose - if your screw is holding an ethernet card you need the carpenters to remove it. Further you have to pay for two at a time for a minimum of one hour each nor could you schedule them in succession as you could only know a window of time they could come out that may or may not be fulfilled).
I'm reminded of how my mother dealt with the union when she works at a steel factory - she reminded them she also had a gun and knew how to use it. Our system blows - bringing the tech industry into it will not solve anything.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I'm a college student. Not even a Distinguished Professor. Or even a working programmer. Occasionally, I'll meet a recent business grad who will discover that I know how to write code, and say, "I have this great idea, I think there's a market for it, we should totally do that."
Well, they know I'm cheap, so at least part of the scheme works for them.
Mostly it involves them talking up a vague notion, which is somehow the Next Big Thing. "It's like eBay! Except it's on your iPhone! And I know eBay already has an iPhone app, but they haven't been successful with it and I will be!" And then it involves me doing all the work and them taking their big cut for the "inspiration." It's fairly easy to come up with an idea that's "like X for your Y." And so I smile and nod and discuss it a bit and then go on my merry way.
If said recent business grad were really able to present me with an idea that really were All That and a Bag of Chips, and could be done by one college student with a twelve-pack of Mountain Dew, I'm not sure what I'd need them for. If I could implement it, I would probably do so and then, if it turned out to really be successful, hire someone else to do the "businessy stuff." Why, I mean, once you've got a product, all there is to do is market it, right?
Fortunately, our friend doesn't need to worry about me stealing his ideas and cutting him out of the picture, because I don't think his ideas are all that hot to begin with.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
There's more to Unions then striking you know? There's voting as a block for economic interests. Right now the trouble with the middle class is they're easily frightened by social issues. A Union gets them back on track and voting for a protectionist agenda that's needed to keep work in your country.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Must suck to work for people that unknowledgeable.
It's too bad these folks with great ideas just can't code up these ideas on their own. Perhaps it is time we programmers, after thousands of years, reveal the secrets to our magical programming abilities to the rest of the world! Too long have our secret tomes on programming and computers been hidden from the rest of the world, revealed only to those of noble programming blood. I shall bring this idea up and the next dark council of programmers meeting. I suspect that dark lord Knuth shall oppose this though...
"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
...without the will and courage to do something about it. It's not the idea guy who is creating the real value - it's the guy who took the idea and had the courage to try and do something with it. Probably everyone on /. has had an original idea at some point - how many of us have taken the step off the curb to actually quit our job (or sacrifice personal time) and try and bring it to fruition? Moreover, how many of us have had the belief in ourselves and our idea to seek out the best and brightest in their field (or anyone at all for that matter) and ask them to follow our lead?
I do like programming things that work super quickly, especially when they work super quickly, super quickly.
As someone that has actually implemented several ideas, if I had a dollar for every one that said 'I thought of something similar' I'd be rich. There is a HUGE void between 'I have an idea' and actually doing it. Ideas pose no risk, doing something about those ideas poses huge risk. Most people even if they could implement their ideas still would never get far. My 2 cents.
I just need a lawyer.. I just need a doctor.. No, you need a good, no great programmer to develop a great idea. Complete idiocy, do you have any clue how many crap programmers are out there? You get what you pay for.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I have "had to" deal with a union, multiple times -- my dad's. They were great with us, and protected both his job, and my health when I was growing up. And that union is still going strong, and because it's in an area where lives are at stake -- superheated steam is not something to be trifled with -- safety, training and demonstrated skill trumps seniority.
Besides, if it's *our* union, *we* make the union rules. We could simply grade skill and productivity objectively, rather than leaving it to some idiot PM with a BS in some lame-ass MIS program.
Small businesses currently have three undesirable options: either having to provide benefits, having to hire WAY overpriced contractors, or having to outsource. A union could provide them with the quality that the contracting outfits currently *claim* to provide, at a fraction of the cost, and still have enough of a cut to provide proper benefits. A more flexible workforce, and on-site, with the kind of immediate communication and understanding of the problems at hand that you just don't get from outsourced labor.
To address the issue of scab labor and fake "promotions" to undermine the union, you just send in your heavies to explain the value proposition. The reason you don't see that going on with skilled labor in heavy construction (in NY anyway) is because the general contractors realize they're actually getting a good deal.
Wait, what situation are programmers in industry wide? Making three times the median income? Getting full coverage healthcare with no limits (and so cheap it's almost free)? I mean, I have it pretty good here, and so do most of the other programmers I know.
When I hear 'union', I think seniority, inefficiency, union dues, and another layer of administrators to deal with. I don't want to deal with some incompetent coworkers who can't be fired just because they've been around a long time. I really don't see how I would get anything at all from a union, at least from a US style union.
Qxe4
Upper management and idea people who 'just need a programmer' suffer from the same problem: they cannot articulate their idea(s) in a useful form. An idea is only as powerful as the explanatory power and effort behind it (obligatory xkcd). This however, has nothing to do with ivory tower issues--the ivory tower problem is that people who can clearly describe ideas to each other have a problem describing those ideas to non-experts (or that the underlying assumptions in the field are hard to translate or inapplicable). The problem described above is that they may have an idea, that they are convinced is novel, useful, profitable etc, but they cannot articulate the specifics of the idea to anybody to the point where development can proceed. Rather than recognize their failure to research and specify the idea sufficiently clearly for others to buy in, they instead blame the problem on outside forces for which programmers provide one of the myriad of scapegoats.
I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I WANT.
It should take you no more than a few hours to develop (IF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SAYING).
I could do it myself, BUT I'M _TOO BUSY DOING IMPORTANT THINGS_.
If you don't understand me, THEN YOU MUST BE STUPID.
By the way, I like shouting. A LOT. But /. won't let me.
Actually, the industry is rapidly realizing that offshoring only works in certain very limited situations, and that any "key performance metrics" you put in place can be easily gamed by people too far away to throttle when they start in with the malicious compliance and the stringing out jobs forever with their poor quality work.
The key to a successful union would be to provide better quality work for a lower price overall. Would you rather work with a union rep who in his or her heart of hearts wants your enterprise to succeed and can get you the people you actually need quickly and effectively and at a fair price, with no dickering over 401K's -- and to work on-site?
Or would you rather work with some outsourcing outfit that undercuts and way under-delivers and then has the cheek to insist that you have them fix their mistakes? Or a contracting outfit that charges like a wounded bull and whose people are no better than cheap overseas labor anyway?
why would i want to join a union? i get paid wads (plus equity) doing exactly what i love doing. what's a union going to do for me?
The vast majority of the "idea people" have unrealistic expectations of the programming reality as well as unrealistic expectations of the outcome of their great idea. I have been asked too many times to count if I would just take a percentage of the massive profits instead of my development fees. I got burned a couple times early and always, always just take the hourly/bid price and leave the "massive profits" to the idea people..and I am pretty sure I am way way waaay ahead of the game.
I just need a programmer.
It is not that I feel you are all worthless or that I do not need visionaries, engineers, and artists. It is that I do not have the money to pay you. For $10/hr I can find someone needing experience who can assist me coding some php and answering phone calls while I take care of business needs. A visionary, artist, or business process guru is sweet! Will you all be willing to work for $10/hr with a future promise of stock ownership if I make it in 2 years? You wont.
I accept this as I get what I pay for. I have bills to pay and will not be paid myself for this for 2 years until I generate revenue and gain more funds. I have to work another job as well while I run this one and I just can't pay $50,000 a year plus medical benefits and offer a stable job to someone who is all these things. The entrepreneur in this situation is after what he wants at a local university and is in the right.
http://saveie6.com/
That is a stupid idea. Have you ever met unionized programmer? I once met DBA who was setting up a new system and we needed to check if the thing works... So I told him: execute Select * From some_table. He actually begun typing: select S T A R..... I must have had a face because he threw his hands and said: "look, I don't do SQL". The point is: programming is an art that is still evolving very fast and requires programmers to keep up. Union people just don't do that because they don't have to, since their contract doesn't make easy to fire programmers""
It depends on the union.
My experience with unions -- my dad's, my brother's, my other brother's and my brother-in-law's -- have been uniformly positive.
Sounds like Oak Ridge National Laboratory has people that are completely incompetent at negotiating with the unions. Sucks to be them -- elitist academic narcissistic a-hole administrators with only a university education, and no actual labor negotiating experience.
The manufacturing industry unions have had a completely different approach and history than the skilled labor unions, particularly in the south. I agree with you that they have screwed their membership.
But I think it is a mistake to think of unions as one entity that unionizing would bring us "into" -- if a segment of labor organizes *itself* it makes its own rules. More to its liking, and learning from the mistakes of other unions.
Think of it as a professional society with balls.
We get this all the time at my work. Yeah they just need engineers and programmers who will work for commissions/share options in their idea, plus fund the $50k in UL, CE and other safety certifications, plus pay for prototypes, plus pay for injection moulding tooling, plus turn their single page "idea" into an actual specification. 5 minutes on Google find that most "ideas" already exist, or defy the laws of physics.
LOL and watch those jobs bounce back to overpaid contractors here because nobody can control people they can't stand over when necessary.
The problem with some entrepreneurs is that they can't execute. That is, they must develop a business plan and execute it. If the plan underestimates the value of programmers, the business will fail. If the plan correctly values the programmer, but the plan is not executed correctly, the business will fail. Additionally, entrepreneurs must be able to adjust the plan when the facts change.
implementation is the thing
and money
and timing
and hard work
and persistence
and luck
and a strong positive belief in the face of withering negativity
etc., etc.
there's a lot of things that goes into the Next Big Thing (tm) besides just the idea
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Just" quit smoking. "Just" exercise and lose weight. "Just" balance the budget. "Just" get off foreign oil. "Just" win baby.
"Just" is the word that betrays the orders of magnitude energetic difference between the running of the mouth and the actual doing of something.
What about a software engineer who brings to the table specialized algorithmic knowledge that can mean the difference between a slow product, and product that is at least fast enough to use. What about a software engineer whose toolkit includes imaging algorithms that can find faces in the haze, or is able to marry multispectral information across several devices. What is your definition of a programmer, and a software engineer?
My definition of a programmer has increased in complexity since I have been involved in embedded actively stabilized sensor systems, where knowledge and use of DSP, precise timing to allow the Human Machine Interaction to be as fast as the Human can think while performing all the necessary calculations in the background to keep everything stable.
I agree ideas are important, but a good algorithm can make or break a product as well. Ultrasound imaging is just such an example, it took years for the algorithmics to develop to a point where the image was real time.
Just my opinion, but I have been party to several companies that failed because their ideas where ahead of the algorithmics, or the programmers just did know what algorithms to apply.
If You have an idea that You really like, You'll be willing to at least hack a lame half/working prototype by yourself, seeing it functioning would be enough of reward, You would enjoy little implementation details even if it takes to learn some programming skills.
Otherwise Your idea is just a bubble of hot air that even You do not really believe in.
Having worked in the Game industry, we get these sorts of people who have the latest greatest idea for a game and all they need is a programmer (or so they claim). Of course they have no idea how much actual work is involved in the creation of whatever they want to do, and most of the time the project they suggest is based upon a game they fell in love with when they were just teenagers and think that if only a programmer were to whip up this modernized, albeit plagiarized, version, that they're going to make millions and everyone will see the game idea guy as the genius he knows he is. Of course, the old and established game industry has plenty of success plagiarizing games, so why would it open its doors to people off the streets to do the same?
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Asking for ONLY CS majors is a bad idea. Many people, some of whom are extremely good and do high grade work for the various military forces, do not have and will probably not ever need to have a degree in CS with what they already know and what they learned by institutions not academically credited (like the military).
make it a overall IT union and real training with NO VENDER certs BS. And no need for 4-6 year degree needed stuff.
Does steamfitters and pipefitters need a BS or MS just to get a job?
Yeah, don't you know we've got Java programmers working for minimum wage and JavaScript experts literally being paid in peanuts? And I mean literally in the sense of salty legumes.
"Situation". What a joke. I may bitch and moan about my job because it's human nature, but if you ask me seriously I'm god damned blessed - sit in a comfortable cube and write code all day and make 3X what someone who does difficult manual labor does?
Unionization of programmers is a ridiculously bad idea.
The problem with unionizing programming vs plumbing is that the standard of trade for plumbing is well established. For programmers, you'd wind up paying fixed wage levels for people who are utterly incompetent.
Our non-unionization is exactly why a handful of grads 5 years out of school are earning 200K+ because they are really that good, while other work is going overseas at $8/hr.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I hate unions but we need some kind of professional standard. Schools crank our thousands of CS grads every year that have no idea how to program anything. Those dimwits go out and represent themselves as programmers. After working through a few hopeless degree wielders employers get the idea that the best they can do is hire these guys in bulk at minimum wage and set them loose like the proverbial monkeys with typewriters which totally screws up the job market for developers. Certifications aren't any better. Students have been taught how to build a doghouse and suddenly they're thrown into a job market where they are expected to build skyscrapers. Of course they're going to be in over their head. And years of experience isn't a good judge either because it could be years done doing the same exact thing over and over or they could just be bad at it. And employers usually have no idea if you're doing a good job or not other than being disappointed that programming isn't as easy as typing their idea into a word processor.
Some sort of mentor organization and judgement by more experienced peers as to when a level of competence has been obtained would be more useful I think.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
What really sucks is that it is the norm to do so. Those of us at better jobs are very lucky, and/or very talented.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The one that hurts me is that I wanted to create an internet search site with rankings based on how peer sites linked to pages. In 1995.
I couldn't get investors to help fund the servers and bandwidth I needed.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I absolutely don't want a union. Unions would try and institute crazy things like standardized pay, and equal compensation to all programmers. No thanks!
I like getting paid well, usually to clean up some other programmer's mess because they were incompetent. I'd hate a union coming in and saying he should get paid as much as I do just because he's also a programmer.
Free market works well for those who actually DESERVE their pay. The rest of you asshats who can't program your way out of a for-next loop SHOULD get frustrated and go look for another job.
Obligatory XKCD^H^H^H^HDilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-02-12/
>There's voting as a block for economic interests.
I vote for who I think is best. Fuck unions.
Saying, "I just need a programmer" is a lot like saying, "I could totally get this car running if I just had a tool." What kind of tool were you looking for? An OBD-II reader, a flathead screwdriver? a 9mm socket wrench? A hydraulic lift bay? Not all programmers are created equal, and they are not equivalent cogs that can be removed and replaced at will without regard or consequence. Surely there are programmers that are more valuable than others, just like there are works of art or engineering that are more prized than others. There is a widely accepted myth among the industry that nearly everything is a computer solvable problem. At the same time, the technology professionals who will be expected to solve these problems with the aid of technological tools such as hardware and software are often considered a minor and inconsequential part of the equation, without value or merit beyond performing a specific task. Often we are told not only what problem to solve, but how we are expected to solve it. Usually by people who haven't the faintest notion what they are asking for.
I went to an event called StartupWeekend back on '08. I had a great time working with like-minded people building something over the course of a weekend. I've been back to two additional events since then and left after the opening night both times. The shift at these events has been away from the hacker culture and towards the entrepreneur; hours of pitches by people who "have retail experience and know the space, but just need a programmer". It's disheartening. The idea is some of the work, and most times (but not necessarily) comes first. Sometimes, you work on something cool and it turns out other people want it. That's great too. But never has the world clamored or shouted for joy for some guy's concept of a real estate site. People love redfin and zillow, but until you can touch it, it's nothing. It's not even worth talking about. Learn to build a prototype. It should be a requirement for filing a patent.
"When I hear 'union', I think seniority, inefficiency, union dues, and another layer of administrators to deal with."
Funny, that's what I think when I hear "corporation."
But seriously, I think the "situation" orphiuchus is referring to is the situation where we don't have an effective lobby when our elected representatives claim that we need to approve more H1-B visas and make it easier for corporations to offshore large segments of the technical work force, including programmers.
Or maybe the situation where there is no effective training outside the universities (who are hopelessly out of touch with the industry to the point that you're often better off quitting school and teaching yourself how to do things you've already seen are useful in the real world).
Or maybe he (or she) was referring to the situation where there is widespread sexual harassment and all HR does is figure out legitimate ways to get rid of the *victims* if they have the temerity to say *anything* -- rather than solving the problem.
Or maybe the situation where you are one change of ownership or one change of the-latest-fashion-in-programming-languages away from losing your current sweet deal, no matter how good you are.
Or maybe the situation where businesses go broke going around in that sorry circle too many times before getting the right people for a fair price and not having to worry about paying health benefits or pension plans.
BTW, the unions I've worked with offer real pension plans, and health benefits in retirement -- not your pathetic up again down again 401Ks.
you just send in your heavies to explain the value proposition.
Yeah, that sounds all legal and ethical. It says something about you that you have no problem with that.
I don't wish to associate with criminals and scum so I will never join a union.
Union Steamfitters in NY make nearly six figures.
You're paying Java code monkeys fresh out of college that? L053r.
Think of *your* union as a professional society with balls. And a pension plan.
How's that 401K think workin' out for ya?
You know the one that lost 50% of its value year before last. And has yet to recover.
The AFL-CIO is one of the last organizations in the country to offer a defined benefits pension plan, and they still deliver.
No, their current skill set is currently worth that. As soon as the "fashion language of the week" changes, or another wave of programmers in India or China learn that skill set, it's goodbye charlie to them.
They'd better save some of that "200K+" today, because it could go down to less than 20 tomorrow.
Of course they're right about their tiny idea being the next big thing! That's the way it has always been, from now until back to the invention of the wheel. Stupid guy, what does he think he is going to accomplish with that round piece of rock with a hole in the middle? Every inventor needs to have someone else that can actually implement their ideas. Need some little plastic gizmo to use for their product? Call the giant plastic factory full of people who know plastic manufacturing as their life's work. Need to feed your dog? Go to the people who have their own researched formula for dog food, and have been selling it for years. Need a computer program? Write it yourself. Wait, huh? Ya. Yourself. Documentation is free. Always has been. And if it isn't, what are you doing even thinking about using it? I've put my entire life into understanding how things work, what they do, which place they have in practical use, what is need to make these work, etc. And if someone can't put 30 minutes of work into writing their own program, then they should either give up and call it quits, or... *gasp*... hire someone else who knows how to write one. But the people who don't do this are the ones who just waste money or go out of business a few months later wondering why, either way, they don't deserve the personal freedom of being rich enough to run their own business. Prospective inventors also historically have a way of chasing the dream, just because some magical computation box machine is involved doesn't make it any more modern, special, or otherwise newsworthy.
Or is this an explanation of how the your father can find them in his nineties?
What about a software engineer who brings to the table specialized algorithmic knowledge that can mean the difference between a slow product, and product that is at least fast enough to use. What about a software engineer whose toolkit includes imaging algorithms that can find faces in the haze, or is able to marry multispectral information across several devices. What is your definition of a programmer, and a software engineer?
It's a crapshoot whether you get a good one who is willing to think of something new, or one that will shoehorn his existing knowledge in whether it's fruitful or not. I've seen too many cases of WTF implementations that contain absolutely brilliant code that has no place being there at all, but was added because it was the love baby of a chief programmer or program engineer.
Doubling the code base to get a super-fast and extremely elegant numeric sort routine that takes advantage of Benford's law, in order to be able to rapidly sort your web statistics by bytes or gas mileage by mpg?
In short, if what they bring to the table is a solution that looks for a problem, they may not be the right men (or women) for the job.
If, on the other hand, they can immediately identify the right tool for the job, or invent one if a good tool doesn't already exist, and excel at finding alternative solutions, they're worth their weight in gold-pressed latinum.
Oh. So if you tried to form a union you would try and institute crazy things?
The thing is what can and can't be done with a computer is the kind of thing non-computer people have trouble understanding. So their "great ideas" may well be "impossible pipe dreams." I have a friend who is all the time bothering another friend with ideas for development that are impossible, things that would require an AI to do. He doesn't know computers very well so he doesn't know what can and can't be done.
So you might not have to be a programmer, but at least have some deeper computer and programming knowledge to be able to actually come up with a workable idea.
As a practical matter I find that the "I have the idea all I need is a programmer," types always have shitty ideas. They are usually very vague, obvious, already been done, etc. We see this shit with business students (I work for a university). They'll come over since we are the engineering department looking for engineers to work on their project. They have a "great idea" and "just need some people to develop it." They have a very small amount of funds they are willing to pay, and of course they keep all the rights, because after all THEY did the hard part. Often their ideas are, literally, along the lines of "Make a search engine that works better than Google," or the like. Things that would take a massive implementation effort even if they are feasible. However they think they did all the work coming up with it and making Powerpoints about it, and they just need a couple engineering students to stop being jerks and accept a minimal amount of pay to make it a reality.
Ugh. Mod parent +1 "it hurts because it's true".
Don't have to outsource to have scabs. The reasons unions work(ed) is that there is a centralized workforce-- basically everyone in the same place, making sure no one breaks the social/work/union contract of "we're all in this together-- so don't cross the picket lines or you fuck us all". It's not an accident that the most important accomplishments of unionization (8 hour day, weekends off) in the US happened in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the coal mines, steel mills, etc, where the employees worked in close proximity.
Also doesn't help to have the attitude that "only dumb unskilled rubes need unions-- I'm smart enough to 'negotiate' for the wage I want from whomever I 'want' to work for"... sadly, an attitude I see a lot in my field.
The ideas ARE what is valuable.
Everyone has good ideas, both programmers and non-programmers, but unless you really beleive in the idea you will not be willing to put enough time and money in it.
If I would even consider all other peoples ideas for more than 1s each I would be starving now because I would not be able to get anything useful done.
The key to getting your ideas implemented is simple.
If you really beleive in your idea you either show me $30000 or whatever it will cost to implement it or you do what everyone else who is looking for handouts does, you come up with "the elevator speech". (If you are looking for money for research it is very helpful to be able to explain what you are doing in about 10s because that is about the longest people are willing to put up with you until you have shown that you aren't a complete nut.)
If you can get someone to listen the first 10s then be prepared to present your case more detailed. You will need to do this again when the project starts but before anyone wastes his time he will want to know that you have thought this through and spent more time sorting the idea out than it takes explaining it. If the idea is a waste of time to begin with chances are that it will be a waste of time in the end too.
The programmer doesn't get special treatment, just as the marketing person, or the graphic artist, or the supply guru doesn't get special treatment. You have chosen a specialized field, deal with it.
All of the above expects to be paid for their work. Don't ask a programmer to take over the world for you unless you are willing to put your wallet where your mouth is because everyone else would also like to get some work done for free.
When the programmer tells you to go fuck yourself you should take that as a reminder that the people who really beleives in their ideas are willing to pay for the opportunity to explain the idea to someone who is skilled enough to implement it. Don't waste peoples time unless you have the money.
My story is that my bosses associate is a designer. He knows some basic stuff such as variables assignment, but doesn't know the difference between javascript and java. Basically, to him programming is just a bunch of ifs. I get a lot of respect from people that don't know a thing about programming, but almost none from people that know "how stuff works". What I really find sad is that people don't see programming for what it is, a creative process.
Well most of the times the programmer doesn't get a finished idea though so really the product doesn't exist until the programmer has completed the idea. Perhaps in some kind of programming the programmer will get strict rules to follow but in my line of work (automation of machinery) the idea is almost never technically finished.
Wrong. Ideas are still a dime a dozen.
figuring out the ways to aggregate all of its parts into a finished product is what makes things happen
The idea leads to figuring things out, but it is ONLY the second step that produces anything. I literally just yesterday had a guy approach me with a GREAT idea. He wanted to design and mass produce a DIY ignition controller for cars. He was going to make a MINT he said. He just needed someone to design it for him. This guy had not bother to even do a google search to see what the landscape of the market looked like. FAIL!! (Megasquirt has been out for years, and isn't setting anybody up for retirement.) He just needed someone to design it for him, and had not the slightest clue of how daunting a task an engine controller can be.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
No matter what the pay scale, only the inexperienced and those lacking talent put up with the kind of crap that "we just need a programmer" leads to.
Actually, the training programs offered by the steamfitters and pipefitters -- and by the brotherhood of carpenters -- are very effective, and people are constantly taking more courses to keep their skills up.
Courses offered for free by the union.
No, scratch that, courses that you actually get paid for while you take them, and get college credit for besides.
By new skills, I mean new welding techniques made possible by advances in materials science, new construction techniques, engineering courses (yes, engineering courses) and management courses -- particularly in site planning and project management.
So, if your DBA was not availing himself of the training opportunities his union provided, he can stay at whatever level (at a lower level of pay) he chooses, but it's still your bad for not specifying that you wanted a DBA that would verify the system *with* *SQL* when you were negotiating the contract.
Possibly those "niceties" were rejected by your management at either the planning or the staffing phase.
But that goes on all the time, whether the labor is union or non-union.
If someone says that, "they just need a programmer", they haven't vetted the idea.
Actually if the "ideas" that this guy receives are like the "ideas" my colleagues and I receive as physics profs I would not even call them ideas but simply wishes as in "I wish physics worked like this and I'd like you to work on proving that it does." vs. "I wish this piece of software existed and I'd like you to work on writing it.". Apparently it is not just profs which get requests for help with "ideas" as amusing exchange shows.
The devil take thee!!!
Patents are ideas on paper but sometimes they are worth hundreds of milions of dollars in settlements. Those who say that ideas are not worth much most likely have never had one themselves.
I always thought programming would be an ideal industry to bring back the idea of a Guild.
I just need an ideas guy. I now have the hang of this C++ thing and if I could just find some idea lackey, I will be the next google.
Doesn't sound right this way around does it?
Oh it *is* legal and ethical to explain a value proposition in the course of a negotiation.
This makes people "criminals and scum"? What, because they represent the interests of people with dirt under their fingernails? People who do actual work?
Now, I'm sure you don't put your money in a bank either, or take out a mortgage, or invest in the stock market through your 401K -- because last I checked, *those* people were the real criminals and scum.
This is wishful thinking.
A real good idea is indistinguishable from implementation.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
I think you're trying to make a point, but you're using so much hyperbole it's not clear what your point is. H1-B visas? That sorry complaint of racist, incompetent programmers? Did you really claim that unions would help keep companies from going broke? Was your university really that bad (and why didn't you go to a better one)? Seriously, your arguments would be better if they were based in reality.
Qxe4
An educated programmer (or other engineer) knows a lot both about technical feasibility and about customer wishes. An educated programmer will also often contradict the illusions of feasibility and usefulness that computer-uneducated marketing and management have. As information scientists & analysts, they even may have better education in parts of a management job than the mangers themselves.
So, that should by all means result in much more influence on the company than a graphical artist. Essentially, they often should be sitting on the same table and always on eye-level with even top-level management, because they are the only ones that really have a means to estimate feasibility and time/resource consumption on what's usually by far the most complex part of work in a product (and hence the largest risk), PLUS knowledge about customer wishes that management and marketing often does not have, PLUS an useful elevated ability to work with information in general which that enables them to -say- work out if a complex project schedule is realistic or not in a systematic fashion, PLUS they are amongst the hardest to replace if they leave a company.
Programmers don't obsolete management skills or marketing skills. But they are not used well at all -and your company will feel that just as badly as having a bad CEO- if they are only seen as the people who execute tasks as much as possible to the specifications by management or marketing, like graphic artists.
No, but the majority (bad programmers) would vote on things that would help them at the expense of the minority (good programmers). The bad programmers think things are unfair, when in truth, they are getting what they are worth. If they actually were worth more, they'd be getting more without a union already.
If you want a 401k retirement fund, then demand it, or find another employer/contract agency that does offer it. If you can't find one, then that says what the industry views your skills are worth.
Until the new tech bubble pops.
Then you'll be wishing you had that supplemental unemployment benefits unions offer, along with the free classes to add to your skill set.
You people have short memories, don't you?
Good programmers are capable of learning more than one language. They're even capable of learning new languages long after they leave academia behind.
As Atwood would say ..
"It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution."
I feel like you are trying to encourage people to see the good side of unions, which is probably a decent goal, but your coming across as a self-righteous prick. You'll be more fun to talk to if you stop that.
Unemployment benefits are nice, and so are classes, but they aren't free. Someone has to pay for all that stuff, and I can take care of myself even without it, thankyou.
Qxe4
Well trained people that produce a good product at a fair price, and can be properly supervised because they're on-site? Yes, a union that provides this would definitely help keep companies from going broke.
What happens to tech businesses now is they get all kinds of snake-oil coming at them from all directions, and they solve the same problem at least three times while circling the drain.
The only ones that even survive their first round are the ones where the people in charge are themselves programmers and can smell the bullshit a mile away.
As soon as the money men and the managers take over, the company circles the drain a few times with first massive staff turnover, then attempted outsourcing, then re-in-sourcing with way overpriced contractors to get enough lipstick on the pig to flog it.
We've all seen it. I've even shamelessly benefited from it. Though the contracting outfits that do the re-in-sourcing and take a *huge* cut benefit a whole lot more without doing jack. Quite frankly, I'd rather see that cut going to the AFL-CIO or even the Teamsters or the UAW than to whoever it is that owns TekSystems, Addecco, or any number of other body shops out there.
Oh, and my undergraduate degree is from Cornell.
Home of the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Except my degree was from the Engineering school. I spent a lot of time with ILRs, because my father was a union man, so we had some basis of communication.
Of course, I suppose it's better to get your education on how unions work from FOX news than from being close friends with ILR students at Cornell, or by direct experience with the unions themselves.
It's simple to see the benefits: compare unemployment in the US during the global slump, to a unionized country like Germany.
Hire and fire has its downsides: you get the axe when rich people decide that they want to save their money, instead of fuelling the economy and creating jobs. With looming deflation it's the no-brainer choice for them: deflation makes their existing capital even more valuable in the future. Inflation would force that capital into the 'real economy' - but inflation is decreasing right now - the US is facing japanese-style deflation.
Those of you who rely on honest work instead of on investment income on inherited or hoarded capital: sorry, the next decade or two is not going to be to your liking. Those who are trying to survive these bad times in their country clubs are sending their condolences. (but not any cheques)
In 1979 the top 1% earners had 10% of the US's wealth. In 2010 the top 1% has more than 50% of the wealth - and the bottom 40% has exactly zero percent. (they are in net debt)
If you thought that such income asymmetries have no downsides you were wrong.
A little while ago, my wife's cousin (who is a trust fund baby living on an island in a treehouse... no shit) decided that he's going to change the world. He is educated as a carpenter (daddy made him work for a little while... to build character) and is damn good at it. But, when you're living in a tree house in the tropics with your wife and babies... there's very little to do but "think".
Over FaceBook, he has been putting a great deal of effort into informing people about government conspiracies that are crushing alternative fuel concepts because all politicians are making profits from oil in one way or another. Now, this wouldn't really be a problem, you know... just another quack with a conspiracy theory. But one day, he decided he would suggest that "What if what they're teaching us in school is wrong to keep us from moving away from oil?" and he moved on to talk about "Howard Johnson's power amplifier" which is a generator that outputs more energy than it takes in and is based on "The fifth element, magnetism".
Howard Johnson published multiple "papers" leading up to how his design works, but since he was scared of being murdered by the government, he decided that he'd keep the last magical component hidden until he found a way to safely release the information without fearing for his life... or something of the sort. He did however point out that the "Key" is in neodymium magnets. And he displayed that he managed to find a new way to "measure magnetism" that all those bozo physicists couldn't figure out in a million years that showed that magnets actually had rectangular fields which rotated. And even made a meter to display them.
Well, a high school physics teacher, myself, a Cambridge mathematician, and several others all put effort into trying to explain to him that 1) we know enough about magnetism to poke around and manipulate a single atom using a magnetic field smaller than the atom itself. 2) We know enough about magnetism that the Japanese are currently testing magnetic propulsion on space craft. 3) The basic laws of physics (such as thermodynamics) are more than just silly rants. 4) Power amplifiers are an impossibility, though it might be possible to gather energy from an external source and it might appear like it's amplifying. But just because you can't see the energy being gathered, it has to come from somewhere.
He is convinced that this will work if we just ignore these stupid laws of physics that are holding us back.
Well, this conversation has proven to all of us "Silly skeptics who will listen to anything we're told in school" that there may in fact be such a thing as perpetual motion. After all, after months of trying to educate him (for the safety of us and others around him), he is still posting messages on FaceBook like "Dreaming of a world where neodymium powers our future". So, while in theory, it might actually come to an end in 40 years when he's dead and burried, it is also likely that he's infected others by then and it will perpetuate infinitely.
Woah, I've been hearing good things about Germany lately, but according to your graph, the best they can do is around 7% unemployment, and for a like time it was more like 12%. Pass on that. In America, when times are good, we have 4%-6% unemployment. That's more like it.
Qxe4
Oh, no, I HAVE a 401K.
Compared to the defined benefits plan my dad had with his union, 401k plans stink to high heaven.
Now you go look up what a "Defined Benefits Pension Plan" is. You don't even know, do you?
You'll NEVER get one. You'll have all your money in the stock market in your 401K and it will TANK the day before you are eligible to retire. Right after your house suddenly becomes worthless -- again. Right after your fabulous republicrat gubmint has "privatized" Medicare and Social Security out from under you, and that's disappeared as well.
Good luck.
You know most 401K's you can select what your money is invested in. Stocks, Bonds, Cash account, or a mix of all.
If you are concerned about stocks tanking, move it to bonds, or if you want absolute security, move it to a cash account.
When I hear that, I recall a comment about the misconceptions about racing: "Winning the Indianapolis 500 is easy. All you do is stand on the gas and turn left.". 'nuff said.
Greetings and Salutations....
Having skimmed through the comments, I will say that it is a good feeling to know that there are so many of us highly competent artists who are massively under-appreciated and under paid. No...I am NOT being sarcastic here. Just the other day, I had a lengthy meeting with three very nice folks that wanted me to set up and administer a website pushing their brand of Zeolite. They had a reasonably cautious business plan, and, had thought about many expenses and such that could arise. Two of them are fairly successful business people, and, I say that because, while they may not be accumulating huge amounts of wealth, they are keeping their heads above water even in TODAY's nasty and fragile economy. In any case, we talked about the content of the site, and, while they had SOME information for it, it quickly became clear to me that they had the idea that I could come in, pop up a few pages for a couple hundred dollars, and, they could then forget the site while the orders and cash rolled in. They had no idea about search engine optimization (such as it is), or, adding content to keep folks interested in coming back to the site, or any of a half a dozen OTHER things that help generate interest in the site and, perhaps the product they were pushing.
Alas, it ALSO became clear as I spoke with them that they wanted me to create this website, including an e-commerce shopping cart, and, maintain it, either for free (Promises of great rewards to come when the company took off) or for small money (something on that $10/hour figure that has been tossed around already). Well, as an independent consultant, my hourly rate is just a tad larger than that, and, I just walked away from a client who spent a lot of time blowing smoke up my "dress" about how I was going to get these great rewards for my efforts on their behalf, as soon as the economy picked up. Being somewhat slow to learn, it took a while for me to look at them, driving their expensive BMWs, Lexi, and Hummers, and living in their million dollar houses, to realize that the only pocket the money was going to go into was theirs...not mine. So...to get back to my point....I thought about doing this online shop and website for these fine folks for a bit, and ended up writing them a proposal that, essentially, cut my hourly rate by about 25%, but, with a guaranteed monthly payment, and strict limits on how many hours per month they would get from me FOR that retainer. I also made it very clear that any time I spent over and above the allocated time would be charged at my regular rates, and, that I DID charge for time spent in meetings. My general rule there is that the client gets the first meeting free...after that...it gets billed.
So...it has been a few months now, and, oddly enough, I have not heard anything back from them. I suspect that, since it was mentioned in our original meeting, that they have gone ahead and talked the nephew of one of the folks into putting the site together. Should I have taken the job? At the time it was the only sign of work out there. However, since then, I have picked up several smaller clients, who call me on an as-needed basis, and, pay COD...so since I do not do this as a hobby, and, so far, the utility company has yet to give me free electricity, I think I made the correct decision.
Just to prove I am not totally wandering away from the topic at hand with this rant, the zeolite folks that I talked to were pretty much of the mindset that they had done all the hard work - coming up with the idea for the website and all they needed was a hack to go in and change some URLs or a bit of text to talk about THEM and THEIR product, and make it pretty. It has been my experience over the years that folks like this are not really downplaying the role of the programmer so much as they are running on that autopilot program th
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
I'm currently trying to finish a novel. I have never done any creative writing before, but then along came a zany idea, which I had to get it out of my head and into a file. The idea itself took but moments, yet writing the 130k words I'm now up to has taken 18 months, a great deal of hard work and whole load of learning. So, when someone pops into a writing forum and says "Hey, I've had a great idea, and now I just need a writer" everyone tries to be gentle with them. No, really, we do.
I used to write computer games and it was much the same there. Yes, original ideas are important, but the implementation stage - where raw ideas meet harsh reality - is when talent and experience are essential. Ian
Ideas are a dime a dozen. As a software developer I have many ideas. I can also potentially develop software myself. Even so I cannot simply implement every idea I have. The reality is that time is money; even open source developers know that their time is valuable, and that you need to focus on developing one idea at a time. A simple application might take a month of development time. Complex applications take years of effort, and can require whole teams of developers. If you don't have your own money this means you will need a business case and some funding behind it.
I don't know how many times some Joe has offered to tell me about their brilliant idea, and that they will let me implement it and share in the rewards. Naturally I won't be paid, but get to share in the rewards when the software is sold or licensed. I can count the number of times I have accepted this kind offer on the fingers of one foot. Am I so arrogant that I believe I'm the only one that can have a good idea?
No. Its just that I know that it takes more than a good idea to be a success. You need the resources behind you, the expertise, experience and contacts in the industry you are trying to sell into. Good ideas are common. Good execution is rare.
Measured differently.
America doesn't measure the long-term unemployed, Europe does.
Well, you'd be more fun to talk to if you'd stop insinuating that any union talk must mean I'm a bad programmer or poorly educated. I am neither.
But of course, you're starting to struggle with the substance of the argument, so you start attacking the person. Fox news much?
Anyway, here is how it works with the classes. First off, you're an apprentice for five years before they set you loose on a job on your own. You have some work (for a lot less money than a journeyman) and some classes -- for free.
Now this "someone has to pay for it" is absolutely true. Union dues might seem like a burden to someone on salary -- but think of the contractor.
How much does that contracting outfit get? Much more than your union dues. When I was fresh out of grad school, I got thirty-five bucks an hour, and that was back in the early 90's.
But the contracting outfit got more than three times that -- for doing sweet fuck-all. That's right, they were charging the company like 125 an hour and giving me 35. Hey it was twice what I was making as a post-doc, what did I know? Fresh out of school.
Now, say you took what the contracting outfit was getting off of your labor -- and split it three ways: you, the union and business.
The business gets a better deal. You get more money. And the other third goes into your dues which in turn goes straight into benefits, training, unemployment insurance and a defined pension plan.
Now think of the person on salary. If he or she joins the union, the benefits are managed by the union, not the business. Here, you and the business might break even if that money the business had to spend on benefits were going to the union instead.
You could say that this would be a case for going solo on a 1099, but the fly in that ointment is health benefits -- with a union you're part of a group with massive bargaining power. On your own, you're just...you.
So...you can take care of yourself, can you? How's that individual health plan workin for ya?
I "had an idea" for Kinect over a decade ago. Having toyed with VR stuff and motion capture and the like I though "Man, it'd be really awesome to have a device that does visual and shape capture at the same time, to be able to get a full 3D capture of a world in to an editor." I personally was thinking something along the lines of an IR laser rapidly scanning a scene (like a laser shape capture device but larger).
Wow! Amazing! I so thought of it years before MS! I should be rich!!
Well... No.
All I did was think it was a neat idea. I had no fucking clue how to make it work. I just thought such a device would be great and would be doable, and had maybe a vague idea of what you might try. That is in no way shape or form something you could start development from or really anything unique. I'm sure tons of other people had the idea. What makes Kinect unique is that they got a team together, had engineers sit down and figure out how you might build such a thing, and do it cheaply, and now other people have figured out how to use data from it to reconstruct 3D scene data on a computer. The idea is not the hard part, the implementation is.
Even in purely idea fields, having a vague idea isn't amazing or worth anything, showing its worth is. Feynman didn't win the Nobel prize because he had an idea about how the spin of particles might relate to larger phenomena (such as the spin of plates, as he talks about in his book). He won it because he turned that idea, that spark, in to a theory of quantum electrodynamics that is detailed in its construction and makes extremely accurate predictions. Had he just said "Huh, it is interesting that the amount a plate wobbles when tossed is an integer ratio to how much it spins. Maybe that has something to do with the way particles work," well then nothing would have come of it. His work was all ideas, but the important part of the idea work was developing it in to a complete, useful, theory.
"... what it would be like if more people could implement their own ideas."
The result would be that most of the ideas would turn out to be failures.
In my experience the type of people that make that kind of simplistic statement tend to over simplify everything.
I am a webdev for a fairly small firm. We have people with "next big thing" ideas coming in all the time who just need it coded up. The common trait I have noticed over the years is that very few of them fully understand their own ideas. Half the time we ask fundamental questions about their business model and are met with blank stares and "I hadn't thought about it like that, errr, I don't know."
As programmers we can't just build something, we first have to fully think about it and understand how the whole thing will work and go together. This normally means understanding it to a far deeper level that the "ideas guy" ever will.
We are very rarely just coders, we often end up taking a fanciful idea and turning it into a business model that could work.
Oh dear God in heaven do NOT even think it, much less say it! Good God man, do you have ANY idea the soul sucking den of evil you are making light of? Imagine, you are just a humming along, all happy as can be with your shotgunned modems and your overclocked Celeron pumping 600MHz with Win98 stripped down like a used Buick all hot rodded when BAM...you hit the tar pit that is Geocities.
Suddenly all the fans scream to life, desperately trying to keep the Comet Cursor that suddenly is hanging a fricking pocket watch off your arrow like a swing ball of snot from blowing your CPU, your modems strain under a bazillion animated GIFs, while you are blinded by a neon purple background with snot green text in the always evil "OMG Ponies!" style, complete with little stardust shit dripping off their "brilliant" prose, when SLAM the overload of total lameness kills Win98 and you are staring at a BSOD, which sadly is kinda comforting at that moment because at least it ain't fricking purple or swinging snot clocks. So don't joke about Geocities pal, those of us that lived through it will end up having nightmares! That is like joking about Bonzi Buddy to PC repairman, you just DON'T, okay?
As for TFA, the reason they probably think it is "just a programmer" is thanks to offshoring that is how pretty much ALL IT is treated today. Experience and education don't mean jack when they can hire a guy from Bangalore for $15k a year. So they are just thinking like future CEOs and looking at the programmers as "just the help" which sadly is the way many are treated in this crap economy.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have a great idea for a car. It gets 200 mpg and only exhausts unicorn farts. I just need a mechanic!
Yah, and we do it on our own time, as well.
Everyone does. Consequently, skills briefly worth a quarter mil aren't worth that for very long.
How does union membership change that?
Who is more important in the building of a building? The architect or the builder? The opera house of Sydney is a case in point. The architects jobs was easy, just a few wavy lines. Then the engineers and builders had to figure out how to build it.
THINKING of man being able to fly was easy. BUILDING it was a LOT harder. Thinking of a man on the moon has been done a long time before it was possible.
And yes this applies to software. People have thought of secure systems for a LONG time, but failed to build it.
You can see this most clearly in game development. The ideas are a dime a dozen. The people actually able to go beyond the Xth 3d engine and push something new, worth their weight in gold.
This doesn't mean there aren't coders who are little more then typists, who put into words their betters dictation. Perhaps Anrego has never added anything of value to an idea. Maybe he has never had the job to turn a vague but promising idea into something that actually works. To bad for him. But some of us ARE good at our jobs and are the engineer to the architect. The builder to the artist. The cameraman to the director. The pianist to the conductor.
Ideas are one part. Realization is another. How they are divided varies from project to project and they can overlap, but only a fool thinks the idea is the thing. If that was the case, we would have a secure OS, interstellar travel, peace on earth and two girls for every boy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yah and they're all bullshit. You haven't read the fine print on those puppies, have you?
You still haven't figured out the difference between a lousy 401k and a defined benefits pension, have you?
Probably because the latter as all but ceased to exist outside of the unions.
nt
I cant believe these sites didnt get immediately mentioned, everyone I know goes to them to get program written and have done for years now. Theres loads of great programmers sitting around with nothing to do in xyz country who will do code at a fraction of the price it would cost me to do it.
Woah, I've been hearing good things about Germany lately, but according to your graph, the best they can do is around 7% unemployment, and for a like time it was more like 12%. Pass on that. In America, when times are good, we have 4%-6% unemployment. That's more like it.
I heard the frightening number that in the USA, about 7 percent of the adult male population is in prisons. That number includes both inmates, plus all the employees having to look after them. That makes 7 percent of the male adult population totally non-productive without counting as unemployed.
The whole idea vs. execution model is wrong. It's not THAT separate different things. After working a while both designing and programming, I'd see that the idea tends to be a starting point within some field that needs to be explored. So when someone is asking for a programmer it could be for a reason that they are looking for a working partner that is interested in the same thing. It's an ongoing process that requires constant interest and investigation. Rather than talking about who's idea it was to start with, it's usually more important if you are at the same level in the career to start working together.
If someone says they have a great idea and all they need is a programmer, then they need a lot lot more than just a programmer. If all they needed was a programmer, then they would just hire one.
What these people need first is money. They usually don't have any. Then they need a clue how to run a business, or at least how to create a finished software product that can be sold, and how to sell it. Or how to hire people doing it. So these people with the ideas, how much time have they spent on developing the idea? Have they spent at least a week of concentrated work on it? I doubt it.
You know, programmers have lots of ideas, too. And they know at least one programmer who could be convinced to work very cheaply, if the idea is worth it (unlike the guy who "only needs a programmer"). But in addition, most of them have common sense. And some idea of the cost. And some idea of what is a good idea and what is a pipe dream. So all the really stupid ideas get filtered out by them.
I worked for 10 years as an audio engineer/producer/arranger. People would come in to my studio saying, "I have the whole song in my head... it goes, duh, de, duh".
I'd do a quick transcription of whatever melody was there, better it, then harmonize and arrange it. Then Joe Genius would say, "No, the lead part on the bridge has to be more, umphy". Me: can you write a lead sheet? Joe: No. Me: can you point to an example? Joe: No.
Sigh.
All the positives you talk about can be had from forming a professional association without the incredible bullshit involved with being a union shop.
Unions are the biggest waste of human talent and resources in the world. I have seen a slack pompus prick keep his job over a hardworking young labourer on account of him simply having all the right friends in the union when he started a fight with the poor kid at a factory. I have seen industrial plant operators all order tickets to the company function that most of them had no intention of going to because the union said it was "their right to have the company spend money on them".
Seriously you should learn from the doctors, accountants, lawyers and engineers. Form professional associations and lead them in a way that don't make membership sound like complete bullshit. You get all the training in the world and recognition that you're actually worth employing. Sure you can sit an exam every time you apply for a job, or you could just point at the letters granted by your association like "CPA" for accountants. Unions get treated with the disdain of a plumber who shows up late for a job, whereas if you associate yourself with a group who not only have a strict entry requirement, but also a periodic revalidation to prove you deserve to stay part of the association, then my friend, THEN you will be treated like the professional you deserve to be rather than a code junkie.
Strange, because here in Belgium, anybody can join a union. There probably is a minimum age, but the job is irrelevant. Even better: you do not even NEED a job to join a union. And you can select from several.
This means that if they make a picket line, they have a lot more pressure.
They might start with just a few people in one company. Then the whole company or all of the same profession or even the whole country.
The main disadvantage I see is that _elected_ union people are over protected and that draws people who are in it for the over-protection and not for their cow orkers. Meaning many are lazy but can't be fired. For all the others there is no difference between union and non-union. Same pay. Same amount of holidays. Same whatever.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I have an idea... I just need a programmer, an artist, a musician, etc...
It's not just programming, it's everything. If you can not implement some significant part of your idea yourself, chances are you won't find someone willing to "not take credit for it" later.
This is why Song Writers are often Musicians, Directors and Producers are often also screen Writers and Actors (or otherwise worked in the business)... they know their part of the idea. Bring in other people when you want to polish up, or even bounce ideas off people before spending the money to start rolling with the project.
You even see this with things like webcomics... often there is someone who has an idea, but can't draw, so they steal clipart, sprites, or use the stock models in Poser or Daz3D and push that off as a "Comic", if there's any weakness in the writing or the idea itself, the art is not going to save it. If it's a great idea, then you can always hire someone to draw... after you proven it's a good idea.
There are thousands of throw-away software programs out there. From games, to GPL'd operating systems. They often become software looking for a use, fanclub, etc. Sometimes whatever niche the software designed for comes to pass, and the software takes off. More often than not, someone will just make a GPL knock-off of your idea and open source it before you make a dime out of it in todays highly connected environment. If the open source project doesn't take off... then neither will your product.
There's only two products on my wish list that I'd like to see out there, that have either not been made, or not been made in an effective way.
1. A program to up-convert flash-animations to lossless HD video. I wrote something that did this and often ran into more bugs caused by hacks the animators used than anything wrong with the flash plugin. No 64bit stable plugin makes doing this aggravating as the output files often exceed 4GB. And no, Moyea SWF2Video is garbage.
2. A modular world simulator "physics-enabled game" (something akin to a MMO) that would actually respond to environmental, manmade and theoretical variables. Second Life doesn't even come close (as it's not a seamless environment) and most MMO games are just level-grinds inside a stale stagnant world that doesn't change. SimEarth on a much much much grander level. After playing several MMORPG games I've come to the decision that this is highly desireable, but will never be implemented because the companies aren't interested in makeing "good MMO games", just shitty D&D rules, Diablo clones, even the Asian ones. Nobody wants to innovate in the MMO land. Even Startrek Online is just a re-skinned copy of PerfectWorld International. What I want is a game that buildings and infrastructures actually wear out or can be choice destroyed as part of the game, erosion and earthquakes can change the land. Ships and Aircraft are integral, not just a fast way to get from point A to Point B and maybe kill some vendor-trash vending monsters. If the world doesn't change, it gets boring. Games like WoW just add new areas... and the old areas are just quickly vacated. Nothing more to do there.
It's only racism if you didn't experience it time and time again.
To give you an example, to say Mexicans are generally lazy is racism. To say US voters are generally uninformed is watching international politics.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Quite humble request - our sales people frequently sell items that require nothing short of artificial intelligence, perpetum mobile and some black magic to tie them together.
Facebook pretty flies in the face of everything you posted .... or supports it completely. I haven't decided yet.
Ideas are like assholes: everybody has one.
Most "Ideas" are just some vague clowd castle in the air kind of thing, not really thought through, lacking details and a proper look at feasability or applicability - somebody woke up in the morning with "a really cool idea" but then didn't went through the trouble of properly fleshing it out with details, researching if it can be done and if is worth the trouble of doing it.
Anybody that has ever done software development in direct contact with the end users know what I'm talking about here: somebody has an idea for something the system should be doing, but you have to sit with them and walk them through the nitty gritty details of coming up with the requirements, which is when the idea actually starts to take shape, often enough turning out to be quite different from the original idea. This is in a specialized area, with domain specialists (in a business), and just extending an existing something - brand-new ideas from non-specialists in a specific domain are way much vaguer.
He's probably not racist, so put your own prejudices away for a bit.
When you do find though, is that the generic programmer you get from Indian development shops are the inexperienced ones. There's a very strong hierarchy in these places (and in India in general) which means that once a dev gets experience, he will expect to be promoted to a more senior supervisor/manager/etc position. Once there, coding is not part of his job description, and from what I've found the guys in these positions quickly start to resist being put back in a coding position.
The other issue is that, once you outsource to these dev shops, you never get the same guys twice. So we take junior devs from them, take ages to bring them up to speed, and next time we need them... we get another junior guy. I'm sure the Indian chaps over there are laughing their heads off at us, yet our pointy-haired management keeps on falling for it as all they see if the immediate $$ salary costs.
void dwim(void);
While were talking about programmers... I just want to show you my lattest little programming/designing creation: http://today.onlyfor.mobi/ I'm probably going to get banned for doing this, but still :)
what do you think?
The Professor is missing the irony in his own remarks. Since he is the "oracle" in this situation, the one the idea guys seek. He's pontificating as though he's addressing one of his classes on what should happen in the "real" world.
On the other hand, what he should do is look in the mirror. What do most Professors do when they get an idea? Why, farm it out to a grad student, of course. They're the academic equivalent of the real world instance he's deriding. Grad students after all are cheap labor to be exploited for his infinite favor in the course of their thesis work and perhaps the whiff of a nod in the credits when it's time for him to collect the prize. Other than that, they are merely a commodity.
Freakin' hypocrite.
Many fiction writers have told me the same story about their own profession. Somehow people think the hard work of making an idea real is the easy part.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Starting a business and making it successful is fairly easy - just boring and hard work.
Yes, the most successful people are the ones with the greatest tolerance for boredom.
But ironically it's the lazy dreamer who has the best ideas in the first place. So a successful lone-wolf needs to master both the dreamer and drone modes.
No wonder most successful start-ups have at least two founders, providing complementary skills or cross-motivation.
I would have to disagree. The difference between wealth and having a second job isn't in whether you can code the idea. Any 15-year-old idiot can probably code an idea, unless it's very complex. How well you can do it is nearly paramount. You know, for example, that most sort algorithms max out at an efficiency of Clog(n)[element_count], as a rough description. You know who makes six figures a year? The guy who can reduce "C" by five percent. And no, you can't do that with shell scripts and lines of spaghetti code.
c = 299,792,458 metres per second - it's not just a good idea - it's the law. Of course you can't do it with shell scripts. You need at least a Mr. Fusion.
Lived through it? Dude, I actually had to program something like that in 1999. The other folks in the team were calling the graphics designer turned app designer The Antichrist, because his ideas made everyone cringe.
Green text on purple background? You kids don't know how good you have it. Oh, what we wouldn't have given for something as readable as green on bright purple. See, the Antichrist's idea was orange-ish yellow text on yellowish orange background, or in some parts the other way around. Even telling him that medically a lot of people will be unable to read that poor contrast did nothing to move him.
He had an idea for navigation that thankfully got dropped because he made the mistake of showing it to some investors and nobody could understand how they'd use it to get from page A to page B. Even that was better than the idea he had for some other site, where you literally had to find a scrap of paper with the action you wanted to do in a heap of newspaper cuts. I don't even mean newspaper style scraps arranged in a neat menu, but literally finding the one you want in a heap.
And yes, 1 MB+ of graphics per page.
Remember that this was the age of dot-coms, when they sold such craps to investors based on the idea that browsing some site should be an "experience". You don't go to some news portal site to read news, you go to have a unique experience, see? ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Would that be the Pradeep Principle?
When you do find though, is that the generic programmer you get from Indian development shops are the inexperienced ones. There's a very strong hierarchy in these places (and in India in general) which means that once a dev gets experience, he will expect to be promoted to a more senior supervisor/manager/etc position. Once there, coding is not part of his job description, and from what I've found the guys in these positions quickly start to resist being put back in a coding position.
No - couln't disagree more... ideas are precious and fragile... easy to dismiss. There are millions of people can program and implement a plan. That's what OO was all about. UML defines the scenarios and a programmer decides how to implement the design. Like ALL building work, it's the project manager that gets things knitted together
Of course there is always going to be a gap between the actual functional requirements and code design (UML and code), but that's like when architects try an make a building pretty and don't think about exactly the practical implications. I bet a lot of builders and engineers have had to change the architects plans to make things work.
So this all shows that the idea is the most precious (if good), and this is nothing without a good experienced project manager, followed by the architect, followed by the coders, then last but not least the quality assuance process!
To make a hit you need a lot of things all at the same time and place to come together.
A developer is just one component.
Other things you need.
1. LUCK
2. A decent idea
3. Drive, aka hard work
4. A plan ( ish )
5. Timing
Mostly it all comes down to hard work. Given all the factors that might come to play if one lacks something then other aspects must adust accordingly. A developer / quality code are only 1 of many many factors. The code can actually suck if other factors pick up the slack.
I've been in IT for a few decades now. And the quality of the code has very little to do with a money making project. Remember you don't need a smash hit product to make money. I've seen some shocking code make money. I've seen near perfect code loose so much money it hurts.
Only someone who is arrogant believes that their talent is essential for success. People are replacable. The same is not so true for a solid team. A diverse set of talents in a single team can achieve some stunning stuff. A good team is very difficult to replace.
So in summary yes in some cases asking for "Just a developer" is a reasonable way to turn a profit. But to believe that only the developer can bring this project to completion is pure rubbish.
Can an electrician build an office tower? NO
Can an office tower be built with out an electrician? NO
Can a team of talented trades men build an office tower? YES
The other issue is that, once you outsource to these dev shops, you never get the same guys twice. So we take junior devs from them, take ages to bring them up to speed, and next time we need them... we get another junior guy.
In a sane world, you would be able to bring the guy who you brought up to speed to US on a H1-B may be and get him/her to spend the earning in the USA and pay the taxes in USA and contribute his/her kids to the local schools and thus enrich the US economy, US Government and US communities in multiple ways.
But instead we limit the H1-B quota to 65000 a year, and offer 50000 visas a year through a lottery program. There was a time USA was in need of agricultural labor and manual industrial labor. Then it made sense to ask the world for their wretched masses yearning to breath free. Now we don't need 50,000 families of uneducated unskilled people from countries that largely despises America. Indians love America. If only we let them come in here, work here, spend here, pay taxes here and keep the business here we will be so much better off.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
People often trivialize the amount of work that needs to be done by others. From things like "I just need a programmer" to "Honey can you move the entertainment center to the other wall". Quite often the level of effort is inversely proportionate to how simple they think something can be done.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
That said, from your example and mine, I'm starting to get the idea that it's not just programmers these people need. Before even needing that, they could use a few more experts, starting with interface designers and usability experts. And maybe someone who understands the business side of that idea too.
Honestly, the more I think about it, I don't even think it's just programmers they miss. People spew all sorts of half baked ideas, and thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect, the more unqualified they are to judge that, the more that half-baked idea sounds like a stroke of pure genius. I've had to sign NDA's for ideas boiling down to "we'll make a portal site and have an IPO and people will give us lots and lots of money", and those people seemed to genuinely be convinced that someone would be just itching to steal _that_ pure genius idea.
Heck, it's not even about programs. People have "genius" ideas about business, games, mods, etc. Now someone just has to do the boring trivial stuff like balancing the gameplay or making that business idea work. They did their part and had the idea, and should get the credit, right?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A truly good developer developer is worth a six-figure salary because they are good. Not because of a language they know.
The good developers do not need the benefits of a union. They will always have work, and will always be paid well. You'll know you've found one when everyone in the company goes to them for help and always comes away with a great answer. They're the ones getting job offers when they aren't even looking for work. They're also very rare.
A union would benefit the 'regular' developers in that it could help with the problems you identified upthread. But the really good ones will be well taken care of without a union. And that will be one of the biggest problems in unionizing: many developers think they are 'good' when they're just rank-and-file.
Well, then, you've only made clear that you need to make your union international in scope. Your point is precisely the reason why various unionists, socialists and communists have always always believed that their ideas need to be spread worldwide.
The biggest challenge is that when corporations are faced with workers standing up for themselves, they move to countries where doing so is illegal in fact if not in name. For instance, in most countries currently with sweatshops, people who start trying to unionize are first fired, and then not infrequently shot by their employers.
I am officially gone from
This will become less of an issue as the dollar weakens, and other factors also point to emerging-market wages 'levelling out' with those in the first world.
Though it seems to me plumbers are super-expensive, perhaps more people should become plumbers instead of programmers.
If you're going to put disposability up front as a priority, you're not valuing what has to be done correctly.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
But if you don't mind rewriting it from scratch, go right ahead.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Isn't C# supposed to be drop and program?
Anyone can learn it in 24 hours according to a book I've seen.
I apologize if someone said this already...lots and lots of comments to read through. Here's something that I don't think has really come up in all of this. Yes, you need someone with the idea (and the wherewithal to see it through), and someone who really knows their stuff to make it happen. But the one thing that everyone seems to be missing is adoption. Without a way to get the word out and get people to _try_ your idea, the best ideas, with the best implementations, are going to go nowhere. I'm not a marketing nerd by any means, but I also really think that you need some sort of plan (and a person to think through the plan) of how to get the word out on your great idea. And the person who had the idea, and the person who implemented it, are rarely the ones who think about how to do this.
Didn't 60 Minutes detail all that last night covering Facebook?
Having written custom software for a few businesses I can tell you that it is the way to go a company to have it's specific needs developed right at home.We need more of this.A vision turned into reality,wow!
How can you write a historical description of Geocities and not mention the BLINK tag? The constant threat of epileptic seizure is part of what made that site great.
The hatred for vba is misplaced. The quality of the code written in it is primarily the fault of its low barrier to entry, not its poor design. Too many people use it who shouldn't. If you are stuck without matlab or a real compiler its about your best bet. Way faster than python (2 or 3 times faster for standard linear algebra stuff), because its compiled not interpreted. It has huge libraries of math utilities, and a quick simple way to make headers for any dll calls you need to make. By comparison python bindings to natively compiled routines are brain surgery, and they aren't *that* hard. If you only have a compiler and no libraries it still can be a good choice. But given good libraries or (genuflection required) matlab with toolboxes, vba is quite obviously a poor choice.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
If there is one thing I have learned in my years of consulting and programming is that the programming does not matter. Sure, I like to think broad and architect software that lasts and is easy to update as necessary, but it does not matter. Why? Because end users do not give a damn about it. Oh well, my credit card information got stolen and my social security number, etc. No big deal site x is so good.
It is far better to be first to market with a pretty interface than actually working. Look at recent big time successes. What are they written in? Why? Make the money and fix it when you have to. People don't leave Twitter when it goes down because its infrastructure was never thought about upfront. Facebook is a security void let alone a hole, but who cares? The only clients I have ever had care about the development of the software are clients where it is running important aspects of their business. It is code that has to work and always has to work. All my other clients look at the designs first, even initial functionality testing results are so much better in a fully implemented design than framework. I can have a demo explode, but if it looked pretty no one cared. I can have a demo where all of the functionality was nailed and the design was not implemented yet and everyone was disappointed.
This advice goes against everything I believe, but here it is:
Hack it together as quick as you can and make it look pretty. Don't bother debating with the architect folks like me who will tell you to do your unit tests and spend time on prgramming related tasks. It apparently only matters to us. If it doesn't scale you can probably throw hardware at it. If you can't debug it, you can hack it together with a bandaid. When you make your first $100 million you can go back and fix what you need if you want. Be first, be innovative, and most importantly be pretty. If it works also then that is a bonus. It doesn't have to be secure because no one gives a damn and advertisers will probably love you more anyway. Sure there may be a big flare up every now and again, but does anyone leave? So why worry about it?
For software folks, it seems our roles are better in the corporate world, education, or on high security stuff for the government. Every day people give no value to what programmers and architects do. They think Google is really as simple as type in word and hit the button and laugh at you for not thinking of that first.
Now, get off my lawn!
To give you an example, to say Mexicans are generally lazy is racism.
To be pedantic, not necessarily (and ignoring that "Mexican" is not a race). For instance, if someone asked "do you think most Mexicans are lazy?". An appropriate answer might be "yes", if you believed that most peole (and therefore most Mexicans, most caucasians, most women, most men, most one-armed people, etc) are lazy.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I had an idea as non-programmer and did know any programmers in the late 90's. My solution was to be become the programmer. I ended up scratching my own itch by tossing together a small music related app. It ended up paying my way through college a couple years later when I was laid off by the Fortune 500 company I was working for in '01. The software is still used though it is a nightmare for me to try to maintain.
I have lots more ideas that I know are capable of being written and there is even a market for them, but it is much harder for me to work on something one my own after spending all day working on company code.
Sorry, but MySpace reinvented that problem. Not to mention they made it easier to create such a page. Just unavoidable I'm afraid.
The other folks in the team were calling the graphics designer turned app designer The Antichrist, because his ideas made everyone cringe.
Green text on purple background? You kids don't know how good you have it. Oh, what we wouldn't have given for something as readable as green on bright purple. See, the Antichrist's idea was orange-ish yellow text on yellowish orange background, or in some parts the other way around. Even telling him that medically a lot of people will be unable to read that poor contrast did nothing to move him.
If those were his ideas, then he wasn't really a graphic designer. Sure, he may have called himself that, and by the sounds of things, enough of you guys bought into it. Hell, he may even have had some design sense. But he most certainly wasn't a real designer. It's the equivalent of calling a guy who can cobble some premade PHP scripts together to do something different a "programmer".
No, he assumes that the experience and education of the Bangalorian matters less to the offshorer than the fact that he'll work for $15k a year.
Oh well. Capitalism is supposed to maximize efficiency by minimizing marginal costs. I guess having a standard of living above barely staying alive counts a marginal cost.
I wonder how difficult it would be to set up a shadow economy where I do favours for my neighbours, they do favours for me, and rich parasites are excluded? Because the actual economy seems to be getting worse and worse for the common people, despite all the technological advances.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Can you tell me what would I personally gain from unionization with you or anybody?
15 years of experience, 10 years as a contractor, last year working on my own business.
Salary in the first 5 years came close to the maximum that could be made in the field in a permanent position, the contract rates were in the top percentile, probably in the 85th percentile or more, I cannot be certain but since it is done as a corporation and the corporate taxes are lower than personal and there is a way to write things off against taxes and there is a way to invest through the year before paying taxes...
You have to explain to me how unionization would have helped and what would it have helped with.
Really, would it make me MORE money? Would it allows me to keep MORE cash in the pocket (the only true measure of the job, at least for a contractor, who had contracts as long as 5 years and as short as 2 weeks.)
WHAT would it give me?
I knew plenty of people who clearly would have benefited from a union, but seriously speaking, you wouldn't want those people working for you, so why would you want to force those people as workers upon anybody?
Also what exactly would a union do for me if I am trying to get my own business going?
You can't handle the truth.
In a sane world, the US would protect its domestic industries and prevent hemorrhaging money all over the world by making offshoring outright illegal and not allowing foreign labour into the country. As is, it's rabidly de-industrializing and going bankrupt as a result.
But hey, the CEOs get bonuses for looting the economy, so it's alright.
No, you won't be. An Indian accepts a smaller salary than an American because he won't be spending it in America, he'll be spending it in India. Meanwhile, that smaller salary depresses wages, which both decreases tax revenue and makes people poorer.
Again, the only winner is the aristocracy, and again it happens at the expense of the working class.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Um, the position of having all our jobs sent overseas? Here's another thought, when you think 'union' think the American Medical Association & the BAR. They're both unions you know?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You mean Freshmeat?
Hey, mock it all you want, a lot of us learned html and got our first webpage thanks to Geocities. It's not like there were a ton of sites back in 1994 offering free web space (something we pretty much take for granted now). And it cost a lot more than $5-$10 a month back then if you wanted to buy webspace too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Will the madness never end?
Oh, wait... maybe we all need each other?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"I need just a programmer" is something that pisses me off. I had some rather "entrepreneurial" friend contact twice already in the past about realizing some of his ideas. After discussing things, it usually ended up in the way where he reaps all profits and I'm getting paid some wage, but only if the whole ordeal works out.
I mean, it's nice that some people get novel ideas. But programming is the whole brunt of the work, so I'd like an appropriate share. Practically, it'd be more than for the guy with the idea.
For the same reason, I don't envy those programmer drones in large companies.
MySQL Query progress bars on web page, fuzzy AI search algos for web app and putting it on the cloud are just check marks on the features list.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Agreed. I'm one of those geniuses who dropped out of high school because my teachers taught me little. I skipped college and quickly went to corporate america where I'm kicking major ass. I regularly school these "college" people in meetings and code reviews. I make them look unskilled I'm so far ahead of them.
I've been in the industry since I was 19. I have no degree, or certs. I look like shit on paper.
I keep getting promoted (over 6 figured now) and the college guys I work with keep getting fired.
Unions and their certification walls to entrance, only would force me to go back to school and waste more time. I'd rather keep stealing the college jobs because college isn't teaching them shit.
...and one might have predicted this would happen. (I would not be surprised at all to find that someone did predict this).
The business world seems to believe that the idea is the most important part of the product release process. Goes hand in hand, I think, with the patent troll phenomenon. If creation of an actual product were seen as the most important part of a successful product, perhaps the patent trolls would find productive employment elsewhere (cleaning out septic tanks, for example) instead of clogging up the patent system and the courts with their dreams of big bucks without having to produce a physical product.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Obligatory XKCD
Well, he had made the graphics for a couple of small games you've probably never heard of. So I guess you could call him some kind of artist, at least. The only problem was that basically he never got out of the mentality that he's designing games. Effectively, he didn't as much design a web site or a navigation menu, he made it effectively a minigame by any other name.
Other than that, well, I see no point in going No True Scottsman about it. He's a guy who used to make graphics for games, and suddenly he was the one who should decide what a web-site should look like. Was he a _real_ graphics guy? Maybe. Maybe not. The ones who had any power to say "yes" or "no" to his crazy ideas sure thought he was one. In the end, that was everything that mattered.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wonder how difficult it would be to set up a shadow economy where I do favours for my neighbours, they do favours for me, and rich parasites are excluded?
Governments call that tax evasion. At least in some countries, it is illegal to swap services without taxing, even though no money changed hands. Freedom is nice, right ? :(
Can I light a sig ?
As for TFA, the reason they probably think it is "just a programmer" is thanks to offshoring that is how pretty much ALL IT is treated today. Experience and education don't mean jack when they can hire a guy from Bangalore for $15k a year. So they are just thinking like future CEOs and looking at the programmers as "just the help" which sadly is the way many are treated in this crap economy.
That's what a former (now out of business) employer thought when they outsourced the development and coding for a labor scheduling system for a 1900 store video rental chain to Bangalore. After getting as far as deploying (and messing up the basic operations) in several beta stores, the whole thing was scrapped to the tune of half a million.
As for TFA, the reason they probably think it is "just a programmer" is thanks to offshoring that is how pretty much ALL IT is treated today. Experience and education don't mean jack when they can hire a guy from Bangalore for $15k a year. So they are just thinking like future CEOs and looking at the programmers as "just the help" which sadly is the way many are treated in this crap economy.
Sadly, I think you are correct here. The natural extension for the service-economy the US is in, is to rely even less on production and more on "ideas". That also explains the extreme interest the US has in spreading its intellectual property laws across the globe.
I don't think the world will follow in lockstep. As local wealth increases in production economies, local demand will increase and will decrease the export potential. And as local demand increases, the local service economy will as well, which will eventually lead to local "ideas". From a "Western" perspective, the pervasive Internet will make knowledge sharing only easier and as a consequence, "knowledge" and "ideas" will decrease in value. What remains is the skill to harness that knowledge. In the long run, the healthiest economies will be the ones with local production, not the ones that focus on the cheapest labour overseas.
As for "just a programmer": there are plenty. RentAcoder anyone? But the bottom line remains the same: your "ideas" will be copied twenty ways from Sunday before your product ever launches. Ideas are worthless. Having the skills to implement your ideas is what makes you stand apart from the rest. IP is a bubble just as dotcom was.
In a sane world, the US would protect its domestic industries and prevent hemorrhaging money all over the world by making offshoring outright illegal and not allowing foreign labour into the country. As is, it's rabidly de-industrializing and going bankrupt as a result.
Not 'illegal'...just taxed more.
No, you won't be. An Indian accepts a smaller salary than an American because he won't be spending it in America, he'll be spending it in India.
And even if he is spending it over here, he's a) used to a smaller standard of living, and b) trapped by the law so that he can't negotiate for a smaller salary, and c) expect to retire back to India and doesn't need as much savings.
Meanwhile, that smaller salary depresses wages, which both decreases tax revenue and makes people poorer.
Indeed, the problem isn't the low salary or why it would be accepted, the problem is that having people willing (and able) to work for lower wages depresses an industry...and having that happen economy-wide depresses an economy.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Or a contracting outfit that charges like a wounded bull and whose people are no better than cheap overseas labor anyway?
Heck...the contracting outfit's programmers probably are cheap overseas labour. They're just being fronted by a domestic company that charges a 750% markup on their services.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Ok, ok, so it's more chauvinism, less racism. Happy?
Excuse me that I don't really make that much of a difference between two things I find pretty much equally despicable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Three times the median income? You're awfully expensive. Your boss should see me about cheaper programmers that are just as skilled as you. Of course you'll have to train them in before we replace you.
Wow, my former professor made it on Slashdot. Cool! Thank you UNI for 4 wonderful years and a now a great career as a software engineer. And special thanks to professor Wallingford!
Those folks with the next great thing also want YOU to do the work for free, on spec, against some magical day when profits start rolling in and you'll get a cut.
Uh huh... If the idea is good enough, they could and get someone else to put up the cash and *pay* for the programming work.
'Many idea people,' observes Wallingford, 'tend to think most or all of the value [of a product] inheres to having the idea. Programmers are a commodity, pulled off the shelf to clean up the details. It's just a small matter of programming, right?' Wrong.
Here's the thing that the professor, living in the world of academics and not business, fails to understand. The world is full of people who think they have a marvelous idea, and that if they could only find somebody with the specialized skills (but, obviously, lack of great ideas) to spend just a bit of time implementing it, they'd be rich. These people are not entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs understand that to get from idea to successful business requires a ton of hard gritty work, they understand that the ideas are out there everywhere, shared by many, and that the riches go to people who start with an idea, add that ton of hard gritty work, have some good luck as well, and often fail and restart one or more times.
And most importantly, explaining how things really work to the former, never ever turns them into the latter. It's a matter of fundamental personality traits, not a bit of education or experience.
rather than leaving it to some idiot PM with a BS in some lame-ass MIS program.
Seeing as the VP is such a VIP, maybe we should keep the PC on the QT, 'cause if it leaks to the VC, he could end up an MIA, then we'd all be put on KP.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
So we're back to protectionism? Please stop. Really.
Free trade and Wall Street shenanigans have nothing to do with one another. The fact that Wall Street folks support free trade isn't proof it's a bad idea.
I work for a large international engineering firm (mainly bridges and buildings type) and a few years ago I came up with a concept for simulating some complex systems that are important in some industries. I had the coding skills (barely) to do a pretty decent first pass of a tool set. We are now a few months away from commercializing that software and selling it outside our firm. There is a small team that is devoted to producing this software. Our software is admittedly targeted at a niche technical market, but in my experience the most important thing is the TEAM. Yes the idea is critical, but so is having a the development know how to build an extensible platform, optimize for threading, etc. It is also important to have people who understand reseller networks and marketing. These days I am mostly concerned with getting our development funding in place and working out how we will position our tools in the market, but all of these things are made easier because the product is a robust and effective one. That product is the result of teamwork not a brilliant visionary or an heroic lone coder. Cheers, 3CM
I would like to propose a radical idea. (Someone else can program it, I'm the idea guy.)
When a story revolves around the juxtaposition of two words-- in this case, "idea" and "programming", try reversing the two. If your story makes as much, or very nearlyi as much, sense one way as the other, reconsider posting the story.
To wit:
'Many programmers,' observes Fallingward, 'tend to think most or all of the value [of a product] inheres to writing the program. Ideas are a commodity, pulled out of a closet to give a well-constructed algorithm a purpose. It's just a small matter of the idea, right?' Wrong. 'Thinking of the idea is the ingredient the programmers are missing,' he adds. 'They are doing the right thing to seek it out. I wonder what it would be like if more people could think up their own ideas.'"
Yes, a lot of self-described "idea guys" have lousy ideas and aren't interested in details like programming. Is perhaps the thesis here that idea guys can be taught to program, but mere programmers can't be taught to have ideas? Because that's a bit insulting.
Ok, ok, so it's more chauvinism, less racism. Happy?
Excuse me that I don't really make that much of a difference between two things I find pretty much equally despicable.
Huh? How is the belief that the majority of people share some negative attribute chauvanism?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"theodp writes 'Many idea people,' observes Wallingford, 'tend to think most or all of the value [of a product] inheres to having the idea. Programmers are a commodity, pulled off the shelf to clean up the details. It's just a small matter of programming, right?' Wrong. 'Writing the program is the ingredient the idea people are missing,' he adds. 'They are doing the right thing to seek it out. I wonder what it would be like if more people could implement their own ideas.'"" - Posted by timothy on Sunday December 05, @11:03PM from the next-step-solve-all-problems dept.
If I understood the poster correct & his source? Well, from experience, I can only say this:
Most mgt. couldn't code to save their lives and yet they lead programmers/software engineers? Real intelligent that - it'd be like putting a 2 yr. old that NEVER PLAYED FOOTBALL @ the head of an NFL team & say "lead them!"... Yuh - "REAL SMART", that: More like a useless expense being incurred @ the 6 figure OR MORE payroll mark!
After all - ANY dimwit moron can "make an idea" from the "10,000 foot view" (which is where these "mgt.-men" can only operate from, take credit for & be in the "Trade Rags" + BLOGS etc., & especially in MIS/IS/IT dept.'s from what I have seen for 17 yrs. now!)
Why, I cannot see why, they have these posts as THEY HAVE NOT DONE THE JOB THEMSELVES hands-on for years to decades themselves!
It's like when I see people say "Steve Jobs in brilliant & a visionary" & ahem: WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT!
Jobs merely "attached himself" to a truly brilliant Polish guy named Steve Wozniak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Polish_Americans who made it happen for him and he just "leeched" onto said brilliance, takes the credit, and is nothing but a credit/limelight stealing fake...
Fact is, I cannot BELIEVE Steve Jobs allows posts like that to happen and NOT SAY OTHERWISE + GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT IS TRULY DUE! It's certainly NOT due he, by no means (and his b.s. about fonts? So what - did HE do any of the actual work involved? No, point-blank!)
Anyone doesn't LIKE IT? Too bad, I just tell it like it is, and hugely so, in the Computer Sciences related realm!
I reiterate/Again - Most of these "mgt. visionaries" couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag with a shotgun from the inside of the broad side of a barn... and I think other coders here will largely agree from their experiences over time also (especially IF they have years to decades of experience in this art & science of computing).
APK
P.S.=> Example from my own professional career spanning back a good 17 yrs. now (28 yrs. total time on computers since mainframes/midranges & timesharing systems also to current), where I have done the job on BOTH fronts (network engineering & design + programmer/analyst-software engineer, & on "enterprise class" multi-million lines sized projects that run ENTIRE companies systems up from departmental designs into the larger "industrial scale" database systems, while also being multiply published in many reputable magazines (such as Windows IT Pro for example, where the work got me paid a nice chunk ontop of that work + others for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com & its application which was a finalist @ Microsoft Tech Ed 2000-2002 2x, in the hardest category there - SQLServer Performance enhancement)):
In that timeframe?
I've had 3 managers/bosses that actually COULD DO THE JOB, of 10 total... & those guys/that RARE type? Those kind I exclude from this critique of mine, they ARE truly, "exempt". Why?
WELL - Because they had done so, as programmers themselves, for decades first prior to even DOING mgt. (most didn't want to in fact, unless it was for more pay) in fact! I am speaking of the type of fellows that had done the job, even before there were PC's in "Client-Server" or "WebServices" design (ISAM format DB's, &
Hire me plz.
Haha this should be modded up. I guess all of us had all of these ideas and the same constraints.
You forgot the search engine idea, and the MMO with real life elements via your smartphone (this one is not yet properly realized)
If it was easy for people to implement their own ideas, then it would be a whole lot harder to sell software.
If someone can truly send me a great idea that 'just needs a programmer', I will commit to writing the code. Out of the hundreds of 'ideas' that I get pitched 99% of them are already done (and often better than their plans), the 'idea owners' haven't even taken the time to review the market. Additionally, rarely does an 'idea' just need a programmer, it typically needs lots of capital to get over the hump of turning and idea into reality.
If your idea can pass a few simple questions
- How large is the potential market?
- Has this idea been done before, what makes it unique? It is patented, patentable?
- What have you invested in it?
My offer stands.
You do realize that the H1-B program if full of liars right? So yeah, they bring in some "algorithm designer" and supposedly pay him 90K per year, but since nobody ever comes back to investigate what is *really* happening they don't see that Pradesh the "algorithm designer" is actually doing basic IT admin and help desk work for about 1/5 the stated rate of pay. Pradesh doesn't complain because it's more than he would get in India and he knows that any insubordination and he will find himself back in the slums of Bangalore so fast that his head will be spinning. Meanwhile, Pradesh doesn't pay much tax on his much lower income and doesn't spend very much in the US economy either because (a) he doesn't have much left to spend after expenses and (b) he is trying to send money back home to support his parents. The H1-B program is rife with abuse and really should be abolished. The large companies, like IBM et al, don't even bother anymore and just open up a development center in India which means that even fewer legitimate H1-B's remain in the program (i.e. mostly smaller and medium sized companies who are even more likely to cheat). Obama likes to talk about STEM jobs for smart young Americans and then he goes to India and tells the outsourcing firms, "don't worry, we won't have any problems". Why should any smart US student choose a STEM career under these circumstances? Study and work hard for 5+ years so that your job can be outsourced? No, the smart ones are choosing business, law and medicine, not STEM, and who can blame them? If American companies want qualified Americans, as they say that they do, then they need to do more to prove that STEM is the path to a stable and well paying career, not some sucker bet where new graduates are hired and then cast aside after a few years in favor of other new graduates or offshore outsourcing.
The fact that Wall Street folks support free trade isn't proof it's a bad idea.
Perhaps not, but it's a pretty good piece of circumstantial evidence. The wall street traders don't give two shits about you and your family. They will sell you down the river for thirty pieces of silver. They support what is in their best interest, country be damned, so maybe you too should be looking out for numero uno instead of saying how great it is to get a fantastic deal at WalMart while your neighbor is unemployed.
That has all the earmarks of wishful thinking. If it were true, the US job market for programmers and software engineers would look very different than it does. Right now, there are vast numbers of highly skilled unemployed programmers with lots of experience; the corporate tendency is almost universally to hire young and discard/ignore old, and consequently they get programmers that have very little depth... and who can reasonably be replaced by offshore programmers who also aren't very good. And make no mistake, this is about money: older programmers cost more, load the insurance programs more, and require a little more costly environment and certain perks to thrive -- they're not willing to live in an apartment with four buddies, they tend to have kids, houses, a spouse, medical bills, and so forth..
Yet, corporations posted record profits in 2010, and the sad fact is, they did it with the majority of good programmers sidelined. They gave consumers "applications" that are megabytes in size with kilobytes of functionality; "Applications" that consume enormous amounts of system resources to do jobs that literally needn't have strained a 1990's-era computer with four megs of memory; "Applications" that are "pretty", but really not very functional -- it's a rare consumer who actually wants/uses a high powered software tool, they typically use a fraction of what it can do and what we're typically seeing are terribly implemented crap-storms with those few features becoming the norm.
I'm sorry, but although my personal opinion of skilled programmers is very high, the actual reasonably-compensated marketplace for them is mostly limited to inside their own heads. Which in fact can work out; do your own thing, as Bruce said above, spend a few hundred bucks on a domain, and try; no, it usually won't work, but it's not a lot of money and you can learn from the experience. And...
Keep seriously trying, and eventually, something -- or several somethings -- will work. I speak from experience. It is unlikely that anyone would even consider paying me what I think my time is worth. And yes, I'm a really good programmer. A rockstar of sorts. Awards, board positions, mentions in engineering journals, lots of successful devices and software in the field both on my own and on behalf of my Former Corporate Masters, very wide range of experience... all that stuff. But I no longer need people to employ me. I went from wage slave to a condition most people only dream of precisely by trying one idea after another, and nurturing only those that made me money. Little enterprises, big ones, doesn't really matter. Positive cash flow is what matters, that and maintainance-free designs; you can't build up an "empire" that you spend all your time administering, you need to create things that will make money without your attention.
Under those conditions, ideas that only make a little money remain valuable; otherwise they smother you. Just as you have to be willing to try something, you have to be willing to kill it if it isn't holding up its own end of the deal by providing earnings. No matter how much you like the idea. The market will tell you if your idea is worth anything - that's a whole different kettle of fish from the idea being cool or neat. The more of these low or medium earners you can create, the better. Another benefit of this approach is that if one idea goes under after working for a while, it's not your entire enterprise, and your bottom line isn't crushed. And sometimes, you're lucky (or perhaps understand your markets) enough to come up with a high earner.
My advice to those who seek serious financial success is not to seek it under the umbrella of a corporation, but to build your success yourself, one inexpensive, careful brick at a time. Because unlike the previous poster, I see absolutely no signs of a resurgence in
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, it's Sameer's Corollary to Brooks's Law:
"Adding offshored programmers to a late software project only makes it later."
It is fascinating that business professors are not inundated with requests from programmers clamoring for just an idea person to pair up with to change the world.
That indicates there is a supply-demand imbalance between idea people and programming people, that all these supposedly business-oriented idea people are overlooking. An imbalance that is classically rectified by raising the value of programmers, and/or lowering the value of idea people until the supply-demand curves intersect at a more mutually-acceptable point.
In any case, trying to discuss whether the idea or the perspiration is more important vastly oversimplifies the complexity of a business. I suggest that the more relevant matter to pursue in a technical forum is, why are so many programmers such poor negotiators that as a group, they have come to be perceived as a commodity in the mainstream?
Those people are the reason the legal industry here is so huge, the police, lawyers, courtroom elves, etc. Prisoners are not workers (and they never will be again, except at McDonalds, etc.) They are locked to the lowest class and will go back to prison because they are now unemployable in any serious capacity and cannot advance and so are locked into a life of crime (which they're generally not very good at... that's why they get caught in the first place.) They're resources for the legal industry, not employable people. Without our large prison population, our legal system would be a fraction of the size it is, and so would our economy. That's why it's so important to arrest as many people as possible for things that aren't really criminal under any sane definition of liberty. That way, there's sure to be enough "crime" to go around and keep the wheels turning.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I know there is no level higher than 5... but can the parent be modded up to 6 please?
Unions have their place....and that place is as far from me and my employment as possible.
Here's another thought, when you think 'union' think the American Medical Association & the BAR. They're both unions you know?
Those are professional societies. And they're big contributors to costly medical care in the US and the perverse litigative environment that the US currently has. Programmers already have such things, particularly, the ACM and IEEE.
I thought it was called Visual Basic.
"I just need a designer".
Apple Fanboi or not, the easiest way to learn to appreciate the genius of Jobs (and/or the people he hires) and the tough road of his competitors, is to try to design a real-world object yourself. For me, that's a "dynamo-driven bike LED light plus standlight". Cold, wet, vibration. Wires break. Static wakes up the microcontroller. And when you're done, it looks kinda dumpy.
Uhh, let me get this straight. The Indian guy that's living here in America, rents an apartment in America, drives a car in America, eats in America, and goes out for entertainment in America is actually spending all his salary in India, and therefore can accept less in pay?
With a heavily programmer-biased crowd here, I'm not surprised to see these comments extolling the virtues of programming, and they are all right - the best idea in the world is worthless without good code. Likewise, the most beautiful code can't make a terrible idea appealing.
Clearly, the people who say that they "just need a programmer" are idiots. The best products are ones that consider *everything*, from the details of implementation up to a user's first experience with the product. This isn't to say that all of the details need to be recorded on paper before beginning, but rather that the function and the form of what is being created are in close harmony.
In practice, though, I rarely see this. Instead, I hear marketing folks saying vague, poorly thought out ideas, which are then handed over to developers. Programmers think about details, so before you know it, you have a new feature with about 15 different options, since the developers wanted to make sure that the user could control their experience. The trouble is that in 99% of the cases, the user wants to do the same thing, and having to slog through 10 different questions ruins the experience and confuses the user.
I'm sure that people are reading the above paragraph and thinking of solutions. By now, you probably have even though of the idea of putting in a set of defaults and having the ability to edit the defaults. Then, when the user starts the function, they have the choice of going to "advanced mode" or just using the defaults.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Here, in a hypothetical situation, is is really easy to start proposing solutions, but there is absolutely no context for understanding the idea and the intended use. (Because I deliberately omitted them.) Instead, the complexity is starting to snowball without any thought to overall vision.
This is my complaint with nearly every piece of software in the world. Outside of the world of software engineers, most people don't care about all the options. They are using a piece of software because they are trying to accomplish something in their lives (even it that something is just entertainment). The most ideal software is what allows the person to focus most specifically on that goal and to have all the flexibility that they need, which is a big difference to having all the possible functionality.
Accomplishing this goal is extremely difficult, and to do it well, designers and programmers must be in close contact (and both competent).
A parting thought from the French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
Absolutely! Efficiency is priority number 1.
Why should a Java code monkey fresh out of college make $100k? You're also pretending that these steamfitters make that right out of the gate, and that steamfitting (something you need someone to be there to physically do, and which can be an easily cornered/monopolized market) is just like Java coding.
It's not a racist assumption at all. It's unpopular and/or politically incorrect to say so, but generally speaking, the ones that are well educated and experienced have moved to a different country to take up their new trade. The rest tend to remain in the 3rd world, where $15k a year pays the bills very comfortably. As the 3rd world industrializes, this trend will diminish and finally vanish, as once the disparities in cost of living are eliminated, companies will find they can't pay someone overseas to do something for dirt cheap and have them like it.
Someone needs to factor in Marketing in here somewhere. You know, the reason Facebook made it and why Orkut or Multiply or whatever else didn't. It wasn't the idea. It wasn't (necessarily) the execution.
I don't understand why you think you'd get a fair fight. We are already doing nothing about the end run around labor laws, environmental laws and safety standards that are already on the books...
No, that's an H1B visa worker. The topic at hand is the "Offshored" worker-- EG, "Mahamed-Udi" from smell technical support.
I do that already with my friends, saves all of us a buttload of money.
I do trivial computer repairs, one friend does trivial automotive repairs, etc. You just have to be very careful about not getting pimped out to their friends, by only offering this kind of thing to friends you can trust to only call you when they really need to.
Some people will think that they are doing you a favor by recommending you to their friends, but this is only true if you are getting paid. ;) Trading favors without getting favors in return is a losing game, so you need to be frank and candid with your friends about that fact. If they are really your friends, they will understand.
We don't need a union, we need a guild. (Which is exactly what you're talking about with 'partner system'.)
Don't look at mine workers, look at actors.
We don't need to try to standardize wages or anything.
What we want is:
Minimum required skill levels. Preferably with tests, as a lot of colleges are turning out shit workers.
Minimum required pay levels, including contributions to pension plans.
Ability to specify our own time limits for jobs, so rush jobs don't happen. (This is vague, but it's been figured out in other professions.)
No working with non-guild programmers, or on code contracted from non-guild programmers.(Erm, since the guild agreement was signed, of course.)
No confusing us with support or help desk or electrical engineers.
Possibly royalties?
Someone needs to look at SAG's contract. That's the sort of thing we should be looking at.
Incidentally, the 'HTML Writer's Guild' has the same sort of idea for web designers...except they have no power at all. But if programmers make a guild, and they make a guild, and we only work with each other, and we managed to get the IT union guys with us...
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
More like probably because I don't care. I understand the concept, and it makes no difference to me.
See I know that if I put x away for y years and stick it into a cash account that when I'm ready to retire at age y (y is an age that *I* define, although possible penalties apply if I take it out too early), then I'll be able to take out z each month for w months. Really, not that difficult. The only downside is that is if I live longer than w months, then I believe the defined benefits pension continues to pay while my cash account does not. However, if I die earlier, then I can give that money to my heirs where a DBP, I can not.
Shotgunned modems. I've been looking for this technology so long I've began to think it was a myth... please please send me a url.
The main reason he accepts that smaller salary is that he has to, at least if he wants to be in this country. Thanks to the fucked up way the H1-B visa system is set up, they are basically indentured servants to the employer that brought them here. If they don't polish their employer's knob in every way, they get sent back to India.
One word: guild.
It's essentially a union for people with non-linear skills. Who should, thus, not get paid solely on seniority. So it's a union minus a pay-scale and mandatory wage increases.
Actors have one. Sets minimum pay levels, has 'residues', which is a fairly weird pension system (I think a normal pension system would be better for programmers.), sets regulations about treatment of actors, etc.
Writers for books, TV shows, movies, all have one, too. Musicians do not have one, but desperately desperately need one.
While actors don't have 'mentors', that actually was a part of the original guild system, and would not be impossible to figure out. Neither would professional standards.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No, but if the Wall Street folks think something is a good idea, its probably not. At least not for everyone else in the country.
We should unionize
No thank you, I prefer to remain ionized.
From Scott Meyer's book:
FileSystem &tfs()
{
static FileSystem fs;
return fs;
}
You now get to control and log all access to your global variable and have the opportunity to change any semantics associated with it in one place instead of 5000. Please don't use global variables. Anyone who has to maintain your code will be eternally grateful for it.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Do you realize you could be talking to an ex-H1B, now a proud American?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well, more like if Geocities was a collection of 404 and 403 error pages. But yes, you are totally right.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This is a common occurrence in many fields with a high technical bar. Usually, the person with the "plan" has a pretty high opinion of themselves, which may or may not be justified. I see a lot of "genius children" (labeled by their parents) with big ideas that just need "a few things" worked out to have their Invention built and make a ton of money for them and their parents.
To give an example from a nerd hobby forum, it's common in an amateur ROV group I frequent to get questions from new members, usually teenagers, saying something like the following: "I have a great ROV design that will dive to 5000 feet, be small enough for one person to carry and use, and will only cost $10,000. It can be used for (insert random phrase describing any "cool" ROV use here). I have the design almost done and I'm going to take it to various companies to get the manufacturing done (read as: try to get someone to buy my design and give me lots of royalties) and I just need details on a few things. First, can someone tell me how I can seal a motor against water getting in? Second, I plan on using outdoor extension cord cable with fiber optics inside for communications, can someone tell me where I can order this online? Third, I'm going to need a special caulk to seal the wires where they enter the hull of the ROV, where can I buy that in a small tube for under $10?"
Usually the person doing this has drawn up a couple pictures or mock-ups in a CAD program or even a modeler like Blender or Maya. They've usually picked a use for their ROV without understanding anything about how the use relates to design, specifications, or capabilities. If anything they've designed their model with superficial features that make it "work" for the use intended, like drawing in an arm with a sawblade on it "for cutting off damaged well heads". Note that I'm not talking about an actual design, they've just drawn a picture of a (possibly) cool looking ROV, spending as much time on the paint job as the shape.
The thing all the people that do this have in common is a very human attribute - they want to believe they are special, that they are geniuses, and that they will be able to make a living/get rich/get famous without having to do it the way "ordinary" people do, through education, luck, and hard work.
That's not a horrible fault, but usually they don't want to hear that the "great design" they have, no matter how detailed, is in fact the "easy" part of creating something like they want. They don't want to hear they're not a genius and that what they want isn't simple. They interpret you telling them that it isn't that simple the same way they'd interpret someone saying "I'm not smart enough to do what you're asking" or "We big industry guys don't like to listen to new ideas". Heaven help you if you try to actually produce a quote for the work they want you to do.
People like this are why the term "hubris" exists.
If it's a kid I try to encourage them to keep thinking great ideas, but to get some education in what they want to do. If they just won't listen, sometimes I just ignore them and let them find out on their own that they're dreaming.
The same thing works for non programmers designing software. They are great if they know they're designing a user interface or interaction, and that what they want may not be possible. That kind of perspective can really help a deep technical person produce a great product. If they're convinced they have a product ready to go and that all that needs to be done is write some code, it's the same Hubris. They probably won't listen. Just ignore them unless you have the patience to get them to understand (for example, if you're a social worker or a canonized saint).
Nearly six-figures for semi-skilled (and I'm being generous here) labor? That's extortionate.
Now that I think about it, I suppose that's all unions are: a legalized form of extortion for people whose abilities don't deserve that kind of money.
His response was to: "Indians love America. If only we let them come in here, work here, spend here, pay taxes here and keep the business here we will be so much better off." implying we are talking about visa workers.
> I wonder what it would be like if more people could implement their own ideas.
Programmers would be valued less, paid less, and the people who come up with ideas would think that is where all of the value is.
The Wright Brothers had a similar problem:
Seastead this.
...at my finger tips.
"Mom! Meatloaf! Now!"
Get your dogma outta my yard!
So it's like Facebook or Slashdot, but with animated gifs and more line noise? Or...?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If I ask for "citations, please," I hope you will take it not as an expression of skepticism, but rather as coming from a genuine desire to be able to quote authoritative sources for this information.
You really do need to think outside the box to realize those massive improvements. Sometimes a few percent is enough; sometimes it isn't.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Lately, ideas have gone up in price from 1/10th of a cent to 10/12ths of a cent.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Most people over estimate the value of an idea. The best way somebody ever phrased it was an idea is worth negative one million dollars since it will take probably that much to make it become real and break even. Any idea costs money to create and make into a reality, then you need to convince enough other people that your idea is worth some of their money to buy so you can just get to the break even point.
Of course you could always just patent it then its a direct conversion from smoke into cash and only costs a portion of your soul to implement.
As one of my positive characteristics, that I'm not an IT type, but I have enough of an understanding of the issues to understand those who are IT types.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
If that's New York the city, the cost of living makes nearly-six-figures analogous to a good but more sane mid-5-figure job elsewhere.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Funny, that's what I think when I hear "corporation."
A common trait amongst assorted large organizations, and people with a certain political slant indeed focus on a particular subtype of "large organization".
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The people who are worth 200K aren't worth it because the knowledge they have is fashionable, it's because they have a skill that is timeless.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Generally the foreign worker isn't paid to come here because of his unique skills (that's just the spin put on the process by the corporations who want more low-paid workers). They get to come here because they are a lot cheaper than the native equivalents, that means they often do not spend all the money to assist the local economy - instead they rent as cheaply as possible (often several people to a single property to save cash), save as much as they can and send it away home.
We see this in the UK, we've had a lot of Polish workers come over to do anything (including a great many construction workers who've seriously undercut the local plumbing/building/handyman economy which isn't such a bad thing as they actually do good jobs as quickly and efficiently as possible...) but they all work here on a 'temporary' basis, living very badly knowing that they can put up with the conditions as the money they save will be worth disproportionally more when they return home.
I see the same with the Indian workers we've brought over, they can't afford to live like I do - we don't pay them enough, so they scrimp and save and send it home.
Ultimately its a short-term gain, but a long-term disaster for the local economy. Not just because the locals are sitting around claiming benefits, but also the skills needed are not being kept up. In the UK, for example, we find ourselves in the position where we want (or need) nuclear power stations but we no longer have the workers who know how to build and maintain them. As a result, we'll be paying French companies for our electricity generation for years to come.
In a sane world, the US would protect its domestic industries and prevent hemorrhaging money all over the world by making offshoring outright illegal and not allowing foreign labour into the country. As is, it's rabidly de-industrializing and going bankrupt as a result.
In a sane world, people would just be people and not some generalized group that can be dehumanized. There would be no ridiculous nationalism, ethnocentrism or sexism. People would be hired and paid according to their merits. And, humanity would be at the core of all our actions.
The fact that Wall Street folks support free trade isn't proof it's a bad idea.
What makes you think they're into free trade? They support hypercapitalism, which makes them about as trustworthy as a pack of rabid weasels.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Thank you. I just loooove how everyone screams I MUST be racist, and then they completely miss the $15K part. I don't give a shit WHICH country you hire from, you get a coder for 15K? They are gonna be green as goose shit and are really gonna suck.
What I do believe though is that we shouldn't be trading with countries that have extremely lax worker and environmental laws. Notice how they ALWAYS say H1-Bs are because "we have a serious shortage here in the USA" yet you NEVER see an H1-B from England? or Germany? Why is that? Because their excuse is absolute bullshit that's why, and it is nothing but bringing a guy over they can train and then send back to Bangalore where he can be paid shit wages and have no rules like OSHA or unemployment insurance, that's why. Just look at what "free trade" has done to the air and water of China. The ten most cancer causing cities? 8 out of 10 are in China, the other 2 are old USSR era former military production towns.
So scream racist all you want, but letting corporations have all the benefits of selling and operating here while they exploit the lands and people of the third world is wrong. Instead of bringing them up they just strip mine the place and then when they actually want to be treated well they move on like the locusts they are. Look at how many pieces of plastic crap are now "Made in Vietnam" now that the Chinese want more than a couple of cents an hour. It is wrong, it is evil, and our government is evil for condoning it, and if you are all for it you might want to learn about The White Man's Burden which is just as racist and evil a concept now as it was then.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Rocky, Watch me pull a programmer out of my ass.
Nothing up my sleeve.
Programming, and the art of elegance and elegant solutions is a much lost art.
Even efficient programming is long ago buried.
Apps that I use today, make me long for the version that came out 10 years ago,
bug free, simple interface, and USABLE!
Microsoft has set the standard with just shipping mediocre buggy products,
so that the industry standard is watered down to choosing who has the least evil junk.
Now we are paying the cost of lowering our standards.
Did you just say "dancing baby" or was I only dreaming it?
Yeah you do that, and now instead of paying $15k/year you're paying him at least twice that. Three or four times more if you care to keep him long enough to accomplish anything.
Because saying "Mexicans are lazy" is not the same as expressing "the belief that the majority of people share some negative attribute".
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
But instead we limit the H1-B quota to 65000 a year, and offer 50000 visas a year through a lottery program.
That's simple to get around. Enroll them in a US university and get them a student visa. A 'graduate' can work in the US for 29 months without a work visa. All you need to do is have a university that 're-certifies' them and issues a diploma. Just one more degree paper mill.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/dhs-extends-time-foreign-students-can-stay-in-us-087
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
<blink> was always criminal, but I seem to remember <marquee> being the choice of the truly tasteless webmaster.
Car analogies break down.
I remember less than a decade ago, there was some teenage kid who had one of those "great game ideas" and wanted a big name company to take him in as Director, pay him all kinds of money, give him a team of full-on professionals to do the real work and this game was guaranteed to make everyone rich. And if it didn't, this kid was willing to, wait for it, run naked through CES as punishment for losing millions of dollars and wasting everyone's time.
As I recall, he couldn't believe id and EA and whomever wouldn't take him up on his shit-for-brains offer and got all butt-hurt about it. He's probably still grousing about it today, but I really hope he pulled his head out of his ass. The world needs fewer middle-managers, not more.
With great power comes great responsibility, but only if you're over 18 since you can't enter into a binding contract at a younger age. Anyone who would trust a kid to get the job done when so much is at stake is a braver soul than I and will probably end up screwed anyway.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Wasn't modem shotgunning really called PPP frame bonding or something?..... After a wikipede it looks like channel bonding or modem bonding is more appropriate.
IIRC Windows 98 supported it, and 95 didn't, though you needed an ISP that supported it too. No idea what the state of support was like in *nix back then - probably complete. NT4 always had more sophisticated dial up than 9x, so that could probably do it, and that means every NT since is able to.
Just had a mess about with a Windows 2000 VM, and that indeed does support the shotgunnage of modems. You simply add a tick next to the modem in a dial up networking networklet properties (yeah, I'm fucked if i can remember what the microsofties call those things). And playing about with the Windows settings, if your dial up server is SLIP rather than PPP, it doesn't seem to allow multilinking (what Windows seems to call modem shottying). If this is a limitation of SLIP or MS's implementation of a SLIP client, I don't know.
Car analogies break down.
But instead we limit the H1-B quota to 65000 a year
Pesky 16-bit Win16 applications! At least they used an unsigned int.
Stick Men
These stories pop up from time to time, and only affirm my observation that we (CS people) are our own worst enemy.
Mediocrity is the outcome. Stop it!
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Opinion on this website?
http://www.microtronix.com/
Warning: You will need hearing protection and probably brain bleach.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
That is because you have been sold on those ideas your whole life by the corporate controlled media.
The sad thing? You don't even realize that you are repeating corporate talking points that you have been programmed to parrot.
But it doesn't mean all the ideas are crap so generally I just politely call them out to discover how serious they are. Do they have a business plan, a marketing plan, what's the value of the market, are you seeking funding, have you patented your idea, created a trademark or other branding? Usually these questions separate the wheat from the chaf as some actually have and they have real dollars to start shelling out. That's when I move on to the next phase about designing the software and how well they know the needs of the target market etc.
One of my colleagues summed this experience up quite neatly that if someone is bringing you this idea and haven't done all of this planning, they have finished serving their purpose in bringing the idea to life.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How is hypercapitalism different from regular capitalism, and how does that affect support or lack thereof of free trade?
It seems to me like capitalism by definition supports free trade, to come closer to a perfect supply/demand market.
The ideas guys seem to forget the work part, most of the time and thinking is the hardest work.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Just an idea... that's not built (and that who knows how many people are currently working on, have worked on to know it's infeasible or someone has patent-mined into being unusable) is worthless.
A well developed product that no one knows about is worthless.
A well marketed product that picks up interest but you don't have the ability to produce in the scale potential clients demand or which requires more volume / higher prices than people will pay to keep your head above water is worthless. (Except possibly to be bought by someone)
A product which requires support which you can't provide for the # of customers you need to be profitable is worthless.
If you, a lay-person have had a "great idea" that's so clearly wonderful, no offense but you're probably not so brilliant as you think. If it's such a great idea... of course others have probably thought about it. That said, maybe they haven't. Maybe they have but lacked the drive or resources to create it. Maybe per the top line they developed it until they realized one aspect required more investment than they thought.
To start with there's 3 levels of ideas.
Level 1: I'd like to have a custom built home. (Worthless fluff, other than that it might serve as motivation.)
Level 2: I drew up the blueprints and see I can't have all the rooms as big as I wanted and fit on the lot, the ideas are now withing the constraints of reality, which I hadn't earlier seen because I didn't have the real "big picture", just a hint of a summary and fuzzy feelings. (Much better, a starting point that could get partners interested, you might get someone to help you build the home. You're not the guy with $500 bragging to the audio-philes about how you're about to build the most awesome home theater ever, you've done your basic research. You may get some interest but may have to court it a good bit, you're on the right track but not fully ready.)
Level 3: I turned in the plans to the appropriate local government office, who told me what I had to change to meet local code and ran them by one or more professional developers to get estimates of about what it would take and now have this offer and am / am not willing to haggle. (You've done full research, you're good to go, if the actual cost found from talking to experts in the field is in your range to pay.)
Before assuming your idea is awesome, how far developed is it per the above.
You're now done with the idea... the next step is selecting the help. What kind of help do you need? One time? (You need someone to build you a prototype) Ongoing? Get estimates on the timeline of how long it will take, don't assume. Does the person have other obligations, can they meet your availability requirements? Are you willing to pay what they cost? (Sure, programmers in many companies don't get much... but there's a trade-off. They have another check coming next week, one the week after that etc. Is your offer big enough to be worth their notice compared to what they can get for working for another permanent or temporary employer? If you're looking to pay fast food wages... they'ed be better off at local fast food with an ongoing check than yours temporarily.) If you have confidence in your idea, you should be ok with them getting a small percentage to encourage personal dedication (after all, it'll make enough that you won't miss the relative small change of that %). The % isn't enough though, the idea is likely to be stolen (ripped off by existing companies in the field, MS or Zynga), fail for unforeseen reasons (better buggy whips when cars come out) or personal financial issues taking away the $ you need to finance until you're ready to run out. No matter how good the idea is... most flop, even if you do everything perfect. Luck is involved. The awesome nature of your idea does not transcend business reality. Apple's PDAs are well loved now, that took how long? (Newton anyone?) You need to be prepared to feed the help until the project is complete enough that they
Well, you'd be more fun to talk to if you'd stop insinuating that any union talk must mean I'm a bad programmer or poorly educated. I am neither.
ok, ok, I'll stop. But you have to stop insinuating that everyone who disagrees with you must get all their *knowledge* from Fox News.
Anyway, here is how it works with the classes. First off, you're an apprentice for five years before they set you loose on a job on your own. You have some work (for a lot less money than a journeyman) and some classes -- for free.
Uh, pass on that, I liked college, and now I can typically learn something faster than I would if I took a class. So being forced to get certified for something would be nothing but a hinderment to me.
But the contracting outfit got more than three times that -- for doing sweet fuck-all. That's right, they were charging the company like 125 an hour and giving me 35.
I'm sorry. That company ripped you off. I sincerely hope you're doing better now.
Now, say you took what the contracting outfit was getting off of your labor -- and split it three ways: you, the union and business.
Instead, let's say we don't base our view of the programming world on some company that was ripping you off. The business shouldn't get any, and you should get it all. If you want to contribute to a defined pension, that should be your decision, you shouldn't be forced to join it just because your coworkers want to.
So...you can take care of yourself, can you? How's that individual health plan workin for ya?
Hmmm indeed, healthcare is a problem right now in the US. Not a huge problem, because I don't have to pay until I get sick (since no insurance company can reject me). However, I don't think the proper solution for healthcare is to make everyone join a union. Unions and companies should be independent from healthcare.
All that said, you do make a good point that there is a use for professional services (for example, classes and unemployment services). I'm just not sure strong unions are the best way to do that.
Qxe4
I quit programming as a freelancer, and why I WILL NOT program as an employee or contractor.
Fuck them people!
I program for myself. If I ever go commercial it will be within the context of selling an app or apps.
Programming is sacred and beautiful to me.
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
Matthew 7:6
SARAVA!
Hypercapitalism is organizing society based on pure capitalism instead of tempering it with socialism (like we do today). It's pursuit of profit above all else, and is a bit short sighted. This means that you have to keep them on a short leash or they'll burn your house down (somewhat metaphorically).
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I've worked with such programs written by Lotus-123 and Excel power-users. While their program often did the job, it was usually a maintenance nightmare. There was mass copy-and-paste, band-aides on band-aides, variable names like A1, A2, A3, etc., and fragile portions that could easily crash if given certain somewhat likely input. Maintainability is often the cost/labor bottleneck, not the creation of the idea. Newbies just don't grasp this.
Table-ized A.I.
Around 1983, in a meeting with Dr. Ted Hoff, the architect of the first microprocessor at Intel, the 4004, he gave me a perspective on ideas that has stayed with me. He said. "Everyone has ideas. It's only the people who can make something of them that count." From 1989-1999 I ran a software company and my employees used to come to me with great ideas for what the company should do next. Most of these were software developers. I told them that I couldn't commit the resources the idea needed, but I would give them all the leeway I could to make something of the idea themselves. And they hardly ever did. Programmers have software ideas. Non-programmers have software ideas. Some of each group will succeed in implementing them, but very few.
I think it would be great if people could transport themselves from place to place by telephone! All I need is a physicist to iron out the details. (I also have other ideas; invisibility, a brain booster and x-ray glasses)
Yes. We tried free trade and it failed miserably: unemployment keeps rising and rising, many jobs no longer pay enough for a worker to even afford food (Wal-Mart, I'm looking at you), society is getting more and more into debt, and any attempt to do anything about any of this leads to cries of "business will leave for China! WAAHHH!"
Protectionism protects domestic industry, which creates jobs and wealth. Free Trade means that everyone's standard of living races to the bottom. We must stop this madness while we still can.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I have a great idea for a blog post! I just need to get it slashdotted...
He understands just fine, but is being diplomatic.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I started "bloging" at that time, the good thing is that I choose being a sysadmin not a programmer, my life is nice, and this is not a joke
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Basically, after thinking about it, here is my more-well-reasoned opinion:
The way you describe unions, they could be a good thing. However, that is not the way unions currently work in the US. Now, if someone proposed a way to create the unions like you described, and also a way to keep the bad things of American unions out, then I would be ok with them. But so far that's not what any of the union fights in the US are about. So for now I will oppose the creation of any union that affects me (if it doesn't affect me, I am neutral).
Qxe4