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If the Programmer Won't Go To Silicon Valley, Should SV Go To the Programmer?
theodp writes: "If 95% of great programmers aren't in the U.S.," Matt Mullenweg advises in How Paul Graham Is Wrong (a rejoinder to Graham's Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In), "and an even higher percentage not in the Bay Area, set up your company to take advantage of that fact as a strength, not a weakness. Use WordPress and P2, use Slack, use G+ Hangouts, use Skype, use any of the amazing technology that allows us to collaborate as effectively online as previous generations of company did offline. Let people live someplace remarkable instead of paying $2,800 a month for a mediocre one bedroom rental in San Francisco. Or don't, and let companies like Automattic and Github hire the best and brightest and let them live and work wherever they like." Microsoft and Google — which hawk the very tools to facilitate remote work that Mullenweg cites — have shuttered remote offices filled with top talent even as they cry the talent sky is falling. So, is "being stubborn on keeping a company culture that requires people to be physically co-located," as Mullenweg puts it, a big part of tech's 'talent shortage' problem?"
Chris Pepper also recently posted another reasoned rebuttal to Graham's post.
If 95% of great programmers aren't in the U.S.
Then you really must think India programers are the shit.
Also, stop being anal about degrees, credit scores, old convictions, age, and health.
There's no programmer shortage. That's utter BS.
There's just a hiring pathology.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...so they can keep an eye on you, so they can 'manage' you.
There's a whole lot of BS in this world, and many of the people that sling the BS best can't really do much else. They talk a great game, but they produce little to nothing. The problem with this is some endeavors, like writing software in a collaborative setting, make it difficult to measure the contributions of the individuals that are supposed to be applying themselves. It's not so easy as simply counting lines of code or commits or functions written when there's distinct possibility that flaws in those contributions will require extensive rewriting or will end up being orphaned code, and further complicating matters, there's no good way to measure how only slightly flawed code, easily corrected by another, contributes to the project. Either a project maintainer must keep on top of all of the code all of the time, which is a daunting task, or they must keep on top of the people, to see what they're doing, to measure how much they're applying themselves and how much time they actually spend working.
I'm sure I'll be flamed for this perspective, but given the sheer number of distractions around us these days, it's very easy for someone to do anything besides their paid job.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's funny because you can't just mash some numbers together and be like, "FACTUAL STATISTICS!"
Nobody cares cause nobody loves you.
That is so mean!!! I try to spread happiness with Yipppeessss!!
No Yiiippppeees ever for you!! None ever!!
SV makes up only a small percentage of software dev firms. They're located all over the place. Instead of going to work in SV, why not work in Irvine? Santa Monica? Denver? Seattle? Phoenix? Huntsville? Hoffman Estates? etc etc etc?
And that's not even getting into the fact that many software dev firms allow you to work remotely. Who cares about working at Microsoft or Google if you can work at ADP or Northrop and live much cheaper?
I can think of a few reasons why some software development companies oppose telecommuting.
Sometimes, an air gap can be the most effective form of information security. By 1985, Atari was already adding electronically locked doors; see posts about "building access" in Jed Margolin's inter-office memos from 1985. And for years, Nintendo required that authorized game developers operate out of a "secure office facility", explicitly excluding a home office. (Source: WarioWorld.com, the home of Nintendo's software development support group) This caused a bit of drama when Nintendo refused to sell a DS devkit to Robert Pelloni's home-based studio and Pelloni ran to the news media. (Nintendo relaxed this a bit in 2011, possibly to meet a threat of competition from iOS, Android, and OUYA.)
In addition, a lot of people still live in areas where affordable, reliable, high-speed, low-latency Internet access needed for telecommuting is unavailable.
Finally, the dynamics of interrupting another team member for a quick answer to a quick question differ between working in person and working remotely.
No matter what your industry is, some PHB is going to get into a position where they feel out of control and unproductive if they can't get instant gratification popping in on their people to micro-manage them. In-person meetings are a must for these people.
...are the ones with imagination, foresight and creativity - not the ones who can pass the silly college-quiz-style interviews and look appropriately hipster, as the big companies require.
Frankly, commercial software development for its own sake is not a place you'll find very bright people. If you want to look for them, go into more traditional engineering or scientific fields or finance (alas). And the best minds, i.e. the ones directed entirely to scholarship rather than the least work for the most income, will be found in academia.
Umm...aren't they already sending the jobs off to Bangalore and Singapore?
business logic in your website theme, wtf.
I was just talking to some people yesterday about the popular trend in offices to build open floor-plans in lieu of the traditional cubicles and dividers.
Even Google embraced the open floor-plan concept, yet I can't find much evidence from people working in such an environment that they find it an improvement?
Basically, people are remodeling in this style because it's viewed as more trendy and insightful. Never mind the fact that the old way was probably done for good reasons and to solve real problems. (Open floor-plan offices have serious problems with noises, distractions and a lack of appropriate places to go make a phone call with a client or vendor. They remove the privacy of the individual worker, causing everyone around to see every little thing you do. Duck out for a smoke break or to use the rest-room? Everyone immediately sees how long you're not occupying your seat and can make judgements on your behavior.
Same thing with this argument of using remote, "work from home" employees vs. making people come in to a central office. There are, IMO, many good reasons to expect your employees to be physically present in a central workplace each day. (Companies like Yahoo, who tried letting people work from home, decided to ban the practice when it turned out to be a failure for them.) Truthfully, I love having the ability to work from home in my own job - but I do computer support and systems administration work. Realistically, I usually wind up coming in to the office and only working from home about one day each week. In my situation, I'm (thankfully) given permission to make judgement calls about when it's most sensible for me to come in, vs. stay home. If I expect it will be a day of nothing but phone calls, helping users via remote access to their machine, and working with cloud based services we use? Then sure, I can do it from home. Many other times though, I'm expecting a package to arrive with a part to replace for somebody, or I'm just able to provide people a better level of service if I can look at an issue hands-on with them. (Remote control software is all but useless if you're trying to figure out why they're having monitor issues, for example. It may look fine on YOUR remote session screen even if their display is going bad.)
I know a number of our creative workers putting together marketing proposals and the like do better work when they're in a group together, in-person. We've given them plenty of tools to collaborate remotely, and sometimes they do. But there are still lots of limitations with the technology, including internet bandwidth issues for some people, meaning their video keeps breaking up or their audio gets choppy on a conference call. And ultimately, you can't celebrate with co-workers for a job well done by remotely taking them out for dinner or a few drinks, either.
I've become more and more convinced that the best solution is a mix of allowing SOME work from home or remote, and SOME expectation of coming in, in person. You won't be able to keep "best in breed" software development going with a scattered workforce who only collaborates video video chat, IM, email or phone calls.
Telecommuting is a distant dream in my present job - they still use a tannoy! Yes a loudspeaker that interrupts 100+ people to call one person to reception if they don't answer their phone.
Also, a lot of programmers might be willing to relocate if needed, but would never relocate to the US. Which is exactly my case, BTW.
EOF
Give an average manager a great programmer and you might as well just hire an average programmer. Great managers are rarer than great programmers.
It's easy to cooperate with people who are awake and working at the same time as you. Managing projects up and down the US east coast was easy from Toronto.
If you have people in San Francisco that start 3 hours later, you have to intentionally organize for that time difference. Some people here worked late hours (including at least one night-owl friend who liked to come in at noon), while others cursed the absence of their colleagues. Still other gloried in the absence, and said things like "I get three uninterrupted hours of work!"
If QA was in Ireland (or India, or both) then people learned to hand off discrete chunks, and get the results in the morning. With people across either the Atlantic or Pacific, you get one meeting a day, so make the best of it!
One group did time-critical diagnoses, and had three shifts running: Singapore, Grenoble and San Francisco. They passed the same bug around the world, working continually on it until they got done.
Working in multiple timezones can work well, but only if you plan for it.
If you don't plan for it, you'd better keep your business in the zone you're in.
davecb@spamcop.net
It is quite easy to make logical arguments for why it makes sense to work remotely. The problem is that the buck stops at your managers desk. If you are fortunate enough to have an enlightened manager that trusts you to get things done then you will likely both benefit.
Unfortunately there are still a lot of managers that have this rigid, old-school mentality that dictates that they must watch your every move, every day. They are more concerned with what time you come in to work and how long you take for lunch and how long your coffee break is than what you actually do all day. Sadly, some of them have no idea what you do. And they don't care. These are typically the people with no real skills. The type of people that see everything as some sort of power grab. The ones destined for middle management purgatory.
The good news is that it will change, whether they like it or not. I am seeing this already in my line of work. I used to have to travel every week. Now it's about twice a month, if that. On my end, I just need to make sure that I'm getting my stuff done on time at a high quality. Management - rather than focus on the nonsense above - can focus on productive tasks. And so can I.
Why don't we see all the examples of the other side of this discussion? The stories of managers with one direct report that runs a standup remotely and answers a few emails and collects a handsome salary? The teams and individuals that never seem to be online and have a 24-hour delay on email responses? Employees that never seem to be fired because their organization is a self-protecting one all the way to the top?
One of the most effective tactics in my arsenal when I don't get a response from people is to show up at their desk. Kinda hard to do if they're in Spokane.
To those who say these people should be fired, you've obviously never had to fire anyone at a company large or small. Favoritism and institutional inertia make it very hard to do, regardless of what 37signals likes to expouse.
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No. Reciprocal loyalty is dead.
If you work in SV, you can likely walk away from a tech job you can't stand and have another tech job inside a week. Some people can do it the same day.
If you work in Omaha Nebraska, you can walk away from a tech job you can't stand and have another job inside a week. At Pizza Hut.
There's a huge benefit to the worker to being able to switch loyalties quickly in an industry which is notoriously disloyal to their workers; some people's notification comes in the form of them coming back from a trip and finding that their badge no longer opens the door.
There are also economic factors. First, it's very east to relocate from San Francisco to Omaha, because it's an economic downslope. It's very hard to migrate from Omaha to ... well, anywhere ... because it's an economic upslope. The equity in your house or condo will convert out nicely, going one direction, and will end very poorly going in the other.
Finally, there are the social aspects; I'm not just talking about nightlife, or the bar scene, or sexuality issues, I'm talking about having a group of friends and acquaintances with whom you can maintain face to face contact, who are able to help you out in a job search, which simply doesn't exist, if you're looking for a tech job, but don't live in a tech Mecca. It's just not going to happen. So when your company is disloyal to you (read: let go, RIF'ed, laid off, temporarily cut back, or any of the other euphemisms), there's no reciprocity.
Gone are the days you could move to Southern Utah, go to work for Browning Arms, and write IBM 360 assembly code happily until you hit retirement age, and then collect your pension for the remainder of your life, in happy retirement. Even IBM has moved to a cash-balance pension plan, instead of a fully funded pension plan. Jobs for life are a thing of the past. And relocation, when it happens, is generally a long term thing. IF jobs don't last as long as the relocation does, and there are no alternatives: no thank you.
And, if you want your company to be successful and retain highly-productive developers, firing those people is a must. People who don't respect their employees' time don't deserve to manage them.
I recently attended a talk by Joel Spolsky, of "Joel on Software" and "Stack Overflow" fame, who made exactly the same point as TFS. He said they were routinely hiring people to work remotely at Stack Overflow and using remote technology such as Skype in order to get the best and the brightest - presumably also at the best price, though he didn't actually say that. He suggested this as a future trend that companies were eventually going to adapt to.
Ironically, he gave that talk at a company that concentrates as many engineers as possible in one location. Oh, and he gave his talk onsite, not via Skype. Go figure.
Little guys like Indie video game companies can't afford studios. They make video games with an artist in one state, and a programmer in another state. The teams can get big, but they get successful software done. Telecommuting saves people tens of grand a year, and I'd take a job for 20-30 grand less a year if I could telecommute. That's the price of gas, time to commute and big time savings on housing. Meetings are even more productive than in face meetings because you both share computers with things like gotomeeting or join.me. You get communication via voice, and can share copy/paste buffers and write code together which is productive unlike face to face meetings where no actual code normally gets done.
Don't criticize telecommuting if you haven't done it yet. I know it is different(and people are afraid of change), but it is superior in many ways.
God spoke to me
There's more to it than just that though. My current employer was founded by engineers...they know damn well how it goes, and they've been only hiring people they feel they can trust (break that trust and you're out damn quick...but that pretty much never happens. People are pretty honest).
People work from home (legitimately) left and right, schedules are nearly random (some people come in at 3 pm and work until midnight as their normal schedule, others are in at 5 am and are out right for time for a late lunch...).
We can still get face time when needed and collaborate in real time without friction of shitty tools though (everyone uses Slack or whatever when that's not needed). The inability to have ad-hoc face to face meetings without flying people over is just a deal breaker.
To be able to scale the company, some groups are in separate offices at other locations, but they take care to keep engineering together, sales together, design together, etc. Having engineering and sales videoconference once a month isn't too bad, but having engineering people have to teleconference with each other whenever text isn't good enough would just slow things down.
One day they'll hit the limit of how many they can realistically hire in one location for a given group, then things will change...but you probably want to avoid it if you can.
I was lucky enough to be hired by a company that lets me work remotely. I get paid what I expect/deserve, and I didn't have to move to San Francisco. I go there about 3~4 times a year just to get face-time with the people I work with. They like it because they don't have to find a space for me, and I like it because I didn't want to move to California.
I've had experience working with people remotely, and my experience has been that the problems scale with distance. Specifically, it's easiest to work with someone in your own office, a little harder to work with someone across the hall, harder still to work with someone across the country, and *quite* hard to work with someone across the ocean. By the time you get that far away, timezones become a major problem, and IT systems don't always work well.
From a business point of view, you have to look at the cost versus the benefits. I once worked with a group of people from India who reportedly cost 1/4 of what we cost. But we did some metrics that showed we were 6x as productive, so we actually cost less overall than them. The main reason we were more productive was that our local group was highly experienced in the specialized technology we were developing, whereas the folks in India were brand new to it. Also, the folks in India ran into numerous network and server problems that slowed them down. Evidently, nobody in The Big Corporation realized that they needed to spend money on IT, since this experiment was supposed to be about "cost savings".
Given time, the IT problems might have gotten ironed out, and the Indians might have developed the necessary experience. However, the India group had so much turnover that they never became experienced in that technology as a group. In contrast, we had some Indian folks who worked with us locally, stuck around (at least until they got their Green Cards), and were ultimately as productive as the rest of us.
I've worked from home for about 14 years, and my software has worked from home for at least a decade. We work well "together" and have been successful. The remote work place has some challenges, but we've adapted. When offering remote support to customers we all are better at it and have a good idea what can be understood and how to go about the work.
One of the big advantages is having the space needed to really think free from distractions of coworkers. I'm definitely more productive.
If your employees won't work unless they are watched you have a management problem not a worker problem. Your employees obviously don't feel the success of the company is to their own advantage. They obviously don't feel like your giving them enough, and I don't necessarily mean money. Does the job make them feel important? Do they feel like they are contributors? Are you as a manager undermining the good they have done?
The USA if full of talent that can't get employed because the cost of credentials in terms of time and money is much too high. Kids that excel in programming while in public school are told that after 12 years of a public education, they now need to slog through years of college and build a mountain of debt before they can apply their talent.
But without credentials, SV won't even look at you -- and they are mostly legally prevented from doing so .
Lots of foreign labor have the credentials, though, in part because their educational system is cheaper, less time consuming, and frankly less demanding of their students.
If SV will take a little time and reach out to high schools, they'll find tons of talent.
Of better, if they can create a credentialing body, they can more easily avoid legal pitfalls.
This is just the kind of thinking I was speaking of. It makes no sense whatsoever when you actually consider it, yet people throw it up as if it was a real thing you had to worry about.
If someone hired me and was X time zones away, I would simply adjust my hours by X, or X +/- Y as they considered useful to them. This is no different than, for instance, having to work the night shift (or any other fixed shift, or a swing shift.)
This is a factor that should be of absolutely no relevance unless the prospective employee actually refuses to work the required hours, in which case, I guess they didn't want the job anyway, and you're better off moving right along.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Sure, raising salaries will increase a company's chances of retaining existing workers and hiring new ones. It fixes the problem for that company. It doesn't do anything for other companies. In particular, it does nothing for the company whose worker you just nabbed. You get a new worker that you have to train. They get a job opening. Which they need to fill with a new worker. Who they have to train. Net effect on production is negative. From one company with an established worker and one company with a job opening, we now have one company with a new hire that needs training and one company with a job opening.
If a company is trying to hire someone for $10 an hour, then sure, they should be upping that offer. But a company that's paying $90K a year isn't going to gain much by upping to $110K. They'll talk to a bunch of people who will then go to their existing employers and say, "Hey, I can make $110K working for Foo -- will you match?" Then they'll get the one person whose existing employer says, "No, you're not worth it."
And does anyone believe that people aren't going into programming because it doesn't pay enough? Where are they going instead? Professional athlete? Movie star? Doctor? Lawyer? None of those have the same skill set as programming. Perhaps the closest is finance, although the math is harder there. The primary reason that students don't go into programming is the same as why they don't do engineering. It's hard. It's much easier to go to school for one of the humanities, and for many, it's more fun.
If raising salaries is going to have any effect on entry into the field, it's going to be five years from now. But the problem remains that it's not lack of job prospects that keep people out of STEM fields. It's the increased difficulty of those fields. Perhaps there are some people who could be good at programming who are going elsewhere instead, but the way to fix that is not increasing salaries of people already in the industry. It's to better recognize who can succeed early and help them then.
And all that ignores the biggest problem with restrictive immigration. If US companies can't hire people, what's to stop Indian and Chinese companies from hiring them and taking the work away from the US companies entirely? It's much cheaper to operate in India or China than in the US. Currently we make up for that with other advantages. But if we can't get the work done because there's only 10,000 people to do 20,000 jobs, then we're not going to be competitive.
" is "being stubborn on keeping a company culture that requires people to be physically co-located," as Mullenweg puts it, a big part of tech's 'talent shortage' problem?""
Yes.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
It is quite easy to make logical arguments for why it makes sense to work remotely. The problem is that the buck stops at your managers desk. If you are fortunate enough to have an enlightened manager that trusts you to get things done then you will likely both benefit.
I get a laugh out of these sorts of comments. You, and everyone else making them, wants us to believe that you really are this kind of rock-star worker. And maybe you are. But guess what- a lot of other people are not. For every "works well without direct supervision" person out there, there's a dozen who wont' get a damn thing done without the constant prodding. Give an inch, they take a mile.
There are many bonuses to having people work in the same physical space, even if it's only part of the week. There's a lot of knowledge that gets spread around in ad hoc, informal meetings- on the way to the bathroom, waiting for food to cook in the breakroom, standing around having a smoke in the Pariah's corner, etc. You simply can't replicate that in a purely remote environment.
As for the article, however, it's bullshit. There's no shortage of programmers, there's a shortage of people who are willing to get paid shit for a wage working brutal hours. Some H1-B from India is willing to put in 120 hours a week for a $35k salary, some fresh grad out in L.A. is not.
Oh, and you know that little thing called "Drug Testing"? Ya you should probably stop doing that. If someone is fucked up on the job, fire them. If they want to smoke weed on their days off, it's none of your concern... but you're cutting a huge section of the workforce out of your applicant pool.
Individual workers want to be near multiple job opportunities (because jobs are now so short), and a two-career couple needs to be in a city where *both* people have work opportunities in depth. And, as the cities get bigger as careerists crowd into them, it's hard to commute all the way across town, so housing near the center gets more desirable.
I keep reading articles describing urbanization as a matter of taste, usually taste in shopping, but it feels like work-survival strategy to me.
I doubt you can really find a good job within a week.
Finding a really good job takes months at best.
No. Reciprocal loyalty is dead.
Exactly. Be loyal to people but never to corporations. The corporation will never be loyal back: it will lay you off as soon as it benefits the bottom line.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
20-something hipster problems, meh
Tuturu!
Signed,
Mayuri.
No, 95% of great programmers are not in the U.S. But they ARE in high-educated, Western countries.
We're talking about actual programmers, BTW, not copy-and-paste artists.
Why should I want a job in one of the most expensive places to live in the country, in a poor work environment, under leadership that thinks nothing of using people up and throwing them away? Remember, you are just an expense to be managed, interchangeable and easily replaceable. I did that for over 25 years and have finally had the strength to walk away from it and not look back.
One can definitely find a replacement tech job in a week. A replacement tech job they want/like/is satisfying....? That sometimes takes the better part of a career.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
...then why are virtually all of the most successful tech companies here?
Yes, a few exist outside of the US. Not many.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You would GTFO too. That would drive any developer insane polishing whatever turd the project is and make them worry that they are rotting at this bad management hell hole.
Programming is a creative activity that is greatly enhanced by teams of programmers being present together in one place. Team members feed off each other, and perform far better than they could in isolation. Sure, programming CAN be done remotely, but not at the same level.
This is true not only at the individual level, but at the corporate level. There is a reason software companies congregate in Silicon Valley, why oil companies congregate in Houston, and entertainment companies congregate in Hollywood. The talent pools for these industries has been built up over a long period of time, and establishing similar talent pools elsewhere is no easy task.
It works both ways: a software company in Silicon Valley has a much easier time finding good programmers than software companies elsewhere, and programmers in Silicon Valley have a much easier time finding good jobs there, than elsewhere.
If all these immigrants are so beneficial to me, I want a citizen's dividend to prove it and I do _not_ want my citizenship's equity diluted by making "voting share holders" out of these immigrants.
Oh, you can't provide that for me?
Take your immigration propaganda and shove it.
Seastead this.
It's the people management. Is Nancy happy doing what she's doing, or is she feeling frustrated or wants to work on something else? Bob has intermittent FMLA leave which we have to work around, in a tactful way.
And especially if the people on your team are also on other teams in a matrix organization. I don't have 100% of Alexis, I have 25% of Alexis, and while I'm happy to take less than 25% for a week, I need to know if it's going to persist because an unexpected push-up in another project is going to consume resources for the next 3 months. The manager of that other project doesn't necessarily realize that Alexis has actually been putting in 130% time to try and meet the deliverables on all 3 tasks she's assigned to.
The other thing is that all workers (myself included) have things they would rather not do, but which need to be done (e.g. documentation). Having the boss wander by and ask how that unloved task is coming along is a better motivator than saying "Ricardo, I see that you're not making your milestone on the documentation". Especially in a multi-project environment, when the icky stuff on YOUR project comes along, there's a powerful temptation to work on the OTHER guy or gal's project.
...then why are virtually all of the most successful tech companies here?
Yes, a few exist outside of the US. Not many.
It's because we have been so far successful in getting the a large chunk of the 95% to move the US.
But, new programmers are being minted everyday and if we don't get there here, they will start creating their own software companies in their own countries. It doesn't take long for a company to start with nothing and become one of the largest company in the world in a decade.
I'm only half serious though. There are enough reasons why the next Google can or can't come from outside the US. Can we confidently say that the next Google will be an American company? Can we do anything about it or just sit and wait?
I doubt you can really find a good job within a week.
Finding a really good job takes months at best.
You can if you have standing offers. Many people have multiple standing offers, at least one of which would qualify as "good". How often do you get "hit on" by a recruiter? If it's once a week, chances are good they will have a job in inventory that's to your liking. If you just hang up on them when they call, rather than maintaining an amicable relationship, then yes, it can take you a while to find a job.
You can also do it if you have the friends network that I mentioned in my first posting; put the word out you are looking, and you will likely get multiple offers. The quality of the offers will likely depend on the connectedness and quality of your friends, and whether or not they are connected in the domains where you want to work, but this is why you cultivate a network.
Both of these bring me back to the original points of why you go into a tech Mecca, rather than going to Omaha: (1) Standing offers are generally "for someone in your geographic area", and (2) Your friends network's ability to help you out is dependent on connectivity to a large enough base of companies that cover some at which you'd want to work.
But, yes: if you are in Omaha(*), it can take months, at best.
(*) I picked Omaha more or less at random, so sorry if you are a tech company in Omaha trying to hire, it was not a personal grudge.
I get offers on a weekly basis, if not more, but finding a well-paid job in a domain you're interested in, close to your home, and that still leaves you enough free time to spend with your family is not that easy.
If you work in Omaha Nebraska, you can walk away from a tech job you can't stand and have another job inside a week. At Pizza Hut.
I'm talking about having a group of friends and acquaintances with whom you can maintain face to face contact, who are able to help you out in a job search, which simply doesn't exist, if you're looking for a tech job, but don't live in a tech Mecca.
Huh. I must just be imagining that I live in a medium-sized metro area in flyover country (that nobody would think of as a "tech mecca")? Must be imagining that I've voluntarily changed jobs five times here, without more than a weekend between them. That for my most recent job I was hired (at a new company) by someone I had worked with two jobs ago. That this was over a period of years, that each job was better than the last.
Because that's only possible in tech meccas, right?
There's a strong bias to justify to yourself living in a high cost of living area.
This seems heavily biased to the US... or maybe low-demand skill sets.
I jump jobs regularly in AU as a contractor, I'm rarely down for more than a week, with no help from anyone (not even a recruitment agent), traveling all over AU 2-3 times a year where jobs take me.
who live in Salt Lake City, Seattle, Austin Texas, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, New York City. I don't know any other IT professionals from other countries besides my uncle in Calgary, Canada.
There are many successful tech companies outside the US. Heck, Intel would be nearly dead if it weren't for their Israeli R&D team and the (British) ARM chip. And SAP is German. Samsung, Foxcon, Hitachi, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, LG, Nokia, Arduino, ... they all do tech, and they're outside the US, right?
Yes, there are tons of US tech companies. But don't forget that the rest of the world exists, and has exciting stuff going on, too!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
The discussion the other day on open plan offices pointed out a middle ground between cubicle maze and open plan, which is to have large cubicles for groups.
That way, in theory, groups can collaborate privately within their cubicle and maintain some noise privacy and space ownership. I doubt such a middle ground will take off, as it's not extreme enough.
Some project at my $CORP forced slack down my throat. I resisted the (strong) temptation to kick the PM in the nuts. But I'm not on this project anymore. Thank goodness (and some activity on my part).
Such a stinking pile of shit.
Because you USA own the main internet tubes and you're not willing to release them and let your wonderful tech companies play fair with the rest of the world, perhaps?
Also: your trend of skype interviews and facebook check with coders may work with your fellow US workers, but be assured it piss off many european coders as well.
If you need a coder you should be looking for technical abilities, not for people with social skills who happens to write some code from time to time.
The problem isn't that 95% of the "good" programmers aren't in the United States; the problem is that US companies are not willing to pay reasonable salaries to the "good" programmers that are here. As a result they push the government to grant more H1B visas so they can get services from the "good" programmers that are willing to work for the peanuts that they are willing to pay! Sure these foreign programmers may be okay, but try and read the code they write when it's time to update the system! After 10 years in the programming field many with the department of defense, and telecom industry, I have found the following to be somewhat accurate. The H1B workers seldom comment their code thoroughly, and have little experience using patterns that make code reusable. There are some exceptions to the rule, but in general this is the case. In the end the companies don't care, because they can always get another H1B visa worker that won't complain about having to reinvent the wheel to fix a problem created by the first one. So a giant FU to the person who wrote this article, and another one to corporate america; thanks for ruining the country you pontificating ass hats!
I'm going on my 15th year at Microsoft. The first three were spent in Redmond. The rest have been at the office in Fargo, ND. For family reasons, I asked to be xferred to Fargo.
These days, not only do I not want to work in Redmond, I would prefer to not regularly go to a company office at all. Last year, I moved to a farmstead that is a bit outside of town. I've been working from home irregularly -- a few days here and there. Now that I have a new boss who is in Redmond, he doesn't care if I'm a remote employee in a Fargo office or a remote employee in my basement. So, I expect to be doing quite a bit more WFH.
It turns out that I am way more individually productive at completing tasks from home than I am when I am in the office.
However, there are definite advantages to getting some face to face time with the people you regularly work with. But not every day.
Every few months, Google, Netflix, Salesforce,etc will grab my linked in profile and ask if I'm interested. I tell them all the same thing - there is no condition under which I would move to the Bay Area. None at all. Furthermore, these companies are all based off of opensource software that was developed via distributed engineering - so what's their excuse to want to co-locate people into offices? Surely it isn't an engineering reason? Surely what they're building isn't more complicated than the linux kernel?
When something happens to my MS job out here, I plan on taking a 50% pay cut when I find whatever is next. That's not ideal, but I'm not willing to move to a big urban area again. There are people who are competent software engineers that don't want to live in large cities, or who don't want to commute to an office even if they do live in a large city. We're affordable to hire, we incur no facilities costs, and we're appreciative and loyal. Stop overlooking us.
Corporate culture is behind social and technical culture. Most of us interact daily with acquantances that live multiple timezones away. The reasons for forcing co-workers into the same building every day continue to shrink. It will be great when cube farms are levelled and other more interesting things are built in their place.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I get contacted probably 10 - 20 times per week to take work in California. I do not live in CA. My response every time I get contacted is that the opportunity sounds great, but I can't afford to live in CA. The salary raise they tout is nowhere near enough to cover the cost of living increase. I have suggested several times that I would be willing to work remotely and even commute every few weeks to still have the connection to the team and nobody is willing to do it. I even offered to make a little less than the CA co-workers because my costs to live are much less. Still a no go.
Silicon valley can't complain about the worker shortage and not be flexible. Anybody that is willing to relocate to CA is a sucker because the costs of living outweigh any salary that could be offered.
Nearly everyone I know in the Bay Area leaves for better pay, not "boredom" as you claim. The larger companies in the Bay area, and the elephant in the room I have yet to see discussed, were found guilty of illegally colluding to keep wages artificially low just a few months back. This impacted the wages of everyone in the bay area, like it or not (that is the nature of Capitalism). You can bet that there is still collusion, but people are going to be a lot more careful about their deals for a while. Those same companies for years have claimed "we need more H1Bs because nobody is qualified" as a way of further artificially depressing wages. Which brings up the 2nd elephant in the room, that a company not too long ago was found guilty of slavery abusing H1B workers.
So now a few of those same companies are claiming "95% of the good programmers are not in the USA" and who really believes them?
Stop and think about what it means to be a "good" programmer from your perspective, then from the egocentric pricks making these claims. I guarantee it's a completely different standard. To them, it's whether or not they get paid average or less in wages and how much hiring someone impacts their bonuses and income (which to us would be insanely excessive). For example: How well an employee can communicate is not in their measures, and in fact they don't want people that can communicate. How good is your team when there is poor communication?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There is a big problem tossing around the Dunning-Kruger effect, and that is "you" look guilty as hell. Philosophy is in essence logic, which is in essence programming. Not the same language of course, but a person that learned symbolic logic that can break down written language to measure truth can do it in any language they decide to learn.
Computers are logical and programs are logical. A person with extensive training in Logic, as a PhD would have, does do exceptionally well.
Blindly claiming "Dunning Kruger" when a person has at least 7 years of University knowledge is telling. Sure, I have met a couple I don't trust. At the same time, I have met countless people that don't know what Philosophy is (Academically speaking) I trust less. The latter always seems to claim "Philosophy is bad" in some way.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Having people working remotely by themselves is not (currently) a great model. Software is produced by teams not individuals and teams really need to collaborate to be effective and the easier it is to collaborate the better the results. I'm sure you all read the recent report about open space offices? Until that trend ends you can expect that remote/cubed workers are not going to be in vogue.
I do think that robotic avatars will eventually solve this problem, so if I was the Indian, Russian or whatever government I'd get cracking on this.
Housing price bubble are terrible
I've voluntarily changed jobs five times here, without more than a weekend between them.
"Voluntarily" is disloyalty on your par, and generally has only the downtime you choose to have, since you tend to explore all your options, then pick up the new job before you leave the old job.
What I was talking about was employment risk. Employment risk is the risk of your employer *leaving you in the lurch*, and what happens when that happens. In that case, it's typical that there are other people from the same company, and you are all looking for jobs at once.
For example, I was working in Tucson, Arizona when the company basically ran out of money (the new CEO had spent all of the company's buffer on telephony acquisitions, because he thought that was the next big thing), and a company that had been operating for over a decade suddenly became insolvent. Suddenly, there were 400+ people looking for work in the same job market, with roughly comparable skill sets to their peers. Tucson is a limited tech job market. I was lucky, I had an existing network, and an industry reputation. Some of my peers were not so lucky.
I didn't mention industry reputation before, because it's simply not possible for everyone to have one, and these people tend to have standing offers, even if it requires the company pay relocation for the person to take advantage of them. They're kind of irrelevant to the idea of Joe Shmoe, techie, who answers a billboard ad and moves to Omaha, only to be competing with 10 former coworkers for the same *small* set of jobs within a largely non-tech region.
So I will claim non-applicability of your case, based on (1) voluntarily means you avoided the "flash crowd" problem, and (2) You demonstrated use of a small network, and (3) it was not a case of company disloyalty to the worker.
This seems heavily biased to the US... or maybe low-demand skill sets.
I jump jobs regularly in AU as a contractor, I'm rarely down for more than a week, with no help from anyone (not even a recruitment agent), traveling all over AU 2-3 times a year where jobs take me.
Again, this is voluntary on your part, not the company flooding the job market with people. And yes, contracting is not the same as having a full time job, and requires the ability to sell yourself. The original article was not about sales skills, it was about "Hey! Come move out to the boonies! The water's fine!", when in fact the water is *not* fine for stereotypical job seekers in stereotypical jobs.
1-12, childhood, video games, Legos, drawing
12-20, hobby, enthusiast, school, college, internship
20-25, basic programming, learning design, support
25-30, advance programming, designing the designers, support and business practices and methodologies
30-35, basic management, security, networking, architecture, start-ups
35-40, upper management, project architect, budgeting, corporate loyalties, start-ups, author
40-50, corporate ownership, multiple start-ups, retirement, board member, author
50+, retirement, board member, jet setting
if you're not even remotely floating this career path as a goal, then you will always be a resource to use and not an ally to rely on.
Senior management can only use what they know. They know personality, required respect, and subservience. For the most part, they either don't know the architecture and technology they rule or they were only technically productive in the past long enough for their political skill to put them past the work. Thus, Oracle, Microsoft, CA, etc. can lead them around by the nose into ever more silly Rube Goldberg systems to do otherwise straight forward business oriented data processing.
I have a text file containing several months worth of the shared chat room interactions of a fairly large team in which the participants were in multiple work locations, including their homes. Management and senior management communications are notably absent from these communications. Hmmm... I guess we're forced to fill the parking lot and mouse-maze building of cubes so they can show their necessary leadership by counting hours (not work), noses, meetings, and fresh-cool-buzz-word acronym implementing project managers. Why can we hand off work to folks in India and Egypy (you know the place), but not to someone thirty miles away? Oh wait. I just covered that.
Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
Tell Obama regime to impose tax on Company revenues, not profits.
http://wh.gov/iYIFb
Casteism
I've brought this up before (in one of the many many threads, I can't remember which), but it needs to seed itself from somewhere. So if it is poisoned when you make the initial request (for seeding the file) then you are now going to be forever using the poisoned entry rather than getting the proper entry when the situation is fixed. Also, if someone changes their dns server (like, if they move to a new hosting provider) their site is now inaccessible to you until you refresh your list (being open to poison attacks again). Also brought up in another thread is that by blocking all advertising, you hurt the sites you use. Also, for being a very "ads are evil" type of poster, there are sure a lot of ads on the download page for the software.
There are things that the hosts file is good for and things that it is bad for. Hardcoding all entries is something that certainly doesn't fit with how I need to do things, and certainly doesn't fit with managing the moderately sized network that I manage.
HOSTs won't even block Camfrog Ads. They figured out a way around it AND figured out a way to get their ad network to prompt you to install stuff.
Which means your entire HOSTs file is bullshit, now!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"So its useless in blocking botnets, malscripted sites, phish/spam sources & trackers to, & speeding you up via hardcodes hosts have (which also secure you vs. DNS issues too of ALL kinds)"
Yea, your HOSTS file will *CERTAINLY* protect against DNS poisoning.
What a fucking tool.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
" I'd LIKE to KNOW how you know that, if you don't use hosts?"
Easy - we had this conversation in the tech room on Camfrog, where actual tech people can talk without idiots like you spamming your useles solutions all over the place. Guess what? When you ingrain parts of the service so every part has contact capability with ad networks, if you block them all, you block Camfrog from working in its entirety.
Your HOSTS file is useless. All that whitespace taking up room and making websites unusable. Can be effectively and easily bypassed, subject to DNS poisoning, modern browsers won't pay attention to it (Opera, for example) unless you root your phone you can't access HOSTS, etc.
Guess what works far better than a HOSTS file?
Being competent enough to run your own fucking DNS server.
Which you obviously aren't competent enough to do.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Yes: Avoiding DNS via fav. site hardcodes protects users vs. DNS issues (via fav site hardcodes). For once, you're right - however, ONLY BY AGREEING WITH 1 OF MY TOTALLY VALID POINTS!"
You totally miss sarcasm. No wonder you're so retarded and keep on about a HOSTS file that won't protect against DNS poisoning (If your hard-coded IP/DNS entry gets fucked, you're fucked, stupid.)
"P.S.=> Issuing downmods vs. facts & truths YOU FUCKED UP ON"
I haven't had mod points in a couple of months, so once again, you're full of shit and know nothing.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Downmodding my posts not proving 'em wrong = you fail Khyber!"
Considering I haven't had mod points in a couple of months, you're obviously full of shit.
Meanwhile...
"where you STILL refuse to show me these 'camfrog' ads, which are easy to stop..)"
Install the program yourself, asshole. Since you won't, you're obviously scared that you'll find out just how WRONG you are.
So yes, HOSTS files are useless. Note how you CONVENIENTLY avoid the fact I can list stuff that bypasses HOSTS (like Opera) without any issues, making your HOSTS file pointless and useless in the first place. Let alone all the attacks that target (and bypass) HOSTS all day.
But no comment towards that, eh loser? Given proof, you ignore it and keep attacking on your other futile points.
You're so wrong. You're a running joke at google. Whenever the Helpouts service has a minor issue, we say "It's been APK'd."
When GOOGLE laughs at your ass, you should just give the fuck up.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Hey apk,
Just because people don't like something you posted and thus mod it down, doesn't mean that Khyber or anyone else in the discussion did the down-modding. You have no way to know who the moderators were, and accusing random people of doing so just makes you come off as an asshole.
I know this is a long shot, but why not make your point(s) without making personal attacks? If you want to be taken seriously, then discuss things rationally *and* politely. If you are only here to attack in hopes of "destroying" people, then you are clearly asking moderators to jump all over you.
Apk,
My comment was about the content of your posts, and has nothing to do with your preconceived (and incorrect) notion that I am defending anyone.
I come here to read interesting discussions. Posts (from anyone) containing attacks and finger pointing are boring and hurt everyone's experience.
So again let me ask you:
why not make your point(s) without making personal attacks?
And please don't respond with "so and so was mean to me, so I needed to destroy them". You can rise above someone else's childish comment, if you so choose. Just ignore their comment and move on. It isn't worth your time.
Take a shot at this challenge of mine ...http://slashdot.org/comments.p... instead - Go on: Go for it...
Been there, done that. You and I previously discussed the Ad Muncher software that I have been using for many years, and you agreed it was a good solution (especially compared to browser plugins). Is hosts file manipulation another solution? Sure, probably. But I don't care, since I already have a good solution.
In regards to my question to you, instead of repeating myself, I will just refer you to our other conversation.
I wasn't speaking to you. I'm confronting BarbaraHudson, rightfully.
"I come here to read interesting discussions. Posts (from anyone) containing attacks and finger pointing are boring and hurt everyone's experience."
TELL BARB THAT, not myself (she started it, and continued it for years, see links below), ok? Go away...
APK
P.S.=> "Rinse, Lather, & Repeat" -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... especially since your quote above says what it does? Tell us "it's ok for barbarahudson to ac stalk, harass, & troll me by ac posts" as well as libel me?? Hmmmm????
Me? I don't "run" from that - I face my detractors, naming & shaming them, just as I did above - That works for me, not being a "I'll just ignore it like a little worm" since THAT is what scumbag trolls like Barb, want... no way jose, that's not me! apk