How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes -- And a Global Software Sweatshop (forbes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Forbes magazine has an in-depth piece on Joe Liemandt. As you may be aware, Liemandt was the founder of Trilogy, a startup which has been credited to help put Austin on the tech map. He is also founder of ESW Capital, a private equity firm that is scooping up software startups left and right. Forbes called him "one of the most mysterious and innovative figures in technology."

But the story explores the approach Liemandt and his team took to acquire enterprise software companies, install new leadership, lay off staff and hire significantly cheaper tech labor abroad. And the numbers are compelling -- $15 an hour C++ programmers. Those are Amazon warehouse wages -- and those $15 programming gigs don't come with much for benefits. Plus, they require you to install software to your computer that tracks surfing, keystrokes and even takes screen grabs and photos via your computer's camera -- and this is typically on a gig worker's personal computer, not an employers' machine. The story opens with this: From an office suite on the 26th floor of the iconic Frost Bank Tower in Austin, Texas, a little-known recruiting firm called Crossover is searching the globe for software engineers. Crossover is looking for anyone who can commit to a 40- or 50-hour workweek, but it has no interest in full-time employees. It wants contract workers who are willing to toil from their homes or even in local cafes. "The best people in the world aren't in your Zip code," says Andy Tryba, chief executive of Crossover, in a promotional YouTube video. Which, Tryba emphasizes, also means you don't have to pay them like they are your neighbors. "The world is going to a cloud wage."

Tryba's video has 61,717 views, but he is no random YouTube proselytizer. He worked in sales at Intel for 14 years before serving in the White House as an advisor to President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Since 2014, Tryba has been the right-hand man of Joe Liemandt, one of the most mysterious and innovative figures in technology. In the 1990s Liemandt was the golden boy of enterprise software, a 30 Under 30 wunderkind before there was a Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Like Bill Gates before him, he dropped out of college, in his case Stanford, to start a company, Trilogy, and build his fortune. In 1996, at the age of 27, he made the cover of Forbes, and a few months later he appeared as the youngest self-made member of The Forbes 400, with a $500 million net worth.

Comments

You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

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APK

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Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Still amusing that this "tech site" can't manage a simple filter to stop one autist from posting the same spam.

Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk

[magarity]

See subject: I'm so sick & tired of /. BULLIES. You shitweasels have nothing better to do than HARASS, STALK

Hypocrite. You're the most harassing, stalking bully I've ever seen on this site and I've been reading it consistently since about '98.

Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

After 25 years in the software industry, I saw that this was becoming the norm. Outsourcing and cost cutting. And people wonder why software has gone to shit these days? The best people walk away from the industry as soon as they can.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[LynnwoodRooster]

Software, in general, is a race to zero. There is always someone who will program cheaper than you, and the cost of replication/distribution is rapidly approaching zero. So there is always a potential to "do the same thing but cheaper" out there. Look at the cost of web hosting, OSes, productivity tools, etc. If the cost of replication and distribution is effectively zero, then the only real costs borne are the NRE costs. And that will always get cheaper. So the drive is always to zero.

Hardware, on the other hand, has a definite minimum cost for replication and distribution. You can use scale-of-economy to lower the price, but you still hit a bottom limit beyond which you cannot survive as a company. Tangible goods are more difficult to compete against for this very reason - cheaper NRE will help a little, but cannot save your company. Unlike software.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[ShanghaiBill]

Software, in general, is a race to zero.

This is the exact opposite of reality. Wages for developers have gone up far more than the average wage over the last 20 years. With unemployment for programmers under 3%, this trend is unlikely to reverse.

Wages for developers are going up even faster in poor countries. $15 an hour may not sound like much to you, but in India, and even China, that is a very good wage. Five times the average wage in China, and ten times the average Indian wage.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Crashmarik]

Man you're full of crap

From this site 4 days ago and you even commented on it with a reply to the first post

Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[ShanghaiBill]

Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds

Go back and RTFA. That article talking about NON-technical jobs in Silicon Valley: Grocery clerks, truck drivers, waitresses.

These non-techs have seen their incomes stagnate in the face of soaring housing prices, while the techs have prospered.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been identified as someone that "only reads the headlines". You're part of the problem, as you're forming ideas based upon headlines, which are often inflammatory and clickbait.

You need to start reading the entire article, prior to forming opinions, else you will suffer from head-up-the-ass syndrome, repeatedly.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Crashmarik]

Go back and RTFA. That article talking about NON-technical jobs in Silicon Valley: Grocery clerks, truck drivers, waitresses.

Funny that's what I did when I saw your comment. The article makes no mention of technical vs non technical. It does however mention highest paid against all others and points out that the large tech companies are paying less as a percentage of their revenue to employees.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

After the same amount of time in the industry. You get what you pay for. Within a year or two the crap programmers will not get any better. The ones who grasp the basics and know what they are kind of doing are on a decent trajectory to make decent money.

I have been using almost exclusively open source items recently. The quality is almost nearly exactly the same as many of the closed sourced projects I was on. As an industry we have a 'it works dont touch it you poor bastard' mentality. Even though the interface sucks and the separation of interests is terrible and it takes 2 weeks to trace through the code to find 1 bug.

I have just about 0 worries about getting a job other than a bit of ageism. As quickly as we make software we throw it all away and re-write it. Just as terrible as it was the first time. I try my best to steer people in the right direction. Almost all of them are willing to listen and learn.

But one thing I have learned is if you outsource your core thing you will fail. The outsourcing company *does* *not* *care*. They will take your pittance you give them and blow smoke up your ass how they will fix it. In the end you end up with where you started. Throwing it all away and starting over. Seen it a few times.

If I had someone offering 15 an hour for C++ I would give them a wide skip. Only the most green/desperate programmers would take that. It is currently one of those langs where you need to have a bit of caution and skill to use properly. I rarely see that in your outsourced groups. Plus if you can can do C++ any of the other popular languages are fairly straightforward to learn.

I currently work at a company that has a whole set of 'cheap Indian programmers' in india. We are afraid to give them anything serious. I am currently trying to get them to *run* a piece of software. 3 weeks so far and they will not double click an exe. It is not because 'idians are bad'. The guys here are top shelf guys. But the ones we have in the 'cheap group'. Well that they are cheap, well it shows.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back and RTFA. That article talking about NON-technical jobs in Silicon Valley: Grocery clerks, truck drivers, waitresses.

Funny that's what I did when I saw your comment. The article makes no mention of technical vs non technical. It does however mention highest paid against all others and points out that the large tech companies are paying less as a percentage of their revenue to employees.

Your reading comprehension stinks. From the article:

Nine out of every 10 Silicon Valley jobs pays less now than when Netflix first launched in 1997, despite one of the nation’s strongest economic booms and a historically low unemployment rate that outpaces the national average.

While tech workers have thrived, employees in the middle of Silicon Valley’s income ladder have been hit hardest as their inflation-adjusted wages declined between 12 and 14 percent over the past 20 years, according to a study from UC Santa Cruz’s Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the labor think tank Working Partnership USA, which examined the economic impact of technology companies.

Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found

Re: Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't people who only read the headlines.

The problem is the headlines intentionally mislead to get attention.

Re: Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever brought in the Indians needs to have his neck cut

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[jonwil]

I dont like the idea of having to install spy software but $15/hour for software development C++ work (which I am good at) may well in theory be better than what I do now. Especially if it qualified as "commercial experience in software development" for my resume.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[St.Creed]

15$ an hour is pretty good. There are places in Europe (Greece, Spain, the former Warsaw pact states) where this is a pretty decent wage. The average wage for high skilled employees in Greece is 1500 euro per month, so 15$ an hour doesn't sound bad at all. And in fact, Dutch companies outsource to Greece and Spain already because of this.

But even more important, for younger people it's extremely hard to get a job due to ossified labour laws, in Italy, Spain and Greece. But by working for this outfit they are avoiding the whole social structure, make more money than their parents in all likelyhood, and gain experience that will help them get a local job on better terms later on.

There is a shortage in the US and the EU of programmers. This company isn't replacing anyone, they're additional labor. Employers can put up with lower quality and communication hassles because otherwise they would have NO developers. The wage difference isn't all that important, but availability of developers, that's the major thing for any business.

They might replace the people I sometimes meet, though: the people that only develop because of the money, never read any literature, aren't interested in development practices and are not only unproductive but actively stifle any new idea. Getting rid of that deadwood would be a good thing.

Re: Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be General Electric and the overhyped Jack Welch. Around 2012 they realized the mistake they made and started reducing their dependence on outsourcing without much fanfare while their rivals were all still trying to copy Welch.

Re:Thatâ(TM)s why Iâ(TM)m a farmer

[HuguesT]

15$ without benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc) comes to 2500$ per month if working 40h week. Doing much more than that is hard if you are truly developing. Then you have to pay for health insurance, and save for retirement. Your net pay will end up being be far less than 1500 euros.

Sure you can hire people for $15

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they are any good they can do better. You aren't going to get the best people at those wages. Also maintenance is going to be a bitch.

Re:Sure you can hire people for $15

[phantomfive]

This has been my experience as well. You can try to hire people in Eastern Europe or South America, but if you want working software, you're going to need to pay the same order of magnitude as in America.

Re: Sure you can hire people for $15

[Anonymous Coward]

Your claim is exactly what the article refutes.

If he is able to hire people under these conditions and the company profits don't decrease to the point of making the practice invalid, then your statement has been proven untrue.

Re: Sure you can hire people for $15

[phantomfive]

Your claim is exactly what the article refutes.

The article doesn't refute anything. It doesn't present data, or even anecdote, to show how well these programmers in foreign companies are working. The article did manage to find some ex-programmers for the company in far off places, who basically complained how crappy the job was.

Re: Sure you can hire people for $15

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true at all. Your condition is that the company has to be sufficiently profitable for his statement to be false, but the parent spoke of working software, not the riches of some profiteer.

As the software industry itself has proven over and over again over the years, working software has literally nothing to do with being profitable.

Re:Sure you can hire people for $15

[LynnwoodRooster]

I get really good results using UpWork for contract SW services. This includes website development, some C++ code, IT management, etc. I've had really positive results over the last 8 years, predominantly hiring SW engineers from Eastern Europe and Asia (the best IT guy I ever had was from Vietnam; awesome service, done quickly and efficiently, and $8/hour). It helps to have really good specs and directions, though...

Re:Sure you can hire people for $15

[dknj]

You all are missing the point. I was approached by ESW capital. They have an efficient structure in which they pay $150k, $300k, and up to $500k for management roles. The $150k positions are the ones "interfacing" with maintenance. They are hiring a lot of those positions, the $300 and $500k are the elite level of management/eneigneering/sales positions. From the people I saw in the interview process, very very few fit that bill.

If you don't think $150k to work from home for 40-50 hours a week is nothing to sneeze at (this is not the contract position the article speaks of) then you are going to be one of the many left out in the turning tides of IT employment.

-dk

Re: Sure you can hire people for $15

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen they pay as low as $100k for management and as high as $800k.

In a one to one matchup, they generally lose as far as position goes, by a lot. To maintain your pay, you generally HAVE to get a promotion or two, or three.

They made the pitch to everyone at the office I was in. Only 1 person took it and it was because he was desperate. And he's miserable.

The office I was in also paid people below market rates. I can only imagine how bad the match up would be at others.

Of course, maybe we talked to a different division of ESW than you did. But I wouldn't even consider it. Given the environment, the low pay, and other nonsense. There was literally nothing about the pitch that was appealing to anyone at all.

Re:Sure you can hire people for $15

[St.Creed]

My advice for anyone who thinks they will remain coding all of their lives: coding is going out the door everywhere. Low-code development platforms will make specification ever more important, and coding ever less so.

But information analysis, domain knowledge, requirements analysis and business process modeling/data modeling, these are for ever. Architecture too, although changing faster than the other areas.

Re:Sure you can hire people for $15

[drsquare]

That sounds like a very complacent comment. What exactly stops Eastern Europeans making good software? They have a strong education system and a thriving tech sector. People used to think Japanese manufactured goods were junk.

Re:Sure you can hire people for $15

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they are any good they can do better. You aren't going to get the best people at those wages.

There is also the possibility that they will insert bugs or exploits on purpose and then later sell them on the black market to supplement the crappy wages. If the workers are overseas and these executives never meet them then how do they know who they're dealing with? In countries like Greece or Italy, it's much easier to move money around pseudo-anonymously because of all the corruption and family based networks. Let the buyer beware.

Re: Sure you can hire people for $15

[phantomfive]

People in Eastern Europe can make good software. But the ones who can do it charge roughly as much as good programmers in America.

What white collar workers said...

[Anonymous Coward]

When globalization came for blue-collar work and droves lost their jobs to 3rd world workers making $1/hr, the white-collar worker said, "you deserve that, you didn't upgrade your skills, your work can be done anywhere, you have to compete or fail!"

What goes around comes around. Now, your turn under the bus. Compete or fail.

Re: What white collar workers said...

[Type44Q]

the white-collar worker said, "you deserve that, you didn't upgrade your skills, your work can be done anywhere, you have to compete or fail!"

No, they didn't. Stupid fucker.

Re: What white collar workers said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you reading the same slashdot as I am? Or are you actively trying to filter out those kinds of posts? Just have a looksie in the archives, there certainly is no shortage of them.

Re: What white collar workers said...

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt not all, but a lot did say that dummy.

Re: What white collar workers said...

[benjfowler]

And who's going to pay for all this retraining.

This is where there is a role for the public sector to oversee this process, and help redeploy resources quickly to where they can maximise value for everybody.

The most competitive countries out there see this, and the public and private sectors work hand-in-glove. Markets are generally good, but occasionally fail.

Otherwise, you get the bad situation, where you've got carpet-bagging for-profit colleges bankrupting desperate people for worthless qualifications -- and key worker shortages everywhere.

Re: What white collar workers said...

[Anonymous Coward]

ahahahahahahahahaa, truth hurts so much, ouchie..

Re: What white collar workers said...

[Hognoxious]

Perhaps he's griping about the use of singular "worker" with plural "they".

Though the way he writes it's pretty unlikely he'd notice.

Re: What white collar workers said...

[cyber-vandal]

Globalization arrived for COBOL developers after Y2K and companies have been screwing their dev teams ever since. I don't know why you think it's just started.

What kind of software are they writing?

[shoor]

C++ programmers at $15/hr? Written at home or in a cafe? What kind of software is it? Where is the demand for that kind of stuff?

Re: What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Third world countries where there are smart, poor people and it is a great wage.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know it's quality code.

Re: What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen (yes I've worked some with ESW), it's mostly maintenance on preexisting software. The software tends to be all across the spectrum, since they buy lots of different companies.

As for the environment, the workers generally don't have an office. They work from anywhere. It's one of the perks. It also makes meetings rather awkward and random.

Since they fire ALL original tech workers there is literally zero info on why things are as they are with the code or what the developers were considering doing. It seems like long term projects just kind of go away. (I would say that makes it a rather poor investment really, when you consider the potential returns on some of the projects they just tossed)

The quality of the work seems to be above the worst but not exactly good. (Considering some developers I have known barely do their jobs, this makes an easy win for them in some cases)

As for the clients, I'd say this is what they really purchase. When they buy a company, they essentially gut it (at least from what I've seen). Leaving really only the relationship the customers have with the former company. Which is then as awkward as hell, because everyone knows the original company is gone entirely. But the customers don't immediately leave. The contracts remain, so they collect the money that the old company collected and pay for maintenance work on the products.

If I was the customer, honestly, I'd just switch to one of the competitors. There's really no reason to stick around in my mind. You're essentially paying a gutted out shell to maintain questionable service.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I got some advanced C++ for a 3D FEA magnetics engine for $10/hour. Written by a physics post-doc in Russia, it was well-documented, efficient, accurate, and did exactly what I wanted. He did it in about 70 hours, where I got a few US local contractors estimating 300 hours at $125 per hour...

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you hate America?

Re: What kind of software are they writing?

[benjfowler]

It's a really common business model for the vulture-capital funds which do this.

When they go shopping for failing enterprise software companies to buy out, one of the key criteria, is "stickiness" of the software, and how hard they can screw their customers on recurring license revenue before they jump ship and use something modern. For some markets, e.g. core banking software, a failed core banking migration project might be disastrous, which is why so much broken old software remains in service.

Vulture-capitalist private equity funds LOVE this sort of thing, and they are making absolutely OBSCENE amounts of money off the misery and toil of others.

I've been there. I see getting raped by vulture-capitalists as a punishment for failure. Not much you can do about it as an individual software developer, but it does go to show how bad managers can really destroy a lot of value, if allowed to.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[CptLoRes]

Because there is so much to 'hate' (dislike is the word you are looking for)?

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exception to the rule. There are great programmers in all these countries and some of them would be happy to code for $10-$15 an hour. But as a general rule a lot of shitty code also can come from there and good luck getting support after you paid them. The same situation can happen in US at $150 an hour but at least there is a legal system that can hold someone accountable if things go south.

Re: What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree 100%

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Caedite Eos]

In a previous life I used to do the same. The "secret" to success is writing outstanding specs.

Yes, it's possible to get shit code, but it's a MUCH less likely possibility than the naysayers would have you believe.

I can barely program my way out of a wet paper bag, but I was the most productive in my section. ALL due to my farming out my bits to Roumania and Ukraine. (Yes, my bosses were aware, they only cared about the quality and quantity of the results, so, as long as I didn't involve the company resources in this, it was all good.)

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Kernel Kurtz]

C++ programmers at $15/hr? Written at home or in a cafe? What kind of software is it? Where is the demand for that kind of stuff?

The Internet of Things :-/

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[_merlin]

Have you used any software lately? There's no sense of quality or pride in work.

macOS had a bug where you could log in as root without a password.

Microsoft keeps breaking MSVC in horrible ways and their response is to tell you to wait a couple of years for the next major update. Windows gets bugs like preventing you from changing keyboard/layout input method settings, and they won't fix it until the next six-monthly update, by which time they'll have broken more stuff. The bug where files were deleted if you had custom library paths had been reported by "insiders" yet they still rolled out the update without fixing it. Oh and the way they've sacked their QA department and try to sell being an unpaid beta tester as being an "insider" is disgusting. You're just doing unpaid testing at the risk of your own data/productivity, you're not an "insider" in any meaningful sense.

Meanwhile, Red Hat has forgotten what "stability" means. RHEL7 has broken not just binary compatibility but also source compatibility for kernel extensions on a point release (the APIs for IPv6 stuff changed in an incompatible way), and they subsequently completely changed how Infiniband and RDMA work on a point release, breaking compatibility with everything that uses it. Their graphical installer now needs 2GB of RAM to run properly, even though you can actually run an installed system in 512MB. The default installation contains a whole pile of WiFi firmware packages and daemons that are only useful if your network configuration changes dynamically (like a notebook used on public WiFi) which you'd never need on a server. They've completely lost touch with their customers.

Games are all developed with a "ship buggy, patch later" mentality. There have been games released in a state where it's impossible to finish the first level. You know what was good about cartridge-based consoles with no connectivity? They needed some QA because it was expensive to pay for a run of mask ROMs that you had to dump in landfill.

Software is almost uniformly shit these days. Apparently no-one thinks it's worth making good software any more.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[shoor]

You ask if I've used any software lately. Well, I'm a retired computer programmer who mostly worked in embedded systems or with Unix, programming in C and assembler. Since I came from a Unix background I went with Linux as soon as I heard about it back in the 90s. I don't want to come across as an obnoxious, haughty linux fanboy, particularly since I literally don't have much experience with anything else in the last 20 years so I can't compare it. And I also realize that not everybody has my background which made switching to linux so easy and natural for me. But after reading the responses to my question, maybe I'm living in a kind of bubble.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly it is inferior to the software that you can get from APK for FREE!

Yes free! Free for all! APK protects you from malware and advertising in the best possible way.

Serve him, and serve him well! He already serves you. Start promoting APK today!

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Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[_merlin]

The Linux ecosystem isn't in great shape either. Just look at systemd - some good ideas, but horrible implementation. Far too much attack surface on PID 1, no privilege separation, effectively proprietary interfaces. Gnome removes functionality with every release, and KDE just messes up the UI for no reason. When I boot up a Fedora 20 KDE system, the KDE UI looks and feels so much better.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[shoor]

I agree that there's been some troubling developments recently. To some extent I suppose Linux is a victim of it's own success. Although I haven't delved deeply into the technical side of systemd, the mere fact that it was bulldozed into the eco-system was enough to make me shy away from it. So nowadays I mostly use devuan.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[MrKaos]

C++ programmers at $15/hr?

You get what you pay for.

Written at home or in a cafe?

They can't afford either.

What kind of software is it?

Shit.

Where is the demand for that kind of stuff?

Very high, however the demand to fix their broken crap shitty code is even higher. Any fool that invests their money in business infrastructure this cheap deserves all of the downtime, errors and customer problems their non existent QA department didn't pick up on.

They pay their management highly so they have no qualms about being cunts whilst they earn people's contempt.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[St.Creed]

The thing is, you need to be on top of the whole process. Go move there. A friend of mine is running three external departments, basically small outfits they bought, in Sweden, China and another country. So he goes there regularly, sits with them on the floor a few days, has a video wall locally that is always on so their offices look like an extension of the home office. Questions can be asked by walking up to the wall, and waving.

You need to be thinking very hard on how to organize communication, much more so than when everyone sits next to you. But if you do, it can work out very well indeed.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Hognoxious]

Christmas must have come early. Training up your future competitors like that. Now that's generous.

[wipes away a tear]

Re: What kind of software are they writing?

[Zehsi]

lol it's not misery, it's called technical debt. You need to constantly fight it or you will get raped. Avoid vendor lockin, use free software whenever you can, etc, etc. It's very easy to not get raped.

Re:What kind of software are they writing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody is crammed into an open office. Nobody can hear themselves think above the din.... so they slowly write shitty software. Management wants them to go faster, so they hire more people and cram them in the office. Repeat.

Tech Outsourcing Tariffs

[DatbeDank]

I'd love to see some try and propose a tariff on all tech outsourcing efforts.

Want to hire cheap coders in some trash pit somewhere? 25% tariff.

Want to outsource your US teams to some shared services center in Timbuktu? 40%.

It won't happen, but it's good to watch certain types squirm.

Re: Tech Outsourcing Tariffs

[Anonymous Coward]

Write to your representative on this, given the current administration regarding H1Bs that might be an option.

Re: Tech Outsourcing Tariffs

[AnthonywC]

Lol may as well write to Santa or God while you are at it; and at least with Santa you may get a generic reply back.

Re: Tech Outsourcing Tariffs

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot..I wrote mine and got a reply..this is why we don't have change because fools like you give up without trying..you pathetic impetant nerd who lacks critical thinking skills

Re:Tech Outsourcing Tariffs

[drsquare]

Good luck with that. The US is a huge net exporter of software, there's no way you could win a trade war on that. It would cripple the US software industry and create new ones elsewhere. India and Europe would end up with their own Googles, Amazons, Microsofts etc.

Wait, you are aware that other countries would hit back with their own tariffs, aren't you? Or are you like Donald Trump who thinks crying 'America first' means the world will do what America wants?

Re: Tech Outsourcing Tariffs

[DatbeDank]

Seeing the shitty me toos that exist out there, I say bring it on. Especially India and Chinese software. Absolute utter crap.

"Joe"

[Anonymous Coward]

JOSEPH

Managers' turn next

[Archtech]

I'm looking forward to the epiphany when Western managers and "entrepreneurs" discover that foreigners can do their work far better too.

Re:Managers' turn next

[JaredOfEuropa]

To some degree this is already happening: some large firms outsourcing not just a couple of teams or some projects, but entire departments like IT or R&D to low wage countries. The local shops are predominantly run by local cheap managers.

On the other hand, I've known a few managers who are good at managing remote workers, organizing remote teams or organisations, getting results where others failed and blamed it on the rubbish foreign workers. That's a valuable and highly sought after skill, and it seems that this Liemandt guy is one of those people who have it. Good for him... though he seems one of those scumbags who are hell bent on turning every job into a gig.

Re:Managers' turn next

[cheesybagel]

It has already happened. Meet Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai.

Re: Managers' turn next

[Anonymous Coward]

The time difference and connectivity issues are real, regardless of the quality of worker.

Re:Managers' turn next

[St.Creed]

I've met some quite good Indian managers. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible in theory. In practice, however, management positions go to "people like me".

Re:Managers' turn next

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of managers already know this. The number of, for instance, Indian-born managers in the high-tech industry is quite high. And once they're in, they love to hire more Indian-born people to work under them. The caste system is alive and well, and these managers can bully the hell out of their employees, even the ones that aren't H1Bs. They get their own little satrapy, the managers above them get to do their empire building _and_ get subordinates who won't ever say no to any stupid idea the upper levels come up with. Tends to kill the company in the long run (unless they're defense contractors), but by then everyone's got better titles, lots of money, and move on to do the same elsewhere.

I'm a software engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

And for $15/hr I'd rather bag groceries.

I bill around $80/hr, a bit less for certain customers. Even so, I'm considered cheap compared to many other contractors in my industry.

ZIP

Re: I'm a software engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess...you donâ(TM)t live in China.

There are people in China who code just as well as you who would be happy to work for a fourth of that. Once logistics get worked out, youâ(TM)re fucked.

Re: I'm a software engineer

[jpaine619]

Sorry guy, but really you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. He's not going to be outsourced to China. Tech support... stuff like that sure.. But only a complete and utter fucking moron would ship their source code to China. It'll be stolen in 5 seconds..

Just because one asshole in Austin is doing it doesn't mean shit. China STEALS.. This is a known fact.. Their theft is either state sponsored or state approved. You don't ship anything secret to that shit hole of a country.

Programming (as others have pointed out) is a low unemployment industry that generally pays good wages. You want laws that protect your IP? Your only real choices are countries in the first world.

Re: I'm a software engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it's not just one company doing it. Lots of them do it.

Yes, a wise company wouldn't do it. But not all companies are that wise.

Additionally, politically sometimes there isn't much choice. I've seen a number of developers (or managers) start to 'coast' at the job. They don't get things done. Ignore complaints. Etc. Use politics to maintain their position. Then one day, the REAL owners decide they want out, orders come down from above... And you get this. And the coasting developers (or managers) and everyone else within the blast radius (responsible for the problems or not) get dumped on the nearest curb.

They figure, if they're going to get crap, they might as well get cheap crap.

Re: I'm a software engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

China doesn't steal. They share information, Information replication is not stealing. China IP laws are also different, less strict. Chinese are not brainwashed into thinking sharing information is stealing. Woe to you who thinks that sharing information is "stealing" imaginary property.

Re: I'm a software engineer

[St.Creed]

Well, even in China it is frowned upon to take something you're supposed to maintain, and then sell it to third parties.

Re: I'm a software engineer

[drsquare]

The American economy was built in IP theft, what are you complaining about?

Re: I'm a software engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

China STEALS.. This is a known fact.. Their theft is either state sponsored or state approved. You don't ship anything secret to that shit hole of a country.

Bingo. Any business people reading this, take heed. The Chinese government either encourages and supports their companies to steal intellectual property, does it directly on their behalf or looks the other way. Do you understand? These people are thieves and you will have no redress in either American or Chinese courts. The current trade war is just the start. There's a very good chance that China and the United States will fight a shooting war in the next two decades. There's nothing for you in China. Whatever money you think that you can make there is a mirage. The Chinese F you in the ass and make you pay them for the privilege. You've been warned.

Lol Democrats

[Anonymous Coward]

Say one thing in politics, do the exact opposite when no one is looking. That's why they are good to follow to know where to invest.

Re:Lol Democrats

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the dipshit trump supporter/racist republican

Re:Lol Democrats

[Anonymous Coward]

NPC-to-English translation: "Orange man bad"

Re:Lol Democrats

[benjfowler]

The soup is rarely eaten as hot as it's served. Everyone knows that.

Re:Lol Democrats

[jpaine619]

Did somebody hurt your Feelz? Bad bad man! FEELZ!

IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)

APK

P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE... apk

Re:IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

(everybody join in!)

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

APK
GO the fuck AWAY!

Why not?

[rsilvergun]

All it would take is for people to stop voting for anyone who accepts money from corporate PACs and to vote in their primary election. Hell, if the population of /. would just show up to their primaries with that mindset it would probably be enough. If you think voter turnout's bad in a mid term you ain't seen nothing like a mid term's primary. If you want political power for the working class, that's where it is.

Re:Why not?

[cascadingstylesheet]

All it would take is for people to stop voting for anyone who accepts money from corporate PACs and to vote in their primary election. Hell, if the population of /. would just show up to their primaries with that mindset it would probably be enough. If you think voter turnout's bad in a mid term you ain't seen nothing like a mid term's primary. If you want political power for the working class, that's where it is.

Hmm, there is a prominent US politician (and linked movement) who wants to limit or stop the loss of jobs to cheap foreigners.

Perhaps you could throw some support that way ...

Re:Why not?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Hmm, there is a prominent US politician (and linked movement) who wants to limit or stop the loss of jobs to cheap foreigners.

Said US politician says that, but has not practiced it in his own companies. Also, said US politician renegotiated a NAFTA deal which it turns out will remove some protections from US-based jobs; and was seemingly more alarmed about the loss of Chinese jobs than the US workers who would gain them when ZTE complained they might be driven out of business (coincidentally this happened a day or two after Chinese interests invested $500 million in said US politician’s new hotel and casino).

Re:Why not?

[Waffle Iron]

Hmm, there is a prominent US politician (and linked movement) who wants to limit or stop the loss of jobs to cheap foreigners.

Unfortunately, he is unable to comprehend the existence or value of any occupation that wasn't practiced by the 1890s. So he'd be of no use at all in this case.

Re:Why not?

[mentil]

Reality TV stars existed in the 1890s?!

Re: Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have I not told you about or prophet Joseph smith?

"This is the weapon of a jediknight"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not as clumsy/random as a blaster - An elegant weapon 4 a more civilized age" https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

* "For over a 1,000 generations the Jedi Knights were guardians of peace & justice in the old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the EMPIRE"

(NOT "wannabe weapons" of TROLL shitlords on /. - theirs = effete downmods I RUN 'EM DRY OF & lies/deceit/mistrust - it's WHY they LOSE).

APK

P.S.=> Many here DO listen https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & enjoy greater speed/security/reliability & anonymity hosts yield natively speeding you up 2 ways (adblocks & hardcodes that protect vs. DNS security issues in redirect poisoning + request tracking logs & RESOLVE FASTER locally from RAM driven by KERNELMODE speed vs. slow usermode in "solutions" packed w/ security issues (DNS/Antivirus) OR not working fully by default (adblock) in usermode addons easily detected by webmasters & blocked doing less but using more)... apk

Why am I not surprised . . .

[sgt_doom]

Yet another Obama jackhole is involved with American jobs offshoring??? The Clintons and Obama are biggest neocon P.O.S.es out there --- with the R-cons we know they are anti-worker crooks, with the faux crats they are lying swine who claim to be something other than what they are: anti-worker crooks!

Re:Why am I not surprised . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop whining and start helping you prick!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys are fucking scum. Nothing but parasites that drain value from productive people under the guise of "job creators". The 21st century's robber barons and sweat shop owners, except their products are far inferior to that of their late predecessors.

The digital and legal shackles they put on their employees and the slave-like hours they demand "employees" work mean that we're not far off from people being paid in scrip and being forced to buy their goods in the company store, which will probably be Amazon.

Captcha: salaried

Re:Good grief

[fahrbot-bot]

Plus, they require you to install software to your computer that tracks surfing, keystrokes and even takes screen grabs and photos via your computer's camera -- and this is typically on a gig worker's personal computer, not an employers' machine.

Good grief. That is fucking appalling. This Liemandt guy sounds like a complete sociopath.

Obviously, one would (should) get a separate PC and use it *solely* for this work. This also makes it easier to deduct it 100% as a business expense.

IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)

APK

P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE... apk

"This is the weapon of a jediknight"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not as clumsy/random as a blaster - An elegant weapon 4 a more civilized age" https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

* "For over a 1,000 generations the Jedi Knights were guardians of peace & justice in the old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the EMPIRE"

(NOT "wannabe weapons" of TROLL shitlords on /. like ZIP https://it.slashdot.org/commen... - theirs = effete downmods I RUN 'EM DRY OF & lies & WHY they LOSE).

APK

P.S.=> Many here know https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & enjoy greater speed/security/reliability & anonymity hosts yield natively speeding you up 2 ways (adblocks & hardcodes that protect vs. DNS security issues in redirect poisoning + request tracking logs & RESOLVE FASTER locally from RAM driven by KERNELMODE speed vs. slow usermode in "solutions" packed w/ security issues (DNS/Antivirus) OR not working fully by default (adblock) in usermode addons easily detected by webmasters & blocked doing less but using more)... apk

Sounds like someone I don't want to work for.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a horrible working ethic.

fuck a 7rollkore

[Anonymous Coward]

PARTS OF YOU ARE mem,bers' cr3ative

Typical Forbed ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, any kid from Cairo can "teach himself to code" by watching Youtube videos. But that doesn't mean they'll produce anything of quality that's actually maintainable. I've seen the quality that comes out of India, and it's atrocious. I'm not the only one, essentially everyone in the industry I've talked to that's experienced outsourced Indian coders has said the same thing. I see no reason it'd be any different from anywhere else where prices are cheap.

This is a typical Forbes article written for Business Boys who think they can just outsource software dev to India for 1/10 the price and expect the same results. Just recycle the same article from 2002, and change a couple details around.

There's certainly been some progress in the last 20 years that this is a fantasy. 20 years ago everyone though there wouldn't be any developers in the US that made any money. People were discouraged from going into software as a career for this very reason. Yet here we are 20 years later, and Software developers are bigger than ever!

Re: Typical Forbed ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing funnier than reading JIRA comments from indians. 4-5 people bouncing the ticket back and forth pretending to do work, but really take turns repeating what the other one says until someone 'does the needful'.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

Sure, any kid from Cairo can "teach himself to code" by watching Youtube videos. But that doesn't mean they'll produce anything of quality that's actually maintainable. I've seen the quality that comes out of India, and it's atrocious.

Oh, yes. I reviewed some Java code from Indian "quality outsourcing" a few years back for security. This was so bad it was absolutely incredible. A lot of layers, basically all they did was rename all parameters and exceptions and pass them downwards (upwards). They had parameter names longer than 80 chars, differing in 3 chars, for example and these were not the same renamed parameters, but different ones. But the best thing I found was this: While scrolling over the code, I saw a nested loop (immediate red flag in glue code). And get this: It was a hand-coded bubble sort (probably the worst performer possible that is still n^2) used to remove duplicates (Java has hash-tables for that) from the result of a database query (you can tell the DB to remove the duplicates before it returns the result) that could possible include the whole customer base of a few million entries. I don't think it is possible to do this any worse so that it still technically works. I don't think I ever have seen technically working code that shows such a massive non-understanding of the technologies used. Needless to say the project was scrapped a while later, because they could not get it to work fast enough even with the medium-sized test data set.

My take is that the only economically sensible way to produce business-critical code (and a lot is that) is to get the absolute best coders you can, pay them wathever they ask and you will still come out massively ahead on the code TCO compared to the utter trash that usually gets deployed.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[cheesybagel]

Ah. Yet another person dissing bubble-sort. The venerable bubble-sort is quite efficient O(N) when sorting already sorted lists and it does not use any additional memory whatsoever. Try that with quick-sort or merge-sort.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[cheesybagel]

You want basically to use something which will likely use a heap and result in an O(n log n) solution when the problem to remove duplicates, if the keys are small, is like O(k n).

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Outsourced quality code seems to be not really cheaper than when it is made locally.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[St.Creed]

If the data is coming from a database, anyone mucking about with their own sorting algorithm after retrieving it should be fired on the spot for incompetence.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah. Yet another person dissing bubble-sort. The venerable bubble-sort is quite efficient O(N) when sorting already sorted lists and it does not use any additional memory whatsoever. Try that with quick-sort or merge-sort.

Most real world implementations of quick-sort already include special checks for their known worst-cases. In the case of quick sort, this worst case occurs when the items are in exactly the reverse of sorted order. In this case the condition can be detected and remedied in linear time. This is a non-problem and you still never ever want to use bubble sort in real production code. Using bubble sort is a joke, not a serious proposal.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

In the scenario at hand, the input was basically randomized.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

There are still people using quick-sort? The mind boggles. Using that utter atrocity should get you banned for life from writing code. Use merge-sort of bottom-up heap-sort for minimally worse constants, but assured performance.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

Fail. This is Java. You use one of the nice, language supplied hash-tables. Also, since you seem to not have really ready what I wrote, SQL has a "DISTINCT" keyword and the DB will nicely and efficiently remove duplicates for you.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

That is decidedly the biggest fail in there. Even of the duplicates-removal was implemented efficiently (using a hash-table, people, anything else is insane!) you may end up pushing a lot of extra data over a slow interface. And you use a lot of additional memory. This is the job of the DB and nobody else.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

If you have competent people locally, outsourcing coding is extremely expensive. Of course, if you fired all your coders or threat them so badly that all good ones have left, outsourcing may be the only option left.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[cheesybagel]

Yes using the SQL command is the right approach. And no hash-tables are not the best solution. Please check your nearest book for the best case and WORST-CASE complexity of key insertion. kthx bye.

Re:Typical Forbed ignorance.

[gweihir]

Hash tables are the best solution for this problem. Using modern hash functions will give you almost constant time for insertion and search, with very good constants. Sure, the theoretical worst case is extreme, but you are not going to hit it in the remaining lifetime in this universe and that makes it pretty irrelevant.

Re:Good grief

[phantomfive]

Obviously, one would (should) get a separate PC and use it *solely* for this work.

You're not going to be happy doing that at $15 an hour.

Self made my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks capitalism

Re: Good grief

[nehumanuscrede]

âoe Good grief. That is fucking appalling. This Liemandt guy sounds like a complete sociopath âoe

Corporate surveillance of employees is fairly common. Here, they just call it âoe metrics âoe.

He is just using the system the elites

[oldgraybeard]

have built for themselves. part of me says why not! But then another part of me says I need to keep doing things the way I have been all along. The price is, I will always be closer to the edge than to comfort. But it is a personal choice that I am happy "I can make".

Just my 2 cents ;)

Piece of Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

This piece of shit was taking home $15/hr is he.

Failing ESW companies, and privat equity parastism

[benjfowler]

This model works best for crappy near-end-of-life "enterprise" software, where all the original developers are long gone, and you're in maintenance mode.

These private-equity types buy up loads of failing enterprise software companies and offshore everything. They fund the purchase by loading up the victim companies with the debt used to purchase them.

It works best with _sticky_ software -- systems which are very, very hard for customers to get rid of. Bend over your customers, fuck them hard on recurring license revenue, do a little "labour cost arbitrage".

The spivs who are doing this are making BANK. The insiders are getting something like 40% return on capital, even accounting for losing bets. Investors are bashing down doors to invest in these equity funds.

I saw this with another notorious (and VERY large) San Francisco-based private equity outfit, who've pulls a similar caper, although not quite as draconian -- they have just opened an enormous development centre in Bucharest instead of pimping out contract developers online. Eventually, they'll wise up after chasing the cheapest competent developers in the world, and implement a digital treadmill, as these amoral worms have.

If you're running or working for an enterprise software company, here's a hard home truth: if you embrace mediocrity or fail outright, this is your fate: you'll be bought out by these vultures, cut up for scrap, and everything you've worked for will be worth ought, while these fat cats walk away laughing.

All software is shit and this is making it worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody gives a fuck. You exchange money for lines of code. Anyone who has seen how people code when they're minimally invested in the overall result can see the problem. It's like the CDO game: developers are aggregated and, through some magic math, somehow a whole lot of worthless coding is turned into tranches of excellent coding, and some lesser coding, and at some point someone will realize that it's actually all shit and then it hits the fan. But as long as these people have extracted heaps of actual money before it all blew up, they're fine and they'll do it again.

Re:Good grief

[benjfowler]

You'll probably find that anybody who's got more than a couple of million to their name, probably stepped on a lot of necks to get their wealth. Being a psychopath is almost mandatory in that line of business. You have to not care at all about the suffering and toil of others.

I was thinking the same thing

[SuperKendall]

I mean, what is $15/hour C++ going to look like? The mind boggles.

Re: I was thinking the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell. Those idiots overtook company I used to work. Replaced us with Turkish, egyptian... people. They got an assaignment to acquire 100 % test coverage and those idiots didn't even bother to ask and started to write unit tests for generated code from A to Z. And coverage meant to "green out" the lines. No asserts so far. And testing getters and setters... The only capable people were those from Ukraine who were leaders of virtual teams. And about Andy Trouba I could spent many more lines about his religious belief that his, what we called spyware, monitoring software is doing good to developers. Yay and I forgot that every human robot is scored based on committed lines and closed issues and must improve every week.

Re:I was thinking the same thing

[mentil]

Every line ends with a GOTO statement.

Re:I was thinking the same thing

[Hognoxious]

It will have wariables without walues in them.

Re:I was thinking the same thing

[St.Creed]

It will probably look pretty good. The universities in Estonia and other former Warsaw pact countries are very good, and turn out a lot of competent IT developers that would be very happy with $15/hour.

And to be clear: their universities are not *that* far behind MIT, in terms of competence. How many overpaid US developers have never had any formal CS training? Quite a few, I bet. A decent CS grad student in Eastern Europe is competent, and overjoyed at being paid $15/hour. I wouldn't mind outsourcing my development to them at all.

Re:Good grief

[ShanghaiBill]

This also makes it easier to deduct it 100% as a business expense.

Home office deductions are an American, or at least 1st world, concept.

These 3rd world workers are not reporting their income, or even filing tax returns. So they don't need any deductions.

Re:Good grief

[jpaine619]

You'll probably find that anybody who's got more than a couple of million to their name, probably stepped on a lot of necks to get their wealth. Being a psychopath is almost mandatory in that line of business. You have to not care at all about the suffering and toil of others.

spot the liberal in 3..2...1

count me out

[AndyKron]

Isn't nice how some people become filthy rich off the backs of others?

Re:count me out

[Anonymous Coward]

As slashdot is usually keen to point out: "it's capitalism, baby."

Suddenly it looks like it seems like it's a whole lot less attractive when the consequences are beginning to hit the own ranks. I can't stop thinking, "WTF where you thinking?"

It was obvious from the start that this would happen once the low wage countries had absorbed all the low-skilled work, and started to be able to bid for those requiring more skills. This is not stopping, it's not stopping until the "first world" has been reduced to rubble and there is no more "value" to extract from it.

Blame those impersonating me... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't really me you replied to: It's impersonators of me & I only post on hosts IF they stop threats OR speed you up. I don't off topic.

HOWEVER: I won't "lay down" to losers attacking me 1st. I defend myself w/ facts they can't beat.

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

I've got a "psycho fanclub" IMPERSONATING me & spamming + lying about MY work STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts!

GOOFS like c6gunner CAUGHT IMPERSONATING ME https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

(His name's on the post as SUBMITTER signing "APK" & he ALTERED users words of praise of my work (since he tried INSULTING me 1st & I issued a FAIR CHALLENGE to SHOW HE CAN DO BETTER - he hasn't)).

gweihir PROVED you IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... too!

APK

P.S.=> I'm not here to win a popularity contest OR to lose (it's for LOSERS like c6gunner - not I): I'm here to WIN & so do hosts users... apk

Computer Associates 2.0?

[Tablizer]

the original company is gone entirely. But the customers don't immediately leave. The contracts remain, so they collect the money that the old company collected and pay for maintenance work on the products.

Wasn't this the Computer Associates model a decade or two ago? The products usually shrank in market-share after purchase, and CA's reputation eventually caught up with them. I smell another hit-and-run gimmick.

We need to attract students to STEM

[Anonymous Coward]

You see there is a shortage of tech workers And articles like this are not helping attract the next generation of talent

Re: We need to attract students to STEM

[Anonymous Coward]

If tech workers are starting to make $15/hr contract pay, do we really need more of them?

The shortage is a myth used to get more people in the field so that 5 years from now we can pay them $10 instead.

IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)

APK

P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE... apk

"This is the weapon of a jediknight"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not as clumsy/random as a blaster - An elegant weapon 4 a more civilized age" https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

* "For over a 1,000 generations Jedi Knights were guardians of peace & justice in the old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the EMPIRE"

(NOT "wannabe weapons" of TROLL shitlords on /. like ZIP https://it.slashdot.org/commen... - theirs = effete downmods I RUN 'EM DRY OF & lies & WHY they LOSE).

APK

P.S.=> Many here know https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & enjoy greater speed/security/reliability & anonymity hosts yield natively speeding you up 2 ways (adblocks & hardcodes that protect vs. DNS security issues in redirect poisoning + request tracking logs & RESOLVE FASTER locally from RAM driven by KERNELMODE speed vs. slow usermode in "solutions" packed w/ security issues (DNS/Antivirus) OR not working fully by default (adblock) in usermode addons easily detected by webmasters & blocked doing less but using more)... apk

As they say in Eastern Europe

[melted]

You pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. I can guarantee you he's not getting any good C++ for that $15/hr.

Re:As they say in Eastern Europe

[roman_mir]

He is overpaying, my devs do the job starting at $2 for the first 2 months, then it is $3 for the first year, I do give $1 increases yearly though. Now, my team is small compared to what he is doing and I am hands on, it is a product we are building, not doing outsourcing for other companies (yet, I am going to start that also next year, it is worth it). Looks like he is overpaying and also he only hired people with at least 5 years of experience with those rates. I don't monitor people with software yet either and I do rent offices, but I already started hiring people who work from home as well, seems to make sense, not all of the people with the needed skills are in the same city. If you need to start churning out code you have to be flexible.

Re:As they say in Eastern Europe

[St.Creed]

I guess you got downvoted because people don't like where you're going with this :) But your experience mirrors my own. Although I would pay more, just to make the company more attractive and really get the best people in and make sure they're comfortable. In the long run, paying $15/hr is peanuts if it makes your employees really happy and productive.

Re: As they say in Eastern Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

The incentive is for you to lie to attempt to depress wages. Either way, you might want to put some thought towards the political consequences of your actions. (You'll say you have, but failure to understand the ecology of a social species suggests you approach it from a different angle next time you're feeling contemplative.)

Re: As they say in Eastern Europe

[roman_mir]

You don't understand the economy, nobody can depress wages by lying in a competitive environment. If I pay too little for a given resource in a given location this resource will be sold to a higher bidder. That's the only thing that is relevant.

Re:As they say in Eastern Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you got downvoted because people don't like where you're going with this

Actually, no. Roman was not downmoderated at all on that comment. Roman posts at -1 because he has a long history of being abusive towards other slashdot members and has karma that is according to that behavior. He has also set up a sock puppet account that he uses to try to speak more loudly or game the system into better karma.

Roman also has a long documented history of using slashdot to recruit for the cult that he is a proud member of. He rarely posts more than a handful of comments without plugging for it. Regardless of your thoughts on fringe religious movements, people tend to tire of it pretty quickly.

Re:Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of this pathetic attempt at smart rethoric, why don't you try to offer a counter argument ?

Re:Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Deduct it as an expense? You mean stick a depreciation schedule on it over a few years?

Back in WWII, a luftwaffe commander once said

[Anonymous Coward]

Back during WWII, a luftwaffe commander once said to his men:

"If I ever find out one of you has shot a parachute, he better not ever show his face here again, because I will shoot him myself. This is something you don't do for the ennemy, you do this for yourself, so you don't completely lose your humanity."

And that commander was a fucking nazi. So what does that make that Liemandt guy ?

Re:Back in WWII, a luftwaffe commander once said

[gweihir]

This is an impressive quote, used in an impressive way!

Re:Back in WWII, a luftwaffe commander once said

[shoor]

I read somewhere that in Europe during WW II there was an unwritten rule that we didn't shoot at their medics and they didn't shoot at ours. Maybe it's kind of the same thing. We don't shoot at your parachutes, and you don't shoot at ours. Maybe the Nazi commander was thinking to himself that maybe someday HE would be the one in the parachute.

Re:Back in WWII, a luftwaffe commander once said

[Anonymous Coward]

it makes him a good enterpreneur and bussinessman, he should get some kind of title, Sir Liemandt perhaps?
Really, what is it with you guys to oppress the people who contribute to society the most

Re:Back in WWII, a luftwaffe commander once said

[painandgreed]

I read somewhere that in Europe during WW II there was an unwritten rule that we didn't shoot at their medics and they didn't shoot at ours. Maybe it's kind of the same thing. We don't shoot at your parachutes, and you don't shoot at ours. Maybe the Nazi commander was thinking to himself that maybe someday HE would be the one in the parachute.

That, plus, from Goering on down was this sense that the Luftwaffe and pilots were some sort of modern day knights bound by honor. Held to a higher code and worthy of it and even in some sort of Brotherhood with other pilots as part of a heroic self image. Goering even got better treatment for captured allied pilots than normal allied POWs got.

THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES KEN DOLL

[Anonymous Coward]

THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES KEN DOLL NAZI FAGGOT

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:Failing ESW companies, and privat equity parast

[phantomfive]

It works best with _sticky_ software -- systems which are very, very hard for customers to get rid of. Bend over your customers, fuck them hard on recurring license revenue, do a little "labour cost arbitrage".

In other words, this is the end-game for Salesforce, after they have all your data? SAAS ftw.

Serious problem

[duke_cheetah2003]

Crossover is looking for anyone who can commit to a 40- or 50-hour workweek, but it has no interest in full-time employees.

This right here is one of the major issues facing US workers. Employers want to screw us over at every turn.

And we've been so brainwashed by the 2009 Recession's "effects", ie higher unemployment, stagnant wages, etc.. workers leap at the chance to be ass-raped as a 'independent contractors.' This needs to stop.

Re:Serious problem

[cheesybagel]

Yeah no shit. I mean committed to a 40- 50- hour workweek but it isn't a full-time job? What would you know.

The best guys are not working at such conditions

[gweihir]

Or for that pay. At the very most you are getting mediocre people. If you sell their labor at a steep profit, that will still make you rich, but your customers are getting screwed.

Re:All software is shit and this is making it wors

[gweihir]

Indeed. Great coders actually spend a lot of time thinking, and little time coding. That does not fit this slave-labor model at all though.

Re: Good grief

[_merlin]

Corporate surveillance of employees is fairly common.

In the US maybe. It's not legal in most of Europe.

Games and Rules

[hackus]

"One of the most mysterious and innovative figures in technology..."

Really? Who says and what new revolutionary break through in software did this guy or his company produce?

I have a different view.

How about you employee people in third world countries and use their labor to destroy the living standards of 1st world countries?

That is one of the tenants of Globalism.

It isn't innovative, and it certain isn't mysterious.

If it seems immoral, it is. Capitalism requires even rules for everyone on both ends, both Capital and Labor.

These people should be paid 1st world country wages, or their should be Tariff's on the labor.

Lets see how innovative and mysterious this guy is when he has to compete on a level playing field with everyone else.

They deserve misery

[Anonymous Coward]

... counts keystrokes to measure how "productive" they are ...

If someone is dumb enough to choose being treated as a low-skilled typist or to load spyware on a personal-use computer, they deserve misery. The gig-economy means "you're the boss": Start acting like it and demand normal working conditions. Otherwise, one is just an employee choosing to forsake all employment protections (what little there is in the USA) at minimum wage.

Re:Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, you're just butthurt that you've discovered your talents are not unique or important.

Price discovery is a bitch.

I knew it!

[Anonymous Coward]

For months, I've seen a company called Crossover offering salaries of $200,000 - $400,000 a year for Senior Programmers. Yet, the second you begin your application process it seems as if they are milking you for free work.

Any company that makes you complete a work-from-home coding exercise that takes more than 30 minutes of your time (often they take over 8 hours!) is not worth the effort. You won't get the job and even if you do you'll wish you hadn't.

Re: I knew it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen them offer anywhere close to that.

When they talked to us, they were offering rates so far below market price, that it wasn't even worth it to review it any further.

And having just looked at their website, it looks like their rates are indeed quite low for most positions.

The American Way.

[suezz]

What computer science students get coming out of school is appalling. The american way is to lose all sense of morality and don't care what kind of quality to get the job done. I tell every college student I know not get into computers. It isn't rewarding and fun like it use to be when it was starting out. It is cut throat and no once cares about doing anything properly. If you can talk out of your arse and act like you know what you are talking about you can go far no matter even though the actual work you do gets fixed by people who know what they are doing. If it wasn't for Linux I would not be in the industry.

Re:The American Way.

[cheesybagel]

As if it wasn't enough for Red Hat to impose systemd on us they just got bought out by IBM. I fear, my friend, that Linux is DOOMED.

Re:The American Way.

[Anonymous Coward]

As if it wasn't enough for Red Hat to impose systemd on us they just got bought out by IBM. I fear, my friend, that Linux is DOOMED.

If only there was another Linux distribution available!

(OK, that was sarcasm. Check out distrowatch.com)

Re:The American Way.

[richman555]

The American Way is to hire foreign workers to do this work. Oh by the way, these foreign workers aren't getting paid well and endure harsh labor practices. For this reason, I also do not recommend Computer Science to anyone going to college. It is simply not worth the time and money.

Re:The American Way.

[cheesybagel]

I use Ubuntu personally. But you know, Red Hat, like them or not, are the only ones interested in the "non-exciting" parts of the system. Like "unimportant" things like, you know, GCC, binutils, libc, systemd (blech), pulseaudio (blech), even little things like X11 core code getting the Linux kernel to actually compile and run properly on things other than Linus's computer...

Re:Good grief

[cheesybagel]

Just install their crapware on a VM.

Re:Good grief

[cheesybagel]

Then remember to put a cycling video showing yourself "working" as the input to the webcam et voila.

Re:Good grief

[cheesybagel]

That is just a repetition of that axiom that "behind every great fortune is a crime" of some sort.

Re:Good grief

[mentil]

On the downside the taxman pulls out a saw and takes 20% of their laptop as a tax.

IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)

APK

P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE... apk

"This is the weapon of a jediknight"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not as clumsy/random as a blaster - An elegant weapon 4 a more civilized age" https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

* "For over a 1,000 generations Jedi Knights were guardians of peace & justice in the old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the EMPIRE"

(NOT "wannabe weapons" of TROLL shitlords on /. like ZIP https://it.slashdot.org/commen... - theirs = effete downmods I RUN 'EM DRY OF & lies & WHY they LOSE).

APK

P.S.=> Many here know https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & enjoy greater speed/security/reliability & anonymity hosts yield natively speeding you up 2 ways (adblocks & hardcodes that protect vs. DNS security issues in redirect poisoning + request tracking logs & RESOLVE FASTER locally from RAM driven by KERNELMODE speed vs. slow usermode in "solutions" packed w/ security issues (DNS/Antivirus) OR not working fully by default (adblock) in usermode addons easily detected by webmasters & blocked doing less but using more)... apk

Blame those impersonating me... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't really me you replied to: It's impersonators of me & I only post on hosts IF they stop threats OR speed you up. I don't off topic.

HOWEVER: I won't "lay down" to losers attacking me 1st. I defend myself w/ facts they can't beat.

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

I've got a "psycho fanclub" IMPERSONATING me & spamming + lying about MY work STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts!

GOOFS like c6gunner CAUGHT IMPERSONATING ME https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

(His name's on the post as SUBMITTER signing "APK" & he ALTERED users words of praise of my work (since he tried INSULTING me 1st & I issued a FAIR CHALLENGE to SHOW HE CAN DO BETTER - he hasn't)).

gweihir PROVED you IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... too!

APK

P.S.=> I'm not here to win a popularity contest OR to lose (it's for LOSERS like c6gunner - not I): I'm here to WIN & so do hosts users... apk

'Self-made'? Hah!

[mvdwege]

And again the myth of the self-made man strikes again. To silence the critics that this is yet another plutocrat trying to keep them down, we must pretend that he did it all on his own, from humble beginnings.

Well, if you do some googling, the truth soon comes out: so-called self-made man is just another rich boy. Liemandt's father was none other than the direct subordinate of GE's Jack Welch; another sociopath millionaire. So that's Liemandt: another spoiled rich boy sociopath.

Re:Good grief

[St.Creed]

The counter argument is that most rich people inherited their wealth. For instance, the 10 richest families in medieval Venice still make up the 7 richest families today. And while some people get rich by being a doctor, or by inventing brilliant stuff, or winning the lottery, most people just inherit it and if successful, expand it a bit.

Still, a lot of people who get very wealthy do act like sociopaths.

Re: THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES KEN D

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrat partisan cyberstalking faggots sure do like gratuitous overuse of the word "faggot".

credited to help put Austin on the tech map

[edittard]

credited to help put Austin on the tech map

What kind of retard speak is this?

Re:credited to help put Austin on the tech map

[Anonymous Coward]

Was probably written by a $15/hour journalist from Elbonia.

Get what you paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming the code works as promised, foreign developers are not under the same legal framework. This is a huge risk if you don't want someone copying and reselling the software you just paid for. I have seen this happen a few times and always assume either 1. the manager is an idiot or 2. it's a low valued project = low pay.

IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).

& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)

APK

P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE... apk

$150/hour C++ is no great shakes

[Anonymous Coward]

...and for $300/hour, you can get a C++ programmer that won't try to write a 50-line shell script using 100K lines of C++. :-)

Re:Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

(bignameschool) required installing something like this "virtual proctoring" software. On a personal computer. Which required flash. With no uninstall. From a third-party. Did I mention it also scanned your hard-drive and processes?

Seriously.

Seriously.

Re: Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is, if you voluntarily agree to it, as all these contractors do.

(Aurea, an ESW/Crossover sibling, has workers in portugal and england and spain all with this software legally installed and running and mining its data).

IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd never "cry victim" to ne'er-do-wells (TROLLS, not all /.ers) either.

U EVEN HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& then realizing it you quit trying to make me look bad via what you thought were lies on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... on speculative execution attack: Hosts PREVENT 'EM, joke's on you)

APK

P.S.=> 2nd to last link's KILLING U THAT U HELPED ME & got me to see if hosts stop portsmash/meltdown/spectre & yes - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE + FAIL a PORTFILTER TEST https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...