"This is exactly what Islamic extremist do, point out to drone strikes where countless innocent have died to establish US is the devil. Truth is somewhere in between, on both sides its the necessities of war, US is no more the devil than Islam is extremist."
You chose a ridiculously poor example to try to make your point. By treaty, international law, and even U.S. law, drone strikes are NOT a valid act of war. And since it is an illegal, premeditated killing, that pretty much makes it murder.
"If you can do your work from home, it's probable that someone else can do the work from the other side of the planet. For less. So be careful what you wish for."
They might be able to do it for less, but they won't do it better.
I've been freelancing for some time now. I deal with people in this field all the time, and the consensus seems to be the same: most third-world developers are worth what you pay them.
For the last 2 years, give or take, I've been seeing more and more job offers on the freelance boards that say "North America or Europe Only". Many have been stung by outsourcing, usually because of poor quality of work, or non-completion.
I'm not trying to imply they're all like that. But there are plenty. Enough that over the years outsourcing the kind of development I do has gotten a pretty bad rap.
Recently a client had an issue with me, apparently because I didn't want to do something he asked me to do that I considered to be unprofessional. He said "If this is going to be a problem, I have some guys in [Country X] who are waiting to do the work."
Well, I didn't feel it was worth arguing with him, so I told him fine. And I don't know if whoever has been working on the project are actually from [Country X], but they really buggered it up. I can see where they're working on it. Some critical back-end code I wrote doesn't work any more, some of the graphics are screwed up, etc. It's a mess. And there's one important bit of code that is so messed up it's really hard for me to resist the urge to describe it here and say hahahaha. But {sigh...} I won't.
I don't know who's going to finish the project for him. But his "outsourced" devs don't seem to be capable of it.
"Im in school now for the second time around, and the first time around i paid it off making ~12k/ yr as a waiter part time. Got a loan from my parents, but it was paid off in ~ 1-2 years so not really a biggie."
The first time around you probably had lower tuition and/or were living with your parents. Because there is no way you could live on your own AND afford $10k tuition on $12k per year, without large student loans. It just doesn't add up.
To repeat, my point was: a lot of, if not most, state college students live on their own. And in order to do that you need to either have a pretty good income already, OR take out a lot of loans to get you through it. More power to you if you can get loans from the family rather than enter into the current student load program, which can be rather nasty compared to years past.
"this is the correct behavior, user would complain if for some reason their "sign in with facebook" buttons stopped working"
I don't agree that the fact that users would complain makes it the correct behavior. As far as I am concerned, blocking all 3rd party cookies is the correct behavior. It certainly is for kids... it should be or adults too.
"The patch is not exactly a one-liner, because the implemented behavior is not as straight-forward as just 'block 3rd party cookies'. It's 'block cross-site cookies from origins which I've not visited yet as a 1st party websites and have already 1st party cookies from'. "
That's okay, because the ability to straight-up block 3rd party cookies is already baked in. But that makes this even less news than I first thought it was.
Why they would want to water down their default that much I don't know, but I don't really care. The settings for just blocking 3rd parties are there. I really would like to see just that as a default, though.
"... with the buffer on modern DSLRs able to handle 20 full-res shots or more, it's unlikely an expensive card will make any difference to anyone other than professionals shooting bursts of fast-action shots."
I have seen a number of reviews for inexpensive video cameras that said a 4x card was not fast enough and caused choppy video, but a faster card fixed it.
Not really. IIRC, they were using a pixel tracker... a third-party graphic, not a third-party cookie. And I am pretty sure they were far from the first to do that. Just the first to use it the way they did.
"I have always turned of the third party cookies, but good move for making it a default. And to hell with marketers, they can cry all they want."
Agreed. Pretty much by definition, third-party cookies are "stealth" information gathering. They have no right to be tracking me. I keep them turned off, too.
But I do not see why this is news-worthy. It's just a checkbox. The so-called "patch" is probably one line of code, and an exceedingly short one at that.
"The issue of jacking all trades is not unique to programming either. Sysadmins now need to claim to be experts in IOS, Netapp, SAN, every app under the sun (Java debugging, Apache/Tomcat debugging, Squid, HA Proxy), know at least 2 databases, code in script at least 3 languages (perl, python, java or C), and all 423 flavors of Linux because every previous jackass they hired thought their flavor was better."
Yes, that's true. It think it's true of most if not all branches of IT. Before I got into programming as a profession I did a long stint as a sysadmin at an engineering company. I have to admit those were simpler days, though. (It wasn't that long ago... I'm not an old fogey. But things change pretty fast.)
"It makes everyone liars to some degree as well, since it's not possible to be an expert in everything they ask."
Good point. If they aren't actually lying, they're sorely tempted to. And that isn't healthy either.
"My grocery bill has been more stable; your personal anecdotes (and mine) may not be indicative of overall economic trends."
I have friends around the country and they have all been complaining about high grocery prices. So while your mileage may vary, I have good evidence that this is far from a local phenomenon. (Not to mention that I buy much of my food at nation-wide franchise chains. On average, their prices are not likely to vary a lot from one region to another.)
"Maybe because the minimum wage is down by more than 50% from when it was introduced many decades ago? You realize that proposed 24% increases aren't just covering for one year of stagnant wages?"
Do you think I am a fucking idiot? It's up 24% from the last time it was raised, 6 years ago, to $7.25. That is significantly different from government's claimed inflation rates. Your argument that it is "down 50%" just reinforces what I was saying: inflation is higher than what government has been claiming. But anybody with half a brain who has looked at how the government calculates it knows that anyway.
"And investors holding government bonds during the recent crash did quite well."
Whooooosh!
It's simply not in your worldview that government monetary policy can be unsustainable, or investors wrong, eh?
GP hadn't written anything about T-Bills. So I hadn't seen the context. But I just now looked at what he was replying to, and saw that it was about government itself "not being able to afford the interest".
I thought your comments were out of context. But I see that mine were. I retract my other comments about this particular thing.
"Use the steam to power an off-the-shelf generator, run it through an off-the-shelf power conditioner to get whatever levels of "clean" it needs, and then disconnect it from everything else. Discloses nothing of his technology"
That isn't just showing that it works. That's showing that it works the way YOU want it to. Sure, that would prove the technology to a lot of people's satisfaction. But that's not the same thing. (But by the way: while it still isn't proof of anything, there are reports that he has been working with Siemens AG on exactly that.)
He has shown it working. Just not in ways that have been satisfactory to a lot of people. In order for skeptics to be convinced that it is actually working, without any trickery, many want to know how it works.
Granted, his "demonstrations" have left a lot to be desired, and leave him looking like a quack. But he has stated reasons for that which could well be legitimate.
So yeah, in summary, he looks a lot like a quack. And he might be. Or he might not. But there is simply no solid evidence one way or the other. I'll wait for that before making up my mind.
"It happens. Lucky it doesn't happen often, but it does."
Thank you for that good example. But the point here is, I think, not that you should water down your hiring practices out of fear of getting sued. You should simply have good, valid practices in the first place, execute them properly, and document it.
"If you were wondering, most VA state schools run under $10k / year."
Holy shit. How old are you? You call that cheap?
Here's some news: first, tuition at most state colleges used to, not that many years ago, run a lot closer to $1k-$2k a year. But a lot more to the point: tuition is, or used to be anyway, only a minor part of the cost of education.
You're going to a state college? Okay, you need tuition. AND you need books and materials. And you have lab fees, student body fees, athletic fees if you want to see any football games. Then you have room and board: a housing contract, and if you're not in a dorm or frat, probably separate utilities like everybody else. And food. And gasoline to get to your part-time job if you're lucky enough to have one. Oops... can't forget car payments and insurance. Again if you have one.
PLEASE don't try to tell me how cheap a college education is today. I'll just laugh at you. It was far cheaper when I went to a state university, and it was hard enough then.
"Arbitrary requirements are there for a reason: CYA. In order to avoid expensive litigation and settlements in a number of states, it's a very good idea to have enumerable reasons and missed requirements for not hiring someone."
Sorry, but I've seen far too much of this for far too many years. CYA is the coward's way out. You might not get sued, but your company isn't going anywhere, either.
"... and with companies saying they somehow can't find IT workers in the states as of late, it's no wonder a lot of those IT workers aren't willing to pledge any loyalty to their companies."
Most of the screeching has come from larger companies, and they want the government to approve more H1-Bs so they can hire more people cheap.
There is no shortage of IT workers. The companies complain that they can't find somebody with experience in 5 or 6 different, very specific, unrelated technologies... hahaha. It would be like trying to find a mechanic who had 5 years experience working on Volkswagen and Cooper bodies, AND Renault and Subaru transmissions, AND, especially, Lamborghini engines. All at the same time. Well, folks, good luck with that.
(I'm not kidding. Look at the job postings for web developers for instance. They want somebody who is expert in HTML5, and CSS3, and MongoDB, and New Relic, and Django or Rails, and JavaScript, and CoffeeScript, and SASS, and some-proprietary-shopping-cart, and...)
Granted, a few of those you have to know to do competently do web development at all these days. But put those together with a specific combination of those other things, and... good luck with that.
"How about weeding them out according to character? Like how many candidates do you see who spend just a few months on a job before hopping to the next?"
You're making a pretty big assumption, if you think that's always due to "character". I know of one good example.
I know somebody who works pretty hard and is pretty dedicated. He went to work for one employer, and did a good job (and came out of it with a good recommendation), but less than a year after he started there, changes in the industry make his position obsolete (for that particular niche job, that is). He went on to do good contract work for various clients, but none of those projects lasted more than a year. He went to work full-time for another employer, and though he was told that the project would last for at least 3 years, after a little more than one year the company closed that branch office and laid all the employees off. And so on.
So for quite a few years, he hasn't had a single job that lasted more than a year... unless you count contract work, which I guess you could call self-employment. But the reasons were not any of his doing, and he always got good recommendations from his employers.
What would you make of that person? Would you judge him as lacking in character simply because he had held many short jobs, for a very long time, and none of them 3 years? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity.
"And a note to job seekers: when you apply for a job online and the system asks you to answer a few specific questions about the job before you submit your resume, fill out those questions carefully, because those are weedout questions, when the hiring manager scans the list of candidates, he's not even going to look at your resume if he doesn't like the answer to those questions."
And a note to job offerers:
Dude, you're just not going to find competent employees (or not the most competent ones, anyway) if you start out by asking them three "weed out" questions online. I hate to break the news to you, but most people with any skill or experience are going to take one look at your form and go elsewhere. The market for experienced people -- especially in software right now, since you mentioned it -- is still pretty good from the applican'ts viewpoint.
There may be a lot of applications from educated people with no experience or demonstrated skill. If you're looking to fill retail cashier positions, or burger flippers, maybe that's fine. Anything much more professional than that -- like a software developer -- and you are throwing most of the good people away.
If you don't have the time to look at 300 resumes, that's what HR is for (a point you made). But if you do the form and HR, you're hurting yourself.
Just the other day I got an offer, and the email said "go to this URL and fill out the form..." I literally didn't even look at the form before emailing her back with a "No thanks."
Remember to look at things from the applicant's point of view, too. They have no choice but to assume that the way you treat them during the application and hiring process is the way you'll treat them later. If you treat them like a cheap commodity, that's what they'll expect from you later... and the good ones will say "no thanks".
Also, the fact that the economy is a little slow is no justification for being a cheapskate, especially with tech jobs. Somebody with skill and experience might take a job for low pay because they have to, but later they will resent you for it, and you will end up getting what you pay for.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is exactly what Islamic extremist do, point out to drone strikes where countless innocent have died to establish US is the devil. Truth is somewhere in between, on both sides its the necessities of war, US is no more the devil than Islam is extremist."
You chose a ridiculously poor example to try to make your point. By treaty, international law, and even U.S. law, drone strikes are NOT a valid act of war. And since it is an illegal, premeditated killing, that pretty much makes it murder.
"So something like Christianity six centuries ago? :)"
Perhaps. But the key phrase there is "six centuries ago". The rest of the world has continued to evolve.
"If you can do your work from home, it's probable that someone else can do the work from the other side of the planet. For less. So be careful what you wish for."
They might be able to do it for less, but they won't do it better.
I've been freelancing for some time now. I deal with people in this field all the time, and the consensus seems to be the same: most third-world developers are worth what you pay them.
For the last 2 years, give or take, I've been seeing more and more job offers on the freelance boards that say "North America or Europe Only". Many have been stung by outsourcing, usually because of poor quality of work, or non-completion.
I'm not trying to imply they're all like that. But there are plenty. Enough that over the years outsourcing the kind of development I do has gotten a pretty bad rap.
Recently a client had an issue with me, apparently because I didn't want to do something he asked me to do that I considered to be unprofessional. He said "If this is going to be a problem, I have some guys in [Country X] who are waiting to do the work."
Well, I didn't feel it was worth arguing with him, so I told him fine. And I don't know if whoever has been working on the project are actually from [Country X], but they really buggered it up. I can see where they're working on it. Some critical back-end code I wrote doesn't work any more, some of the graphics are screwed up, etc. It's a mess. And there's one important bit of code that is so messed up it's really hard for me to resist the urge to describe it here and say hahahaha. But {sigh...} I won't.
I don't know who's going to finish the project for him. But his "outsourced" devs don't seem to be capable of it.
"That's what it replaced."
Not really. Not for programming / IT workers.
Cubicles came about because CEOs and managers didn't want to spend so much for offices.
"Im in school now for the second time around, and the first time around i paid it off making ~12k/ yr as a waiter part time. Got a loan from my parents, but it was paid off in ~ 1-2 years so not really a biggie."
The first time around you probably had lower tuition and/or were living with your parents. Because there is no way you could live on your own AND afford $10k tuition on $12k per year, without large student loans. It just doesn't add up.
To repeat, my point was: a lot of, if not most, state college students live on their own. And in order to do that you need to either have a pretty good income already, OR take out a lot of loans to get you through it. More power to you if you can get loans from the family rather than enter into the current student load program, which can be rather nasty compared to years past.
"Blocking all third party cookies breaks things that a lot of people like and use, like Facebook/Twitter login, disquis, etc."
No it doesn't. Those are script, not cookie, issues. You can enable the scripts while keeping 3rd-party cookies blocked.
"Has any one, let alone some large corporate entity, every been sanctioned for false takedown?"
I have wondered that myself. False takedown is an offense, after all. I want to see it enforced.
"this is the correct behavior, user would complain if for some reason their "sign in with facebook" buttons stopped working"
I don't agree that the fact that users would complain makes it the correct behavior. As far as I am concerned, blocking all 3rd party cookies is the correct behavior. It certainly is for kids... it should be or adults too.
"The patch is not exactly a one-liner, because the implemented behavior is not as straight-forward as just 'block 3rd party cookies'. It's 'block cross-site cookies from origins which I've not visited yet as a 1st party websites and have already 1st party cookies from'. "
That's okay, because the ability to straight-up block 3rd party cookies is already baked in. But that makes this even less news than I first thought it was.
Why they would want to water down their default that much I don't know, but I don't really care. The settings for just blocking 3rd parties are there. I really would like to see just that as a default, though.
"... with the buffer on modern DSLRs able to handle 20 full-res shots or more, it's unlikely an expensive card will make any difference to anyone other than professionals shooting bursts of fast-action shots."
I have seen a number of reviews for inexpensive video cameras that said a 4x card was not fast enough and caused choppy video, but a faster card fixed it.
"yet DoubleClick found a way around that"
Not really. IIRC, they were using a pixel tracker... a third-party graphic, not a third-party cookie. And I am pretty sure they were far from the first to do that. Just the first to use it the way they did.
"I have always turned of the third party cookies, but good move for making it a default. And to hell with marketers, they can cry all they want."
Agreed. Pretty much by definition, third-party cookies are "stealth" information gathering. They have no right to be tracking me. I keep them turned off, too.
But I do not see why this is news-worthy. It's just a checkbox. The so-called "patch" is probably one line of code, and an exceedingly short one at that.
"The issue of jacking all trades is not unique to programming either. Sysadmins now need to claim to be experts in IOS, Netapp, SAN, every app under the sun (Java debugging, Apache/Tomcat debugging, Squid, HA Proxy), know at least 2 databases, code in script at least 3 languages (perl, python, java or C), and all 423 flavors of Linux because every previous jackass they hired thought their flavor was better."
Yes, that's true. It think it's true of most if not all branches of IT. Before I got into programming as a profession I did a long stint as a sysadmin at an engineering company. I have to admit those were simpler days, though. (It wasn't that long ago... I'm not an old fogey. But things change pretty fast.)
"It makes everyone liars to some degree as well, since it's not possible to be an expert in everything they ask."
Good point. If they aren't actually lying, they're sorely tempted to. And that isn't healthy either.
"My grocery bill has been more stable; your personal anecdotes (and mine) may not be indicative of overall economic trends."
I have friends around the country and they have all been complaining about high grocery prices. So while your mileage may vary, I have good evidence that this is far from a local phenomenon. (Not to mention that I buy much of my food at nation-wide franchise chains. On average, their prices are not likely to vary a lot from one region to another.)
"Maybe because the minimum wage is down by more than 50% from when it was introduced many decades ago? You realize that proposed 24% increases aren't just covering for one year of stagnant wages?"
Do you think I am a fucking idiot? It's up 24% from the last time it was raised, 6 years ago, to $7.25. That is significantly different from government's claimed inflation rates. Your argument that it is "down 50%" just reinforces what I was saying: inflation is higher than what government has been claiming. But anybody with half a brain who has looked at how the government calculates it knows that anyway.
"And investors holding government bonds during the recent crash did quite well."
Whooooosh!
It's simply not in your worldview that government monetary policy can be unsustainable, or investors wrong, eh?
Pardon me, but we have a context issue here.
GP hadn't written anything about T-Bills. So I hadn't seen the context. But I just now looked at what he was replying to, and saw that it was about government itself "not being able to afford the interest".
I thought your comments were out of context. But I see that mine were. I retract my other comments about this particular thing.
"Use the steam to power an off-the-shelf generator, run it through an off-the-shelf power conditioner to get whatever levels of "clean" it needs, and then disconnect it from everything else. Discloses nothing of his technology"
That isn't just showing that it works. That's showing that it works the way YOU want it to. Sure, that would prove the technology to a lot of people's satisfaction. But that's not the same thing. (But by the way: while it still isn't proof of anything, there are reports that he has been working with Siemens AG on exactly that.)
He has shown it working. Just not in ways that have been satisfactory to a lot of people. In order for skeptics to be convinced that it is actually working, without any trickery, many want to know how it works.
Granted, his "demonstrations" have left a lot to be desired, and leave him looking like a quack. But he has stated reasons for that which could well be legitimate.
So yeah, in summary, he looks a lot like a quack. And he might be. Or he might not. But there is simply no solid evidence one way or the other. I'll wait for that before making up my mind.
"It happens. Lucky it doesn't happen often, but it does."
Thank you for that good example. But the point here is, I think, not that you should water down your hiring practices out of fear of getting sued. You should simply have good, valid practices in the first place, execute them properly, and document it.
"If you were wondering, most VA state schools run under $10k / year."
Holy shit. How old are you? You call that cheap?
Here's some news: first, tuition at most state colleges used to, not that many years ago, run a lot closer to $1k-$2k a year. But a lot more to the point: tuition is, or used to be anyway, only a minor part of the cost of education.
You're going to a state college? Okay, you need tuition. AND you need books and materials. And you have lab fees, student body fees, athletic fees if you want to see any football games. Then you have room and board: a housing contract, and if you're not in a dorm or frat, probably separate utilities like everybody else. And food. And gasoline to get to your part-time job if you're lucky enough to have one. Oops... can't forget car payments and insurance. Again if you have one.
PLEASE don't try to tell me how cheap a college education is today. I'll just laugh at you. It was far cheaper when I went to a state university, and it was hard enough then.
"Arbitrary requirements are there for a reason: CYA. In order to avoid expensive litigation and settlements in a number of states, it's a very good idea to have enumerable reasons and missed requirements for not hiring someone."
Sorry, but I've seen far too much of this for far too many years. CYA is the coward's way out. You might not get sued, but your company isn't going anywhere, either.
"... and with companies saying they somehow can't find IT workers in the states as of late, it's no wonder a lot of those IT workers aren't willing to pledge any loyalty to their companies."
Most of the screeching has come from larger companies, and they want the government to approve more H1-Bs so they can hire more people cheap.
...)
There is no shortage of IT workers. The companies complain that they can't find somebody with experience in 5 or 6 different, very specific, unrelated technologies... hahaha. It would be like trying to find a mechanic who had 5 years experience working on Volkswagen and Cooper bodies, AND Renault and Subaru transmissions, AND, especially, Lamborghini engines. All at the same time. Well, folks, good luck with that.
(I'm not kidding. Look at the job postings for web developers for instance. They want somebody who is expert in HTML5, and CSS3, and MongoDB, and New Relic, and Django or Rails, and JavaScript, and CoffeeScript, and SASS, and some-proprietary-shopping-cart, and
Granted, a few of those you have to know to do competently do web development at all these days. But put those together with a specific combination of those other things, and... good luck with that.
"How about weeding them out according to character? Like how many candidates do you see who spend just a few months on a job before hopping to the next?"
You're making a pretty big assumption, if you think that's always due to "character". I know of one good example.
I know somebody who works pretty hard and is pretty dedicated. He went to work for one employer, and did a good job (and came out of it with a good recommendation), but less than a year after he started there, changes in the industry make his position obsolete (for that particular niche job, that is). He went on to do good contract work for various clients, but none of those projects lasted more than a year. He went to work full-time for another employer, and though he was told that the project would last for at least 3 years, after a little more than one year the company closed that branch office and laid all the employees off. And so on.
So for quite a few years, he hasn't had a single job that lasted more than a year... unless you count contract work, which I guess you could call self-employment. But the reasons were not any of his doing, and he always got good recommendations from his employers.
What would you make of that person? Would you judge him as lacking in character simply because he had held many short jobs, for a very long time, and none of them 3 years? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity.
"To the the clueless: Hiring you isn't my job. Hiring you is just extra work."
Hahahaha! That's hilarious!
If you are hiring one or more employees, then it *IS* your job. And if you end up with a shitty employee, it's because YOU DIDN'T DO YOUR JOB.
Or you can hire someone to do it. But make no mistake: it is part of the job.
Agree. See my reply further below.
s/applican'ts/applicant's
Sheesh.
"And a note to job seekers: when you apply for a job online and the system asks you to answer a few specific questions about the job before you submit your resume, fill out those questions carefully, because those are weedout questions, when the hiring manager scans the list of candidates, he's not even going to look at your resume if he doesn't like the answer to those questions."
And a note to job offerers:
Dude, you're just not going to find competent employees (or not the most competent ones, anyway) if you start out by asking them three "weed out" questions online. I hate to break the news to you, but most people with any skill or experience are going to take one look at your form and go elsewhere. The market for experienced people -- especially in software right now, since you mentioned it -- is still pretty good from the applican'ts viewpoint.
There may be a lot of applications from educated people with no experience or demonstrated skill. If you're looking to fill retail cashier positions, or burger flippers, maybe that's fine. Anything much more professional than that -- like a software developer -- and you are throwing most of the good people away.
If you don't have the time to look at 300 resumes, that's what HR is for (a point you made). But if you do the form and HR, you're hurting yourself.
Just the other day I got an offer, and the email said "go to this URL and fill out the form..." I literally didn't even look at the form before emailing her back with a "No thanks."
Remember to look at things from the applicant's point of view, too. They have no choice but to assume that the way you treat them during the application and hiring process is the way you'll treat them later. If you treat them like a cheap commodity, that's what they'll expect from you later... and the good ones will say "no thanks".
Also, the fact that the economy is a little slow is no justification for being a cheapskate, especially with tech jobs. Somebody with skill and experience might take a job for low pay because they have to, but later they will resent you for it, and you will end up getting what you pay for.