Look, not every article's going to be a winner, especially on a slow Sunday in June. But this is just nuts. What value is there in this article? Worse yet, the source article is behind a WSJ paywall.
It's not news. It helps nobody. C'mon Slashdot, do better, and pick editors who know the difference between news and not news.
There have been products that detect anything falling into the water for years; they're basically floating tilt-sensors that respond to waves and sound an alarm. No wristband needed.
In the United States, any device that offers a medical treatment or claims to have positive medical effects would already fall under FDA regulations via the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They sort things into a bunch of different classes that determine the degree of risk and regulatory burden; anything that passes electricity into your head is probably going to need a full 510(k) registration.
Microsoft's heavy-handed attempts to force it on to my Windows 7 machine, combined with the clear message that Microsoft intends to make money by selling user data to the highest bidder, led me to decide to never, ever willingly install Windows 10 on any of my machines. Some of my employees are forced to use it by their clients, and my teenage son accidentally upgraded his laptop, so I have enough familiarity with the UI to be unimpressed.
My current Windows 7 machines are my final Windows platforms for anything other than client-specific work, and in those cases I'll use a VM. Once these machines have aged beyond usefulness then I'll either go Mac OS full time or a hybrid of Mac OS and a Linux distro.
Yes, I know Apple isn't exactly pure of heart or mind either, but I've never had a macOS upgrade force itself down my throat.
The long-term question isn't whether people want a watch or something more generalized, it's more a question of whether your wrist is a viable place to wear something useful. Traditional watches and the plethora of UP/Fuel/FitBit bands seem to say "sure."
Any disruptive technology starts out less effective than the thing it's disrupting. Early cell phones were big, clunky, and had short battery life; early smart phones had clunky keyboards and low bandwidth; early SSD drives were (are) more expensive and smaller than HDDs, etc. Early smart watches have and will continue to suck at being watches, but that's not the point. When battery life is no longer an issue, when clunky tiny interfaces stop trying to replace bigger interfaces and focus on things that work well at that size, *then* the disruption will begin in earnest.
Various posters are correct that a Rolex is a fashion statement and that its time-telling ability is incidental. However, there is such a thing as fashionable technology, so for the luxury watchmakers to think that they're completely immune to disruption looks short-sighted to me.
When you're tired of screwing it up like amateurs, bring in Accenture so you can screw it up like professionals!
My firm has made a lot of money cleaning up Accenture's disasters. It's a living.
So while Accenture was originally based in Bermuda, they've since moved their corporate HQ to Ireland. Could we at least pick a vendor incorporated in the U.S.?
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use XML.' Now they have two problems."
-JWZ
MarkLogic is an XML database, not a relational database, so if your data primarily consists of XML content then it's the right tool for the job. Sounds like the vendor building the system had a favorite hammer and decided that a rather traditional database problem looked like a nail.
MarkLogic itself is fine if your data fits neatly into an XML schema, but with healthcare.gov that tree is probably enormous and hard to optimize for DB activity.
Those of us who have been in and around the industry have seen this developing for a long time. The solutions are straightforward but face enormous resistance from those currently benefiting from how antibiotics are currently misused.
1) Ban the use of antibiotics in livestock except to actually treat disease. As the article notes, >60% of all antibiotics by volume are used to fatten livestock in the absence of disease. Because the USDA regulates livestock production rather than the FDA it becomes a jurisdictional quagmire to try to limit use in livestock. While there isn't much antibiotic left in meat when it goes to market, the runoff from stockyards provides the perfect mixture of bacteria and diluted antibiotic (and metabolites) to create resistant strains. 2) Stop prescribing antibiotics in novel classes for routine things like ear infections and sinus infections. Studies show that most of those will clear up on their own without antibiotic treatment, but nobody wants to be the guy who feels miserable but doesn't get a Z-Pak or some fluroquinolones as treatment. 3) Ban these ridiculous anti-bacterial soaps and things that contain triclosan. It's creating cross-antibiotic resistance and isn't even that effective at killing bacteria during primary use because people don't leave it on long enough. 4) An earlier poster asked if the lack of corporate investment to find new antibiotics is a market failure, and the answer is yes. Besides the enormous dysfunction that permeates big pharma in general, the reality is that antibiotics are generally not nearly as profitable as once-a-day drugs that last a lifetime. Either provide regulatory incentives for antibiotic development or do more of the research at the government level or both. 5) In the long run, we need a completely different approach to managing bacterial infection. An earlier poster mentioned phages, and there are multiple different research avenues that show some promise if we can get them going.
But I logged in for the first time in forever just to agree with the hundreds of comments so far about what a poor redesign this is, especially in its use of ridiculous amounts of white space.
Oh well, the end comes with not a bang, but a whimper.
So we here in the Slashdot crowd are the first ones to laugh at businesses that fail to stay ahead of the technology curve. AOL and their endless CDs, RIM getting destroyed by iPhones and Android phones, Yahoo's failure to recognize that Google's advantage comes from more than just its search algorithms, et al. A common theme through all of these dramatic implosions is that the old business model strangled the new, and that the leadership of these companies was unwilling to take the short-term pain hit to prepare for the future. Yet Netflix is doing just that, and they meet with even more derision because it's going to screw up the existing customer base.
Do any of us believe that DVDs via USPS are the future of content delivery? Of course not. Could Netflix have spun it a little better? Sure, but there's a whole set of reasons that moving away from your established business model is considered painful, and one of those is that it's going to piss off the established base and cost you some lost business. A little more artistry in the transition would have been nice, but anyone who thinks that this move is going to kill off Netflix is probably mistaken. They are being remarkably honest about it all.
The DVD business is dying fast, and they know it. Direct content delivery is the growth industry that is disrupting DVDs (and eventually CDs, games, and packaged software) out of existence, and they're jumping to the new ship before the old one is sunk.
SciFi jumped the shark when they canceled Farscape. How can you argue with a show where a giant mushroom Muppet pilots a living starship full of hot blue and gray women, an alien warrior with a six foot tongue, a lost Earthman, and his almost-but-not-exactly-human girlfriend, all while being chased by a guy who looks like an anorexic with an S&M fetish?
My job entails a lot of recruiting for software developers; for each person that I hire, I probably have to screen through 60-70 resumes and 10 interviews.
When I see a resume with a lot of certifications on it, I think, "Hmm, this person has a lot of useless certifications, which means that he or she is trying to make up for a lack of a technical degree and/or relevant experience." Sure, there are some people who are actually pretty skilled and have a couple of certifications as well, but the vast majority of those that I interview can't make it past the initial technical screening. They know some specifics about whatever product the certifications cover, but they rarely have the broader analytical and problem-solving skills needed to survive in the real world.
At best, a certification shows me a person who is willing to work to improve himself or herself. At worst, it shows me someone who is missing the forest for the trees - someone who thinks that a bunch of initials after your name is more valuable than actually learning something. In the absence of other positive things on the resume, I'll pass.
Based on my own experience, I offer these tips:
Put the time into a nicely formatted, clean, concise, one page resume. Nothing kills a candidate faster than a bad resume. Work experience first, specific skills second, education and certifications third, awards and interests last. Drop the objective statement or summary unless you need to fill up some space.
If you don't have a degree, start an accredited four year degree program, even if you can only afford a couple of credits a year.
If you're unemployed or underemployed, run your own mini-business strictly for the purpose of learning some things and putting it on your resume. Set up a Linux box from scratch, write an experimental program you can demo, write a short article about some weird technical thing you learned about while putzing around with a router. I'm much more impressed by somebody who set up his own Linux box and fought through a couple of glitches than I am by any certification that begins with a "Microsoft Certified..."
If you're in one of the more commoditized areas like network administrator, generic VB programmer, web designer, etc., recognize that the market is still a bit ugly, and that creativity and coming across as "yes, I can do that, even if I have to learn a bit to make it happen" will serve you well. Despite the gloomy predictions all of IT is not about to go to India, so if you enjoy that sort of work keep pounding at it until you get what you want.
Hey now, let's look at the favorable comparisons here:
Pac Man swept the world and was a major craze, especially in the US and Japan.
Pac Man created lots of spinoff games, including Ms. Pac Man, Super Pac Man, Pac Land, etc., etc.
Pac Man went on to create even more spinoff products, like the cartoon series and the breakfast cereal. (Do you think Linus will get his own cartoon series soon?)
Most importantly, Pac Man DEVOURED ANYTHING THAT GOT IN HIS WAY!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry about that last bit. I don't know what came over me.
Dustpuppy's observations match what I've seen both as director of e-business for a couple of companies and owner of my own. When the Web was new and hot and certain skill sets were short, the threshold for entry dropped waaay down and anyone who could pick up an HTML book and manage to make Dreamweaver do something would be employed.
On top of that, however, the same mistakes were made at the company level, and I'm not just referring to the dot coms themselves: lots of body shops, staffing firms, head hunters, recruiters, and contracting companies sprung up overnight and were deluded into thinking they knew what they were doing, buoyed along first by the artificial Y2K bubble and then the temporary dotcom bubble. The bubble has now burst, and entire companies are suddenly discovering that, crap, they don't know how to sell IT services, and worse yet their stable of talent is full of JavaScript hacks and PowerPoint kings.
The challenge for most recruiters these days is separating the hacks from the hackers; if you have solid skills, the market is still fine - you just need the patience to separate yourself from the hacks.
In general computer classes that I've taught (and not just those for the elderly) I've found many students who are afraid that they'll "break" the computer. They've been told that computers are expensive, that they crash, that they're delicate, that they're complex, and so forth. Combine this with students who are sometimes very self-conscious that they seem to be the only ones on earth who aren't computer-literate, and they approach every step with fear and trepidation, which inevitably hampers experimentation and learning.
So start off your class with a reassuring statement about how robust the computer is. No matter how they click their mouse or type on their keyboard, they aren't going to physically damage the machine. Even if they somehow manage to find a way to erase or misplace the software on the computer, it is easily replaced. You probably want to encourage them not to spill drinks in the keyboard or pound on the machine with a brick, but other than that they should be fine. Once they learn that they're not at risk to incur a $2,000 repair bill, they should be more comfortable experimenting with the machine.
Thanks for the responses so far. Some clarification to some of the points raised:
It doesn't have a whirling blade o' death. It has a small cutter that might take some skin off if someone managed to get in front of it, but not much more. Level and light sensors on the underside shut everything down if someone lifts the mower.
Perimeter wire detection is impractical in this case because of the size of the yard being mowed (45,000 square feet) and some complicated terrain (mostly a lot of small trees on a steep hill in the front.) I have considered using many sets of perimeter wire to break it into zones, but that has its own issues.
I've seen the LawnNibbler links before, but I think I first saw them over two years ago with no sign of a commercial product. Has anyone seen an actual product come out of that group?
I suspect that radio won't help much because of the very small speeds and distances involved; not enough doppler shift to measure. I've considered using triangulation via a rotating directional antenna on the robot itself to find multiple static beacons, but I'm not sure how accurately I could pinpoint the location of each beacon.
The laser and sonar options are interesting, and I'll probably research these further.
And yes, it will be fun to freak the neighbors out. Or better yet, subcontract the robot to do their yards as well.:)
I'm the president of a small consulting company, and we have a simple policy on employee agreements like the IP agreement described above:
We don't have them.
No IP agreements. No non-competes. No non-solicitation of employees. No declaration of ownership of the employee's immortal soul. We'll request a standard protection of proprietary information form to protect our clients from wholesale theft of their trade secrets, but our employees could copy everything we do without penalty after they leave.
Why? Because having been on the opposite side of that piece of paper, I was always annoyed at a) how fundamentally heavy-handed and disrespectful of the employee they were and b) how useless they'd really be in the event that I chose to break them. Non-compete? Most courts won't enforce them. Non-solicitation? Fine, I'll just say that the employee came looking for me. If you treated your employees right, I probably wouldn't be able to lure them away anyway.
So I told my board of directors we weren't having any of that nonsense. I expected resistance, but was instead surprised that they all agreed with both my feelings and the approach. Sure, the company is somewhat vulnerable to an unethical employee leaving and screwing us over. But if the company is run correctly, that vulnerability (and the likelihood of someone exploiting it) is minimal, and I have the added power of watching my competitors quiver in fear and confusion when I hire the best people away from them because I start the relationship with trust and respect, not with lawyers and contracts.
I've been a consultant in the greater Philadelphia area for nearly ten years now, working both for larger firms and now for my own firm. If there's one thing that I've managed to figure out, it's that there sure are a hell of a lot of amateurs out there calling themselves consultants.
The demand for talented consultants (and software developers in general) has exceeded supply since the mid-90s; as a result, there are a lot of not-so-talented consultants on the market. Because demand is so strong, many of them can succeed indefinitely without really being particularly talented in either a business or a technical sense. My most recent employer is a prime example: supposedly a full-services consulting firm, 110 people, $16 million in revenue a year, and they had to call me when their Internet connection went down due to a DNS screwup by their provider.
Also, our clients (in general) are trusting us to make the right decision and poorly equipped to evaluate our decisions early, so it's not immediately apparent when they're being hosed by their consultant. Most clients will attempt to evaluate the quality of a consultant up front by comparing past experience and skills to their needs, but for most non-technical clients the process degenerates into "does this person have technology X on their resume" rather than "is this person able to solve my problem for me." Even when a system starts to have problems, many clients will chalk it up to the inevitable suckitude of computers or software.
I wholeheartedly agree with those who have already mentioned that your reputation catches up to you, that referrals and repeat business are your lifeblood in this industry, and that doing the ethical thing is also the smart thing from a business perspective.
It's absolutely true that there are some consultants out there who are more interested in placing more bodies or extending their own contracts than in solving their clients' problems. Many consultants know how to use only a single tool, and they'll apply that tool relentlessly to any problem, regardless of whether it actually solves the problem.
In general, though, I see more of this behavior coming out of incompetence than out of malice. Many consultants aren't even aware of their limitations, and won't walk away from an assignment for which they're ill-suited even when it's obvious that failure is the only possible outcome.
I always recommend that clients find a consultant they can trust, one that will say "no" to work for which he/she is unsuited, one who will carefully describe all the options available to the client and help the client make the decision, and one who is not afraid to have another consultant look at his/her work. If your consultant just makes decisions for you without involving you in the process, if your consultant can't digest the technical elements of the decision down to terms you understand in the context of your business, or if your consultant turns white when you suggest a code review or a quality audit, fire that consultant immediately and find another. Software is tough enough - you don't need someone who is incompetent developing it for you.
(And if you're a client having a hard time identifying whether a consultant is right for you, send e-mail at the address listed and I'll be happy to help.)
I've been playing/running a mud for nearly ten years now (Shameless plug: The Dragon's Den), and I remember back in the days of LPMud 2.4.5 being impressed with the fact that anyone with some server space and an Internet connection could download the source, make some tweaks, and have a functional multiplayer game. The proliferation of MUD servers (LPMud, MudOS, DGD, Diku and its descendants, etc.) is a testimony to the early open nature of the MUD world.
Those of who have burned countless hours looking for that one stupid artifact necessary to complete the next quest realize that the addictiveness of a game isn't always related to its triangle fill rate and texture mapping capabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Because those are the articles msmash seems to approve. I have no idea why he thinks this belongs on Slashdot.
Look, not every article's going to be a winner, especially on a slow Sunday in June. But this is just nuts. What value is there in this article? Worse yet, the source article is behind a WSJ paywall.
It's not news. It helps nobody. C'mon Slashdot, do better, and pick editors who know the difference between news and not news.
There have been products that detect anything falling into the water for years; they're basically floating tilt-sensors that respond to waves and sound an alarm. No wristband needed.
I'm also seeing everything in bold, since sometime today.
And half of us are right.
You're describing what sounds like a waterfall approach. Successful software development shops dropped that nonsense twenty years ago.
In the United States, any device that offers a medical treatment or claims to have positive medical effects would already fall under FDA regulations via the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They sort things into a bunch of different classes that determine the degree of risk and regulatory burden; anything that passes electricity into your head is probably going to need a full 510(k) registration.
Microsoft's heavy-handed attempts to force it on to my Windows 7 machine, combined with the clear message that Microsoft intends to make money by selling user data to the highest bidder, led me to decide to never, ever willingly install Windows 10 on any of my machines. Some of my employees are forced to use it by their clients, and my teenage son accidentally upgraded his laptop, so I have enough familiarity with the UI to be unimpressed.
My current Windows 7 machines are my final Windows platforms for anything other than client-specific work, and in those cases I'll use a VM. Once these machines have aged beyond usefulness then I'll either go Mac OS full time or a hybrid of Mac OS and a Linux distro.
Yes, I know Apple isn't exactly pure of heart or mind either, but I've never had a macOS upgrade force itself down my throat.
The long-term question isn't whether people want a watch or something more generalized, it's more a question of whether your wrist is a viable place to wear something useful. Traditional watches and the plethora of UP/Fuel/FitBit bands seem to say "sure."
Any disruptive technology starts out less effective than the thing it's disrupting. Early cell phones were big, clunky, and had short battery life; early smart phones had clunky keyboards and low bandwidth; early SSD drives were (are) more expensive and smaller than HDDs, etc. Early smart watches have and will continue to suck at being watches, but that's not the point. When battery life is no longer an issue, when clunky tiny interfaces stop trying to replace bigger interfaces and focus on things that work well at that size, *then* the disruption will begin in earnest.
Various posters are correct that a Rolex is a fashion statement and that its time-telling ability is incidental. However, there is such a thing as fashionable technology, so for the luxury watchmakers to think that they're completely immune to disruption looks short-sighted to me.
When you're tired of screwing it up like amateurs, bring in Accenture so you can screw it up like professionals!
My firm has made a lot of money cleaning up Accenture's disasters. It's a living.
So while Accenture was originally based in Bermuda, they've since moved their corporate HQ to Ireland. Could we at least pick a vendor incorporated in the U.S.?
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use XML.' Now they have two problems."
-JWZ
MarkLogic is an XML database, not a relational database, so if your data primarily consists of XML content then it's the right tool for the job. Sounds like the vendor building the system had a favorite hammer and decided that a rather traditional database problem looked like a nail.
MarkLogic itself is fine if your data fits neatly into an XML schema, but with healthcare.gov that tree is probably enormous and hard to optimize for DB activity.
Those of us who have been in and around the industry have seen this developing for a long time. The solutions are straightforward but face enormous resistance from those currently benefiting from how antibiotics are currently misused.
1) Ban the use of antibiotics in livestock except to actually treat disease. As the article notes, >60% of all antibiotics by volume are used to fatten livestock in the absence of disease. Because the USDA regulates livestock production rather than the FDA it becomes a jurisdictional quagmire to try to limit use in livestock. While there isn't much antibiotic left in meat when it goes to market, the runoff from stockyards provides the perfect mixture of bacteria and diluted antibiotic (and metabolites) to create resistant strains.
2) Stop prescribing antibiotics in novel classes for routine things like ear infections and sinus infections. Studies show that most of those will clear up on their own without antibiotic treatment, but nobody wants to be the guy who feels miserable but doesn't get a Z-Pak or some fluroquinolones as treatment.
3) Ban these ridiculous anti-bacterial soaps and things that contain triclosan. It's creating cross-antibiotic resistance and isn't even that effective at killing bacteria during primary use because people don't leave it on long enough.
4) An earlier poster asked if the lack of corporate investment to find new antibiotics is a market failure, and the answer is yes. Besides the enormous dysfunction that permeates big pharma in general, the reality is that antibiotics are generally not nearly as profitable as once-a-day drugs that last a lifetime. Either provide regulatory incentives for antibiotic development or do more of the research at the government level or both.
5) In the long run, we need a completely different approach to managing bacterial infection. An earlier poster mentioned phages, and there are multiple different research avenues that show some promise if we can get them going.
But I logged in for the first time in forever just to agree with the hundreds of comments so far about what a poor redesign this is, especially in its use of ridiculous amounts of white space.
Oh well, the end comes with not a bang, but a whimper.
So we here in the Slashdot crowd are the first ones to laugh at businesses that fail to stay ahead of the technology curve. AOL and their endless CDs, RIM getting destroyed by iPhones and Android phones, Yahoo's failure to recognize that Google's advantage comes from more than just its search algorithms, et al. A common theme through all of these dramatic implosions is that the old business model strangled the new, and that the leadership of these companies was unwilling to take the short-term pain hit to prepare for the future. Yet Netflix is doing just that, and they meet with even more derision because it's going to screw up the existing customer base.
Do any of us believe that DVDs via USPS are the future of content delivery? Of course not. Could Netflix have spun it a little better? Sure, but there's a whole set of reasons that moving away from your established business model is considered painful, and one of those is that it's going to piss off the established base and cost you some lost business. A little more artistry in the transition would have been nice, but anyone who thinks that this move is going to kill off Netflix is probably mistaken. They are being remarkably honest about it all.
The DVD business is dying fast, and they know it. Direct content delivery is the growth industry that is disrupting DVDs (and eventually CDs, games, and packaged software) out of existence, and they're jumping to the new ship before the old one is sunk.
SciFi jumped the shark when they canceled Farscape. How can you argue with a show where a giant mushroom Muppet pilots a living starship full of hot blue and gray women, an alien warrior with a six foot tongue, a lost Earthman, and his almost-but-not-exactly-human girlfriend, all while being chased by a guy who looks like an anorexic with an S&M fetish?
My job entails a lot of recruiting for software developers; for each person that I hire, I probably have to screen through 60-70 resumes and 10 interviews.
When I see a resume with a lot of certifications on it, I think, "Hmm, this person has a lot of useless certifications, which means that he or she is trying to make up for a lack of a technical degree and/or relevant experience." Sure, there are some people who are actually pretty skilled and have a couple of certifications as well, but the vast majority of those that I interview can't make it past the initial technical screening. They know some specifics about whatever product the certifications cover, but they rarely have the broader analytical and problem-solving skills needed to survive in the real world.
At best, a certification shows me a person who is willing to work to improve himself or herself. At worst, it shows me someone who is missing the forest for the trees - someone who thinks that a bunch of initials after your name is more valuable than actually learning something. In the absence of other positive things on the resume, I'll pass.
Based on my own experience, I offer these tips:
Some examples of non-sci-fi resurrections:
It's not just sci-fi that has rabid fans (although I plead guilty to wanting a resurrected Doctor Who series).
Hey now, let's look at the favorable comparisons here:
Sorry about that last bit. I don't know what came over me.
Dustpuppy's observations match what I've seen both as director of e-business for a couple of companies and owner of my own. When the Web was new and hot and certain skill sets were short, the threshold for entry dropped waaay down and anyone who could pick up an HTML book and manage to make Dreamweaver do something would be employed.
On top of that, however, the same mistakes were made at the company level, and I'm not just referring to the dot coms themselves: lots of body shops, staffing firms, head hunters, recruiters, and contracting companies sprung up overnight and were deluded into thinking they knew what they were doing, buoyed along first by the artificial Y2K bubble and then the temporary dotcom bubble. The bubble has now burst, and entire companies are suddenly discovering that, crap, they don't know how to sell IT services, and worse yet their stable of talent is full of JavaScript hacks and PowerPoint kings.
The challenge for most recruiters these days is separating the hacks from the hackers; if you have solid skills, the market is still fine - you just need the patience to separate yourself from the hacks.
In general computer classes that I've taught (and not just those for the elderly) I've found many students who are afraid that they'll "break" the computer. They've been told that computers are expensive, that they crash, that they're delicate, that they're complex, and so forth. Combine this with students who are sometimes very self-conscious that they seem to be the only ones on earth who aren't computer-literate, and they approach every step with fear and trepidation, which inevitably hampers experimentation and learning.
So start off your class with a reassuring statement about how robust the computer is. No matter how they click their mouse or type on their keyboard, they aren't going to physically damage the machine. Even if they somehow manage to find a way to erase or misplace the software on the computer, it is easily replaced. You probably want to encourage them not to spill drinks in the keyboard or pound on the machine with a brick, but other than that they should be fine. Once they learn that they're not at risk to incur a $2,000 repair bill, they should be more comfortable experimenting with the machine.
Thanks for the responses so far. Some clarification to some of the points raised:
I'm the president of a small consulting company, and we have a simple policy on employee agreements like the IP agreement described above:
We don't have them.
No IP agreements. No non-competes. No non-solicitation of employees. No declaration of ownership of the employee's immortal soul. We'll request a standard protection of proprietary information form to protect our clients from wholesale theft of their trade secrets, but our employees could copy everything we do without penalty after they leave.
Why? Because having been on the opposite side of that piece of paper, I was always annoyed at a) how fundamentally heavy-handed and disrespectful of the employee they were and b) how useless they'd really be in the event that I chose to break them. Non-compete? Most courts won't enforce them. Non-solicitation? Fine, I'll just say that the employee came looking for me. If you treated your employees right, I probably wouldn't be able to lure them away anyway.
So I told my board of directors we weren't having any of that nonsense. I expected resistance, but was instead surprised that they all agreed with both my feelings and the approach. Sure, the company is somewhat vulnerable to an unethical employee leaving and screwing us over. But if the company is run correctly, that vulnerability (and the likelihood of someone exploiting it) is minimal, and I have the added power of watching my competitors quiver in fear and confusion when I hire the best people away from them because I start the relationship with trust and respect, not with lawyers and contracts.
...what can be adequately ascribed to stupidity.
I've been a consultant in the greater Philadelphia area for nearly ten years now, working both for larger firms and now for my own firm. If there's one thing that I've managed to figure out, it's that there sure are a hell of a lot of amateurs out there calling themselves consultants.
The demand for talented consultants (and software developers in general) has exceeded supply since the mid-90s; as a result, there are a lot of not-so-talented consultants on the market. Because demand is so strong, many of them can succeed indefinitely without really being particularly talented in either a business or a technical sense. My most recent employer is a prime example: supposedly a full-services consulting firm, 110 people, $16 million in revenue a year, and they had to call me when their Internet connection went down due to a DNS screwup by their provider.
Also, our clients (in general) are trusting us to make the right decision and poorly equipped to evaluate our decisions early, so it's not immediately apparent when they're being hosed by their consultant. Most clients will attempt to evaluate the quality of a consultant up front by comparing past experience and skills to their needs, but for most non-technical clients the process degenerates into "does this person have technology X on their resume" rather than "is this person able to solve my problem for me." Even when a system starts to have problems, many clients will chalk it up to the inevitable suckitude of computers or software.
I wholeheartedly agree with those who have already mentioned that your reputation catches up to you, that referrals and repeat business are your lifeblood in this industry, and that doing the ethical thing is also the smart thing from a business perspective.
It's absolutely true that there are some consultants out there who are more interested in placing more bodies or extending their own contracts than in solving their clients' problems. Many consultants know how to use only a single tool, and they'll apply that tool relentlessly to any problem, regardless of whether it actually solves the problem.
In general, though, I see more of this behavior coming out of incompetence than out of malice. Many consultants aren't even aware of their limitations, and won't walk away from an assignment for which they're ill-suited even when it's obvious that failure is the only possible outcome.
I always recommend that clients find a consultant they can trust, one that will say "no" to work for which he/she is unsuited, one who will carefully describe all the options available to the client and help the client make the decision, and one who is not afraid to have another consultant look at his/her work. If your consultant just makes decisions for you without involving you in the process, if your consultant can't digest the technical elements of the decision down to terms you understand in the context of your business, or if your consultant turns white when you suggest a code review or a quality audit, fire that consultant immediately and find another. Software is tough enough - you don't need someone who is incompetent developing it for you.
(And if you're a client having a hard time identifying whether a consultant is right for you, send e-mail at the address listed and I'll be happy to help.)
Those of who have burned countless hours looking for that one stupid artifact necessary to complete the next quest realize that the addictiveness of a game isn't always related to its triangle fill rate and texture mapping capabilities.