I couldn't agree more. Sales is not some evil thing that slimy boards make companies do -- its actually the reason that the company is around in the first place. If you dont think that's right -- stay in school and do research.
My best experiences on the tech side were riding shotgun with sales. That is how you figure out what features are needed to close a deal vs which seem technically interesting.
On the question of comp -- which is how this thread started -- its all about risk / reward. Technical people probably have a higher base comp than sales people -- sales people are comfortable having more at risk based on performance.
If a sales / tech partnership is working well -- and a sales guy is hitting his numbers -- than comp may be similar after commission. If the sales guy is hitting it out of the park -- then his comp is going to be larger than his tech counterpart.
so - if the tech base salary is already pretty high -- I wouldn't have that much of a delta based on successful sales -- perhaps 10-15 percent ( of salary ) based on good performance on the sales team -- if the tech person thinks they are getting ripped off in this -- they should move to sales where more is at risk -- but the sky is the limit on comp -- I have seen that happen and work well.
Welcome to the club brother. Best post I've read here about the reality of owning your own business. Its not easy, you work your ass off, and you pay some other professions to keep the govt away - but its the only way to live.
if you are an s-corp you need to have more than one client -- or the irs will eventually get annoyed. thats not that hard to do though - and this is what accountants are for -- to make sure you dont have issues like that.
As someone who worked corporate and is independent now -- all of these reasons not to go independent are just fear talking. And the feeling that its safer inside of a corporation -- that is to put it bluntly - a lie you are telling yourself so you can sleep at night.
the only barrier to working for yourself is getting over your fear, and getting your first client.
Ive sold companies and taken them public -- the channels for sales are the following:
Lawyers -- in my market there are a couple of big law firms -- each has a deal guy for this stuff -- get to know him. This is what linked in is for -- not so much slashdot
ip lawyers -- unless there is a patent here -- probably not.
vc's -- this is really where you are -- you have a product - you proved it can sell ( the games you make, not the framework ) - and now you want to raise money for some business talent to help monetize it. be prepared to part with most of your company, lose control and have an outsider as ceo. Its not that bad -- and is really the stage you are at.
not all of your team will want to do that -- too bad -- they can leave, but they will leave some ownership behind as well.
if your company turns out to be sale worthy -- they as well as your new ceo will have the contacts to make it happen -- mostly that happens when you dont need it to.
now for the next question -- how do you get vcs to pay attention to you -- thats still challenging -- but at least its the right problem. Good Luck
It is -- and there are a lot of people just as skilled as you that are out of work. Some of them might feel some ownership of the project and want to get it done. Some of them might understand that we write code for a living and this is part of the package. Some might leave at 5 when everyone else on the team is pulling an all nighter to get a project out the door. Its the job of the manager to make sure the project gets done -- then clear out any morale crushing behaviors that showed up -- because unemployment is at 10% right now -- Its 5pm and I have a new guy I need to interview.
We used to have a company called TSR that behaved this way -- they sued all of the their fans that tried to keep D&D alive and didnt understand the economics of this type of community. When wizards got the license -- regardless of all of the harping on this forum about them -- they embraced this type of community and created the OGL. Their discussion with publishers was we can either fight over each piece off the pie or try and make the pie bigger. It was a completely different approach and it worked amazingly well. GW will figure that out at some point -- or go away like TSR.
GW has every right to protect their ip -- it is theirs and they spent a lot of money developing it -- it just may be bad business to go about it the way that they are.
And Im sure ill get abused for this next comment -- but with all of the slamming of wizards in this forum about them not being open -- you are confusing open for free. Open is important for the community -- free is not. If free is the most important aspect of a gaming system -- stay away from rpgs -- I play them and I want professional content created by talented people -- and those people like to get paid.
Besides the constitutional reasons that it is like this that will not change --- lets look at what would happen if you allowed local govts to enforce everyone to collect thier taxes. I know my fair city - Philadelphia -- would within a week decide that all items ordered on line were subject to a 15% tax that they wanted collected. They would cry poor and make all the same arguments here - but mostly they like taxing people that cant vote them out of office and would present this as a way to help local busineses. Soon every township that has a guy on the board that feels mail order places are biting into his business would tax this whole concept out of existance -- which is why we have a clause in the consititution that prevents interferance with inter state commerce -- because without it -- we would.
This behavior is called dumping and is what monopolys get in trouble for. Selling something for less than your cost of production for the purpose of gathering market share and shutting out competition. If their name was Microsoft - they would be in court now.
dont buy that bundle -- the zone player is the main part you need here -- its 400 bucks. dont buy speakers from them -- there is no way they will be anything worth listening too. if money is tight -- dont get their remote -- they have an iphone interface that is actually very nice and free.
thats why we sell more expensive amps -- makes the install seem cheaper. but seriously -- in the custom av business -- a typical project is 60% gear and 40% installation.
because they just work and it fits the requirements. If you dont want to pull wire through your walls -- this is the way to go. If you are willing to pull wire and put speakers in the walls -- there are a couple of other options -- but the install then becomes more expensive than the gear -- and this is slashdot where the next post after a sonos post is 400 for an wireless device with a built in amplifier and an incredibly good interface that can be controlled with a touch screen or an iphone -- why dont we put a noisy linux box there, download some codec -- write an interface all by ourselves that our wife wont use and forget that we needed an amplifier - that would be cheaper.
not sure what your definition of open is as it regards amx -- it has a complete programming language that controls every one of their products and you can add non-amx products to any project. Whats closed about that? -- Now the price thing -- no argument there.
its not pointless -- its just not for you.
We put these systems in lots of houses and when they are done right they make complicated systems very simple to use. Most of our projects have 8-16 rooms with digital music, video networks that can put any source on any TV and simple remote controls that make the whole thing work. It aint cheap, but done correctly you can make these systems work for competing viewpoints of husbands and wives.
Typically husbands love tech -- dont mind seeing a stack of equipment in a room and see it as a normal part of everyday life that they need 3 remotes to watch a movie. Wives want to see the stuff disappear -- which is why you put speakers in the ceiling and have touchpads control music instead of having a stereo stack in each room you might want to listen to music in. These systems also let you have a nice clean look in media rooms. Most of our projects we put every piece of equipment in a server rack and control it all via RF remotes. This lets you just put a TV over the fireplace -- or just have a plasma and in wall speakers in the family room without having to cram a bunch of stuff into a piece of furniture you didnt want in the room.
This is not for everybody -- but to our customers ease of use and aesthetics are important and they are willing to pay for them.
Now there is a DIY crowd out there trying to use home depot quality stuff and x-10 tech. If this is all you look at, you will think the field hasnt moved in decades. The enthusiast market is filled with incomplete solutions and hacker tech. It may be fun to play with, but it aint wife friendly and it wont be reliable. This group tends to get overly focused on the cost of the gear and has very high expectations of performance ( this is from my viewpoint as a professional in the space ) As a company weve stayed away from projects where people want to use x-10 level of gear.
Lastly -- and way off topic -- but there is some chatter about wifi growing up to handle these tasks. I'd put that at not likely with the current state of that spec. Its fine for laptops roaming around the house, but its too unreliable for home automation where it needs to work 100% of the time. We try to have anything that needs that kind of connectivity have a dedicated ethernet or we never really trust it. Its not all wifi's fault -- the embedded device code for wifi that is in most touch panels and equipment in the automation space has no clue how to handle a multi channel wifi network where it might roam -- this makes it pretty bad for what most people expect of it.
Zigbee is out and in the field with a couple of companies. One of my companies is a home automation company and we program and install products from Control4 and AMX -- both have support for zigbee. AMX with their remotes and control4 with pretty much their whole product line.
The spec creates a mesh network where all of the devices act as repeaters -- which makes it much more than just a blutooth competitor. Case in point -- my house has 50 zigbee controllable lights in it -- and no dedicated repeaters. Since the lights are all decently close to each other -- the network size just scales.
There are starting to be more products that have native support for zigbee -- theres someone selling remote locks that communicate their status as well as being controllable from other user interfaces -- think open your door with your iphone -- not your keys -- not sure thats useful -- but it can be done.
Not to be confused with open source -- the control4 platform is linux based. As far as I can tell they only run it on their own hardware -- but when there are problems you can still telnet in and see whats going on.
I don't think there is any black mark - actually when it comes to writing secure code -- this industry is well ahead of other industries. I probably hired 70 developers at my last company and I wouldn't hesitate to hire someone from the gambling industry.
The paper scoring technology that I am familiar with ( used by the GRE's and some high school English classes ) cant be fed a random paper -- it needs to be trained on a particular assignment. Then it can score papers for that assignment. The success that they get with these is pretty surprising -- but the application is limited to these types of tests or curriculum that is designed around the assignments it has been trained for.
The more interesting affect from this type of system reported from students ( not gre takers ) is that it lets them write a paper -- get it scored, make changes and see if they are getting better. When I was writing papers in high school -- you wrote it -- handed it in, then a week later got a grade and never thought about it again. This type of technology actually allows you to learn a lot more from one paper by iterating several versions and getting direct and specific feedback on how to improve.
This type of tax break also exists for startups -- I've run a couple of small software startups and we always incorporate in Delaware -- for both better laws for corporations and the tax break that is gives us. To do anything else is a waste of your investors money.
You should always pay taxes you owe -- but you shouldnt go out of your way to pay some you can easily change your business to avoid.
All businesses are motivated by cutting their costs of production -- this is one aspect of it.
if you call extorting the state hiring a bunch of people -- who all pay local taxes -- building a massive campus with local contractors -- who all pay taxes in the state -- then -- yeah they are totally extorting them.
Or -- should the state get a cut of a transaction that happens in all 50 other states that has almost nothing to do with them -- but more likely ms sales people that work elsewhere.
MS is doing what every other software company does -- work within the law to not pay taxes to states that they don't have to. And its also perfectly legal when the state says that they will change the law -- to tell them that that will have a consequence. Governments think that they have a right to take a piece of every transaction they see - they also think that if a company has to charge more that their sales wont be affected making it free money for the state. They are wrong on both. A business like Microsoft understands that and you can be sure their shareholders would have a fit if they said -- hey our home state couldn't figure out we were in a recession and kept spending money and ran a deficit -- so were going to lend them a hand.
And while were all being righteous about making sure we all pay our taxes here -- whens the last time anyone on this forum filled out a sales tax declaration after buying something on-line? That stuffs not actually tax free -- its just that the vendor doesn't have to collect it. You are still supposed to pay it.
The article hints at the real reason cursive is dying -- and its not because it has only suspect use in our lives --- its because you cant test cursive on the no child left behind exams. Simple math then takes over -- the school looks at how much time they are spending on cursive -- and how much money they will lose if they dont get their scores up in other areas. NCLB is whats going to kill it - I wont miss it -- but its also the first useful non-intended consequence of that particular law.
if thats going into your personal account from the vendor directly -- and not a discount on server licenses or something to your company -- what you did was illegal.
as they other side will know that as well -- you probably got paid under the table -- so now add tax evasion to that when you get caught.
when this happens -- you'll never be asked to make any decision like this again -- you wont be able to get a job at any real company after they do a background check on you -- which thanks to the internet is now so easy, even hr can do it.
if they paid that to your company, and your company decided to reward you for striking such a good deal --- then more power to you -- great job -- keep it up - you are an awesome corporate citizen.
Perhaps -- just maybe -- high quality software, is worth money. Crazy idea on this forum, but its why we have a software industry in this country.
Also -- the definition of "worth money" is what you are talking about here -- an installer that works, a gui that makes sense to a casual user, updates that do not require a comp sci degree to install.
All that stuff is a pain to develop, its not sexy, its not fun, its not cool. Ive had people quit after trying to write an installer its so painful.
So -- what makes it all work -- you have to pay talented people to write un-fun code, to make a product professional. Heres where it gets cool -- because you did that, you can charge money for it. Then you use that money to pay the talented developers to write not just to cool fun parts, but the boring required parts. Its the circle of life - or at least how professional software gets written and paid for.
.
Thats the only model I would put up with as a job seeker. You can work on it during your off hours - so it doesn't interfere with your current job, the company gets to see your work and thought process, and if no job comes of it -- neither side is particularly hurt. All the rest of the models here are gotcha interviewing techniques, or so slanted to the employer that they will ensure that the best people don't bother with the process.
I ran a shop of about 50 programmers, and the most important thing is finding the best people -- I cant imagine any of my A players having a problem with the model you went through -- I also couldn't imagine any of them leaving a job for another opportunity that was a 90 day temp job, or some probationary relationship with no benefits. Those models will narrow your job pool to only people that really hate their current job, or are struggling to find a job in the first place.
I'm just glad to see part of this thread actually discussing Feynman after reading 20 hater posts about silverlight.
I could care less about silverlight -- Feynman was special to many in the science community, and clearly he was inspirational to Gates and many at Microsoft. ( you don't call something project TUVA if your not a Feynman fan )
I've picked up a copy of six easy pieces - a set of cassette tapes with his lectures on physics a few years back so my kids could hear him speak when they were old enough to appreciate the subject matter. I've been keeping an old cassette walkman around to play them and was worried that at some point they would become unplayable and lost to me. Knowing the publishing community - -they would just let this IP die and it would be lost.
Reading that these would be available -- in any format -- is great news. Preserving the words of Feynman for future generations, whether as a scientist or a role model -- its kind of what this internet thing is for.
Be like every other part of the corporation -- get a budget and track to it.
if your only task is make everyone happy -- you are doomed.
If you have every call go through a help desk system -- even if its just an email box -- you have a record of the calls, open tickets and can then report how many tickets a month you can get through.
This will then let you have the reasonable conversation with your boss that if a department needs more service -- then you need a new hire to take some of the load.
each person can get through x tickets a month -- we have 3x coming in -- we need more people.
or even have the proactive conversation of -- we have 3x -- why -- what system is causing all the problems.
or even --these 2 people are responsible for 70% of the tickets -- and since I made them log them all in email -- there being kind of a pain.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't agree more. Sales is not some evil thing that slimy boards make companies do -- its actually the reason that the company is around in the first place. If you dont think that's right -- stay in school and do research. My best experiences on the tech side were riding shotgun with sales. That is how you figure out what features are needed to close a deal vs which seem technically interesting. On the question of comp -- which is how this thread started -- its all about risk / reward. Technical people probably have a higher base comp than sales people -- sales people are comfortable having more at risk based on performance. If a sales / tech partnership is working well -- and a sales guy is hitting his numbers -- than comp may be similar after commission. If the sales guy is hitting it out of the park -- then his comp is going to be larger than his tech counterpart. so - if the tech base salary is already pretty high -- I wouldn't have that much of a delta based on successful sales -- perhaps 10-15 percent ( of salary ) based on good performance on the sales team -- if the tech person thinks they are getting ripped off in this -- they should move to sales where more is at risk -- but the sky is the limit on comp -- I have seen that happen and work well.
Welcome to the club brother. Best post I've read here about the reality of owning your own business. Its not easy, you work your ass off, and you pay some other professions to keep the govt away - but its the only way to live.
if you are an s-corp you need to have more than one client -- or the irs will eventually get annoyed. thats not that hard to do though - and this is what accountants are for -- to make sure you dont have issues like that. As someone who worked corporate and is independent now -- all of these reasons not to go independent are just fear talking. And the feeling that its safer inside of a corporation -- that is to put it bluntly - a lie you are telling yourself so you can sleep at night. the only barrier to working for yourself is getting over your fear, and getting your first client.
Ive sold companies and taken them public -- the channels for sales are the following: Lawyers -- in my market there are a couple of big law firms -- each has a deal guy for this stuff -- get to know him. This is what linked in is for -- not so much slashdot ip lawyers -- unless there is a patent here -- probably not. vc's -- this is really where you are -- you have a product - you proved it can sell ( the games you make, not the framework ) - and now you want to raise money for some business talent to help monetize it. be prepared to part with most of your company, lose control and have an outsider as ceo. Its not that bad -- and is really the stage you are at. not all of your team will want to do that -- too bad -- they can leave, but they will leave some ownership behind as well. if your company turns out to be sale worthy -- they as well as your new ceo will have the contacts to make it happen -- mostly that happens when you dont need it to. now for the next question -- how do you get vcs to pay attention to you -- thats still challenging -- but at least its the right problem. Good Luck
It is -- and there are a lot of people just as skilled as you that are out of work. Some of them might feel some ownership of the project and want to get it done. Some of them might understand that we write code for a living and this is part of the package. Some might leave at 5 when everyone else on the team is pulling an all nighter to get a project out the door. Its the job of the manager to make sure the project gets done -- then clear out any morale crushing behaviors that showed up -- because unemployment is at 10% right now -- Its 5pm and I have a new guy I need to interview.
We used to have a company called TSR that behaved this way -- they sued all of the their fans that tried to keep D&D alive and didnt understand the economics of this type of community. When wizards got the license -- regardless of all of the harping on this forum about them -- they embraced this type of community and created the OGL. Their discussion with publishers was we can either fight over each piece off the pie or try and make the pie bigger. It was a completely different approach and it worked amazingly well. GW will figure that out at some point -- or go away like TSR. GW has every right to protect their ip -- it is theirs and they spent a lot of money developing it -- it just may be bad business to go about it the way that they are. And Im sure ill get abused for this next comment -- but with all of the slamming of wizards in this forum about them not being open -- you are confusing open for free. Open is important for the community -- free is not. If free is the most important aspect of a gaming system -- stay away from rpgs -- I play them and I want professional content created by talented people -- and those people like to get paid.
Besides the constitutional reasons that it is like this that will not change --- lets look at what would happen if you allowed local govts to enforce everyone to collect thier taxes. I know my fair city - Philadelphia -- would within a week decide that all items ordered on line were subject to a 15% tax that they wanted collected. They would cry poor and make all the same arguments here - but mostly they like taxing people that cant vote them out of office and would present this as a way to help local busineses. Soon every township that has a guy on the board that feels mail order places are biting into his business would tax this whole concept out of existance -- which is why we have a clause in the consititution that prevents interferance with inter state commerce -- because without it -- we would.
Because states are looking for every dime they can get -- and see dollars here.
This behavior is called dumping and is what monopolys get in trouble for. Selling something for less than your cost of production for the purpose of gathering market share and shutting out competition. If their name was Microsoft - they would be in court now.
dont buy that bundle -- the zone player is the main part you need here -- its 400 bucks. dont buy speakers from them -- there is no way they will be anything worth listening too. if money is tight -- dont get their remote -- they have an iphone interface that is actually very nice and free.
thats why we sell more expensive amps -- makes the install seem cheaper. but seriously -- in the custom av business -- a typical project is 60% gear and 40% installation.
because they just work and it fits the requirements. If you dont want to pull wire through your walls -- this is the way to go. If you are willing to pull wire and put speakers in the walls -- there are a couple of other options -- but the install then becomes more expensive than the gear -- and this is slashdot where the next post after a sonos post is 400 for an wireless device with a built in amplifier and an incredibly good interface that can be controlled with a touch screen or an iphone -- why dont we put a noisy linux box there, download some codec -- write an interface all by ourselves that our wife wont use and forget that we needed an amplifier - that would be cheaper.
not sure what your definition of open is as it regards amx -- it has a complete programming language that controls every one of their products and you can add non-amx products to any project. Whats closed about that? -- Now the price thing -- no argument there.
its not pointless -- its just not for you. We put these systems in lots of houses and when they are done right they make complicated systems very simple to use. Most of our projects have 8-16 rooms with digital music, video networks that can put any source on any TV and simple remote controls that make the whole thing work. It aint cheap, but done correctly you can make these systems work for competing viewpoints of husbands and wives. Typically husbands love tech -- dont mind seeing a stack of equipment in a room and see it as a normal part of everyday life that they need 3 remotes to watch a movie. Wives want to see the stuff disappear -- which is why you put speakers in the ceiling and have touchpads control music instead of having a stereo stack in each room you might want to listen to music in. These systems also let you have a nice clean look in media rooms. Most of our projects we put every piece of equipment in a server rack and control it all via RF remotes. This lets you just put a TV over the fireplace -- or just have a plasma and in wall speakers in the family room without having to cram a bunch of stuff into a piece of furniture you didnt want in the room. This is not for everybody -- but to our customers ease of use and aesthetics are important and they are willing to pay for them. Now there is a DIY crowd out there trying to use home depot quality stuff and x-10 tech. If this is all you look at, you will think the field hasnt moved in decades. The enthusiast market is filled with incomplete solutions and hacker tech. It may be fun to play with, but it aint wife friendly and it wont be reliable. This group tends to get overly focused on the cost of the gear and has very high expectations of performance ( this is from my viewpoint as a professional in the space ) As a company weve stayed away from projects where people want to use x-10 level of gear. Lastly -- and way off topic -- but there is some chatter about wifi growing up to handle these tasks. I'd put that at not likely with the current state of that spec. Its fine for laptops roaming around the house, but its too unreliable for home automation where it needs to work 100% of the time. We try to have anything that needs that kind of connectivity have a dedicated ethernet or we never really trust it. Its not all wifi's fault -- the embedded device code for wifi that is in most touch panels and equipment in the automation space has no clue how to handle a multi channel wifi network where it might roam -- this makes it pretty bad for what most people expect of it.
Zigbee is out and in the field with a couple of companies. One of my companies is a home automation company and we program and install products from Control4 and AMX -- both have support for zigbee. AMX with their remotes and control4 with pretty much their whole product line. The spec creates a mesh network where all of the devices act as repeaters -- which makes it much more than just a blutooth competitor. Case in point -- my house has 50 zigbee controllable lights in it -- and no dedicated repeaters. Since the lights are all decently close to each other -- the network size just scales. There are starting to be more products that have native support for zigbee -- theres someone selling remote locks that communicate their status as well as being controllable from other user interfaces -- think open your door with your iphone -- not your keys -- not sure thats useful -- but it can be done. Not to be confused with open source -- the control4 platform is linux based. As far as I can tell they only run it on their own hardware -- but when there are problems you can still telnet in and see whats going on.
I don't think there is any black mark - actually when it comes to writing secure code -- this industry is well ahead of other industries. I probably hired 70 developers at my last company and I wouldn't hesitate to hire someone from the gambling industry.
The paper scoring technology that I am familiar with ( used by the GRE's and some high school English classes ) cant be fed a random paper -- it needs to be trained on a particular assignment. Then it can score papers for that assignment. The success that they get with these is pretty surprising -- but the application is limited to these types of tests or curriculum that is designed around the assignments it has been trained for. The more interesting affect from this type of system reported from students ( not gre takers ) is that it lets them write a paper -- get it scored, make changes and see if they are getting better. When I was writing papers in high school -- you wrote it -- handed it in, then a week later got a grade and never thought about it again. This type of technology actually allows you to learn a lot more from one paper by iterating several versions and getting direct and specific feedback on how to improve.
This type of tax break also exists for startups -- I've run a couple of small software startups and we always incorporate in Delaware -- for both better laws for corporations and the tax break that is gives us. To do anything else is a waste of your investors money. You should always pay taxes you owe -- but you shouldnt go out of your way to pay some you can easily change your business to avoid. All businesses are motivated by cutting their costs of production -- this is one aspect of it.
if you call extorting the state hiring a bunch of people -- who all pay local taxes -- building a massive campus with local contractors -- who all pay taxes in the state -- then -- yeah they are totally extorting them. Or -- should the state get a cut of a transaction that happens in all 50 other states that has almost nothing to do with them -- but more likely ms sales people that work elsewhere. MS is doing what every other software company does -- work within the law to not pay taxes to states that they don't have to. And its also perfectly legal when the state says that they will change the law -- to tell them that that will have a consequence. Governments think that they have a right to take a piece of every transaction they see - they also think that if a company has to charge more that their sales wont be affected making it free money for the state. They are wrong on both. A business like Microsoft understands that and you can be sure their shareholders would have a fit if they said -- hey our home state couldn't figure out we were in a recession and kept spending money and ran a deficit -- so were going to lend them a hand. And while were all being righteous about making sure we all pay our taxes here -- whens the last time anyone on this forum filled out a sales tax declaration after buying something on-line? That stuffs not actually tax free -- its just that the vendor doesn't have to collect it. You are still supposed to pay it.
The article hints at the real reason cursive is dying -- and its not because it has only suspect use in our lives --- its because you cant test cursive on the no child left behind exams. Simple math then takes over -- the school looks at how much time they are spending on cursive -- and how much money they will lose if they dont get their scores up in other areas. NCLB is whats going to kill it - I wont miss it -- but its also the first useful non-intended consequence of that particular law.
if thats going into your personal account from the vendor directly -- and not a discount on server licenses or something to your company -- what you did was illegal. as they other side will know that as well -- you probably got paid under the table -- so now add tax evasion to that when you get caught. when this happens -- you'll never be asked to make any decision like this again -- you wont be able to get a job at any real company after they do a background check on you -- which thanks to the internet is now so easy, even hr can do it. if they paid that to your company, and your company decided to reward you for striking such a good deal --- then more power to you -- great job -- keep it up - you are an awesome corporate citizen.
Perhaps -- just maybe -- high quality software, is worth money. Crazy idea on this forum, but its why we have a software industry in this country. Also -- the definition of "worth money" is what you are talking about here -- an installer that works, a gui that makes sense to a casual user, updates that do not require a comp sci degree to install. All that stuff is a pain to develop, its not sexy, its not fun, its not cool. Ive had people quit after trying to write an installer its so painful. So -- what makes it all work -- you have to pay talented people to write un-fun code, to make a product professional. Heres where it gets cool -- because you did that, you can charge money for it. Then you use that money to pay the talented developers to write not just to cool fun parts, but the boring required parts. Its the circle of life - or at least how professional software gets written and paid for. .
Thats the only model I would put up with as a job seeker. You can work on it during your off hours - so it doesn't interfere with your current job, the company gets to see your work and thought process, and if no job comes of it -- neither side is particularly hurt. All the rest of the models here are gotcha interviewing techniques, or so slanted to the employer that they will ensure that the best people don't bother with the process. I ran a shop of about 50 programmers, and the most important thing is finding the best people -- I cant imagine any of my A players having a problem with the model you went through -- I also couldn't imagine any of them leaving a job for another opportunity that was a 90 day temp job, or some probationary relationship with no benefits. Those models will narrow your job pool to only people that really hate their current job, or are struggling to find a job in the first place.
I'm just glad to see part of this thread actually discussing Feynman after reading 20 hater posts about silverlight. I could care less about silverlight -- Feynman was special to many in the science community, and clearly he was inspirational to Gates and many at Microsoft. ( you don't call something project TUVA if your not a Feynman fan ) I've picked up a copy of six easy pieces - a set of cassette tapes with his lectures on physics a few years back so my kids could hear him speak when they were old enough to appreciate the subject matter. I've been keeping an old cassette walkman around to play them and was worried that at some point they would become unplayable and lost to me. Knowing the publishing community - -they would just let this IP die and it would be lost. Reading that these would be available -- in any format -- is great news. Preserving the words of Feynman for future generations, whether as a scientist or a role model -- its kind of what this internet thing is for.
Be like every other part of the corporation -- get a budget and track to it. if your only task is make everyone happy -- you are doomed. If you have every call go through a help desk system -- even if its just an email box -- you have a record of the calls, open tickets and can then report how many tickets a month you can get through. This will then let you have the reasonable conversation with your boss that if a department needs more service -- then you need a new hire to take some of the load. each person can get through x tickets a month -- we have 3x coming in -- we need more people. or even have the proactive conversation of -- we have 3x -- why -- what system is causing all the problems. or even --these 2 people are responsible for 70% of the tickets -- and since I made them log them all in email -- there being kind of a pain.