I'm going to have to make a blog entry one of these days with all the bad experiences. But one of the high(low?)lights has to be the time I spent when my company was a subcontractor on a couple of jobs done by Andersen Consulting.
The important insight I had about Andersen Consulting years later, was that Andersen's main product isn't software, it's billable hours. They don't actually want to produce workable software, because then the billable hours will stop flowing in. So instead they do everything in their power to fuck up the project royally. At the time, I was baffled by their behaviour because I was driven to produce high quality software that did what the customer needed, and I couldn't seem to get that done under Andersen conditions. Understanding that simple fact about their main product made all the following experiences make perfect sense.
- Andersen always operates in "crash mode". Their people work incredible long hours, and if you work along side them they expect you to work the same hours. On one 9 day long project, I got an average of 3-4 hours sleep a night. I once saw one "Anderoid" yell at another because she was leaving at 11pm, to which she responded that her boss told her that she had to work 36 straight hours the next day so she was going home to get some sleep. One time one of the Anderoids and I were trying to solve a specific problem, and I was having a hard time concentrating and it seemed we were going around in circles, so I went home to sleep at around 1am. The next morning, I came in rested (by Andersen standards) and the guy I'd been working with was still going around in the same hopeless circles. I restored the hack job he'd done on the source code from my personal backups, and tried out an idea I'd had in the shower that morning, and it worked perfectly first time. Subsequent times working together, I told my company that I wouldn't go unless I had control over my working hours - I'd work long hours if I had to, but they wouldn't be the norm.
- Andersen hires idiots. They used to boast about how they didn't care about qualifications, as long as they had the "Andersen Attitude". One of the guys on the projects I was on had a philosophy degree. He knew about as much about programming as I did about Cartesian Dualism.
- Andersen is more concerned about looking professional that actually getting work done. One job we were in a large echo-ey room - about 100 of us at big long tables with no partitions or anything to deaden the sound. I brought in a Walkman because I was having trouble concentrating, and was told that I couldn't wear it because Andersen didn't think it looked professional. Evidently 15 people standing around having animated conversations right beside my chair was "professional", but listening to some music with headphones wasn't.
- Andersen are slave drivers of the worst sort. As well as the long hours, they also don't seem to pay that well. And they can transfer you around the country (or overseas) with almost no notice and you have very little say in the matter. One guy on the projects we were on together said that in your entire career at Andersen you can only refuse one assignment - if they wanted to transfer you to Antartica tomorrow, and you've used up your refusal, you have two options: go buy a down parka or quit. He told me that he hadn't been back to his home base in over two years. It was little wonder that the only married Anderoids I met were married to other Anderoids. And even that was no guarantee - one guy I met had been transferred to another city from his wife, and since they'd both used up their refusals already, they hadn't lived in the same city in over a year.
- Andersen enforces their bizarre behaviour requirements on their people by holding this carrot and stick: If they do what they're told, work long hours for little pay and have no sleep or personal life, they will eventually make Jr. Partner. The working conditions don't get any better, but the pay does.
On the first project we did together, my company actually poached one of the Anderoids to come to work for us. On the second project, he came along - you should have seen the faces of the Anderoids when he and I got up at 10pm and said we're going home.
I run a bunch of Mailman mailing lists. One time, one of the people on this mailing list false SpamCop-ed one of the monthly mailing list reminders, which caused my ISP to complain to me. I kicked him off the mailing list and told him he couldn't come back until he'd convinced my ISP that the spam report was in error. I don't think he ever did come back on, but fortunately the ISP didn't kick me off - perhaps it's giving RoadRunner too much credit, but even *they* must realize the huge false positive rate from SpamCop.
It's too bad the site is slashdotted. I wonder if they have one of my personal favourites, SPF (which was also called ISPF at some point in its lifetime). I kept my box of cards with my personalized SPF screens for years after I left the mainframe world in case I went back.
Name one product that DOESN'T cost less than the cost of the internals? If you price every part in your car, it will add up to considerably more than the cost of the car - if it didn't, people would just buy the parts and assemble their own car.
The iPod Mini is "ridiculously overpriced" because there is no way in hell I'd pay that much for it. Maybe next year when it gets $50-100 cheaper, I might buy one for a gift for somebody, but right now I'd pay the $50 extra and get a 15Gb one first.
You should learn the meaning of the phrase "subjective judgements" some day.
Yeah, and the Archos has sold fewer in the year or so it's been on the market than the iPod Mini has sold in the few weeks it's been on the market. Not least because it's heavy, bulky, has a horrible interface, and it's UGLY.
Video capability isn't going to kill iPod sales. It isn't even going to scratch the surface.
I don't see anybody clamouring for a portable device that plays "video AND audio in WMP format".
Look at the huge sales of the ridiculously overpriced iPod Mini - the market wants smaller and sleeker and good looking, not huge, bulky and with too many features.
The only "iPod killer" is going to be something that looks as cool as an iPod, holds as much, but is smaller and cheaper.
Kodak has a lot of patents that relate to digital photography, some of which date back to the 1960s regarding technology they developed for film cameras or film processing. But all the big camera and digital camera manufacturers cross license each other's patent portfolios, usually on an entire portfolio to entire portfolio basis, with no money being exchanged - it's all very convenient for them, but I bet it's hell if a new company wanted to get into the business.
What is probably happening here is that Kodak wants access to some Sony patents, and needs to leverage the patents they have to get access to it. This is probably just a legal ploy to get Sony back to the bargaining table.
Disclaimer: Even though I'm currently on contract at Kodak, I don't have any inside information on this case and I'm not involved in digital still cameras. I just know what they told us in the "why you need to apply for patents on your work" lecture.
Oh yeah, I forgot that one of the birds loves the escape key on my laptop. I'll be typing away, and suddenly she'll come over and grab the escape key and run away with in her mouth. Very cute, but annoying if you're in vi.
I've got cable chewing birds. Over the years, they've chewed through innumerable headphone and speaker cables. One of them chewed through a mouse cord and ruined the PS/2 ports on that computer - I had to use a serial mouse. And worse than all that, they give off tons of dust that clogs up power supplies and the fins of heat sinks.
I don't let them run around the computer desks any more, and I bought a large HEPA filter to try and keep down the dust. Unfortunately the cooling fans on my main computer seem to have more power than the HEPA filter, so the prevailing air currents go from the bird cage to the computer to the filter, instead of the other way around.
Last time I checked, you don't put a sign on your plane that says "I have nukes". Might as well paint a target on your head. You put a sign on the radome warning people that they might get zapped if the radar gets turned on and the squat switch doesn't work. Look at the picture somebody just posted on an EA-6B with the same symbol on its radome. No nukes there, just a fuck of a lot of energy coming out that sucker.
You know, if spammers cared a whit about anything except getting more addresses onto their "10 million email addresses" CDs that they sell by spamming, that would have some validity. However experience tells me otherwise.
Spammers have hit email addresses that have only ever been used in postings in news.admin.net-abuse.email. They also spam my abuse@ email addresses. If there is any group of people more likely to have heavy spam filters and/or to complain or retaliate against spammers, it would be the people who post to n.a.n-a.e, and the people who handle spam abuse complaints for their domain. You'd think out of sheer self-preservation that spammers wouldn't bother those people, but they do.
You got that as an MP3? I had it as a.au. On the SPARCStation, you could play it with
cat linus.au >/dev/audio
I also had the sound of a cow mooing as a.au, so I made a cron job on a computer in the training room called "bovine" to play that sound at 30 minute intervals. Strangely enough, the trainers couldn't figure out which machine was mooing, nor how to stop it, but they all knew it was me who did it. I was amazed they couldn't make the logical leap from "mooing" to "only one of the machines in this room has a cow-like name". I guess that's why they were trainers.
Somebody told me that I'd probably like these two bands, so I downloaded two songs each from them. I decided I didn't like one, but the other, The Pogues, I liked a lot. Because of those downloads, I've since bought "Rum Sodomy and the Lash" and "The Best of the Pogues", and I'm probably going to buy a few more.
So take that RIAA - I downloaded 4 songs, and it led to two CD sales.
I've got a DEC vt220 hooked up to my serial port. I use it for checking email (mutt) and Usenet news (trn) when somebody else is using the console screen for something graphical. Since my oldest step-daughter got a laptop, I hardly ever use it.
Slashdot Mirror
"A water company in the UK"? New Town House, Warrington, Cheshire perchance?
I'm going to have to make a blog entry one of these days with all the bad experiences. But one of the high(low?)lights has to be the time I spent when my company was a subcontractor on a couple of jobs done by Andersen Consulting.
The important insight I had about Andersen Consulting years later, was that Andersen's main product isn't software, it's billable hours. They don't actually want to produce workable software, because then the billable hours will stop flowing in. So instead they do everything in their power to fuck up the project royally. At the time, I was baffled by their behaviour because I was driven to produce high quality software that did what the customer needed, and I couldn't seem to get that done under Andersen conditions. Understanding that simple fact about their main product made all the following experiences make perfect sense.
- Andersen always operates in "crash mode". Their people work incredible long hours, and if you work along side them they expect you to work the same hours. On one 9 day long project, I got an average of 3-4 hours sleep a night. I once saw one "Anderoid" yell at another because she was leaving at 11pm, to which she responded that her boss told her that she had to work 36 straight hours the next day so she was going home to get some sleep. One time one of the Anderoids and I were trying to solve a specific problem, and I was having a hard time concentrating and it seemed we were going around in circles, so I went home to sleep at around 1am. The next morning, I came in rested (by Andersen standards) and the guy I'd been working with was still going around in the same hopeless circles. I restored the hack job he'd done on the source code from my personal backups, and tried out an idea I'd had in the shower that morning, and it worked perfectly first time. Subsequent times working together, I told my company that I wouldn't go unless I had control over my working hours - I'd work long hours if I had to, but they wouldn't be the norm.
- Andersen hires idiots. They used to boast about how they didn't care about qualifications, as long as they had the "Andersen Attitude". One of the guys on the projects I was on had a philosophy degree. He knew about as much about programming as I did about Cartesian Dualism.
- Andersen is more concerned about looking professional that actually getting work done. One job we were in a large echo-ey room - about 100 of us at big long tables with no partitions or anything to deaden the sound. I brought in a Walkman because I was having trouble concentrating, and was told that I couldn't wear it because Andersen didn't think it looked professional. Evidently 15 people standing around having animated conversations right beside my chair was "professional", but listening to some music with headphones wasn't.
- Andersen are slave drivers of the worst sort. As well as the long hours, they also don't seem to pay that well. And they can transfer you around the country (or overseas) with almost no notice and you have very little say in the matter. One guy on the projects we were on together said that in your entire career at Andersen you can only refuse one assignment - if they wanted to transfer you to Antartica tomorrow, and you've used up your refusal, you have two options: go buy a down parka or quit. He told me that he hadn't been back to his home base in over two years. It was little wonder that the only married Anderoids I met were married to other Anderoids. And even that was no guarantee - one guy I met had been transferred to another city from his wife, and since they'd both used up their refusals already, they hadn't lived in the same city in over a year.
- Andersen enforces their bizarre behaviour requirements on their people by holding this carrot and stick: If they do what they're told, work long hours for little pay and have no sleep or personal life, they will eventually make Jr. Partner. The working conditions don't get any better, but the pay does.
On the first project we did together, my company actually poached one of the Anderoids to come to work for us. On the second project, he came along - you should have seen the faces of the Anderoids when he and I got up at 10pm and said we're going home.
Oh, you worked for Global Crossing too?
I run a bunch of Mailman mailing lists. One time, one of the people on this mailing list false SpamCop-ed one of the monthly mailing list reminders, which caused my ISP to complain to me. I kicked him off the mailing list and told him he couldn't come back until he'd convinced my ISP that the spam report was in error. I don't think he ever did come back on, but fortunately the ISP didn't kick me off - perhaps it's giving RoadRunner too much credit, but even *they* must realize the huge false positive rate from SpamCop.
It's too bad the site is slashdotted. I wonder if they have one of my personal favourites, SPF (which was also called ISPF at some point in its lifetime). I kept my box of cards with my personalized SPF screens for years after I left the mainframe world in case I went back.
Name one product that DOESN'T cost less than the cost of the internals? If you price every part in your car, it will add up to considerably more than the cost of the car - if it didn't, people would just buy the parts and assemble their own car.
The iPod Mini is "ridiculously overpriced" because there is no way in hell I'd pay that much for it. Maybe next year when it gets $50-100 cheaper, I might buy one for a gift for somebody, but right now I'd pay the $50 extra and get a 15Gb one first.
You should learn the meaning of the phrase "subjective judgements" some day.
It's not a "HUGE collection" if you can fit it on a 15Gb iPod. :-)
I guess you don't mind constantly loading and reloading the iPod. I hate having to do that.
Yeah, and the Archos has sold fewer in the year or so it's been on the market than the iPod Mini has sold in the few weeks it's been on the market. Not least because it's heavy, bulky, has a horrible interface, and it's UGLY.
Video capability isn't going to kill iPod sales. It isn't even going to scratch the surface.
Man, I hate Ted. He stomped my iPod the other day, it cost me $250 to get Apple to fix it.
I don't see anybody clamouring for a portable device that plays "video AND audio in WMP format".
Look at the huge sales of the ridiculously overpriced iPod Mini - the market wants smaller and sleeker and good looking, not huge, bulky and with too many features.
The only "iPod killer" is going to be something that looks as cool as an iPod, holds as much, but is smaller and cheaper.
Kodak has a lot of patents that relate to digital photography, some of which date back to the 1960s regarding technology they developed for film cameras or film processing. But all the big camera and digital camera manufacturers cross license each other's patent portfolios, usually on an entire portfolio to entire portfolio basis, with no money being exchanged - it's all very convenient for them, but I bet it's hell if a new company wanted to get into the business.
What is probably happening here is that Kodak wants access to some Sony patents, and needs to leverage the patents they have to get access to it. This is probably just a legal ploy to get Sony back to the bargaining table.
Disclaimer:
Even though I'm currently on contract at Kodak, I don't have any inside information on this case and I'm not involved in digital still cameras. I just know what they told us in the "why you need to apply for patents on your work" lecture.
Man, I'm quoted a lot on that page. I never knew I was so quotable.
Oh yeah, I forgot that one of the birds loves the escape key on my laptop. I'll be typing away, and suddenly she'll come over and grab the escape key and run away with in her mouth. Very cute, but annoying if you're in vi.
I've got cable chewing birds. Over the years, they've chewed through innumerable headphone and speaker cables. One of them chewed through a mouse cord and ruined the PS/2 ports on that computer - I had to use a serial mouse. And worse than all that, they give off tons of dust that clogs up power supplies and the fins of heat sinks.
I don't let them run around the computer desks any more, and I bought a large HEPA filter to try and keep down the dust. Unfortunately the cooling fans on my main computer seem to have more power than the HEPA filter, so the prevailing air currents go from the bird cage to the computer to the filter, instead of the other way around.
...it becomes a gun that shoots a golden bullet.
Last time I checked, you don't put a sign on your plane that says "I have nukes". Might as well paint a target on your head. You put a sign on the radome warning people that they might get zapped if the radar gets turned on and the squat switch doesn't work. Look at the picture somebody just posted on an EA-6B with the same symbol on its radome. No nukes there, just a fuck of a lot of energy coming out that sucker.
Duh. The tri-foil on the nose cone is warning about the radiation from the radar, not from nuclear weapons.
"If you are close enough to read this, the nukes had better not be going off just yet."
Q: Do You Make $60/hr for Programming?
A: Yes. Next question?
Ok, this job is special - my previous job paid $80K, but I also got a $15K signing bonus and a $15K Christmas bonus.
But then again, I'm 45 years old and I've been doing this longer than most Slashdot readers have been alive.
Sheesh, and I thought I had it bad getting 2-3000 spams a day. Are you sure they aren't all just asking you about the Auckland Festival of Missions?
Bob? Is that you?
But at least you were working in aviation!
isn't even really worth it
You know, if spammers cared a whit about anything except getting more addresses onto their "10 million email addresses" CDs that they sell by spamming, that would have some validity. However experience tells me otherwise.
Spammers have hit email addresses that have only ever been used in postings in news.admin.net-abuse.email. They also spam my abuse@ email addresses. If there is any group of people more likely to have heavy spam filters and/or to complain or retaliate against spammers, it would be the people who post to n.a.n-a.e, and the people who handle spam abuse complaints for their domain. You'd think out of sheer self-preservation that spammers wouldn't bother those people, but they do.
You got that as an MP3? I had it as a .au.
/dev/audio
.au, so I made a cron job on a computer in the training room called "bovine" to play that sound at 30 minute intervals. Strangely enough, the trainers couldn't figure out which machine was mooing, nor how to stop it, but they all knew it was me who did it. I was amazed they couldn't make the logical leap from "mooing" to "only one of the machines in this room has a cow-like name". I guess that's why they were trainers.
On the SPARCStation, you could play it with
cat linus.au >
I also had the sound of a cow mooing as a
Somebody told me that I'd probably like these two bands, so I downloaded two songs each from them. I decided I didn't like one, but the other, The Pogues, I liked a lot. Because of those downloads, I've since bought "Rum Sodomy and the Lash" and "The Best of the Pogues", and I'm probably going to buy a few more.
So take that RIAA - I downloaded 4 songs, and it led to two CD sales.
I've got a DEC vt220 hooked up to my serial port. I use it for checking email (mutt) and Usenet news (trn) when somebody else is using the console screen for something graphical. Since my oldest step-daughter got a laptop, I hardly ever use it.