It's a wonderful idea: this will solve our spam problems once and for all - all those spam messages are implicitly copyrighted by their creator and ISPs will have to make sure that the message has been properly licensed before passing it through.
At the moment a lot of Chinese manufacturers are making these PMP with head-mounted display products - these things were already available wholesale at least 2 months ago.
I suspect the fact that one of these things makes you look like a hard-core fan of a certain science fiction TV series imitating a certain weak-sighted character is probably not helping with it's adoption.
If you're really into portable media players you're probably better off with any of the flash memory based 2.4'' MP4 player which supports Divx and Xvid.
I have a digital media player at home which can play DivX and XVID movies, not to mention all other common video encoding formats.
It's a little box, smaller than most portable DVD players, with a 250GB disk inside. It has an ethernet port and can browse and play movies from any PC i have in my home network which is on at the moment (i use a Ethernet-Over-Powerline solution for the part of my home network which is not wireless, so i have no unseemly cables running around the place). It also has a USB port, so i can plug an external HDD to it (it can play movies from one of those too).
This thing is great for playing movies, TV series or any other video content in digital format. Video compression using one of the MPEG-4, Divx, XVID codecs means that i can fit a lot of movies in the 250GB HDD I've fit in it. Add to this the extra space from all the machines i have at home plugged into my network, not to mention portable HDDs i have lying around and that means hundreds of movies are literally at my fingertips (it has a remote control:)).
I could literally many days in a row watching movies and TV series from it, sitting in my sofa the whole time without barely moving a finger (as long as i used diapers and stock up on food first;))
Performance is great, since it uses a dedicated hardware solution (an Integrated Circuit specific for that) for decoding the digital media files and re-sizing the image (if needed). The only problem i ever had with it was, because my (original) HomePlug network was using the lowest speed (11Mb/s) adaptors, when playing HD content over the network, the movie would stutter for scenes were the camera was panning fast or for a long time (due to the way movie compression works, those scenes required a higher bandwidth), and that could be fixed in newer versions (for example: use the local HDD as a cache).
These things are being made in China by loads of manufacturers (check www.alibaba.com) and cost maybe 50$ a pop (without HD) at wholesale prices. There's at least 2 (maybe 3 or 4) different IC manufacturers with microchips designed specifically to play DivX/XVID/MPEG-4 content.
Add to this the fact that with a modern broadband connection, it's perfectly possible to download from the internet at least 1 movies or 3 TV series episodes in HD format during the night, every day (on a slow connection).
So, to summon things up: - A cheap, little box next to my TV can play HD video content from a collection of hundreds/thousands of video files, including just downloaded content from a PC. No need for little disks which can be scratched, no need for huge volumes of space to store said collection, no restriction of backing up the videos, no need to move a muscle beyond those needed to press the keys on the remote.
That's convenience.
Funny part is that, at shop prices and including the HDD and 2 HomePlug adaptors (2nd gen, 85Mb/s), the whole setup has cost me about £200 - cheaper than a PSP3 or the cheapest BluRay player available in the UK.
So how exactly is anybody with a setup like mine going to want to change back to using expensive, scratch prone little disks running on expensive hardware only this time around the laser is blue???
As usual, it's the European Commission that's behind "industry friendly" (read, big companies with loads of $$$ and many lobbyists in Brussels) legislation.
Those are the same guys that tried to push software patents in Europe even though the European Parliament voted against them and everybody but a couple of the biggest IT companies was against it.
Interestingly enough, the members of the European Commission are not elected to their post but instead are nominated by national governments....
PS: I really like the EU concept. Actually, i am where i am (physically and financially) because of the EU. However, until the unelected powers inside the EU political infrastructure are removed, the current structure will remain flawed and prone to serve the hidden agendas of wealthy individuals and companies instead of serving the European citizens.
I personally haven't bought any CD since they started having copy protection: i only listen to my music in MP3 players and I don't see the point of going to the trouble of figuring out how to rip a CD with copy protection type X if i can get the same music in MP3 format by other... ahem... means.
If the presence of too many adverts results in me spending more time trying to obtain some information than i would if the adverts were not there, then I'm paying for the adverts with my time.
Granted, with Google this should not be a problem. When it comes to time wasted due to adverts, I'm mostly thinking of the kind of websites that, for a higher page hit count, will spread over 10 pages an article that fits in 2.
I think you are falling into the trap of assigning human characteristics to what is essentially a statistical process: - Characteristics that increase the likelihood of having descendants which in turn have their own descendants will slowly be shared by an increasing percentage of the total population. - Characteristics that decrease the likelihood of having descendants which in turn have their own descendants will slowly be shared by an decreasing percentage of the total population.
There is no mother nature which "has reasons" or "determines" anything. The success or not of a characteristic is purely dependent on the environment where the individuals live in. There are no inherently "good" traits or "bad" traits - there are only characteristics which increase or decrease your chances of having viable descendants in the environment an individual inhabit. If an environment changes, what was once a positive trait may become a negative trait.
Nowadays, in most wealthy countries, that environment includes modern medical facilities and services. Maybe that means that abilities related to survival just after birth and unassisted conception are less important, and abilities that allow them to afford expensive medical procedures are more important.
Some have argued that technological advancements stunt evolutionary change by reducing the severity of natural selection pressures such as the ability to provide food for oneself or to make contact with a mate.
If you live in a world where being able to use machinery and computers is a strong factor in your ability to hold a steady job thus resulting in you actually being able to have (meet a mate) and raise (provide food) kids, wouldn't that select in favor of those best able to use said machinery and computers?
Actually, it's social security (to specifically, the part where chronically unemployed people are kept by the state when have lots of kids) that's more likely to distort natural selection.
Note that this is only a possible problem in the US.
EULAs are not valid in most other countries. To quote the Trading Standards (UK governmental trading watchdog) Business guidance leaflet - "A Trader's Guide to the Civil Law Relating to the Sale and Supply of Goods and Services":
"When a consumer purchases goods and/or services from a trader, both consumer and trader are entering into a legally binding contract. [...] Terms given to a consumer after the contract is made (for example, terms written on the back of a receipt) are not part of the contract and they have no effect."
Keep in mind that if there is a written and signed contract (for example, as part of a volume license) which limits or restricts the ability to re-sell the licenses, then that is valid. EULAs, however, are never valid since they're "terms given to a consumer after the contract is made".
The way of the future is the 1 pixel screen - with a really, really big pixel.
Also the single key keyboard, having one single huge key with, in big bold red shinny letters, the text "Do Stuff!!!".
After all bigger is better and we need to make computers simpler so that anybody of any age (we're talking newborns here) can use it without any special training.
Of course, all of this will run the latest Windows version and require 4, octal-core CPUs running at 5 GHz with at least one TB memory and special space folding technology that allows each computer to have it's own private universe for solid state data storage.
Those of us that are not Slaves to Hype and a Misinformed Sense of Fashion actually find the visions of thousands bending over, taking it hard and saying "Thank you Steve" entertaining and are quietly applauding from the sidelines.
Having personally met (and worked with) one of the most rabid, religious-like, aggressive and illogical Apple fanatics on the face of the planet, i derive a sick pleasure of seeing any and all Apple fan-boys jumping down the cliff like nice little lemmings all the while chanting praises to the Almighty Steve Jobs.
All your 8 examples have digital cameras - which is just about the most worthless feature you can put on a mobile phone (hands up anybody that uses their mobile phone camera to take their vacation shots with).
In addition to that, most have all kinds of crummy needless features (yeah, i really need that SD card interface 'cause i can never find enough space to store the... err... pics i take with the camera...)
If you want to find a phone that behaves like a phone, find a mobile phone with NO camera.
Have you considered that you are looking at it from the point of view of a member of a specific society and that the "if it's not white then it's black" approach to morality is a learned trait specific to your own society, though not necessary other societies?
I was one such person in the beginning of my career (i.e. bright kid, been coding long before i started working on it - started on Assembly with ZX Spectrums, a degree in an IT related field, etc).
Compared with what i know now, i knew nothing when i started.
It doesn't mater how gifted you are coding, how many projects you did on your own at home, at school or even in an OpenSource environment, or how many programming languages or OSes you have mastered:
Until you have faced you first project with real business users and real business requirements which have nothing to do with software you will have no clue about the kind of things they throw at you.
Until you've had to design reusable libraries, under a tight schedule, to be used by people whose level of expertise is often very inferior to your own (think below average coders) you will have no clues about how your libraries have to be done so as to be error proof, fail-fast and validate most inputs and log clear, easy to understand error messages.
Until you have had to diagnose strange problems in you system, which turn out to be bad data, which in turn ended up in your database because somebody else's system has sent to your external interfaces a message containing inconsistent data in a way which was never supposed to happen, you will not know the importance of validating all inputs, even those which are supposed to always be right.
Until you have find the damn empty value for a mandatory field in a file which is several Gigabytes long and contains structures inside structures inside structures, you will not know the real importance of proper logging of errors in your file parser.
Until you have to integrate 5 different systems, some as old as 10 years, done in just as many languages (or more) and mantained by 5 different teams in just as many geographical locations, you will not appreciate the importance of Interface Requirements Specifications.
From your post, i reckon you're me 10 years ago, just as cocky, working in his first company, dazzled by the management bullshit and HR shaped company group-think that is meant to convince you to happily work 80h/week while having no life (and thus no self-fulfillment) outside of work.
Been there, done it, grew out of it - from my experience, contractors are what gifted techies turn into when they become very experienced but don't want to go down the management route.
Talk to me 2-3 years from now when you've seen enough.
Incompetence (at anything, even management) gets on my nerves and public glorification of the ways of the incompetent gets on my nerves even more - otherwise i would've kept my big mouth shut:(
I've come across more than enough people that "always do the same mistakes but never learn" or who have "20 years experience in being morons" to believe that older = wiser.
My points were about the downsides of relying 100% on inexperienced people for any significant project.
Maybe the confusion is that the word "experience" for me means "been through the fire often and learned from it". Choosing somebody to be a team lead on an important project purelly because of "X years doing Y" in their CV is not the correct methodique IMHO.
My personal golden test for measuring experience in Tech Leaders usually includes the question "Has this person worked anywhere else?". In my experience (currently 10 different companies across 5 different business sectors), people that have always worked in the same environment are too deep into the "company culture" to see it's good sides and it's bad sides - they cannot see when "the usual way" is the wrong way (maybe it was the right way years ago, just not anymore) because they have nothing to compare what they see against. In my view, you're not fit to be technical lead of a project before you worked at least in 2 different places.
Another one is if they're working 80 hours/week from the beginning - any lead/manager worth it's salt will save the "overworking" for the end part of the project when the extra hours mean more work done and the side-effects (tired people doing more mistakes) won't be felt (because they're the result of a cummulative effect).
---
Also, my points mostly apply to production projects whose life is measured in years and which need to be maintained, adjusted and extended throught the life of the software. APMs mostly don't fit this profile since they are more akin to Research projects in that they are usually proofs of concept and are not meant to be in production for that long. Although production products have come out from some APMs, i would bet an arm and a leg that either the software was fully rewritten once the decision was taken to put it in production (or after a while when somebody added the numbers and found that it was cheaper to rewrite it than to maintain it for another 6 montsh) or there is a whole group of people constantly complaining about "the idiots that did this software".
I know i do that often enough with some of the big piles of crap i sometimes have to maintain (though i usually use the words "incompetent amateurs" instead of "idiots").
When you've overspent on hiring and capital expenditures quarter after quarter, it's a no brainer to see that it's cheaper to hire a bunch of young, cheap talent and send them around the world to get them all gung ho and Mouseketeer-y about working 80 hour weeks, than it is to hire senior product management with families and less mental plasticity who turn in mediocre-to-decent performance 9-5 at a $150k base (almost 2x what these APM's are getting).
So what if the APM's fuck up now and then, when your raw productivity is 4-5x that of "adult" talent, you can afford the occasional product airball.
As a freelance software developer who often is brought in to clean up the mess which results in having overworked, inexperienced, bright (and cocky) young people designing and developing whole systems, i can tell you that the total costs (including maintenance costs and system improvements costs) of having a system designed and developed by these "cheap young people" far outweighs the savings you get from not including at least one or two experience persons in the team. And this is not even including hard to measure costs such as indirect business costs due to under-performing software (such as the ones you get because the system is 10x slower than it should be at doing time-critical, essential business functions, 'cause the guy that designed it didn't understand database indexes or thought that using remote calls in every layer would be "cool").
Now that i think of it, often enough, even before the project is delivered, the initial development costs when using cheap young people outweigh the cost of having more senior people in the project.
Unfortunately, mediocre managers often fall into the trap of confusing "hours worked" with productivity. Proper measures of productivity - such as: business functions implemented per man hour - actually require having things like requirements specifications and mediocre managers don't use tools like requirements specs... or any other advanced form of project structuring or planning beyond pretty MS Project graphics.
And the reality is they probably even fuck up less.
Actually, for any piece of software which is in production for more than 6 months, they will keep fucking the support, maintenance and extendability of the software long after they've left the company.
If you're inexperienced:
You never had to maintain any software so you will have no clue about how design and development decisions affect problem tracking and software extendability
You will not expect the common sorts of improvement requests you get just after going live, such as the "monthly system usage report" that the Business Unit manager is bound to ask about 1 or 2 months after the system goes live.
You have never worked anywhere else so you only know one way of doing things. You will not have experience in working in enough environments to know "theres a better way of doing X" or "if we do it this way we'll have to risk Y"
You will not know on which parts is performance important and on which it is not important. You will spend time optimizing the speed of the monthly report (which takes 1 hour but happens once a month) instead of the data retrieval for the GUI main screen (which takes 5 minutes, and is done average once an hour, per user)
You will go down design dead-ends and chose under performing technological solutions 'cause you blindly believed the industry hype (and forgot that vendors are in it for their own profit, not yours), only to find out one month into the project that because of that choice the software won't be able to meet agreed performance targets
You will overextend yourself, going into overdrive and overwork mode early on and, due to being tired, introducing bugs and making wrong design and development decision which result in too much time being wasted in bug-fixing and back-tracking out of wrong design/implement
Ahh... nothing like entrusting your most important, most secret, most essential corporate data to a 3rd party in a country where contracts are seen as something below toilet paper 'cause the paper ain't as soft and has ink on it.
The kind of "IT work" which can be replaced by a Wiki or other sorts of cooperative "note sharing" software is basically first line support. We're talking about answering questions like "How do i do this in application X?" (something which belongs in a User Manual, but in custom systems often nobody ever writes said User Manual) or helping the user with solving simple issues whose resolution is easily scriptable (User: "I have problem seeing X in screen Y"; Support-Monkey: "Can you please close that screen and open it again? Does it work now?"; User: "Everything looks alright now, thanks").
Not only is this kind of work not really IT (anybody that can read and write, knows which side of the keyboard to type in and does not have Tourette syndrome can be trained to do it), but this kind of thing can, and often is, already outsourced to low cost countries.
Personally, i can't understand how some big companies *cough* investment banks *cough* actually pay highly expensive software developers to spend half their time doing this kind of cra^H^H^Hwork...
I remember about 18 years ago, during high-school, when a colleague of mine went to the US for a year in a student exchange program.
This guys wasn't exactly an above average student (in the previous year he graduated with a score of 11 out of 20). A year later he comes back from the US and he's bragging about how there he was an all As student. A year after that and he's still getting the same low scores at the end of the high-school year in his home country.
Honestly, you guys (Americans) have been dumbing down your high-school tests for a long time now....
I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.
What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like.
A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE.
Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships.
The point you made matches the article: they're figures are about contractors (a.k.a. freelancers) and in my experience (granted, all of it in Europe), contractors tend to be very experienced. Basically (at least in Europe), the 2 biggest pathways a Software Developer has for career growth (read: better income) beyond a certain level of experience are either go into management or start contracting.
Thus, and in light of your statements about the difficulty in finding senior people, it's not at all surprising that the rates for the biggest pool of free-moving senior technical people are going up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a wonderful idea: this will solve our spam problems once and for all - all those spam messages are implicitly copyrighted by their creator and ISPs will have to make sure that the message has been properly licensed before passing it through.
At the moment a lot of Chinese manufacturers are making these PMP with head-mounted display products - these things were already available wholesale at least 2 months ago.
I suspect the fact that one of these things makes you look like a hard-core fan of a certain science fiction TV series imitating a certain weak-sighted character is probably not helping with it's adoption.
If you're really into portable media players you're probably better off with any of the flash memory based 2.4'' MP4 player which supports Divx and Xvid.
I have a digital media player at home which can play DivX and XVID movies, not to mention all other common video encoding formats.
:)).
;))
It's a little box, smaller than most portable DVD players, with a 250GB disk inside. It has an ethernet port and can browse and play movies from any PC i have in my home network which is on at the moment (i use a Ethernet-Over-Powerline solution for the part of my home network which is not wireless, so i have no unseemly cables running around the place). It also has a USB port, so i can plug an external HDD to it (it can play movies from one of those too).
This thing is great for playing movies, TV series or any other video content in digital format. Video compression using one of the MPEG-4, Divx, XVID codecs means that i can fit a lot of movies in the 250GB HDD I've fit in it. Add to this the extra space from all the machines i have at home plugged into my network, not to mention portable HDDs i have lying around and that means hundreds of movies are literally at my fingertips (it has a remote control
I could literally many days in a row watching movies and TV series from it, sitting in my sofa the whole time without barely moving a finger (as long as i used diapers and stock up on food first
Performance is great, since it uses a dedicated hardware solution (an Integrated Circuit specific for that) for decoding the digital media files and re-sizing the image (if needed). The only problem i ever had with it was, because my (original) HomePlug network was using the lowest speed (11Mb/s) adaptors, when playing HD content over the network, the movie would stutter for scenes were the camera was panning fast or for a long time (due to the way movie compression works, those scenes required a higher bandwidth), and that could be fixed in newer versions (for example: use the local HDD as a cache).
These things are being made in China by loads of manufacturers (check www.alibaba.com) and cost maybe 50$ a pop (without HD) at wholesale prices. There's at least 2 (maybe 3 or 4) different IC manufacturers with microchips designed specifically to play DivX/XVID/MPEG-4 content.
Add to this the fact that with a modern broadband connection, it's perfectly possible to download from the internet at least 1 movies or 3 TV series episodes in HD format during the night, every day (on a slow connection).
So, to summon things up:
- A cheap, little box next to my TV can play HD video content from a collection of hundreds/thousands of video files, including just downloaded content from a PC. No need for little disks which can be scratched, no need for huge volumes of space to store said collection, no restriction of backing up the videos, no need to move a muscle beyond those needed to press the keys on the remote.
That's convenience.
Funny part is that, at shop prices and including the HDD and 2 HomePlug adaptors (2nd gen, 85Mb/s), the whole setup has cost me about £200 - cheaper than a PSP3 or the cheapest BluRay player available in the UK.
So how exactly is anybody with a setup like mine going to want to change back to using expensive, scratch prone little disks running on expensive hardware only this time around the laser is blue???
As usual, it's the European Commission that's behind "industry friendly" (read, big companies with loads of $$$ and many lobbyists in Brussels) legislation.
....
Those are the same guys that tried to push software patents in Europe even though the European Parliament voted against them and everybody but a couple of the biggest IT companies was against it.
Interestingly enough, the members of the European Commission are not elected to their post but instead are nominated by national governments
PS: I really like the EU concept. Actually, i am where i am (physically and financially) because of the EU. However, until the unelected powers inside the EU political infrastructure are removed, the current structure will remain flawed and prone to serve the hidden agendas of wealthy individuals and companies instead of serving the European citizens.
I personally haven't bought any CD since they started having copy protection: i only listen to my music in MP3 players and I don't see the point of going to the trouble of figuring out how to rip a CD with copy protection type X if i can get the same music in MP3 format by other ... ahem ... means.
Time is money.
If the presence of too many adverts results in me spending more time trying to obtain some information than i would if the adverts were not there, then I'm paying for the adverts with my time.
Granted, with Google this should not be a problem. When it comes to time wasted due to adverts, I'm mostly thinking of the kind of websites that, for a higher page hit count, will spread over 10 pages an article that fits in 2.
I think you are falling into the trap of assigning human characteristics to what is essentially a statistical process:
- Characteristics that increase the likelihood of having descendants which in turn have their own descendants will slowly be shared by an increasing percentage of the total population.
- Characteristics that decrease the likelihood of having descendants which in turn have their own descendants will slowly be shared by an decreasing percentage of the total population.
There is no mother nature which "has reasons" or "determines" anything. The success or not of a characteristic is purely dependent on the environment where the individuals live in. There are no inherently "good" traits or "bad" traits - there are only characteristics which increase or decrease your chances of having viable descendants in the environment an individual inhabit. If an environment changes, what was once a positive trait may become a negative trait.
Nowadays, in most wealthy countries, that environment includes modern medical facilities and services. Maybe that means that abilities related to survival just after birth and unassisted conception are less important, and abilities that allow them to afford expensive medical procedures are more important.
If you live in a world where being able to use machinery and computers is a strong factor in your ability to hold a steady job thus resulting in you actually being able to have (meet a mate) and raise (provide food) kids, wouldn't that select in favor of those best able to use said machinery and computers?
Actually, it's social security (to specifically, the part where chronically unemployed people are kept by the state when have lots of kids) that's more likely to distort natural selection.
Note that this is only a possible problem in the US.
EULAs are not valid in most other countries. To quote the Trading Standards (UK governmental trading watchdog) Business guidance leaflet - "A Trader's Guide to the Civil Law Relating to the Sale and Supply of Goods and Services":
"When a consumer purchases goods and/or services from a trader, both consumer and trader are entering into a legally binding contract. [...] Terms given to a consumer after the contract is made (for example, terms written on the back of a receipt) are not part of the contract and they have no effect."
Keep in mind that if there is a written and signed contract (for example, as part of a volume license) which limits or restricts the ability to re-sell the licenses, then that is valid. EULAs, however, are never valid since they're "terms given to a consumer after the contract is made".
I was going to say something about grammar nazis but then someone would invoke Goodwin's Law and the whole thread would grind to a halt...
... err ... never mind
So
The way of the future is the 1 pixel screen - with a really, really big pixel.
Also the single key keyboard, having one single huge key with, in big bold red shinny letters, the text "Do Stuff!!!".
After all bigger is better and we need to make computers simpler so that anybody of any age (we're talking newborns here) can use it without any special training.
Of course, all of this will run the latest Windows version and require 4, octal-core CPUs running at 5 GHz with at least one TB memory and special space folding technology that allows each computer to have it's own private universe for solid state data storage.
Those of us that are not Slaves to Hype and a Misinformed Sense of Fashion actually find the visions of thousands bending over, taking it hard and saying "Thank you Steve" entertaining and are quietly applauding from the sidelines.
Having personally met (and worked with) one of the most rabid, religious-like, aggressive and illogical Apple fanatics on the face of the planet, i derive a sick pleasure of seeing any and all Apple fan-boys jumping down the cliff like nice little lemmings all the while chanting praises to the Almighty Steve Jobs.
Sorry for that.
All your 8 examples have digital cameras - which is just about the most worthless feature you can put on a mobile phone (hands up anybody that uses their mobile phone camera to take their vacation shots with).
... err ... pics i take with the camera ...)
In addition to that, most have all kinds of crummy needless features (yeah, i really need that SD card interface 'cause i can never find enough space to store the
If you want to find a phone that behaves like a phone, find a mobile phone with NO camera.
Have you considered that you are looking at it from the point of view of a member of a specific society and that the "if it's not white then it's black" approach to morality is a learned trait specific to your own society, though not necessary other societies?
...
I bet you live in the US
By contractor i mean the British meaning of the word. For USians the word would be "freelancer".
That means i have my own company.
Compared with what i know now, i knew nothing when i started.
It doesn't mater how gifted you are coding, how many projects you did on your own at home, at school or even in an OpenSource environment, or how many programming languages or OSes you have mastered:
From your post, i reckon you're me 10 years ago, just as cocky, working in his first company, dazzled by the management bullshit and HR shaped company group-think that is meant to convince you to happily work 80h/week while having no life (and thus no self-fulfillment) outside of work.
Been there, done it, grew out of it - from my experience, contractors are what gifted techies turn into when they become very experienced but don't want to go down the management route.
Talk to me 2-3 years from now when you've seen enough.
Incompetence (at anything, even management) gets on my nerves and public glorification of the ways of the incompetent gets on my nerves even more - otherwise i would've kept my big mouth shut :(
I've come across more than enough people that "always do the same mistakes but never learn" or who have "20 years experience in being morons" to believe that older = wiser.
My points were about the downsides of relying 100% on inexperienced people for any significant project.
Maybe the confusion is that the word "experience" for me means "been through the fire often and learned from it". Choosing somebody to be a team lead on an important project purelly because of "X years doing Y" in their CV is not the correct methodique IMHO.
My personal golden test for measuring experience in Tech Leaders usually includes the question "Has this person worked anywhere else?". In my experience (currently 10 different companies across 5 different business sectors), people that have always worked in the same environment are too deep into the "company culture" to see it's good sides and it's bad sides - they cannot see when "the usual way" is the wrong way (maybe it was the right way years ago, just not anymore) because they have nothing to compare what they see against. In my view, you're not fit to be technical lead of a project before you worked at least in 2 different places.
Another one is if they're working 80 hours/week from the beginning - any lead/manager worth it's salt will save the "overworking" for the end part of the project when the extra hours mean more work done and the side-effects (tired people doing more mistakes) won't be felt (because they're the result of a cummulative effect).
---
Also, my points mostly apply to production projects whose life is measured in years and which need to be maintained, adjusted and extended throught the life of the software. APMs mostly don't fit this profile since they are more akin to Research projects in that they are usually proofs of concept and are not meant to be in production for that long. Although production products have come out from some APMs, i would bet an arm and a leg that either the software was fully rewritten once the decision was taken to put it in production (or after a while when somebody added the numbers and found that it was cheaper to rewrite it than to maintain it for another 6 montsh) or there is a whole group of people constantly complaining about "the idiots that did this software".
I know i do that often enough with some of the big piles of crap i sometimes have to maintain (though i usually use the words "incompetent amateurs" instead of "idiots").
As a freelance software developer who often is brought in to clean up the mess which results in having overworked, inexperienced, bright (and cocky) young people designing and developing whole systems, i can tell you that the total costs (including maintenance costs and system improvements costs) of having a system designed and developed by these "cheap young people" far outweighs the savings you get from not including at least one or two experience persons in the team. And this is not even including hard to measure costs such as indirect business costs due to under-performing software (such as the ones you get because the system is 10x slower than it should be at doing time-critical, essential business functions, 'cause the guy that designed it didn't understand database indexes or thought that using remote calls in every layer would be "cool").
... or any other advanced form of project structuring or planning beyond pretty MS Project graphics.
Now that i think of it, often enough, even before the project is delivered, the initial development costs when using cheap young people outweigh the cost of having more senior people in the project.
Unfortunately, mediocre managers often fall into the trap of confusing "hours worked" with productivity. Proper measures of productivity - such as: business functions implemented per man hour - actually require having things like requirements specifications and mediocre managers don't use tools like requirements specs
Actually, for any piece of software which is in production for more than 6 months, they will keep fucking the support, maintenance and extendability of the software long after they've left the company.
If you're inexperienced:
Ahh ... nothing like entrusting your most important, most secret, most essential corporate data to a 3rd party in a country where contracts are seen as something below toilet paper 'cause the paper ain't as soft and has ink on it.
The kind of "IT work" which can be replaced by a Wiki or other sorts of cooperative "note sharing" software is basically first line support. We're talking about answering questions like "How do i do this in application X?" (something which belongs in a User Manual, but in custom systems often nobody ever writes said User Manual) or helping the user with solving simple issues whose resolution is easily scriptable (User: "I have problem seeing X in screen Y"; Support-Monkey: "Can you please close that screen and open it again? Does it work now?"; User: "Everything looks alright now, thanks").
...
Not only is this kind of work not really IT (anybody that can read and write, knows which side of the keyboard to type in and does not have Tourette syndrome can be trained to do it), but this kind of thing can, and often is, already outsourced to low cost countries.
Personally, i can't understand how some big companies *cough* investment banks *cough* actually pay highly expensive software developers to spend half their time doing this kind of cra^H^H^Hwork
So what about if ones reverses the direction of the motor in a Roomba?
I'm from an European country.
....
I remember about 18 years ago, during high-school, when a colleague of mine went to the US for a year in a student exchange program.
This guys wasn't exactly an above average student (in the previous year he graduated with a score of 11 out of 20). A year later he comes back from the US and he's bragging about how there he was an all As student. A year after that and he's still getting the same low scores at the end of the high-school year in his home country.
Honestly, you guys (Americans) have been dumbing down your high-school tests for a long time now
The point you made matches the article: they're figures are about contractors (a.k.a. freelancers) and in my experience (granted, all of it in Europe), contractors tend to be very experienced. Basically (at least in Europe), the 2 biggest pathways a Software Developer has for career growth (read: better income) beyond a certain level of experience are either go into management or start contracting.
Thus, and in light of your statements about the difficulty in finding senior people, it's not at all surprising that the rates for the biggest pool of free-moving senior technical people are going up.