Information and Social Skills ...
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
... these are the most needed abilities for a programmer.
Information about the work enviroment in each company (country). This allows for informed decisions about the questions:
Should i move jobs (country)?
Where should i move to?
Social Skills so that you know how to handle your current manager and know how to negociate your next job
In the "Handle you Manager" side of things this allows you to avoid overwork - for example by explaining to your manager that doing that project in 3 weeks instead of 3 months will fail and leading him to suspect that you will put out the word in the correct ears so that when the project does fail the blame will all fall in the manager.
The "Know how to negociate your next job" is obvious.
Forced overtime is an integral part of software development. This isn't highrise construction we're talking about here where a single contractor will be responsible for a single structure. Software is on the most highly competitive industries today. If your company averages 40 hours a week of productivity per employee, it's going to get eaten by the company that averages 45 hours a week of productivity. Schedules are short because they have to be. Unless you are an Open Source company (or even if you are) you are hampered only by your own ability to produce. Unions will do nothing to alleviate forced overtime.
From my personal experience of working 70 hours/week and working 40 hours/week, i came to the conclusion that:
Working more hours does not lineary correlate with producing more
To be more precise, there is a point in which you are working so much time and your productivity per-hour is so low, that you are actually producing less in total than if you worked less hours.
Please keep in mind that (contrary to popular belief) being productive IS NOT THE SAME as producing lines of code.
Working more hours makes you more tired
If you are more tired the ammount of bugs in your code increases
Debugging a program until you find the bug and then correcting the bug and testing the correction may consume 10-100 times more than than the actual writting the code (debugging and solving DataModel design problems can be much worse and consume 1000s times more that the initial Design and Coding because it usually implies massive code rewriting).
What this means is that if you keep on working bellow a certain level of mental "freshness" you can actualy have a negative productivity (because you are introducing loads of bugs that later will take time to be tracked and solved)
As with everything, there is a point of balance in which you work the adequate number of hours to get the maximum total productivity. This will vary from person to person.
Knowing the right moment to stop and go home is what distinguishes the Really Excelent Programmers from the Simply Good Programmers.
That's quite interesting because i know FOR SURE that KPN has leaked my personal info to 2 external organizations (ANWB and some heart disease thing).
I am non-dutch (but still and EU citizen) and KPN are the only ones that have my name wrong (now also two other companies).
Assume the bomb is in a shipping container. For this to work the container must be in the top.
Phase 1 - Blow out top of container (explosive bolts - one side goes off mmiliseconds before the other one)
Phase 2 - Helium ballon connected to the bomb self inflates from auxiliary bottles of pressurized gas
Phase 3 - Bomb explodes using a pressure detector or timer (even if the ballon get's tangled on something the timer will take care of making it explode)
Of course this is just an amateur's idea (i can think of a lot of possible problems)
The first thing i saw when i opened the link was an open cardboard box with nothing inside...
For a moment i tought they sold fake invisible computer cases ("yes sir, our invisible computer case it's every geeks dream... now if i could only find a sample to show you...")
... constant internal fighting trying to decide which operating system is best:
Windows
Unix
Mac
Amiga
...
Same thing for Programming Languages; Editors, Coding Styles - "In a function declaration the begin block ( "{" sign ) should be in the same line as the function parameters"; "In the next line"; "Two lines bellow"; "In the living room"; "In my grandma's place";...
They are trying to look like doing something to fix the problem.
Typical approach for the school to "solve" this problems:
a)Come up with simple gut-feeling explanations to the problem - "they played violent games that's why they were violent" ("killing people in games makes killing people in real life" seems a more obvious explanation than "being ignored by parents and teachers and being bullied by collegues makes killing people in real life")
b)Put the responsability in an area out your influence - "violent games" (They didn't play them in school so that's not our responsability - they were bullied at school but the problem was not that, the problem were the violent games)
c)Take visible actions against apparently correlated events - if the shy, quiet kid threats to kill somebody then send him home (seems a direct risk), if the bully beats the hell out of a kid just ignore it (it's a normal event, plus he didn't mention killing when beating the kid up)
Personaly i think these explanations only convince low-inteligence people, but then again my opinion of most people is not very impressive (and it gets worse everytime i turn my TV on)
I guess i didn't said exactly what i wanted to say. The point will not be proven or unproven by looking at one consumer's habits.
The reason behind my inicial point (that strong brands will charge more money for a product of the same quality even if they didn't spend that much money advertising for a product) derives from the management decisions that are taken when a company tries to increase revenues. I think it goes like this:
Example A - company selling less than they could produce in they factories:
A decision has to be taken about what to do:
A marketing campaign would cost a one-off ammount of money with no warranty about the results (eg they might not sell more).
A decrease in prices would mean an immediate redution in revenues (they sell the same but get less per unit). If the market share increases they might end up getting more money, or not, depending on the size of the increase. Worse, if they are forced latter on to increase prices, they might loose clients, and end up worse than when they were in the beginning
Going for the marketing campaign would mean
RISK: Loosing a fixed ammount of money (the cost of the campaign).
GAIN: Selling as much as their production capacity, at the same price as currently
Going for the redution in price per unit would mean:
RISK: Selling the same number of units as currently with a smaller price per unit or less units than now with the same price per unit (they risk loosing costumer if they are forced to raise their price to the inicial level)
GAIN: Selling as much as they can produce for a smaller ammount of money than now (they can latter on try to increase their prices but they risk loosing all the new costummers which where atracted by the cheaper price)
Another situation:
Example B - company selling as much as they can produce in they factories:
They now have to choose between:
Increasing prices and risk loosing costumers
Investing in new production capacity and risking to have then new capacity underused (ie they cannot sell as much as they can produce - the situation in example A)
This one is less of a clear cut situation - sometimes it will be 1), others it will be 2).
Now connect examples A and B.
Some companies will do A1-B1, meaning you end up paying more for the product.
Others will do A1-B2 meaning more product for the same price.
For companies which take the A2 path, a latter increase in prices is very risky (they atracted costummers based on price), so the more likely path is A2-B2.
Companies that invest in brand (A1) and are running at full capacity can choose to increase prices. Those that compete in price (A2) and are running at full capacity have a very limited ability to increase prices (which would scare off the new costumers that came because of cheap prices)
Beware that option A1 could be "invest in R&D" instead of "invest in a marketing campaign". R&D can also increase the value of a product, but is a slower and more expensive process. Being slower means that and investment in R&D is a strategic decision ("Our product will be the best in the market") as oposed to a tactical one ("We need to sell more NOW"). I believe that both tools are used by management, but my poor oponion of the typical manager tells me that strategic view is not their strong point, so i expect more investment in marketing than in R&D.
From my point of view as a consumer, i prefer an investment in R&D because it's more likelly to increase a product's REAL value (although in certain situations - example semi-transparent color computer cases - R&D serves to add more marketting type of value than the REAL one)....
It's passed in the sense that products are advertised so that they can ask the buyers more money for a product of the same quality - the stronger (and more advertised) is the brand, the more the consumer has to pay for that product.
Naturaly one can always buy similar products from other brands (which sometimes are sold cheaper because they compete in price with highly branded products).
From all the things you have to do here to keep 100% legal, registering with the Population Register is the last one. The way things are set-up around here, you first register with the "Foreign Police", then with the "Tax Office" and finally with the "Population Register" of your municipality.
If i'm not mistaken you can even register with the "Tax Office" without being registered with the "Foreign Police".
I'm living here for more than one year now and NEVER, EVER, EVER got asked to show any identification to anybody as being registered with the "Population Register". Also, only once did i got asked to show my "Vreemdelinger" card ("Foreigner" card, literally "Alien" card - issued by the Foreign Police), and that was to register in the "Population Register".
You can live without any problems around here without ever registering with the "Population Register". I've know a couple of people who did it. Personaly, when i moved house (to a new municipality), i was a couple of months without signing-up to the "Population Register" of my new area (there's always something more important to do).
However for things that you do at the City Hall (like applying for a Dutch Drivers License - so that you can buy a car here), then you have to be registered.
From my point of view as a foreigner (and EU citizen), and as far as i can tell, if you don't buy a house here (just rent) or (maybe) get married (no big deal because non-married couples are a very popular thing around here and have lots of rights), then you could live your whole live without ever registering with the "Population Register" (buy the car in your country of origin and just drive it here).
I guess it's probably slightly different for the natives.
Actualy i do it for all sort of things (not just for clothing).
Your point is very interesting.
I would like to add that you can also dress-up quite elegantly without using (almost none) branded clothing.
I would say there are more than one type of "peacock", the visibly-strong-branded-clothes ones being the less evolved (as compared to the elegantly/fashionably dressed ones).
Maybe this derives from the fact that the sort of clothes one finds stylish while in our teens is completly different from the sort appreciated later on in life (but not so late as to having to use a cane).
I actualy trained myself NOT to buy branded products.
When i have to take a shopping decision i will force myself to ignore the item from the brands i know more about. The more i've heard about a brand the more likelly it is that i will exclude it from my shopping list.
The reasoning behind this is simple: Branding serves to increased the percieved value of a product without increasing it's real value. Thus a strong brand allows a manufacturer to sell a product for more money than competing products of the same quality which have a weaker brand.
As a consumer, buying strongly branded products means paying more for the same level of quality.
As an example of this, consider the fact that Levi's jeans have increased it's price to about 10 times it's price in the beginning of this century (already corrected for inflation). This information was taken from an article in "The Economist" but i don't remember in which issue (the initial value was taken from a expenses form of a correspondent in the US)
When i go online to buy the latest number of "Creamy Banana Erotic Magazine" i don't want to end up buying it from a US store (i live in Europe).
Just imagine the thing getting stuck in customs because they happened to open it in the page where "Anita Big Melons" grabs an overgrown banana and a goat cheese and proceeds to......
Dear sirs
As a foreigner living in Holland and using Dutch v1.x i'm taking this opportunity to complaint about a couple of issues with your system:
IJ actualy represents an Y with two dots on top. It reads strange otherwise
UI actualy reads as OU. For example UIT is read as the english word OUT (and means the same)
The letter G can be read in two totally distinct ways: As the G of Going or as a gutural groan (nothing quite like it in any of the other languages i know). It all depends on the origins of the word: "garage" is G because it comes from the French, "gaan" is the gutural thing.
What worries me about CRTs is the ammount of Electro-Magnetic, non-visible spectrum energy they emit.
The basic principle of CRTs is to produce light by firing high speed electrons against a "brick wall" (actually lead and glass if i'm not mistaken). The problem is that, when a high speed electron is quickly decelerated (as in hitting a solid surface), it will release energy across the whole Electro-Magnetic spectrum (what i call an EMP Scream).
Guess what - i'm siting just behind one of those brick walls, getting bombarded by thousands of bilions of electrons per minute. The tought is not very conforting...
As a total amateur in this area, but having read something about it:
Yes, there is a speed beyond which the human eye cannot track changes in briliance (ie ammount of light) fast enough. Basically nervous conections have a minimum recovery time between passing two nervous impulses - if i'm not mistaken, for neurons it's about 18 ms (i got this from my neural networks class some years ago).
So, even if the optic nerves were faster than this, the information couldn't get to the brain any faster.
Slashdot Mirror
Information about the work enviroment in each company (country).
This allows for informed decisions about the questions:
Social Skills so that you know how to handle your current manager and know how to negociate your next job
From my personal experience of working 70 hours/week and working 40 hours/week, i came to the conclusion that:
Working more hours does not lineary correlate with producing more
To be more precise, there is a point in which you are working so much time and your productivity per-hour is so low, that you are actually producing less in total than if you worked less hours.
Please keep in mind that (contrary to popular belief) being productive IS NOT THE SAME as producing lines of code.
What this means is that if you keep on working bellow a certain level of mental "freshness" you can actualy have a negative productivity (because you are introducing loads of bugs that later will take time to be tracked and solved)
As with everything, there is a point of balance in which you work the adequate number of hours to get the maximum total productivity. This will vary from person to person.
Knowing the right moment to stop and go home is what distinguishes the Really Excelent Programmers from the Simply Good Programmers.
My p0rn^B^B^B^B *cof* *cof* educational imagery collection has been higly improved because of that.
I am non-dutch (but still and EU citizen) and KPN are the only ones that have my name wrong (now also two other companies).
Do you know who where can i go to with this?
Phase 1 - Blow out top of container (explosive bolts - one side goes off mmiliseconds before the other one)
Phase 2 - Helium ballon connected to the bomb self inflates from auxiliary bottles of pressurized gas
Phase 3 - Bomb explodes using a pressure detector or timer (even if the ballon get's tangled on something the timer will take care of making it explode)
Of course this is just an amateur's idea (i can think of a lot of possible problems)
1900s No CCD stuff yet (but good steam technology)
... just the other day i saw a page with loads of links saying things like "click here for free naked teenage pictures"
For a moment i tought they sold fake invisible computer cases ("yes sir, our invisible computer case it's every geeks dream ... now if i could only find a sample to show you ...")
oh well, back to real life ...
- Windows
- Unix
- Mac
- Amiga
- ...
Same thing for Programming Languages; Editors, Coding Styles - "In a function declaration the begin block ( "{" sign ) should be in the same line as the function parameters"; "In the next line"; "Two lines bellow"; "In the living room"; "In my grandma's place";Total and complete paralysis.
Typical approach for the school to "solve" this problems:
a)Come up with simple gut-feeling explanations to the problem - "they played violent games that's why they were violent" ("killing people in games makes killing people in real life" seems a more obvious explanation than "being ignored by parents and teachers and being bullied by collegues makes killing people in real life")
b)Put the responsability in an area out your influence - "violent games" (They didn't play them in school so that's not our responsability - they were bullied at school but the problem was not that, the problem were the violent games)
c)Take visible actions against apparently correlated events - if the shy, quiet kid threats to kill somebody then send him home (seems a direct risk), if the bully beats the hell out of a kid just ignore it (it's a normal event, plus he didn't mention killing when beating the kid up)
Personaly i think these explanations only convince low-inteligence people, but then again my opinion of most people is not very impressive (and it gets worse everytime i turn my TV on)
The reason behind my inicial point (that strong brands will charge more money for a product of the same quality even if they didn't spend that much money advertising for a product) derives from the management decisions that are taken when a company tries to increase revenues. I think it goes like this:
Example A - company selling less than they could produce in they factories:
A decision has to be taken about what to do:
- A marketing campaign would cost a one-off ammount of money with no warranty about the results (eg they might not sell more).
- A decrease in prices would mean an immediate redution in revenues (they sell the same but get less per unit). If the market share increases they might end up getting more money, or not, depending on the size of the increase. Worse, if they are forced latter on to increase prices, they might loose clients, and end up worse than when they were in the beginning
Going for the marketing campaign would mean- RISK: Loosing a fixed ammount of money (the cost of the campaign).
- GAIN: Selling as much as their production capacity, at the same price as currently
Going for the redution in price per unit would mean:Another situation:
Example B - company selling as much as they can produce in they factories:
They now have to choose between:
- Increasing prices and risk loosing costumers
- Investing in new production capacity and risking to have then new capacity underused (ie they cannot sell as much as they can produce - the situation in example A)
This one is less of a clear cut situation - sometimes it will be 1), others it will be 2).Now connect examples A and B.
Some companies will do A1-B1, meaning you end up paying more for the product.
Others will do A1-B2 meaning more product for the same price.
For companies which take the A2 path, a latter increase in prices is very risky (they atracted costummers based on price), so the more likely path is A2-B2.
Companies that invest in brand (A1) and are running at full capacity can choose to increase prices. Those that compete in price (A2) and are running at full capacity have a very limited ability to increase prices (which would scare off the new costumers that came because of cheap prices)
Beware that option A1 could be "invest in R&D" instead of "invest in a marketing campaign". R&D can also increase the value of a product, but is a slower and more expensive process. Being slower means that and investment in R&D is a strategic decision ("Our product will be the best in the market") as oposed to a tactical one ("We need to sell more NOW"). I believe that both tools are used by management, but my poor oponion of the typical manager tells me that strategic view is not their strong point, so i expect more investment in marketing than in R&D.
From my point of view as a consumer, i prefer an investment in R&D because it's more likelly to increase a product's REAL value (although in certain situations - example semi-transparent color computer cases - R&D serves to add more marketting type of value than the REAL one)....
"sorry we only have pepsi"
"yea fine whatever"
Why not a Pepsi? Or an orange juice? Or beer? Or a cup of milk?
Why a coke?
I rest my case
Naturaly one can always buy similar products from other brands (which sometimes are sold cheaper because they compete in price with highly branded products).
From all the things you have to do here to keep 100% legal, registering with the Population Register is the last one. The way things are set-up around here, you first register with the "Foreign Police", then with the "Tax Office" and finally with the "Population Register" of your municipality.
If i'm not mistaken you can even register with the "Tax Office" without being registered with the "Foreign Police".
I'm living here for more than one year now and NEVER, EVER, EVER got asked to show any identification to anybody as being registered with the "Population Register". Also, only once did i got asked to show my "Vreemdelinger" card ("Foreigner" card, literally "Alien" card - issued by the Foreign Police), and that was to register in the "Population Register".
You can live without any problems around here without ever registering with the "Population Register". I've know a couple of people who did it. Personaly, when i moved house (to a new municipality), i was a couple of months without signing-up to the "Population Register" of my new area (there's always something more important to do).
However for things that you do at the City Hall (like applying for a Dutch Drivers License - so that you can buy a car here), then you have to be registered.
From my point of view as a foreigner (and EU citizen), and as far as i can tell, if you don't buy a house here (just rent) or (maybe) get married (no big deal because non-married couples are a very popular thing around here and have lots of rights), then you could live your whole live without ever registering with the "Population Register" (buy the car in your country of origin and just drive it here).
I guess it's probably slightly different for the natives.
Your point is very interesting.
I would like to add that you can also dress-up quite elegantly without using (almost none) branded clothing. I would say there are more than one type of "peacock", the visibly-strong-branded-clothes ones being the less evolved (as compared to the elegantly/fashionably dressed ones).
Maybe this derives from the fact that the sort of clothes one finds stylish while in our teens is completly different from the sort appreciated later on in life (but not so late as to having to use a cane).
The reasoning behind this is simple: Branding serves to increased the percieved value of a product without increasing it's real value. Thus a strong brand allows a manufacturer to sell a product for more money than competing products of the same quality which have a weaker brand.
As a consumer, buying strongly branded products means paying more for the same level of quality.
As an example of this, consider the fact that Levi's jeans have increased it's price to about 10 times it's price in the beginning of this century (already corrected for inflation). This information was taken from an article in "The Economist" but i don't remember in which issue (the initial value was taken from a expenses form of a correspondent in the US)
This is totally untrue:
When i go online to buy the latest number of "Creamy Banana Erotic Magazine" i don't want to end up buying it from a US store (i live in Europe).
Just imagine the thing getting stuck in customs because they happened to open it in the page where "Anita Big Melons" grabs an overgrown banana and a goat cheese and proceeds to ......
Today it's going to end as freezing desolation of dead stars ...
I never seem to get the right clothes for the ocasion!
- It gives no score
- It takes no score
- It will be called "Good Try"
Anybody seconds my proposal?He joined Crossgain (a startup) in September because "he saw it as a key player in the next generation of Internet computing"
He's contract with Micro$oft contained noncompete restrictions valid for 1 year.
Crossgain is a startup that aims to "create a service that runs a company's big software programs over the Web" (in competition with "we know who").
Besides him also a couple of ex-Micro$ofties went to Crossgain.
Micro$oft sued the guy ( and the other Micro$ofties ) and they had to fire themselfs from Crossgain.
He and a couple of his collegues tried to pull a fast one and failed - so what!!!
Disclaimer: Even though this involves Micro$oft, which is the devil incarnated, i am refraining myself from being parcial against MS.
- IJ actualy represents an Y with two dots on top. It reads strange otherwise
- UI actualy reads as OU. For example UIT is read as the english word OUT (and means the same)
- The letter G can be read in two totally distinct ways: As the G of Going or as a gutural groan (nothing quite like it in any of the other languages i know). It all depends on the origins of the word: "garage" is G because it comes from the French, "gaan" is the gutural thing.
I expect this to be corrected in Dutch v2.0Best Regards,
A Dissatisfied User
I guess he never heard of Quantum Computation.
I'd like to play Quake 21 (or Doom 15) in one of those babies
The basic principle of CRTs is to produce light by firing high speed electrons against a "brick wall" (actually lead and glass if i'm not mistaken). The problem is that, when a high speed electron is quickly decelerated (as in hitting a solid surface), it will release energy across the whole Electro-Magnetic spectrum (what i call an EMP Scream).
Guess what - i'm siting just behind one of those brick walls, getting bombarded by thousands of bilions of electrons per minute. The tought is not very conforting ...
Yes, there is a speed beyond which the human eye cannot track changes in briliance (ie ammount of light) fast enough. Basically nervous conections have a minimum recovery time between passing two nervous impulses - if i'm not mistaken, for neurons it's about 18 ms (i got this from my neural networks class some years ago).
So, even if the optic nerves were faster than this, the information couldn't get to the brain any faster.