While I don't agree with many large business's attitudes towards employee's (such as having no loyalty to the employee but expecting the employee's to have full loyalty to them) I also don't like people who whine about the offshoring of jobs.
If the move actually made economic sense, I don't think you would see as much whining, but many of us have seen offshoring done in situations where it made no sense, it cost the company money while lowering service levels, it was presented to management as such, and the short-sighted managers went ahead with the process anyway because they didn't believe the recommendations. And the company lost money, the offshoring had to be abandoned, etc., but not until after some local employees lost their jobs.
The key is to keep your skills sharp and make yourself be in demand.
Easy to say, but hard to do. Many companies don't care what you know if you don't have demonstrable experience with the technologies in question. A list of buzzwords on a resume means nothing w/o formal experience to back it up.
I just tossed out a low-end number that would apply in places like the Twin Cities or Atlanta. I know that a number of places on the right and left US coasts are significantly higher, but I wanted to preempt the naysayers by not saying $1000/month initially.:-)
Exactly - for ages, those in the IT world scoffed at the clericals and other low-skill employees who were obsoleted by advances in technology they created and/or implemented.
In 18 years of working in a corporate environment, I've never seen this attitude. I always appreciated having a secretary for our department, having documentation specialists, etc., because some of those folks were far far better at what they did than we programmers were, and it was a sad day for most of us when those folks were let go.
Secretaries have largely been wiped out due to the advance of email and word processing, manufacturing and distribution personnel have been cut due to the development of industrial technology, retail workers threatened by the progress of e-commerce, etc.
Secretaries went the way of office supply cabinets, department copy machines, and other things which used to be "standard" due to general corporate cost-cutting. Advances in technology had little or nothing to do with it.
From what I see in this forum and elsewhere, US workers are embittered, cynical and feel they're grossly underpaid, while foreign workers are not embittered, uncynical and are grateful to work for peanuts.
"Have-Nots" who are given opportunuties tend to be positive. "Haves" who have opportunities taken away from them through no fault of their own tend to be negative.
Someone tell me why I SHOULD hire a US worker or invest in the US with the above being true.
I think you should hire the person who will do the best job in your particular context. Whether that is a US worker or a non-US worker depends on your criteria.
Most US workers do not "charge" their employers -- instead, they work for that employer for a rate that is set by the employer, and most employees say "okay" and go along.
Salaries and hourly rates for IT workers are generally in-line with other professions in the US. A master plumber or mechanic makes between 50k-100k per yer in most of the US, for example, which is very similar to what a programmer/analyst with similar experience and training would make in the IT world. Also, while a help desk analyst might make $12 or $15/hour, that isn't very much different from folks in other similar types of professions. Heck, a person can make $8-10 an hour in some parts of the US flipping burgers.
Problems start when you start mixing and matching labour from economies with radically different levels of expenses. A person making minimum wage in the US could be very well off in many parts of the world, even though many people find it difficult to live on that same wage in a number of places here in the US. Why? Because it doesn't cost $500/month for a basic apartment in those parts of the world.
I use GIF files still becayse I have a lot of software on variuos platforms which legally supports it, and I don't have as much software which supports PNG. That, plus animation, makes it a useful format for me.
DSL comes with Synaptic, and can easily install OpenOffice or a number of other spreadsheets. I can't speak for the other two items as I have no interest in such capabilities.
Arrr, in Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration o' the thirteen united States o' America A pence for an old man o'de sea?
Ahoy, when in the Course o' human e'ents it becomes necessary for one people t' dissol'e the political bands which have connected them with another and t' assume among the powers o' the earth, the separate and equal station t' which the Laws o' Nature and o' Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect t' the opinions o' mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them t' the separation.
We hold these truths t' be self-e'ident, that all men be created equal, that they be endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these be Life, Liberty and the pursuit o' Happiness. -- That t' secure these rights, Go'ernments be instituted among Men, deri'in' their just powers from the consent o' the go'erned, -- That whene'er any Form o' Scalwags becomes destructi'e o' these ends, is the Right o' the People t' alter or t' abolish it, and t' institute new Rapscallions, layin' its foundation on such principles and organizin' its powers in such form, as t' them shall seem most likely t' effect their Safety and Happiness. Aye...
No need to hold your breath -- it's been done already by a commercial DVR vendor, and the end result is still very much available. Just check out eBay for any 5000-series ReplayTV unit (not 5500-series, which dropped the auto-skip feature).
If you want to learn a little more about ReplayTV's current owner (who also owns of couple of other little brands called "Denon" and "Marantz), check out this web site... It ain't disappearing any time soon.:-)
Hey, my ReplayTV 5040 is still running (and skill skipping commercials automagicalyl) just fine. The service is still up and running, the firmware is still being updated periodically, the features are still intact, and you can still obtain units with lifetime memberships attached on eBay.
Stick to your Tivo if you really want to. I'm sticking with what I have.:-)
Sorry, that's not correct. I also purchased a Philips CD recorder several years ago and special digital-music-specific CD-R media with which to make true digital copies of music CDs.
The music industry gets their cut from this, so I assume I'm free to duplicate CDs for MY OWN PERSONAL USE with that equipment and media.
That is the whole reason for its existence, and I have already paid for the privilege.
So what happens if they misindentify you (get the IP address wrong, the ISP gives them incorrect information, or whatever) but you happend to have tons of MP3/ogg files lying around that you ripped yourself and don't distribute?
How can you defend yourself?
I can point to retail CD copies that I own for EVERY SINGLE ONE of the thousands of MP3 files resident on my LAN, but is that (by itself) sufficient to stop the RIAA from suing my butt into oblivion based on inaccurate info?
Especially since the ripped MP3 copy is a lossy copy, in essence no different from the analog copies which were once (and are still?) allowed because of the AHRA?
It certainly is hypocritical, especially if those standards are so new (or so poorly implemented in mainstream browsers such as IE) that a large percentage of folks can't use the new version.
What ever happened to serving the lowest common denominator?? There's a REASON why many sites eschew CSS and other trendy UI-centric crap and focus instead on maximizing the ability to deliver information.
Slashdot is going the way of KDE and Gnome, with too much concentration on flashy UI elements and not enough concentration on service a diverse user base.
Some schools must be better than others.:-) I *still* use practical things that I learned in college from time to time, mainly related to structured code design and the breaking down of various problems using pseudocode, etc.
(I only knew a couple of BASIC and Fortran variants before I got to college, and I'd never designed anything larger than a few thousand lines of code, so some of that stuff was new to me. This was back in 1981, after all, when not everyone had access to programming classes, and self-taught Applesoft BASIC programmers like myself weren't really known for writing structured code ).
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If the move actually made economic sense, I don't think you would see as much whining, but many of us have seen offshoring done in situations where it made no sense, it cost the company money while lowering service levels, it was presented to management as such, and the short-sighted managers went ahead with the process anyway because they didn't believe the recommendations. And the company lost money, the offshoring had to be abandoned, etc., but not until after some local employees lost their jobs.
Easy to say, but hard to do. Many companies don't care what you know if you don't have demonstrable experience with the technologies in question. A list of buzzwords on a resume means nothing w/o formal experience to back it up.
I just tossed out a low-end number that would apply in places like the Twin Cities or Atlanta. I know that a number of places on the right and left US coasts are significantly higher, but I wanted to preempt the naysayers by not saying $1000/month initially. :-)
In 18 years of working in a corporate environment, I've never seen this attitude. I always appreciated having a secretary for our department, having documentation specialists, etc., because some of those folks were far far better at what they did than we programmers were, and it was a sad day for most of us when those folks were let go.
Secretaries went the way of office supply cabinets, department copy machines, and other things which used to be "standard" due to general corporate cost-cutting. Advances in technology had little or nothing to do with it.
"Have-Nots" who are given opportunuties tend to be positive. "Haves" who have opportunities taken away from them through no fault of their own tend to be negative.
I think you should hire the person who will do the best job in your particular context. Whether that is a US worker or a non-US worker depends on your criteria.
Most US workers do not "charge" their employers -- instead, they work for that employer for a rate that is set by the employer, and most employees say "okay" and go along.
Salaries and hourly rates for IT workers are generally in-line with other professions in the US. A master plumber or mechanic makes between 50k-100k per yer in most of the US, for example, which is very similar to what a programmer/analyst with similar experience and training would make in the IT world. Also, while a help desk analyst might make $12 or $15/hour, that isn't very much different from folks in other similar types of professions. Heck, a person can make $8-10 an hour in some parts of the US flipping burgers.
Problems start when you start mixing and matching labour from economies with radically different levels of expenses. A person making minimum wage in the US could be very well off in many parts of the world, even though many people find it difficult to live on that same wage in a number of places here in the US. Why? Because it doesn't cost $500/month for a basic apartment in those parts of the world.
I use GIF files still becayse I have a lot of software on variuos platforms which legally supports it, and I don't have as much software which supports PNG. That, plus animation, makes it a useful format for me.
In time I may switch to PNG. Who knows?
Killed the format? It's still one of the most common image formats on the web...
The only thing I know that might kill the format is the fact that it's limited to 256 colors.
"Blade Barriers are better," said the High Priest of Poseidon. It's the gift that keeps on giving. ;-)
Each university tends to have its own rules in the US. There is no "system"... :-)
Even better, OpenOffice 1.1.4 is a MyDSL package, so you don't even have to install Synaptic to get a copy installed on DSL.
Which version were you using that had no spreadsheet?
DSL comes with Synaptic, and can easily install OpenOffice or a number of other spreadsheets. I can't speak for the other two items as I have no interest in such capabilities.
Arrr, in Congress, July 4, 1776
:-)
The unanimous Declaration o' the thirteen united States o' America A pence for an old man o'de sea?
Ahoy, when in the Course o' human e'ents it becomes necessary for one people t' dissol'e the political bands which have connected them with another and t' assume among the powers o' the earth, the separate and equal station t' which the Laws o' Nature and o' Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect t' the opinions o' mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them t' the separation.
We hold these truths t' be self-e'ident, that all men be created equal, that they be endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these be Life, Liberty and the pursuit o' Happiness. -- That t' secure these rights, Go'ernments be instituted among Men, deri'in' their just powers from the consent o' the go'erned, -- That whene'er any Form o' Scalwags becomes destructi'e o' these ends, is the Right o' the People t' alter or t' abolish it, and t' institute new Rapscallions, layin' its foundation on such principles and organizin' its powers in such form, as t' them shall seem most likely t' effect their Safety and Happiness. Aye...
Etc.
"It's the game's fault. I'm just a pawn..."
Or the Integral Trees. :-)
No need to hold your breath -- it's been done already by a commercial DVR vendor, and the end result is still very much available. Just check out eBay for any 5000-series ReplayTV unit (not 5500-series, which dropped the auto-skip feature).
If you want to learn a little more about ReplayTV's current owner (who also owns of couple of other little brands called "Denon" and "Marantz), check out this web site... It ain't disappearing any time soon. :-)
Hey, my ReplayTV 5040 is still running (and skill skipping commercials automagicalyl) just fine. The service is still up and running, the firmware is still being updated periodically, the features are still intact, and you can still obtain units with lifetime memberships attached on eBay.
:-)
Stick to your Tivo if you really want to. I'm sticking with what I have.
You can tell it was a fairly big explosion, too, because Jamie flinched a bit when it went off, and he doesn't strike me as being the squeamish type.
Sorry, that's not correct. I also purchased a Philips CD recorder several years ago and special digital-music-specific CD-R media with which to make true digital copies of music CDs.
The music industry gets their cut from this, so I assume I'm free to duplicate CDs for MY OWN PERSONAL USE with that equipment and media.
That is the whole reason for its existence, and I have already paid for the privilege.
So what happens if they misindentify you (get the IP address wrong, the ISP gives them incorrect information, or whatever) but you happend to have tons of MP3/ogg files lying around that you ripped yourself and don't distribute?
How can you defend yourself?
I can point to retail CD copies that I own for EVERY SINGLE ONE of the thousands of MP3 files resident on my LAN, but is that (by itself) sufficient to stop the RIAA from suing my butt into oblivion based on inaccurate info?
Especially since the ripped MP3 copy is a lossy copy, in essence no different from the analog copies which were once (and are still?) allowed because of the AHRA?
An MP3 file is NOT a precise copy of the music.
It certainly is hypocritical, especially if those standards are so new (or so poorly implemented in mainstream browsers such as IE) that a large percentage of folks can't use the new version.
What ever happened to serving the lowest common denominator?? There's a REASON why many sites eschew CSS and other trendy UI-centric crap and focus instead on maximizing the ability to deliver information.
Slashdot is going the way of KDE and Gnome, with too much concentration on flashy UI elements and not enough concentration on service a diverse user base.
76 30 16 14 15 76 75 75 75 05
15 12 35 05 16 30 05 30 24 05
07 24 27 16 23 14 55 05 15 12
15 55 05 51 13 23 24 27 11 40
Some schools must be better than others. :-) I *still* use practical things that I learned in college from time to time, mainly related to structured code design and the breaking down of various problems using pseudocode, etc.
(I only knew a couple of BASIC and Fortran variants before I got to college, and I'd never designed anything larger than a few thousand lines of code, so some of that stuff was new to me. This was back in 1981, after all, when not everyone had access to programming classes, and self-taught Applesoft BASIC programmers like myself weren't really known for writing structured code ).
Yeah, but he wrote it in COBOL so it should be self-documenting... Right...?? :-)