Yes, social networking can work wonders. I know a lot of folks who've obtained job in that way, and I've gotten some interviews that way as well.
Just make sure that the folks you know are working in a variety of industries so if one of them gets hammered worldwide you aren't left up a creek without a paddle.:-)
I had very poor luck responding to job postings on various job sites (no interviews after more than 300 attempts), but very good luck with folks finding my resume online and contacting me (all five of my serious interviews came as a direct result of a headhunter or company rep finding my resume on a major job site).
Even older X-based desktop environments like KDE 2.2 will run just fine on a 32MB or 64MB PII box or even older boxes (like my PPros). X isn't that heavy -- it's bloated modern desktop environments like the current KDE incarnation that are heavy in terms of resource consumption.
I think people forget that PPro/PII hardware is two generations beyond hardware like the 486, and that such hardware is perfectly capable of performing most modern desktop and server tasks as long as you don't bog it down with bloatware. Add a little more RAM, and even the bloated desktops become less of an issue.
You don't need a 1GHz box to surf the net or use a spreadsheet...
Interesting. MCP running in an emulator on a PC. I could see that being potentially useful for development. Wish they had something similar for the 2200 side.
Windows was then scheduled for demolition right up to the point where a couple of smart guys saved the company by getting Windows to run in 32 bit mode. Microsoft throws their marketing muscle behind this new version of "Windows", and the rest is history.
Windows NT (the first 32-bit Windows release) came out on March 1st, 1994, and it didn't do very well at all in the market. It took the Windows 95 release in late 1995 to finally make folks realize that 32-bit Windows was a good idea -- by taking all choice away from them and making the 16-versions obsolete.
I know close to 100 former Unisys employees, and very few current ones. Layoffs have been a part of that company's corporate culture since Unisys was formed (via the takeove^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmerger of Sperry by^H^Hwith Burroughs), and many of the folks who are still there had better positions previously and are simply hanging on to whatever is available.
My wife worked for a while on a Help Desk at Unisys (MACS/InfoHub in Eagan), and morale there was absolutely terrible because most of the folks there were overqualified for help desk work, but it beat being unemployed.
The Unisys LZW patent was available to the public, and Unisys was enforcing the patent in other areas (e.g., communications) prior to the creation of the GIF format.
CompuServe simply dropped the ball by using LZW compression in their GIF image specification.
Unisys acted like a bunch of jerks after the fact, but they didn't start the fire. CIS did.
Disclaimer: I worked for Unisys for 4.5 years in the late 80's and early 90's, and I also knew a number of friends and acquaintances who were active in the shareware community (as I was on RIME and Fido) when the GIF controversy broke, so I may have a bias in either direction (or both ).
They come in two flavors, the OS2200 line (which is the descendant of the Sperry UNIVAC 1100-series), and the MCP line (which is the descendant of the Burroughs B-series and A-series). Nice boxes for those who need that kind of high-end legacy technology (airlines, banks, insurance companies, etc.).
I agree with the general sentiment -- programmers who aren't curious and who don't like to take things apart (either literally or figuratively) tend to be poor programmers, and people who lack even a basic sense of curiosity about their development environment will generally fail to learn much more about it than the minimum amount required to do their jobs.
I've worked with many of those people over the years, and it can be frustrating.
However, I'm not sure that maintaining one's own box is a valid measurement except in those cases where it actually means something.:-)
I've held four corporate software development/support positions over the past 17+ years, and I've never had a box under my own control that was even remotely similar architecturally to the machine/environment on which I was doing software development and support.
People aren't generally given their own mainframes or their own Sun boxes in the corporate environments I've been a part of -- instead, they use their own local Mac or PC to access a centrally-administered development hardware.
On the other hand, I also tend to learn about and hack whatever I can both at work and at home, which is why I have my own custom editor and various other utilities in the mainframe environment here, why I'm wandering out and bringing in various utilities to try to make my life under Solaris easier and more efficient, and why I'm constantly asking questions of the systems support people that they often can't answer. Too many people are content to use the default/minimal toolsets, and while that often works quite well, there are times when those tools really suck compared to stuff other sites have developed and are actively using.
The software development world is a series of isolated ponds, and too many people are content to play in the shallows when there are *boats* sailing around out there...:-(
You're not a developer if you can't even maintain your own machine.
Most of the serious UNIX and mainframe environments I've worked in over the years kept the sysadmin and application software development functions completely separate.
The functions were performed by different groups in the IT department, and were populated by completely different people.
This often makes sense, since the skillsets required to admin a box tend to be completely different than the skillsets required to design/code/test/support applications software.
So do you also implicitly agree to support anything the users want to have installed?
Our Solaris sysadmins have a better (IMO) policy on our development servers:
(1) They will install software packages on request if a few users have a legitimate need or if it's otherwise considered to be really important for a product/project.
(2) If you, as a user, want to install something nonstandard, go ahead and figure out how to do it, but you have to support it yourself. I've done this with tools like mc, DDD, vim, and a number of other utilities I consider useful.
(3) Software installed by individual users will be removed if it causes any issues.
That's for DEV boxes, though. QA and Production servers are locked down tight, and only #1 applies, but they tend to be extremely fussy about what is allowed (almost nothing).
I was thinking more along the lines of experienced but unemployed programmers in their 30's or 40's who are starting to hit their financial limits due to lack of elmpoyment and who currently have house payments and families.
Perhaps those people aren't your targetted demographic. These days, however, they make up a sizable percentage of the IT folks looking for work.
While I was looking for work a year ago, "telling the employers" was much easier said than done.
Most of the folks I was able to contact fell into the following general categories:
(1) Fellow unemployed IT workers who were also looking for work. They understood and mostly concurred with me, at least for the most part, but that was of little value in the short term.
(2) Friends, relatives, and aquaintences I knew who were still employed in IT. Most of them also understood, but were not in a postion to do much about it (either by being individual contributors with no hiring authority or by having no openings/hiring budget).
(3) Reps for contracting and headhunting firms of various types. Most of these folks made sympathetic noises and many appreciated the circumstances that so many unemployed IT folks were in, but their hands were typically tied by client or contract requirements.
(4) Actual HR people or hiring manage types. Most of the time I was able to talk to people like this was during some point in an ongoing interview process, and those were few and far between. If they hadn't already decided they wanted to talk to you, there was no (apparent) communications channel available.
Both the airline I worked for in the past and the company I'm currently working for seem to value people and general IT experience very highly, so that's a positive thing.
Ground yourself in fundamentals rather than just one technology or language. Language wars are silly because a good engineer can learn a language easily.
Most programmers know this to be true, at least in the general case.
Unfortunately, it seems that many employers do not.:-(
Yes, I'm still using those systems from 1997 for gaming. A 64MB PPro/200 with a 12MB Voodoo2 plays the original UT at 800x600, Tribes 1 at 640x400, and Total Annihilation, and those are all games I still play on those boxes.
No -- I just find it to be a more convenient way to browse when reading news sites like/., OSNews, Linux Today, Google News, etc., because the content is mostly text, and a text web browser provides me with a fast and uniform viewing experience. I don't have to worry about weird font colors, layouts, etc.
*Microsoft* (not IBM) charged over US$1000 for the OS/2 1.x SDK back before the IBM/MS split, and they ended up screwing over a large number of potential OS/2 developers by announcing and then never releasing the last version. IBM's independent OS/2 efforts had to overcome the bad taste MS left in the mouths of developers, which made an otherwise difficult selling job even harder.
Microsoft also withheld developer resources and key Windows programming information from companies that were doing cross-platform application development.
US$300 means nothing to even a small business developer, but losing access to key developer programs can really hurt in a competitive market.
Not only did Windows have an advantage in terms of the number of applications available for it, but MS went out of its way to ensure that folks who were developing key apps for Windows kept their apps only on Windows.
WordPerfect 5.x for OS/2 died in the late beta stages as a direct result of MS actions, as did several OS/2Windows development tools like those developed by Borland and Micrografx.
Whether or not the conduct was illegal isn't too important -- the fact of the matter is that MS was quite proactive in screwing over its competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, social networking can work wonders. I know a lot of folks who've obtained job in that way, and I've gotten some interviews that way as well.
:-)
Just make sure that the folks you know are working in a variety of industries so if one of them gets hammered worldwide you aren't left up a creek without a paddle.
I had very poor luck responding to job postings on various job sites (no interviews after more than 300 attempts), but very good luck with folks finding my resume online and contacting me (all five of my serious interviews came as a direct result of a headhunter or company rep finding my resume on a major job site).
Even older X-based desktop environments like KDE 2.2 will run just fine on a 32MB or 64MB PII box or even older boxes (like my PPros). X isn't that heavy -- it's bloated modern desktop environments like the current KDE incarnation that are heavy in terms of resource consumption.
I think people forget that PPro/PII hardware is two generations beyond hardware like the 486, and that such hardware is perfectly capable of performing most modern desktop and server tasks as long as you don't bog it down with bloatware. Add a little more RAM, and even the bloated desktops become less of an issue.
You don't need a 1GHz box to surf the net or use a spreadsheet...
Interesting. MCP running in an emulator on a PC. I could see that being potentially useful for development. Wish they had something similar for the 2200 side.
Windows was then scheduled for demolition right up to the point where a couple of smart guys saved the company by getting Windows to run in 32 bit mode. Microsoft throws their marketing muscle behind this new version of "Windows", and the rest is history.
Windows NT (the first 32-bit Windows release) came out on March 1st, 1994, and it didn't do very well at all in the market. It took the Windows 95 release in late 1995 to finally make folks realize that 32-bit Windows was a good idea -- by taking all choice away from them and making the 16-versions obsolete.
I know close to 100 former Unisys employees, and very few current ones. Layoffs have been a part of that company's corporate culture since Unisys was formed (via the takeove^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmerger of Sperry by^H^Hwith Burroughs), and many of the folks who are still there had better positions previously and are simply hanging on to whatever is available.
My wife worked for a while on a Help Desk at Unisys (MACS/InfoHub in Eagan), and morale there was absolutely terrible because most of the folks there were overqualified for help desk work, but it beat being unemployed.
The Unisys LZW patent was available to the public, and Unisys was enforcing the patent in other areas (e.g., communications) prior to the creation of the GIF format.
CompuServe simply dropped the ball by using LZW compression in their GIF image specification.
Unisys acted like a bunch of jerks after the fact, but they didn't start the fire. CIS did.
Some supporting information
Disclaimer: I worked for Unisys for 4.5 years in the late 80's and early 90's, and I also knew a number of friends and acquaintances who were active in the shareware community (as I was on RIME and Fido) when the GIF controversy broke, so I may have a bias in either direction (or both ).
For the curious, the Clearpath Dorado (running a mixture of OS2200 and x86 processors) is 69" tall, 48" deep, 27" wide, and weighs 1200 lbs.
The largest Clearpath Libra on the first spec sheet (running a mixure of MCP and x86 processors) is 69" tall, 43" deep, 27" wide, and 1160 lbs.
Such CMOS mainframes are smaller than their predecesors, but they aren't desktop boxes.
I'm curious what you've seen? Some sort of MCP emulator?
These are Unisys Clearpath servers:
Picture #1
Picture #2
Clearpath Home Page
Clearpath Dorado OS2200 Home
Clearpath Dorado Specification Sheets
Sample Spec Sheet
Clearpath Libra MCP Home Page
Clearpath Libra Specification Sheets
Sample Spec Sheet
Not much relationship to Dell boxes, I'm afraid.
They come in two flavors, the OS2200 line (which is the descendant of the Sperry UNIVAC 1100-series), and the MCP line (which is the descendant of the Burroughs B-series and A-series). Nice boxes for those who need that kind of high-end legacy technology (airlines, banks, insurance companies, etc.).
That might be a thing to do anyway just as a sanity check...
I agree with the general sentiment -- programmers who aren't curious and who don't like to take things apart (either literally or figuratively) tend to be poor programmers, and people who lack even a basic sense of curiosity about their development environment will generally fail to learn much more about it than the minimum amount required to do their jobs.
:-)
:-(
I've worked with many of those people over the years, and it can be frustrating.
However, I'm not sure that maintaining one's own box is a valid measurement except in those cases where it actually means something.
I've held four corporate software development/support positions over the past 17+ years, and I've never had a box under my own control that was even remotely similar architecturally to the machine/environment on which I was doing software development and support.
People aren't generally given their own mainframes or their own Sun boxes in the corporate environments I've been a part of -- instead, they use their own local Mac or PC to access a centrally-administered development hardware.
On the other hand, I also tend to learn about and hack whatever I can both at work and at home, which is why I have my own custom editor and various other utilities in the mainframe environment here, why I'm wandering out and bringing in various utilities to try to make my life under Solaris easier and more efficient, and why I'm constantly asking questions of the systems support people that they often can't answer. Too many people are content to use the default/minimal toolsets, and while that often works quite well, there are times when those tools really suck compared to stuff other sites have developed and are actively using.
The software development world is a series of isolated ponds, and too many people are content to play in the shallows when there are *boats* sailing around out there...
You're not a developer if you can't even maintain your own machine.
Most of the serious UNIX and mainframe environments I've worked in over the years kept the sysadmin and application software development functions completely separate.
The functions were performed by different groups in the IT department, and were populated by completely different people.
This often makes sense, since the skillsets required to admin a box tend to be completely different than the skillsets required to design/code/test/support applications software.
So do you also implicitly agree to support anything the users want to have installed?
Our Solaris sysadmins have a better (IMO) policy on our development servers:
(1) They will install software packages on request if a few users have a legitimate need or if it's otherwise considered to be really important for a product/project.
(2) If you, as a user, want to install something nonstandard, go ahead and figure out how to do it, but you have to support it yourself. I've done this with tools like mc, DDD, vim, and a number of other utilities I consider useful.
(3) Software installed by individual users will be removed if it causes any issues.
That's for DEV boxes, though. QA and Production servers are locked down tight, and only #1 applies, but they tend to be extremely fussy about what is allowed (almost nothing).
...having a GIMP 10th Anniversary Interface Redesign Contest?
I was thinking more along the lines of experienced but unemployed programmers in their 30's or 40's who are starting to hit their financial limits due to lack of elmpoyment and who currently have house payments and families.
Perhaps those people aren't your targetted demographic. These days, however, they make up a sizable percentage of the IT folks looking for work.
While I was looking for work a year ago, "telling the employers" was much easier said than done.
Most of the folks I was able to contact fell into the following general categories:
(1) Fellow unemployed IT workers who were also looking for work. They understood and mostly concurred with me, at least for the most part, but that was of little value in the short term.
(2) Friends, relatives, and aquaintences I knew who were still employed in IT. Most of them also understood, but were not in a postion to do much about it (either by being individual contributors with no hiring authority or by having no openings/hiring budget).
(3) Reps for contracting and headhunting firms of various types. Most of these folks made sympathetic noises and many appreciated the circumstances that so many unemployed IT folks were in, but their hands were typically tied by client or contract requirements.
(4) Actual HR people or hiring manage types. Most of the time I was able to talk to people like this was during some point in an ongoing interview process, and those were few and far between. If they hadn't already decided they wanted to talk to you, there was no (apparent) communications channel available.
Both the airline I worked for in the past and the company I'm currently working for seem to value people and general IT experience very highly, so that's a positive thing.
Ground yourself in fundamentals rather than just one technology or language. Language wars are silly because a good engineer can learn a language easily.
:-(
Most programmers know this to be true, at least in the general case.
Unfortunately, it seems that many employers do not.
Of course, "IT specialist" is generalized enough that it doesn't really mean anything. :-)
How do the workers survive on minimum wage between bonuses? Are the project small enough that monthly expenses can still be made?
Yes, I'm still using those systems from 1997 for gaming. A 64MB PPro/200 with a 12MB Voodoo2 plays the original UT at 800x600, Tribes 1 at 640x400, and Total Annihilation, and those are all games I still play on those boxes.
No -- I just find it to be a more convenient way to browse when reading news sites like /., OSNews, Linux Today, Google News, etc., because the content is mostly text, and a text web browser provides me with a fast and uniform viewing experience. I don't have to worry about weird font colors, layouts, etc.
The systems I purchased in 1996 and 1997 have only PCI and ISA slots (AGP did not exist at that point in time).
*Microsoft* (not IBM) charged over US$1000 for the OS/2 1.x SDK back before the IBM/MS split, and they ended up screwing over a large number of potential OS/2 developers by announcing and then never releasing the last version. IBM's independent OS/2 efforts had to overcome the bad taste MS left in the mouths of developers, which made an otherwise difficult selling job even harder.
Microsoft also withheld developer resources and key Windows programming information from companies that were doing cross-platform application development.
US$300 means nothing to even a small business developer, but losing access to key developer programs can really hurt in a competitive market.
Not only did Windows have an advantage in terms of the number of applications available for it, but MS went out of its way to ensure that folks who were developing key apps for Windows kept their apps only on Windows.
WordPerfect 5.x for OS/2 died in the late beta stages as a direct result of MS actions, as did several OS/2Windows development tools like those developed by Borland and Micrografx.
Whether or not the conduct was illegal isn't too important -- the fact of the matter is that MS was quite proactive in screwing over its competition.
Seriously. I do most of my browsing via Links 0.99 on a 21" monitor in text mode.
I tend to use either 1600x1200 or 1280x1024 on GUIs, but that also varies (some of my older 17" monitors are limited to 1024x768).