You can also just run your own DNS server with whatever TLDs you want, and point them to whichever zone authority you want. Point.COM at the Internic servers to keep it the same, or point it somewhere else to make it be different. You can make the decision different for each TLD, leave some out, or add more (maybe lots more). You don't have to set up world-wide DNS to do this as it can be done in whatever DNS server(s) you now use for resolving names now. The load doesn't increase by doing this; in fact it decreases slightly because one level of lookup is bypassed.
Click on http://grs.ipal.net/ to see what I set up a couple years ago to build zone files for this kind of thing.
If you run a DNS server, it is you who has handed DNS control to the corporations. Take a look at your root hints file in the DNS configuration. That basically says "let the control start there". And you point at the corporations. To take control back, just gather where NS records for TLDs you want to keep using are pointing to, then fill in what you want for the others, and add whatever you want. Restart your DNS server and enjoy the new control.
In a variation of Make spoofed packets illegal simply block outbound packets from your network that have a source address other than from your network. While this can be a big problem for core routers, it's really only needed at borders to other administrations. Logic could be added to inspect incoming packets by applying routing lookup to the source address. If the incoming interface is valid (not necessarily best, but at least valid) for the incoming packet, then it's OK. Otherwise discard it. Linux 2.4 now has this in the kernel. I've heard Cisco IOS has a form of this, too. It should be made to be the default configuration.
Whether you choose Slackware or some other distribution depends on what you want from your system. What Slackware is good for is stability. It intentionally avoids having the latest greatest untested versions. Other distributions focus on trying to have the very latest of everything (and Debian probably succeeds the best at that). Some people want the latest. Some people want the stable stuff. I'm in the latter category, having used SLS, Slackware, Redhat, Suse, OpenBSD, Solaris, and many other unixen ages ago. My preferences now are for Slackware and OpenBSD. The only reason I'll still be running a couple Solaris machines is for compiling and testing some code I wrote. For my servers, it's Slackware and OpenBSD.
How will Bastille allow users to treat their computer and network security as a "process" (as Bruce Schneier is quoted to say). Are there tools to help users deal with security "events"?
I just looked at documents 1 through 5 above. The company may classify them as trade secrets, but there is really nothing worth even keeping secret in them. That's pretty much a standard business practice. If you break things, you pay for them. The company really was not ripping people off in those procedures. Perhaps CLUELESS reps were not executing things correctly. And most certainly the company management is blowing things all out of proportion by their reaction. But then, PHB's are pretty vile people, anyway.
If the project is small enough that one person can do it, and also could have written the code you submitted for themselves had they thought of that and liked the idea, they would. OTOH, larger projects which need a team of people thrive on contributions. I think we're simply going to see some both, and probably a lot more of the smaller personal projects that indeed do scratch an itch. I know I'm doing a few of the latter myself, although a coming one is destined to be much larger than I can alone ultimately handle, so I will have to decide how to deal with that when the time comes.
As for good clean code, opinions do differ. I've debated with a programmer who persistently releases code without comments that I find hard to read, and he was of the strong belief that his style was the very best. To him, comments just got in the way of seeing what the real code really does. While I still personally insist on good comments that explain and add to the code (as opposed to redundant comments, which are evil), his arguments have made me at least be careful about overcommenting. The point is, what constitutes good code, and good programming, and good design, is in fact something so many of us all have different opinions about. These differences are one of the factors that causes more than one project with the same apparent end goal (not to be confused with different virtual requirements, e.g. KDE vs Gnome).
If you want to tell me your opinion of my coding/programming style, one sample is here. If you disagree with my style, then I'm almost sure to disagree with yours. But isn't that the way it's supposed to be:-)
Q: Could Linux have ever been the result of a commercial project requirement? BSD? Apache?
Q: Could any commercial requirement ever have resulted in what we have today as Linux? BSD? Apache?
IMHO, certain things simply could not be developed in a commercial requirement scenario, and most certainly not if there was no open source movement. Your thoughts?
I sure hope tux2 is capable of at least 2^31 or 2^32 * blocksize. I don't see why it wouldn't be. OTOH, if it's cleanly enough written, you should be able to redefine a few macros and have a version capable of 2^63 or 2^64 * blocksize, and with larger blocks, too.
Other limitations on size, such as limiting a single file to 2GB tend to be more a problem with API's trying to conform to standards (you have to be able to address a location in a file via the API to the byte level, including negative values for relative seeking), and using the variable type called off_t, which probably could not have been equated to the type long long (though the new C99 now makes that a standard one).
From what I recall, ext, which came before ext2, meant "extended", and probably refers to going upwards from the rather limited minix. The filesystem in use by BSD may have at that time still been a licensing issue.
I have not even read most of the other posts but I did read the article. So I'll post off the cuff hoping to get an intelligent respose. It's not just that older workers are discriminated against, regardless of their skills, but that a corporate culture exists which rewards mediocrity and punishes skill. Contrary to what most of you assert here - that people with the right skills are in high demand regardless of age, what is in demand is someone who simply "conforms" and has done nothing outstanding, because doing something outstanding marks you as "unusual" or "risky". There are exceptions at the very high end - the very top 1% of programmers who have achieved "fame" for contributions to free software, etc., but these exceptions are VERY few.
There is demand for people who can make things happen. And suits do think that means high-tech skills. And indeed high-tech skills could do it were it not for the bureaucracy ingrained into so many corporations that effectively squashes any ability to do this. A few months ago I reported a bug on the web site of a major high tech company. I did get a followup inquiry back, and explained the problem further and gave a solution. They told me they didn't have the authority to fix the problem, but would try to contact someone at another office who handled the contracting to a web site development company who had contractors doing the work. I could tell that company was in a mess. I know I wouldn't want to work there (and no, it was not Apple).
If you do currently have a job in IT, chances are that you are very mediocre, and that you are falsely holding a position based on padding your resume and fitting a certain social stereotype and that you are depriving someone who does have the needed skills of a job. Look, I've been working or was working in the field for years. It's been my observation that those who advance in pay and status have not been the "nerds" but those who don't even enjoy coding and software design. These become "software architects" and "senior analysts" but they really are just suits who started out as coders. And, if you don't move up into management or at least into project management you get moved out.
I recently changed jobs. It doesn't fit that profile at all. But I've worked in the past for places that have lots of people just as you describe. I do believe what you say.
Well, how does anything get accomplished if things are this way? Managers know that 7 out of 10 programmers are just dead weight but that a few, perhaps 3 out of ten, will see that the job gets done. It's all based on statistics. Because there are PLENTY of talented people seeking employment, a few of these will get hired by chance in any organization, even though most people hired will be of little value to the project. But management makes no conenction between that statistical probability and the specific individuals who make up those numbers. Hiring, promotion, and firing have nothing whatsoever to do with skills, contribution to the sucesss of a project or with having a truly helpful attitude.
It's all about whose nose gets the brownest.
I was regarded as a "nerd" who was very competent and helpful by coworkers, long before being a nerd became popular. But I did rub some people the wrong way. So does anyone who is a real human being. As I got older and I decided to take a relatively short vacation from programming for a living ( having accumulated some savings). Then when I tried to get back into the work force I found it impossible, despite the fact that my current skills are much higher than those of most people in their 20's who seem to be in high demand.
Right now I'm working on one of the biggest and baddest free software projects for no pay. The other people on the team have no idea how old I am but still think my code is good enough. Yet, most of the people I know or know of who are making big bucks in commercial software would NEVER have their code accepted by this project or even know where to start. But the are good at kissing behinds and finding someone else to blame when things go wrong. Definitely senior software architect material!
Send me your resume. If you can't crack my e-mail, you wouldn't qualify:-)
This industry is ruled by hype, deciet and envy of those with real skills and real personalities. It's about a phony as the rest of corporate culture. Fortunately, I can derive some pleasure from coding and developing FREE software which is the BEST IN THE WORLD but I have to make a living doing something else.
And there's probably some resentment over the fact that the Internet caught nearly every business by surprise, and it's us techies who actually created it.
Maybe that is a blessing in disguise. Who knows whether I would REALLY have the skills neeeded to contribute to free software if I had a successful career in "the industry". Probably not.
Soon, every job field will have a shortage of qualified people, while millions and millions of people sit around unemployed (and are not collecting experience).
I have to disagree... there is no shortage. But there is a gap. There are enough people out there to fill every one of the over a million job openings. The problem is communications and perception. There is also the problem that many of the jobs are junk jobs (mostly the 3rd party contract jobs).
Why are you wanting to hire a QA engineer to sit and follow an existing test plan, instead of developing them? That's not an engineer's job. That's a test TECHNICIAN. I would not have taken said job for any LESS than $150k because it's TOO LOW for me (yes, my demand goes UP for mismatched jobs, even for lower level ones).
The market rate is NOT that high. Salary expectations are. The reason is because there really is an available supply of people. If companies would start hiring from the available supply, instead of nit picking and whining, then salary expectations would not really be high because there would not be that massive number of job openings. If you look around all the various web sites, there are probably well over a million high-tech openings in just the USA alone. THAT sets very high expectations by people because they see it as if there is an IT shortage when in fact there is no shortage of AVAILABLE people. There is just a shortage of what companies are currently willing to hire (like someone with 5+ years experience with C#).
The simple solution for Corporate America is to NOT have so many job openings. Make the jobs themselves look as scarce as their tendencies to hire really are. Then people will expect less, and they can hire them for less.
There is a shortage of clueful corporate executives and HR directors.
If they can't afford to hire someone who can make the difference in how effective their organization operates, then maybe they're paying the executives way too much.
The pay scale should vary by experience, and it will be influenced by how much experience does value a business. The high pay is expected because some businesses are indeed paying that. They are paying that because they recognize that they need to have the clueful person on staff to make a difference in their company. The probably hired them away from someone company that just didn't give a damn. The problem is that other company won't change.
I wouldn't want to work for Intel anyway. I know they have some good people working there, but the quality of their products is going downhill, so it must be the silly bureaucracy of the company. It's already obvious based on some of the lame answers I get on their own USENET site from people that I know actually know the right answers, but aren't allowed to tell the truth. So if Intel complains about lack of IT workers, what they are really complaining about is lack of secretaries with CS or EE degrees.
With more Americans not getting programmer jobs, and more H1B workers taking them instead, and going back home after they can't, or won't, work here anymore, there will come to be a new and real shortage... of people who have actual long term programing experience to take jobs as project leaders and managers. We'll be effectively sending that experience overseas.
The worker shortage might well be real in California. Those who live there love it, until they discover it is cheaper to live somewhere else (unless they are stuck with golden handcuffs). Those who don't live there don't want to go there.
Here's how to figure it whether the salary worthwhile, in my opinion. Starting where the job is located, draw rings (not exactly round) on the map at 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes and 40 minutes, for average commute time one way. Now find out what the median (not average) home price is for the areas within the ring (but not including the ones in the inner ring for outer ones). Multiply the median for the 10-20 minute range by 1.333, the 20-30 minute range by 1.667, and the 30-40 minute range by 2. Now average these 4 numbers together. Now determine the ratio of salary to the average.
Now figure out this ratio not only in Boston, but in other areas, including suburbs of Boston, and other cities in the country. You can change the times and multiplies to match up with different levels of importance for different lifestyles but the above is probably a decent starting point.
Different kinds of jobs will have different ratios, of course. A programming job should get at least 0.5. In California, the ratios are much lower due to extremely inflated housing prices. Shift the pricing to apartment lease rates for a different perspective on it (California still loses). Is Boston somewhere peope really want to live in?
Well, I'm an H-1B in US, working for a non-profit. I'm paid mostly within 90% of the market rate. Oh yes, I'm from India as well:-) It is always the money that matters in these things. We are paid better here than in India, and employer gets a hard working person for little less. Because of H-1B terms (which are now changing), the employer is surer to keep the employee for a little more time.
Why are you not getting 100% of the market rate? Is it because you're willing to accept 90% because back home you'd get way less than that? I don't blame you for coming here. There certainly are opportunities here. I just wish you'd demand that 100%. I'm assuming your skills and experience justify it, if not more.
Very few Americans who are CS degree holders want to be programming after 5 years on the job. A lot less number of folks from other background who just had some HTML-ASP course want to actually do coding for more than a year. Everyone wants to be an analyst or coordinator or manager or the idea guy. If they need to code, they are unhappy and thanks to the citizenship, they can easily change jobs - that said, I've really seen employee shortage atleast around DC area. And many American companies' IT departments seldom follow any kind of written standards for software projects - I'm talking about companies with primary business NOT being software development. This makes it very difficult to cope up with a change in work force. what corporate America needs is experienced work force and some decent HR policies to keep them.
Many corporations, maybe most corporations, really treat people badly, and often have no clue that this is what is going on. Right out of college, people are very gung-ho about working in high-tech, and are willing to work 80 hours for 40 hours pay. But within 5 years most realize they are getting shafted by corporations in the process. Many are married by then, and those that aren't realize the hours are why they aren't.
I suspect one reason people want to be the analyst or the idea person is because they often are working where the "ideas" come from PHBs who are clueless about the technology. I've personally experienced this a few times where the "ideas" were totally lame, totally without vision, and doomed to fail. Their only defense is they use the old argue "If you assume it will fail, it will fail". But assuming success cannot make a bad idea work. If better ideas were being worked on in a corporation, maybe people would be happy to stick around and make them work. If managers would work directly with the techies to come up with ideas, I think that would help a lot.
Corporate America really can keep their work force, and keep not only the technical experience but also the company experience, by creating a decent job atmosphere to work in, and compensating people at market levels (even if it means a programmer makes more money than the manager he works for).
My suggestions:
1. No need to increase the H-1B cap, this just makes it worse.
I'd agree with this.
2. Relax the H-1B restrictions so that changing employers are easier. Isn't America built upon the principles of competition? This will help keep the pay higher, and will certainly make employers see the light in hiring experienced American employees.
That makes sense, too
3. After 6 years on H-1B, one needs to take an year out of USA. Lift this restriction. This will help the employers and employees financially.
I don't know that it will make much difference one way or the other. It certainly would make for more continuity.
4. And for God's sake, before any one starts on an IT project, have a plan before the first line of code is written or the first resource is committed.
Absolutely! But I don't know if Corporate America knows how to do this. They certainly aren't listening to the suggestions from techies.
About the report of the Professor, it just seems like a political rhetoric, in tune with the rest of the world. I say this because before USA, I had worked in Europe, Middle East and Japan. And India. Similar sons-of-soil preachers are on the rise there too. It makes sense about a small % of H-1Bs are really really good though. And that the emphasis should be made on general programming talent and learnability.
I certainly think all borders should be open for people to go work wherever they want, if a job is available (e.g. all you need to get in is a job offer). And it does seem like what companies in America are wanting, and getting, is not really a true workforce, but just a team of slave labor. This is due to the restrictions that exist which effectively pin people into one job. It would be nice if you didn't have to leave your home country to get a decent job. I'd like to see you be able to go back to India (if that's where you ultimately want to live) and start a business, create jobs, and help the economy there.
One other thing I see wrong with Corporate America is that they don't know how to go about communicating with techies to even find people that they might hire. Recruitment is in a sorry state right now, and the job web sites don't help at all.
But that violence is already in human nature. Most of the manifestations are in the form of flaming. Rarely does it reach real life, but it does happen. What's scary about it to older people is that they really don't understand it, and they don't understand or see all the overwhelming good the Internet is doing, and how miniscule a part of it all that this real violence actually is.
There are cases of Internet induced violence. One incident in Texas that George W. may have on his mind involved a meeting by e-mail and an eventual murder. In another case from Oregon I'm sure you all know about, it has been documented that Kip Kinkle was downloading lots of weaponry and satanic related material on the Internet.
Blaming the Internet is wrong, of course. The problem is ourselves. The Internet is just a very efficient communications medium. And the important thing is that we need to keep it all in perspective; the Internet is bringing far more value to our lives, our economy, and our society, than it is bringing these few problems. If we can find ways to addresses these problems without harming the good, then I'm for that.
You can find the stats on car deaths per year. Those exceed the Internet deaths per year. But we don't doubt the value of having cars. We are not proposing to ban cars (well, most of us aren't). The Internet is nowhere near as bad as cars in terms of the negative, and in fact it may well help reduce the negative of cars by its very being.
Maybe Bob doesn't get it because he's not really paying attention to what his company is doing.
Redhat, the company, is going about setting up deals with many businesses, such as Dell and IBM, in ways that cause them to prefer the Redhat distribution over others. What Microsoft has done in the past, and what I compare Redhat with, is the practice of trying to make sure that I have no choice in OS for my computers. In the case of Redhat, it's no choice of distribution.
This is different than encouraging some company to offer Linux, and Redhat, with their hardware. These are cases where the hardware vendor will refuse to support their hardware problems when the software being run isn't Redhat (or Windows).
Bob, if you want to be a better member of the Linux community, then work to encourage hardware vendors to not just support Redhat, but to also support their hardware with not just any distribution running the Linux kernel, but other operating systems, such as xxxxBSD, as well.
That would be nice if it could happen. In reality banks are run by PHB's who buy Microsoft whnever they don't think about what it is they are buying into, which is never, anyway. They will bite the M$ song hook, line and sinker when M$ tells the bank that IE is just being extra secure for places like banks. The PHB won't analyze it to see if there is any merit to the statement; he'll just switch to what works with IE, and quite possibly wonder about restricting access to IE only.
Performance might be nice. Reliability and security (as in no buffer holes for script kiddies) are certainly important. However, simplified visual interfaces are not my forté. Can Zeus be administered in the most literal and detailed sense?
Slashdot Mirror
You can also just run your own DNS server with whatever TLDs you want, and point them to whichever zone authority you want. Point .COM at the Internic servers to keep it the same, or point it somewhere else to make it be different. You can make the decision different for each TLD, leave some out, or add more (maybe lots more). You don't have to set up world-wide DNS to do this as it can be done in whatever DNS server(s) you now use for resolving names now. The load doesn't increase by doing this; in fact it decreases slightly because one level of lookup is bypassed.
Click on http://grs.ipal.net/ to see what I set up a couple years ago to build zone files for this kind of thing.
If you run a DNS server, it is you who has handed DNS control to the corporations. Take a look at your root hints file in the DNS configuration. That basically says "let the control start there". And you point at the corporations. To take control back, just gather where NS records for TLDs you want to keep using are pointing to, then fill in what you want for the others, and add whatever you want. Restart your DNS server and enjoy the new control.
In a variation of Make spoofed packets illegal simply block outbound packets from your network that have a source address other than from your network. While this can be a big problem for core routers, it's really only needed at borders to other administrations. Logic could be added to inspect incoming packets by applying routing lookup to the source address. If the incoming interface is valid (not necessarily best, but at least valid) for the incoming packet, then it's OK. Otherwise discard it. Linux 2.4 now has this in the kernel. I've heard Cisco IOS has a form of this, too. It should be made to be the default configuration.
Whether you choose Slackware or some other distribution depends on what you want from your system. What Slackware is good for is stability. It intentionally avoids having the latest greatest untested versions. Other distributions focus on trying to have the very latest of everything (and Debian probably succeeds the best at that). Some people want the latest. Some people want the stable stuff. I'm in the latter category, having used SLS, Slackware, Redhat, Suse, OpenBSD, Solaris, and many other unixen ages ago. My preferences now are for Slackware and OpenBSD. The only reason I'll still be running a couple Solaris machines is for compiling and testing some code I wrote. For my servers, it's Slackware and OpenBSD.
How will Bastille allow users to treat their computer and network security as a "process" (as Bruce Schneier is quoted to say). Are there tools to help users deal with security "events"?
I just looked at documents 1 through 5 above. The company may classify them as trade secrets, but there is really nothing worth even keeping secret in them. That's pretty much a standard business practice. If you break things, you pay for them. The company really was not ripping people off in those procedures. Perhaps CLUELESS reps were not executing things correctly. And most certainly the company management is blowing things all out of proportion by their reaction. But then, PHB's are pretty vile people, anyway.
WTF is so confidential about that? The MANAGEMENT at @HOME are the ones who are clueless (but then, we knew that already).
If the project is small enough that one person can do it, and also could have written the code you submitted for themselves had they thought of that and liked the idea, they would. OTOH, larger projects which need a team of people thrive on contributions. I think we're simply going to see some both, and probably a lot more of the smaller personal projects that indeed do scratch an itch. I know I'm doing a few of the latter myself, although a coming one is destined to be much larger than I can alone ultimately handle, so I will have to decide how to deal with that when the time comes.
As for good clean code, opinions do differ. I've debated with a programmer who persistently releases code without comments that I find hard to read, and he was of the strong belief that his style was the very best. To him, comments just got in the way of seeing what the real code really does. While I still personally insist on good comments that explain and add to the code (as opposed to redundant comments, which are evil), his arguments have made me at least be careful about overcommenting. The point is, what constitutes good code, and good programming, and good design, is in fact something so many of us all have different opinions about. These differences are one of the factors that causes more than one project with the same apparent end goal (not to be confused with different virtual requirements, e.g. KDE vs Gnome).
If you want to tell me your opinion of my coding/programming style, one sample is here. If you disagree with my style, then I'm almost sure to disagree with yours. But isn't that the way it's supposed to be :-)
Q: Could Linux have ever been the result of a commercial project requirement? BSD? Apache?
Q: Could any commercial requirement ever have resulted in what we have today as Linux? BSD? Apache?
IMHO, certain things simply could not be developed in a commercial requirement scenario, and most certainly not if there was no open source movement. Your thoughts?
I sure hope tux2 is capable of at least 2^31 or 2^32 * blocksize. I don't see why it wouldn't be. OTOH, if it's cleanly enough written, you should be able to redefine a few macros and have a version capable of 2^63 or 2^64 * blocksize, and with larger blocks, too.
Other limitations on size, such as limiting a single file to 2GB tend to be more a problem with API's trying to conform to standards (you have to be able to address a location in a file via the API to the byte level, including negative values for relative seeking), and using the variable type called off_t, which probably could not have been equated to the type long long (though the new C99 now makes that a standard one).
From what I recall, ext, which came before ext2, meant "extended", and probably refers to going upwards from the rather limited minix. The filesystem in use by BSD may have at that time still been a licensing issue.
There is demand for people who can make things happen. And suits do think that means high-tech skills. And indeed high-tech skills could do it were it not for the bureaucracy ingrained into so many corporations that effectively squashes any ability to do this. A few months ago I reported a bug on the web site of a major high tech company. I did get a followup inquiry back, and explained the problem further and gave a solution. They told me they didn't have the authority to fix the problem, but would try to contact someone at another office who handled the contracting to a web site development company who had contractors doing the work. I could tell that company was in a mess. I know I wouldn't want to work there (and no, it was not Apple).
I recently changed jobs. It doesn't fit that profile at all. But I've worked in the past for places that have lots of people just as you describe. I do believe what you say.
It's all about whose nose gets the brownest.
Send me your resume. If you can't crack my e-mail, you wouldn't qualify :-)
And there's probably some resentment over the fact that the Internet caught nearly every business by surprise, and it's us techies who actually created it.
Or maybe you just wouldn't "fit in" :-)
Soon, every job field will have a shortage of qualified people, while millions and millions of people sit around unemployed (and are not collecting experience).
I have to disagree ... there is no shortage. But there is a gap. There are enough people out there to fill every one of the over a million job openings. The problem is communications and perception. There is also the problem that many of the jobs are junk jobs (mostly the 3rd party contract jobs).
Why are you wanting to hire a QA engineer to sit and follow an existing test plan, instead of developing them? That's not an engineer's job. That's a test TECHNICIAN. I would not have taken said job for any LESS than $150k because it's TOO LOW for me (yes, my demand goes UP for mismatched jobs, even for lower level ones).
The market rate is NOT that high. Salary expectations are. The reason is because there really is an available supply of people. If companies would start hiring from the available supply, instead of nit picking and whining, then salary expectations would not really be high because there would not be that massive number of job openings. If you look around all the various web sites, there are probably well over a million high-tech openings in just the USA alone. THAT sets very high expectations by people because they see it as if there is an IT shortage when in fact there is no shortage of AVAILABLE people. There is just a shortage of what companies are currently willing to hire (like someone with 5+ years experience with C#).
The simple solution for Corporate America is to NOT have so many job openings. Make the jobs themselves look as scarce as their tendencies to hire really are. Then people will expect less, and they can hire them for less.
There is a shortage of clueful corporate executives and HR directors.
If they can't afford to hire someone who can make the difference in how effective their organization operates, then maybe they're paying the executives way too much.
The pay scale should vary by experience, and it will be influenced by how much experience does value a business. The high pay is expected because some businesses are indeed paying that. They are paying that because they recognize that they need to have the clueful person on staff to make a difference in their company. The probably hired them away from someone company that just didn't give a damn. The problem is that other company won't change.
I wouldn't want to work for Intel anyway. I know they have some good people working there, but the quality of their products is going downhill, so it must be the silly bureaucracy of the company. It's already obvious based on some of the lame answers I get on their own USENET site from people that I know actually know the right answers, but aren't allowed to tell the truth. So if Intel complains about lack of IT workers, what they are really complaining about is lack of secretaries with CS or EE degrees.
With more Americans not getting programmer jobs, and more H1B workers taking them instead, and going back home after they can't, or won't, work here anymore, there will come to be a new and real shortage ... of people who have actual long term programing experience to take jobs as project leaders and managers. We'll be effectively sending that experience overseas.
The worker shortage might well be real in California. Those who live there love it, until they discover it is cheaper to live somewhere else (unless they are stuck with golden handcuffs). Those who don't live there don't want to go there.
Maybe more companies should leave California.
What are they paying in Boston?
Here's how to figure it whether the salary worthwhile, in my opinion. Starting where the job is located, draw rings (not exactly round) on the map at 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes and 40 minutes, for average commute time one way. Now find out what the median (not average) home price is for the areas within the ring (but not including the ones in the inner ring for outer ones). Multiply the median for the 10-20 minute range by 1.333, the 20-30 minute range by 1.667, and the 30-40 minute range by 2. Now average these 4 numbers together. Now determine the ratio of salary to the average.
Now figure out this ratio not only in Boston, but in other areas, including suburbs of Boston, and other cities in the country. You can change the times and multiplies to match up with different levels of importance for different lifestyles but the above is probably a decent starting point.
Different kinds of jobs will have different ratios, of course. A programming job should get at least 0.5. In California, the ratios are much lower due to extremely inflated housing prices. Shift the pricing to apartment lease rates for a different perspective on it (California still loses). Is Boston somewhere peope really want to live in?
Why are you not getting 100% of the market rate? Is it because you're willing to accept 90% because back home you'd get way less than that? I don't blame you for coming here. There certainly are opportunities here. I just wish you'd demand that 100%. I'm assuming your skills and experience justify it, if not more.
Many corporations, maybe most corporations, really treat people badly, and often have no clue that this is what is going on. Right out of college, people are very gung-ho about working in high-tech, and are willing to work 80 hours for 40 hours pay. But within 5 years most realize they are getting shafted by corporations in the process. Many are married by then, and those that aren't realize the hours are why they aren't.
I suspect one reason people want to be the analyst or the idea person is because they often are working where the "ideas" come from PHBs who are clueless about the technology. I've personally experienced this a few times where the "ideas" were totally lame, totally without vision, and doomed to fail. Their only defense is they use the old argue "If you assume it will fail, it will fail". But assuming success cannot make a bad idea work. If better ideas were being worked on in a corporation, maybe people would be happy to stick around and make them work. If managers would work directly with the techies to come up with ideas, I think that would help a lot.
Corporate America really can keep their work force, and keep not only the technical experience but also the company experience, by creating a decent job atmosphere to work in, and compensating people at market levels (even if it means a programmer makes more money than the manager he works for).
I'd agree with this.
That makes sense, too
I don't know that it will make much difference one way or the other. It certainly would make for more continuity.
Absolutely! But I don't know if Corporate America knows how to do this. They certainly aren't listening to the suggestions from techies.
I certainly think all borders should be open for people to go work wherever they want, if a job is available (e.g. all you need to get in is a job offer). And it does seem like what companies in America are wanting, and getting, is not really a true workforce, but just a team of slave labor. This is due to the restrictions that exist which effectively pin people into one job. It would be nice if you didn't have to leave your home country to get a decent job. I'd like to see you be able to go back to India (if that's where you ultimately want to live) and start a business, create jobs, and help the economy there.
One other thing I see wrong with Corporate America is that they don't know how to go about communicating with techies to even find people that they might hire. Recruitment is in a sorry state right now, and the job web sites don't help at all.
But that violence is already in human nature. Most of the manifestations are in the form of flaming. Rarely does it reach real life, but it does happen. What's scary about it to older people is that they really don't understand it, and they don't understand or see all the overwhelming good the Internet is doing, and how miniscule a part of it all that this real violence actually is.
There are cases of Internet induced violence. One incident in Texas that George W. may have on his mind involved a meeting by e-mail and an eventual murder. In another case from Oregon I'm sure you all know about, it has been documented that Kip Kinkle was downloading lots of weaponry and satanic related material on the Internet.
Blaming the Internet is wrong, of course. The problem is ourselves. The Internet is just a very efficient communications medium. And the important thing is that we need to keep it all in perspective; the Internet is bringing far more value to our lives, our economy, and our society, than it is bringing these few problems. If we can find ways to addresses these problems without harming the good, then I'm for that.
You can find the stats on car deaths per year. Those exceed the Internet deaths per year. But we don't doubt the value of having cars. We are not proposing to ban cars (well, most of us aren't). The Internet is nowhere near as bad as cars in terms of the negative, and in fact it may well help reduce the negative of cars by its very being.
Maybe Bob doesn't get it because he's not really paying attention to what his company is doing.
Redhat, the company, is going about setting up deals with many businesses, such as Dell and IBM, in ways that cause them to prefer the Redhat distribution over others. What Microsoft has done in the past, and what I compare Redhat with, is the practice of trying to make sure that I have no choice in OS for my computers. In the case of Redhat, it's no choice of distribution.
This is different than encouraging some company to offer Linux, and Redhat, with their hardware. These are cases where the hardware vendor will refuse to support their hardware problems when the software being run isn't Redhat (or Windows).
Bob, if you want to be a better member of the Linux community, then work to encourage hardware vendors to not just support Redhat, but to also support their hardware with not just any distribution running the Linux kernel, but other operating systems, such as xxxxBSD, as well.
That would be nice if it could happen. In reality banks are run by PHB's who buy Microsoft whnever they don't think about what it is they are buying into, which is never, anyway. They will bite the M$ song hook, line and sinker when M$ tells the bank that IE is just being extra secure for places like banks. The PHB won't analyze it to see if there is any merit to the statement; he'll just switch to what works with IE, and quite possibly wonder about restricting access to IE only.
Performance might be nice. Reliability and security (as in no buffer holes for script kiddies) are certainly important. However, simplified visual interfaces are not my forté. Can Zeus be administered in the most literal and detailed sense?
But how often do ordinary users even check who a certificate is issued to?