And you don't see the difference between a US regulatory agency looking into a merger between two American companies and an EU agency doing the same?
The EU is welcome to do whatever they please, but it does not alter the question of why.
Maybe because both companies (Shitorola and Google) are also registered in the EU, and both conduct substantial operations therein? Just a pretty fucking wild guess.
You haven't been paying attention. The EU likes to make themselves relevant for all kinds of mergers that aren't any of their business. (Oracle/Sun and GE/Honeywell off the top of my head). Doubly so when it could affect a European company -- perhaps you've heard of Nokia?
If a US-based company is also registered in the EU and conducts massive business operations therein, then mergers and acquisitions by said company are, you know, kinda like "ZOMG Kim Kardashian LOLCATS" under EU jurisdiction. Ergo, it is their business to nose around.
I think the EU's nosing around in these mergers (Moto+Google, Oracle+Sun) are really stupid (and horrendously costly for the companies involved). But we are not debating the is/ought meta-ethics conundrum, but observing the EU exercising its legal jurisdiction muscles, which are sovereignty theirs to flex.
Motorola Problems (opposite of Solutions) is a US company.
Google is a US company.
Why is the EU even getting involved at all? This has nothing to do with them, other than the fact that some of their lobbyists see Apple dollars and that hamstringing this merger would help keep Apple with the upper hand in this patent polka that all the phone companies are forced to play.
Maybe the EU should look at other things like banks, and their problems.
Bro, the existence of conglomerates with assets in multiple continents (and thus subject to multiple judicial systems) is a hard to grasp notion in that isolated cow town of yours, ain't it <pulls out banjo>squeal little piggie</pulls out banjo>
apprenticeship system. Take today's tech schools and add apprenticeships to them.
CS degrees build theory and a lot of that is high level stuff with out the skills of working on systems / working with stuff at the hands on levels.
Now with a apprenticeship people can build real world skills and companies get people who are not people who can cram for a test and be come a paper MCSE
What does CS have to do with IT? Having a CS degree and working in IT are two things that are purely coincidental. You do not get a CS degree to work on IT. Ever. The fact that you mentioned both in the same sentence makes your knowledge in both areas suspect.
CS != software engineering != IT != MIS. Overlap != Equality (or equivalence). It's not rocket science for fuck's sake.
In my field of embedded programming a CS grad is worthless. If you dont have an EE degree you will never be able to write the code.
Bullshit. Where I work we have CS grads doing embedded work just fine. Though you are right that there are items that a CS grad should be cognizant, specially for doing work at the bare metal (like FPGA). There is a wide spectrum in the areas of embedded development. The closer you get to the metal, the more you need a EE degree (specially when you are spec'ing the hardware). From device driver level up, many competent CS grads do fine (read "competent".)
You have to understand what the voltages coming in MEAN. Understand transistors, logic devices, feedback loops, etc...
A lot of CS students (depending on the school that is) actually have a lot of CE/EE in their curriculum. Or used to... CS education has been watered down in the last 15 years.
The last CS grad we hired was completely worthless. Dude did not even know how a microprocessor worked.
And that's a reflection on him and the CS school that gave him a degree. Understanding how a microprocessor work, down to the digital level, is a must for a good CS degree. Or used to be a must.
Almost all CS grads I know or met know nothing at all about computers.
There. Fixed that for you. The sad thing is that many who have graduated with a CS degree in the last few years are just web-based programmers. That is not the same as being a Computer Scientist.
And don't be so smug with your EE degree. I work with many EE grads, and they can't code for shit. Yeah, they can make the hardware sing alright, but their code is unmaintainable, unreadable and fucking atrocious. Their cope out it is that their code is "embedded" or "optimized", but more often than not, it is anything but. A lot of the cost over runs associated with them simply come from their craptacular code bases.
Even beyond that, because they thing they can code a for loop, they thing they are the authority in matters of software. I have a EE co-worker who was stupidly lecturing me on semaphores, assuming I didn't know because I was a CS grad (all the while the retard didn't even know that the concept of a semaphore was invented by Dijkstra, a CS'tist.) That same tard was arguing with me (quite gratuitously and for no reasons at all other than to prove that Computer Science was easy) that he could write a compiler with nothing but lookup tables. Yeah, I want to see how things like dead code elimination and register allocation can be done with lookup tables.
Better, I know of a EE lead at another company that is insisting developers to use 8-bit error codes to identify unique errors, down to the actual physical line of code (as opposed to an error type code and a error string descriptor), because it is more efficient. The guy does not comprehend that potential faults in their code base can be mapped into thousands of points, so how the fuck will he map those into a 8-bit error code. He might know what a transistor is, but he for certain cannot write even semi-decent embedded code.
Stupidity and incompetence exist in both sides of the fence. It takes more than knowing about circuits, transistors and feedback loops to perform GOOD, COST-EFFECTIVE embedded programming. Anyone who thinks otherwise is full of it or is ignorant of his own ignorance.
As far as Java goes, 'there are many people going into Java now that really don't have strong computer science backgrounds,' said its chief scientist, Bill Curtis."
This is indeed true, but, as a Computer Scientist, I don't necessarily agree that one truly needs a CS background for most enterprise computing related tasks. What a person needs is technical depth, analytical skills and, mucho importante, organizational/spatial skills that allow a person to design and/or work with large amounts while coping - efficiently - with rapid code change (read as "can write code of sufficient quality under pressure, combined with an ethic of never delivering shit without sacrificing deadlines"). People with MIS and Computer-based Art degrees have also done well without a CS background... and there are people with CS backgrounds that should never be allowed to be near a keyboard.
I would change Mr. Curtis statement to the following: many people going into Java (and.NET and PHP and most other stacks related to Enterprise Computing), for one reason or another, end up lacking the technical depth necessary to be a good programmer/software engineer. Combine that with the ever changing face of modern enterprise computing and you can see why the greater technical debt cost per line of code.
can pass the test and have no idea on how to use the concepts?
If the tests lets them google the answers, then yeah, it happens. Ever wondered why so many "senior" developers out there cannot code for shit? This is a very (sadly) common occurrence in the enterprise and IT (less in more technically inclined areas such as embedded development, but it still happens.) This is why we are seeing an increasing number of job openings requiring an in-person code test. The horrors that I've witnessed (and that I've heard from reliable job placement sources)...
Don't people Google and trade answers in the workforce?
Yeah, like "how do connect to db, have client that need us for implement the general CRRSK[1] general ledger application, please provide code sample to do the needful, kindest regards."
Tests like this that forbids people for going to teh googlez do so to avoid this kind of retarded, google-copy-paste cheating. There is a reason why there is an increase of in-person coding tests taking place in code interviews (specially for senior positions.)
Yes, in the workforce we all rely on google and stackoverflow and what not. But those are tools of the trade that are supposed to be used by people with 1) the sufficient training and analytical skills to 2) know what to look for apply as appropriate. You want to test for #1 without #2 because #2 can be done by even the most craptacular of Shakespeare-typing code monkeys.
This should be, I dunno, fucking obvious to anyone who is in IT/software for a living, that 1) is not a google-copy-paste code monkey, and 2) that has been subjected to cleaning the turds said "professionals" leave behind.
[1] Replace with any random, business-specific acronym that no ones outside of said company knows what the fuck it stands for.
So you worked for one whole year in this industry, and that gives you insight enough to know that there is only ONE reason that things get to this state?
That is not what he said. He said this:
I worked in this environment for one year...
As in "I worked in such type of environment as described by the original submitter". The rest of this person's post does not provide a context with which to infer that such a year was the only year in this industry. In fact, the post context hints very strongly that such is not the case.
The only place I can see that possibly making any sense is if you were a genius level programmer, at the head of your own company, and had a net worth of more than a million. Since he mentioned at least one other person (predecessor) and talks about a position...I'm thinking not.
And dual-timing IT / programming for commerce is NOT a good idea, for any site with any traffic. You split those roles if you have that much traffic.
So, I'm guessing it's a LAMP shop, doing stuff that most (seasoned) programmers would run from.
My backup was my boss who was technically competent, so there was that, but it's not like I've never worked a job as a one man show. You buckle down and do what you have to and make it so things don't break just because you're not around (yes, this requires budget, but I've been fortunate enough that anyone willing to pay me what I'm worth is also willing to invest in a solid infrastructure).
This made you (and the situation you described) an outlier, one with a positive outcome. Your experiences cannot be applied in general. In general, this is rarely the case, for one-man-tech shops that is.
For the most part, conditions as described by the original submitter typically have "GTFO ASAP!" written all over it. I've done IT in companies, small and large, and I can attest that what you say is true: Yes, it is possible to being the one-guy-IT-slash-programmer-shop at a small e-commerce company. But the question is why? I wouldn't do it (again) unless a good compensation package came with it (which is typically never the case), or if I'm fresh out of school with nothing on my plate to take (in which case, it is ok.)
Good companies are never based on one-man-IT-slash-dev-shops, regardless of size (or at least they try not to.) I know, again, I've worked with companies big and small. Conditions like that are typically good proxies for more systemic problems, and at the end of the day (whenever possible), you want a paycheck, a rewarding job and good working conditions. Rarely you see that with one-man-IT-slash-dev-shop gigs, rarely if ever, regardless of the size of the company.
That's just my $0.02 input from what I've seen. YMMV so readers be warned and please take this anecdotal piece with a grain of salt.
Seems to me that there is miles of difference between a born Engineer (a smart, logical thinker who loves tinkering and solving problems), and a sold Engineer (someone who has no inclination or desire towards engineering, but simply wants to make as much money as possible).
I don't think there will be a Boom of engineers, because what any decent company is trying to do (and what this article is referring to) is get their hands on GOOD engineers... a product that you cannot commoditize.
Yes, and we can see that right now as companies are becoming, out of necessity, far pickier than before in their hiring process. Having said that, this particular tidbit of truth will be missed by the perennial speculator. You can count on seeing a lot of morons and moronic companies hoarding on software developers, missing completely on the fact that this does not equate to software development talent.
Overproduction of developers/comp.sci. graduates does not create a bubble. Perhaps a lot of miserable people, but not an economic bubble like the.com bubble of the late 90s. The most likely economic impact overproduction of qualified people will have is the cheapening of labor i.e. lower pay rate for developers.
It will create a bubble in the sense that morons will invest tons of money in developers, with salaries and benefit packages increasing until economic realities force their fist down their throats, with companies that existed solely for hoarding talent folding down as they should.
Granted that this is harder to happen than in the dot-com era (where the plan was to hoard anything with e- or www in it, hoping to bail out and cash in or be bought by Yahoo or what not.) It is harder, but not impossible. In fact, given the penchant for speculative stupidity displayed by humanity in general (and us Americans in particular), it is highly possible. I cannot wait to see the debacle unfolding as it will be quite hilarious. Yes, it will be hilarious.
if only computer science was easy enough for the average money hungry bear to just "jump" into...hahaha
Where the hell have you been in the last 12-15 years? CS curricula has been watered down all across many universities, supposedly to churn graduates to meet industrial demand (with the predictable drop in quality.) I see your comment, and all I can think of is "wtf?"
a fine balance between enhancing delivery excellence and releasing a software product in consonance with deadlines.
Can I get this translated into English, please? I try to avoid parsing marketroid and/or manager babble.;)
Deliver on time shit that works with quality, don't sacrifice quality too much just to meet deadlines, and don't blow deadlines too much just to make shit perfectly pretty.
I stand corrected, I did wrote that. I meant to write this:
Being doing this for almost 17 years now, and I've never seen a requirement of working 80 hour weeks continuously
And if you look at the theme across my post, that one of my points I make. Now, whether you believe this explanation I'm giving you, that's up to you considering that you do not address any of the others points made in my last post. To each its own.
I have asked like four times already to quote the text I wrote where I deny the existence of those working conditions
Sorry I missed that among the insults, bullshit and the self-aggrandisement if it was there at all, besides, you can't honestly deny your words above.
Your original post stands with lines such as "I've never seen a requirement of working 80 hour weeks"
No. There is not a single post I made in this thread that says that. That is a line you made. I ask you again, to post the exact text I typed that says or implies such a thing.
and "If you have to put up with 80 hour work weeks, it means that you have few career choices, and thus have no option but being someone's bitch.".
When you work that many hours, weeks, months on end, your health, physical and emotional, deteriorates, your family life (if you have any) deteriorates, your career deteriorates because now you are preoccupied with the constant deliverables to be completed with insane schedule demands (leaving no time or energy to cultivate your skills outside of work, which is a must for cultivating one's career.)
Moreover, and which makes "being someone's bitch" a very apt expression, the number of excess hours that you are asked/forced to work on a regular basis is inversely proportional to the quality of work and management that you are subjected to. Bad management (systemic and systematic) and abuse go in tandem with excessive over time mandated on a regular basis.
So if we are clear that, in general, this is a dysfunctional and unhealthy software-related work behavior, why would one put up with it? Mostly a person would do so because he/she has no that many alternatives (for whatever reasons.) If a person had alternatives, would he/she made the switch, no? Or would that person still stay at such noxious environment on his/her own free will despite having better alternatives?
And if such a person does not have that many alternatives, doesn't that mean then that the control he/she has in his/her career is limited (for internal or external factors or whatever the case may be)? Or are you disagreeing that there is no relation between these two?
The reality is that few get to choose their own destiny, some people get stuck doing long hours, and some (such as in the mining industry) choose it deliberately in exchange for other benefits.
We are not talking mining industry, or anything other than software for that matter. My comment is specific for software development. Of course there are other lines of jobs in which you have no choice (I used to flip burgers at McDonalds once when I first came to this country, so I know.) And in mining, the rewards are sufficient to compensate for the hard labor (which does not include working excessive O/T on a regular basis.
But I repeat, this discussion is not about work in general, but about software development (and the work conditions related to that) specifically. And you have your choices, your options, all of them depending on how you develop your career.
Simply put, work conditions in general (as in outside of software-related industries) are not a topic that I ever discussed here. Bringing it up is a nice straw man, though.
Postgraduate students do it, Medical registrars do it, other doctors new to a practice do it,
True dat. Those fields, however, are not what is being discussed here.
I know I said I'd leave you to win by last man standing, but goddamit, you are an obstinate with your red herrings.
To sum up, your attitude of pretending something is not happening because it doesn't happen where you are sitting is the thing that disgusted me enough to write everything above. I must say I was truly astonished to see you cry "bullshit" about working conditions that nearly every adult would be aware of.
And once again, you display either a lack of reading comprehension, or you are simply being obstinate. This is what I argue against: That the AC stated that work 80hrs constantly is a must to make a 6-figure salary. And this is what I argued for: the amount of hours you work is a direct reflection on how you control your career.
Never have I said that there are appalling working conditions, or that a lot of people in software and IT put 60 hours or more a week consistently (and who blindly think that is how must be and that no other alternatives exist.)
I have asked like four times already to quote the text I wrote where I deny the existence of those working conditions. Four times already I've asked, and four times already you have not done so. Four times I've asked to quote (a simple copy/paste action) the things I wrote that supposedly said that you said I said (forgive the play of words.). And as of yet, nothing from you.
All you have is a red herring, attacking a claim I never made, and a position I never espoused. And if you have to recur again and again to the same red herring, then that means you never had a valid argument to begin with.
So, if you are going to reply to this, are you going to quote the text I supposedly wrote where I deny the existence of the work conditions you describe? Or are you still going to go in circles with a red herring hanging around your neck?
Anyways, be my guess working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week (or a work week extending weekends) to make 60 hours a week, or 13.33 hours 5 days a week (or 11hrs 6 days a week) to make 80, on a regular basis or as an mandatory way to ear a 6-figure salary. Enjoy your career development, a bright future awaits you.
It is equally insulting to suggest my lack of experience when you have nothing but a post to render judgment on me
If you post something as naive
Naive to you, in your eyes, subjectively.
as what I replied to it is a very clear indication that you either have led a very sheltered existence or are lying to pretend that you have. It appears you are using that as an excuse to call me names. Pathetic.
I'm calling you names? Can we take a look at your own posts to compare?
I don't pretend. I avoid. I assess.
For fuck sake not everything is about you.
Never said it was. I'm telling you my response to this (note the text in bold):
Obviously it's not ideal and if it's happening a lot there are nowhere near enough staff - but some places work that way for prolonged periods even if you want to pretend that never happens.
So if I'm telling that I don't pretend, I have to tell you why that is not the case. And that will inevitably involve things that *I* do (which involves I/me/mine unless I invent some type of language that doesn't have conjugation of the first person). But if I do that, then you turn it around accusing me of making it be all about me. Nice red herring+strawman, btw.
That is a very childish way to look at the issue when it is being discussed in absolute terms
Absolute terms? Absolute terms like needing to work 80hrs constantly to make a 6-figure salary, that EA's practices at the time were in line with industry standards, the very arguments that started my disagreement?
and when you are using it to support a generalisation.
Which is no different from you, using your own experiences and observations to generalize about the state of affairs in the software development industry.
While it's a horrible way to run any organisation there are a lot of places where people work long hours.
And where did I say that this is not the case? Focus on this question, and don't post an answer unless you quote the exact text of mine that contradicts or is mutually exclusive to that which you point. Yeah, people work long hours, the number of hours being inversely proportional, primarily, to the control one has in one's career, barring certain circumstances (financial emergencies, etc.) It is not something I denied, and I'm asking you again to quote me precisely where the hell I've said otherwise.
By your own admission, it is a horrible way to run organizations, but then it begs the question. Are all companies dysfunctional like that? Answer is no, not all companies are like that.
So that begs the next question: are there companies that do good, challenging work while operating differently from that dysfunctional model. Answer is yes, yes there are.
Which brings the next question: what do you do in your career to 1) maximize you work with the later type of companies and projects, on your terms, while increasing your salary and your experience, while 2) minimize exposure to the former?
Do you do anything at all, anything methodical? Or do you simply pick up the soap? It doesn't have to be the constant struggle of 60+hrs a week, let alone 80hr, to make a 6-figure salary. It is if you let it be.
Whether you believe what I'm saying is real, or just bull shit, that's up to you man.
Why are you pretending otherwise?
Again, quote me where I did such thing. Reading comprehension man, reading comprehension.
It has served me well since the dot-com crash
If you are actually that old you've been going around with your eyes shut or are being dishonest
I'm old? That suggests me then your age, and by proxy, your expo
Yes, I have had a similar experience on several occassions, know others that have had similar experiences and I'm sure many other reader here have too
"I'm sure" is not a quantifiable statement. It is subjective. It is an opinion, an artifact of emotion that you are evoking simply to build your argument. Nothing more.
because there are a lot of places in a wide range of industries where a lot of unpaid overtime is expected.
Nice strawman. That is not what I argued against. My contention is the claim that suggest working 80hr a week per months on end to make a 6-figure salary. That is ridiculous and not true. I'd suggest you go re-read what I posted, and if you think that was not the theme of my post, simply quote the specific passage you have a problem with so that we can deliberate on it.
I've even seen it done to clerical staff in a telecommunications company for no good reason - a two week "billing crunch" that extended to three weeks and then continuously until the company crashed and burned. I've done it myself, mostly during plant shutdowns which are probably are more time critical and "at-risk" than anything you will ever see in your life - but also later in IT although to a lesser extent than others.
So it sounds then that we have similar work experience. And yet, I fail to see how you can actually agree with what the AC posted, re-quoting the specific passages I have an issue with and which I made very clear (in particular with the lines in bold):
... stuff... It's simply a fact of life, and if you don't like it, go teach 8th grade gym
... stuff... EA's practices were totally in line with industry standards, which are in line with market realities and in line with the compensation package offered
...stuff... If you want the opportunity to make a six figure salary, you're going to have to be prepared to make some sacrifices.
... stuff... If you can't handle 80 hour weeks for a few months when the time comes, well, as I alluded, my old junior high school is in desperate need of a gym teacher.
There is a lot of unsubstantiated bravado in this. The 80hr/week contention is just ridiculous. The last time I ever worked 80hr a week was with a defense contractor, for three weeks during integration, unpaid. And that was fine because, yes, as you said, it is expected. But that someone were to tell me that I have to do that for months, I wouldn't. Even if paid over time. The only time you would ever do that is at the start of your career, when you are accumulating experience, and hopefully, OT. Or perhaps when it is the rare chance to work in some really cool shit that you know in your guts it will position well in your career for the next decade.
You do not need that to make a 6-figure salary. No, you don't. Period. And that's my contention, and it is a provable one. Moreover, and going back to the 80hr/week measure. It cannot be sustained for months on end, not without having a deterioration in performance. There are psychological, physical, emotional, and organizational/administrative limitations to that. When you start seeing people clocking over 60 hours consistently week after week, I can guarantee you you can find a lot of idle time being burned out.
Yes, we work more than 40 hours a week. Yes, we are expected to work in the vicinity of 50. No, the moment you go beyond a threshold (which you reach before you hit 80hrs) - not for a week or two, even a month, but for months on end - either you find it un-productivity and burn-out, or you find someone is milking the time sheets.
And what's this "sock puppet" shit? Why would I post the above AC if I have a login with decent karma?
I have no clue, nor I care about your karma. I just found extremely stupid to
I think you either need to talk to more people or get more experience yourself before pretending
Because obviously my work experience is limited, and I've never worked with small tech start ups, nor IT/Enterprise Computing nor with defense contractors, or with any type of company, small or large for that matter. I have no clue on how to run a business, I have never been an hourly paid contractor in at-risk projects with aggressive schedules, and have no experience giving or receiving orders.
It's like... you know me, and you can attest as verifiable fact that I need to get more experience on the subject I had. You implied so, you said so, so you have to be right, right, right? Yes, si, pretty please, with a cherry on top?
you know more about this topic than the above poster
Who, the anonymous coward with no listed credentials? Or you somehow knows who this AC is and you can vouch for his experience? Or is that actually you, now acting like a sad sock puppet?
or a very large number of the readers.
Whom? How many? For someone (you == AC) claiming a lot of experience, I would have expected a more verifiable and quantifiable antecedent to substantiate your appeal to authority. Thanks for trying.
Besides, chat logs are not a legal and submittable in court.
Wrong. A quick google will prove you wrong on this one in no time.
Email is well tested and has a traceable header.
Woa, wait, what? Are you for real? This is SMTP you are referring to, which gives you zero (yes, ZERO) guarantees for non-repudiation, integrity and authenticity/authentication (all those necessary for claiming traceability).
Slashdot Mirror
And you don't see the difference between a US regulatory agency looking into a merger between two American companies and an EU agency doing the same?
The EU is welcome to do whatever they please, but it does not alter the question of why.
Maybe because both companies (Shitorola and Google) are also registered in the EU, and both conduct substantial operations therein? Just a pretty fucking wild guess.
You haven't been paying attention. The EU likes to make themselves relevant for all kinds of mergers that aren't any of their business. (Oracle/Sun and GE/Honeywell off the top of my head). Doubly so when it could affect a European company -- perhaps you've heard of Nokia?
If a US-based company is also registered in the EU and conducts massive business operations therein, then mergers and acquisitions by said company are, you know, kinda like "ZOMG Kim Kardashian LOLCATS" under EU jurisdiction. Ergo, it is their business to nose around.
I think the EU's nosing around in these mergers (Moto+Google, Oracle+Sun) are really stupid (and horrendously costly for the companies involved). But we are not debating the is/ought meta-ethics conundrum, but observing the EU exercising its legal jurisdiction muscles, which are sovereignty theirs to flex.
Motorola Problems (opposite of Solutions) is a US company. Google is a US company.
Why is the EU even getting involved at all? This has nothing to do with them, other than the fact that some of their lobbyists see Apple dollars and that hamstringing this merger would help keep Apple with the upper hand in this patent polka that all the phone companies are forced to play.
Maybe the EU should look at other things like banks, and their problems.
Bro, the existence of conglomerates with assets in multiple continents (and thus subject to multiple judicial systems) is a hard to grasp notion in that isolated cow town of yours, ain't it <pulls out banjo>squeal little piggie</pulls out banjo>
apprenticeship system. Take today's tech schools and add apprenticeships to them.
CS degrees build theory and a lot of that is high level stuff with out the skills of working on systems / working with stuff at the hands on levels.
Now with a apprenticeship people can build real world skills and companies get people who are not people who can cram for a test and be come a paper MCSE
What does CS have to do with IT? Having a CS degree and working in IT are two things that are purely coincidental. You do not get a CS degree to work on IT. Ever. The fact that you mentioned both in the same sentence makes your knowledge in both areas suspect.
CS != software engineering != IT != MIS. Overlap != Equality (or equivalence). It's not rocket science for fuck's sake.
... is a poetic, totally awesome bitch.
Yup.
In my field of embedded programming a CS grad is worthless. If you dont have an EE degree you will never be able to write the code.
Bullshit. Where I work we have CS grads doing embedded work just fine. Though you are right that there are items that a CS grad should be cognizant, specially for doing work at the bare metal (like FPGA). There is a wide spectrum in the areas of embedded development. The closer you get to the metal, the more you need a EE degree (specially when you are spec'ing the hardware). From device driver level up, many competent CS grads do fine (read "competent".)
You have to understand what the voltages coming in MEAN. Understand transistors, logic devices, feedback loops, etc...
A lot of CS students (depending on the school that is) actually have a lot of CE/EE in their curriculum. Or used to... CS education has been watered down in the last 15 years.
The last CS grad we hired was completely worthless. Dude did not even know how a microprocessor worked.
And that's a reflection on him and the CS school that gave him a degree. Understanding how a microprocessor work, down to the digital level, is a must for a good CS degree. Or used to be a must.
Almost all CS grads I know or met know nothing at all about computers.
There. Fixed that for you. The sad thing is that many who have graduated with a CS degree in the last few years are just web-based programmers. That is not the same as being a Computer Scientist.
And don't be so smug with your EE degree. I work with many EE grads, and they can't code for shit. Yeah, they can make the hardware sing alright, but their code is unmaintainable, unreadable and fucking atrocious. Their cope out it is that their code is "embedded" or "optimized", but more often than not, it is anything but. A lot of the cost over runs associated with them simply come from their craptacular code bases.
Even beyond that, because they thing they can code a for loop, they thing they are the authority in matters of software. I have a EE co-worker who was stupidly lecturing me on semaphores, assuming I didn't know because I was a CS grad (all the while the retard didn't even know that the concept of a semaphore was invented by Dijkstra, a CS'tist.) That same tard was arguing with me (quite gratuitously and for no reasons at all other than to prove that Computer Science was easy) that he could write a compiler with nothing but lookup tables. Yeah, I want to see how things like dead code elimination and register allocation can be done with lookup tables.
Better, I know of a EE lead at another company that is insisting developers to use 8-bit error codes to identify unique errors, down to the actual physical line of code (as opposed to an error type code and a error string descriptor), because it is more efficient. The guy does not comprehend that potential faults in their code base can be mapped into thousands of points, so how the fuck will he map those into a 8-bit error code. He might know what a transistor is, but he for certain cannot write even semi-decent embedded code.
Stupidity and incompetence exist in both sides of the fence. It takes more than knowing about circuits, transistors and feedback loops to perform GOOD, COST-EFFECTIVE embedded programming. Anyone who thinks otherwise is full of it or is ignorant of his own ignorance.
As far as Java goes, 'there are many people going into Java now that really don't have strong computer science backgrounds,' said its chief scientist, Bill Curtis."
This is indeed true, but, as a Computer Scientist, I don't necessarily agree that one truly needs a CS background for most enterprise computing related tasks. What a person needs is technical depth, analytical skills and, mucho importante, organizational/spatial skills that allow a person to design and/or work with large amounts while coping - efficiently - with rapid code change (read as "can write code of sufficient quality under pressure, combined with an ethic of never delivering shit without sacrificing deadlines"). People with MIS and Computer-based Art degrees have also done well without a CS background... and there are people with CS backgrounds that should never be allowed to be near a keyboard.
I would change Mr. Curtis statement to the following: many people going into Java (and .NET and PHP and most other stacks related to Enterprise Computing), for one reason or another, end up lacking the technical depth necessary to be a good programmer/software engineer. Combine that with the ever changing face of modern enterprise computing and you can see why the greater technical debt cost per line of code.
Like it really even matters TO ME IN MY BASEMENTanyway.
There. Fixed that for'cha.
COBOL sucks.
Be that as it may, it does the job, and that's all that really matters.
End of discussion.
Oooooooooooooooooo </hands waving in macabre fashion>
can pass the test and have no idea on how to use the concepts?
If the tests lets them google the answers, then yeah, it happens. Ever wondered why so many "senior" developers out there cannot code for shit? This is a very (sadly) common occurrence in the enterprise and IT (less in more technically inclined areas such as embedded development, but it still happens.) This is why we are seeing an increasing number of job openings requiring an in-person code test. The horrors that I've witnessed (and that I've heard from reliable job placement sources)...
Don't people Google and trade answers in the workforce?
Yeah, like "how do connect to db, have client that need us for implement the general CRRSK[1] general ledger application, please provide code sample to do the needful, kindest regards."
Tests like this that forbids people for going to teh googlez do so to avoid this kind of retarded, google-copy-paste cheating. There is a reason why there is an increase of in-person coding tests taking place in code interviews (specially for senior positions.)
Yes, in the workforce we all rely on google and stackoverflow and what not. But those are tools of the trade that are supposed to be used by people with 1) the sufficient training and analytical skills to 2) know what to look for apply as appropriate. You want to test for #1 without #2 because #2 can be done by even the most craptacular of Shakespeare-typing code monkeys.
This should be, I dunno, fucking obvious to anyone who is in IT/software for a living, that 1) is not a google-copy-paste code monkey, and 2) that has been subjected to cleaning the turds said "professionals" leave behind.
[1] Replace with any random, business-specific acronym that no ones outside of said company knows what the fuck it stands for.
Employees of some outsourcing outfit do not work for you.
They work for their own company.
That contractual wall that separates them from you ensures that they will never care about your company nor go out of their way to
I love you. Seriously. That sentence sums it all up.
So you worked for one whole year in this industry, and that gives you insight enough to know that there is only ONE reason that things get to this state?
That is not what he said. He said this:
I worked in this environment for one year ...
As in "I worked in such type of environment as described by the original submitter". The rest of this person's post does not provide a context with which to infer that such a year was the only year in this industry. In fact, the post context hints very strongly that such is not the case.
Thank you. That sentence bothered me as well.
The only place I can see that possibly making any sense is if you were a genius level programmer, at the head of your own company, and had a net worth of more than a million. Since he mentioned at least one other person (predecessor) and talks about a position...I'm thinking not.
And dual-timing IT / programming for commerce is NOT a good idea, for any site with any traffic. You split those roles if you have that much traffic.
So, I'm guessing it's a LAMP shop, doing stuff that most (seasoned) programmers would run from.
^^^ This.
My backup was my boss who was technically competent, so there was that, but it's not like I've never worked a job as a one man show. You buckle down and do what you have to and make it so things don't break just because you're not around (yes, this requires budget, but I've been fortunate enough that anyone willing to pay me what I'm worth is also willing to invest in a solid infrastructure).
This made you (and the situation you described) an outlier, one with a positive outcome. Your experiences cannot be applied in general. In general, this is rarely the case, for one-man-tech shops that is.
For the most part, conditions as described by the original submitter typically have "GTFO ASAP!" written all over it. I've done IT in companies, small and large, and I can attest that what you say is true: Yes, it is possible to being the one-guy-IT-slash-programmer-shop at a small e-commerce company. But the question is why? I wouldn't do it (again) unless a good compensation package came with it (which is typically never the case), or if I'm fresh out of school with nothing on my plate to take (in which case, it is ok.)
Good companies are never based on one-man-IT-slash-dev-shops, regardless of size (or at least they try not to.) I know, again, I've worked with companies big and small. Conditions like that are typically good proxies for more systemic problems, and at the end of the day (whenever possible), you want a paycheck, a rewarding job and good working conditions. Rarely you see that with one-man-IT-slash-dev-shop gigs, rarely if ever, regardless of the size of the company.
That's just my $0.02 input from what I've seen. YMMV so readers be warned and please take this anecdotal piece with a grain of salt.
Seems to me that there is miles of difference between a born Engineer (a smart, logical thinker who loves tinkering and solving problems), and a sold Engineer (someone who has no inclination or desire towards engineering, but simply wants to make as much money as possible).
I don't think there will be a Boom of engineers, because what any decent company is trying to do (and what this article is referring to) is get their hands on GOOD engineers... a product that you cannot commoditize.
Yes, and we can see that right now as companies are becoming, out of necessity, far pickier than before in their hiring process. Having said that, this particular tidbit of truth will be missed by the perennial speculator. You can count on seeing a lot of morons and moronic companies hoarding on software developers, missing completely on the fact that this does not equate to software development talent.
Overproduction of developers/comp.sci. graduates does not create a bubble. Perhaps a lot of miserable people, but not an economic bubble like the .com bubble of the late 90s. The most likely economic impact overproduction of qualified people will have is the cheapening of labor i.e. lower pay rate for developers.
It will create a bubble in the sense that morons will invest tons of money in developers, with salaries and benefit packages increasing until economic realities force their fist down their throats, with companies that existed solely for hoarding talent folding down as they should.
Granted that this is harder to happen than in the dot-com era (where the plan was to hoard anything with e- or www in it, hoping to bail out and cash in or be bought by Yahoo or what not.) It is harder, but not impossible. In fact, given the penchant for speculative stupidity displayed by humanity in general (and us Americans in particular), it is highly possible. I cannot wait to see the debacle unfolding as it will be quite hilarious. Yes, it will be hilarious.
if only computer science was easy enough for the average money hungry bear to just "jump" into...hahaha
Where the hell have you been in the last 12-15 years? CS curricula has been watered down all across many universities, supposedly to churn graduates to meet industrial demand (with the predictable drop in quality.) I see your comment, and all I can think of is "wtf?"
a fine balance between enhancing delivery excellence and releasing a software product in consonance with deadlines.
Can I get this translated into English, please? I try to avoid parsing marketroid and/or manager babble. ;)
Deliver on time shit that works with quality, don't sacrifice quality too much just to meet deadlines, and don't blow deadlines too much just to make shit perfectly pretty.
Being doing this for almost 17 years now, and I've never seen a requirement of working 80 hour weeks continuously
And if you look at the theme across my post, that one of my points I make. Now, whether you believe this explanation I'm giving you, that's up to you considering that you do not address any of the others points made in my last post. To each its own.
Sorry I missed that among the insults, bullshit and the self-aggrandisement if it was there at all, besides, you can't honestly deny your words above. Your original post stands with lines such as "I've never seen a requirement of working 80 hour weeks"
No. There is not a single post I made in this thread that says that. That is a line you made. I ask you again, to post the exact text I typed that says or implies such a thing.
and "If you have to put up with 80 hour work weeks, it means that you have few career choices, and thus have no option but being someone's bitch.".
But it is true. If you are willing or are forced to work so many hours a week for months (we are not talking about a week here and there, but as a norm), "you are being someone's bitch", an expression that expresses several meanings in the vernacular.
When you work that many hours, weeks, months on end, your health, physical and emotional, deteriorates, your family life (if you have any) deteriorates, your career deteriorates because now you are preoccupied with the constant deliverables to be completed with insane schedule demands (leaving no time or energy to cultivate your skills outside of work, which is a must for cultivating one's career.)
Moreover, and which makes "being someone's bitch" a very apt expression, the number of excess hours that you are asked/forced to work on a regular basis is inversely proportional to the quality of work and management that you are subjected to. Bad management (systemic and systematic) and abuse go in tandem with excessive over time mandated on a regular basis.
So if we are clear that, in general, this is a dysfunctional and unhealthy software-related work behavior, why would one put up with it? Mostly a person would do so because he/she has no that many alternatives (for whatever reasons.) If a person had alternatives, would he/she made the switch, no? Or would that person still stay at such noxious environment on his/her own free will despite having better alternatives?
And if such a person does not have that many alternatives, doesn't that mean then that the control he/she has in his/her career is limited (for internal or external factors or whatever the case may be)? Or are you disagreeing that there is no relation between these two?
The reality is that few get to choose their own destiny, some people get stuck doing long hours, and some (such as in the mining industry) choose it deliberately in exchange for other benefits.
We are not talking mining industry, or anything other than software for that matter. My comment is specific for software development. Of course there are other lines of jobs in which you have no choice (I used to flip burgers at McDonalds once when I first came to this country, so I know.) And in mining, the rewards are sufficient to compensate for the hard labor (which does not include working excessive O/T on a regular basis.
But I repeat, this discussion is not about work in general, but about software development (and the work conditions related to that) specifically. And you have your choices, your options, all of them depending on how you develop your career.
Simply put, work conditions in general (as in outside of software-related industries) are not a topic that I ever discussed here. Bringing it up is a nice straw man, though.
Postgraduate students do it, Medical registrars do it, other doctors new to a practice do it,
True dat. Those fields, however, are not what is being discussed here.
some software developers do it.
This is a fact I'm not denying (despite you
To sum up, your attitude of pretending something is not happening because it doesn't happen where you are sitting is the thing that disgusted me enough to write everything above. I must say I was truly astonished to see you cry "bullshit" about working conditions that nearly every adult would be aware of.
And once again, you display either a lack of reading comprehension, or you are simply being obstinate. This is what I argue against: That the AC stated that work 80hrs constantly is a must to make a 6-figure salary. And this is what I argued for: the amount of hours you work is a direct reflection on how you control your career.
Never have I said that there are appalling working conditions, or that a lot of people in software and IT put 60 hours or more a week consistently (and who blindly think that is how must be and that no other alternatives exist.)
I have asked like four times already to quote the text I wrote where I deny the existence of those working conditions. Four times already I've asked, and four times already you have not done so. Four times I've asked to quote (a simple copy/paste action) the things I wrote that supposedly said that you said I said (forgive the play of words.). And as of yet, nothing from you.
All you have is a red herring, attacking a claim I never made, and a position I never espoused. And if you have to recur again and again to the same red herring, then that means you never had a valid argument to begin with.
So, if you are going to reply to this, are you going to quote the text I supposedly wrote where I deny the existence of the work conditions you describe? Or are you still going to go in circles with a red herring hanging around your neck?
Anyways, be my guess working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week (or a work week extending weekends) to make 60 hours a week, or 13.33 hours 5 days a week (or 11hrs 6 days a week) to make 80, on a regular basis or as an mandatory way to ear a 6-figure salary. Enjoy your career development, a bright future awaits you.
It is equally insulting to suggest my lack of experience when you have nothing but a post to render judgment on me
If you post something as naive
Naive to you, in your eyes, subjectively.
as what I replied to it is a very clear indication that you either have led a very sheltered existence or are lying to pretend that you have. It appears you are using that as an excuse to call me names. Pathetic.
I'm calling you names? Can we take a look at your own posts to compare?
For fuck sake not everything is about you.
Never said it was. I'm telling you my response to this (note the text in bold):
So if I'm telling that I don't pretend, I have to tell you why that is not the case. And that will inevitably involve things that *I* do (which involves I/me/mine unless I invent some type of language that doesn't have conjugation of the first person). But if I do that, then you turn it around accusing me of making it be all about me. Nice red herring+strawman, btw.
That is a very childish way to look at the issue when it is being discussed in absolute terms
Absolute terms? Absolute terms like needing to work 80hrs constantly to make a 6-figure salary, that EA's practices at the time were in line with industry standards, the very arguments that started my disagreement?
and when you are using it to support a generalisation.
Which is no different from you, using your own experiences and observations to generalize about the state of affairs in the software development industry.
While it's a horrible way to run any organisation there are a lot of places where people work long hours.
And where did I say that this is not the case? Focus on this question, and don't post an answer unless you quote the exact text of mine that contradicts or is mutually exclusive to that which you point. Yeah, people work long hours, the number of hours being inversely proportional, primarily, to the control one has in one's career, barring certain circumstances (financial emergencies, etc.) It is not something I denied, and I'm asking you again to quote me precisely where the hell I've said otherwise.
By your own admission, it is a horrible way to run organizations, but then it begs the question. Are all companies dysfunctional like that? Answer is no, not all companies are like that.
So that begs the next question: are there companies that do good, challenging work while operating differently from that dysfunctional model. Answer is yes, yes there are.
Which brings the next question: what do you do in your career to 1) maximize you work with the later type of companies and projects, on your terms, while increasing your salary and your experience, while 2) minimize exposure to the former?
Do you do anything at all, anything methodical? Or do you simply pick up the soap? It doesn't have to be the constant struggle of 60+hrs a week, let alone 80hr, to make a 6-figure salary. It is if you let it be.
Whether you believe what I'm saying is real, or just bull shit, that's up to you man.
Why are you pretending otherwise?
Again, quote me where I did such thing. Reading comprehension man, reading comprehension.
If you are actually that old you've been going around with your eyes shut or are being dishonest
I'm old? That suggests me then your age, and by proxy, your expo
Yes, I have had a similar experience on several occassions, know others that have had similar experiences and I'm sure many other reader here have too
"I'm sure" is not a quantifiable statement. It is subjective. It is an opinion, an artifact of emotion that you are evoking simply to build your argument. Nothing more.
because there are a lot of places in a wide range of industries where a lot of unpaid overtime is expected.
Nice strawman. That is not what I argued against. My contention is the claim that suggest working 80hr a week per months on end to make a 6-figure salary. That is ridiculous and not true. I'd suggest you go re-read what I posted, and if you think that was not the theme of my post, simply quote the specific passage you have a problem with so that we can deliberate on it.
I've even seen it done to clerical staff in a telecommunications company for no good reason - a two week "billing crunch" that extended to three weeks and then continuously until the company crashed and burned. I've done it myself, mostly during plant shutdowns which are probably are more time critical and "at-risk" than anything you will ever see in your life - but also later in IT although to a lesser extent than others.
So it sounds then that we have similar work experience. And yet, I fail to see how you can actually agree with what the AC posted, re-quoting the specific passages I have an issue with and which I made very clear (in particular with the lines in bold):
... stuff... It's simply a fact of life, and if you don't like it, go teach 8th grade gym
There is a lot of unsubstantiated bravado in this. The 80hr/week contention is just ridiculous. The last time I ever worked 80hr a week was with a defense contractor, for three weeks during integration, unpaid. And that was fine because, yes, as you said, it is expected. But that someone were to tell me that I have to do that for months, I wouldn't. Even if paid over time. The only time you would ever do that is at the start of your career, when you are accumulating experience, and hopefully, OT. Or perhaps when it is the rare chance to work in some really cool shit that you know in your guts it will position well in your career for the next decade.
You do not need that to make a 6-figure salary. No, you don't. Period. And that's my contention, and it is a provable one. Moreover, and going back to the 80hr/week measure. It cannot be sustained for months on end, not without having a deterioration in performance. There are psychological, physical, emotional, and organizational/administrative limitations to that. When you start seeing people clocking over 60 hours consistently week after week, I can guarantee you you can find a lot of idle time being burned out.
Yes, we work more than 40 hours a week. Yes, we are expected to work in the vicinity of 50. No, the moment you go beyond a threshold (which you reach before you hit 80hrs) - not for a week or two, even a month, but for months on end - either you find it un-productivity and burn-out, or you find someone is milking the time sheets.
And what's this "sock puppet" shit? Why would I post the above AC if I have a login with decent karma?
I have no clue, nor I care about your karma. I just found extremely stupid to
I think you either need to talk to more people or get more experience yourself before pretending
Because obviously my work experience is limited, and I've never worked with small tech start ups, nor IT/Enterprise Computing nor with defense contractors, or with any type of company, small or large for that matter. I have no clue on how to run a business, I have never been an hourly paid contractor in at-risk projects with aggressive schedules, and have no experience giving or receiving orders.
It's like... you know me, and you can attest as verifiable fact that I need to get more experience on the subject I had. You implied so, you said so, so you have to be right, right, right? Yes, si, pretty please, with a cherry on top?
you know more about this topic than the above poster
Who, the anonymous coward with no listed credentials? Or you somehow knows who this AC is and you can vouch for his experience? Or is that actually you, now acting like a sad sock puppet?
or a very large number of the readers.
Whom? How many? For someone (you == AC) claiming a lot of experience, I would have expected a more verifiable and quantifiable antecedent to substantiate your appeal to authority. Thanks for trying.
Besides, chat logs are not a legal and submittable in court.
Wrong. A quick google will prove you wrong on this one in no time.
Email is well tested and has a traceable header.
Woa, wait, what? Are you for real? This is SMTP you are referring to, which gives you zero (yes, ZERO) guarantees for non-repudiation, integrity and authenticity/authentication (all those necessary for claiming traceability).