Not really, I have been to Bangalore many times and each time I have seen the lines at the job fair. Picture about 200 fresh college graduates standing in line just to be interviewed for the 5-10 positions. I have seen about 15 of these lines just in one morning. There are more employees than jobs.
Duh! All Enterprise IT projects are like custom cars of the 20's and 30's. Each one is hand crafted by a small group of skilled craftsmen (coders, artists, project managers, etc.). No two implementations are the same and the users are just not that sophisticated. Every Enterprise Graphical User Interface I have seen is just an electronic version of "how we have always done it".
Outsiders (the clients upper management) will apply time measurements to IT projects as if they are building bridges or building cars. These are unrealistic because both those industries have been around for 50+ years. The IT industry is immature and still growing. Just think how many languages you have to know just to do your job? Or how many versions of compilers, or how many changes in OS, dll, registry, configs,/bin,/sbin, kernel, etc. that we have been through in the last 5 years. 10 years ago most Enterprse systems did not exist, were running windows 3.1, consoles or just purple ink memo's.
Come on, until there is standadization in tasks (what the client wants to do), interfaces (how the client wants to do it) and tools (how we make it so), all IT projects will be optimistically scheduled and all projects will be under time pressure from the beginning.
Aside from the obvious horror and sense of doom that you must be feeling, I would start by organizing everything by date and timestamp.
Here is what I did in a previous project.
1. I created a wiki website on my laptop and put all the files in one directory. I used a wiki that was not tied to a database, but only file based. 2. I read every single thing from the beginning and wrote my thoughts in the wiki (including links to important docs). Management gave you all the stuff to be read, right. 3. Then I converted everything to pdf files with the date-timestamp in the naming convention.
When I was done, I had a storable, printable and searchable trail of how we ended up where we are today.
Be sure you tell the management how long it will take you to organize all the stuff, they gave you.
Currently, I am a project manager and I do not care if you have a degree or not, only if you can actually do what is required for the job. If you are going to define success in education as a degree, then you should graduate from the most impressive University you can. However, in hiring for projects Cert's mean more than a degree. They are tangable and directly apply to the job. I have found that people who invest the time in their education are the same people who will invest the time necessary to learn and complete the tasks assigned to them. But, you can get more milage from attending classroom training on relevant topics than on a degree. It may not be the best thing in the long term, but to get a job today, you must have something that separates you from the rest of the resumes. Just my.02
Write a list of all the tasks that need to be accomplished. Be sure to include the impact to the company and the time necessary to complete the tasks.
Arrange the list with a impact number. Like security issues a 1 and printer maping a 4.
Present the list of tasks to Management
Ask that they prioritize the list, or at least identify the first few things to complete
Once management has decided make a big poster with the priority list and post it on a wall near you. Identifing that the priority came from Management.
For every new request write it on the bottom of the list
When a task is finished mark it off on the poster. (to show your progress)
Now everyone will see your list and see the priority of their request.
The key is to get management to decide and display it for all to see. It sounds like you have a lot of people who think you have nothing to do and they are really important.
Install this from ArcoIde.comand install a second hard drive. This will mirror your system on two drives and will automatically switch over to the secondary drive.
I have instituted a policy of all the computers on my project to be secured from virii and spyware. We use Spybot from security.kolla.de. Get the Main Appor the updated tools or the updates and are on this mirror.
I travel a lot and would love a cheap international dialup account. No frills, just a connection. With yahoo, hotmail, VPN, web access to corporate email I do not need webspace or an email account. Now, If I could find a way to bypass those annoying hotel sur-charges for phone calls.
How about putting this thing on a computer case and determining how to make it _not_ vibrate?
Then we could get closer to a silent PC without haveing to go to extreme measures.
Re:Very interesting, but I still don't understand.
on
The Economics of Spam
·
· Score: 1
"A 0.002% response rate for 3 million emails is 6 thousand responses."
I wonder how many of those email addresses are spam catcher emails like spam@my-domain.com or what I do put an s- infront of my address and filter all those to/dev/null.
Ask your finance people is you can get any tax benefits from leasing. This is a good use of the companies cash. You only pay for the portion of the useful life that you use. Then you turn them back in and get newer better stuff for the same cost (because hardware costs are continually decreasing) The real cost of this setup is the cost of teh software.
Do you have seat licenses for all the software that you use? Or are you limited by the actual purchased products? Remember that XPHome cannot network more than 5 other computers in a workgroup and cannot join a domain. To do that all the computers must be running XPPro and all of them must be registered with MS or they will stop working.
I would get a universal license for all the software used on these new machines.
The most important thing is who are you going to call when something breaks. The money is already spent and there is no tomorrow. Go with a proven company that has a commitment to service and support. (I have found that the best was Dell) I have run 50+ user machine shops for call centers and other operations.
The two most important things are hardware warrantee and rescue disks. The key is to standardize the hardware so you do not have to keep lots of different drivers.
-- Hardware -- Who do you call when a power supply fails or a video card flakes? Dell will give you onsite repairs for just a little more. It is worth it.
If the whole lot is crap then you have some leverage to return all the machines and make them pay you. They will not want to do this. They will make it good, whatever thier cost.
-- Software -- Use the standard rescue disk to setup the first one, add your changes then ghost the image. Burn the image to a CD for recovery, network recovery or put it on a usb drive, like pockey http://www.pocketec.net/. Recovery disks are your friend!
As far as the Service goes, HP sucks. Compaq used to be good for servers, but HP will cause this to blowup. IBM is out of the PC business. No-one should use a Gateway for business. Sony's are built for home and you cannot order them direct so you would end up with a few different configurations. The rest are no name imports.
Get a Dell and make them give you a personal business contact.
I too have changed from a programmer to another job. (project manager) I will eventually become the President of my current software company.
How long is the average lifespan of a productive programmer? Why is this a short span of time compared to other engineers? Why do most programmers move on eventually, only to be replaced by enthustasic but inexperienced neophites. This seems to be a self fufilling death march of computing.
I have an idea (that is probably out there somewhere).
How would I setup a spam blackhole machine that could be used as a community service?
It would filter all email to/dev/null.
Then anyone could use that domain in their email address to eliminate spam from their personal account.
I use a debunked domain when asked for an email address.
Education should not be designed to get you a job, but instead to foster your imagination.
I am 36. Here is a brief synopsis of my working life:
a waiter,
a salesman,
a cable installer,
a MS Excel macro writer (out of necessity),
help desks, support,
MS office programming for Word, Excel, Access,
to SQL Server and Oracle database programming (VB client interface)
HTML and scripts replacing the VB client
Web Front-ends, database back ends
designing these solutions for clients
Y2K analysis
structure and architecture analysis
leading a team to build these web-applications
Managing a team to build these Web-Applications
Managing a portion of a large project on the business side (non-technical)
Except for the 3 programming classes and 1 business law class my formal education is not applicable. I was always more interested in language and literature than technology. Now I use communication and people skills more than coding as my main avenue to make money. I find that business groups have the money not the IT departments. I solve business problems, usually with technology, but not always. My education in business, art, literature, golf, and communications are the keys to my sucess today.
You need a well rounded education because know one knows where they are going to end up 10 years from now, let alone 30.
When I went to college the first time I was a performing arts major. Th second time I got a liberal arts degree. Now I get paid by big corporations to solve their business problems. Do you really know where you will end up?
BTW. The retiring CEO of GE (Jack Welch) has a PHD in Chemistry.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really, I have been to Bangalore many times and each time I have seen the lines at the job fair. Picture about 200 fresh college graduates standing in line just to be interviewed for the 5-10 positions. I have seen about 15 of these lines just in one morning. There are more employees than jobs.
Duh! All Enterprise IT projects are like custom cars of the 20's and 30's. Each one is hand crafted by a small group of skilled craftsmen (coders, artists, project managers, etc.). No two implementations are the same and the users are just not that sophisticated. Every Enterprise Graphical User Interface I have seen is just an electronic version of "how we have always done it".
/bin, /sbin, kernel, etc. that we have been through in the last 5 years. 10 years ago most Enterprse systems did not exist, were running windows 3.1, consoles or just purple ink memo's.
Outsiders (the clients upper management) will apply time measurements to IT projects as if they are building bridges or building cars. These are unrealistic because both those industries have been around for 50+ years. The IT industry is immature and still growing. Just think how many languages you have to know just to do your job? Or how many versions of compilers, or how many changes in OS, dll, registry, configs,
Come on, until there is standadization in tasks (what the client wants to do), interfaces (how the client wants to do it) and tools (how we make it so), all IT projects will be optimistically scheduled and all projects will be under time pressure from the beginning.
I won't even start on budgeting of projects...
Ok, I'm down off the soap box.
Aside from the obvious horror and sense of doom that you must be feeling, I would start by organizing everything by date and timestamp.
Here is what I did in a previous project.
1. I created a wiki website on my laptop and put all the files in one directory. I used a wiki that was not tied to a database, but only file based.
2. I read every single thing from the beginning and wrote my thoughts in the wiki (including links to important docs). Management gave you all the stuff to be read, right.
3. Then I converted everything to pdf files with the date-timestamp in the naming convention.
When I was done, I had a storable, printable and searchable trail of how we ended up where we are today.
Be sure you tell the management how long it will take you to organize all the stuff, they gave you.
I hope this helps.
I run AntiVir http://www.free-av.com/ .
is my favorite open source windows racing game. generally.racesincentral.com
Two words --- Battery Life. The average gba will last 10-18 hours.
CigarBox a piece of wood, a couple if eye bolts, and three guitar strings.
Checkout Shane Speal's CigarBox Guitar Group
CigarBox Guitar Site
Currently, I am a project manager and I do not care if you have a degree or not, only if you can actually do what is required for the job. If you are going to define success in education as a degree, then you should graduate from the most impressive University you can. However, in hiring for projects Cert's mean more than a degree. They are tangable and directly apply to the job. I have found that people who invest the time in their education are the same people who will invest the time necessary to learn and complete the tasks assigned to them. But, you can get more milage from attending classroom training on relevant topics than on a degree. It may not be the best thing in the long term, but to get a job today, you must have something that separates you from the rest of the resumes. Just my .02
- Once management has decided make a big poster with the priority list and post it on a wall near you. Identifing that the priority came from Management.
- For every new request write it on the bottom of the list
- When a task is finished mark it off on the poster. (to show your progress)
- Now everyone will see your list and see the priority of their request.
The key is to get management to decide and display it for all to see.It sounds like you have a lot of people who think you have nothing to do and they are really important.
Install this from ArcoIde.comand install a second hard drive. This will mirror your system on two drives and will automatically switch over to the secondary drive.
I have instituted a policy of all the computers on my project to be secured from virii and spyware. We use Spybot from security.kolla.de. Get the Main Appor the updated tools or the updates and are on this mirror.
I travel a lot and would love a cheap international dialup account. No frills, just a connection. With yahoo, hotmail, VPN, web access to corporate email I do not need webspace or an email account. Now, If I could find a way to bypass those annoying hotel sur-charges for phone calls.
Call it Hell.
Then you can tell your boss, "If you want it fixed, go to Hell!"
How about putting this thing on a computer case and determining how to make it _not_ vibrate?
Then we could get closer to a silent PC without haveing to go to extreme measures.
"A 0.002% response rate for 3 million emails is 6 thousand responses."
/dev/null.
I wonder how many of those email addresses are spam catcher emails like spam@my-domain.com or what I do put an s- infront of my address and filter all those to
There is an article in the November issue of macworld about setting up a Apache, php, mysql web server.
I tried to find the article on-line but was unsuccessful. Maybe someone else can find it and put in a link.
Thank god I got a SMC router instead of a Linksys!
Does that mean that my win2k, winXP and win98 machines are safe now?
Ask your finance people is you can get any tax benefits from leasing. This is a good use of the companies cash. You only pay for the portion of the useful life that you use. Then you turn them back in and get newer better stuff for the same cost (because hardware costs are continually decreasing) The real cost of this setup is the cost of teh software.
Do you have seat licenses for all the software that you use? Or are you limited by the actual purchased products? Remember that XPHome cannot network more than 5 other computers in a workgroup and cannot join a domain. To do that all the computers must be running XPPro and all of them must be registered with MS or they will stop working.
I would get a universal license for all the software used on these new machines.
The most important thing is who are you going to call when something breaks. The money is already spent and there is no tomorrow. Go with a proven company that has a commitment to service and support. (I have found that the best was Dell) I have run 50+ user machine shops for call centers and other operations.
The two most important things are hardware warrantee and rescue disks. The key is to standardize the hardware so you do not have to keep lots of different drivers.
-- Hardware --
Who do you call when a power supply fails or a video card flakes? Dell will give you onsite repairs for just a little more. It is worth it.
If the whole lot is crap then you have some leverage to return all the machines and make them pay you. They will not want to do this. They will make it good, whatever thier cost.
-- Software --
Use the standard rescue disk to setup the first one, add your changes then ghost the image. Burn the image to a CD for recovery, network recovery or put it on a usb drive, like pockey http://www.pocketec.net/. Recovery disks are your friend!
As far as the Service goes, HP sucks. Compaq used to be good for servers, but HP will cause this to blowup. IBM is out of the PC business. No-one should use a Gateway for business. Sony's are built for home and you cannot order them direct so you would end up with a few different configurations. The rest are no name imports.
Get a Dell and make them give you a personal business contact.
HP makes 40% of their money in Printer cartridges. Printer stuff is consumable. That means I use it up and buy more.
I have spent more on printer paper and ink than all my computer hardware put together in the last 5 years.
Paperless office is a dream.
Here is a list of software I install on all my company laptops.
h am/putty/
/
r g
trillian (multi-IM client)
http://www.trillian.cc/
metapad (text editor)
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
opera (web browser, email client...)
http://www.opera.com
putty (ssh client)
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtat
phoenix (web browser)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix
xxcopy (better than xcopy) I use it in my backup batch files.
http://www.xxcopy.com
Here is a list of a few websites that I frequent for free windows software.
http://www.shellcity.net
http://www.tinyapps.o
http://www.freewarehome.com
I play guitar and my right hand is much faster than my left hand.
I can put together a right hand sequence of keystrokes in faster succession than my left hand can manage.
Though my left hand trys to move around on the keyboard.
IE typing "looping" is really fast but "fast" is not.
I too have changed from a programmer to another job. (project manager) I will eventually become the President of my current software company.
How long is the average lifespan of a productive programmer?
Why is this a short span of time compared to other engineers?
Why do most programmers move on eventually, only to be replaced by enthustasic but inexperienced neophites.
This seems to be a self fufilling death march of computing.
I have an idea (that is probably out there somewhere).
/dev/null.
How would I setup a spam blackhole machine that could be used as a community service?
It would filter all email to
Then anyone could use that domain in their email address to eliminate spam from their personal account.
I use a debunked domain when asked for an email address.
What would I need to do?
Is this a good idea?
Education should not be designed to get you a job, but instead to foster your imagination.
I am 36. Here is a brief synopsis of my working life:
a waiter,
a salesman,
a cable installer,
a MS Excel macro writer (out of necessity),
help desks, support,
MS office programming for Word, Excel, Access,
to SQL Server and Oracle database programming (VB client interface)
HTML and scripts replacing the VB client
Web Front-ends, database back ends
designing these solutions for clients
Y2K analysis
structure and architecture analysis
leading a team to build these web-applications
Managing a team to build these Web-Applications
Managing a portion of a large project on the business side (non-technical)
Except for the 3 programming classes and 1 business law class my formal education is not applicable. I was always more interested in language and literature than technology. Now I use communication and people skills more than coding as my main avenue to make money. I find that business groups have the money not the IT departments. I solve business problems, usually with technology, but not always. My education in business, art, literature, golf, and communications are the keys to my sucess today.
You need a well rounded education because know one knows where they are going to end up 10 years from now, let alone 30.
When I went to college the first time I was a performing arts major. Th second time I got a liberal arts degree. Now I get paid by big corporations to solve their business problems. Do you really know where you will end up?
BTW. The retiring CEO of GE (Jack Welch) has a PHD in Chemistry.