Something important to consider; if you are hiring programmers and have several that don't work out there is a good chance that there is nothing wrong with your technical interviewing. There may be real problems in the management.
A lot of frontline managers of programmers are exdevelopers promoted into leadership roles with little to no training.
Here are a few points to think about...
1) For the most part this isn't rocket science (NASA types please substitute something else like maybe auto mechanics)
What I mean by this is that in general most of us DON'T work on difficult research and development problems. The average programmer in your group is NOT going to create a new data structure or intriguing new algorithm or solve the halting problem. In general she will apply known good techniques to fairly simple problems for instance writing a device driver or web service.
Almost any technical interview will reveal if a candidate has the basic skills to do this.
2) Different people work differently.
Not everyone responds to the same managerial strategies. In fact the essence of management is in figuring out how individuals are motivated and figuring out how to meet that within the constraints of your corporate and managerial culture.
In general people like to work and like to succeed but are often unaware of what motivates them to excel. There are a few people who need little to no outside encouragement or affirmation to succeed. The fact that your group produces does not indicate perfect management.
Donations like this really make me worry about the coming of the e-book. With e-books there is no ability to give your long horded collection to posterity after death. In fact of the few e-books I have purchased over time I have lost the keys to two of them rendering them inaccessible.
My chief worry is that once a work becomes economically uninteresting to a major publisher it will vanish from the public's ability to read it. True there may be a copy stored in an ill backed up database in a dark room under the stairs but this does little to enhance our culture or enrich the lifes of the average reader unwilling to brave the, "beware of the leopard", signs.
Perhaps we need to resurrect the idea of key escrow only this time implementing it for the citizen's benefit. Perhaps as a condition of selling a copyrighted work the publisher should be forced to deposit the work, along with any appropriate keys with an escrow agency. As copyrights lapse the agency would release the works to the public via a website or whatever miraculous technology replaces the web.
If the government is going to be involved in the guardianship of corporate profits via DMCA etc I would like to see it at least attempt the guardianship of fair use of the cultural heritage we are creating now.
Probably the hardest thing for us in America
to get over is that every culture doesn't play
the same way ours does.
Every so often something new comes out of
japan, tamagotchi, pokemon etc that simply
blasts onto our gaming scene seemingly out
of nowhere and leaves our heads spinning.
We can't adapt our current headspace easily into
the phone game headspace. I am sure though that
Japan can and wil in time once more startle us.
Odd thing is how every ex-napster employee
says the same exact thing. Napster spent
WAY too much time worried about outside threats
and nearly zero time worrying bout internal
problems which in the end were in many was
just as damaging.
It's a pattern many startups would do well to
notice. There is more to creating a productive
loyal happy workplace than setting out free soda.
The Palm and Palm alikes are much more complete
out of the box. For example if you don't happen
to have Outlook on your windows machine then you
have no way to sync up your pocket pc calendar.
The Palm comes whole and complete.
Synchronization is also far more fleshed out on
the palm. The equivalent application on the PC
is a bit on the twitchy side and loads and runs
by default on windows with no real way to exit it. Kinna a pain on a laptop.
Still despite it's shortcomings I switched to
pocketPC from a palm device two years ago and
would never go back.
I think starcraft and TA are actually very from very different genres. TA is a very well balanced RTS with an unlimited resource model. Starcraft on the other hand is more participatory cinema and role playing with a
decent limited resource RTS grafted on.
I really think StarCraft succeeded more on its
cinematic qualities than on it's RTS qualities.
Lately I've been thinking most of the really
sucessful games regardless of genre are doing
the same.
I have a copy of the novelization and surprisingly it is just as good as the movie. It presents a world where consumerism has rissen to become the be all and end all of civilization and does a tremendous job of fleshing out the vision presented by the film.
I've seen both THX1138s, Lucas's student film and the ful length feature and personally feel it is his best work.
Slashdot Mirror
Something important to consider; if you are hiring programmers and have several that don't work out there is a good chance that there is nothing wrong with your technical interviewing. There may be real problems in the management.
A lot of frontline managers of programmers are exdevelopers promoted into leadership roles with little to no training.
Here are a few points to think about...
1) For the most part this isn't rocket science (NASA types please substitute something else like maybe auto mechanics)
What I mean by this is that in general most of us DON'T work on difficult research and development problems. The average programmer in your group is NOT going to create a new data structure or intriguing new algorithm or solve the halting problem. In general she will apply known good techniques to fairly simple problems for instance writing a device driver or web service.
Almost any technical interview will reveal if a candidate has the basic skills to do this.
2) Different people work differently.
Not everyone responds to the same managerial strategies. In fact the essence of management is in figuring out how individuals are motivated and figuring out how to meet that within the constraints of your corporate and managerial culture.
In general people like to work and like to succeed but are often unaware of what motivates them to excel. There are a few people who need little to no outside encouragement or affirmation to succeed. The fact that your group produces does not indicate perfect management.
Donations like this really make me worry about the coming of the e-book. With e-books there is no ability to give your long horded collection to posterity after death. In fact of the few e-books I have purchased over time I have lost the keys to two of them rendering them inaccessible.
My chief worry is that once a work becomes economically uninteresting to a major publisher it will vanish from the public's ability to read it. True there may be a copy stored in an ill backed up database in a dark room under the stairs but this does little to enhance our culture or enrich the lifes of the average reader unwilling to brave the, "beware of the leopard", signs.
Perhaps we need to resurrect the idea of key escrow only this time implementing it for the citizen's benefit. Perhaps as a condition of selling a copyrighted work the publisher should be forced to deposit the work, along with any appropriate keys with an escrow agency. As copyrights lapse the agency would release the works to the public via a website or whatever miraculous technology replaces the web.
If the government is going to be involved in the guardianship of corporate profits via DMCA etc I would like to see it at least attempt the guardianship of fair use of the cultural heritage we are creating now.
Probably the hardest thing for us in America
to get over is that every culture doesn't play
the same way ours does.
Every so often something new comes out of
japan, tamagotchi, pokemon etc that simply
blasts onto our gaming scene seemingly out
of nowhere and leaves our heads spinning.
We can't adapt our current headspace easily into
the phone game headspace. I am sure though that
Japan can and wil in time once more startle us.
Odd thing is how every ex-napster employee
says the same exact thing. Napster spent
WAY too much time worried about outside threats
and nearly zero time worrying bout internal
problems which in the end were in many was
just as damaging.
It's a pattern many startups would do well to
notice. There is more to creating a productive
loyal happy workplace than setting out free soda.
Not entirely true.
The Palm and Palm alikes are much more complete
out of the box. For example if you don't happen
to have Outlook on your windows machine then you
have no way to sync up your pocket pc calendar.
The Palm comes whole and complete.
Synchronization is also far more fleshed out on
the palm. The equivalent application on the PC
is a bit on the twitchy side and loads and runs
by default on windows with no real way to exit it. Kinna a pain on a laptop.
Still despite it's shortcomings I switched to
pocketPC from a palm device two years ago and
would never go back.
I think starcraft and TA are actually very from very different genres. TA is a very well balanced RTS with an unlimited resource model. Starcraft on the other hand is more participatory cinema and role playing with a
decent limited resource RTS grafted on.
I really think StarCraft succeeded more on its
cinematic qualities than on it's RTS qualities.
Lately I've been thinking most of the really
sucessful games regardless of genre are doing
the same.
I have a copy of the novelization and surprisingly it is just as good as the movie. It presents a world where consumerism has rissen to become the be all and end all of civilization and does a tremendous job of fleshing out the vision presented by the film.
I've seen both THX1138s, Lucas's student film and the ful length feature and personally feel it is his best work.