On one side amoral advertisers who will stoop to any measure to get their 'message' across. On the other possibly the greediest most conniving industry in the world. Lets hope they do some serious damage to each other.
Because it works.
We are swaddled in consumerism, what do you expect? Take your kids to watch the latest tripe at the theater, and afterwards drive them straight to McDonalds in your SUV while sipping your Starbucks and talking on your cellphone in order to buy them promotional toys from the movie you just watched. Our society enables that industry to exist. You can certainly complain about it, but what are YOU doing to stop it?
You have to remember, this opinion comes from someone who has been at this big company for a few years and is sick of it. If I had written this after losing my job at a startup because it went under, it probably would have had a slightly different tone.:-)
Some people really do want that secure, lifetime position at a big company. I know my friends that are still at Moto are making more than I am, and they probably are getting some nice stock options since the stock tanked a few years ago (the shares I bought when I was there are worth about 1/3 what they used to be). It is all about benefit/cost. They may not even see the "cost" in working there because they have only been in that environment. I have been on the outside, and can say that I am soooo glad I left. But I can't speak for all big companies. I have a friend who works at Intel, and he loves it. From what he tells me, it is a great place to work.
Meanwhile, Mozilla appeared on the scene and got better and better. I would say that today, the Mozilla/Firefox family surpasses Opera in enough ways that Opera doesn't really have a niche like it used to.
Opera is my primary browser. I keep downloading and installing Moz/Firefox on occasion, but for me it just isn't there yet. The mouse gestures aren't as good. Why can't I close the last tab without killing the browser? Opera lets me. Opera lets me double-click on the tab-bar and it opens a new tab. These are things that I am very used to using and am not willing to give up yet. I downloaded Firefox 1.0, and the first page I brought up (Slashdot) rendered oddly. The text from the stories overlapped the frame on the left.
And what is the article submitter smoking? Opera IS free, in the same sense that the others listed are free. It doesn't cost anything to download and use Opera. You also now have the option for text or image based ads, and the text ones take up VERY little space.
Opera still has a few problems, but I can live with them. For me, it is the best browser out there.
All these stories of working large companies sound quite ridiculous. My experience is with contract jobs with small companies, and there's no experience like this. Based on what is being said in this story, there's not much motivation for someone to work in a big company. Contracting work and small business seem like the path to sanity.
Depends. I left Moto in '97 to go to a small company. I had essentially had it with their manufactured "culture". I loved the small company, even though I was making less overall (when you account for all benefits) But at the small company, I was truly part of a team. I wasn't just a "resource" or an FTE (full time employee). But....
That small company isn't around anymore. We were a victim of the dot-com bust, our VCs got freaked out and pulled all funding, shutting down the company. Luckily, it all went down before the whole market collapsed, which was good for me. I was able to find a job quickly (about a month). So I am still with that company, and it is HUGE. There are all kinds of positives and negatives about it. I have a stable job - but I am only an FTE. If the word came down, I would be fired with no consideration to my abilities or past performance. I have seen it happen. We got no raises this year, but our CEO made a few million in salary, and with stock and bonuses, he made 50 million. Yet everyone in the company had to forego raises because of financial performance that most of us had nothing to do with.
The thing is, you can work at a large company for a long long time without doing much. You usually have to compromise your personality, spirit, and creativity to do it though. Oh, people like to think that they haven't lost these things, but there is definitely a "group think" going on, where you accept stupid, stupid things because "that is just how things are". Some people are happy with that. Some people don't want to lose their vacation that they have built up, or whatever else they see as a benefit. They don't know what is out there, so what they have is good enough. They like to sit around and bitch about things, knowing full well that they can't change them. It is an odd, symbiotic relationship between corporate entity and employee. They really like not having to care about their job at all. Just put in the hours, work overtime when you are told to, and don't complain because nobody can change it.
The only real option is to leave, and that scares a lot of people. Since they have been there for 10 or 15 years, they have some kind of loyalty to a company that wouldn't give a second thought to cutting their throat. See, if the "company" does something, then nobody is responsible. There is nobody to blame, because that is just how things are. Big companies will break your spirit if you stay at them long enough. So far for me, and I have just worked at two, 4 years is about my limit. After that, I start looking. It is just a damaging environment for me personally. I may even go to another big company, in the hopes that it is different. I mean, I can't judge them all on my measly 2 jobs. Even if it is more of the same, I figure I have about 4 good years before I get sick of it.
I'm shocked that Moto let you actually use Mosaic. Back in the day (at least at the Moto facility I'm thinking of), they didn't want anything on their machines that wasn't "supported" by a company. I think they ended up delaying any sort of web browser stuff until Netscape hit the streets.
Heh. It wasn't supported, and in fact most people had no clue what it even was. There were a couple of grass-roots folks in our facility who used it, and we kept it pretty quiet. Then one guy figured out which machines were the sites proxy servers to the internet, because they were experimenting with it. So we had internet access! We kept that quiet for several months before it leaked out. By that time, we had built up some work related materials, so management thought it was OK. Not to mention that in those days, our management was pretty cool and we showed them how to get on the internet.:-) I don't think Mosaic was ever officially supported, but by the time my "incident" took place, we were all using the official version of Netscape.
Man, I still remember the day we figured out how to set the proxy settings to those secret servers. We got out to the internet! That was exciting. But back then, there was no search engine, so you really did have to surf. You would hear about websites via email, or through newsgroups. Can you imagine not having a search engine nowadays? I am trying to remember what the first search engine was..... webcrawler maybe?
One of my favorite toys growing up was my microscope set. You could either get a new high-tech one that hooks up to the PC, or you could just get a classic one. There are also lots of cool toys at http://shopping.discovery.com/ . And for Jebus' sake, don't get them any "themed" toys like Harry Potter or Mickey the Corporate Whore.
First of all, everyone always needs to keep in mind that HR is not there for the benefit of the employees. That's what every company tells you, but the truth is, HR's job is to protect the corperation.
You got that right. From '93 to '98 I worked at Motorola. For some of you who don't remember, let me set the stage: the WWW was in its infancy. At the company, we had just gotten access to it, and we had Mosaic. Intranets didn't really exist yet,and I was actually on the team that helped create it in our department. (I actually got an award for it, which is kind of funny now) We were on Solaris servers, 10 users per server. So we each had "web space", and people created web pages. It was kind of cool because it was new, people were putting information out there for the whole department to use.
On my page, I had lots of work related stuff, but I also had a small collection of engineer jokes. Nothing dirty at all, just dork humor. And so it went for a few years. One day I was called into Human Resources, and my manager was there. Neither of us knew what was going on. It turned out I was being written up for using corporate resources for non work related activities. My manager stood behind me, and fought for me. He explained that my web page was internal, and that it had mostly work related things on it. There was nothing offensive on it. As it turned out, some other people in the company had discovered the intranet, and found my jokes. They were looking at them, and their supervisor got pissed because they were goofing off. So they called HR. I wasn't even informed, and asked to take the material down, and neither was my manager. I was just written up for it, and it was considered a serious infraction. All we were able to do was argue it down from a class 1 infraction to a class 2. That meant that one more infraction could result in termination. I got a little livid with the HR person, and asked her if she had ever used her email for something non-work related, even saying hi to a family member. She didn't want to answer me, and I pressed her and kept asking. She finally admitted that she had. I asked if she was going to write herself up, and my manager stepped in at that point and ended the meeting.
I left Motorola about 3 months later. There were other factors, but I have to admit that the HR interaction helped me to realize that I didn't want to be there anymore.
That is all well and good but there are something like 200 million Windows users out there who aren't bound by the dictates of an all-powerful system administrator.
I did a stint in customer service. Tough job. It's impossible to please both the customers and the company you work for.
You would think that these would be one in the same goals.
The fact of the matter is that everyone has been hit with at least 1 100 dollar phone bill in their lives, if not routinely.
Not me. I don't have a cell phone. My wife has one, but it is a pre-pay. I honestly do not understand the "need" for cellphones. I am no technophobe, in fact I used to work for Motorola, and I had a flip-phone, and one of the first StarTacs. This was back in the analog days, and quite honestly the call quality is not much better these days. It boggles the minds of my coworkers that I can survive without a digital leash. I see them contstantly checking their phones, and messing around with them. Maybe these people are all more important than me, and have to be available at all times. Or maybe they just want to be.
But I understand what you are saying about billing issues. Before we bought our house, we received bills at our apartment for the previous tenant. I had opened one by mistake the first time we got their mail, and it was a cellphone bill - $300.
If cell phone service were like power, you would pay X cents per minute.
Back around 1996, when I had my cell phone, I think it was $11/month and I paid for every minute. The result? I didn't make that many frivolous calls. Today, minutes are "free", so you might as well call your friend while you are wandering around the grocery store and tell them about your foot fungus problem.
The dark secret of CMM and its peers is that it is intended *soley* to slow down the software development process. Sure, they say that you're just inserting checkpoints, milestones, "process", and all that. But why?
Not true at all. The GOAL of the CMM is to eliminate the ad hoc, immature development and promote mature, disciplined software development. If that slows you down, it slows you down. But if you are truly following the principles, you will be able to produce software better and in a more predictable fashion. There is a lot of case study data on this, I won't hash it out here.
CMM is not the answer for everyone, and you are somewhat right in that it does fit better for projects that are critical in nature, but it certainly can be used effectively by any development group. There is nothing in the CMM that keeps it from working on small, nimble groups. Maybe they don't like it as much if they are held accountable for things, but that is a different topic. Many people poo-poo things like the CMM because they have seen it not work. I'd be willing to bet that it wasn't fully accepted by everyone. The CMM can be sabatoged by people who refuse to accept it, and it will fail. I have seen it, I have been there, I have been one of those people. *IF* it is implemented properly, and *IF* people actually follow it, software projects become easier. The problem is that most places who try it out without committing to it will give up and go back to their old ways of ad hoc development.
It's getting more and more popular for off-shore shops to get ISO or CMM certified, but even there it's not a "look how skilled/fast we are" play, it's a "look how reliable we are" play. They're just aiming to commoditize themselves, usually at the expense of performance.
And these shops cannot be taken at face value. Just because they say they are CMM Level 5 doesn't mean they are. Find out who did their assessment, and look into the assessor's background a little. Ask to see PROOF that they operate at Level 5 (you have to know what you are looking for). If they truly are, then EVERYTHING should be available. It is no joke to get to Level 5. Most places will be happy with Level 2 or 3. And achieving Level X is not the same as operating at Level X.
This is why we have tons of companies who do software development, but few that do software engineering. And I am not suggesting that all software has to be engineered - but please make sure you understand the difference.
This not only seems excessive but just plain wrong. Reading TFA, the project was never in danger, "Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule."
Ahh - but schedule is not king. There is a price to pay for only watching the schedule, and the EA developers seem to be paying it. To be truly effective you have to balance 4 things:
Cost
Schedule
Functionality
Quality
And here is the way they are balanced:
You can Optimize one, Contstrain one, and you have to accept the other two. e.g. You want the most functionality in a release (Optimize) but you HAVE to get it out by a certain date (Constrained schedule). Therefore, you have to accept the cost and the quality. Obviously, there is a balancing act here, and this is just a guiding force for projects - but you'll find it is true.
NASA's needs would be different than EA's, so they may want to Optimize quality and are constrained by budget. So they would have to accept the schedule and the functionality. This is just an example, it could very well be different.
In EA's case, they are accepting the cost, which is the hours the employees are working. Other companies accpet this cost as well, and see OT as "standard practice". Those are also the companies who will have pretty high attrition rates.
This happens in all kinds of software houses, although those hours do seem pretty excessive. I love how programmers deride "process" initiatives (like the CMM) but these are exactly the things that can help in situations like this.
Note that I said help, they aren't guaranteed to solve anything. But the point of models like the CMM are to better manage your projects. If you were up and running at CMM level 2, your senior management would have the visibility into the projects at a high level (via SQA). Of course, this is only if it is done properly, you can certainly fake good behavior just to get some type of CMM level assessment. There is also nothing to prevent said senior management to approve of burning out the employees, but at least then you will know where you stand. But managing your projects and processes effectively is a management decision, and if management enforces those kinds of hours, then you may be out of luck. I would take that kind of job as long as you can, then leave. It doesn't sound like there are any alternatives.
when a British newspaper published the names of convicted child molesters, lynch mobs formed to try to hunt down and kill those people. This should never happen, as it is totally against the concept of a modern constitutional state.
Well, that won't happen in this case, because nobody gives a shit about Windows source code.
You sound like you are bitter that everyone else hasn't given up the consumerist lifestyle as you aspire to. Oh wait a minute, aren't you using a computer with an internet connection that if you cancelled you could use the money to feed several third worlders for years to come?
Having and even acquiring material things in and of itself is not a bad thing. It is when you allow that to define who you are that it becomes a problem. It is a sad commentary on the society in this country. It does have an impact on the society I live in, so therefore it has an impact on me. You are free to live the way you want, and I am free to point out that you are a blind sheep.
Don't get me wrong, I'm just as big a geek as anyone else on here, a big fan of Unreal Tournament 2004 & Half-Life - yes, I'm even looking forward to Half-Life 2.
BUT QUEUING UP AT MIDNIGHT FOR A GAME???
Sorry people, but that's just a little TOO creepy for me...
Sure, I may drift down to my local computer store at lunchtime within the first couple of weeks of Half-Life 2 coming out but there's no way I'm queueing in the rain at midnight like some corporate-controlled mindless robot.
It's JUST entertainment, it's JUST a game, please get a life and some perspective on reality - in other parts of the world, people queue for food & medical supplies to avoid dying. Queuing for a game, DVD, CD, concert ticket, etc. is just a little sick in comparison.
Amen brother. I don't quite get the idea of why being one of the first to see/play/experience something is such a draw for some people. It doesn't really make sense. Is there more entertainment from playing a game the first day it is released? Are movies better on opening weekend? Well, this is Slashdot, so maybe it isn't the best place to ask. This is the site where people get modded up for giving tips on how to choose a movie theater based on the fact that they are showing the new Star Wars Trailer . Sheesh. And this is the same site where people complain about consumerism and Freedom, yet they are blind, drooling fools when it comes to things like this.
I just visited a Best Buy for the first time in about 9 months
I went there a few weeks ago for the first time in years. I always get my stuff online (newegg usually) unless I really have to have it in my hand to get a feel for it. But I still don't buy it from Best Buy.
I went in there because I received a $10 gift card, a reward for working extra hard at work. (Oh joy, that SO makes up for not giving me a raise this year) I was in there for about 20 minutes, and I had to leave without buying anything. The store was uber-annoying! My wife had to scream to get my attention because it was so loud, even though she was only 5 feet away. It wasn't some dufus cranking the stereo either, it was the store music. I looked for a multi-format memory card reader - didn't have any. I looked for cheap CDRs that didn't require a rebate - none. I went to the movie section, but by that time I had had enough. My wife already became so annoyed with the store that she went to wait in the car. I just had to get out of there. The atmosphere was absolutely annoying. I used to shop there pretty much exclusively for tech stuff 10 years ago, but no more. The internet drew my business, and Best Buy did nothing but encourage me to shop elsewhere.
So now I have a $10 gift card that I probably won't spend. Hmm, sounds like a regift to me.
Also, there is no such thing as WPD lock-in. WPD is one of the nicer formats out there, and if you've looked at Abiword or talked to the WP OO.o developers, you'll know that it's a lot easier to work with than.DOC. The WP format hasn't changed much since WP6.1, and opening up a WP6.1 files on Corel WP 12 is pretty slick. Try opening a complex Word document from even one version ago. Yeah, right. You'll be reformatting for hours. WP stays pretty standard on their format.
This brings up a question I have had - how come I can open up Word documents in OpenOffice, but not WordPerfect documents? OpenOffice has conversion tools built-in for many formats, but not WP.
If you ask the theatre which screens & shows have the trailer and they aren't certain, ask them to check the code name on the reels - they're supposed to be labelled clearly although not all of the threatre personnel know this is the distinction and have been confused regarding what the code means and have ignored it.
And if they refuse to go check the reels for code name to find out which theater is showing the new Star Wars trailer: well, then you are just a huge friggin dork for asking them to check in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
So do you guys really have girlfriends, and are they really as hot as they appear in the comic?
Welcome to Slashfox.org
Because it works.
We are swaddled in consumerism, what do you expect? Take your kids to watch the latest tripe at the theater, and afterwards drive them straight to McDonalds in your SUV while sipping your Starbucks and talking on your cellphone in order to buy them promotional toys from the movie you just watched. Our society enables that industry to exist. You can certainly complain about it, but what are YOU doing to stop it?
Some people really do want that secure, lifetime position at a big company. I know my friends that are still at Moto are making more than I am, and they probably are getting some nice stock options since the stock tanked a few years ago (the shares I bought when I was there are worth about 1/3 what they used to be). It is all about benefit/cost. They may not even see the "cost" in working there because they have only been in that environment. I have been on the outside, and can say that I am soooo glad I left. But I can't speak for all big companies. I have a friend who works at Intel, and he loves it. From what he tells me, it is a great place to work.
Opera is my primary browser. I keep downloading and installing Moz/Firefox on occasion, but for me it just isn't there yet. The mouse gestures aren't as good. Why can't I close the last tab without killing the browser? Opera lets me. Opera lets me double-click on the tab-bar and it opens a new tab. These are things that I am very used to using and am not willing to give up yet. I downloaded Firefox 1.0, and the first page I brought up (Slashdot) rendered oddly. The text from the stories overlapped the frame on the left.
And what is the article submitter smoking? Opera IS free, in the same sense that the others listed are free. It doesn't cost anything to download and use Opera. You also now have the option for text or image based ads, and the text ones take up VERY little space.
Opera still has a few problems, but I can live with them. For me, it is the best browser out there.
Contracting work and small business seem like the path to sanity.
Depends. I left Moto in '97 to go to a small company. I had essentially had it with their manufactured "culture". I loved the small company, even though I was making less overall (when you account for all benefits) But at the small company, I was truly part of a team. I wasn't just a "resource" or an FTE (full time employee). But....
That small company isn't around anymore. We were a victim of the dot-com bust, our VCs got freaked out and pulled all funding, shutting down the company. Luckily, it all went down before the whole market collapsed, which was good for me. I was able to find a job quickly (about a month). So I am still with that company, and it is HUGE. There are all kinds of positives and negatives about it. I have a stable job - but I am only an FTE. If the word came down, I would be fired with no consideration to my abilities or past performance. I have seen it happen. We got no raises this year, but our CEO made a few million in salary, and with stock and bonuses, he made 50 million. Yet everyone in the company had to forego raises because of financial performance that most of us had nothing to do with.
The thing is, you can work at a large company for a long long time without doing much. You usually have to compromise your personality, spirit, and creativity to do it though. Oh, people like to think that they haven't lost these things, but there is definitely a "group think" going on, where you accept stupid, stupid things because "that is just how things are". Some people are happy with that. Some people don't want to lose their vacation that they have built up, or whatever else they see as a benefit. They don't know what is out there, so what they have is good enough. They like to sit around and bitch about things, knowing full well that they can't change them. It is an odd, symbiotic relationship between corporate entity and employee. They really like not having to care about their job at all. Just put in the hours, work overtime when you are told to, and don't complain because nobody can change it.
The only real option is to leave, and that scares a lot of people. Since they have been there for 10 or 15 years, they have some kind of loyalty to a company that wouldn't give a second thought to cutting their throat. See, if the "company" does something, then nobody is responsible. There is nobody to blame, because that is just how things are. Big companies will break your spirit if you stay at them long enough. So far for me, and I have just worked at two, 4 years is about my limit. After that, I start looking. It is just a damaging environment for me personally. I may even go to another big company, in the hopes that it is different. I mean, I can't judge them all on my measly 2 jobs. Even if it is more of the same, I figure I have about 4 good years before I get sick of it.
As is Dell.
Nope. Which Moto facility were you at?
Heh. It wasn't supported, and in fact most people had no clue what it even was. There were a couple of grass-roots folks in our facility who used it, and we kept it pretty quiet. Then one guy figured out which machines were the sites proxy servers to the internet, because they were experimenting with it. So we had internet access! We kept that quiet for several months before it leaked out. By that time, we had built up some work related materials, so management thought it was OK. Not to mention that in those days, our management was pretty cool and we showed them how to get on the internet. :-) I don't think Mosaic was ever officially supported, but by the time my "incident" took place, we were all using the official version of Netscape.
Man, I still remember the day we figured out how to set the proxy settings to those secret servers. We got out to the internet! That was exciting. But back then, there was no search engine, so you really did have to surf. You would hear about websites via email, or through newsgroups. Can you imagine not having a search engine nowadays? I am trying to remember what the first search engine was..... webcrawler maybe?
One of my favorite toys growing up was my microscope set. You could either get a new high-tech one that hooks up to the PC, or you could just get a classic one. There are also lots of cool toys at http://shopping.discovery.com/ . And for Jebus' sake, don't get them any "themed" toys like Harry Potter or Mickey the Corporate Whore.
You got that right. From '93 to '98 I worked at Motorola. For some of you who don't remember, let me set the stage: the WWW was in its infancy. At the company, we had just gotten access to it, and we had Mosaic. Intranets didn't really exist yet,and I was actually on the team that helped create it in our department. (I actually got an award for it, which is kind of funny now) We were on Solaris servers, 10 users per server. So we each had "web space", and people created web pages. It was kind of cool because it was new, people were putting information out there for the whole department to use.
On my page, I had lots of work related stuff, but I also had a small collection of engineer jokes. Nothing dirty at all, just dork humor. And so it went for a few years. One day I was called into Human Resources, and my manager was there. Neither of us knew what was going on. It turned out I was being written up for using corporate resources for non work related activities. My manager stood behind me, and fought for me. He explained that my web page was internal, and that it had mostly work related things on it. There was nothing offensive on it. As it turned out, some other people in the company had discovered the intranet, and found my jokes. They were looking at them, and their supervisor got pissed because they were goofing off. So they called HR. I wasn't even informed, and asked to take the material down, and neither was my manager. I was just written up for it, and it was considered a serious infraction. All we were able to do was argue it down from a class 1 infraction to a class 2. That meant that one more infraction could result in termination. I got a little livid with the HR person, and asked her if she had ever used her email for something non-work related, even saying hi to a family member. She didn't want to answer me, and I pressed her and kept asking. She finally admitted that she had. I asked if she was going to write herself up, and my manager stepped in at that point and ended the meeting.
I left Motorola about 3 months later. There were other factors, but I have to admit that the HR interaction helped me to realize that I didn't want to be there anymore.
Come on, we all know that people don't patch their Windows machines...
Wow. Now THAT is an oxymoron.
You would think that these would be one in the same goals.
The fact of the matter is that everyone has been hit with at least 1 100 dollar phone bill in their lives, if not routinely.
Not me. I don't have a cell phone. My wife has one, but it is a pre-pay. I honestly do not understand the "need" for cellphones. I am no technophobe, in fact I used to work for Motorola, and I had a flip-phone, and one of the first StarTacs. This was back in the analog days, and quite honestly the call quality is not much better these days. It boggles the minds of my coworkers that I can survive without a digital leash. I see them contstantly checking their phones, and messing around with them. Maybe these people are all more important than me, and have to be available at all times. Or maybe they just want to be.
But I understand what you are saying about billing issues. Before we bought our house, we received bills at our apartment for the previous tenant. I had opened one by mistake the first time we got their mail, and it was a cellphone bill - $300.
If cell phone service were like power, you would pay X cents per minute.
Back around 1996, when I had my cell phone, I think it was $11/month and I paid for every minute. The result? I didn't make that many frivolous calls. Today, minutes are "free", so you might as well call your friend while you are wandering around the grocery store and tell them about your foot fungus problem.
Why block them? Just reverse its returned results for any MSN site. Call it anti-leech-technology.
Not true at all. The GOAL of the CMM is to eliminate the ad hoc, immature development and promote mature, disciplined software development. If that slows you down, it slows you down. But if you are truly following the principles, you will be able to produce software better and in a more predictable fashion. There is a lot of case study data on this, I won't hash it out here.
CMM is not the answer for everyone, and you are somewhat right in that it does fit better for projects that are critical in nature, but it certainly can be used effectively by any development group. There is nothing in the CMM that keeps it from working on small, nimble groups. Maybe they don't like it as much if they are held accountable for things, but that is a different topic. Many people poo-poo things like the CMM because they have seen it not work. I'd be willing to bet that it wasn't fully accepted by everyone. The CMM can be sabatoged by people who refuse to accept it, and it will fail. I have seen it, I have been there, I have been one of those people. *IF* it is implemented properly, and *IF* people actually follow it, software projects become easier. The problem is that most places who try it out without committing to it will give up and go back to their old ways of ad hoc development.
It's getting more and more popular for off-shore shops to get ISO or CMM certified, but even there it's not a "look how skilled/fast we are" play, it's a "look how reliable we are" play. They're just aiming to commoditize themselves, usually at the expense of performance.
And these shops cannot be taken at face value. Just because they say they are CMM Level 5 doesn't mean they are. Find out who did their assessment, and look into the assessor's background a little. Ask to see PROOF that they operate at Level 5 (you have to know what you are looking for). If they truly are, then EVERYTHING should be available. It is no joke to get to Level 5. Most places will be happy with Level 2 or 3. And achieving Level X is not the same as operating at Level X.
This is why we have tons of companies who do software development, but few that do software engineering. And I am not suggesting that all software has to be engineered - but please make sure you understand the difference.
Ahh - but schedule is not king. There is a price to pay for only watching the schedule, and the EA developers seem to be paying it. To be truly effective you have to balance 4 things:
Cost
Schedule
Functionality
Quality
And here is the way they are balanced:
You can Optimize one, Contstrain one, and you have to accept the other two. e.g. You want the most functionality in a release (Optimize) but you HAVE to get it out by a certain date (Constrained schedule). Therefore, you have to accept the cost and the quality. Obviously, there is a balancing act here, and this is just a guiding force for projects - but you'll find it is true.
NASA's needs would be different than EA's, so they may want to Optimize quality and are constrained by budget. So they would have to accept the schedule and the functionality. This is just an example, it could very well be different.
In EA's case, they are accepting the cost, which is the hours the employees are working. Other companies accpet this cost as well, and see OT as "standard practice". Those are also the companies who will have pretty high attrition rates.
Note that I said help, they aren't guaranteed to solve anything. But the point of models like the CMM are to better manage your projects. If you were up and running at CMM level 2, your senior management would have the visibility into the projects at a high level (via SQA). Of course, this is only if it is done properly, you can certainly fake good behavior just to get some type of CMM level assessment. There is also nothing to prevent said senior management to approve of burning out the employees, but at least then you will know where you stand. But managing your projects and processes effectively is a management decision, and if management enforces those kinds of hours, then you may be out of luck. I would take that kind of job as long as you can, then leave. It doesn't sound like there are any alternatives.
Well, that won't happen in this case, because nobody gives a shit about Windows source code.
Having and even acquiring material things in and of itself is not a bad thing. It is when you allow that to define who you are that it becomes a problem. It is a sad commentary on the society in this country. It does have an impact on the society I live in, so therefore it has an impact on me. You are free to live the way you want, and I am free to point out that you are a blind sheep.
Amen brother. I don't quite get the idea of why being one of the first to see/play/experience something is such a draw for some people. It doesn't really make sense. Is there more entertainment from playing a game the first day it is released? Are movies better on opening weekend? Well, this is Slashdot, so maybe it isn't the best place to ask. This is the site where people get modded up for giving tips on how to choose a movie theater based on the fact that they are showing the new Star Wars Trailer . Sheesh. And this is the same site where people complain about consumerism and Freedom, yet they are blind, drooling fools when it comes to things like this.
I went there a few weeks ago for the first time in years. I always get my stuff online (newegg usually) unless I really have to have it in my hand to get a feel for it. But I still don't buy it from Best Buy.
I went in there because I received a $10 gift card, a reward for working extra hard at work. (Oh joy, that SO makes up for not giving me a raise this year) I was in there for about 20 minutes, and I had to leave without buying anything. The store was uber-annoying! My wife had to scream to get my attention because it was so loud, even though she was only 5 feet away. It wasn't some dufus cranking the stereo either, it was the store music. I looked for a multi-format memory card reader - didn't have any. I looked for cheap CDRs that didn't require a rebate - none. I went to the movie section, but by that time I had had enough. My wife already became so annoyed with the store that she went to wait in the car. I just had to get out of there. The atmosphere was absolutely annoying. I used to shop there pretty much exclusively for tech stuff 10 years ago, but no more. The internet drew my business, and Best Buy did nothing but encourage me to shop elsewhere.
So now I have a $10 gift card that I probably won't spend. Hmm, sounds like a regift to me.
This brings up a question I have had - how come I can open up Word documents in OpenOffice, but not WordPerfect documents? OpenOffice has conversion tools built-in for many formats, but not WP.
Don't you mean partnered with the wrong people?
And if they refuse to go check the reels for code name to find out which theater is showing the new Star Wars trailer: well, then you are just a huge friggin dork for asking them to check in the first place.