I guess when you say "outperforming", you mean technically, not market-wise. WP lost in the marketplace long before Novell bought it.
The reality is that WP was fundamentally designed for those who prefer to peform commands through keystrokes. This was exactly the correct approach for the early to mid 80's when there were still armies of secretaries doing all the business typing. It was wrong, however, for later times when a larger share of executives had to do their own typing and hordes of non-professionals started using computers.
Actually, there's a bit of irony that Corel should end up being the 3rd owner of Wordperfect. Despite all the claims that MS fooled WordPerfect Corp into targeting OS/2 instead of Windows and took advantage of secret API's, Corel was able to create a great graphics program that ran on Windows working with the same limitations. So a company that had the vision to see the importance of Windows and a willingness to do the work necessary to make an application for it could succeed. Corel inhereted WordPerfect precisely because the orignal owners dropped the ball.
The fact is that WordPerfect Corp had become lazy and wanted to just continue milking the WordPerfect cash cow. The philosphy of their word processor was that the interface should be a like a blank page, and they were late even to offer a menuing system for it. Windows was the antethisis of their UI philosphy and they went kicking and screaming into their first Windows version. They really didn't want to do it and they pretty much didn't.
Wordperfect was the leading word processor and it was available on many platforms. The idea that they somehow had to choose between OS/2 and Windows is nonsense. They simply didn't want to do the Windows version so they did too little, too late.
Sure, back in the days when you had to pay a ton of money to lease a computer from IBM there may have not been any seperate line-item for software, but rest assured you paid for the software too.
This idea that most software was "free as in beer" before the PC is a myth.
Is this the time to say that monopolies have to follow a different set of rules. It is, after all, a very popular notion on Slashdot.
Actually, I don't think Google has reached the monopoly level yet, but it will be interesting to see if Slashdotters are consistent about their opinions when the monopoly isn't MS.
On the hand, just as MS could only qualify as a monopoly when the market in question was artifically restricted to desktop OS's, you could certainly make the case that Google has a monopoly on web searches performed by companies starting with the letter 'G';
Google hasn't beaten MS in anything but search. Google is just the latest in a long line of media-proclaimed MS killers including Lotus Notes, Netscape, Java, Network computers, Linux etc.
gmail makes you jump through hoops to sign up. AOL makes you jump through hoops to cancel. They could form a partnership. AOL could offer a service to make it easy to sign up for a gmail account. gmail could offer a service to make it easy to cancel your AOL account.
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes were either (1) immature kids who wouldn't pass a real civics class if they were ever put in one, (2) people who don't understand the real issues and how fundamental they are, or (3) shills or trolls or other people with an anti-freedom agenda. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
RMS might be right or he might be wrong, but attacking his critics proves nothing.
"2-3 years was a minimum, not a maximum. I probably should have written it as just "2 years".
Why not just say a minimum of 5 years? That would increase the probability of finding someone who meet the technical requirements.
"I should have put battery-powered on the "consumer electronics" thingy."
There are plenty of embedded systems that are not comsumer, but are battery operated. In any case, I don't see why not having experience with battery-operated systems is a key issue for a software team, even if they are going to build a battery-operated system.
"I've interviewed a lot of them, and found they're just not what I'm looking for."
This sounds rather subjective. What were they missing that others were not?
"I have the best team in my division, and everyone acknowledges it."
Perhaps you do. But it's usually hard to trace a company's performance back to the quality of a particular team. Are the inferior teams generating less money for the company?
Right or wrong, you're probably doing the right thing for your personal career. The general principle is that it's more important to be thought of by upper management as being the best than it is to actually be the best.
In your rush to slam IE users, you've made a rather absurd argument. The computer illiterate don't use IE because they don't know how to use a computer. It's like saying that the illiterate read the Da Vinci Code instead of War and Peace. Perhaps you should have said "right-thinking computer experts" instead.
Personally having extensive experience in embedded systems in consumer, medical, industrial, and military applications, I'd say that your theory that embedded development of consumer electronics is so specialized that you wouldn't consider hiring people with general embedded experience isn't justified. Of course, if your own embedded experience is limited to a single industry, it's understandable.
Perhaps part of the problem is specifying 2-3 years experience which means very little experience. Whenever I see an upper bound on experience I interpret that as an indication that the salary is low and that older workers need no apply. Essentially you're looking for young, cheap labor but you still want skills that are rarely available at that experience level.
"People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using."
People don't want to just access information, they want to use it, modify it, create it, etc. The best platform for doing that is the PC. The fact that a web application is running in a browser doesn't make it any less PC-bound.
Sure you can run a browser on a cell phone, but in practice it's not very useful. In fact, the browser is usually the least effective "application" that a cell phone has. The problem is that devices with restricted resources don't work well with generic solutions. An application that must run on a platform with a tiny screen, a limited keyboard, and no mouse should be designed from the ground up specifically for that class of platform.
"I'm not so sure about the whole 'tied to one piece of hardware' bit, but Google is definitely proving that the industry is shifting from a product emphasis to a service emphasis."
I'd say that the same media band-wagon jumpers from the heady dot-com era have decided that Google is a sure thing. What I don't see is any great reduction in desktop application sales in favor of web services. That day may indeed come, but there's little evidence of it today.
"If people are incapable of reading job posts on the major industry sites, I don't think they are qualified for the job."
I find this comment very interesting. Companies complain about being unable to find qualified people and yet their focus is always on finding reasons not to hire people. You know the drill: typo on the Resume, wrong clothes for the interview, didn't have a 5 year plan, couldn't answer our pet puzzle question that proves how smart we are, etc.
All these rather pointless reasons to eliminate people that are most likely going to be around for only 2 or 3 years anyway.
Let's apply Occam's razor to the problem. If 5000 people are layed off and your company can't find any they want to hire, what is the simplest explanation: That these 5000 people are incompetent, or that your company is incompetent at hiring people?
Companies that are serious about accomplishment hire the best people available within a reasonable time and get on with the work, they don't wait around for people with "perfect" qualifications.
If you meant qualified instead of suitable, you should have said so. Why don't you state your qualifications and then we can judge whether there is (or was) a shortage of such candidates?
"You needed to raise huge sums of VC to pay ridiculously prissy workers who wanted 150k a year and perks out the ass to do no work."
You didn't mention what level of experience was supposed to go with 150K a year. I'm not sure if any companies were paying that kind of money for programmers with less than 10 years of experience, but if they were, they were probably by dot-com companies with crazy business models that were going to fail anyway. I think a lot of companies during that period gave their workers large amounts of worthless stock options rather than high salaries anyway.
The fact is for most companies a significant lack of workers would result in the company shutting down due to an inability to perform the company's function. If the need is critical, you simply pick a qualified candidate and you don't worry about subjective criteria such as "suitability". Some companies try to convince themselves that they are special by rejecting qualified candidates. At the end of the process, the person who is finally hired is about as effective as the ones who weren't.
"For them good code is what does the thing it has to do."
I would take that as axoimatic (overlooking the poor wording).
"For me good code is what A, does it has to do B, in the least possible time, C until the end of the world, and D, does not make bigger problems, as the ones it solves."
Criteria B may violate criteria A in some real-time applications. Criteria C is impossible to meet. If criteria A is met, and criteria D is violated, it must be a requirements problem.
There should be a regulation that states that you have to offer the customer the option to cancel that is just as easy as signing up. Then companies like AOL can decide if they really want to sign all customers up over the phone, or just let them cancel online without a hassle.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess when you say "outperforming", you mean technically, not market-wise. WP lost in the marketplace long before Novell bought it.
The reality is that WP was fundamentally designed for those who prefer to peform commands through keystrokes. This was exactly the correct approach for the early to mid 80's when there were still armies of secretaries doing all the business typing. It was wrong, however, for later times when a larger share of executives had to do their own typing and hordes of non-professionals started using computers.
Actually, there's a bit of irony that Corel should end up being the 3rd owner of Wordperfect. Despite all the claims that MS fooled WordPerfect Corp into targeting OS/2 instead of Windows and took advantage of secret API's, Corel was able to create a great graphics program that ran on Windows working with the same limitations. So a company that had the vision to see the importance of Windows and a willingness to do the work necessary to make an application for it could succeed. Corel inhereted WordPerfect precisely because the orignal owners dropped the ball.
The fact is that WordPerfect Corp had become lazy and wanted to just continue milking the WordPerfect cash cow. The philosphy of their word processor was that the interface should be a like a blank page, and they were late even to offer a menuing system for it. Windows was the antethisis of their UI philosphy and they went kicking and screaming into their first Windows version. They really didn't want to do it and they pretty much didn't.
Wordperfect was the leading word processor and it was available on many platforms. The idea that they somehow had to choose between OS/2 and Windows is nonsense. They simply didn't want to do the Windows version so they did too little, too late.
Never underestimate a typical Slashdotter's ability to hold contradictory beliefs if both of these beliefs indicate bad news for MS.
Sure, back in the days when you had to pay a ton of money to lease a computer from IBM there may have not been any seperate line-item for software, but rest assured you paid for the software too.
This idea that most software was "free as in beer" before the PC is a myth.
Is this the time to say that monopolies have to follow a different set of rules. It is, after all, a very popular notion on Slashdot.
Actually, I don't think Google has reached the monopoly level yet, but it will be interesting to see if Slashdotters are consistent about their opinions when the monopoly isn't MS.
On the hand, just as MS could only qualify as a monopoly when the market in question was artifically restricted to desktop OS's, you could certainly make the case that Google has a monopoly on web searches performed by companies starting with the letter 'G';
Google hasn't beaten MS in anything but search. Google is just the latest in a long line of media-proclaimed MS killers including Lotus Notes, Netscape, Java, Network computers, Linux etc.
gmail makes you jump through hoops to sign up. AOL makes you jump through hoops to cancel. They could form a partnership. AOL could offer a service to make it easy to sign up for a gmail account. gmail could offer a service to make it easy to cancel your AOL account.
If humans and animals are not distinct entities, why don't you ask the other animals why they crap on the ground instead of using the bathroom?
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes were either (1) immature kids who wouldn't pass a real civics class if they were ever put in one, (2) people who don't understand the real issues and how fundamental they are, or (3) shills or trolls or other people with an anti-freedom agenda. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
RMS might be right or he might be wrong, but attacking his critics proves nothing.
"2-3 years was a minimum, not a maximum. I probably should have written it as just "2 years".
Why not just say a minimum of 5 years? That would increase the probability of finding someone who meet the technical requirements.
"I should have put battery-powered on the "consumer electronics" thingy."
There are plenty of embedded systems that are not comsumer, but are battery operated. In any case, I don't see why not having experience with battery-operated systems is a key issue for a software team, even if they are going to build a battery-operated system.
"I've interviewed a lot of them, and found they're just not what I'm looking for."
This sounds rather subjective. What were they missing that others were not?
"I have the best team in my division, and everyone acknowledges it."
Perhaps you do. But it's usually hard to trace a company's performance back to the quality of a particular team. Are the inferior teams generating less money for the company?
Right or wrong, you're probably doing the right thing for your personal career. The general principle is that it's more important to be thought of by upper management as being the best than it is to actually be the best.
I'll let go of this now and shutup.
In your rush to slam IE users, you've made a rather absurd argument. The computer illiterate don't use IE because they don't know how to use a computer. It's like saying that the illiterate read the Da Vinci Code instead of War and Peace. Perhaps you should have said "right-thinking computer experts" instead.
Personally having extensive experience in embedded systems in consumer, medical, industrial, and military applications, I'd say that your theory that embedded development of consumer electronics is so specialized that you wouldn't consider hiring people with general embedded experience isn't justified. Of course, if your own embedded experience is limited to a single industry, it's understandable.
Perhaps part of the problem is specifying 2-3 years experience which means very little experience. Whenever I see an upper bound on experience I interpret that as an indication that the salary is low and that older workers need no apply. Essentially you're looking for young, cheap labor but you still want skills that are rarely available at that experience level.
No wonder your having trouble.
"People want to get access wherever they are, from whatever device they're using."
People don't want to just access information, they want to use it, modify it, create it, etc. The best platform for doing that is the PC. The fact that a web application is running in a browser doesn't make it any less PC-bound.
Sure you can run a browser on a cell phone, but in practice it's not very useful. In fact, the browser is usually the least effective "application" that a cell phone has. The problem is that devices with restricted resources don't work well with generic solutions. An application that must run on a platform with a tiny screen, a limited keyboard, and no mouse should be designed from the ground up specifically for that class of platform.
"I'm not so sure about the whole 'tied to one piece of hardware' bit, but Google is definitely proving that the industry is shifting from a product emphasis to a service emphasis."
I'd say that the same media band-wagon jumpers from the heady dot-com era have decided that Google is a sure thing. What I don't see is any great reduction in desktop application sales in favor of web services. That day may indeed come, but there's little evidence of it today.
"If people are incapable of reading job posts on the major industry sites, I don't think they are qualified for the job."
I find this comment very interesting. Companies complain about being unable to find qualified people and yet their focus is always on finding reasons not to hire people. You know the drill: typo on the Resume, wrong clothes for the interview, didn't have a 5 year plan, couldn't answer our pet puzzle question that proves how smart we are, etc.
All these rather pointless reasons to eliminate people that are most likely going to be around for only 2 or 3 years anyway.
Let's apply Occam's razor to the problem. If 5000 people are layed off and your company can't find any they want to hire, what is the simplest explanation: That these 5000 people are incompetent, or that your company is incompetent at hiring people?
Companies that are serious about accomplishment hire the best people available within a reasonable time and get on with the work, they don't wait around for people with "perfect" qualifications.
If you meant qualified instead of suitable, you should have said so. Why don't you state your qualifications and then we can judge whether there is (or was) a shortage of such candidates?
"You needed to raise huge sums of VC to pay ridiculously prissy workers who wanted 150k a year and perks out the ass to do no work."
You didn't mention what level of experience was supposed to go with 150K a year. I'm not sure if any companies were paying that kind of money for programmers with less than 10 years of experience, but if they were, they were probably by dot-com companies with crazy business models that were going to fail anyway. I think a lot of companies during that period gave their workers large amounts of worthless stock options rather than high salaries anyway.
The fact is for most companies a significant lack of workers would result in the company shutting down due to an inability to perform the company's function. If the need is critical, you simply pick a qualified candidate and you don't worry about subjective criteria such as "suitability". Some companies try to convince themselves that they are special by rejecting qualified candidates. At the end of the process, the person who is finally hired is about as effective as the ones who weren't.
"In the dot-com rush of the late 1990s, yes, we needed H1-B workers because there plain simply was not enough workers. "
That was never true. H1-B workers were needed simply because salarys were beginning to rise and industry didn't want that trend to continue.
We needed some for the kindergarden graduation ceremony.
"For them good code is what does the thing it has to do."
I would take that as axoimatic (overlooking the poor wording).
"For me good code is what A, does it has to do B, in the least possible time, C until the end of the world, and D, does not make bigger problems, as the ones it solves."
Criteria B may violate criteria A in some real-time applications. Criteria C is impossible to meet. If criteria A is met, and criteria D is violated, it must be a requirements problem.
This is, after all, Slashdot.
There should be a regulation that states that you have to offer the customer the option to cancel that is just as easy as signing up. Then companies like AOL can decide if they really want to sign all customers up over the phone, or just let them cancel online without a hassle.
Most of these guys have been at MS about 2-5 times as long as the industry average. I wouldn't read too much into this.