It doesn't matter what kind of methodology you use. It all comes down to people. If you have skilled developers and skilled management and skilled testers then you will be successful. If one of those three are missing you will be less successful. If all three are missing...God help you:-)
The mistake that some managers make is adopting a methodology (be it scrum or what have you) and seeing it as some sort of magic potion. There is no magic potion.
I have been a developer for many years and now I am managing a team of developers. One of the things I learned over the years is that developers are a different breed. They generally don't respond well to micro management. Some people view scrum as exactly that. I try to keep things simple. I give them a task and let them accomplish it as they see fit - enforcing standards but not stifling their creativity. My goal is to filter the corporate BS so that they can focus on what they do best - coding. My focus is on quality rather than quantity because if they rush the job to meet some arbitrary deadline it will take more time in the long run due to bug fixes.
It's been a while since I was in University but more and more I am convinced that most jobs simply don't require a university degree. Success in any field is determined more by diligence, networking, experience and hard work than academic credentials. Sure, many university grads possess those skills but many of them don't.
I work with a woman that has an MBA (don't know where she went to school). She cannot write a coherent sentence. Her grammar and spelling are atrocious. Her communication and leadership skills are non existent. Yet she remains employed. How she even got hired in the first place is beyond me but I'm sure that the advanced degree had a lot to do with it.
I would take an eager high school kid over this bozo any day of the week and yet the kid without the degree is unlikely to even get an interview.
Certainly some professions require advanced training. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, electrician...those come to mind. There are others without a doubt. But for most jobs the skills required simply do not require 4 years of university education. Yes, there are lots of benefits that university provides aside from specific job training but the notion that a 4 year degree is required for entry level jobs is nonsense.
"People do move to other areas of the country which are cheaper than Boston too. I think that there has been decent migration to the triangle area." - Part of the reason for that is cost of living, as you mentioned. Better weather too.
"Why do you think that you were treated differently? I think that the distance thing is something that's part of New England's character. Many other areas of the country [and world] are more welcoming. You have to be willing to break the ice and be somewhat socially outgoing to build relationships here." - I wish I knew why. Perhaps I could have tried harder - who knows. After about the first year I had made up my mind that Boston was not the place for me so I kind of had one foot out the door so to speak. What others have told me is that it's harder to make friends in Boston but once you do you have a true friend. That's not such a bad thing:-)
Well, the new construction is badly needed. When I was there is seemed like the town was falling apart.
"I would disagree on Boston being provincial as you do have a lot of students that come in for the universities and stay here after they graduate with BS, MS and Phds. Boston is a city of neighborhoods and their characters vary widely from place to place." - I'm sure that some stay but a lot more leave. That makes it a very transient town. The locals know this. From my experience, I was treated very differently that someone born there. I found the people there to be very insular and not particularly friendly. I lived next door to someone for 2 years and not once did they even say hello to me. I tried once or twice and then gave up on them.
Now I live in the Southwest and I find people here to be much warmer. Maybe it has something to do with the warmer weather or the fact that things are more spread out than the Northeast.
Lived there for 3 years...couldn't wait to get out of there. Long cold winters and humid in the summer. All the apartments were those triple decker shit holes that are about 100 years old with no insulation and generally falling apart...and expensive. Landlords there have no incentive to fix the places up because of the abundance of schools with their endless supply of snot nosed Ivy league rich kids. Nowhere to park.
I have been all over the US and Boston has got to be the most provincial place I have ever seen. I met several people that were born there and had never even left the state for a vacation - ever - in their entire life. If you were not born in Boston you will always be an outsider. They continue, even to this day, to have terrible racial issues.
On the bright side, there is a lot of interesting historical stuff. But that contributes to the terrible traffic since those old buildings can't be knocked down and thus the streets cannot be widened.
"So what if she's a CEO of a cloud services company - it doesn't mean she's incorrect." - I didn't say she was incorrect. But she is clearly biased.
"If you hack into Amazon's AWS you won't get a directory with "creditcards.xls" and "passwords.txt" in it, you'll be faced with a network architecture you won't understand, with hundreds of thousands of servers you won't recognize, virtualized and sequestered in ways you've never heard of." - Then why is it that data breaches happen so often? Even given that the credit card numbers are tucked away in remote locations and not in a single file, SOMEONE knows how to find them. I'm not claiming that I know where to find it, or that I even have the skills to do it. But there are people out there than can, and do, break into systems and steal stuff.
She is the CEO of a cloud based company. What the fuck do you expect her to say?
The real question is not...is the cloud secure? The question is...who is more likely to be a target of hackers?
Can cloud services be made secure? Of course it can. But it doesn't necessary mean that it is. It all depends on policies and procedures which you, as an end user, have absolutely no say in. And what happens if there is a data breach? You get a year of free credit monitoring. Thanks for playing. There is no implicit guarantee, or liability, on their part.
If you are a hacker who will you target? Me - with maybe a few credit card details or Amazon with millions or credit card details. The answer is obvious.
When it comes to the cloud I am reminded of the Tony Montano (Scarface) quote: "Who do I trust? ME!".
When the cost of storage is going down they put the prices up. Maybe instead of OneDrive they should call it HalfDrive. Thanks MS but I think I'll stick with my Dropbox.
Yet another failed attempt to find a home in the post Gates era. Epic fail.
"There were also consultants, like Ernst & Young. They would bring in a team consisting of some very junior people who were obviously had no clue to as to what they were doing and were learning on the job." - This sounds typical. It is amazing to me how these clowns exist. It's always the same pattern. Bring in two or three senior people that get all the client face time. The rest of the crew is right out of school and training on the clients nickel.
By the way, I worked at the Gateway facility for a period of time back in the early 2000's. At the time it was in South Dakota. I still remember driving through miles and miles of wheat fields and seeing those huge cow-clad buildings looming in the distance. I got a fascinating tour of the manufacturing facility. Everyone I met was really cool. Great client.
This is what happens to all candidates that don't have strong poling numbers. They get shut out of the debates. They get hardly any questions at all. I thought this was supposed to be a democracy? I think that all candidates should get equal time in the debates. Give them all x number of minutes to make their case to the American voters. Without moderators jumping in or getting cut off by other candidates. Every time a candidate jumps in take a minute of time away from their talking time.
The current format is a circus. Nothing more than name calling and gotcha questions. Let's find out what they really have to say and let them stand or fall on their own merits.
a lot of that "consumer getting screwed" stuff is less common now that it used to be. The difference today is that you as a consumer have a lot more information than you used to have about cars. It's pretty easy to find the invoice price for a given car or the KBB value for a car. That's pretty powerful information. Information you can use to get a better deal and, more importantly, avoid getting screwed and paying way too much.
The other option is to buy a used car. A new car is a terrible investment. A good, late model used car can be a great deal.
On another level, these "get rid of X industry" things seem to sound good on the surface. But when you look a little deeper it doesn't make so much sense. So if we get rid of all car dealers then how many people will suddenly be out of a job? Not just salespeople but the office manager and the receptionist and the people in the parts department and the service shop. Those car dealerships also kick in a lot of money for the local tax base - both property tax and sales tax. Who is going to replace those jobs and revenue?
I'm not so sure about that. If I saw someone carrying a device like that I might think it was a bomb too. A briefcase with a bunch of wires attached to a clock? These days you never know.
Personally, I think the real overreaction took place after the fact with the whole boy-genius thing.
Sorry that won't work. That would mean paying people actual market rates for skilled jobs. We just can't have that. Particularly when there is an endless supply of 3rd world talent willing to work for a fraction of what you and I would work for. So let's just open the H1-B floodgates and let them all in. It's the Walmart-ization of high tech. Careful what we wish for.
I recall that Fox called this whole thing out as a hoax from day one. Which was right about the time that the rest of the national media was drooling over this supposed boy genius.
It just goes to show that politics has invaded every segment of society. The folks at Google don't think this kid is a genius any more than I do. But it was promoted for political reasons. Same with Obama. It advances their agenda to push for more H1-B visas. It also advances various "diversity" agendas. Too bad it wasn't a little girl - could have pushed that agenda too.
So as usual when the national media gets the story wrong there is not retraction. There is no follow up. It's just on to the next story. This is pretty much why I have given up on CNN and CBS and NBC, etc. Every story is twisted to advance some sort of political agenda. Now some might say that Fox does the same thing, and they do, but at least Fox will correct the story if they make a mistake.
Oh yeah, good riddance you little prick. Hope you enjoyed your 15 minutes of fame.
I'd tell them to go fuck themselves. Unless the severance package amounts to 2 years salary then you are basically working for free. Oh and by the way...we want you to train the offshore people. No thanks.
This whole thing is part of a conspiracy by US companies to chip away at high salaried developers. On one front is the give everyone a green card crowd. Bring in a bunch of people from 3rd world countries and drive down wages. On another front are the groups like this that want to turn out programmers with a minimum amount of formal education. This too will drive down wages by increasing the labor pool.
What is so evil about this is that on the surface it seems like a noble thing to do. Create opportunities for people from poor countries. Fill a shortage of talent thereby allowing American companies to grow, benefiting everyone. Provide professional level jobs for people that would otherwise not be eligible for them without attending college.
The problem is that its all a load of shit. They don't give a damn about poor countries. They don't give a damn about creating jobs or other such nonsense. What companies DO care about, first and foremost, is making money. And the easiest way to do that is to cut labor costs.
I wonder how much this has to do with the frosty US/UK relations as of late? If you think about it this whole Get-Assange-At-Any-Costs thing is mostly for US benefit. The conventional wisdom is that if the UK gets him they immediately turn him over to the US authorities who want to lock him up and throw away the key.
Personally, I think that many countries - not just the UK - are a bit pissed at the US for the middle east retreat and the resulting onslaught of refugees. Maybe I'm connecting too many dots here but this might be just a Fuck-You-Obama-Go-Get-Him-Yourself kind of thing, *Shrug*
Yes I'm sure that it will continue to improve and I am monitoring it closely. I should be able to pull the trigger in the next year or two with any luck.
Ok fair enough. The panels would still work, although less efficiently than newer ones. For me the real deal killer was that it would only save me $30 a month. That's peanuts and certainly not enough to go to the time and expense of having it installed. I want something that will save me $100 a month minimum. Then it starts to make more sense.
What I'm saying is that the ROI didn't work out whether I purchased them or I leased them. The fact that I'm locked into a 25 year lease with no opportunity to upgrade just reinforces that it's a bad deal.
Look, if you want to get solar panels because it makes you feel like you're saving the world then have at it. Not every decision is or should be based on money. All I'm saying is that I looked at it and I didn't like the terms. I'm not going to go to the trouble and expense of putting panels on my roof just to save $30 a month. And I'm not going to lay out 35 grand to buy panels that I know will be obsolete in 5 years. Maybe it works for you. Didn't work for me.
I stand corrected on the options - but it really does boil down to buy or lease. It sounds like your experience was similar to mine. I went into it with high hopes but the terms and the numbers just didn't do it for me. 13% increase is pretty big actually. But I suspect that in a couple of years it will be there. Then I'll give it another look.
I did do an ROI. My net savings would have been $30/month vs what I am paying now for electricity from the grid. 30 bucks. And that is assuming you agree with their projections on energy cost going forward, which they factor into the calculation. Now I am sure that the cost of electricity is going to go up but nobody knows by how much. Factoring in the tax rebates the payoff would have been about 8 years. I'm not that I'll be in this house for that long.
To me it just seems like a 25 year car lease. Nobody leases a car for 25 years. Why? Because the technology improves sufficiently that you can get more car for the same money. New features, better gas mileage, more power, etc.
Sure you could buy the panels outright - for about $35,000 or so depending on the size of your house. And in 5 years when much better technology comes along what are you going to do with the old panels? You could sell them for pennies on the dollar but someone has to climb up on the roof first and take then down, and hope that none of them get broken.
It kind of reminds me of those giant satellite dishes that people used to have. Remember those? They were about 8 feet in diameter.
I like the idea of solar power it's just that the technology is not efficient enough yet for me to jump in. Eventually someone is going to develop a panel that is so efficient that it will power your entire house with one panel. Or maybe even smaller than that.
The other thing I was hoping for was energy independence from the utility company. With the system that Solar City showed me it's not even close. Yes, it reduces your bill but not by a tremendous amount. At best it's a hybrid system.
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It doesn't matter what kind of methodology you use. It all comes down to people. If you have skilled developers and skilled management and skilled testers then you will be successful. If one of those three are missing you will be less successful. If all three are missing...God help you :-)
The mistake that some managers make is adopting a methodology (be it scrum or what have you) and seeing it as some sort of magic potion. There is no magic potion.
I have been a developer for many years and now I am managing a team of developers. One of the things I learned over the years is that developers are a different breed. They generally don't respond well to micro management. Some people view scrum as exactly that. I try to keep things simple. I give them a task and let them accomplish it as they see fit - enforcing standards but not stifling their creativity. My goal is to filter the corporate BS so that they can focus on what they do best - coding. My focus is on quality rather than quantity because if they rush the job to meet some arbitrary deadline it will take more time in the long run due to bug fixes.
It's been a while since I was in University but more and more I am convinced that most jobs simply don't require a university degree. Success in any field is determined more by diligence, networking, experience and hard work than academic credentials. Sure, many university grads possess those skills but many of them don't.
I work with a woman that has an MBA (don't know where she went to school). She cannot write a coherent sentence. Her grammar and spelling are atrocious. Her communication and leadership skills are non existent. Yet she remains employed. How she even got hired in the first place is beyond me but I'm sure that the advanced degree had a lot to do with it.
I would take an eager high school kid over this bozo any day of the week and yet the kid without the degree is unlikely to even get an interview.
Certainly some professions require advanced training. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, electrician...those come to mind. There are others without a doubt. But for most jobs the skills required simply do not require 4 years of university education. Yes, there are lots of benefits that university provides aside from specific job training but the notion that a 4 year degree is required for entry level jobs is nonsense.
"People do move to other areas of the country which are cheaper than Boston too. I think that there has been decent migration to the triangle area." - Part of the reason for that is cost of living, as you mentioned. Better weather too.
"Why do you think that you were treated differently? I think that the distance thing is something that's part of New England's character. Many other areas of the country [and world] are more welcoming. You have to be willing to break the ice and be somewhat socially outgoing to build relationships here." - I wish I knew why. Perhaps I could have tried harder - who knows. After about the first year I had made up my mind that Boston was not the place for me so I kind of had one foot out the door so to speak. What others have told me is that it's harder to make friends in Boston but once you do you have a true friend. That's not such a bad thing :-)
Well, the new construction is badly needed. When I was there is seemed like the town was falling apart.
"I would disagree on Boston being provincial as you do have a lot of students that come in for the universities and stay here after they graduate with BS, MS and Phds. Boston is a city of neighborhoods and their characters vary widely from place to place." - I'm sure that some stay but a lot more leave. That makes it a very transient town. The locals know this. From my experience, I was treated very differently that someone born there. I found the people there to be very insular and not particularly friendly. I lived next door to someone for 2 years and not once did they even say hello to me. I tried once or twice and then gave up on them.
Now I live in the Southwest and I find people here to be much warmer. Maybe it has something to do with the warmer weather or the fact that things are more spread out than the Northeast.
Lived there for 3 years...couldn't wait to get out of there. Long cold winters and humid in the summer. All the apartments were those triple decker shit holes that are about 100 years old with no insulation and generally falling apart...and expensive. Landlords there have no incentive to fix the places up because of the abundance of schools with their endless supply of snot nosed Ivy league rich kids. Nowhere to park.
I have been all over the US and Boston has got to be the most provincial place I have ever seen. I met several people that were born there and had never even left the state for a vacation - ever - in their entire life. If you were not born in Boston you will always be an outsider. They continue, even to this day, to have terrible racial issues.
On the bright side, there is a lot of interesting historical stuff. But that contributes to the terrible traffic since those old buildings can't be knocked down and thus the streets cannot be widened.
"So what if she's a CEO of a cloud services company - it doesn't mean she's incorrect." - I didn't say she was incorrect. But she is clearly biased.
"If you hack into Amazon's AWS you won't get a directory with "creditcards.xls" and "passwords.txt" in it, you'll be faced with a network architecture you won't understand, with hundreds of thousands of servers you won't recognize, virtualized and sequestered in ways you've never heard of." - Then why is it that data breaches happen so often? Even given that the credit card numbers are tucked away in remote locations and not in a single file, SOMEONE knows how to find them. I'm not claiming that I know where to find it, or that I even have the skills to do it. But there are people out there than can, and do, break into systems and steal stuff.
YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!!!
She is the CEO of a cloud based company. What the fuck do you expect her to say?
The real question is not...is the cloud secure? The question is...who is more likely to be a target of hackers?
Can cloud services be made secure? Of course it can. But it doesn't necessary mean that it is. It all depends on policies and procedures which you, as an end user, have absolutely no say in. And what happens if there is a data breach? You get a year of free credit monitoring. Thanks for playing. There is no implicit guarantee, or liability, on their part.
If you are a hacker who will you target? Me - with maybe a few credit card details or Amazon with millions or credit card details. The answer is obvious.
When it comes to the cloud I am reminded of the Tony Montano (Scarface) quote: "Who do I trust? ME!".
When the cost of storage is going down they put the prices up. Maybe instead of OneDrive they should call it HalfDrive. Thanks MS but I think I'll stick with my Dropbox.
Yet another failed attempt to find a home in the post Gates era. Epic fail.
"There were also consultants, like Ernst & Young. They would bring in a team consisting of some very junior people who were obviously had no clue to as to what they were doing and were learning on the job." - This sounds typical. It is amazing to me how these clowns exist. It's always the same pattern. Bring in two or three senior people that get all the client face time. The rest of the crew is right out of school and training on the clients nickel.
By the way, I worked at the Gateway facility for a period of time back in the early 2000's. At the time it was in South Dakota. I still remember driving through miles and miles of wheat fields and seeing those huge cow-clad buildings looming in the distance. I got a fascinating tour of the manufacturing facility. Everyone I met was really cool. Great client.
This is what happens to all candidates that don't have strong poling numbers. They get shut out of the debates. They get hardly any questions at all. I thought this was supposed to be a democracy? I think that all candidates should get equal time in the debates. Give them all x number of minutes to make their case to the American voters. Without moderators jumping in or getting cut off by other candidates. Every time a candidate jumps in take a minute of time away from their talking time.
The current format is a circus. Nothing more than name calling and gotcha questions. Let's find out what they really have to say and let them stand or fall on their own merits.
a lot of that "consumer getting screwed" stuff is less common now that it used to be. The difference today is that you as a consumer have a lot more information than you used to have about cars. It's pretty easy to find the invoice price for a given car or the KBB value for a car. That's pretty powerful information. Information you can use to get a better deal and, more importantly, avoid getting screwed and paying way too much.
The other option is to buy a used car. A new car is a terrible investment. A good, late model used car can be a great deal.
On another level, these "get rid of X industry" things seem to sound good on the surface. But when you look a little deeper it doesn't make so much sense. So if we get rid of all car dealers then how many people will suddenly be out of a job? Not just salespeople but the office manager and the receptionist and the people in the parts department and the service shop. Those car dealerships also kick in a lot of money for the local tax base - both property tax and sales tax. Who is going to replace those jobs and revenue?
Best post I've seen on here in ages. Watch and learn kiddies. This is the road map to success.
Fox got it right. I'm not saying that they always get it right but this time they did. So there.
I'm not so sure about that. If I saw someone carrying a device like that I might think it was a bomb too. A briefcase with a bunch of wires attached to a clock? These days you never know.
Personally, I think the real overreaction took place after the fact with the whole boy-genius thing.
Sorry that won't work. That would mean paying people actual market rates for skilled jobs. We just can't have that. Particularly when there is an endless supply of 3rd world talent willing to work for a fraction of what you and I would work for. So let's just open the H1-B floodgates and let them all in. It's the Walmart-ization of high tech. Careful what we wish for.
I recall that Fox called this whole thing out as a hoax from day one. Which was right about the time that the rest of the national media was drooling over this supposed boy genius.
It just goes to show that politics has invaded every segment of society. The folks at Google don't think this kid is a genius any more than I do. But it was promoted for political reasons. Same with Obama. It advances their agenda to push for more H1-B visas. It also advances various "diversity" agendas. Too bad it wasn't a little girl - could have pushed that agenda too.
So as usual when the national media gets the story wrong there is not retraction. There is no follow up. It's just on to the next story. This is pretty much why I have given up on CNN and CBS and NBC, etc. Every story is twisted to advance some sort of political agenda. Now some might say that Fox does the same thing, and they do, but at least Fox will correct the story if they make a mistake.
Oh yeah, good riddance you little prick. Hope you enjoyed your 15 minutes of fame.
I'd tell them to go fuck themselves. Unless the severance package amounts to 2 years salary then you are basically working for free. Oh and by the way...we want you to train the offshore people. No thanks.
This whole thing is part of a conspiracy by US companies to chip away at high salaried developers. On one front is the give everyone a green card crowd. Bring in a bunch of people from 3rd world countries and drive down wages. On another front are the groups like this that want to turn out programmers with a minimum amount of formal education. This too will drive down wages by increasing the labor pool.
What is so evil about this is that on the surface it seems like a noble thing to do. Create opportunities for people from poor countries. Fill a shortage of talent thereby allowing American companies to grow, benefiting everyone. Provide professional level jobs for people that would otherwise not be eligible for them without attending college.
The problem is that its all a load of shit. They don't give a damn about poor countries. They don't give a damn about creating jobs or other such nonsense. What companies DO care about, first and foremost, is making money. And the easiest way to do that is to cut labor costs.
I wonder how much this has to do with the frosty US/UK relations as of late? If you think about it this whole Get-Assange-At-Any-Costs thing is mostly for US benefit. The conventional wisdom is that if the UK gets him they immediately turn him over to the US authorities who want to lock him up and throw away the key.
Personally, I think that many countries - not just the UK - are a bit pissed at the US for the middle east retreat and the resulting onslaught of refugees. Maybe I'm connecting too many dots here but this might be just a Fuck-You-Obama-Go-Get-Him-Yourself kind of thing, *Shrug*
Yes I'm sure that it will continue to improve and I am monitoring it closely. I should be able to pull the trigger in the next year or two with any luck.
Ok fair enough. The panels would still work, although less efficiently than newer ones. For me the real deal killer was that it would only save me $30 a month. That's peanuts and certainly not enough to go to the time and expense of having it installed. I want something that will save me $100 a month minimum. Then it starts to make more sense.
What I'm saying is that the ROI didn't work out whether I purchased them or I leased them. The fact that I'm locked into a 25 year lease with no opportunity to upgrade just reinforces that it's a bad deal.
Look, if you want to get solar panels because it makes you feel like you're saving the world then have at it. Not every decision is or should be based on money. All I'm saying is that I looked at it and I didn't like the terms. I'm not going to go to the trouble and expense of putting panels on my roof just to save $30 a month. And I'm not going to lay out 35 grand to buy panels that I know will be obsolete in 5 years. Maybe it works for you. Didn't work for me.
I stand corrected on the options - but it really does boil down to buy or lease. It sounds like your experience was similar to mine. I went into it with high hopes but the terms and the numbers just didn't do it for me. 13% increase is pretty big actually. But I suspect that in a couple of years it will be there. Then I'll give it another look.
I did do an ROI. My net savings would have been $30/month vs what I am paying now for electricity from the grid. 30 bucks. And that is assuming you agree with their projections on energy cost going forward, which they factor into the calculation. Now I am sure that the cost of electricity is going to go up but nobody knows by how much. Factoring in the tax rebates the payoff would have been about 8 years. I'm not that I'll be in this house for that long.
To me it just seems like a 25 year car lease. Nobody leases a car for 25 years. Why? Because the technology improves sufficiently that you can get more car for the same money. New features, better gas mileage, more power, etc.
Sure you could buy the panels outright - for about $35,000 or so depending on the size of your house. And in 5 years when much better technology comes along what are you going to do with the old panels? You could sell them for pennies on the dollar but someone has to climb up on the roof first and take then down, and hope that none of them get broken.
It kind of reminds me of those giant satellite dishes that people used to have. Remember those? They were about 8 feet in diameter.
I like the idea of solar power it's just that the technology is not efficient enough yet for me to jump in. Eventually someone is going to develop a panel that is so efficient that it will power your entire house with one panel. Or maybe even smaller than that.
The other thing I was hoping for was energy independence from the utility company. With the system that Solar City showed me it's not even close. Yes, it reduces your bill but not by a tremendous amount. At best it's a hybrid system.