Hell... I'd love to be able to compare enterprise grade to consumer grade when I go shopping for my own personal stuff. What is the difference? Does any company actually have any proper advertisements detailing those differences? After getting burned a few times a number of years ago because I paid more "for the more respectable [fill in the blank]" only to find out it wasn't more reliable, I've found it very hard to actually make comparisons on quality.
I think that if stories were allowed 7 or 14 years then put into the public domain, the "original brand" would survive just fine. If I write a story which people liked and then others started writing with those same characters, the people who liked my book are going to come back to me. Go to the grocery and look in the breakfast isle. There's always room for another raisin bran cereal or corn flakes, but Post and General Mills will have that market locked up pretty good even though others can jump in and fight for a piece of the market.
Yup... both types of tools have their place. I'm sort of the opposite of you. I deal more with the GUI stuff because I'm not a great administrator. I'm a programmer by profession. Still, when I need to hit hard and heavy, I pull out the command line. On the flip side (before the ribbon), I made people's jaws drop when I handed them the mouse and used the keyboard for everything... and I did everything faster than they could. (The ribbon, unfortunately, has greatly slowed down my speed in using the keyboard in Word.)
I last used this a couple of years ago. It's a pretty good set of utilities, but I will say this: it is slower than the native stuff in Windows. Despite that, it is much more powerful than the cmd.exe.
Ms. Sacco deserved everything she got. Nothing more, nothing less. If you do something so overwhelmingly and obviously stupid as what she did, and then compounded that stupidity by getting on a plane and going offline for several hours, what do you expect is going to happen?
You must be the first perfect person the whole of humanity has ever had.
The author of the article is just trying to twist this sordid tale into some kind of cautionary example of the excesses of "internet justice." [Snip] If you do something so stupid that NOBODY is willing to defend it, then why should she not suffer the consequences?
I'm not going to defend what she said. It would offend my black friends and therefore offends me. With that said, no one deserves what "internet justice" dishes out. It is swift, merciless, unforgiving, and life-lasting. Other ways should be used to discourage and curb this kind of behavior.
The brevity of tweets makes it deceptively easy to assume the worst intent on the part of the writer.
You are correct. Regardless of what Justine Sacco really meant or what se was really thinking, those in the I.T. world have have all known for well over a decade that emails can be and frequently are misconstrued. I believe that is why emoticons / smilies came to be. They help convey the actual meaning of the author. You can't hear or see the emotions of the sender otherwise. (Not that emoticons or "lol" are that great.) Tweets are even worse than email in this regard because of the brevity.
This. A hundred times this. Is there a way to rate something higher than 5?
The only thing I'd add is that sometimes I don't want to "own" a video. I'd rather rent it first. (It's too frequent that you get locked into a particular technology that doesn't transfer to a new medium when you want it to. That's why I still prefer DVDs if I'm going to own something.)
I read the FTA and I didn't get any proof that we were living in a simulation at all. The article basically says some physicists ran two simulations for a black hole -- one with quantum theory (single dimension) and the other with a (more traditional) 10-dimensional model. The results matched.
Several take aways: 1) Great work by the physicists 2) I thought the standard models had eleven dimensions and not ten 3) I still don't know what they are talking about because this stuff is way beyond me 4) There is no mention about whether this proves one way or another that our universe is a hologram or a simulation.
The FTA is throwing around the word hologram, but IMHO that is a bit a stretch. Or maybe I don't know the official scientific definition of a hologram.
The only way to truly prevent bitrot is by maintaining at least three complete copies of the data, and regularly compare between them
Disagree. I've had an idea for a while that I'm surprised backup vendors don't do: two copies with a check sum and automatic restore*. The two copies and a check sum are a variation of the three-copy idea, but without the third copy. (I'd write a backup program myself with this idea except it would take too long to implement all of the ideas I have that I think every home backup program should have. The backup programs on the market are getting better, but they could still stand a few more improvements like this idea.)
My idea: On the first backup, the original copy on the hard drive gets backed up to the USB backup drive along with a check sum. (Despite your concerns about USB, I believe the original poster is talking about home use and can't really avoid this without significant costs.) When the backup is run a second time (like a day or week later), the original on the hard drive is compared to what is on the backup. Check sums are also performed. If something doesn't match, then you know you have bit rot. The check sum will determine whether the backup or the original is invalid and the program will then take appropriate action all without asking the user.
*Of course, Microsoft had to monkey up the works with using this idea. When you merely open an Excel file, it will modify the contents of the file. Very little can be found on this phenomenon, but here is something about it from Microsoft. Through personal experience, I have found it does not change the modified date and time after the file is closed, but it does modify contents. (I discovered this while playing with a prototype of my idea.) This fits with what they say in the link I provide, but it's not exactly the thing that jumps out at you after the first or second read. When only a single user uses the file, this phenomenon is not seen, although I suspect that Microsoft writes to the file then as well -- an idea which I absolutely hate. Truecrypt is also guilty of this, but at least it does it on purpose, it is documented, and you can turn it off. For security reasons, there is a setting that allows changes to a truecrypt container without changing the modified date and time marks of the truecrypt container file.
Good thing your wife was able to deduct the cost for the licensed tax counselor that you hired to answer this question from your German taxes. Oh wait... you actually didn't seek qualified advice and instead relied on the recommendations (or leack thereof) of some one-size-fits-all software.
No, not really. I was merely keeping the story simple. We went to tax people in America who couldn't figure out our taxes properly before our move. I'm not super happy with the one we're using in Germany either. Oh... and on both sides of the pond, they use either H and R Block or Turbo Tax. We tried bigger tax corporations too. They wanted a really complicated set up for my wife's business of one person. WTF? She didn't make that much money so we could afford all the complications of they things they were suggestion.
For a business of one person (only her), we shouldn't need qualified advice. No, the problem is with the IRS and the laws that Congress made. Period. End of story.
I don't. I give it to them because it's either them or another private entity that will store my data... and I have to use a search engine of some sort if I want to do my job. Say what you want about Duck-Duck-Go, etc, but I don't believe any of them anymore. Unless I know the CEO personally and it's a very small corporation, I don't believe them. How could I in today's world?
Over the last 3 decades, the IRS has actually deserved about 1% of the vitriol poured out on it
You're getting a lot of "1% stories". Here's mine. I'm American and my wife is German. Before we moved to Germany, we proactively called the IRS to ask what special things we needed to do to make sure we paid our taxes properly before we moved to Germany. Should have been pretty simple stuff, actually. We were escalated several times and finally got someone who knew the answers to many of our questions, but he said there was no answer to our big one: How should we split up the taxes between paying the U.S. and paying Germany since we were not moving on December 31st. He couldn't answer that simple question. I said we couldn't be the first couple in this scenario. He said there no good rules we could follow and we were on our own.
Tax programs couldn't accommodate us either. Our scenario was too complex for Turbo Tax and H and R Block. Basically, we had to guess our way through, hope the IRS is happy, and hope we don't get audited for trying to do the right thing. We'll have this hanging over our heads for a long time.
I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised by the amount of vitrol by the young ones... but I still am. I think some on this discussion list are trolling just for fun.
I know what you're saying and I'm about 20 years younger than you. I don't they quite get that it's not just your knees. You're probably also having back problems and sleep problems. (At least I do. If it's not that, I'm sure you're having other health related issues. My knees are ok as I can still run when the weather isn't crap, but they aren't what they used to be and my family has knee problem history.) Balancing work with being healthy with having good relationships with other people (all consume tremendous amounts of time) and perhaps have a little time left over for fun doesn't seem to cross their minds.
For me, I'm in shape, but it's a lot of hard work that eats up a lot of time and sometimes I have to sacrifice my health-related activities for other things in life that must be done. They don't quite get that it isn't "just the knees".
Wow, you're getting a lot of venom from all those AC's, huh? Either they are trolling or they'll be singing a different tune when they reach middle age or older. I have a healthy weight and am in good shape, but not only do I watch my weight like a hawk, I have to work friggin hard to maintain it.
It's even worse for those who are overweight than it is for drug addicts. Drug addicts aren't constantly being bombarded with happy, uplifting advertising claiming how good it is to use drugs.
There's a lot of truth in this statement. Compare the advertisements that have those young, happy, slim people you seeing eating McDonald's burgers with real people in the restaurants. I suspect you'll find they are not one in the same. I had to stop watching TV for a long time before I could convince myself McDonalds (and Burger King, Wendy's, etc) was revolting. It's amazing to me how much of an influence ads had (and continue to have despite no cable and very minimal broadcast TV) in my life.
If my anecdotal evidence could be proved to have a larger scope, it would be interesting if not watching broadcast and cable TV could single handedly wipe out the obesity in a generation. Wishful thinking, I know.
Result: NAS full of music at work for everyone in the dept.
I'm assuming, of course, that you're not just dumping files onto a NAS where it is a free for all. This can result in big problems for said company if anyone from the MAFIAA found out that the music was swapped / copied freely. All it takes is one unhappy whistle blower. Or some guy posting on Slashdot advertising this.
My idea: It would be kinda neat if a program managed the mp3 files instead. A worker dumps their legally owned mp3s into a folder that no one else in the company can access, and the program takes control so that the files are "loaned" out as needed to others. That way, it is only being played for one person at a time. In essence, you're loaning out your mp3s, but you don't have to be physically asked for your music, you can easily peruse what others have, and the asking and loaning happens electronically.
I'm sure the MAFIAA would still have a heart attack with such a program and would still sue the bejesus out of any person who wrote that or any company that used it, but it is a nice, little fantasy anyway if you're looking to stay legal or be fair or something along those lines without making all of the mp3s totally open.
Your main issue is: in every single sentence you told us you said "I want", "I need" something to essentially make the situation better for you and your co-workers and you want the company to spend money for that. This is completely useless since all they hear is you asking for a favor to make your life and your job easier for YOU, and you presented mildly or barely business-relevant arguments as a justification for that but your main points were presented about YOU and your team. It is not an issue for management if you and your coworkers are overworked as long as things are still running; they will brush that off as "the geeks are just whining" or "times are tough but it will get better". It obviously has not been an issue so far that certain projects got delayed. And "we could do better" is something managers don't care about because it is universally always true even if you are the leader in that area.
The original poster didn't make it very clear, but from my personal experience when I worked with a small company, I could only say "I want" and "I need". My knowledge about the rest of the company was minimal. I was hired for my IT skills, not my management skills. I can't speak for the original poster, but I can speak for my specific situation: if management doesn't see that people in IT are overworked, then they aren't doing their job. One of the first posts by an AC was "Quit". If management (whoever that is -- whether it is the original poster or their boss) doesn't do their job, that is exactly what is going to happen and that will hurt the company.
Something to consider: I used to work in a small business (under 60 people). I was hired for my programming skills. My expertise was not management nor business nor finances. It was hardware and software. Coming up with a quote that showed how much money the company could save by hiring a second IT could not happen because I wasn't given the financial information in that detail -- nor did I want them. It would have just been one more thing on my plate to concern myself with and I was plenty busy already just trying to handle the IT side of things. I could feel the pain and I tried to describe it to my boss. It took a while before they hired a second person to help me out.
The list of suggestions you give are very similar to the items in What Color Is Your Parachute? and the book offers more suggestions with context as to what works best and highly suggest combinations along with studies to back up everything. Excellent book. I've owned two copies in my life. The most recent I own is the 2012 version, although I link to the 2014.
Despite your excellent advice and the book's excellent advice, I do get frustrated for a few reasons. I'm naturally an introvert. This does not mean I'm shy. (Often people are shocked to find out I'm an introvert because face-to-face, I am easy to talk with and can usually step into conversations when I want.) I've been out networking all week because I am looking for a job close to where I live. Unfortunately, being an introvert, I need my down time. That means not interacting with others to "recharge my batteries". (By contrast, extroverts recharge their batteries when they are around people and interacting with them.) When I do have a full time job, I come home and want to be with my family and doing something other than programming -- not networking and not coding. I have other interests like writing books, martial arts, weight lifting and running, and science fiction related activities. I live seven time zones away from family so that is also high on my priority list. I'm also really bad with names. (I'd forget my name if I didn't remind myself what it is from time to time.) The energies required to maintain a list of contacts over time is too cost prohibitive. My example:
Before I left my last job, I decided to look for a job. I looked for over a year. I kept my full time job during that year and (because I like to think of myself as a man of principle), I don't go looking for work on my boss' dime. Where I used to live, I knew a number of people, but the full time job prevented me from getting out face-to-face which is where I excel. I suck when networking online and over the phone. Despite my challenges, I did manage to get about half a dozen phone interviews. I was not impressed with recruiters nor those potential bosses I spoke with. No one read my resume before getting on the phone with me. I'm not exaggerating. They told me that over the phone or a 30 second glance would have answered most of the questions and saved us an interview. I'm still trying to figure out how they chose me over the piles of others. I'm not even getting into my HR stories. (They actively stopped me from interviewing with two managers at one particular company even though both me and the managers were interested in talking with one another.) I am glad you can find good recruiters. The ones I tend to work with are only for one specific job and then I never hear from them again -- even if I contact them.
My personal experience suggest extroverts have a huge advantage over introverts when finding a job, but the introverts have the advantage when writing good programs. The enjoyment of solitary pursuit allows them think more deeply about problems and find better solutions. (Even John Cleese alludes to this.) I'm speaking very generally, of course, and the world needs both kinds of people.
Thanks for the reply. Maybe we'll remain in contact on the 'Net, eh?
People in IT tend not to understand that how the rest of the world operates is vastly different. We rightfully or wrongly think we should just learn on the job. That we have the skills in terms of general programming and people should just hire us and we will learn whatever specifics are needed. The rest of the world simply does not work this way.
I respectfully disagree. You mention brain surgeons, heart surgeons, and lawyers. After they graduate from school, they learn on the job. The company pays to keep their skills up to date. Are they expected to do keep up to date with their own money on their own time and their own equipment?
Again, I'm not saying how we do things is right or wrong. There are pros and cons to everything. But just understand the rest of the world operates much more like the very specific certifications that you complain about.
You say an electrician doesn't become a plumber. I agree. A programmer just doesn't become a plumber either. The problem is that there is so much we are expected to know that it is unrealistic. If you go and look at the job board today, a programmer is expected to know: databases, the ins-and-outs of multiple operating systems, web programming (which entails several languages), security (on many different levels), and programming on tablets. That is simply unrealistic. The certifications or qualifications you talk about are very expensive and hard to come by.
Now some HR people are getting about this. Some hiring managers are getting smarter and putting in more general requirements.
I usually assume that it will take 4 to 12 weeks to find an appropriately qualified engineer, then 2 weeks for said engineer to give notice at his/her current job and then 2 months to ramp up on our existing product stack. During these 14 to 22 weeks, this new resource is either not providing any benefit to the project or is actually slowing the project down (ie during interview phase and during ramp up phase).
This is reasonable.
This is always bad news and no VP ever wants to hear that velocity in his/her pet project cannot be improved for at least 14 weeks.
I understand, but that is part of managing a project. I have yet to see a project that allowed for people coming or going from a company. If you're not allowing for this, you're managing incorrectly. Ironically, with poor management that puts the squeeze on the programmers that are still there, you're encouraging them to leave as well leading to a nasty circle.
Now imagine that I have to add another 1 to 2 months of slowed velocity while this new engineer upgrades his or her skillset (or occasionally downgrades to an earlier version). Ugh. That is why there is a huge preference for people that know the exact tool chain and software stack that the project is already running. Time.
I understand your frustration, but programming is a very time consuming profession. If the VPs do not understand that, then it is a problem with management, not with the situation in the job market. I see a lot of unrealistic expectations thrown around by managers.
Find out who the hiring manager is and somehow get introduced to them.
That's great. Me and a bunch of friends on Slashdot would love to meet hiring managers face-to-face. Where do they hang out besides work and home so that I can meet them? You see, meeting hiring managers has been my #1 problem when job hunting. Recruiters, people in HR, unemployment agencies, and dice.com don't lead me to them. All they are good for is allowing the employers to find me... which as you stated is a big problem. (Don't say job fairs. That is too hectic for me to convince an employer in 30 seconds that I'm a good programmer. Besides, the majority of businesses don't do job fairs.)
Slashdot Mirror
Hell... I'd love to be able to compare enterprise grade to consumer grade when I go shopping for my own personal stuff. What is the difference? Does any company actually have any proper advertisements detailing those differences? After getting burned a few times a number of years ago because I paid more "for the more respectable [fill in the blank]" only to find out it wasn't more reliable, I've found it very hard to actually make comparisons on quality.
I think that if stories were allowed 7 or 14 years then put into the public domain, the "original brand" would survive just fine. If I write a story which people liked and then others started writing with those same characters, the people who liked my book are going to come back to me. Go to the grocery and look in the breakfast isle. There's always room for another raisin bran cereal or corn flakes, but Post and General Mills will have that market locked up pretty good even though others can jump in and fight for a piece of the market.
Yup... both types of tools have their place. I'm sort of the opposite of you. I deal more with the GUI stuff because I'm not a great administrator. I'm a programmer by profession. Still, when I need to hit hard and heavy, I pull out the command line. On the flip side (before the ribbon), I made people's jaws drop when I handed them the mouse and used the keyboard for everything... and I did everything faster than they could. (The ribbon, unfortunately, has greatly slowed down my speed in using the keyboard in Word.)
I last used this a couple of years ago. It's a pretty good set of utilities, but I will say this: it is slower than the native stuff in Windows. Despite that, it is much more powerful than the cmd.exe.
Ms. Sacco deserved everything she got. Nothing more, nothing less. If you do something so overwhelmingly and obviously stupid as what she did, and then compounded that stupidity by getting on a plane and going offline for several hours, what do you expect is going to happen?
You must be the first perfect person the whole of humanity has ever had.
The author of the article is just trying to twist this sordid tale into some kind of cautionary example of the excesses of "internet justice." [Snip] If you do something so stupid that NOBODY is willing to defend it, then why should she not suffer the consequences?
I'm not going to defend what she said. It would offend my black friends and therefore offends me. With that said, no one deserves what "internet justice" dishes out. It is swift, merciless, unforgiving, and life-lasting. Other ways should be used to discourage and curb this kind of behavior.
The brevity of tweets makes it deceptively easy to assume the worst intent on the part of the writer.
You are correct. Regardless of what Justine Sacco really meant or what se was really thinking, those in the I.T. world have have all known for well over a decade that emails can be and frequently are misconstrued. I believe that is why emoticons / smilies came to be. They help convey the actual meaning of the author. You can't hear or see the emotions of the sender otherwise. (Not that emoticons or "lol" are that great.) Tweets are even worse than email in this regard because of the brevity.
Shouldn't they automatically do this for everyone? If not, isn't it theft or false advertising?
This. A hundred times this. Is there a way to rate something higher than 5?
The only thing I'd add is that sometimes I don't want to "own" a video. I'd rather rent it first. (It's too frequent that you get locked into a particular technology that doesn't transfer to a new medium when you want it to. That's why I still prefer DVDs if I'm going to own something.)
FTA = The friggin article.
I don't feel that tired, but I think my comment speaks for itself. I need to go take me a one dimensional holo-nap or something.
I read the FTA and I didn't get any proof that we were living in a simulation at all. The article basically says some physicists ran two simulations for a black hole -- one with quantum theory (single dimension) and the other with a (more traditional) 10-dimensional model. The results matched.
Several take aways: 1) Great work by the physicists 2) I thought the standard models had eleven dimensions and not ten 3) I still don't know what they are talking about because this stuff is way beyond me 4) There is no mention about whether this proves one way or another that our universe is a hologram or a simulation.
The FTA is throwing around the word hologram, but IMHO that is a bit a stretch. Or maybe I don't know the official scientific definition of a hologram.
The only way to truly prevent bitrot is by maintaining at least three complete copies of the data, and regularly compare between them
Disagree. I've had an idea for a while that I'm surprised backup vendors don't do: two copies with a check sum and automatic restore*. The two copies and a check sum are a variation of the three-copy idea, but without the third copy. (I'd write a backup program myself with this idea except it would take too long to implement all of the ideas I have that I think every home backup program should have. The backup programs on the market are getting better, but they could still stand a few more improvements like this idea.)
My idea: On the first backup, the original copy on the hard drive gets backed up to the USB backup drive along with a check sum. (Despite your concerns about USB, I believe the original poster is talking about home use and can't really avoid this without significant costs.) When the backup is run a second time (like a day or week later), the original on the hard drive is compared to what is on the backup. Check sums are also performed. If something doesn't match, then you know you have bit rot. The check sum will determine whether the backup or the original is invalid and the program will then take appropriate action all without asking the user.
*Of course, Microsoft had to monkey up the works with using this idea. When you merely open an Excel file, it will modify the contents of the file. Very little can be found on this phenomenon, but here is something about it from Microsoft. Through personal experience, I have found it does not change the modified date and time after the file is closed, but it does modify contents. (I discovered this while playing with a prototype of my idea.) This fits with what they say in the link I provide, but it's not exactly the thing that jumps out at you after the first or second read. When only a single user uses the file, this phenomenon is not seen, although I suspect that Microsoft writes to the file then as well -- an idea which I absolutely hate. Truecrypt is also guilty of this, but at least it does it on purpose, it is documented, and you can turn it off. For security reasons, there is a setting that allows changes to a truecrypt container without changing the modified date and time marks of the truecrypt container file.
I got a little lost in the jingle... are we talking just about the NSA or the government as a whole?
Gawd... I'm responding to an AC troll...
Good thing your wife was able to deduct the cost for the licensed tax counselor that you hired to answer this question from your German taxes. Oh wait... you actually didn't seek qualified advice and instead relied on the recommendations (or leack thereof) of some one-size-fits-all software.
No, not really. I was merely keeping the story simple. We went to tax people in America who couldn't figure out our taxes properly before our move. I'm not super happy with the one we're using in Germany either. Oh... and on both sides of the pond, they use either H and R Block or Turbo Tax. We tried bigger tax corporations too. They wanted a really complicated set up for my wife's business of one person. WTF? She didn't make that much money so we could afford all the complications of they things they were suggestion.
For a business of one person (only her), we shouldn't need qualified advice. No, the problem is with the IRS and the laws that Congress made. Period. End of story.
I give my information to Google willingly.
I don't. I give it to them because it's either them or another private entity that will store my data... and I have to use a search engine of some sort if I want to do my job. Say what you want about Duck-Duck-Go, etc, but I don't believe any of them anymore. Unless I know the CEO personally and it's a very small corporation, I don't believe them. How could I in today's world?
Over the last 3 decades, the IRS has actually deserved about 1% of the vitriol poured out on it
You're getting a lot of "1% stories". Here's mine. I'm American and my wife is German. Before we moved to Germany, we proactively called the IRS to ask what special things we needed to do to make sure we paid our taxes properly before we moved to Germany. Should have been pretty simple stuff, actually. We were escalated several times and finally got someone who knew the answers to many of our questions, but he said there was no answer to our big one: How should we split up the taxes between paying the U.S. and paying Germany since we were not moving on December 31st. He couldn't answer that simple question. I said we couldn't be the first couple in this scenario. He said there no good rules we could follow and we were on our own.
Tax programs couldn't accommodate us either. Our scenario was too complex for Turbo Tax and H and R Block. Basically, we had to guess our way through, hope the IRS is happy, and hope we don't get audited for trying to do the right thing. We'll have this hanging over our heads for a long time.
I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised by the amount of vitrol by the young ones... but I still am. I think some on this discussion list are trolling just for fun.
I know what you're saying and I'm about 20 years younger than you. I don't they quite get that it's not just your knees. You're probably also having back problems and sleep problems. (At least I do. If it's not that, I'm sure you're having other health related issues. My knees are ok as I can still run when the weather isn't crap, but they aren't what they used to be and my family has knee problem history.) Balancing work with being healthy with having good relationships with other people (all consume tremendous amounts of time) and perhaps have a little time left over for fun doesn't seem to cross their minds.
For me, I'm in shape, but it's a lot of hard work that eats up a lot of time and sometimes I have to sacrifice my health-related activities for other things in life that must be done. They don't quite get that it isn't "just the knees".
Wow, you're getting a lot of venom from all those AC's, huh? Either they are trolling or they'll be singing a different tune when they reach middle age or older. I have a healthy weight and am in good shape, but not only do I watch my weight like a hawk, I have to work friggin hard to maintain it.
It's even worse for those who are overweight than it is for drug addicts. Drug addicts aren't constantly being bombarded with happy, uplifting advertising claiming how good it is to use drugs.
There's a lot of truth in this statement. Compare the advertisements that have those young, happy, slim people you seeing eating McDonald's burgers with real people in the restaurants. I suspect you'll find they are not one in the same. I had to stop watching TV for a long time before I could convince myself McDonalds (and Burger King, Wendy's, etc) was revolting. It's amazing to me how much of an influence ads had (and continue to have despite no cable and very minimal broadcast TV) in my life.
If my anecdotal evidence could be proved to have a larger scope, it would be interesting if not watching broadcast and cable TV could single handedly wipe out the obesity in a generation. Wishful thinking, I know.
Result: NAS full of music at work for everyone in the dept.
I'm assuming, of course, that you're not just dumping files onto a NAS where it is a free for all. This can result in big problems for said company if anyone from the MAFIAA found out that the music was swapped / copied freely. All it takes is one unhappy whistle blower. Or some guy posting on Slashdot advertising this.
My idea: It would be kinda neat if a program managed the mp3 files instead. A worker dumps their legally owned mp3s into a folder that no one else in the company can access, and the program takes control so that the files are "loaned" out as needed to others. That way, it is only being played for one person at a time. In essence, you're loaning out your mp3s, but you don't have to be physically asked for your music, you can easily peruse what others have, and the asking and loaning happens electronically.
I'm sure the MAFIAA would still have a heart attack with such a program and would still sue the bejesus out of any person who wrote that or any company that used it, but it is a nice, little fantasy anyway if you're looking to stay legal or be fair or something along those lines without making all of the mp3s totally open.
It's an idea. Not a great one, but an idea.
Ha! The joke's on you. Programs running on Wine while running Linux in Javascript is going to save the day.
Your main issue is: in every single sentence you told us you said "I want", "I need" something to essentially make the situation better for you and your co-workers and you want the company to spend money for that. This is completely useless since all they hear is you asking for a favor to make your life and your job easier for YOU, and you presented mildly or barely business-relevant arguments as a justification for that but your main points were presented about YOU and your team. It is not an issue for management if you and your coworkers are overworked as long as things are still running; they will brush that off as "the geeks are just whining" or "times are tough but it will get better". It obviously has not been an issue so far that certain projects got delayed. And "we could do better" is something managers don't care about because it is universally always true even if you are the leader in that area.
The original poster didn't make it very clear, but from my personal experience when I worked with a small company, I could only say "I want" and "I need". My knowledge about the rest of the company was minimal. I was hired for my IT skills, not my management skills. I can't speak for the original poster, but I can speak for my specific situation: if management doesn't see that people in IT are overworked, then they aren't doing their job. One of the first posts by an AC was "Quit". If management (whoever that is -- whether it is the original poster or their boss) doesn't do their job, that is exactly what is going to happen and that will hurt the company.
Something to consider: I used to work in a small business (under 60 people). I was hired for my programming skills. My expertise was not management nor business nor finances. It was hardware and software. Coming up with a quote that showed how much money the company could save by hiring a second IT could not happen because I wasn't given the financial information in that detail -- nor did I want them. It would have just been one more thing on my plate to concern myself with and I was plenty busy already just trying to handle the IT side of things. I could feel the pain and I tried to describe it to my boss. It took a while before they hired a second person to help me out.
I appreciate you responding back. Thank you.
This is easy to say, a PITA to do
You are so spot on with that comment.
The list of suggestions you give are very similar to the items in What Color Is Your Parachute? and the book offers more suggestions with context as to what works best and highly suggest combinations along with studies to back up everything. Excellent book. I've owned two copies in my life. The most recent I own is the 2012 version, although I link to the 2014.
Despite your excellent advice and the book's excellent advice, I do get frustrated for a few reasons. I'm naturally an introvert. This does not mean I'm shy. (Often people are shocked to find out I'm an introvert because face-to-face, I am easy to talk with and can usually step into conversations when I want.) I've been out networking all week because I am looking for a job close to where I live. Unfortunately, being an introvert, I need my down time. That means not interacting with others to "recharge my batteries". (By contrast, extroverts recharge their batteries when they are around people and interacting with them.) When I do have a full time job, I come home and want to be with my family and doing something other than programming -- not networking and not coding. I have other interests like writing books, martial arts, weight lifting and running, and science fiction related activities. I live seven time zones away from family so that is also high on my priority list. I'm also really bad with names. (I'd forget my name if I didn't remind myself what it is from time to time.) The energies required to maintain a list of contacts over time is too cost prohibitive. My example:
Before I left my last job, I decided to look for a job. I looked for over a year. I kept my full time job during that year and (because I like to think of myself as a man of principle), I don't go looking for work on my boss' dime. Where I used to live, I knew a number of people, but the full time job prevented me from getting out face-to-face which is where I excel. I suck when networking online and over the phone. Despite my challenges, I did manage to get about half a dozen phone interviews. I was not impressed with recruiters nor those potential bosses I spoke with. No one read my resume before getting on the phone with me. I'm not exaggerating. They told me that over the phone or a 30 second glance would have answered most of the questions and saved us an interview. I'm still trying to figure out how they chose me over the piles of others. I'm not even getting into my HR stories. (They actively stopped me from interviewing with two managers at one particular company even though both me and the managers were interested in talking with one another.) I am glad you can find good recruiters. The ones I tend to work with are only for one specific job and then I never hear from them again -- even if I contact them.
My personal experience suggest extroverts have a huge advantage over introverts when finding a job, but the introverts have the advantage when writing good programs. The enjoyment of solitary pursuit allows them think more deeply about problems and find better solutions. (Even John Cleese alludes to this.) I'm speaking very generally, of course, and the world needs both kinds of people.
Thanks for the reply. Maybe we'll remain in contact on the 'Net, eh?
People in IT tend not to understand that how the rest of the world operates is vastly different. We rightfully or wrongly think we should just learn on the job. That we have the skills in terms of general programming and people should just hire us and we will learn whatever specifics are needed. The rest of the world simply does not work this way.
I respectfully disagree. You mention brain surgeons, heart surgeons, and lawyers. After they graduate from school, they learn on the job. The company pays to keep their skills up to date. Are they expected to do keep up to date with their own money on their own time and their own equipment?
Again, I'm not saying how we do things is right or wrong. There are pros and cons to everything. But just understand the rest of the world operates much more like the very specific certifications that you complain about.
You say an electrician doesn't become a plumber. I agree. A programmer just doesn't become a plumber either. The problem is that there is so much we are expected to know that it is unrealistic. If you go and look at the job board today, a programmer is expected to know: databases, the ins-and-outs of multiple operating systems, web programming (which entails several languages), security (on many different levels), and programming on tablets. That is simply unrealistic. The certifications or qualifications you talk about are very expensive and hard to come by.
Now some HR people are getting about this. Some hiring managers are getting smarter and putting in more general requirements.
This is much more the exception than the rule.
I usually assume that it will take 4 to 12 weeks to find an appropriately qualified engineer, then 2 weeks for said engineer to give notice at his/her current job and then 2 months to ramp up on our existing product stack. During these 14 to 22 weeks, this new resource is either not providing any benefit to the project or is actually slowing the project down (ie during interview phase and during ramp up phase).
This is reasonable.
This is always bad news and no VP ever wants to hear that velocity in his/her pet project cannot be improved for at least 14 weeks.
I understand, but that is part of managing a project. I have yet to see a project that allowed for people coming or going from a company. If you're not allowing for this, you're managing incorrectly. Ironically, with poor management that puts the squeeze on the programmers that are still there, you're encouraging them to leave as well leading to a nasty circle.
Now imagine that I have to add another 1 to 2 months of slowed velocity while this new engineer upgrades his or her skillset (or occasionally downgrades to an earlier version). Ugh. That is why there is a huge preference for people that know the exact tool chain and software stack that the project is already running. Time.
I understand your frustration, but programming is a very time consuming profession. If the VPs do not understand that, then it is a problem with management, not with the situation in the job market. I see a lot of unrealistic expectations thrown around by managers.
Find out who the hiring manager is and somehow get introduced to them.
That's great. Me and a bunch of friends on Slashdot would love to meet hiring managers face-to-face. Where do they hang out besides work and home so that I can meet them? You see, meeting hiring managers has been my #1 problem when job hunting. Recruiters, people in HR, unemployment agencies, and dice.com don't lead me to them. All they are good for is allowing the employers to find me... which as you stated is a big problem. (Don't say job fairs. That is too hectic for me to convince an employer in 30 seconds that I'm a good programmer. Besides, the majority of businesses don't do job fairs.)