No. You are wrong. I've worked in many startup software companies (several of which have been really successful) and the overriding theme is always this - we can't find enough good people to fill the positions.
Now, it may very well be true that at IBM/HP/other big co they look to outsourcing as a cost savings measure. But I can tell you for sure that in most of the small and emerging tech companies the toughest part of the job is finding the right people, even at the very top of the salary range.
I'm in this position right now at a startup with plenty of funding, customers, interesting products, good salaries and stock comp. Still, we can't find enough capable people fast enough.
I know what you're going to say - our bar is too high or too specific. That's just not true. When I say capable, I mean being able to write code for basic datastructures, and be able to work through algorithms to solve relatively easy, problems - no trick questions, just straight forward "can you code" types of things.
And it's not just the company I'm at. There's a bunch of us spending gobs of money on recruiting trying desperately to find folks.
I've been through several successful startup companies, and each and every time we considered outsourcing it had nothing to do with money. It's always been about how quickly you can hire good folks. In a venture funded startup the budgets are usually built with the assumption that you will be hiring folks here. The money is in the bank and ready to pay the salaries. The problem is this - it's impossible to find people who know how to write systems software anymore. By that, I mean folks who understand networking, filesystems, databases, operating systems, and just basic algorithms and datastructures.
We're in the middle of this right now. We'd do just about anybody to hire people with a hint of these skills, and still we're always scrambling to find good people to hire.
So from my point of view, at least in my world, it's not about the money, and it's not bullshit.
I'm responding to this because I think this is really important, but I'm sure this thread is dead now.
wrt pay college students high enough for them to get training: The skills we needed were always pretty basic C coding skills. Can you impliment a linked list? Can you do a binary search? Can you impliment some basic functions from clib - strstr, atoi, etc. That's all we'd need. The rest can come on the job. But really, if somebody comes out of school and doesn't have those skills, there's nothing we can do to train them. It means they are in the wrong field.
I'm confused by your last statement. You're saying you spent 3 years sending out resumes and in that time didn't get any second interviews, and you feel that this is due to lack of training? Wouldn't you have learned some things on your own in that time?
I have worked at places with unions in the past (that's how I put myself through college). What you will find is that they foster an environment where nobody feels they need to work hard because nobody else is, and as you say, raises are considered a 'right'. I recognize that they were very helpful for different folks and different times, but my experiences have not been positive.
Can you code C? Can you do those basic things I describe? Do you need a job?
As somebody who has worked at several successful startups, before, during, and after this 'depression' I can tell you this:
At every company I have been at we have been starved for good engineers. Every single time there was talk of outsourcing it was always around the concept of simply being able to hire fast enough. Money was never the issue.
Where we paying below market rate? No, and as a matter of fact, given the afore-mentioned success, many people got wealthy. Where our standards too high? I don't know. I can say they were at least high-enough, and I can say that in retrospect the things we asked people to be able to do were not unreasonable at all. Write some code to solve some problems on the whiteboard. Is that so hard? This is what you are claiming you can do for us on a regular basis, right? These are not trick questions, they are designed to be straight forward and demonstrative of basic coding skills.
I honestly cannot explain the difference in experiences I've had from yours. Why would you be trying to work for a company like Microsoft anyway when there are so many good companies out there struggling for talent?
I used to be very excited about this idea. I only have windows boxes around for when I need to run office, usually for excel. OpenOffice does a damn good job nowadays, but there are still some things that have issues.
I was using the google aps for a while and was very happy about the prospect. However, on many occasions, right when I really needed to get at something, google aps were simply broken. I'm sure you've seen gmail get into a confused state where you cannot log in. This usually results in you having to clear your browser cache and delete all cookies, though this doesn't always work. Google makes some change somewhere, and then after a while they figure it out and fix it. But they never tell you when to expect downtime. Google just rolls out new code whenever they feel like it and you wind up suffering.
Until they start to run their services more like a production IT shop, I can't see how anyone can run a business on it.
This article pertains to events in the mid-western red-states. The only thing I can say is the it's only like that in 51% of the country. This has horrible rammifications for national events, like presidential elections, but there's still a lot of blue-state geography here - places where you can go to school, learn science, allow other people to live their lives.
I realize the tyranny of the USA majority (even if it is only 51%) has horrible rammifications for the rest of the world, and for that I can only say 'sorry about that'.
Backups for the home or small business user do not need to be tricky, difficult, inconvenient or time consuming. But you do need to have the right equipment and software for the job.... P.S. I do not work for Maxtor or Dantz, but I am a happy customer and I have sold this device to others in the past.
Your entire post reads like marketing copy. I call shenanigans.
The article states that Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder which requires specialist support. And from what I think I have heard about Autism, people with this condition (perhaps just the most extreme forms?) need special care throughout their lives.
So this is what I don't understand - two successful (in their analytical based fields) have an offspring and that child can't get by in the world. Doesn't it seem like the child would be progressively less social, and more analytical. How come the sudden collapse?
Mythbusters at it's core is a show about science - "get your hands dirty, run the experiments, figure it out" science.
How do you feel about the current trend of portions of the US moving away from understanding how apply the scientific method in a sort of ever expanding radius from religious topics - the latest example being the mandatory teaching of Intelligent Design in certain school systems. Is there a widening rift between the "intellectual elite" and the down to earth "Nascar Dads"? Is this simply a political trend with the current administration? Has science education in the school systems become dumbed down too far?
How do we fix it?
(aplogies for the generalizations in this comment - I know many nascar fans love science and many on the religious right don't love nascar, etc.)
For those of you who don't realize what a big loss for MS this is, I'd like to give some background on Ward Cunningham...
His career dates back to the early 50s where he successfully raised to children, Wally and "the Beave". His wife was hot and he drove off to some secret govt. installation every day without the slightest suspicion of family or neighbors. He went mostly by "Ward" in those days.
WC was on sabbatical during the 60s.
During the 70s WC went by the more proper "Mr. Cunningham". He raised Richie and Joannie, although not to his earlier level of success (Joannie went on the date Ralph Macchio). His wife was not hot.
During this phase of his life, Mr. Cunningham worked at a hardware store - punchcard readers/writers, that sort of thing.
(2) HARMFUL TO MINORS.--The term ``harmful to minors'' means any picture, image, graphic imagefile, or other visual depiction that-- (A) taken as a whole and with respect to minors, appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex,or excretion; (B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals; and (C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to minors.
As the late, great, Bill Hicks used today - "that pretty much sounds like every piece of advertising you see today"
We are sorry that you are having problems driving the car we sold you without a steering wheel. An easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from the DOT to install tracks which your car can ride on and be guided to approved locations. To help speed this effort was ask that you contact your local DOT.
Thank you for the opportunity to be of assistance.
most people DID understand the underlying mechanics of what was going on. They COULD do things command-line and know precisely what to expect to receive back
That's just a different interface. You think knowing the cmd line means that
you understand the mechanics of what is going on because you consider the cmd
line to be "low level". A person who wrote the OS would look at both of you
(old school cmd line user and new school ui user) and say that neither of you
understand the mechanics of what is going on.
And really, the people who designed the CPU or BIOS might claim that the
operating system writer doesn't really understand the mechanics of what is
going on.
I read your comment as a deeper seated resentment against things changing. The
truth is that if somebody wanted to they could make a system with no cmd line
at all.
I mean really, I like the cmd line, but there's nothing more fundamental about
it than ui. It may seem like it because cmd line leans towards funcationality
and ui leans towards intuitive interaction.
Please don't waste your money on an AlienWare product. Two friends and I made that mistake years ago and had nothing but problems with their systems. To top it off, their support is rediculous. They are a joke and I hate them because they made me waste my hard earned money on their junk.
Just so you know - I have never worked for AlienWare or any of its competitors.
I suspect that you are one of those people that I meet far too often who love to complain about the fact the world just doesn't know the "correct" way to see how smart they really are. I suspect that you are one of those people I meet far too often who constantly espouse the firm belief that they have these great genius level ideas, but that nobody recognizes it.
I would like to take this opportunity to call bullsh*t on you.
Me and some of my friends each bought Alienware computers a couple of years ago. Without fail, each of us had a horrible experience with them.
The way they assemble things is very shoddy, and they must have some sort of ESD issues at their assembly facility - we all had extremely short lifetimes on motherboards and cpus - usually measured in months.
These weren't overclocked machines that we purchased, but they were at the time AWs highest end computers.
To make things worse (much worse!) their support is horrible. It takes 3 transfers to be able to talk to anybody who knows anything about your situation when you are in the middle of a component replacement. Their "on-site" replacement means that they hire out whomever is cheapest in your area to replace the myriad of things which break on their boxes. As a bonus, they continually change who they outsource their support services too, so the quality varies a lot, but it certainly is consistent at the low end.
One more thing - if you ever even mention, that you might have, at one time, considered getting a linux installation disk anywhere near your AW box, they will instantly refuse to help in anyway, no matter how obvious the hardware problem.
When it comes to responsibility, they just want to deny, deny, deny.
Just so you know - I don't now, and never have worked for AW or any of their competitors. I'm just a very unhappy consumer of one of their crappy products. I hate them, and I don't want to see anybody else burned.
Society strives to create an environment whereby you will be better off by putting energies into playing the game and getting ahead.
As the process continues, those who are doing well will make laws to allow them to continue to do well, thus further fostering the environment.
People too far below the average intelligence can't make it far enough down the path set before them, and so turn to crime, and are caught.
This works fine until those at the top start to use infuence to prevent their competitors, and hence those behind them from getting ahead. This turns into a class system and accelerates until revolution and then socialism.
This in turn leads to loss of competition, and then a continued slowing of progress. Smaller factions break off and start to create their own internal competition, and more capitalist leanings , and then the whole process starts over again.
Slashdot Mirror
Alien fucking sucks. They always have. Their hardware is crap. I bought from them once and would never do it again.
So, fuck them.
who cares.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195430&thresho ld=3&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=16012744
No. You are wrong. I've worked in many startup software companies (several of which have been really successful) and the overriding theme is always this - we can't find enough good people to fill the positions.
Now, it may very well be true that at IBM/HP/other big co they look to outsourcing as a cost savings measure. But I can tell you for sure that in most of the small and emerging tech companies the toughest part of the job is finding the right people, even at the very top of the salary range.
I'm in this position right now at a startup with plenty of funding, customers, interesting products, good salaries and stock comp. Still, we can't find enough capable people fast enough.
I know what you're going to say - our bar is too high or too specific. That's just not true. When I say capable, I mean being able to write code for basic datastructures, and be able to work through algorithms to solve relatively easy, problems - no trick questions, just straight forward "can you code" types of things.
And it's not just the company I'm at. There's a bunch of us spending gobs of money on recruiting trying desperately to find folks.
I've been through several successful startup companies, and each and every time we considered outsourcing it had nothing to do with money. It's always been about how quickly you can hire good folks. In a venture funded startup the budgets are usually built with the assumption that you will be hiring folks here. The money is in the bank and ready to pay the salaries. The problem is this - it's impossible to find people who know how to write systems software anymore. By that, I mean folks who understand networking, filesystems, databases, operating systems, and just basic algorithms and datastructures.
We're in the middle of this right now. We'd do just about anybody to hire people with a hint of these skills, and still we're always scrambling to find good people to hire.
So from my point of view, at least in my world, it's not about the money, and it's not bullshit.
Alienware told me the same thing about a box I purchased from them. This was pre-Dell acquisition.
Worst comp. purchase I have ever made.
San Francisco
jobs@sproutsys.com
I'm responding to this because I think this is really important, but I'm sure this thread is dead now.
wrt pay college students high enough for them to get training: The skills we needed were always pretty basic C coding skills. Can you impliment a linked list? Can you do a binary search? Can you impliment some basic functions from clib - strstr, atoi, etc. That's all we'd need. The rest can come on the job. But really, if somebody comes out of school and doesn't have those skills, there's nothing we can do to train them. It means they are in the wrong field.
I'm confused by your last statement. You're saying you spent 3 years sending out resumes and in that time didn't get any second interviews, and you feel that this is due to lack of training? Wouldn't you have learned some things on your own in that time?
I have worked at places with unions in the past (that's how I put myself through college). What you will find is that they foster an environment where nobody feels they need to work hard because nobody else is, and as you say, raises are considered a 'right'. I recognize that they were very helpful for different folks and different times, but my experiences have not been positive.
Can you code C? Can you do those basic things I describe? Do you need a job?
I don't agree with you at all.
As somebody who has worked at several successful startups, before, during, and after this 'depression' I can tell you this:
At every company I have been at we have been starved for good engineers. Every single time there was talk of outsourcing it was always around the concept of simply being able to hire fast enough. Money was never the issue.
Where we paying below market rate? No, and as a matter of fact, given the afore-mentioned success, many people got wealthy. Where our standards too high? I don't know. I can say they were at least high-enough, and I can say that in retrospect the things we asked people to be able to do were not unreasonable at all. Write some code to solve some problems on the whiteboard. Is that so hard? This is what you are claiming you can do for us on a regular basis, right? These are not trick questions, they are designed to be straight forward and demonstrative of basic coding skills.
I honestly cannot explain the difference in experiences I've had from yours. Why would you be trying to work for a company like Microsoft anyway when there are so many good companies out there struggling for talent?
I used to be very excited about this idea. I only have windows boxes around for when I need to run office, usually for excel. OpenOffice does a damn good job nowadays, but there are still some things that have issues.
I was using the google aps for a while and was very happy about the prospect. However, on many occasions, right when I really needed to get at something, google aps were simply broken. I'm sure you've seen gmail get into a confused state where you cannot log in. This usually results in you having to clear your browser cache and delete all cookies, though this doesn't always work. Google makes some change somewhere, and then after a while they figure it out and fix it. But they never tell you when to expect downtime. Google just rolls out new code whenever they feel like it and you wind up suffering.
Until they start to run their services more like a production IT shop, I can't see how anyone can run a business on it.
This article pertains to events in the mid-western red-states. The only thing I can say is the it's only like that in 51% of the country. This has horrible rammifications for national events, like presidential elections, but there's still a lot of blue-state geography here - places where you can go to school, learn science, allow other people to live their lives.
I realize the tyranny of the USA majority (even if it is only 51%) has horrible rammifications for the rest of the world, and for that I can only say 'sorry about that'.
Backups for the home or small business user do not need to be tricky, difficult, inconvenient or time consuming. But you do need to have the right equipment and software for the job. ...
P.S. I do not work for Maxtor or Dantz, but I am a happy customer and I have sold this device to others in the past.
Your entire post reads like marketing copy. I call shenanigans.
SHENANIGANS!
Thank you.
The article states that Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder which requires specialist support.
And from what I think I have heard about Autism, people with this condition (perhaps just the most extreme
forms?) need special care throughout their lives.
So this is what I don't understand - two successful (in their analytical based fields) have an offspring
and that child can't get by in the world. Doesn't it seem like the child would be progressively less
social, and more analytical. How come the sudden collapse?
Joe Firmage? As in "we got all our technologies from space aliens" Joe Firmage?
Think I'm joking?
link
More of the story here.
You should check this out - this guy from Fast Times at RMH replies to that scam. It's pretty funny.
link
Mythbusters at it's core is a show about science - "get your hands dirty, run the experiments, figure it out" science.
How do you feel about the current trend of portions of the US moving away from understanding how apply the scientific
method in a sort of ever expanding radius from religious topics - the latest example being the mandatory teaching of
Intelligent Design in certain school systems. Is there a widening rift between the "intellectual elite" and
the down to earth "Nascar Dads"? Is this simply a political trend with the current administration? Has science
education in the school systems become dumbed down too far?
How do we fix it?
(aplogies for the generalizations in this comment - I know many nascar fans love science and many on the
religious right don't love nascar, etc.)
His career dates back to the early 50s where he successfully raised to children, Wally and "the Beave". His wife was hot and he drove off to some secret govt. installation every day without the slightest suspicion of family or neighbors. He went mostly by "Ward" in those days.
WC was on sabbatical during the 60s.
During the 70s WC went by the more proper "Mr. Cunningham". He raised Richie and Joannie, although not to his earlier level of success (Joannie went on the date Ralph Macchio). His wife was not hot.
During this phase of his life, Mr. Cunningham worked at a hardware store - punchcard readers/writers, that sort of thing.
Microsoft has truly lost a piece of Americana.
(A) taken as a whole and with respect to minors, appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex,or excretion;
(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals; and
(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to minors.
As the late, great, Bill Hicks used today - "that pretty much sounds like every piece of advertising you see today"
Dear Customer,
We are sorry that you are having problems driving the car we sold you without
a steering wheel. An easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation
from the DOT to install tracks which your car can ride on and be guided to
approved locations. To help speed this effort was ask that you contact your
local DOT.
Thank you for the opportunity to be of assistance.
The Sony BMG Automotive Support Team
That's just a different interface. You think knowing the cmd line means that you understand the mechanics of what is going on because you consider the cmd line to be "low level". A person who wrote the OS would look at both of you (old school cmd line user and new school ui user) and say that neither of you understand the mechanics of what is going on.
And really, the people who designed the CPU or BIOS might claim that the operating system writer doesn't really understand the mechanics of what is going on.
I read your comment as a deeper seated resentment against things changing. The truth is that if somebody wanted to they could make a system with no cmd line at all.
I mean really, I like the cmd line, but there's nothing more fundamental about it than ui. It may seem like it because cmd line leans towards funcationality and ui leans towards intuitive interaction.
Please don't waste your money on an AlienWare product. Two friends and I made that mistake years ago and had nothing but problems with their systems. To top it off, their support is rediculous. They are a joke and I hate them because they made me waste my hard earned money on their junk.
Just so you know - I have never worked for AlienWare or any of its competitors.
I suspect that you are one of those people that I meet far too often who love to complain about the fact the world just doesn't know the "correct" way to see how smart they really are. I suspect that you are one of those people I meet far too often who constantly espouse the firm belief that they have these great genius level ideas, but that nobody recognizes it.
I would like to take this opportunity to call bullsh*t on you.
Thanks!
Me and some of my friends each bought Alienware computers a couple of years ago. Without fail, each of us had a horrible experience with them.
The way they assemble things is very shoddy, and they must have some sort of ESD issues at their assembly facility - we all had extremely short lifetimes on motherboards and cpus - usually measured in months.
These weren't overclocked machines that we purchased, but they were at the time AWs highest end computers.
To make things worse (much worse!) their support is horrible. It takes 3 transfers to be able to talk to anybody who knows anything about your situation when you are in the middle of a component replacement. Their "on-site" replacement means that they hire out whomever is cheapest in your area to replace the myriad of things which break on their boxes. As a bonus, they continually change who they outsource their support services too, so the quality varies a lot, but it certainly is consistent at the low end.
One more thing - if you ever even mention, that you might have, at one time, considered getting a linux installation disk anywhere near your AW box, they will instantly refuse to help in anyway, no matter how obvious the hardware problem.
When it comes to responsibility, they just want to deny, deny, deny.
Just so you know - I don't now, and never have worked for AW or any of their competitors. I'm just a very unhappy consumer of one of their crappy products. I hate them, and I don't want to see anybody else burned.
thx.
It's not just a good thing, its the only way.
Society strives to create an environment whereby you will be better off by putting energies into playing the game and getting ahead.
As the process continues, those who are doing well
will make laws to allow them to continue to do well, thus further fostering the environment.
People too far below the average intelligence can't make it far enough down the path set before them, and so turn to crime, and are caught.
This works fine until those at the top start to use infuence to prevent their competitors, and hence those behind them from getting ahead. This turns into a class system and accelerates until revolution and then socialism.
This in turn leads to loss of competition, and then a continued slowing of progress. Smaller factions break off and start to create their own internal competition, and more capitalist leanings , and then the whole process starts over again.
wait, what was I talking about?