Isn't it the case that other countries force their students to pick a career path beginning in high school? I thought this was how other countries, especially the Indian and Chinese government, were able to turn out so many engineers/scientists...by narrowing the focus of education early on.
I agree with the idea that students shouldn't be all lumped into the same category. If you're destined to be a scientist, why spend half your high school career studying unrelated subjects? Cram all the knowledge in now, while your brain still has a huge memory capacity. That way, college is reserved for deeper study of a subject, not review of stuff you should have learned in high school.
Also, high school curricula are pretty much aimed at the lowest common denominator. It makes sense to separate those who are interested in learning from those who are interested in using up oxygen. Ever wonder why college degrees are almost required for any corporate job? Because high school doesn't give you enough preparation to do a "real world" job. This would also prevent people from being forced through college who otherwise don't need it. There are very few non-menial jobs you can get anymore without a degree, and some people, while qualified for a job, are not suited for advanced study.
I'm all for a school board governing body declaring that the Internet is not dangerous. However, aren't teachers doing everything they can to keep their student's attention? All these Web 2.0 kids are MySpacing, Facebooking and blogging during class already. Why would you want to encourage that?
Seems to me that cellphones with web access are causing more and more distraction. When was the last time you saw a student not in a classroom setting without a phone stapled to their ear? Actively encouraging use of a tool that will further shorten attention spans sounds like a bad move for education. It's not the "predators" you have to worry about...it's whether your students are listening to you!
The social network concept is a good one until people get totally engrossed in it. One thing I've noticed is that us "Web 1.0" types are mostly information consumers, posting to a couple discussion boards and stuff. It seems like Web 2.0 folks can't shut up about themselves. They seem to think that everyone's hanging on their next word, and have an incredibly inflated sense of self-importance. I have no illusions...I know someone will see this and form an opinion one way or the other, but it's not my personal goal to publish my life story. Others love to share every experience, including long rants on things like customer service for very minor issues.
I guess it's inevitable that we'll be a 24/7 connected society in the next few years, and us 30-year-old fogeys will wind up in the digital nursing home.:)
In this day and age, who actually goes out of their way to not let their children hear curse words? I'll bet these are the same kind of parents who wonder why their perfect little angels are doing drugs and drinking behind their back at age 13. Wake up guys, the social scene has changed in the last 30 years. Kids are exposed to everything from a very early age.
The tighter you control, the more your kids will try to get away with. Everyone knows that from their own childhood, but forgets that when they become parents themselves!
My personal philosophy: Assume kids have access to every bad thing out there. Give them the tools to deal with it so they don't wind up killing themselves or doing something stupid. At the same time, tolerate a little bit of abnormal behavior. Any other control you try to impose is just going to turn them into a social retard or push them away from you.
Right, this just gets your youthful coworkers resentful of you for making every excuse under the sun for you to get out of work while they pick up your slack. (ex: My kid is sick. My kid has a parent teacher conference. My kid needs to get picked up from school, etc.)
So what's the solution, promote us? Not every techie is destined for management, nor should they be. When you hit your 30s, do you want to just be replaced by someone who can spend their entire life in the office? Heck, I'm worried about hitting the magic "40" number where overt age discrimination starts setting in. I really want to stay 100% technical as long as I can...that's where I'm most valuable to any company. Sorting out the "kindergarteners" when they have stupid people disputes is not how I want to end my career. Leave people management for those who enjoy it.
Having a life outside work doesn't necessarily make you a slacker. Lots of people are, and some use their outside commitments as an excuse. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to fire corporate employees for poor performance everyplace I've worked.
A lot of people say "start a business." If you're not a people-management type, any business you start will fail miserably.
Here's an idea for us older types with families...I think IT companies would have fewer retention problems if they balanced this "take care of everything" approach with some reasonable limits.
Here's an example: Most parents would love the idea of on-site daycare for their kids. It's the 2000s, and many women actually want to keep working after they have kids. Making the whole childcare thing easier would definitely keep good, more experienced workers in place and productive.
The problems come when this extra stuff is provided with the understanding that you will work tons of extra hours for it. The college campus atmosphere works for younger workers, but most older ones with families want a balance.
In your 20s, especially in the IT world, you don't have a whole lot of outside commitments. You can go to work, then go home to an empty apartment. This doesn't fly once you get married and you're expected to put time in outside of the office. This is another reason why Big 5 consulting is so attractive to the young. A job where you get to travel, drink in strange places, and make a lot of money is a really easy sell for a new grad.
I think companies (especially software/hardware/services houses) would be really surprised how much a few extra "grown up" perks add to productivity. If I have to make one less trip a day because something's provided, that's more time I can be contributing. One of these things would be an enclosed work space...cube life is annoying especially when you have loud neighbors.
When I graduated, I was in a very similar situation. I was working nearly full-time my last two years, ended up with a 3.1something. However, I was able to find a job without much difficulty. Here's why:
Despite what colleges tell you, where you get your degree and how well you do does not matter for 90% of the jobs out there. Where does it matter?
Investment banks -- they've got way too many people clamoring for these six and seven figure jobs, and have to sort them somehow. You either have to have a near-perfect GPA or a degree from the Ivy League.
Anything academic -- Duh. If you're going to grad school, teaching or whatever, your academic record is incredibly important.
Consulting firms -- Ivy League or top-ten public university only, or extremely high GPAs from other places. Also another high-paying job, but full of people who just think they know everything. Consulting tricks you into thinking you're an absolute genius because that's the image they want you to show to the customer.
Extremely large corporations -- I think this is a holdover from a previous era, but it's still true. I got my job on my own, but a lot of people get "picked" by large companies who recruit on-campus. They order by GPA. However, it seems to me like the vast majority of these entry level jobs are incredibly boring. I'd rather get in as a contractor or work for a smaller company.
Professions (law, medicine) -- But you already knew that.
Any other job, for the most part, just checks that you graduated. Everything after your first job is based on how well you've done in previous jobs, and who you know.
So get out there and get to work, unless law school/med school or a teaching career is in your future.
I'm pre-Web 2.0, so I really don't know the answer to this one.
Does every high school and college student use MySpace or FaceBook these days? Sure, there's probably some Luddites out there, but is the penetration in the 90+% range?
Has it really become that huge a phenomenon? I've seen some goofy MySpace pages, but didn't realize that _everyone_ had one.
Stuff like this really makes me feel like an old fogey. Don't people realize that no one cares what you ate today, who your friends are, or what kind of car you drive?
Replace "terrorist" with "communist" and it's 1950 all over again.
I almost wish we had the Cold War back. At least the enemy was clearly defined and kept 100% of the government's attention. Now that there's no clear enemy, we feel the need to go after everything.
And with the Cold War, at least there was a permanent stalemate on both sides...neither side would even think about launching an attack because they'd get wiped out in the process. Tense, but it kept people at bay.
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but it really seems to me like people have grown soft in the last few years. Maybe it's the lack of a strong father figure in the home, or whatever. But it seems like kids aren't allowed to experience things for fear of getting hurt or "scarring them for life." What's wrong with a normal kid playing a violent video game? They're going to be exposed to it in real life anyway. Not preparing them adequately for it is just going to make them more immature when they "grow up."
Example: Toy guns. You can't find realistic toy guns anymore. When I was younger, we had full-weight, metal replicas of the real things. Now you can only find bright orange ones, usually made of plastic or foam.
Maybe this is why so many kids have no ability to handle reality. Instead of dealing with their own problems, they go crying to a psychiatrist.
In my opinion, keep the rating system to appease the crazy parents, but don't ban sales. That's just encouraging the kids to play these games anyway...
"Generations of men raised by women." --Tyler Durden from "Fight Club"
It'll be interesting to see what China (and Asia in general) does in the next 50 years. On one hand, they publicly denounce the US and treat us like an enemy. On the other, we've pretty much lost all of our manufacturing capability to them. No US producer can ignore their vast quantities of cheap labor and hospitable business climate. Now that the Communists have no real power there, what's going to fill in the void?
What will be even more interesting is a conflict that forces us to begin manufacturing domestically again. I wonder how long it'll take to ramp up all the factories that closed up during the last 30 years or so?
Any country on Earth with enough technological resources to protect would be stupid not to start thinking about ways to defend it in a conflict. China's no exception.
I don't know where all the anti-union rhetoric comes from, but I suspect it comes from unions having better contracts with better benefits, and then the general public getting pissed when unions fight to keep what they have.
I tend to agree, but there are some exceptions. Sometimes unions can destroy companies by refusing to compromise. Eastern Airlines was put out of business because its unions refused to change their contracts. Mainly though, they're a great deal for anyone who's in them. Whether the conservatives admit it or not, the unions were what grew the middle class in the 50s and 60s. Having a steady job you won't get fired from on a whim allows you to buy a house/car/whatever and not worry so much about where your paycheck is coming from. Also, I think that if labor was stronger, you wouldn't see things like CEOs getting $50 million pay packages for doing nothing.
If IT were unionizable, I'd be on-board in a second. Think about all the stuff you don't typically get as an IT employee... Generous vacation you're actually allowed to take. Clear definitions of your work hours, duties and rules. Not having to play the salary-negotiation shell game. Encouraged long-term employment, and therefore better domain-specific knowledge within your industry. Paid training. Etc.
Sure, they have their problems. But faulting people just because they have it better than you is not a good way to go. Heck, if you told me to give up a small percentage of my salary for guaranteed high wages and raises every year, I'd say you were crazy not to sign up. Just having someone negotiate the terms of your employment for you is reason enough.
This kind of story is all too common lately. Cable companies and the separate telcos often neglect equipment, have lousy customer service and generally suck. It seems like this all started with the deregulation of the telecom market. I would like to see a return to single provider service (i.e. the Bell system.)
The local cable provider around here is very good about fixing things and running a fast network, but even they don't have the power a single provider would.
Consider some of the items you get with open-competitive comm service:
High prices, almost as high as you had under the monopolized system.
Stories like this with a profit-motivated vendor neglecting older equipment because it doesn't generate as much revenue as the new stuff.
Incompetent customer service. The provider might also outsource this function because it isn't a "core competency." Now you have someone halfway around the world who has no clue how to help you.
Service turn-ups measured in months -- I gave up after 3 months and 2 separate attempts to get DSL.
Now, think of the stuff we had under the previous system:
High prices, but you get what you pay for.
A provider who has an enforceable mandate to keep their networks maintained and running.
Reliability -- uptimes of equipment measured in tens of years.
Bell Labs and the like -- There's no way a for-profit company actually wants to support research these days. IBM and Microsoft say they do, but nothing compares to the discoveries Bell Labs made. That was all telecom money.
I think it's time to re-regulate all telecom. The private companies have been given a chance, and proven they can't police themselves.
A lot of people who didn't like the old system complain that they had to rent their phone, or that the pace of innovation wasn't as fast under a single provider. In my opinion, having reliable service is worth forgoing the buzzword-of-the-week. I'd be interested in hearing what people think about this.
Every day, you hear stories in the news about how people's "lives were ruined' when someone got hold of their credit card information or SS numbers and bought stuff. Is it really that much of a problem? Why go to all the trouble to protect this information?
The reason I'm suspicious about this is because there's now a huge market for "identity theft protection" solutions. Aren't they just stirring up foam to get people panicked about losing money?
Anyone who doesn't pay attention to their credit card statements at the end of each month deserves what they get. If you see something you didn't pay for, just call the bank and it's taken care of almost automatically. I've had to do this 2 times in the last 10 years. As long as you keep your receipts and keep your eyes open for anything suspicious, this shouldn't hit you too badly.
It seems to me like the vast majority of ID theft happens to the inattentive.
As for the credit card companies not moving to stop this, why bother? They are making tons of money anyway. If 1% of a $2 trillion set of transactions is fraud, you're still making a huge cut if you take 3% up front in merchant fees, and who-knows-how-much in interest charges and fees to the customer.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for interest rates to drop if fraud suddenly dropped. Once they got the bankruptcy law they asked for, the credit card companies didn't move to lower rates for people. In fact, there's now more fees and higher interest rates if you pay late, simply because they know you can't discharge the debt in bankruptcy anymore. In short, don't worry about credit card companies. They can more than afford to absorb a little fraud.
Once the genome is completely mapped, and every congenital defect is detectable, the life insurance industry will change completely. Even if they're not allowed to check, or base their rates on the results, you can bet insurance companies will take a quick look at what they can expect over the life of the policyholder. If I have a heart condition or a neurological defect that's going to kill me sometime between 55-70, that can really give the actuaries something to chew on. While not 100% certain of when I'll die, they know when I'm most likely to die, and the rest is all accident insurance.
A lot of auto insurance customers are up in arms about the "insurance score" that most US auto insurers use to determine part of your premiums. For those who don't know, the insurer runs a credit report to see how responsible you are with your finances. I guess the idea is that someone who doesn't pay their bills on time is most likely to commit fraud or be absent-minded and get into more accidents. Basing part of your life insurance premiums on a known portion of your long-term health history seems fairer to me than this.
I hope we do wind up with most of the genetic puzzle solved sometime in my life. We could wipe out most inherited conditions in 2 or 3 generations. A lot of people think it's too much like engineering a society, but I think it would be a great service to the species. There should be some limits, but who wouldn't want to get rid of conditions that produce people who are a burden on society? (retards, etc.)
Microsft knows they're going to get people to upgrade. Unless there's _major_ pushback from corporate IT, XP and previous versions of Windows will go end-of-life on their scheduled dates. When that happens, you lose patch and fix support, which means your desktops are unprotected. Any IT person who runs Windows knows that's a dangerous gray area. There are still a couple of die-hard places running NT4, but it's not for general use and the admins keep tight control over the system.
So yes, Microsoft will eventually get their revenue. Dumping 17 years of Windows-based code and processes for Linux or any other OS is just too tough a sell in most large companies. I'm not a big Vista backer either, but you have to keep up with the times. I'm playing with it while supporting XP and 2003 in our environments. It would be foolish not to.
Moore's Law is a huge help for technical computing. Anytime you need to crunch numbers for something, it's a good bet that you'll have more processing power in next year's hardware. This gets us closer to really important breakthroughs in science and technology.
It's a monster hindrance for mainstream computing. Having all this processing power available to you, coupled with cheap memory, means you can be as lazy as you want when you write software. I do systems integration work for a large company, and the bloated, inefficient garbage that runs fine given enough hardware is mind-boggling. I may seem a little bitter, but it seems like apps written for internal use only survive due to pumped up memory specs. I'm not saying you need to do funky tricks to squeeze a program into 4K anymore, but at least optimize code so you're not doing crazy things like iterating through each row in a database table, etc.
The nature of the data isn't the biggest story...it's the fact that someone who doesn't work there anymore had access to it.
I've seen this a million times; it happens in every single company, but especially so in large ones. There's no connection between human resources and the system administrators in some cases. When you're fired or quit, an automatic process that is kicked off by the routine that prints your last paycheck should also disable your accounts. The problem is the disconnected nature of systems.
Even in disconnected environments, it's possible to do this by assigning someone to be responsible for accounts. In previous IT organizations, this was usually the PFY's job. Unfortunately, this is an incredibly boring job and it is difficult to keep someone doing this forever. It's a problem that could be solved by technology, but either (a) none of the sysadmin staff want to work on it because they fear automation that might take their jobs, or (b) the company has such a complex HR system (homegrown mess, SAP, etc.) that building interfaces is really hard.
I'm going to sound old here, but I'd like to jump back a few technology generations to when you actually needed to be a highly skilled technologist to take care of systems. It would force a little discipline, which is lacking. Sysadmins are overworked, this is true. That's often why you see stories like this. But a good sysadmin knows how to automate the tedious.
If you're a service provider making money hosting software (or a feature of your software) over the net, put as much capacity as you think you'll need in place, then put in the ability to add more immediately to account for things like this.
There are limits to this, but it's a basic fact of hosted apps. All of your customers might actually want to use your software at once. At any given time. Therefore, if you have your salespeople signing up a few million more customers, it's time to plow some of the profits back into the infrastructure.
I would guess most of these SaaS companies (NetSuite, Salesforce.com, etc.) have the same greedy mentality..."No one could possibly hit the app all at once, over and over again. Let's not listen to our IT guys. Request for servers and bandwidth denied."
I'm not surprised Intuit got burned. They practically have the lock on the financial software market, and know it. Quicken for all its faults is a good product, and MS Money is awful. TurboTax is great (when it works.) However, I've been a user of Quicken for years, and every new release has more gimmicky features, while basic things like data integrity aren't looked after. Support has been going downhill for years, but you need to keep buying the software every year because it makes it so easy to take care of your finances.
I really don't understand why this is a problem. Something like this seems like yet another overprotective law designed to insulate kids from the real world. I'm sure a sizable portion of the Slashdot community got bullied in school (I know I did.) Instead of demanding laws to protect me, I either fought back or ignored it, depending on severity. Now it's text messages or a stupid YouTube video posted about someone that is causing all the furur...how crazy is that?
It really seems like everyone wants to shelter their kids from the real world, especially in the last few years. The whole "danger for children" thing is completely overhyped, and parents are scared to let their kids do anything somewhat dangerous. I say this is the wrong approach. If you don't let your kid mess up and make mistakes, they'll become adult babies who can't take care of themselves.
When I was growing up, they sold toy guns that look very much like real ones. Now they're bright orange and shoot soft Nerf foam.:)
I think the gender gap in computer-related employment might be partially self-selected. Admittedly, there is evidence that earlier education may be part of it too. Lots of women report being encouraged to take on "softer" career choices like marketing, design, etc. My wife, a very smart woman in her own right, was often passed over to answer questions in her math and science classes growing up. She wound up doing fine for herself, but I wonder how many other women just gave up early on.
But, you have to admit that the field isn't all that attractive on the outside to women.
Pros of a career in computing:
Relatively high wages (outsourcing aside, it still pays well for the amount of actual work put in.)
If you play your cards right, your success isn't determined solely by office politics like it would be in a management or marketing position
You never quit learning if you're doing it right. Perfect for education junkies.
Cons that might make this unappealing:
Long hours -- most places expect on-call work. If you're truly good, you can expect to be asked for advice all the time.
Not the most conducive to child care -- if you take a year or two off in a non-computing career track, you can get back in pretty quickly. Not so for our chosen field, unless you've kept sharp!
The nerd factor -- Deserving or not, our field has the stereotype of being introvert and nerd central. Women are social creatures and very few would rather spend their time solving difficult problems.
Being employed in what is perceived as a misogynistic culture also isn't a big draw. Take a poll; how many of your colleagues are porn addicts, use crude humor in the workplace, etc? Women just don't stand for that. There's a reason why companies make us go to sexual harassment training, and some of us really need to listen!
I'm all for diversity, but let nature take its course. We should be more focused on getting domestic students interested in the field at all, regardless of gender. For those of us who love it, it's been a tough 5 years or so. Outsourcing is on everyone's mind...the truth is that working for ultra-big companies is going to be less of an option in another 5 years or so. It's going to be the medium-sized companies employing IT people domestically.
Also, we should focus on quality of graduates. I love my work, and really try my best every day to make sure anything I do is done right. Many others are _still_ here for the money, even after the dotcom mess. I just want people to work with who can correctly troubleshoot a problem, and apply logic instead of randomly changing things until they work. Developers who produce optimized code wouldn't hurt either...I'm sick of tiny apps requiring 512 MB of RAM to run correctly (and that's not Java either!!)
I still can't see large companies wanting to rely on an outside service provider to host core applications, keep their data safe, and have full uptime. I especially can't see this happening now or anytime in the near future. Web GUIs are a lot better than they were a few years ago, but no amount of AJAX,.NET or whatever can make up for the fact that the app is being served over the network.
What I do see is a march back to centralized computing. Thin clients, blade PCs, etc. are all the rage now. It's a cycle...dumb terminals in the 70s and 80s, PCs in the 80s and 90s, web-based apps and thin clients in the 00s.
A large company might embrace a web application if they were allowed to host it. In the mainframe era, everyone's terminal was hard-wired into a big box in the data center. The company owned and maintained it. I can only see a small or medium business wanting to trust that Google Apps is up and running today. If it isn't...work's over, go home.
Also, there's the issue of privacy. Even if you don't care about privacy issues (and very few people actually do, especially the Web 2.0 generation,) you have to think about what would happen if your app provider got hacked. What kind of liability does, say, Salesforce.com or NetSuite have if someone pulls a "Glengarry Glen Ross" and steals your sales leads??
First off, what Circuit City is doing is stupid. Firing someone just because they do too well in a system you set up is wrong.
But, when you think about it, CC is just responding to customers. In a lot of places, Best Buy has taken out a lot of smaller electronics retailers. It's not because they necessarily have the best selection or good help, but they offer cheap middle-of-the-road electronics for the masses. If you're technically savvy, you do all your research online before you go into a store and buy something. I don't think I've ever interacted with a salesperson beyond, "I want that. Is it available?"
People have to understand the fact that customer service is dead. Nobody under the age of 50 cares about it anymore; they just want the lowest price. As the population that did care about customer service dies, there will be even less need for service-oriented salespeople. Think about it, when was the last time you paid more for a good or service just because people were nicer to you?
This shouldn't really come as a surprise. The former Soviet countries have long been known to have a lot of programming talent available. Don't forget that scientists and engineering types were treated pretty well under the Soviet system and technology/R&D was considered strategic. it would make sense that some of the older talent is still around, and passed down to a new generation.
Also, the stereotype of Russian organized crime controlling most of the phishing/conning scams out there is based on fact. Some of the attempts are really lame, but a lot of the Internet frauds committed are very sophisticated.
I'm sure Russia is happy to have the concentration of talent. We'll see what the next 20 or so years brings in the way of Russian politics, but the current climate seems very pro-business. Almost too pro-business if some of the stories are to be believed...
Microsoft really messed up by releasing Vista so early, and by making the hardware requirements so steep. They have two problems. On the consumer front, people just don't see a reason to upgrade. The UI is pretty and you get some under-the-hood improvements, but it's an underwhelming upgrade. The jump from either Me or NT to 2000 was a huge leap as far as reliability went, and XP was a no-brainer because of the many 2000 bugs that it fixed. This time...I'm not so sure.
Eventually, developers will build apps that only run with Vista's new presentation layer and add some value. Most apps are still backward-compatible, however. Vendors know consumers aren't going to necessarily jump to the new operating system right away.
The other side of the problem is corporate customers. Large companies who actually have a handle on their desktop systems are holding off on Microsoft upgrades. Really huge companies are just starting to deploy Office 2003, for example. Smaller companies may be a little more likely to try Vista, simply because that's what came on the boss's Dell when he bought it. Most places are still trying to get IE 7 in place on their existing desktops, which is a huge chore depending on how many web applications you have out there.
Microsoft's not stupid; they realize the show-stopping OS release is over. They've been trying to move people to the subscription model for years. Our company has a "Software Assurance" agreement that has us pay by the year for the MS products we use, and we have the right to choose the versions. From talking to my colleagues at other large companies, most are still trying to get XP rock-solid, just like we are.
If I was a product manager at Microsoft, I would have tried to hold back on releasing Vista until a lot of its new features were finished. Some of the stuff they cut (the new filesystem, etc.) would really have made the case for an upgrade.
A lot of people disagree with me, but if you want to stay technical, chasing the latest specialty is not always the best way to go. If you really want to build a technical career that will last you through outsourcing, technology shifts, etc., then you need to have a broad background.
Smart people will always find work. I've bounced all over the IT world...support, sysadmin, design and architecture, and it's really hard keeping your skills truly sharp. Someone who's truly valuable picks a few key areas to get really good at, and knows _something_ about the rest. If you're a network guru, learn a little about the machines you're connecting. If you're a systems genius, learn enough about databases to realize your DBA is BSing you.:-)
Take the latest fads...SOA and security. You can learn everything about these two areas, but what happens to all that knowledge when it becomes a commodity? When the execs realize SOA is just a rehash of centralized computing with some XML and the web thrown in, where will you be? Keeping yourself open keeps you employed.
I learned through a really tough experience that management was not for me 2 years ago. Technical people generally don't make good people-managers. It's not lack of social skills, but management is a completely different job. You will never touch a machine again. You will be in meetings, answering e-mails, making phone calls, and "separating the kindergarteners" when they get into conflicts. If you burn out on technology, then it's an excellent career path. Otherwise, don't let people convince you it's a good move. Rememeber all the bad bosses you have/had? Just like some people aren't suited for IT, they're not suited for managing either.
One good overspecialization example I like to cite is OpenVMS system administrators. OpenVMS is still in active use, but it's really declining. Truth is, it's easier to write new applications to run on Linux/Windows Server than to pay for expert system administrators. One of the first IT jobs I had before moving on was VMS support. I don't know how DEC trained these guys, but they're some of the best, most vigilant admins I've ever seen. However, finding a paying job working with those systems is getting harder. I world love to have that kind of sysadmin in the Linux and Windows world I work in, but a lot of them are totally specialized and don't want to learn new systems.
One other thing...outsourcing is here to stay. If you're a developer, become a crack genius developer so you can get the contract jobs rewriting outsourced code that doesn't work. If you're a procedural system admin, become an operations wizard that designs systems that don't randomly blow up. In short, truly earn your money!
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Isn't it the case that other countries force their students to pick a career path beginning in high school? I thought this was how other countries, especially the Indian and Chinese government, were able to turn out so many engineers/scientists...by narrowing the focus of education early on.
I agree with the idea that students shouldn't be all lumped into the same category. If you're destined to be a scientist, why spend half your high school career studying unrelated subjects? Cram all the knowledge in now, while your brain still has a huge memory capacity. That way, college is reserved for deeper study of a subject, not review of stuff you should have learned in high school.
Also, high school curricula are pretty much aimed at the lowest common denominator. It makes sense to separate those who are interested in learning from those who are interested in using up oxygen. Ever wonder why college degrees are almost required for any corporate job? Because high school doesn't give you enough preparation to do a "real world" job. This would also prevent people from being forced through college who otherwise don't need it. There are very few non-menial jobs you can get anymore without a degree, and some people, while qualified for a job, are not suited for advanced study.
I'm all for a school board governing body declaring that the Internet is not dangerous. However, aren't teachers doing everything they can to keep their student's attention? All these Web 2.0 kids are MySpacing, Facebooking and blogging during class already. Why would you want to encourage that?
:)
Seems to me that cellphones with web access are causing more and more distraction. When was the last time you saw a student not in a classroom setting without a phone stapled to their ear? Actively encouraging use of a tool that will further shorten attention spans sounds like a bad move for education. It's not the "predators" you have to worry about...it's whether your students are listening to you!
The social network concept is a good one until people get totally engrossed in it. One thing I've noticed is that us "Web 1.0" types are mostly information consumers, posting to a couple discussion boards and stuff. It seems like Web 2.0 folks can't shut up about themselves. They seem to think that everyone's hanging on their next word, and have an incredibly inflated sense of self-importance. I have no illusions...I know someone will see this and form an opinion one way or the other, but it's not my personal goal to publish my life story. Others love to share every experience, including long rants on things like customer service for very minor issues.
I guess it's inevitable that we'll be a 24/7 connected society in the next few years, and us 30-year-old fogeys will wind up in the digital nursing home.
In this day and age, who actually goes out of their way to not let their children hear curse words? I'll bet these are the same kind of parents who wonder why their perfect little angels are doing drugs and drinking behind their back at age 13. Wake up guys, the social scene has changed in the last 30 years. Kids are exposed to everything from a very early age.
The tighter you control, the more your kids will try to get away with. Everyone knows that from their own childhood, but forgets that when they become parents themselves!
My personal philosophy: Assume kids have access to every bad thing out there. Give them the tools to deal with it so they don't wind up killing themselves or doing something stupid. At the same time, tolerate a little bit of abnormal behavior. Any other control you try to impose is just going to turn them into a social retard or push them away from you.
Right, this just gets your youthful coworkers resentful of you for making every excuse under the sun for you to get out of work while they pick up your slack. (ex: My kid is sick. My kid has a parent teacher conference. My kid needs to get picked up from school, etc.)
So what's the solution, promote us? Not every techie is destined for management, nor should they be. When you hit your 30s, do you want to just be replaced by someone who can spend their entire life in the office? Heck, I'm worried about hitting the magic "40" number where overt age discrimination starts setting in. I really want to stay 100% technical as long as I can...that's where I'm most valuable to any company. Sorting out the "kindergarteners" when they have stupid people disputes is not how I want to end my career. Leave people management for those who enjoy it.
Having a life outside work doesn't necessarily make you a slacker. Lots of people are, and some use their outside commitments as an excuse. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to fire corporate employees for poor performance everyplace I've worked.
A lot of people say "start a business." If you're not a people-management type, any business you start will fail miserably.
So what do we do?
Here's an idea for us older types with families...I think IT companies would have fewer retention problems if they balanced this "take care of everything" approach with some reasonable limits.
Here's an example: Most parents would love the idea of on-site daycare for their kids. It's the 2000s, and many women actually want to keep working after they have kids. Making the whole childcare thing easier would definitely keep good, more experienced workers in place and productive.
The problems come when this extra stuff is provided with the understanding that you will work tons of extra hours for it. The college campus atmosphere works for younger workers, but most older ones with families want a balance.
In your 20s, especially in the IT world, you don't have a whole lot of outside commitments. You can go to work, then go home to an empty apartment. This doesn't fly once you get married and you're expected to put time in outside of the office. This is another reason why Big 5 consulting is so attractive to the young. A job where you get to travel, drink in strange places, and make a lot of money is a really easy sell for a new grad.
I think companies (especially software/hardware/services houses) would be really surprised how much a few extra "grown up" perks add to productivity. If I have to make one less trip a day because something's provided, that's more time I can be contributing. One of these things would be an enclosed work space...cube life is annoying especially when you have loud neighbors.
Despite what colleges tell you, where you get your degree and how well you do does not matter for 90% of the jobs out there. Where does it matter?
Any other job, for the most part, just checks that you graduated. Everything after your first job is based on how well you've done in previous jobs, and who you know.
So get out there and get to work, unless law school/med school or a teaching career is in your future.
I'm pre-Web 2.0, so I really don't know the answer to this one.
Does every high school and college student use MySpace or FaceBook these days? Sure, there's probably some Luddites out there, but is the penetration in the 90+% range?
Has it really become that huge a phenomenon? I've seen some goofy MySpace pages, but didn't realize that _everyone_ had one.
Stuff like this really makes me feel like an old fogey. Don't people realize that no one cares what you ate today, who your friends are, or what kind of car you drive?
Replace "terrorist" with "communist" and it's 1950 all over again.
I almost wish we had the Cold War back. At least the enemy was clearly defined and kept 100% of the government's attention. Now that there's no clear enemy, we feel the need to go after everything.
And with the Cold War, at least there was a permanent stalemate on both sides...neither side would even think about launching an attack because they'd get wiped out in the process. Tense, but it kept people at bay.
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but it really seems to me like people have grown soft in the last few years. Maybe it's the lack of a strong father figure in the home, or whatever. But it seems like kids aren't allowed to experience things for fear of getting hurt or "scarring them for life." What's wrong with a normal kid playing a violent video game? They're going to be exposed to it in real life anyway. Not preparing them adequately for it is just going to make them more immature when they "grow up."
Example: Toy guns. You can't find realistic toy guns anymore. When I was younger, we had full-weight, metal replicas of the real things. Now you can only find bright orange ones, usually made of plastic or foam.
Maybe this is why so many kids have no ability to handle reality. Instead of dealing with their own problems, they go crying to a psychiatrist.
In my opinion, keep the rating system to appease the crazy parents, but don't ban sales. That's just encouraging the kids to play these games anyway...
"Generations of men raised by women." --Tyler Durden from "Fight Club"
It'll be interesting to see what China (and Asia in general) does in the next 50 years. On one hand, they publicly denounce the US and treat us like an enemy. On the other, we've pretty much lost all of our manufacturing capability to them. No US producer can ignore their vast quantities of cheap labor and hospitable business climate. Now that the Communists have no real power there, what's going to fill in the void?
What will be even more interesting is a conflict that forces us to begin manufacturing domestically again. I wonder how long it'll take to ramp up all the factories that closed up during the last 30 years or so?
Any country on Earth with enough technological resources to protect would be stupid not to start thinking about ways to defend it in a conflict. China's no exception.
I don't know where all the anti-union rhetoric comes from, but I suspect it comes from unions having better contracts with better benefits, and then the general public getting pissed when unions fight to keep what they have.
I tend to agree, but there are some exceptions. Sometimes unions can destroy companies by refusing to compromise. Eastern Airlines was put out of business because its unions refused to change their contracts. Mainly though, they're a great deal for anyone who's in them. Whether the conservatives admit it or not, the unions were what grew the middle class in the 50s and 60s. Having a steady job you won't get fired from on a whim allows you to buy a house/car/whatever and not worry so much about where your paycheck is coming from. Also, I think that if labor was stronger, you wouldn't see things like CEOs getting $50 million pay packages for doing nothing.
If IT were unionizable, I'd be on-board in a second. Think about all the stuff you don't typically get as an IT employee... Generous vacation you're actually allowed to take. Clear definitions of your work hours, duties and rules. Not having to play the salary-negotiation shell game. Encouraged long-term employment, and therefore better domain-specific knowledge within your industry. Paid training. Etc.
Sure, they have their problems. But faulting people just because they have it better than you is not a good way to go. Heck, if you told me to give up a small percentage of my salary for guaranteed high wages and raises every year, I'd say you were crazy not to sign up. Just having someone negotiate the terms of your employment for you is reason enough.
The local cable provider around here is very good about fixing things and running a fast network, but even they don't have the power a single provider would.
Consider some of the items you get with open-competitive comm service:
Now, think of the stuff we had under the previous system:
I think it's time to re-regulate all telecom. The private companies have been given a chance, and proven they can't police themselves.
A lot of people who didn't like the old system complain that they had to rent their phone, or that the pace of innovation wasn't as fast under a single provider. In my opinion, having reliable service is worth forgoing the buzzword-of-the-week. I'd be interested in hearing what people think about this.
Every day, you hear stories in the news about how people's "lives were ruined' when someone got hold of their credit card information or SS numbers and bought stuff. Is it really that much of a problem? Why go to all the trouble to protect this information?
The reason I'm suspicious about this is because there's now a huge market for "identity theft protection" solutions. Aren't they just stirring up foam to get people panicked about losing money?
Anyone who doesn't pay attention to their credit card statements at the end of each month deserves what they get. If you see something you didn't pay for, just call the bank and it's taken care of almost automatically. I've had to do this 2 times in the last 10 years. As long as you keep your receipts and keep your eyes open for anything suspicious, this shouldn't hit you too badly.
It seems to me like the vast majority of ID theft happens to the inattentive.
As for the credit card companies not moving to stop this, why bother? They are making tons of money anyway. If 1% of a $2 trillion set of transactions is fraud, you're still making a huge cut if you take 3% up front in merchant fees, and who-knows-how-much in interest charges and fees to the customer.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for interest rates to drop if fraud suddenly dropped. Once they got the bankruptcy law they asked for, the credit card companies didn't move to lower rates for people. In fact, there's now more fees and higher interest rates if you pay late, simply because they know you can't discharge the debt in bankruptcy anymore. In short, don't worry about credit card companies. They can more than afford to absorb a little fraud.
Once the genome is completely mapped, and every congenital defect is detectable, the life insurance industry will change completely. Even if they're not allowed to check, or base their rates on the results, you can bet insurance companies will take a quick look at what they can expect over the life of the policyholder. If I have a heart condition or a neurological defect that's going to kill me sometime between 55-70, that can really give the actuaries something to chew on. While not 100% certain of when I'll die, they know when I'm most likely to die, and the rest is all accident insurance.
A lot of auto insurance customers are up in arms about the "insurance score" that most US auto insurers use to determine part of your premiums. For those who don't know, the insurer runs a credit report to see how responsible you are with your finances. I guess the idea is that someone who doesn't pay their bills on time is most likely to commit fraud or be absent-minded and get into more accidents. Basing part of your life insurance premiums on a known portion of your long-term health history seems fairer to me than this.
I hope we do wind up with most of the genetic puzzle solved sometime in my life. We could wipe out most inherited conditions in 2 or 3 generations. A lot of people think it's too much like engineering a society, but I think it would be a great service to the species. There should be some limits, but who wouldn't want to get rid of conditions that produce people who are a burden on society? (retards, etc.)
Microsft knows they're going to get people to upgrade. Unless there's _major_ pushback from corporate IT, XP and previous versions of Windows will go end-of-life on their scheduled dates. When that happens, you lose patch and fix support, which means your desktops are unprotected. Any IT person who runs Windows knows that's a dangerous gray area. There are still a couple of die-hard places running NT4, but it's not for general use and the admins keep tight control over the system.
So yes, Microsoft will eventually get their revenue. Dumping 17 years of Windows-based code and processes for Linux or any other OS is just too tough a sell in most large companies. I'm not a big Vista backer either, but you have to keep up with the times. I'm playing with it while supporting XP and 2003 in our environments. It would be foolish not to.
Moore's Law is a huge help for technical computing. Anytime you need to crunch numbers for something, it's a good bet that you'll have more processing power in next year's hardware. This gets us closer to really important breakthroughs in science and technology.
It's a monster hindrance for mainstream computing. Having all this processing power available to you, coupled with cheap memory, means you can be as lazy as you want when you write software. I do systems integration work for a large company, and the bloated, inefficient garbage that runs fine given enough hardware is mind-boggling. I may seem a little bitter, but it seems like apps written for internal use only survive due to pumped up memory specs. I'm not saying you need to do funky tricks to squeeze a program into 4K anymore, but at least optimize code so you're not doing crazy things like iterating through each row in a database table, etc.
The nature of the data isn't the biggest story...it's the fact that someone who doesn't work there anymore had access to it.
I've seen this a million times; it happens in every single company, but especially so in large ones. There's no connection between human resources and the system administrators in some cases. When you're fired or quit, an automatic process that is kicked off by the routine that prints your last paycheck should also disable your accounts. The problem is the disconnected nature of systems.
Even in disconnected environments, it's possible to do this by assigning someone to be responsible for accounts. In previous IT organizations, this was usually the PFY's job. Unfortunately, this is an incredibly boring job and it is difficult to keep someone doing this forever. It's a problem that could be solved by technology, but either (a) none of the sysadmin staff want to work on it because they fear automation that might take their jobs, or (b) the company has such a complex HR system (homegrown mess, SAP, etc.) that building interfaces is really hard.
I'm going to sound old here, but I'd like to jump back a few technology generations to when you actually needed to be a highly skilled technologist to take care of systems. It would force a little discipline, which is lacking. Sysadmins are overworked, this is true. That's often why you see stories like this. But a good sysadmin knows how to automate the tedious.
If you're a service provider making money hosting software (or a feature of your software) over the net, put as much capacity as you think you'll need in place, then put in the ability to add more immediately to account for things like this.
There are limits to this, but it's a basic fact of hosted apps. All of your customers might actually want to use your software at once. At any given time. Therefore, if you have your salespeople signing up a few million more customers, it's time to plow some of the profits back into the infrastructure.
I would guess most of these SaaS companies (NetSuite, Salesforce.com, etc.) have the same greedy mentality..."No one could possibly hit the app all at once, over and over again. Let's not listen to our IT guys. Request for servers and bandwidth denied."
I'm not surprised Intuit got burned. They practically have the lock on the financial software market, and know it. Quicken for all its faults is a good product, and MS Money is awful. TurboTax is great (when it works.) However, I've been a user of Quicken for years, and every new release has more gimmicky features, while basic things like data integrity aren't looked after. Support has been going downhill for years, but you need to keep buying the software every year because it makes it so easy to take care of your finances.
I really don't understand why this is a problem. Something like this seems like yet another overprotective law designed to insulate kids from the real world. I'm sure a sizable portion of the Slashdot community got bullied in school (I know I did.) Instead of demanding laws to protect me, I either fought back or ignored it, depending on severity. Now it's text messages or a stupid YouTube video posted about someone that is causing all the furur...how crazy is that?
:)
It really seems like everyone wants to shelter their kids from the real world, especially in the last few years. The whole "danger for children" thing is completely overhyped, and parents are scared to let their kids do anything somewhat dangerous. I say this is the wrong approach. If you don't let your kid mess up and make mistakes, they'll become adult babies who can't take care of themselves.
When I was growing up, they sold toy guns that look very much like real ones. Now they're bright orange and shoot soft Nerf foam.
But, you have to admit that the field isn't all that attractive on the outside to women.
Pros of a career in computing:
Cons that might make this unappealing:
I'm all for diversity, but let nature take its course. We should be more focused on getting domestic students interested in the field at all, regardless of gender. For those of us who love it, it's been a tough 5 years or so. Outsourcing is on everyone's mind...the truth is that working for ultra-big companies is going to be less of an option in another 5 years or so. It's going to be the medium-sized companies employing IT people domestically.
Also, we should focus on quality of graduates. I love my work, and really try my best every day to make sure anything I do is done right. Many others are _still_ here for the money, even after the dotcom mess. I just want people to work with who can correctly troubleshoot a problem, and apply logic instead of randomly changing things until they work. Developers who produce optimized code wouldn't hurt either...I'm sick of tiny apps requiring 512 MB of RAM to run correctly (and that's not Java either!!)
I still can't see large companies wanting to rely on an outside service provider to host core applications, keep their data safe, and have full uptime. I especially can't see this happening now or anytime in the near future. Web GUIs are a lot better than they were a few years ago, but no amount of AJAX, .NET or whatever can make up for the fact that the app is being served over the network.
What I do see is a march back to centralized computing. Thin clients, blade PCs, etc. are all the rage now. It's a cycle...dumb terminals in the 70s and 80s, PCs in the 80s and 90s, web-based apps and thin clients in the 00s.
A large company might embrace a web application if they were allowed to host it. In the mainframe era, everyone's terminal was hard-wired into a big box in the data center. The company owned and maintained it. I can only see a small or medium business wanting to trust that Google Apps is up and running today. If it isn't...work's over, go home.
Also, there's the issue of privacy. Even if you don't care about privacy issues (and very few people actually do, especially the Web 2.0 generation,) you have to think about what would happen if your app provider got hacked. What kind of liability does, say, Salesforce.com or NetSuite have if someone pulls a "Glengarry Glen Ross" and steals your sales leads??
First off, what Circuit City is doing is stupid. Firing someone just because they do too well in a system you set up is wrong.
But, when you think about it, CC is just responding to customers. In a lot of places, Best Buy has taken out a lot of smaller electronics retailers. It's not because they necessarily have the best selection or good help, but they offer cheap middle-of-the-road electronics for the masses. If you're technically savvy, you do all your research online before you go into a store and buy something. I don't think I've ever interacted with a salesperson beyond, "I want that. Is it available?"
People have to understand the fact that customer service is dead. Nobody under the age of 50 cares about it anymore; they just want the lowest price. As the population that did care about customer service dies, there will be even less need for service-oriented salespeople. Think about it, when was the last time you paid more for a good or service just because people were nicer to you?
This shouldn't really come as a surprise. The former Soviet countries have long been known to have a lot of programming talent available. Don't forget that scientists and engineering types were treated pretty well under the Soviet system and technology/R&D was considered strategic. it would make sense that some of the older talent is still around, and passed down to a new generation.
Also, the stereotype of Russian organized crime controlling most of the phishing/conning scams out there is based on fact. Some of the attempts are really lame, but a lot of the Internet frauds committed are very sophisticated.
I'm sure Russia is happy to have the concentration of talent. We'll see what the next 20 or so years brings in the way of Russian politics, but the current climate seems very pro-business. Almost too pro-business if some of the stories are to be believed...
Microsoft really messed up by releasing Vista so early, and by making the hardware requirements so steep. They have two problems. On the consumer front, people just don't see a reason to upgrade. The UI is pretty and you get some under-the-hood improvements, but it's an underwhelming upgrade. The jump from either Me or NT to 2000 was a huge leap as far as reliability went, and XP was a no-brainer because of the many 2000 bugs that it fixed. This time...I'm not so sure.
Eventually, developers will build apps that only run with Vista's new presentation layer and add some value. Most apps are still backward-compatible, however. Vendors know consumers aren't going to necessarily jump to the new operating system right away.
The other side of the problem is corporate customers. Large companies who actually have a handle on their desktop systems are holding off on Microsoft upgrades. Really huge companies are just starting to deploy Office 2003, for example. Smaller companies may be a little more likely to try Vista, simply because that's what came on the boss's Dell when he bought it. Most places are still trying to get IE 7 in place on their existing desktops, which is a huge chore depending on how many web applications you have out there.
Microsoft's not stupid; they realize the show-stopping OS release is over. They've been trying to move people to the subscription model for years. Our company has a "Software Assurance" agreement that has us pay by the year for the MS products we use, and we have the right to choose the versions. From talking to my colleagues at other large companies, most are still trying to get XP rock-solid, just like we are.
If I was a product manager at Microsoft, I would have tried to hold back on releasing Vista until a lot of its new features were finished. Some of the stuff they cut (the new filesystem, etc.) would really have made the case for an upgrade.
A lot of people disagree with me, but if you want to stay technical, chasing the latest specialty is not always the best way to go. If you really want to build a technical career that will last you through outsourcing, technology shifts, etc., then you need to have a broad background.
:-)
Smart people will always find work. I've bounced all over the IT world...support, sysadmin, design and architecture, and it's really hard keeping your skills truly sharp. Someone who's truly valuable picks a few key areas to get really good at, and knows _something_ about the rest. If you're a network guru, learn a little about the machines you're connecting. If you're a systems genius, learn enough about databases to realize your DBA is BSing you.
Take the latest fads...SOA and security. You can learn everything about these two areas, but what happens to all that knowledge when it becomes a commodity? When the execs realize SOA is just a rehash of centralized computing with some XML and the web thrown in, where will you be? Keeping yourself open keeps you employed.
I learned through a really tough experience that management was not for me 2 years ago. Technical people generally don't make good people-managers. It's not lack of social skills, but management is a completely different job. You will never touch a machine again. You will be in meetings, answering e-mails, making phone calls, and "separating the kindergarteners" when they get into conflicts. If you burn out on technology, then it's an excellent career path. Otherwise, don't let people convince you it's a good move. Rememeber all the bad bosses you have/had? Just like some people aren't suited for IT, they're not suited for managing either.
One good overspecialization example I like to cite is OpenVMS system administrators. OpenVMS is still in active use, but it's really declining. Truth is, it's easier to write new applications to run on Linux/Windows Server than to pay for expert system administrators. One of the first IT jobs I had before moving on was VMS support. I don't know how DEC trained these guys, but they're some of the best, most vigilant admins I've ever seen. However, finding a paying job working with those systems is getting harder. I world love to have that kind of sysadmin in the Linux and Windows world I work in, but a lot of them are totally specialized and don't want to learn new systems.
One other thing...outsourcing is here to stay. If you're a developer, become a crack genius developer so you can get the contract jobs rewriting outsourced code that doesn't work. If you're a procedural system admin, become an operations wizard that designs systems that don't randomly blow up. In short, truly earn your money!