Good to see Microsoft is still releasing service packs for Server 2003. However, I really want to see SP3 for XP. Building an XP box, even from SP2 media, requires over 75 patches in our environment! It takes nearly 50 minutes of cranking every time we have to build a new master disk image. Not all of us upgrade instantly.
It's nice that Microsoft makes the patches available separately. For those who don't do it, you wouldn't believe how much work it is testing patches and narrowing down which one broke an application. However, I think they should have one monster rollup available at least every few months. Most of that 50 minutes is spent dependency-resolving, isolating and backing up the files that each patch replaces. Doing that once is better than 75 times.
One thing I don't like about MS is that they tend to abandon customers who can't or won't upgrade to the next version of a product. I'd love to be on IE7, but we're stuck on 6 until several dependencies get fixed. I'm not too wild about Vista, but know that we have to go that way in the next year or so just to ensure we get the latest security fixes. Microsoft guarantees they'll backport fixes for a while, but you can bet they're doing all the active research on Vista. I can't agree with people who say they should still support NT, but most of the enterprise-class vendors have a much more lenient upgrade policy. (OpenVMS is at least kind of supported 3 versions back, IIRC.)
It might be tempting to write this guy off, but he pretty much sums up the current attitude towards large-scale apps these days. I work in systems integration/architecture, and see the products of this thinking all the time. Moore's Law is every programmer's friend. It means they don't have to optimize anything. Throw hardware and memory at the problem, and the problem goes away. This is why simple home-grown apps require 1.5 GB of RAM and dual-core processors to run.
As long as programmers who don't optimize their code exist, and the amount of addressible memory goes up, then yes, we don't need computer science. Where we do need CS is in the embedded space, but even that's debatable. Thin clients are coming with 2 GB of flash onboard, Apple's iPhone is going to have an 8 GB drive. You can write the most inefficient code in the world, and no one will notice.
The other problem is that most of the methods for solving problems have become built into code libraries, meaning that they're accessible to non-CS people. You can call a Sort() function in any library and get an okay result.
Don't forget that companies might be seeing the problem through a different lens. Those that outsource extensively often put out ads like that. The Big Five consulting firms have plenty of "experts" with that job description.
The problem is, they're not experts. I've had experience dealing with a couple big consultancies (Accenture and IBM.) The consulting firm that finds the people in your want ad has this exact business model: 1. Hire Ivy League school graduates with the promise of travel and riches. 2. Train them for 6 weeks to be buzzword compliant, look good in a suit, and blend in at meetings. 3. Present proposal to customer with "experts" on your project. 3. "Experts" show up, and get free on-the-job training on your system/project. 4. Bill customer many times the experts' salaries. 5. Profit! (even if the project fails.)
(Consulting has its place, but I really think executives don't know what they're buying when they sign the checks.)
You can't expect business owners to be against a system that allows them to import what they perceive to be better-quality workers. It's not a popular stance, but I truly believe we're sowing the seeds of our own techie demise. Why? 1. Our educational system is getting progressively worse. Students do not come out of most American schools with a good grasp of math and science. IN developing countries like China and India, they're turning out well-educated workers all the time. We don't force students to study, and there's no consequence for failure. Worse yet, should you not graduate from college, you're stuck in a low-level service job for the rest of your life. Large companies won't even look at candidates with no degree anymore. (I've noticed this first-hand...there are way more underqualified college graduates in the corporate world than there were 10 years ago.) 2. We feel entitled to way more than we're actually worth. It really makes me angry when I see people with mediocre skills making the same or more than me, just because they're good negotiators and can game the system. Also, have you seen what entry-level students are demanding to be paid just out of school? News flash: even if you live in New York City, asking for $55K for an entry-level job is way out of line with reality. One of the reasons the outsourced and immigrant labor pool is attractive is cost. New grads in other countries don't demand insane salaries or complain because the work is difficult. 3. Right or wrong, American tech workers are often considered lazy and painted as having a bad attitude. Giving your life over to your job is stupid, but complaining every time you have to put in an extra hour or two is going to accelerate the trend offshore. 4. Our costs are way out of proportion with the rest of the world. If people would learn to use credit responsibly, live within their means and reduce their consumption, they wouldn't need 5-6% raises every year, or hop jobs every year for a 10% raise.
Gates may be using this to his advantage, but I can't say I disagree totally! You have two labor pools. One is addicted to flashy cars and gadgets, and costs an average of $80K a year per person. The other is smarter, happy to be working, and costs much less. If you were running Slashdot Software, Inc., which would you pick?
With all the negative press surrounding electronic voting, I wonder if this signals a jump back to the standard paper or mechanical voting machines. Any election can be fixed, but I've always felt electronic voting isn't quite ready yet. Given that most people wouldn't understand how an electronic voting machine could produce wrong or fraudulent results, it's probably not the best thing to introduce right now. People understand the idea of improperly marked paper ballots or an election official tampering with the older mechanical tabulators. People don't fully grasp the idea of a group of hackers, whether for fun or profit, gaining access to or changing vote results.
I say we should wait until computer security really is nailed down. Not just because Symantec or other vendors say we're secure, but because it's actually so. Listening to security vendors do presentations at work to the executives is a painful exercise. The common theme is "buy this box, and you're 100% secure from these threats." I think it's going to take a lot of convincing (and a few examples) to change people's thoughts on this.
I think Apple's in a good position for the next generation of end-user computing. Once all the "fat client" applications migrate fully online, it won't matter what the user interface on the desktop is like. As long as a web browser is there, it shouldn't matter. Right now, they have a lot of work to do. There's a whole generation of software developers who are used to the Windows platform, and the majority of businesses use Windows as their core desktop computing environment.
Once people sit down and poke around with a Mac, they're usually happy with it. The interface isn't as much of a stretch from Windows, and the OS is designed to keep the user unaware of what's going on under the hood.
Desktop PCs are going away, and eventually full laptops might follow. The only things that remain to be solved are: (1) Web applications need a user interface that's as fast as a desktop one, and (2) Either people have to give up their privacy and let third parties hold all their data, or local storage needs to be merged with these connected apps.
I'd love to use Macs at work, but our industry uses custom Windows applications that won't be ported in the near future. Getting people to develop for MacOS would be a big step toward business acceptance. Virtualization is great, but it needs to be simple. MacOS did this by placing "Classic" (Mac OS 9) apps in a seamless virtual environment. Users didn't even need to think about it, and that was important. There were _a lot_ of classic apps that needed to be emulated. It would be cool to do that for Windows apps, but I doubt it's ever going to happen.
I think Microsoft might finally have to realize that a lot of corporate and government customers just aren't going to upgrade every time there's a new version of Windows or Office. I work for a company that just grew insanely huge in the last 7 years. When they were small, they were in XP's rapid adoption program...but now we have almost 8 times the number of users and lots more supported applications.
We're trying to stay off Vista for as long as we can; we have almost 3000 machines that can't run it at all. Office 2007 is going to introduce way too many training headaches. Even though most of our users are savvy enough to pick up the new UI, there are a few who have never updated their skills from Office 95/97. I'd like to move us to IE 7 or Firefox for the better security and the fact that Microsoft is eventually going to pull IE 6 patch support. However, we're married to a ton of ActiveX which makes switching to non-IE browsers impossible. Also, lots of our outsourced app partners don't support IE 7 yet, or require an expensive upgrade to get it.
Microsoft already sees this, which is why they have the Software Assurance licensing model. We can run whatever supported version we want, as long as we pay. I don't think there will be too many iterations left for the monolithic desktop OS and office suite anyway... Eventually the web user interface problem will be solved, and connectivity will be universal. As much as I hate the whole Web 2.0 texting/blogging/YouTube/MySpace stuff [1], that's where the computing sector is headed. Pretty soon everyone will be using their cellphones to write spreadsheets.
[1] I don't really "hate" Web 2.0...I just don't like the fact that it's reduced people's attention spans even further...
Besides improving education, here's another way to keep us competitive:
Stop inflating living standards beyond sustainable levels.
Especially where I am (NY Metro,) it's impossible to find an affordable house and work in a field where salaries aren't rising faster than inflation. A 50-year-old two-bedroom house on less than 1/4 acre of land is still going for $700,000+ in some areas around here. Everyone has to have the most expensive car, the most expensive clothes, the best vacations, etc. Most of them do this by borrowing way more than they can ever pay back on credit cards and home equity.
These same people then turn to employers demanding high salaries to fuel their lifestyle. Employers see a labor pool on the other side of the world much happier with 10% of these salaries, and rationally choose to go with them. Why is this a surprise?
The only long-term solution for this is to cut people off from credit. Make it incredibly expensive to borrow money, and teach people to live within their means again. Low-level secretaries and coordinators at companies shouldn't be driving a new Mercedes and wearing Prada shoes.
The fundamental problem is this: We don't value education or hard work as a society. We're overly obsessed with celebrities, sports stars, or whatever other distraction is going on. The educational system itself de-emphasizes fundamental stuff like math and science in favor or "softer" subjects like art and literature. As a result, we turn out project managers and marketing people, not geeks.
Other cultures embrace education and drill it into kids' heads that it's in their best interest to do well. Other countries have a culture where it's shameful to fail. Not getting into a good college is a suicide-triggering event. The best students in India, China, Japan, etc. study for hours and hours a day, and come out of school knowing how to do math, solve problems, and logically work through something like an IT problem. While the US does produce _some_ people like that, the vast majority are just doing the minimum to get by. I was by no means a top student, but I do work hard. I expect people that I work with to have the same work ethic and ability to reason, and am constantly disappointed.
With these facts, I have no trouble believing that companies can't find qualified individuals to fill positions. I think some of it is definitely a ploy to use cheaper labor, but it's not all a scam.
Putting all the blue-screen jokes aside, this might be a good thing.
Windows does have a closed-source kernel, but it does have the advantage of hosting a user interface that even the most basic-knowledge recruit will know. Windows is on 90+% of the world's computers, and absolutely every younger person knows how to navigate around in it.
Here's a parallel example from my line of work...the airline business. Lots of carriers have systems that were designed 20-30 years ago. Most have GUIs slapped over the top of a terminal emulator, but even those are cryptic. Some airlines send their customer service agents to a month of training just to get them to memorize the key parts of the system. I would imagine military systems of the same vintage are even more complex, and force a serviceperson to endure many months of training. Training, by the way, that will prove useless in the real world.
I'll bet the defense contractors designing any Windows-based system have full access to the kernel source anyway. Also, don't forget that stuff designed for the battlefield isn't exactly slapped together by a bunch of new graduates who picked up a ".NET for Dummies" book.
I would say that opinions on job-hopping have shifted over the last 10 years or so. I got my first tech job in '94, and I've been with 4 companies. The first two were "stepping-stone" jobs that helped me get experience, then I had a 5-year stint with my last company, and now I'm working on 2 years with the current one. Before the dot-com boom, it was definitely a sign of immaturity to jump from employer to employer. These days, I'm not so sure. Retirement money is portable, and some less enlightened companies don't see IT as a good place to invest money in training or salaries.
I think there's something to be said for sticking with a company for a while. A lot of permanent employees quit at the first sign of trouble or a better job offer. However, one of the things I like is seeing something I designed get built, released, used, improved and replaced. If you're only at a company for a year, you don't really see the results of your work, or get to learn from your mistakes. It also shows that you're willing to take the good with the bad. I work for a company that just had one of its first unprofitable years. We lost a ton of good people because of that...couldn't afford to pay out raises, etc. However, this year is shaping up to be pretty good. I'm going to get a raise, and life is good.
That said, this isn't the '50s. If you're stuck in a bad job that you know isn't doing anything for your overall career, don't stay. Back in the days of guaranteed lifetime employment and pensions (remember those??) I'm sure it was common for someone to hide in the shadows at an IBM or an AT&T and wait out a bad boss rather than quit. Personally, I wish companies would renew their "social contracts" with long-term employees. That's what made the middle class so strong in the 50s through the 70s...guaranteed income in exchange for good work.
My career advice would be to stay in a job "long enough." But, don't let your skills stagnate. Look for opportunities within your company to grow. If you have a big enough IT department, there should be plenty of places to move around.
Plusses for staying:
Better understanding of your company's core business--don't laugh; the only IT people who are going to be left stateside in the next few years will be those who understand what the business wants. Otherwise, they can just send specs to India and get something close to what they want...
Stability--I'm a big fan of a steady paycheck. It lets you do things like buy a house or car without worrying about where the next payment is coming from.
Promotional opportunities--Short-timers generally don't get offered higher positions.
Plusses for job-hopping:
It's still one of the only ways to get large salary increases. Staying in one place means playing the HR shell-game.
More diverse experience
Hopping at the right time helps you avoid being laid off, etc. Don't go down with the ship!
Especially if you're just starting out, you should hop until you find somewhere you'd be comfortable working at.
Top-ranked colleges are only worth their high price tag if you choose to do something with the degree. Otherwise, you wind up graduating with $80000+ in debt and, essentially, the same BS you could get at a public institution.
Now, if you want to pursue a career that requires a top-tier degree, that's different. For example:
Top law and medical schools are biased towards high-end undergrad degree holders.
Investment banking--Most banks only hire from the Ivy League. Other schools need only apply if they have a connection somewhere. Automatic money-making career, but not for everyone.
The Big Four/Five consulting firms have a strong preference for impressive-school grads.
For other cases, I can't see spending the money. Once you're out of school for a few years, no one cares where you went to school anymore.
On the plus side of this, it sounds like an attempt for a pharmaceutical company to get a legislated kickback was thwarted. Imagine how much money Merck would charge for that vaccine once everyone was required to get it...
On the minus side, it really shows how far we've slipped into rule by religious nuts. I'm not one for religion, but I don't have a problem with those who are. Religion provides comfort for people who can't deal with the world as-is. The problem is when it starts intruding on public life. When common-sense decisions are struck down because a group of people think a behavior is morally wrong, hedonistic or evil, there's a problem.
I can't say where we're doing this, but we're trying out the idea of thin clients for some of our desktop positions. We found that we can get lots of quick wins for the positions that are mostly dumb terminals anyway. As long as the emulation software runs properly in Citrix, users don't know the difference. We're a Windows shop, so we went with Citrix. Native terminal services just doesn't have enough features.
Here's what we've found so far:
Desktop support guys are not going to like this until you explain it to them. They're going to feel that you're taking their jobs away. Unless you give them better career choices to move into, they'll be very unhappy.
Your desktop environment will become a mainframe-like environment overnight. App changes now affect thousands of users at once. You need to have testing, integration and all that stuff dialed in before you even think about moving people to Citrix. If you're still doing "one-off" desktop support and don't have a well-managed environment, you may run into trouble.
All of your apps must at least support being run in terminal services mode. Manually tweaking all those in-house apps to store their settings correctly is a huge pain.
Citrix can be expensive, and once you're on it you will never get off. Remember, once you replace PCs, you now have a machine on everyone's desk that is useless without the back-end environment.
Don't skimp on the server hardware. Max out everything; you're going to need it.
We're forced to use IE because of ActiveX dependencies in our core applications. IE takes up almost 30 MB of RAM, per window, per user just sitting idle. If you can, you might want to consider limiting the number of open IE windows to one.
We're actually doing pretty well with this, but don't forget that some positions in the enterprise just can't function without full-blown PCs. Hosting things like engineering or CAD apps is not worth the effort.
The enterprise IT world *needs* people with mature attitudes.
I totally agree with everything you mentioned. Our company tends to be very bleeding-edge; the sysadmins I work with want to install every single new technology the day it goes beta. It's encouraged in the name of "innovation", which I agree with. However, people need to learn to build stable systems that don't die unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Ripping out Solaris in favor of Linux? Fine, just make sure it's rock-solid and thoroughly tested.
Our developers are already hounding me to publish a standard Vista system so they can get coding. I've tried to explain to them that we spent 5 years getting XP to the point where it's stable and we know how things are configured. (Yes, I do desktop work; I like pain.)
It's impossible to accomplish in IT, but it would be nice if there were a PE license for software engineers. Once a PE in another branch of engineering puts their stamp on a set of plans or a design, they're legally responsible for Bad Things that may happen. That would definitely encourage dilligence.
Here's the problem with programming and IT jobs in general. The people actually doing the work tend to be young. I'm 31, and I'm already starting to see the shift in opinions of my work as a sysadmin. (You know you're old when people out of school have never seen a command prompt before...)
I'm guessing this will change as the profession matures. However, today is not a good day for older workers in the tech field. Too many people don't realize the value of life experience. Also, employers don't want to hire older workers because they're afraid they won't be able to keep up with younger peers. Older workers also demand higher salaries, which IT is not willing to pay in most companies.
I agree that retirement is going to be a lot different for our generation. I really can't see myself on a golf course every day or working as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Hopefully the tide will shift a little. I already see businesses less willing to put up with IT failures caused by "new, cool" systems. Maybe a little standardization and movement towards a "information systems engineering" profession will help.
People don't make major choices about their broad vocations simply on money.
Tell that to the people who left other fields to become day-traders in the late 90s, or real-estate or mortgage hustlers now. Especially in real estate, there's a LOT of money to be made until the market settles down, if it ever does.
Mortgage bankers are just paperwork-filers and middlemen. All they have to do is convince someone to pay interest rate N for their mortgage, sell it to a bank, and they make a lot of easy money. Compare that to spending hours solving a computer problem, with downtime pressure on your head.
This entire topic is one of those that no one wants to tackle head-on and correct. Part of the reason is political correctness, part seems to come from an inflated self-opinion, and another comes from the current economic climate.
First off, let's talk about political correctness. We just can't admit to ourselves that we do a very bad job of educating our workforce. Other countries are way ahead of us in terms of turning out skilled workers who excel in science, engineering and the computer field. I'm convinced that there is something to be said for countries that turn out educated robots. They may not think as creatively and freely as our students, but they at least know how to do math and think logically. I'm amazed at the number of people I've worked with, especially lately, that completely lack the ability to apply logic and cause-and-effect reasoning to troubleshooting tasks. The overall mentality seems to be "just hack at it until it works, never mind why or how." The fix to this part of the problem will be hard, because we have to undo 50 years of conditioning. Not everyone needs to be a college graduate. Some people just aren't designed for it. We need to have appropriate jobs for the wide level of skills that are out there, and not force everyone into a corporate job just because it's the right thing to do. The world needs plumbers, electricians, and garbage collectors (who all make a good-enough salary.)
Second, we tend to think very highly of ourselves. This is especially bad in some sectors of IT. For a stereotype, think of your typical system administrator or developer who thinks everyone using their software or network is dumber than they are. The reality of it is that the computer field has a wide range of ability levels. Especially during the tech boom, there was a low barrier of entry, and people came from every background and education level to seek their fortune. My opinion is that anyone who thinks they know everything really ought to go back and check out what they don't know. The solution here is twofold. We need to realize that we aren't gods of everything, and the world owes us nothing. You should only be entitled to high salaries if you're truly good. Also, our profession really needs to do a better job of training. A lot of people I know are into hoarding knowledge; I guess they're afraid they won't be irreplaceable anymore if someone else knows how their mail server is configured. I help out in this effort by documenting everything I do, and actually explaining stuff to people when they ask (or have a puzzled look on their face.)
Finally, economics. It is absolutely true that businesses are importing cheap labor or sending work offshore. I grew up in upstate NY in the 80s, so I know what it's like when the worldwide labor markets reset themselves. However, there are still plenty of specialty manufacturers in this country. It's not enough to employ the entire manufacturing labor pool, but these guys survive because they make a quality product they can charge more for. What I'm saying is that change is inevitable. You are not going to convince a CIO that you're worth 80% more than the guy in India, China or wherever who's willing to work much harder than you. Also, don't forget that all but the top researchers, professors, etc. are not paid exorbitant salaries. They build up to a good living over time. A lot of college grads want $75K just out of school for entry level work. This mentality is going to keep the shift of work offshore going faster.
The bigger overall economic problem is that it's incredibly expensive to live and do business in the US. Everyone seems to need the most expensive car, house and gadgets. A lot of other countries don't have that mentality, and their workers are willing to take lower salaries in exchange for steady work. With the kind of wage pressure we place on employers, no wonder they want to replace us.
One other thing I'd like to see is the standardization of IT into something akin to a branch of engineering. All licensed engineers
Why is it that the boards of extremely large companies tend to make bad decisions over and over again?
My theory is that there are two components. In the case of a public company, the CEO and board are under constant investor pressure. This is one of the only downsides of the internet and instant access to information. In the 50s, 60s, 70s and before, almost no one was individually in the market (though their pension funds might be.) The worst thing a board had to worry about was a bad article in the Wall Street Journal. Even then, some guy on his yacht or in his country estate would get the news a day later, and ask Jeeves to call the broker and sell. Now, all that has to happen is for one disgruntled employee or board member to post something on Yahoo Finance. Instantly, every trader in the universe starts selling within seconds and you have a 20% drop for the day. Look at what happened with Airbus after the fact that the A380 was behind schedule and way over budget. If I were a CEO, the climate would tempt me to make some decision, any decision, to keep the investors from selling.
The second thing has been around forever. No one in a company, unless they are really fearless, wants to stand up and tell the executives they're wrong. Some companies are more tolerant than others to this, but I've worked in a lot of dictatorships.
I'm a sysadmin in a Windows shop for my day job, and I have a Mac at home. I've always been partial to them, but I went back from a PC about 2 yeats ago.
The pros are definitely that I have to worry less about the computer. Security is an issue, no matter what anyone else says, but things like installing software and upgrading versions of software are much more predictable. I have a very busy day-job, and the fact that I can come home to a working computer for my personal tasks is nice.
The cons stem from lack of industry support. If you're a gamer, your choices of ported games are limited. Certain specialized software either doesn't exist for the Mac, or the Mac version is inferior to the Windows version. To combat this, I keep a Windows machine to run the occasional Windows-only program. Also, virtual machine technology can be a help here.
The software support issue may be going away soon anyway, given vendors' rapid move towards hosted applications. Take Windows Live mail for example (the hotmail replacement.) The UI is almost as good as MS Outlook, even in browsers other than IE.
We'll see what happens in the next few years. Personally, I'm happy paying the premium for what I feel is a better designed machine.
Workaholism and Social Skills
on
IT and Divorce?
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· Score: 1
(I'm married, happily, with no kids yet.)
The #1 reason for divorce has to be overwork. Anyone who's been in the IT world long enough, unless they're very lucky, has worked in one or more jobs that have lousy working hours. Either you're on call 24/7, or projects you're working on are in constant crunch mode. Plus, they never seem to hire enough people to get the volume of work done at the speed they want. If I were a spouse, especially if I had never worked in a job like this, I would probably be pissed after a while. If the other partner isn't available to help with the house stuff, raise the kids, etc. then I don't blame them for divorce.
It's not just IT, but IT jobs tend to require long hours. I've promised myself that I'm going to keep a sane home life, even if I have to accept a lower rate of pay. Here's a wierd example: the company I work at tends to pay on the average side for IT work. Especially on the lowest rung, people could do a lot better somewhere else. This is especially true for our area...banks, brokerages, entertainment companies and law firms routinely pay very high IT salaries. The only problem is that you usually also sign up for the long work hours and lousy work conditions. However, their higher pay means that we have a harder time attracting talent. The flip side is that most of us work a very reasonable schedule.
If you want a non-IT example, just fly on a US airline on a Monday or Friday. You'll see young, unattached consultants who don't mind doing long hours because they've got nothing to come home to. You'll also see overworked executive types who look miserable and haven't seen their families all week. I can't imagine their spouses are all too happy. Just look around at the guy/girl with the discheveled look, loosened tie, and pissed-off expression.
The #2 reason for divorces, I think, tends to be social. I really think a lot of people just fall into marriage, even if they can't stand each other on the inside. Also, it sounds like stereotyping, but the truly great IT people tend to have social problems. It may sound unfair, but our profession is attractive to introverts the same way sales is attractive to extroverts. Some problems are mild (inappropriate humor, difficulty in social situations) and some severe (total withdrawal into work or hobbies, addiction to stuff like Warcraft.) When you pair a geek with a non-geek, you're going to have problems. IT people like to talk about their work too much; I've had to consciously avoid this at home. Even though the wife is smart (works in a different field of geekery,) she could care less about the minutae of my work.
Think of this example. I worked with a guy a few years ago who wound up getting divorced. He was a computer geek, and she obviously wasn't super-bright. I'd overhear phone conversations where she'd ask him questions, and he'd yell at her for not knowing how to handle whatever it was. Whenever he'd get off the phone, I'd hear, "She's so f**king stupid!" Talk about the exact not-right thing to say to someone.
One thing about the whole Indian outsourcing thing that people don't mention is that companies are increasingly going overseas not for the cheap labor, but for the talent. Remember, wage pressure in India and other outsourcing destinations is increasing, and pretty soon it won't be too much cheaper to do the work overseas.
The problem we have now is that fewer people are going into technical fields. We're a nation of CEOs, project managers, liaisons, coordinators, and other non-technical people. I've noticed a lot of people in the tech field encouraging their kids not to pursue any sort of science or engineering education. That's not a shocker. First of all, going to law school or getting an MBA guarantees you a lifetime of high income. Scientists/engineers are begging for jobs, and IT types are not finding as many entry-level positions that would get them entry into the field. Second, if you do decide to pursue something technical, the jobs are not guaranteed to be there. Why beat yourself up going for an engineering degree if someone on the other side of the world will work cheaper and do a better job than you could?
Also, the work ethic and education standard in other countries is much higher. I've worked with Indian outsourcing firms, and they make up for their lack of understanding of the problem with 14 hour work days and no complaints about how low their pay is. Compare that to workers in the US, who waste their whole day grumbling about their pay and are completely lazy.
Honestly, I don't know how to fix this. If we could somehow ensure that there would still be work available for those of us who like doing technical stuff, that would help.
A few businesses could work something like this...rural electric and farm cooperatives, for instance. The problem is, once you grow beyond a certain size, you do need some sort of leadership to make the tough decisions.
It's a classic catch-22. If no one is in power, nothing gets decided. If the leaders rule with an iron fist and absolutely refuse to listen to the underlings, they can run the business into the ground. I think the best compromise is to keep businesses small. I've worked mainly for very large corporations, some of which are very old banks and insurance companies. When you get into the thousands of employees, the organization takes on a life of its own. Too much time and money is wasted playing political games. I've seen millions of bucks flushed down the toilet on useless projects designed specifically to fail so a particular VP can look bad.
Plus, doing this across the board would probably grind the economy to a halt. It's incredible how much of peoples' retirement money is tied up in the stock market. Suddenly taking away the pressure to make the numbers every quarter would really screw up the financial services sector.
With the advent of LCDs that have only one native resolution, this is a big problem for Windows. Imagine that either (1) you're visually impaired enough to not be able to read small stuff, but don't need things like screen magnifiers, or (2) you're tired at the end of a long day and don't feel like squinting at tiny fonts. Windows does let you scale the fonts, but the problem with this is that the graphics widgets don't scale porportionately in XP. Also, some applications and web pages start looking really ugly with scaled fonts. Also, you need to reboot the computer for the font change to take effect, which doesn't make sense to me.
Scaling has to be something that all app vendors take into account in their code for it to work. I actually have my large LCD at a higher DPI right now, and several aopps don't resize their icons, etc.
When everyone was running 17" or 20" screens at 1280x1024 or so, this wasn't an issue. Now, look at monster displays like the Apple 30" widescreen display. Mac OS finally got around to letting you scale the cursor size...before, it was a fixed-size tiny speck on that huge monitor when you ran it at the native resolution. The old solution was to change your resolution...doing this now either doesn't work or makes LCDs look really ugly.
I can see why Microsoft doesn't want to support Virtual PC. Now that Apple's on Intel hardware, it's easy enough to just build a Windows partition and boot to it when you want to use stuff like PC games, Virtual PC, etc. Remember, people need to buy software to make it worth the while of a commercial software vendor!
The desupporting of VB macros should be a bigger concern. Anyone who's worked in a large corporate environment knows that the vast majority of data crunching is not done in fancy analytical tools. Despite what SAS, Oracle and everyone tells you, many key business processes boil down to VB macros in Excel spreadsheets. Business units have spent years doing an end-run around the IT department because they either perceive the analytical tools to be too much of a pain to use, or the IT department is too bloated and slow to help them. That's the number one reason why millions of social security numbers wind up on stolen laptops. Data is pulled from the main systems into spreadsheets and analyzed offline. It's incredibly easy to write macros in VB, even for people who can't program.
Microsoft killing VB macro support for Mac Office takes a big chunk out of the cross-platform compatibility pillar. I can see a lot of other vendors using this Intel platform excuse too. My favorite example is Quicken. The Mac version is years behind the Windows one...I'm sure they're just wairing for the chance to drop it.
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Good to see Microsoft is still releasing service packs for Server 2003. However, I really want to see SP3 for XP. Building an XP box, even from SP2 media, requires over 75 patches in our environment! It takes nearly 50 minutes of cranking every time we have to build a new master disk image. Not all of us upgrade instantly.
It's nice that Microsoft makes the patches available separately. For those who don't do it, you wouldn't believe how much work it is testing patches and narrowing down which one broke an application. However, I think they should have one monster rollup available at least every few months. Most of that 50 minutes is spent dependency-resolving, isolating and backing up the files that each patch replaces. Doing that once is better than 75 times.
One thing I don't like about MS is that they tend to abandon customers who can't or won't upgrade to the next version of a product. I'd love to be on IE7, but we're stuck on 6 until several dependencies get fixed. I'm not too wild about Vista, but know that we have to go that way in the next year or so just to ensure we get the latest security fixes. Microsoft guarantees they'll backport fixes for a while, but you can bet they're doing all the active research on Vista. I can't agree with people who say they should still support NT, but most of the enterprise-class vendors have a much more lenient upgrade policy. (OpenVMS is at least kind of supported 3 versions back, IIRC.)
It might be tempting to write this guy off, but he pretty much sums up the current attitude towards large-scale apps these days. I work in systems integration/architecture, and see the products of this thinking all the time. Moore's Law is every programmer's friend. It means they don't have to optimize anything. Throw hardware and memory at the problem, and the problem goes away. This is why simple home-grown apps require 1.5 GB of RAM and dual-core processors to run.
As long as programmers who don't optimize their code exist, and the amount of addressible memory goes up, then yes, we don't need computer science. Where we do need CS is in the embedded space, but even that's debatable. Thin clients are coming with 2 GB of flash onboard, Apple's iPhone is going to have an 8 GB drive. You can write the most inefficient code in the world, and no one will notice.
The other problem is that most of the methods for solving problems have become built into code libraries, meaning that they're accessible to non-CS people. You can call a Sort() function in any library and get an okay result.
Don't forget that companies might be seeing the problem through a different lens. Those that outsource extensively often put out ads like that. The Big Five consulting firms have plenty of "experts" with that job description.
The problem is, they're not experts. I've had experience dealing with a couple big consultancies (Accenture and IBM.) The consulting firm that finds the people in your want ad has this exact business model:
1. Hire Ivy League school graduates with the promise of travel and riches.
2. Train them for 6 weeks to be buzzword compliant, look good in a suit, and blend in at meetings.
3. Present proposal to customer with "experts" on your project.
3. "Experts" show up, and get free on-the-job training on your system/project.
4. Bill customer many times the experts' salaries.
5. Profit! (even if the project fails.)
(Consulting has its place, but I really think executives don't know what they're buying when they sign the checks.)
You can't expect business owners to be against a system that allows them to import what they perceive to be better-quality workers. It's not a popular stance, but I truly believe we're sowing the seeds of our own techie demise. Why?
1. Our educational system is getting progressively worse. Students do not come out of most American schools with a good grasp of math and science. IN developing countries like China and India, they're turning out well-educated workers all the time. We don't force students to study, and there's no consequence for failure. Worse yet, should you not graduate from college, you're stuck in a low-level service job for the rest of your life. Large companies won't even look at candidates with no degree anymore. (I've noticed this first-hand...there are way more underqualified college graduates in the corporate world than there were 10 years ago.)
2. We feel entitled to way more than we're actually worth. It really makes me angry when I see people with mediocre skills making the same or more than me, just because they're good negotiators and can game the system. Also, have you seen what entry-level students are demanding to be paid just out of school? News flash: even if you live in New York City, asking for $55K for an entry-level job is way out of line with reality. One of the reasons the outsourced and immigrant labor pool is attractive is cost. New grads in other countries don't demand insane salaries or complain because the work is difficult.
3. Right or wrong, American tech workers are often considered lazy and painted as having a bad attitude. Giving your life over to your job is stupid, but complaining every time you have to put in an extra hour or two is going to accelerate the trend offshore.
4. Our costs are way out of proportion with the rest of the world. If people would learn to use credit responsibly, live within their means and reduce their consumption, they wouldn't need 5-6% raises every year, or hop jobs every year for a 10% raise.
Gates may be using this to his advantage, but I can't say I disagree totally! You have two labor pools. One is addicted to flashy cars and gadgets, and costs an average of $80K a year per person. The other is smarter, happy to be working, and costs much less. If you were running Slashdot Software, Inc., which would you pick?
With all the negative press surrounding electronic voting, I wonder if this signals a jump back to the standard paper or mechanical voting machines. Any election can be fixed, but I've always felt electronic voting isn't quite ready yet. Given that most people wouldn't understand how an electronic voting machine could produce wrong or fraudulent results, it's probably not the best thing to introduce right now. People understand the idea of improperly marked paper ballots or an election official tampering with the older mechanical tabulators. People don't fully grasp the idea of a group of hackers, whether for fun or profit, gaining access to or changing vote results.
I say we should wait until computer security really is nailed down. Not just because Symantec or other vendors say we're secure, but because it's actually so. Listening to security vendors do presentations at work to the executives is a painful exercise. The common theme is "buy this box, and you're 100% secure from these threats." I think it's going to take a lot of convincing (and a few examples) to change people's thoughts on this.
I think Apple's in a good position for the next generation of end-user computing. Once all the "fat client" applications migrate fully online, it won't matter what the user interface on the desktop is like. As long as a web browser is there, it shouldn't matter. Right now, they have a lot of work to do. There's a whole generation of software developers who are used to the Windows platform, and the majority of businesses use Windows as their core desktop computing environment.
Once people sit down and poke around with a Mac, they're usually happy with it. The interface isn't as much of a stretch from Windows, and the OS is designed to keep the user unaware of what's going on under the hood.
Desktop PCs are going away, and eventually full laptops might follow. The only things that remain to be solved are: (1) Web applications need a user interface that's as fast as a desktop one, and (2) Either people have to give up their privacy and let third parties hold all their data, or local storage needs to be merged with these connected apps.
I'd love to use Macs at work, but our industry uses custom Windows applications that won't be ported in the near future. Getting people to develop for MacOS would be a big step toward business acceptance. Virtualization is great, but it needs to be simple. MacOS did this by placing "Classic" (Mac OS 9) apps in a seamless virtual environment. Users didn't even need to think about it, and that was important. There were _a lot_ of classic apps that needed to be emulated. It would be cool to do that for Windows apps, but I doubt it's ever going to happen.
I think Microsoft might finally have to realize that a lot of corporate and government customers just aren't going to upgrade every time there's a new version of Windows or Office. I work for a company that just grew insanely huge in the last 7 years. When they were small, they were in XP's rapid adoption program...but now we have almost 8 times the number of users and lots more supported applications.
We're trying to stay off Vista for as long as we can; we have almost 3000 machines that can't run it at all. Office 2007 is going to introduce way too many training headaches. Even though most of our users are savvy enough to pick up the new UI, there are a few who have never updated their skills from Office 95/97. I'd like to move us to IE 7 or Firefox for the better security and the fact that Microsoft is eventually going to pull IE 6 patch support. However, we're married to a ton of ActiveX which makes switching to non-IE browsers impossible. Also, lots of our outsourced app partners don't support IE 7 yet, or require an expensive upgrade to get it.
Microsoft already sees this, which is why they have the Software Assurance licensing model. We can run whatever supported version we want, as long as we pay. I don't think there will be too many iterations left for the monolithic desktop OS and office suite anyway... Eventually the web user interface problem will be solved, and connectivity will be universal. As much as I hate the whole Web 2.0 texting/blogging/YouTube/MySpace stuff [1], that's where the computing sector is headed. Pretty soon everyone will be using their cellphones to write spreadsheets.
[1] I don't really "hate" Web 2.0...I just don't like the fact that it's reduced people's attention spans even further...
Besides improving education, here's another way to keep us competitive:
Stop inflating living standards beyond sustainable levels.
Especially where I am (NY Metro,) it's impossible to find an affordable house and work in a field where salaries aren't rising faster than inflation. A 50-year-old two-bedroom house on less than 1/4 acre of land is still going for $700,000+ in some areas around here. Everyone has to have the most expensive car, the most expensive clothes, the best vacations, etc. Most of them do this by borrowing way more than they can ever pay back on credit cards and home equity.
These same people then turn to employers demanding high salaries to fuel their lifestyle. Employers see a labor pool on the other side of the world much happier with 10% of these salaries, and rationally choose to go with them. Why is this a surprise?
The only long-term solution for this is to cut people off from credit. Make it incredibly expensive to borrow money, and teach people to live within their means again. Low-level secretaries and coordinators at companies shouldn't be driving a new Mercedes and wearing Prada shoes.
The fundamental problem is this: We don't value education or hard work as a society. We're overly obsessed with celebrities, sports stars, or whatever other distraction is going on. The educational system itself de-emphasizes fundamental stuff like math and science in favor or "softer" subjects like art and literature. As a result, we turn out project managers and marketing people, not geeks.
Other cultures embrace education and drill it into kids' heads that it's in their best interest to do well. Other countries have a culture where it's shameful to fail. Not getting into a good college is a suicide-triggering event. The best students in India, China, Japan, etc. study for hours and hours a day, and come out of school knowing how to do math, solve problems, and logically work through something like an IT problem. While the US does produce _some_ people like that, the vast majority are just doing the minimum to get by. I was by no means a top student, but I do work hard. I expect people that I work with to have the same work ethic and ability to reason, and am constantly disappointed.
With these facts, I have no trouble believing that companies can't find qualified individuals to fill positions. I think some of it is definitely a ploy to use cheaper labor, but it's not all a scam.
Putting all the blue-screen jokes aside, this might be a good thing.
Windows does have a closed-source kernel, but it does have the advantage of hosting a user interface that even the most basic-knowledge recruit will know. Windows is on 90+% of the world's computers, and absolutely every younger person knows how to navigate around in it.
Here's a parallel example from my line of work...the airline business. Lots of carriers have systems that were designed 20-30 years ago. Most have GUIs slapped over the top of a terminal emulator, but even those are cryptic. Some airlines send their customer service agents to a month of training just to get them to memorize the key parts of the system. I would imagine military systems of the same vintage are even more complex, and force a serviceperson to endure many months of training. Training, by the way, that will prove useless in the real world.
I'll bet the defense contractors designing any Windows-based system have full access to the kernel source anyway. Also, don't forget that stuff designed for the battlefield isn't exactly slapped together by a bunch of new graduates who picked up a ".NET for Dummies" book.
I think there's something to be said for sticking with a company for a while. A lot of permanent employees quit at the first sign of trouble or a better job offer. However, one of the things I like is seeing something I designed get built, released, used, improved and replaced. If you're only at a company for a year, you don't really see the results of your work, or get to learn from your mistakes. It also shows that you're willing to take the good with the bad. I work for a company that just had one of its first unprofitable years. We lost a ton of good people because of that...couldn't afford to pay out raises, etc. However, this year is shaping up to be pretty good. I'm going to get a raise, and life is good.
That said, this isn't the '50s. If you're stuck in a bad job that you know isn't doing anything for your overall career, don't stay. Back in the days of guaranteed lifetime employment and pensions (remember those??) I'm sure it was common for someone to hide in the shadows at an IBM or an AT&T and wait out a bad boss rather than quit. Personally, I wish companies would renew their "social contracts" with long-term employees. That's what made the middle class so strong in the 50s through the 70s...guaranteed income in exchange for good work.
My career advice would be to stay in a job "long enough." But, don't let your skills stagnate. Look for opportunities within your company to grow. If you have a big enough IT department, there should be plenty of places to move around.
Plusses for staying:
Plusses for job-hopping:
Now, if you want to pursue a career that requires a top-tier degree, that's different. For example:
For other cases, I can't see spending the money. Once you're out of school for a few years, no one cares where you went to school anymore.
On the plus side of this, it sounds like an attempt for a pharmaceutical company to get a legislated kickback was thwarted. Imagine how much money Merck would charge for that vaccine once everyone was required to get it...
On the minus side, it really shows how far we've slipped into rule by religious nuts. I'm not one for religion, but I don't have a problem with those who are. Religion provides comfort for people who can't deal with the world as-is. The problem is when it starts intruding on public life. When common-sense decisions are struck down because a group of people think a behavior is morally wrong, hedonistic or evil, there's a problem.
Here's what we've found so far:
We're actually doing pretty well with this, but don't forget that some positions in the enterprise just can't function without full-blown PCs. Hosting things like engineering or CAD apps is not worth the effort.
The enterprise IT world *needs* people with mature attitudes.
I totally agree with everything you mentioned. Our company tends to be very bleeding-edge; the sysadmins I work with want to install every single new technology the day it goes beta. It's encouraged in the name of "innovation", which I agree with. However, people need to learn to build stable systems that don't die unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Ripping out Solaris in favor of Linux? Fine, just make sure it's rock-solid and thoroughly tested.
Our developers are already hounding me to publish a standard Vista system so they can get coding. I've tried to explain to them that we spent 5 years getting XP to the point where it's stable and we know how things are configured. (Yes, I do desktop work; I like pain.)
It's impossible to accomplish in IT, but it would be nice if there were a PE license for software engineers. Once a PE in another branch of engineering puts their stamp on a set of plans or a design, they're legally responsible for Bad Things that may happen. That would definitely encourage dilligence.
Here's the problem with programming and IT jobs in general. The people actually doing the work tend to be young. I'm 31, and I'm already starting to see the shift in opinions of my work as a sysadmin. (You know you're old when people out of school have never seen a command prompt before...)
I'm guessing this will change as the profession matures. However, today is not a good day for older workers in the tech field. Too many people don't realize the value of life experience. Also, employers don't want to hire older workers because they're afraid they won't be able to keep up with younger peers. Older workers also demand higher salaries, which IT is not willing to pay in most companies.
I agree that retirement is going to be a lot different for our generation. I really can't see myself on a golf course every day or working as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Hopefully the tide will shift a little. I already see businesses less willing to put up with IT failures caused by "new, cool" systems. Maybe a little standardization and movement towards a "information systems engineering" profession will help.
People don't make major choices about their broad vocations simply on money.
Tell that to the people who left other fields to become day-traders in the late 90s, or real-estate or mortgage hustlers now. Especially in real estate, there's a LOT of money to be made until the market settles down, if it ever does.
Mortgage bankers are just paperwork-filers and middlemen. All they have to do is convince someone to pay interest rate N for their mortgage, sell it to a bank, and they make a lot of easy money. Compare that to spending hours solving a computer problem, with downtime pressure on your head.
This entire topic is one of those that no one wants to tackle head-on and correct. Part of the reason is political correctness, part seems to come from an inflated self-opinion, and another comes from the current economic climate.
First off, let's talk about political correctness. We just can't admit to ourselves that we do a very bad job of educating our workforce. Other countries are way ahead of us in terms of turning out skilled workers who excel in science, engineering and the computer field. I'm convinced that there is something to be said for countries that turn out educated robots. They may not think as creatively and freely as our students, but they at least know how to do math and think logically. I'm amazed at the number of people I've worked with, especially lately, that completely lack the ability to apply logic and cause-and-effect reasoning to troubleshooting tasks. The overall mentality seems to be "just hack at it until it works, never mind why or how." The fix to this part of the problem will be hard, because we have to undo 50 years of conditioning. Not everyone needs to be a college graduate. Some people just aren't designed for it. We need to have appropriate jobs for the wide level of skills that are out there, and not force everyone into a corporate job just because it's the right thing to do. The world needs plumbers, electricians, and garbage collectors (who all make a good-enough salary.)
Second, we tend to think very highly of ourselves. This is especially bad in some sectors of IT. For a stereotype, think of your typical system administrator or developer who thinks everyone using their software or network is dumber than they are. The reality of it is that the computer field has a wide range of ability levels. Especially during the tech boom, there was a low barrier of entry, and people came from every background and education level to seek their fortune. My opinion is that anyone who thinks they know everything really ought to go back and check out what they don't know. The solution here is twofold. We need to realize that we aren't gods of everything, and the world owes us nothing. You should only be entitled to high salaries if you're truly good. Also, our profession really needs to do a better job of training. A lot of people I know are into hoarding knowledge; I guess they're afraid they won't be irreplaceable anymore if someone else knows how their mail server is configured. I help out in this effort by documenting everything I do, and actually explaining stuff to people when they ask (or have a puzzled look on their face.)
Finally, economics. It is absolutely true that businesses are importing cheap labor or sending work offshore. I grew up in upstate NY in the 80s, so I know what it's like when the worldwide labor markets reset themselves. However, there are still plenty of specialty manufacturers in this country. It's not enough to employ the entire manufacturing labor pool, but these guys survive because they make a quality product they can charge more for. What I'm saying is that change is inevitable. You are not going to convince a CIO that you're worth 80% more than the guy in India, China or wherever who's willing to work much harder than you. Also, don't forget that all but the top researchers, professors, etc. are not paid exorbitant salaries. They build up to a good living over time. A lot of college grads want $75K just out of school for entry level work. This mentality is going to keep the shift of work offshore going faster.
The bigger overall economic problem is that it's incredibly expensive to live and do business in the US. Everyone seems to need the most expensive car, house and gadgets. A lot of other countries don't have that mentality, and their workers are willing to take lower salaries in exchange for steady work. With the kind of wage pressure we place on employers, no wonder they want to replace us.
One other thing I'd like to see is the standardization of IT into something akin to a branch of engineering. All licensed engineers
Why is it that the boards of extremely large companies tend to make bad decisions over and over again?
My theory is that there are two components. In the case of a public company, the CEO and board are under constant investor pressure. This is one of the only downsides of the internet and instant access to information. In the 50s, 60s, 70s and before, almost no one was individually in the market (though their pension funds might be.) The worst thing a board had to worry about was a bad article in the Wall Street Journal. Even then, some guy on his yacht or in his country estate would get the news a day later, and ask Jeeves to call the broker and sell. Now, all that has to happen is for one disgruntled employee or board member to post something on Yahoo Finance. Instantly, every trader in the universe starts selling within seconds and you have a 20% drop for the day. Look at what happened with Airbus after the fact that the A380 was behind schedule and way over budget. If I were a CEO, the climate would tempt me to make some decision, any decision, to keep the investors from selling.
The second thing has been around forever. No one in a company, unless they are really fearless, wants to stand up and tell the executives they're wrong. Some companies are more tolerant than others to this, but I've worked in a lot of dictatorships.
I'm a sysadmin in a Windows shop for my day job, and I have a Mac at home. I've always been partial to them, but I went back from a PC about 2 yeats ago.
The pros are definitely that I have to worry less about the computer. Security is an issue, no matter what anyone else says, but things like installing software and upgrading versions of software are much more predictable. I have a very busy day-job, and the fact that I can come home to a working computer for my personal tasks is nice.
The cons stem from lack of industry support. If you're a gamer, your choices of ported games are limited. Certain specialized software either doesn't exist for the Mac, or the Mac version is inferior to the Windows version. To combat this, I keep a Windows machine to run the occasional Windows-only program. Also, virtual machine technology can be a help here.
The software support issue may be going away soon anyway, given vendors' rapid move towards hosted applications. Take Windows Live mail for example (the hotmail replacement.) The UI is almost as good as MS Outlook, even in browsers other than IE.
We'll see what happens in the next few years. Personally, I'm happy paying the premium for what I feel is a better designed machine.
(I'm married, happily, with no kids yet.)
The #1 reason for divorce has to be overwork. Anyone who's been in the IT world long enough, unless they're very lucky, has worked in one or more jobs that have lousy working hours. Either you're on call 24/7, or projects you're working on are in constant crunch mode. Plus, they never seem to hire enough people to get the volume of work done at the speed they want. If I were a spouse, especially if I had never worked in a job like this, I would probably be pissed after a while. If the other partner isn't available to help with the house stuff, raise the kids, etc. then I don't blame them for divorce.
It's not just IT, but IT jobs tend to require long hours. I've promised myself that I'm going to keep a sane home life, even if I have to accept a lower rate of pay. Here's a wierd example: the company I work at tends to pay on the average side for IT work. Especially on the lowest rung, people could do a lot better somewhere else. This is especially true for our area...banks, brokerages, entertainment companies and law firms routinely pay very high IT salaries. The only problem is that you usually also sign up for the long work hours and lousy work conditions. However, their higher pay means that we have a harder time attracting talent. The flip side is that most of us work a very reasonable schedule.
If you want a non-IT example, just fly on a US airline on a Monday or Friday. You'll see young, unattached consultants who don't mind doing long hours because they've got nothing to come home to. You'll also see overworked executive types who look miserable and haven't seen their families all week. I can't imagine their spouses are all too happy. Just look around at the guy/girl with the discheveled look, loosened tie, and pissed-off expression.
The #2 reason for divorces, I think, tends to be social. I really think a lot of people just fall into marriage, even if they can't stand each other on the inside. Also, it sounds like stereotyping, but the truly great IT people tend to have social problems. It may sound unfair, but our profession is attractive to introverts the same way sales is attractive to extroverts. Some problems are mild (inappropriate humor, difficulty in social situations) and some severe (total withdrawal into work or hobbies, addiction to stuff like Warcraft.) When you pair a geek with a non-geek, you're going to have problems. IT people like to talk about their work too much; I've had to consciously avoid this at home. Even though the wife is smart (works in a different field of geekery,) she could care less about the minutae of my work.
Think of this example. I worked with a guy a few years ago who wound up getting divorced. He was a computer geek, and she obviously wasn't super-bright. I'd overhear phone conversations where she'd ask him questions, and he'd yell at her for not knowing how to handle whatever it was. Whenever he'd get off the phone, I'd hear, "She's so f**king stupid!" Talk about the exact not-right thing to say to someone.
One thing about the whole Indian outsourcing thing that people don't mention is that companies are increasingly going overseas not for the cheap labor, but for the talent. Remember, wage pressure in India and other outsourcing destinations is increasing, and pretty soon it won't be too much cheaper to do the work overseas.
The problem we have now is that fewer people are going into technical fields. We're a nation of CEOs, project managers, liaisons, coordinators, and other non-technical people. I've noticed a lot of people in the tech field encouraging their kids not to pursue any sort of science or engineering education. That's not a shocker. First of all, going to law school or getting an MBA guarantees you a lifetime of high income. Scientists/engineers are begging for jobs, and IT types are not finding as many entry-level positions that would get them entry into the field. Second, if you do decide to pursue something technical, the jobs are not guaranteed to be there. Why beat yourself up going for an engineering degree if someone on the other side of the world will work cheaper and do a better job than you could?
Also, the work ethic and education standard in other countries is much higher. I've worked with Indian outsourcing firms, and they make up for their lack of understanding of the problem with 14 hour work days and no complaints about how low their pay is. Compare that to workers in the US, who waste their whole day grumbling about their pay and are completely lazy.
Honestly, I don't know how to fix this. If we could somehow ensure that there would still be work available for those of us who like doing technical stuff, that would help.
A few businesses could work something like this...rural electric and farm cooperatives, for instance. The problem is, once you grow beyond a certain size, you do need some sort of leadership to make the tough decisions.
It's a classic catch-22. If no one is in power, nothing gets decided. If the leaders rule with an iron fist and absolutely refuse to listen to the underlings, they can run the business into the ground. I think the best compromise is to keep businesses small. I've worked mainly for very large corporations, some of which are very old banks and insurance companies. When you get into the thousands of employees, the organization takes on a life of its own. Too much time and money is wasted playing political games. I've seen millions of bucks flushed down the toilet on useless projects designed specifically to fail so a particular VP can look bad.
Plus, doing this across the board would probably grind the economy to a halt. It's incredible how much of peoples' retirement money is tied up in the stock market. Suddenly taking away the pressure to make the numbers every quarter would really screw up the financial services sector.
With the advent of LCDs that have only one native resolution, this is a big problem for Windows. Imagine that either (1) you're visually impaired enough to not be able to read small stuff, but don't need things like screen magnifiers, or (2) you're tired at the end of a long day and don't feel like squinting at tiny fonts. Windows does let you scale the fonts, but the problem with this is that the graphics widgets don't scale porportionately in XP. Also, some applications and web pages start looking really ugly with scaled fonts. Also, you need to reboot the computer for the font change to take effect, which doesn't make sense to me.
Scaling has to be something that all app vendors take into account in their code for it to work. I actually have my large LCD at a higher DPI right now, and several aopps don't resize their icons, etc.
When everyone was running 17" or 20" screens at 1280x1024 or so, this wasn't an issue. Now, look at monster displays like the Apple 30" widescreen display. Mac OS finally got around to letting you scale the cursor size...before, it was a fixed-size tiny speck on that huge monitor when you ran it at the native resolution. The old solution was to change your resolution...doing this now either doesn't work or makes LCDs look really ugly.
I can see why Microsoft doesn't want to support Virtual PC. Now that Apple's on Intel hardware, it's easy enough to just build a Windows partition and boot to it when you want to use stuff like PC games, Virtual PC, etc. Remember, people need to buy software to make it worth the while of a commercial software vendor!
The desupporting of VB macros should be a bigger concern. Anyone who's worked in a large corporate environment knows that the vast majority of data crunching is not done in fancy analytical tools. Despite what SAS, Oracle and everyone tells you, many key business processes boil down to VB macros in Excel spreadsheets. Business units have spent years doing an end-run around the IT department because they either perceive the analytical tools to be too much of a pain to use, or the IT department is too bloated and slow to help them. That's the number one reason why millions of social security numbers wind up on stolen laptops. Data is pulled from the main systems into spreadsheets and analyzed offline. It's incredibly easy to write macros in VB, even for people who can't program.
Microsoft killing VB macro support for Mac Office takes a big chunk out of the cross-platform compatibility pillar. I can see a lot of other vendors using this Intel platform excuse too. My favorite example is Quicken. The Mac version is years behind the Windows one...I'm sure they're just wairing for the chance to drop it.