1. Highly placed, big-mouth, overbearing executive gets a huge, ill-advised "Boil The Ocean" type project funded.
2. Overbearing executive gets monetary awards, headlines, kudos at the contract signing. No actual work has begun yet, of course.
3. Overbearing executive gets promotion (because of all those awards and headlines) and moves up and away from the radiation zone from the doomed BTO project.
4. Project drags on for so long that the collective memory "forgets" that overbearing executive was originally the force behind the BTO project. Project is now a "hot potato" that gets passed around to different executives, who quickly see that it is doomed and pass it along to the next exec. No actual decisions are made.
4. Project fails. Last executive to touch BTO loses.
5. Somewhere, in a far, far way department, the original hot-shot executive begins step 1 anew, a new project with a bigger budget....
It didn't matter much what it costs to end-users. What mattered is that developers had to pay through the nose for the SDK when MS would overnight complete Windows developer kits to you just for asking. Heck, even IBMers had to jump through hoops to get developer kits AND systems big enough to run them.
Great O/S, but virtually no apps until it was too late.
Great, so long as you're using it within the hermetically sealed IBM environment.
The problem comes when you actually have to deal with real, live customers that manage their own L1/L2 support. They've never heard of CMVC and certainly aren't about to install it. So, customers end up tracking defects with their favorite software that the rest of the world actually has heard of (e.g. PVCS) and we track with CMVC. Then, of course, we use spreadsheets, DB2, notes written on the back of the program manager's hand or whatever to map the two. Progress, progress....
Maybe because few of us can relate to a heroine who has a 46 triple D cup, a 19 inch waist, and lips that look as if they were attacked by a horde of angry wasps.
You learned about real life. In real life, the well-rounded survive.
You say you learned to program when you were 5 (you win, I was 11). Turn that around. You have a skill that even a 5 (or 11) year old can learn. Why on earth would it be valuable by itself by age 40?
Learn about communication, negotiation, and salesmanship. You don't have to learn golf, but you should learn how to engineer a deal. Those are skills that tend to be marketable even the roughest of times.
Learn, and be passionate about ANOTHER skill. Do you ride a bike? knit? travel? take pictures? like to teach? Turn one of those into a job. The world IS bigger than the latest release of Debian, no matter what Slashdot says!
JoAnn
Re:I dont understand how they could have missed th
on
Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 1
I would add to your list...
-They trust that a spouse will support them financially forever. Sh*t happens. People get laid off. People die. People get disabled to the point where they no longer can work. People get divorced and separated.
At the very least, get insured, not just for death but for disability as well. BOTH spouses should be insured, not just the wage-earner if there's only one in the family because an available-24/7-cooking-cleaning-childcare giving-chaffeur-and-errand runner is expensive to replace.
At the very most, keep your marketable skills up somehow even if you are a non-wage earning spouse. Volunteer, write grants, write books, build stuff and sell it, work at home but DO SOMETHING. In the end, your best "insurance" is your own self-reliance!
I can't give you mod points so I'll just sit in my office and clap!
Times are tough? You ain't SEEN tough yet.
JoAnn
College education costs have overinflated.
on
Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 1
What's happened is that college education costs have, over the past 20 years, outstripped inflation, and the ROI of that college education has fallen drastically. Kind of like the stock market...
Hopefully, the college-bound audience will realize that and the lack of demand will bring college costs back down to reality.
Community college degrees don't look so demeaning now to that the Harvard MBA guy is flipping burgers.
"Utilize" is by far the most overused word in (American) English. Makes my skin crawl when I see it in any kind of writing where "use" would suffice. Same goes for "due to the fact that". Ever hear of "because"? I see resumes with those words on them, they're headed for the trash.
I had similar thoughts on this issue. If you can have a deeper discussion about this with a bunch of Slashdotters than your own girlfriend, you have some pretty big issues. Please, talk this over with her.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen this pattern before.
1. Highly placed, big-mouth, overbearing executive gets a huge, ill-advised "Boil The Ocean" type project funded.
2. Overbearing executive gets monetary awards, headlines, kudos at the contract signing. No actual work has begun yet, of course.
3. Overbearing executive gets promotion (because of all those awards and headlines) and moves up and away from the radiation zone from the doomed BTO project.
4. Project drags on for so long that the collective memory "forgets" that overbearing executive was originally the force behind the BTO project. Project is now a "hot potato" that gets passed around to different executives, who quickly see that it is doomed and pass it along to the next exec. No actual decisions are made.
4. Project fails. Last executive to touch BTO loses.
5. Somewhere, in a far, far way department, the original hot-shot executive begins step 1 anew, a new project with a bigger budget....
If it can't be done using JCL, it ain't worth doing!
Try to say THAT ten times real fast without sounding like Elmer Fudd!
JoAnn
IBM's Websphere Application Developer V5.0 (based on Eclipse 2) has watch and also has a general "break the nth time you hit this line" breakpoint.
JoAnn
>>And it's not our fault, either, because foreign languages are not being taught in the school system the way they are abroad.
Not our fault? Not the fault of AMERICANS that our AMERICAN school system is lacking? Whose fault is it? The education fairy?
JoAnn
Turn off the damned computer right this sec
Sounds like MY project manager!
JoAnn
I *LOVED* Christopher Lloyd in ST III.
....."
Klingon - "What do you do when you see a yellow light on the Genesis device?"
Kirk - "Slow down."
Klingon - "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat doooooooooooooooooo yoooooooooooooooooou doooooooooooooooooooo wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen
JoAnn
It didn't matter much what it costs to end-users. What mattered is that developers had to pay through the nose for the SDK when MS would overnight complete Windows developer kits to you just for asking. Heck, even IBMers had to jump through hoops to get developer kits AND systems big enough to run them.
Great O/S, but virtually no apps until it was too late.
JoAnn
Great, so long as you're using it within the hermetically sealed IBM environment.
The problem comes when you actually have to deal with real, live customers that manage their own L1/L2 support. They've never heard of CMVC and certainly aren't about to install it. So, customers end up tracking defects with their favorite software that the rest of the world actually has heard of (e.g. PVCS) and we track with CMVC. Then, of course, we use spreadsheets, DB2, notes written on the back of the program manager's hand or whatever to map the two. Progress, progress....
JoAnn
Nope. To your parents, you'll ALWAYS be a kid, especially to your mom.
JoAnn
"I got a piece of mail that was vague that the assertion is some marketing person did something that was not entirely straightforward," Ballmer said.
In other words, he was "shocked, SHOCKED" to hear that unscrupulous marketing activities were going on at Microsoft.
JoAnn
....and the prince has to cook, clean the house, drive the kids to soccer practice, and do laundry!
:-)
NOW, you see why women like The Sims more...
Maybe because few of us can relate to a heroine who has a 46 triple D cup, a 19 inch waist, and lips that look as if they were attacked by a horde of angry wasps.
JoAnn
Heh,heh. It took becoming a mom for me to understand it. Parenting has been the best management/people skills training I've ever had.
JoAnn
>>>Those are skills that tend to be marketable even the roughest of times.
....even *in* the roughest of times.
Geez, I guess I had better work on my own communication skills...
JoAnn
Wasted? I think not.
You learned about real life. In real life, the well-rounded survive.
You say you learned to program when you were 5 (you win, I was 11). Turn that around. You have a skill that even a 5 (or 11) year old can learn. Why on earth would it be valuable by itself by age 40?
Learn about communication, negotiation, and salesmanship. You don't have to learn golf, but you should learn how to engineer a deal. Those are skills that tend to be marketable even the roughest of times.
Learn, and be passionate about ANOTHER skill. Do you ride a bike? knit? travel? take pictures? like to teach? Turn one of those into a job. The world IS bigger than the latest release of Debian, no matter what Slashdot says!
JoAnn
I would add to your list...
-They trust that a spouse will support them financially forever. Sh*t happens. People get laid off. People die. People get disabled to the point where they no longer can work. People get divorced and separated.
At the very least, get insured, not just for death but for disability as well. BOTH spouses should be insured, not just the wage-earner if there's only one in the family because an available-24/7-cooking-cleaning-childcare giving-chaffeur-and-errand runner is expensive to replace.
At the very most, keep your marketable skills up somehow even if you are a non-wage earning spouse. Volunteer, write grants, write books, build stuff and sell it, work at home but DO SOMETHING. In the end, your best "insurance" is your own self-reliance!
JoAnn
Toddlers.
I can't give you mod points so I'll just sit in my office and clap!
Times are tough? You ain't SEEN tough yet.
JoAnn
What's happened is that college education costs have, over the past 20 years, outstripped inflation, and the ROI of that college education has fallen drastically. Kind of like the stock market...
Hopefully, the college-bound audience will realize that and the lack of demand will bring college costs back down to reality.
Community college degrees don't look so demeaning now to that the Harvard MBA guy is flipping burgers.
JoAnn
"Utilize" is by far the most overused word in (American) English. Makes my skin crawl when I see it in any kind of writing where "use" would suffice. Same goes for "due to the fact that". Ever hear of "because"? I see resumes with those words on them, they're headed for the trash.
JoAnn
I thought the same thing.
They'll open the second door and come across the Cone of Silence.
I had similar thoughts on this issue. If you can have a deeper discussion about this with a bunch of Slashdotters than your own girlfriend, you have some pretty big issues. Please, talk this over with her.
JoAnn
That's how I pronounced it too. Precisely why, when I first read this story, I thought for SURE it was a hoax/joke/urban legend/whatever.
Way to go, Microsoft.
JoAnn