Actually, I'm an MIT alum myself - and am doing something *very* similar for another industry which also antiquated technology with my own company. So I know where those founders were coming from...:-)
I guess my point is that if you're looking for someone very similar to them - those people can find their own real world puzzles to solve & are going to be less interested in a few brain teasers with no direct real-world benefit (other than being qualified simply to interview with ITA).
I'm sure this helps weed people out - and more power to that from the company's perspective - but I'll bet it weeds out superstars too. When I look at that, it feels gimmicky, but more to the point, as a superstar I don't *have* to spend time solving puzzles when the next company on the job board doesn't make me do that. I'd rather waste a recruiter's time sorting resumes & giving bad interviews than waste MY time helping save time for a company who may or may not hire me (at least at a price that makes sense for me).
And don't take this the wrong way (it's not meant badly), but ITA isn't Google and it doesn't have the name-brand recognition, nerd buzz, or compelling website story that tells me as a superstar that this company is special and is worth solving puzzles for up-front.
Perhaps they need to work with Safari, Konquerer, Opera and Mozilla to work on one "point" across the browsers every 6 months. that way the broswer developers would have "coop-etition" and web designers can learn one new feature at a time across all the browsers. I purposefully left MS off, because with IE7 they've baltently rejected web standards for another "5 years"! The rest of the industry needs to pick up and move on TOGETHER without them!
Totally ineffective. The "rest of the industry" is what - maybe an optimistic 20%? Problem is, I don't think the capabilities or compliance of browsers really drives this - it's the webmasters and how they choose to code their sites. As a webmaster, I really have no incentive to support W3C. The effectiveness of my website is based (from a technical perspective) on supporting the largest possible existing browser base that I can (with a reasonable amount of effort). Practically speaking, this means IE. So whatever markup mess IE supports, THAT is the standard.
W3C can:
Convince a very large portion of webmasters to stop supporting IE as their "standard" in favor of XHTML et al. (Good luck! They're fighting against basic economics here.)
Bank on Firefox, Safari, et al, grabbing a majority share of the market. (I wish... but they'll be waiting for a long time most likely!>
Continue their role as the UN of web standards. (The official body, but with limited teeth and relevancy).
Convince Microsoft to support the standard not only with their browser, but also with Frontpage (and of course get Macromedia/Dreamweaver on board too). IMHO, this is the only option that has a realistic chance.
Agreed - 2 cents/kwh hour is considerably less than it costs them to generate it. If I'm not mistaken, the cheapest coal-driven generators still cost somewhere on the order of 4-6 cents/kwh. My electric bill (Boston area) is 11 cents/kwh for generation alone, and another 9 cents for distribution charges for a total of around 20 cents/kwh.
I've looked into wind farm investments, and even at that scale it generally costs a premium of about 2 cents to use wind over coal/gas after you consider the net present value of the up-front capital costs, etc.
Problem is, these are GRAD students. Undergrads take a lot of unrelated crap (that makes them better human beings, well-educated, etc.), but grad students' class loads should be fairly focused on their major, no? No english papers for them to pass off...
Actually, most engineers would probably do well for themselves to spend a little extra time in English class & "outsource" one of their more technical classes - there's enough overlap between classes in the field that you could probably put the missing pieces together from other coursework fairly well.
That's harsh. The parent has a legitimate point - our efforts are better spent helping actual, living human beings than future "potential" human beings who don't actually exist yet.
Mikey, what's your opinion on data sharing? Either between different agencies in a jurisdiction, or between similar agencies in neighboring jurisdictions (say, electronically coordinating mutual aid with the fire department the next town over)?
I suspect this sort of thing would be more useful in the back office/dispatch than in the field? Although being able to, say, send a floor plan of the building you're going to into the apparatus might be useful?
Right on - but you underestimate the amount of money being thrown at the problem. There is enough for new hardware. NY State just spent some atrocious amount for a new radio system (well into the 9 figures I believe). But it still won't be compatible with, say, NJ State, or even many of their own towns who want to use their own radio system every day instead of the new state-owned system. Every little jurisdiction (and big ones) buy something different - DHS just isn't doing any serious detailed coordinating of how their grants are used - and that's a job beyond any local agency, and probably beyond most state agencies as well.
Open standards would be a good thing. Or an emphasis on purchasing bridging technologies to tie incompatible systems together instead of just replacing everything. It's cheaper, and individual agencies wouldn't need to change the way they operate.
Rather than replacing the radios, have you looked into bridging solutions that might allow interoperability between your existing VHF radios and their digital radios? As long as both infrastructures are already in place, why not use them...
Well the problem is, funding comes in the form of use-it-or-lose-it grants for a specific item (like radios). The other problem is that a fire/police officer isn't professionally equipped to select a solution. Why would they know anything about radio systems, other than from a user's point of view?
What happens is they go call the company(ies) they know - like their original vendor, with whom they have an ongoing relationship via support anyway - and ask what options are available to solve the problem outlined in the grant. What's the first thing the vendor asks? How much do we have to work with (i.e. how much is the grant for)?
Maybe the actual problem is that the agency awarding the grant (some arm of Homeland Security, presumably) doesn't help the local agencies select a solution, they just send a check with strings attached and leave them to sink or swim on their own.
I'm counting down the days until mine expires on the same network; I think they have the fewest dropped calls, because they have the fewest even connect in the first place!
Yeah - but in Vegas, notice how they have to stand in those little slices of land between the casino properties - city-owned land - because casino security won't let them distribute it on their private property which extends all the way to the street.
Funny how that works; the CASINOS of all entities are the ones enforcing "decency.":-)
I suspect that the skillsets it takes to run a significant power-generating operation (especially a nuclear facility!) are fairly different from those that it takes to do cryptography, code-breaking, assassinations, signal interceptions, etc. To bring in that kind of equipment, you have to bring in staff to run it, which costs money & effort. It's nicely seperable from their "main" operations, and can be "outsourced" to BG&E easily. It's a simple case of "it's not our business."
Agreed on original poster's careless attitude, but I gotta comment on your definition of consultant. I'm a consultant, and I definitely spend my share of time cranking code. Is it cost-effective to a company that has engineers on staff? No, I charge an arm & a leg. But, for one-off gigs that don't justify a hire & for companies that don't have the available coding resources it does make sense.
I guess you can make a semantic argument that when I take this role, I'm an engineering contractor instead of a consultant, but it does become purely a semantic argument.
Well, NIEM does incorporate and glom together some existing XML "standards" - Global Justice XML, for example. But there's nobody in gov't who's really up to speed with that either.
I think you'd be shocked at how little information really is being exchanged currently.
Apologies if I did take what you wrote the wrong way, re effort. That's how I read it...
It's not easy to start a business. But it's not impossible for those who are motivated - you have to look for ways to succeed, not reasons to not try. Mortgage, kids... join the club. But in that situation, you've also presumably got something to show for your 10-20 year career (saved up some equity on that house, some savings from your past work), and kids implies you've got a spouse. That spouse can be a second breadwinner! For me, these things are motivations. I want the upside of a startup because I want to give my kids a better life - and realistically, a 5-10% raise every year for being a good employee just isn't going to change your quality of life. Now I don't know your specifics, but the point is it *can* be done.
Really, it depends if you value "security" more or the upside, and the respect. The 'respect' is what this thread is about anyway - the original topic was "where can you find a job that values your tech skills." This is a viable way to do that, and I stand by it. Anyone who has enough skill to really feel undervalued and fit into this conversation shouldn't be all that worried about security, as (at least in a reasonable first-world economy) they shouldn't have any issue finding another job as needed.
A bank is a rather poor place to capitalize a new business. Although I do wonder how much "equaliteral" they'd give me in exchange for a marriage - maybe that wouldn't be such a bad deal!:-D
Friends & family is a good place to start; personal savings; and the angel community. Or you can bootstrap - start it part-time while working at a big co, build the business until it has the revenue to justify a full-time position. And yes, consulting is a viable options as well. You do need experience - and network never hurts, but it's also not entirely necessary.
I'm doing this myself: bootstrapping a company at first with a full-time job, and now with consulting gigs which I'm reducing in scope as the business grows and moves closer to being self-sustaining. And granted I do have the experience, and the network necessary for it, but I have found a good amount of work outside my personal network. It's cyclical, but the consulting market is *hot* right now.
As for chiefs and Indians... not sure about you, but I'd rather be a chief. And, to be honest, I have trouble respecting Indians who don't see themselves as future chiefs. (I don't need a lecture about how everyone lives their own lifestyle and goals & that's their right and privilege. Objectively, I agree. Subconsciously, I don't.)
having to work twice as many hours as someone else's employee.
Uh, you're either thinking of a third-world textile sweatshop as your replacement job, or you have no clue what kind of effort you need to spend in a startup. What employee position has you working twice as many hours - or even the same number of hours - as any reasonable startup effort?!
As for 90% chance of being out of work... so what? Get another f-ing job, or try again with another startup. This sub-thread wasn't about a psychological need to cling to security (which really doesn't exist in most big companies either); it's about finding an employment situation where tech skills are valued.
If YOU value your tech skills, you'll have some confidence that you can use them to make a living as needed.
Agreed. In my 8 years as a software engineer, I don't think I've ever been responsible for any amount of serious maintenance. I build projects; someone else takes care of them. But I make the decisions on frameworks, tools, etc to use - "management" wouldn't have enough of a background to make an informed decision (and usually they know it). But I plan on making MY life easier and on meeting MY goals and responsibilities. I'm not measured on TCO, I'm measured on producing a product quickly that meets a feature spec.
Why search for a company? Start your own. You will be directly compensated on the value you produce; no layer(s) of management to blame for ciphoning off the fruits of your labor... Of course, some of those sales & biz skills will rapidly start to feel pretty important!:-)
Ideally, the company wouldn't just bring in "generic" contractors, but would select firms (or groups within large contract houses) that specialize in that company's specific industry & market. Sure there's some learning curve to the specifics of that company, but that experience not only helps narrow the gap, but it brings insights of what others in the industry do and different points of view that a company insider may not have.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I'm an MIT alum myself - and am doing something *very* similar for another industry which also antiquated technology with my own company. So I know where those founders were coming from... :-)
I guess my point is that if you're looking for someone very similar to them - those people can find their own real world puzzles to solve & are going to be less interested in a few brain teasers with no direct real-world benefit (other than being qualified simply to interview with ITA).
I'm sure this helps weed people out - and more power to that from the company's perspective - but I'll bet it weeds out superstars too. When I look at that, it feels gimmicky, but more to the point, as a superstar I don't *have* to spend time solving puzzles when the next company on the job board doesn't make me do that. I'd rather waste a recruiter's time sorting resumes & giving bad interviews than waste MY time helping save time for a company who may or may not hire me (at least at a price that makes sense for me).
And don't take this the wrong way (it's not meant badly), but ITA isn't Google and it doesn't have the name-brand recognition, nerd buzz, or compelling website story that tells me as a superstar that this company is special and is worth solving puzzles for up-front.
...a Weather Rock.
:-)
When it's white, it's snowing outside.
When it's wet, it's raining.
When it's...
Totally ineffective. The "rest of the industry" is what - maybe an optimistic 20%? Problem is, I don't think the capabilities or compliance of browsers really drives this - it's the webmasters and how they choose to code their sites. As a webmaster, I really have no incentive to support W3C. The effectiveness of my website is based (from a technical perspective) on supporting the largest possible existing browser base that I can (with a reasonable amount of effort). Practically speaking, this means IE. So whatever markup mess IE supports, THAT is the standard.
W3C can:
Agreed - 2 cents/kwh hour is considerably less than it costs them to generate it. If I'm not mistaken, the cheapest coal-driven generators still cost somewhere on the order of 4-6 cents/kwh. My electric bill (Boston area) is 11 cents/kwh for generation alone, and another 9 cents for distribution charges for a total of around 20 cents/kwh.
I've looked into wind farm investments, and even at that scale it generally costs a premium of about 2 cents to use wind over coal/gas after you consider the net present value of the up-front capital costs, etc.
Problem is, these are GRAD students. Undergrads take a lot of unrelated crap (that makes them better human beings, well-educated, etc.), but grad students' class loads should be fairly focused on their major, no? No english papers for them to pass off...
Actually, most engineers would probably do well for themselves to spend a little extra time in English class & "outsource" one of their more technical classes - there's enough overlap between classes in the field that you could probably put the missing pieces together from other coursework fairly well.
That's harsh. The parent has a legitimate point - our efforts are better spent helping actual, living human beings than future "potential" human beings who don't actually exist yet.
Mikey, what's your opinion on data sharing? Either between different agencies in a jurisdiction, or between similar agencies in neighboring jurisdictions (say, electronically coordinating mutual aid with the fire department the next town over)?
I suspect this sort of thing would be more useful in the back office/dispatch than in the field? Although being able to, say, send a floor plan of the building you're going to into the apparatus might be useful?
Right on - but you underestimate the amount of money being thrown at the problem. There is enough for new hardware. NY State just spent some atrocious amount for a new radio system (well into the 9 figures I believe). But it still won't be compatible with, say, NJ State, or even many of their own towns who want to use their own radio system every day instead of the new state-owned system. Every little jurisdiction (and big ones) buy something different - DHS just isn't doing any serious detailed coordinating of how their grants are used - and that's a job beyond any local agency, and probably beyond most state agencies as well.
Open standards would be a good thing. Or an emphasis on purchasing bridging technologies to tie incompatible systems together instead of just replacing everything. It's cheaper, and individual agencies wouldn't need to change the way they operate.
Rather than replacing the radios, have you looked into bridging solutions that might allow interoperability between your existing VHF radios and their digital radios? As long as both infrastructures are already in place, why not use them...
Well the problem is, funding comes in the form of use-it-or-lose-it grants for a specific item (like radios). The other problem is that a fire/police officer isn't professionally equipped to select a solution. Why would they know anything about radio systems, other than from a user's point of view?
What happens is they go call the company(ies) they know - like their original vendor, with whom they have an ongoing relationship via support anyway - and ask what options are available to solve the problem outlined in the grant. What's the first thing the vendor asks? How much do we have to work with (i.e. how much is the grant for)?
Maybe the actual problem is that the agency awarding the grant (some arm of Homeland Security, presumably) doesn't help the local agencies select a solution, they just send a check with strings attached and leave them to sink or swim on their own.
I'm not sure going from 40% to 65% is a stunning recommendation of how you never need to attend lectures, because you know it all already.
Those numbers are meaningless without context; I assume most universities grade on a curve... 65% might well be A+ work.
Stupider is valid English... leave the guy alone!
Service contract.
I'm counting down the days until mine expires on the same network; I think they have the fewest dropped calls, because they have the fewest even connect in the first place!
Yeah - but in Vegas, notice how they have to stand in those little slices of land between the casino properties - city-owned land - because casino security won't let them distribute it on their private property which extends all the way to the street.
:-)
Funny how that works; the CASINOS of all entities are the ones enforcing "decency."
I suspect that the skillsets it takes to run a significant power-generating operation (especially a nuclear facility!) are fairly different from those that it takes to do cryptography, code-breaking, assassinations, signal interceptions, etc. To bring in that kind of equipment, you have to bring in staff to run it, which costs money & effort. It's nicely seperable from their "main" operations, and can be "outsourced" to BG&E easily. It's a simple case of "it's not our business."
Agreed on original poster's careless attitude, but I gotta comment on your definition of consultant. I'm a consultant, and I definitely spend my share of time cranking code. Is it cost-effective to a company that has engineers on staff? No, I charge an arm & a leg. But, for one-off gigs that don't justify a hire & for companies that don't have the available coding resources it does make sense.
I guess you can make a semantic argument that when I take this role, I'm an engineering contractor instead of a consultant, but it does become purely a semantic argument.
And which patent office with jurisdiction over Space did you use? :-)
Well, NIEM does incorporate and glom together some existing XML "standards" - Global Justice XML, for example. But there's nobody in gov't who's really up to speed with that either.
I think you'd be shocked at how little information really is being exchanged currently.
Apologies if I did take what you wrote the wrong way, re effort. That's how I read it...
It's not easy to start a business. But it's not impossible for those who are motivated - you have to look for ways to succeed, not reasons to not try. Mortgage, kids... join the club. But in that situation, you've also presumably got something to show for your 10-20 year career (saved up some equity on that house, some savings from your past work), and kids implies you've got a spouse. That spouse can be a second breadwinner! For me, these things are motivations. I want the upside of a startup because I want to give my kids a better life - and realistically, a 5-10% raise every year for being a good employee just isn't going to change your quality of life. Now I don't know your specifics, but the point is it *can* be done.
Really, it depends if you value "security" more or the upside, and the respect. The 'respect' is what this thread is about anyway - the original topic was "where can you find a job that values your tech skills." This is a viable way to do that, and I stand by it. Anyone who has enough skill to really feel undervalued and fit into this conversation shouldn't be all that worried about security, as (at least in a reasonable first-world economy) they shouldn't have any issue finding another job as needed.
A bank is a rather poor place to capitalize a new business. Although I do wonder how much "equaliteral" they'd give me in exchange for a marriage - maybe that wouldn't be such a bad deal! :-D
Friends & family is a good place to start; personal savings; and the angel community. Or you can bootstrap - start it part-time while working at a big co, build the business until it has the revenue to justify a full-time position. And yes, consulting is a viable options as well. You do need experience - and network never hurts, but it's also not entirely necessary.
I'm doing this myself: bootstrapping a company at first with a full-time job, and now with consulting gigs which I'm reducing in scope as the business grows and moves closer to being self-sustaining. And granted I do have the experience, and the network necessary for it, but I have found a good amount of work outside my personal network. It's cyclical, but the consulting market is *hot* right now.
As for chiefs and Indians... not sure about you, but I'd rather be a chief. And, to be honest, I have trouble respecting Indians who don't see themselves as future chiefs. (I don't need a lecture about how everyone lives their own lifestyle and goals & that's their right and privilege. Objectively, I agree. Subconsciously, I don't.)
having to work twice as many hours as someone else's employee.
Uh, you're either thinking of a third-world textile sweatshop as your replacement job, or you have no clue what kind of effort you need to spend in a startup. What employee position has you working twice as many hours - or even the same number of hours - as any reasonable startup effort?!
As for 90% chance of being out of work... so what? Get another f-ing job, or try again with another startup. This sub-thread wasn't about a psychological need to cling to security (which really doesn't exist in most big companies either); it's about finding an employment situation where tech skills are valued.
If YOU value your tech skills, you'll have some confidence that you can use them to make a living as needed.
Agreed. In my 8 years as a software engineer, I don't think I've ever been responsible for any amount of serious maintenance. I build projects; someone else takes care of them. But I make the decisions on frameworks, tools, etc to use - "management" wouldn't have enough of a background to make an informed decision (and usually they know it). But I plan on making MY life easier and on meeting MY goals and responsibilities. I'm not measured on TCO, I'm measured on producing a product quickly that meets a feature spec.
Why search for a company? Start your own. You will be directly compensated on the value you produce; no layer(s) of management to blame for ciphoning off the fruits of your labor... Of course, some of those sales & biz skills will rapidly start to feel pretty important! :-)
Ideally, the company wouldn't just bring in "generic" contractors, but would select firms (or groups within large contract houses) that specialize in that company's specific industry & market. Sure there's some learning curve to the specifics of that company, but that experience not only helps narrow the gap, but it brings insights of what others in the industry do and different points of view that a company insider may not have.