Are you certain that you have identified the cause of your attrition problem? I'd make sure that you do exit interviews and see why folks are truly leaving. I was honest with my employer during my exit interview when I left to start my own company.
Here are some common reasons for techies to leave a company:
Too much unpaid overtime
Too much overtime period
Too little compensation
Work too boring
Work too stressful
Too much red tape (at that company, they made each employee complete about 8 hours worth of self-assessments, etc. when they knew they weren't giving raises/bonuses/promotions, anyhow)
Insufficient ego-stoking (Yes, techies have big egos and require copious amounts of praise)
If you're looking for morale metrics, check out the average hours worked per employee per week. Also make sure it's not the same employees working all the overtime. Also, see how competitive your compensation is.
Obviously you should be asking the folks who are leaving what made them decide to leave. That's the best place to start.
I also thought I had remembered seeing servlets at a job I was at in mid-97 (doing server-side perl coding, ironically enough) but I couldn't find any references in 5 minutes of searching Sun's website.
I think Andreessen is operating in a parallel universe that is different from the one in which we live.
Fact: PHP was released on June 8, 1995.
Fact: The Java Servlet spec (first server-side Java) was released over 4 years later on October 1, 1999.
After 5 years, Java as caught up with and far surpassed PHP in terms of usage, tools, maturity, etc. Java is showing no signs of slowing down. I don't know what iPlanet Marc is on, but on my planet, if you want to do any server-side web programming, you better know J2EE or.NET.
Also funny was this quote from TFA:
"I think Flash is one of the most exciting technologies out there that's almost on the verge of great success and never quite achieving it," Andreessen said.
Uh, yeah, Marc. That falls solidly in to the category of "thing we wish were true but aren't." I wish Flash wasn't so popular, but the fact is it's used very heavily.
'My own child could go into this, figure it out and get all this data on all these students. It's mind-boggling.'
That's why you teach your child this thing called "integrity". Never mind that your child could do. There are lots of things your child could do, but should not do. One of your jobs as a parent is teach your child the difference.
If a user has to go into the SPAM box and double check that no mistakes have been made then the system is worse than not having any SPAM checking at all as most users will not check the SPAM box
I use a three-outcome approach with SpamAssassin. Messages scored below 5 are delivered to the user's INBOX. Messages scored 5 or higher, but less than 10 go into the spam box. Messages scored 10 or higher are rejected during the SMTP session, with instructions on how to proceed.
I did this because, in practice, my system never had a message scored 10 or higher that a used considered to be HAM, and indeed, no one has ever called and said, "WTF? My email didn't get through!" Also, in practice, the number of spams and hams that score between 5 and 10 is very low, so users do check their spamboxes. 99% of the messages delivered to the spam folder are flagged as spam. Every so often, a ham slips through, but never has a ham been rejected to my knowledge.
I like this solution because it keeps all obvious spam away from the users, keeps most non-obvious spam away from the users, yet never drops anything to/dev/null.
I'd love to make a few hundred dollar investment on the off-chance that I can teach my kid the lesson that whenever he/she (we'll find out the sex in a few months...) messes up, there will never be any consequences. Daddy will bail him/her out.
Can't he just go down to Washington to get it done? If he got up a little early, he could drive down into Washington, sit for an MRI, and be home in time for lunch. He'd only lose half a day of work.
I thought this type of thing was pretty common. I grew up in Minnesota and we had Canadians come down for heart surgery all the time. I guess given the choice between swallowing your pride by sidestepping the Canadian health care system and "death by waiting list"... well... yeah, let's just say Minnesota hospitals have saved a lot of Canadians' lives. It's a fair trade. We like to buy our prescription drugs from Canada.
Anyhow, I wish your friend the best of luck. Back problems can be totally debilitating.
Could you please explain to me how adding../ to the end of a URL will help me to verify the authenticity of a website? I'm really curious to know about this.
By the way, the site was donate.bt.com. I would have gotten much better information had he just picked up a phone and called BT and asked them if it was legit.
You know, that was my first reaction as well, but I have since changed my mind. What HBO is doing is launching a Denial of Service attack against networks that are illegally distributing their copyrighted works. I'm not trying to excuse the actions of those who engage in copyright infringement, however, HBO does not have the right to DOS attack whomever they don't like. If someone is illegally distributing their works, they may seek remedies through the proper channels.
Naturally, file "sharers" prefer that HBO would just engage in a technical arms-race like they're doing now. On strictly technical grounds, HBO will likely lose. However, from an ideological perspective, what HBO is doing (DOS attacking people) is wrong and illegal. I haven't kept up on the penalties, but I think these days launching a DOS attack carries more severe penalties than non-profit copyright infringement.
1. If your resume is so good, how come you are complaining that no one is calling you back?
2. If you think that C (a procedural language) and C++ (an object-oriented language) are similar architecturally, you have no business designing in either one of them. They are similar in a curly-brace sort of way, but a good C design will not even remotely resemble a good C++ design.
3. You've totally missed the point. When I'm flying through resumes, I'll never see your tag at the end of your resume. You need your strengths to pop out. Even if I did see that tag, I wouldn't waste my time sifting through your code samples.
4. Pretty much any project can be made to sound impressive. I thought I demonstrated that with my buckeye sorting example. Truly, who gives a fuck about buckeyes... but my example sounded pretty impressive, didn't it?
5. Yeah, I don't speak German anymore, either. But about 15 minutes after arriving in Austria I spoke it just fine. Right after I told you to put it on your resume, I told you to find a Chinese friend if you were rusty.
6. Keep networking.
I don't even remotely care what you think of my attitude. Not everyone is going to be nice to you in life. I may be a jerk, but one of us makes money and it's not you.
If you know all these developers and technical managers, how come you are still unemployed? If they are so smart how come they don't know the difference between procedural and OO design? You can respectfully or disrespectfully tell me anything you want. But at the end of the day, your resume still sucks and it's the reason you're not getting called back. It's up to you whether or not you want to listen to all your laughing "tech manager" friends who can't seem to get you a paycheck.
If at 18 you are resourceful enough to put yourself through college, you've learned everything that you are supposed to learn from the "one year off" lesson, and then some. Be my guest.
Actually, it's your resume that is a joke. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but fix that, and you'll start getting interviews.
First of all, you are a recent college grad. Did you get any resume help from your college career center? Would you be able to do it now? If not, go to net-temps.com and read every article you can find on resume writing. They have some great material that will help you immensely. As if you hadn't already guessed, you can post your resume there as well if you want.
Your resume is marketing material. What does your resume say about you? I'd argue it doesn't say much of anything. If I were looking for a C++ developer, I would have trashed your resume. Why? Because I don't see any C++ experience on it. Sure, I see that you took a course on C/C++ (what the heck is C/C++, anyway? Last I checked, C and C++ are similar only in basic syntax), but what did you do with it? printf("Hello world!");? Or did you do something serious?
Your first piece of experience is "Plan and implement custom software and tools". That's like a car advertisement that proudly proclaims, "Can transport you from point A to point B." Well, no shit. A developer develops and car drives. Tell me why YOU are special and better than the other 50 resumes I'm looking at.
Would it kill you to write something like, "Designed and implemented a buckeye sorting system for the Ohio Department of Buckeye Harvestation using C++ which increased buckeye sorting efficiency by 212% over the legacy system." This tells me a lot. It tells me you have real-world C++ experience. It tells me that you can bring a project to successful completion. It tells me that you know a thing or two about buckeyes and sorting, and while I don't have any buckeyes to sort at the present time, maybe I have shipping routes to optimize? It also shows me that you know how to take something which already exists and improve it substantially. These are all important things.
Oh, and another thing. You speak Chinese. That belongs on your resume. Now. If you don't feel your Chinese is good enough, it's time to find a Chinese friend.
Regarding your job search, can you still use on-campus recruiting? You'll compete well against other recent college grads, but you'll get creamed by someone with 10 years experience.
One last thing. There are two ways to do a job search. The way most people do it, and the right way. The way most people do it is to post their resume on monster.com, get zero hits, then bitch about the job market on slashdot. The correct way to do a job search is to call everybody you've ever known and tell them you are looking for a job. The experts call this "networking". Start with the people you've worked with. Then move on to your other friends, profs, students. Your parents' friends. Anyone who will listen. Attend local technology group events. There is undoubtedly a linux user group, java user group, or some XYZ user group in your area. Go there. Talk to everyone you can. Give out business cards and/or resumes. Do some research on something of interest to the group and then present on it.
Cute, but I have to say that I agree with Thoreau on this one. The only thing that makes us all equal is that we're only given a certain amount of time to walk the earth. Money is really not all that important when weighed against time, an individual's ultimate finite resource.
I'm glad it worked for you. My experience was more like: Click. Click. BSOD. Curse. Reboot. Click. Click. BSOD. Call Microsoft. Have them tell me I didn't put my machine together properly. Tell them I did put it together properly. Back, forth, back, forth. Return Windows to store. Install Debian (I guess my machine was put together properly after all).
It's not like I was trying to install some nasty version of windows, either (ME or something). That was Windows 2000 on a dual-P3 box, nothing special.
I read accounts of installs, and I'd have to be on a steady diet of boilermakers and cheap crack to waste my time like that for something as trical as television.
I still say it's not hard. In fact, installing MythTV is trivial.
I've seen better FUD in a Microsoft Linux memo.
Myth is a hell of a lot to install than Windows. Have you ever tried to install Windows? I tried to install it once on a box that I built. I was going to make it a dual-booter, but I had to give up on Windows. Debian installed flawlessly, so to this day that machine is Linux-only.
I was hoping someone who worked on the DC STARS project would comment on what is really going on. It's obvious the Washington Post staff writer doesn't have the foggiest fucking clue.
It's pretty clear the CTO also has no clue. All of the symptoms seem to point to the DC STARS app itself. Running Apache on Windows has been fine for years. Oracle itself is obviously not the problem, although it could be a bottleneck if improperly tuned. However, my guess is that the DC public schools doesn't have near the volume of data to require any Oracle tuning at all. I'd be very hesitant to point fingers at the web server that powers most of the Internet, and the database server that powers most of the financial industry (and most every other industry).
But this is the DC public schools, so certainly it must be someone else's fault. They'll never stop pointing fingers long enough to figure out the real issue.
Slashdot Mirror
No I didn't.
Here are some common reasons for techies to leave a company:
If you're looking for morale metrics, check out the average hours worked per employee per week. Also make sure it's not the same employees working all the overtime. Also, see how competitive your compensation is.
Obviously you should be asking the folks who are leaving what made them decide to leave. That's the best place to start.
My point still stands, however. PHP came first.
Fact: PHP was released on June 8, 1995.
Fact: The Java Servlet spec (first server-side Java) was released over 4 years later on October 1, 1999.
After 5 years, Java as caught up with and far surpassed PHP in terms of usage, tools, maturity, etc. Java is showing no signs of slowing down. I don't know what iPlanet Marc is on, but on my planet, if you want to do any server-side web programming, you better know J2EE or .NET.
Also funny was this quote from TFA:
Uh, yeah, Marc. That falls solidly in to the category of "thing we wish were true but aren't." I wish Flash wasn't so popular, but the fact is it's used very heavily.I did this because, in practice, my system never had a message scored 10 or higher that a used considered to be HAM, and indeed, no one has ever called and said, "WTF? My email didn't get through!" Also, in practice, the number of spams and hams that score between 5 and 10 is very low, so users do check their spamboxes. 99% of the messages delivered to the spam folder are flagged as spam. Every so often, a ham slips through, but never has a ham been rejected to my knowledge.
I like this solution because it keeps all obvious spam away from the users, keeps most non-obvious spam away from the users, yet never drops anything to /dev/null.
But where does the money come from to fund this brillian 20-step program?
Where can I sign up for that?
They broke off their engagement last week. Where the fuck have you been, man? ;)
You might be happy getting prints from WinkFlash. Their FAQ for Pros says they do not do any type of "correcting" to your photos. Plus they only charge $0.12/print plus shipping (I think $1).
One of the benefits of marriage is a wife with benefits.
I thought this type of thing was pretty common. I grew up in Minnesota and we had Canadians come down for heart surgery all the time. I guess given the choice between swallowing your pride by sidestepping the Canadian health care system and "death by waiting list"... well... yeah, let's just say Minnesota hospitals have saved a lot of Canadians' lives. It's a fair trade. We like to buy our prescription drugs from Canada.
Anyhow, I wish your friend the best of luck. Back problems can be totally debilitating.
By the way, the site was donate.bt.com. I would have gotten much better information had he just picked up a phone and called BT and asked them if it was legit.
Naturally, file "sharers" prefer that HBO would just engage in a technical arms-race like they're doing now. On strictly technical grounds, HBO will likely lose. However, from an ideological perspective, what HBO is doing (DOS attacking people) is wrong and illegal. I haven't kept up on the penalties, but I think these days launching a DOS attack carries more severe penalties than non-profit copyright infringement.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I always look for books at the library before I download them.
1. If your resume is so good, how come you are complaining that no one is calling you back?
2. If you think that C (a procedural language) and C++ (an object-oriented language) are similar architecturally, you have no business designing in either one of them. They are similar in a curly-brace sort of way, but a good C design will not even remotely resemble a good C++ design.
3. You've totally missed the point. When I'm flying through resumes, I'll never see your tag at the end of your resume. You need your strengths to pop out. Even if I did see that tag, I wouldn't waste my time sifting through your code samples.
4. Pretty much any project can be made to sound impressive. I thought I demonstrated that with my buckeye sorting example. Truly, who gives a fuck about buckeyes... but my example sounded pretty impressive, didn't it?
5. Yeah, I don't speak German anymore, either. But about 15 minutes after arriving in Austria I spoke it just fine. Right after I told you to put it on your resume, I told you to find a Chinese friend if you were rusty.
6. Keep networking.
I don't even remotely care what you think of my attitude. Not everyone is going to be nice to you in life. I may be a jerk, but one of us makes money and it's not you.
If you know all these developers and technical managers, how come you are still unemployed? If they are so smart how come they don't know the difference between procedural and OO design? You can respectfully or disrespectfully tell me anything you want. But at the end of the day, your resume still sucks and it's the reason you're not getting called back. It's up to you whether or not you want to listen to all your laughing "tech manager" friends who can't seem to get you a paycheck.
Cheers!
If at 18 you are resourceful enough to put yourself through college, you've learned everything that you are supposed to learn from the "one year off" lesson, and then some. Be my guest.
First of all, you are a recent college grad. Did you get any resume help from your college career center? Would you be able to do it now? If not, go to net-temps.com and read every article you can find on resume writing. They have some great material that will help you immensely. As if you hadn't already guessed, you can post your resume there as well if you want.
Your resume is marketing material. What does your resume say about you? I'd argue it doesn't say much of anything. If I were looking for a C++ developer, I would have trashed your resume. Why? Because I don't see any C++ experience on it. Sure, I see that you took a course on C/C++ (what the heck is C/C++, anyway? Last I checked, C and C++ are similar only in basic syntax), but what did you do with it? printf("Hello world!");? Or did you do something serious?
Your first piece of experience is "Plan and implement custom software and tools". That's like a car advertisement that proudly proclaims, "Can transport you from point A to point B." Well, no shit. A developer develops and car drives. Tell me why YOU are special and better than the other 50 resumes I'm looking at.
Would it kill you to write something like, "Designed and implemented a buckeye sorting system for the Ohio Department of Buckeye Harvestation using C++ which increased buckeye sorting efficiency by 212% over the legacy system." This tells me a lot. It tells me you have real-world C++ experience. It tells me that you can bring a project to successful completion. It tells me that you know a thing or two about buckeyes and sorting, and while I don't have any buckeyes to sort at the present time, maybe I have shipping routes to optimize? It also shows me that you know how to take something which already exists and improve it substantially. These are all important things.
Oh, and another thing. You speak Chinese. That belongs on your resume. Now. If you don't feel your Chinese is good enough, it's time to find a Chinese friend.
Regarding your job search, can you still use on-campus recruiting? You'll compete well against other recent college grads, but you'll get creamed by someone with 10 years experience.
One last thing. There are two ways to do a job search. The way most people do it, and the right way. The way most people do it is to post their resume on monster.com, get zero hits, then bitch about the job market on slashdot. The correct way to do a job search is to call everybody you've ever known and tell them you are looking for a job. The experts call this "networking". Start with the people you've worked with. Then move on to your other friends, profs, students. Your parents' friends. Anyone who will listen. Attend local technology group events. There is undoubtedly a linux user group, java user group, or some XYZ user group in your area. Go there. Talk to everyone you can. Give out business cards and/or resumes. Do some research on something of interest to the group and then present on it.
Does Postgres finally support replication? I had no idea!
Isn't owning the company grand?
Cute, but I have to say that I agree with Thoreau on this one. The only thing that makes us all equal is that we're only given a certain amount of time to walk the earth. Money is really not all that important when weighed against time, an individual's ultimate finite resource.
It's not like I was trying to install some nasty version of windows, either (ME or something). That was Windows 2000 on a dual-P3 box, nothing special.
And, yes, MythTV is easy to install.
Contrast that with the steps to set up TiVo:
Personally, I just started out with the MythTV box. I place value on my mental health as well as my time.
It's pretty clear the CTO also has no clue. All of the symptoms seem to point to the DC STARS app itself. Running Apache on Windows has been fine for years. Oracle itself is obviously not the problem, although it could be a bottleneck if improperly tuned. However, my guess is that the DC public schools doesn't have near the volume of data to require any Oracle tuning at all. I'd be very hesitant to point fingers at the web server that powers most of the Internet, and the database server that powers most of the financial industry (and most every other industry).
But this is the DC public schools, so certainly it must be someone else's fault. They'll never stop pointing fingers long enough to figure out the real issue.