ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft......which means ATI will be yanking all their open source and Linux support within the next 60 days.
Do you really want to be working for a company that 1) has administrators that stupid and 2) can treat employees like trash like that?
I was talking about similar situations recently with a friend and we both realized that the few times we had been fired unfairly (in one case she was one of two sales reps reaching well over 100% of her quota regularly and the other rep wasn't even close to 100%), we realized those were jobs we originally wanted to keep, but realized (with time and distance) that we were miserable there and were working for jerks.
I'm working for myself now, but I've learned that when management acts that way, you're probably better off somewhere else. Just see if you can do something about getting a good recommendation.
The Genuine People Personality software is patented by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, so i'd be careful that they don't sue:)
Here's an original idea: We could take the concept of GPP software, write out the descriptions and implementations, drop it in a time warp so it appears in the past, and we could use it to prove the idea was ours all along.
That's an idea so unique, it might even gain a mention in Encyclopedia Galactica.
Imagine if that boss had just explained to you the reasons why he was using that equiptment in a clear and rational way. Poof, problem solved, you wouldn't have been pestering him any more...
It's not his job. Simple as that. He could have explained. Then I might have countered, and he'd have to counter. Kind of like what you're doing now -- you just can't accept that the person in charge is in charge. Since you haven't been in management, you haven't seen it from that side. I gave an example, earlier, of one of my first epxeriences in management, as a teenager, directing and producing a 2 hour production that aired on local cable. Notice that I point out that I started in management with your inexperienced ideas -- that it was the job of the manager to explain his/her decisions to everyone. I found out rather quickly it doesn't work that way. Usually there's too much to do. While I don't like employees who blindly follow orders, I've found that (unless I have time to be wasted), I don't have the time to continually explain my decisions to people I'm paying to do their job. It is quite clear you can't accept that. Fine. Don't accept it. I've wasted enough time -- this is an example. I have a number of reasons for my management style. I've gone over it with someone who doesn't like it, and keeps coming back over and over saying, "Hey, you're wrong." Maybe. Maybe not. But until you've seen both sides of the fence, you'll never know for sure. You'll just "know" you're right, but you'll never have the experience to back it up. This can go on, back and forth, forever. So could the discussions that boss would have had with me. In truth, he saved a lot of time by just telling me to shut up and do my job.
I've found, from experience, that those who keep giving unsolicited advice don't stop at giving the advice. From my experience working in residential treatment, I've learned to look at underlying motives -- why is a person really doing something?
In this case, bottom line: control. And, in this case, I have it, you don't. And you just can't stand that, so you have to keep coming back and telling me what to do. Great -- you make six figures. Great -- your company can't survive without you. Great -- you know so much you are the foremost expert in everything. But until you are willing to put it on the line and manage something where YOU make the decisions and YOU take the heat, don't tell others how to do it. It's just too damn much like a eunich in a harem.
I've seen both ends. From your admission and re-direction of topic, it appears you haven't, and are definately stuck in an "I'm right, and everyone should listen to me." I'm saying when someone starts and runs a business, what happens are their decisions. They can hire you and pay you, but, in the end, it's their decision. You seem to have missed that point over and over and would like to continue to talk about poor management. What's your issue? You don't like the way I run my business -- that's clear. You aren't working for me, you won't be working for me, so why keep whining?
If you'll excuse me, I'm out of this discussion. Bottom line: In my business, I make the decisions and they're my responsibility. You've clarified my point by bickering: when a manager takes time to explain, the explaination is never good enough. Someone that wants to keep telling him what to do has more motives than just "trying to help." They won't let go or let the discussion end until they win. I don't have time for that and my employees don't. If I wasted all that time, I wouldn't be able to spend time doing some of the extra things I treat them to. At some point a boundary has to be set. You're not comfortable with my boundaries, so you're willing to go on and on until you can force me to see I'm right. You've proved a good part of my reasoning: spend your time explaining every decision and someone is going to keep question you over and over and won't let it drop. In the long run, it works better to ju
I have turned down more management positions than I care to count
In other words, no management experience.
Indeed, are you an engineer? Can you do my job? No? Then stop telling me how to do it.
Thank you for making my point, without realizing it. Your point, that unless I'm an engineer I don't know how to do your job is a "two edged sword." You admit to not managing, yet you seem to know how to manage. Yet, you say one who is not in your job or is not an engineer doesn't know how to do your job.
Let me know when you've spent a few years in management. When you've worked on both sides of the fence, let's hear what you think.
I've worked both sides, I know both arguments. There was one small business I worked for where I was continually telling the boss about the problems with equipment and why we should be using something else and what was wrong with the current system. I'm still on good terms with him. Last year, I stopped by his business and apologized for doing that. Why? Because I learned, after running my own business for a while, that management is making their decisions for a reason, often many reasons, and it is management's decision to make those decisions. Often the employees are critizing the management's decisions without knowing the whole story -- and it is not the job of management to justify or explain everything to their employees.
Again, spend a few years on both sides of the fence. I have. I found my views changed drasticly when my decisions were putting my assets and business on the line.
Maybe I have a better understanding of it than you are willing to believe. You seem to have the feeling that you are the bottom line. Not true. Never. The person/people who are running the company are. It is their choice to listen or not listen to your advice.
But, from what you say, it seems clear that you are the ultimate expert. You are the one who knows what should be done. You are the final authority.
So why are you busy working for others who make more than you and can decide your fate? Why don't you "put your money where your mouth is?"
While I go out of my way to listen to input from all employees (see my other posts in this thread), the bottom line is that the welfare of the company is my responsibility and rests on my decisions (which include who I listen to or don't listen to). I pointed this out in another post: it's like the concept of the Captain being fully responsible for everything on his ship. You and a hundred other experts can advise me all day long, but when actions or decisions are made, I'm the one that has to make them, not you. There's a big difference between telling everyone you know what to do and have all the answers and are the best and smartest in your field and being the one that actually makes the decisions that determine if the company survives. I did a lot of "advising" and consulting and found that it is quite different when one has to actually make the decision and take the responsibility for it than when one is just the advisor.
So I take it, since you have such vast wisdom, you must be on the board of directors or running your own business?
As I said in another comment, it always amazes me that the people that give me the most advice on running a business are the ones who have never run one. And 99% of the time, they're people who have never worked in management at all. I keep wondering why, if they have so much wisdom, they're the ones working for others, instead of using their vast wisdom to run that perfect company they say they know how to run.
It's like a friend of mine -- he had a few years of experience in teaching Sunday School and kept telling parents what to do and how to raise their kids. When his wife was expecting, he kept talking about how he had learned so much that he knew the perfect way to raise a kid and commented to me that in 18 years everybody would be amazed and see how it should be done.
Within 3 months after his kid was born, he shut up and NEVER told others how to raise their kids once he started really doing it.
The moral: Those who can, do. Those who think they can, don't, but cannot accept that, so they work for those who do and continually tell them why they're doing it wrong.
No, I won't listen to your advice. I pay you to follow my instructions, not vice versa. I'm much more lenient than most bosses, but if you try that, you're likely to be out of a job whether the company goes down or not.
Suppose I decide I'm tired of running the company and decide to close it or sell it to the highest bidder. Closing it will eliminate your job. Suppose I know the buyer plans on elminating your position. The decision I make still directly effects you. Does that mean it's your responsibility to advise me? Absolutely NOT! You may want to advise me. You may want to tell me, or even beg me, to do what you think I should, but it's not your responsibility to tell the boss what to do.
It's like the naval principle -- the Captain is responsible for everything that happens on his ship. He can claim he doesn't know about something an Ensign did, but it's the Captain's job to make sure he is fully aware of anything that happens on his ship.
Your comment reminds me of something I heard David Gerrold (author of "Trouble with Tribbles") say once. He commented that you usually can't tell the quality of a book by reading just the first and last lines. Then he commented that if the first line was, "You'll find things are a lot different out here than you learned at the academy, Ensign Jones," and the last line is, "Well, Ensign Jones, I guess we misjudged you." It really sounds like you've been watching too many "Ensign Jones" movies -- the ones where the greenhorn, fresh out of training, saves the day in spite of the fact that everyone else in the story has much more experience and knows what they're doing. It's a nice story, and we all can identify with someone new in a strange situation, so we see it a lot, but it's just not realistic.
My personal thought: I started a business because I was willing to put my experience and abilities to the test. In getting it up and running, I learned more things than I ever expected. I'm always amazed at all the "Ensign Joneses" that come in and want to work for me and think they can run it better than I can. If they're really that capable and can run a business and should be making the decisions, why are they coming to me for a job, instead of taking the risk on their own and putting their skills, which they are so sure are unparalleled, to the test?
From the sound of it, you don't make arbitrary decisions without employee feedback
I usually don't. My overall point (or part of it) is that the bottom line rests on me, so I reserve the right to make decisions without feedback, since it is my job to be aware of everything and I may very well be making decisions based on factors most employees do now know about.
I do agree that the situation is different with stock options. I seriously doubt I will ever be involved with a public corporation. It's not my only reason, but as an example, "Marketplace," an excellent business program on National Public Radio, ran a story on SAS Software. They have a turnover rate of 4% -- almost unheard of. They do things like have a concert pianist playing in the lunch room during lunch, onsite day care, gyms and many other facilities for employees to use. The owner refuses to go public because he knows once he does, all that will change because stockholders will look not only at the bottom line, but at TODAY's bottom line.
I like what I do and I make sure employees feel the same way. If I snap at someone, they know I'm under pressure and to back off until I have time to cool down. I've done things like declare St. Lucas day (we all took the day off and went to see Attack of the Clones). We also had St. Tolkein's day, St. Roddenberry's day (for Star Trek: Nemesis), St. Rowling's day, and even St. Wachowski day. I'm sure you can figure out which movies we took off to see on each of those days. In truth, I don't feel things like this cost money, since we're getting all the work we have done on time anyway. Adding in extras like that just make it a little more fun. I go out of my way to treat my employees with respect and that may be why, when I tell them a matter is not up for discussion, or that my decision is final, they generally leave it at that.
I've opened the article in a new tab and will be reading it in a few hours -- when I get to my nightly news, so maybe this is mentioned there, but:
So they're testing WinXP and KDE on a number of people to see which is easier to use. What is the testers' past experience? If you're dealing with people who work in an office environment, then they're used to the Windows interface already, which means XP has a major edge from the start.
Goback and re-read my post. You missed my point - that your post comes across as "I'm the boss, what I say goes."
And just what part of that is so difficult to understand?
I'm not joking. When I started putting together the business, I had nothing, except credit card debt and a truck in my name (and a dog, if you count that). I'm the person who took every risk, who went to countless banks only to be turned down because the business was new, who went for several years with having to decide what bills to pay this month and what to pay next, who rarely got more than 5 hours sleep a day for the same several years, and went through ALL the other pains of getting business going.
Unless something goes VERY wrong, this will take care of my retirement, as well as my kids (when I have time to date/get married/have kids). After going through all the pains of starting this business, I have no desire to ever go through it again, nor to ever work for anyone else again. I started this business for me -- because it was what I wanted to do, because it would take care of my retirement, and because it would give financial security.
That also means it is MY responsibility. Not yours, not the coders', not my lawyers', not my accountant's, but MINE. While I may delegate decisions and functions, it's up to me. Which means I take the heat and the rewards.
I'm not a lawyer - but I know enough about licensing issues to spot -- and can you spot them better than my lawyer, whom I am paying to spot them? Yes, you have a wide variety of experience. But, for example, you only watched a sales staff try something. Can you tell me why it failed? Can you give me a market analysis explaining why the tactic didn't work, but why it looked good?
If you tell me you think we may have licensing issues and my lawyer doesn't, can you guess who I'm going to listen to?
I can see your overall point -- that you have a certain amount of knowledge and experience and it should be looked upon as a resource. While that is true, I've noticed -- especially on/. -- that there are a HUGE number of techies who are very much aware of their intelligence and skills. What they are not aware of is that they do not hold a monopoly on smarts. There seems to be a glass wall, built by the techies themselves, holding them back. Part of that wall is the attitude of, "I know something so you should (or have to) listen to me."
There's another side to it. It's from boss-man's point of view. When you're dealing with your supervisor, you're dealing with someone who has either built the company, or worked hard to get into their management position. While you may be so eager to share your experience, you've forgotten that you're talking to some who, quite often, has even more experience. (It reminds me of when I was a teacher and students would try the same excuses every year, thinking they were original and air-tight. It never occured to them I may have tried the same excuses anywhere from 6-15 years ago.)
Having said all that (and a few other posts), I'll comment that, in reality, I run my company under very unique principles, based on the organization of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which involves respecting the uniqueness of each individual. (If you're not familiar with it, I don't have time to explain it here and now.) I make sure all the different viewpoints are taken into consideration. However, I've learned that usually the person who is continually making suggestions on how everyone else should do their job or what they should do often is doing it out of motives other than just helping. I spent enough time teaching in residential treatment and dealing with people with "messiah" complexes who have to "save the world" or always have the answer that I'm fed up with it. I'm very wary of the person who is always telling everyone else how everything should be done.
Even if you're not, you had better realize that, particularly in the technology field, you hire people for their expertise. Tell me why you would hire someone for their knowlege and experience, and then ignore their opinions on the areas they are uniquely quilified to comment on?
Go back and re-read the post. I gave an example, from my experience over 20 years ago, of what happened when I was directing a production. Later I make the point that there are many other factors. I get opinions. I pay people for their opinions. I weight them. Then I decide. Yes, I hire people for expertise in their fiedl. I'm sorry, but you seem to have missed the many parts where I went to pains to point out that a decision in one area is often impacted by situations across the board. I don't need an IT person to be telling me how to reform my accounting system. That's my account's job -- another person whom I pay for their expertise.
I'm not unique in this, but have you looked at it from the other side? Perhaps it might help you, who is so much wiser than your supervisors (who, contrary to popular belief rarely get their job through the "Mel Cooley" route of being related to the boss) to look at things from management's point of view. (Side note: This is a point that seems to come up a lot in Ask/. -- it seems a lot of the IT people here are too busy being intelligent, patting themselves on the back for it, and showing their intelligence to actually THINK about what's going on!)
I own my own business. Before that, I worked for a few local small businesses. I've also worked as a teacher, with numerous students telling me they knew much more about what they had to know to do Algebra well than I did. The first time I was in charge of people was when I was a teenager, when I was directing and producing a 2 hour dramatic (and sci-fi based with special effects!) production to air on local cable TV. It seems easiest to make my point with an example from that experience. I knew the script forward and backward. If someone called out a scene number (w/ over 100 scenes in a 2 hour script), I could tell you what happened, what actors and props were needed, what set it was on, etc. - everything about it. I could also tell you what scenes came before and after, as well as what the last scene any actor, prop, or set was used and what the next one they were in would be. I had to know all this, since I had nobody to help with continuity. Many times actors would make suggestions they thought would make it better. At first I tried to explain ("No, we can't add a punchline for comic relief here, since we're building toward something more dramatic 2 scenes down," or "I know you look better in that costume, but in the last scene, you were angry and took off and you've been tramping around in the woods, with no luxeries for 2 weeks in July, so you can't wear the sweater that makes you look stacked!") to the actors why or why not something would work. I found that often they were too focused on their own performances (as they should be) to keep the overall view in mind. Often they would say a suggestion whould make their scene better or add personality to the character. After a while I had so much to do I couldn't always explain why I had to (or decided to) say no to many requests. Many times I nixed an idea because it would completely destroy a scene that was important to another character, only to hear an actor walk away, mumbling under their breath, something about just wanting a quality production. What they did not see, and often could not see without the exhaustive time I had put into studying the script before I had cast any of them, was the big picture. I wasn't against quality, but I couldn't have someone changing one scene when it disrupted the overall story.
I find that happening in offices all the time. In my company, the employees do not need to know why I make a decision. The point is it's my business, I'm in charge, and it's my job to keep the business running. I may go with a system that costs more today. Maybe I've got a good relationship with the vendor and know that in another month I'll be buying video equipment instead of computer equipment and they can get it for me for wholesale.
The point is that, as an employee, you don't know why management is making their decisions. It's not your job to know and it's not their job to tell you. When I hire a coder, his/her job is to write code -- and possibly to give advice (when asked for) on overall computer systems. Maybe what I'm doing doesn't make sense to them. It doesn't have to. It makes sense to me. Maybe I'm spending more now because it's a tradeoff and I'd rather spend a few thousand extra on a LAN and save three times that much next month on video equipment. Maybe I'm getting equipment from one dealer because I can barter with him and keep my net cost down. It's not my job to tell an IT person why I'm doing something. It's my sho
To be honest, I didn't read the article. I figured, "Okay, they say there's x stars in the Universe. So what else are they going to say? Who counted, what part of the sky they sampled (I seriously doubt they counted the entire night sky and each of 70 sextillion stars) and they'll probably try to find a way to bring the figure home."
Seriously, so why read an article when the story is basically all revealed in the headline? Especially when the link is to CNN -- the "news" network that claims to be so important, but had no issue with wasting 8 hours a day for over a year covering something as "news worthy" as the O.J. trial?
Actually, I did quite well in my math classes, when I was still seriously considering and working towards a Master's (until I decided to focus more on people and teaching instead). While there are a lot of situations where an actual picture won't work, you'd be surprised at how well visual learners can adapt and can create "visualizations" of abstract concepts in their heads. In order to grasp something, I often had two or three or more related visualizations in my head, overlapping, to avoid "contradictions."
Another point, one I should have mentioned earler: research has shown (and my experience backs this up 100%) that while it is possible for "visual" (not the best term, but let's stick with it for consistency) to sometimes understand how the more "concrete" learners perceive or learn, it is basically impossible for a "concrete" learner to understand a "visual" learner and see why there might be any advantage to that learning style.
You make some excellent points. The strongest of these is "the quote is selective and out of place." I would strongly agree with you there. I don't think this quotation should be at all directly applied to learning/teaching. I can see where visualization might be a problem with some types of programming, but I have also found that "visual" thinkers often do very well by creating their own ways to visualize abstract ideas.
Thanks for the URL. I'll check into it in the next day or two, when I expect to have more time.
Overall, with what I've seen about how people learn, I would never feel safe teaching anything to any group of people and insisting on using only one method of presentation.
"The habit of using pictorial aids, like any habit, is very difficult to get rid of. If, however, we take any responsibility for the effectiveness of our thinking habits, we should try to get rid of the habit as quickly as possibile, for it is a bad habit, confusing and misleading up to the point of being paralysing."
Anyone who would say that obviously has no knowledge of how people learn and how different people learn with different styles.
As someone who spent 10 years with learning disabled and emotionally disturbed students, I can say one of the most effective teaching aids for ANYONE is finding out how they learn and presenting material in the style in which they absorb it the best. Since I worked with those who had the most difficulty learning, I had to learn as much as possible about how we ALL -- disabled, "normal", or gifted learn.
In a nutshell, anyone who can make a statement like the one above is ignorant. It has the sound of someone who is so busy showing off how intelligent he or she is that he has yet to realize how little he knows about people.
Perhaps it was written by someone who does well with the style of learning he describes because he spends all his time in books and on the web and has not yet learned how to deal with the real world yet.
Okay, so I added the "s" to keep the verb in agreement with the noun. To be technical, I should have written that word as "love[s]" with the braces to indicate a change.
On the other hand, if you look, I was basically staying with his quotation. If that one letter to keep the tense straight is so important to you, then I strongly suggest you get a video of Shatner's "Saturday Night Live" sketch -- the one where he tells everyone to "Get a life!" I suggest watching it for 2 reasons: 1) If you're that stuck up on the quotation differing by 1 letter, you are very much the kind of fan depicted in that sketch and described by Shatner when he was ranting, and 2) you seriously need to get a real life.
I used to pitch stories to Star Trek: The Next Generation. My agent was the same one that got Ron Moore started. She got me in the door and I would pitch stories over the phone (I'm told this is VERY rare) to Moore. Even though I did get a couple mentions (by reference, not by name) in "Hollywood Scriptwriter," I have to point out, before I make my comments, that Ron Moore is making a living writing for film and TV and I'm not (although my company will soon be producing video and digital film).
Ron likes to change things. He's the writer at ST:TNG who would frequently change things from the way they were. He wrote "Relics," the episode where Scotty is found in an old ship and says, "I'll bet Jim Kirk himself took the Enterprise out of mothballs to find me." Later he, with Brannon Braga, has Scotty see the gaping hole in "Generations" where Kirk was "killed."
Ron, as best I could tell, is a very intelligent, articulate, and friendly (if shy, it seemed) person. I would never wish him any ill will. However, he has shown that whenever he works with anyone else's material, he "loves to change things" (as Scotty once said). He seems to actually take delight in making sure he takes the original material and changes it enough to actually irritate fans of the original.
Once I saw his name attached to the project, I basically decided I was VERY unlikely to watch it. When I found out Starbuck was a woman, I was sure I wouldn't watch it. It completely destroys the "buddy" relationship that was so important to the original.
Slashdot Mirror
ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft... ...which means ATI will be yanking all their open source and Linux support within the next 60 days.
It's Corel all over again.
Do you really want to be working for a company that 1) has administrators that stupid and 2) can treat employees like trash like that?
I was talking about similar situations recently with a friend and we both realized that the few times we had been fired unfairly (in one case she was one of two sales reps reaching well over 100% of her quota regularly and the other rep wasn't even close to 100%), we realized those were jobs we originally wanted to keep, but realized (with time and distance) that we were miserable there and were working for jerks.
I'm working for myself now, but I've learned that when management acts that way, you're probably better off somewhere else. Just see if you can do something about getting a good recommendation.
The Genuine People Personality software is patented by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, so i'd be careful that they don't sue :)
Here's an original idea: We could take the concept of GPP software, write out the descriptions and implementations, drop it in a time warp so it appears in the past, and we could use it to prove the idea was ours all along.
That's an idea so unique, it might even gain a mention in Encyclopedia Galactica.
Imagine if that boss had just explained to you the reasons why he was using that equiptment in a clear and rational way. Poof, problem solved, you wouldn't have been pestering him any more...
It's not his job. Simple as that. He could have explained. Then I might have countered, and he'd have to counter. Kind of like what you're doing now -- you just can't accept that the person in charge is in charge. Since you haven't been in management, you haven't seen it from that side. I gave an example, earlier, of one of my first epxeriences in management, as a teenager, directing and producing a 2 hour production that aired on local cable. Notice that I point out that I started in management with your inexperienced ideas -- that it was the job of the manager to explain his/her decisions to everyone. I found out rather quickly it doesn't work that way. Usually there's too much to do. While I don't like employees who blindly follow orders, I've found that (unless I have time to be wasted), I don't have the time to continually explain my decisions to people I'm paying to do their job. It is quite clear you can't accept that. Fine. Don't accept it. I've wasted enough time -- this is an example. I have a number of reasons for my management style. I've gone over it with someone who doesn't like it, and keeps coming back over and over saying, "Hey, you're wrong." Maybe. Maybe not. But until you've seen both sides of the fence, you'll never know for sure. You'll just "know" you're right, but you'll never have the experience to back it up. This can go on, back and forth, forever. So could the discussions that boss would have had with me. In truth, he saved a lot of time by just telling me to shut up and do my job.
I've found, from experience, that those who keep giving unsolicited advice don't stop at giving the advice. From my experience working in residential treatment, I've learned to look at underlying motives -- why is a person really doing something?
In this case, bottom line: control. And, in this case, I have it, you don't. And you just can't stand that, so you have to keep coming back and telling me what to do. Great -- you make six figures. Great -- your company can't survive without you. Great -- you know so much you are the foremost expert in everything. But until you are willing to put it on the line and manage something where YOU make the decisions and YOU take the heat, don't tell others how to do it. It's just too damn much like a eunich in a harem.
I've seen both ends. From your admission and re-direction of topic, it appears you haven't, and are definately stuck in an "I'm right, and everyone should listen to me." I'm saying when someone starts and runs a business, what happens are their decisions. They can hire you and pay you, but, in the end, it's their decision. You seem to have missed that point over and over and would like to continue to talk about poor management. What's your issue? You don't like the way I run my business -- that's clear. You aren't working for me, you won't be working for me, so why keep whining?
If you'll excuse me, I'm out of this discussion. Bottom line: In my business, I make the decisions and they're my responsibility. You've clarified my point by bickering: when a manager takes time to explain, the explaination is never good enough. Someone that wants to keep telling him what to do has more motives than just "trying to help." They won't let go or let the discussion end until they win. I don't have time for that and my employees don't. If I wasted all that time, I wouldn't be able to spend time doing some of the extra things I treat them to. At some point a boundary has to be set. You're not comfortable with my boundaries, so you're willing to go on and on until you can force me to see I'm right. You've proved a good part of my reasoning: spend your time explaining every decision and someone is going to keep question you over and over and won't let it drop. In the long run, it works better to ju
And I would never allow anything in my company to be structured so any one person is that vital to the business. In my eyes, it'd be poor management.
It seems unlikely that you and your ego will have to worry about working for me, then, will you?
I have turned down more management positions than I care to count
In other words, no management experience.
Indeed, are you an engineer? Can you do my job? No? Then stop telling me how to do it.
Thank you for making my point, without realizing it. Your point, that unless I'm an engineer I don't know how to do your job is a "two edged sword." You admit to not managing, yet you seem to know how to manage. Yet, you say one who is not in your job or is not an engineer doesn't know how to do your job.
Let me know when you've spent a few years in management. When you've worked on both sides of the fence, let's hear what you think.
I've worked both sides, I know both arguments. There was one small business I worked for where I was continually telling the boss about the problems with equipment and why we should be using something else and what was wrong with the current system. I'm still on good terms with him. Last year, I stopped by his business and apologized for doing that. Why? Because I learned, after running my own business for a while, that management is making their decisions for a reason, often many reasons, and it is management's decision to make those decisions. Often the employees are critizing the management's decisions without knowing the whole story -- and it is not the job of management to justify or explain everything to their employees.
Again, spend a few years on both sides of the fence. I have. I found my views changed drasticly when my decisions were putting my assets and business on the line.
Maybe I have a better understanding of it than you are willing to believe. You seem to have the feeling that you are the bottom line. Not true. Never. The person/people who are running the company are. It is their choice to listen or not listen to your advice.
But, from what you say, it seems clear that you are the ultimate expert. You are the one who knows what should be done. You are the final authority.
So why are you busy working for others who make more than you and can decide your fate? Why don't you "put your money where your mouth is?"
While I go out of my way to listen to input from all employees (see my other posts in this thread), the bottom line is that the welfare of the company is my responsibility and rests on my decisions (which include who I listen to or don't listen to). I pointed this out in another post: it's like the concept of the Captain being fully responsible for everything on his ship. You and a hundred other experts can advise me all day long, but when actions or decisions are made, I'm the one that has to make them, not you. There's a big difference between telling everyone you know what to do and have all the answers and are the best and smartest in your field and being the one that actually makes the decisions that determine if the company survives. I did a lot of "advising" and consulting and found that it is quite different when one has to actually make the decision and take the responsibility for it than when one is just the advisor.
So I take it, since you have such vast wisdom, you must be on the board of directors or running your own business?
As I said in another comment, it always amazes me that the people that give me the most advice on running a business are the ones who have never run one. And 99% of the time, they're people who have never worked in management at all. I keep wondering why, if they have so much wisdom, they're the ones working for others, instead of using their vast wisdom to run that perfect company they say they know how to run.
It's like a friend of mine -- he had a few years of experience in teaching Sunday School and kept telling parents what to do and how to raise their kids. When his wife was expecting, he kept talking about how he had learned so much that he knew the perfect way to raise a kid and commented to me that in 18 years everybody would be amazed and see how it should be done.
Within 3 months after his kid was born, he shut up and NEVER told others how to raise their kids once he started really doing it.
The moral: Those who can, do. Those who think they can, don't, but cannot accept that, so they work for those who do and continually tell them why they're doing it wrong.
No, I won't listen to your advice. I pay you to follow my instructions, not vice versa. I'm much more lenient than most bosses, but if you try that, you're likely to be out of a job whether the company goes down or not.
Suppose I decide I'm tired of running the company and decide to close it or sell it to the highest bidder. Closing it will eliminate your job. Suppose I know the buyer plans on elminating your position. The decision I make still directly effects you. Does that mean it's your responsibility to advise me? Absolutely NOT! You may want to advise me. You may want to tell me, or even beg me, to do what you think I should, but it's not your responsibility to tell the boss what to do.
It's like the naval principle -- the Captain is responsible for everything that happens on his ship. He can claim he doesn't know about something an Ensign did, but it's the Captain's job to make sure he is fully aware of anything that happens on his ship.
Your comment reminds me of something I heard David Gerrold (author of "Trouble with Tribbles") say once. He commented that you usually can't tell the quality of a book by reading just the first and last lines. Then he commented that if the first line was, "You'll find things are a lot different out here than you learned at the academy, Ensign Jones," and the last line is, "Well, Ensign Jones, I guess we misjudged you." It really sounds like you've been watching too many "Ensign Jones" movies -- the ones where the greenhorn, fresh out of training, saves the day in spite of the fact that everyone else in the story has much more experience and knows what they're doing. It's a nice story, and we all can identify with someone new in a strange situation, so we see it a lot, but it's just not realistic.
My personal thought: I started a business because I was willing to put my experience and abilities to the test. In getting it up and running, I learned more things than I ever expected. I'm always amazed at all the "Ensign Joneses" that come in and want to work for me and think they can run it better than I can. If they're really that capable and can run a business and should be making the decisions, why are they coming to me for a job, instead of taking the risk on their own and putting their skills, which they are so sure are unparalleled, to the test?
From the sound of it, you don't make arbitrary decisions without employee feedback
I usually don't. My overall point (or part of it) is that the bottom line rests on me, so I reserve the right to make decisions without feedback, since it is my job to be aware of everything and I may very well be making decisions based on factors most employees do now know about.
I do agree that the situation is different with stock options. I seriously doubt I will ever be involved with a public corporation. It's not my only reason, but as an example, "Marketplace," an excellent business program on National Public Radio, ran a story on SAS Software. They have a turnover rate of 4% -- almost unheard of. They do things like have a concert pianist playing in the lunch room during lunch, onsite day care, gyms and many other facilities for employees to use. The owner refuses to go public because he knows once he does, all that will change because stockholders will look not only at the bottom line, but at TODAY's bottom line.
I like what I do and I make sure employees feel the same way. If I snap at someone, they know I'm under pressure and to back off until I have time to cool down. I've done things like declare St. Lucas day (we all took the day off and went to see Attack of the Clones). We also had St. Tolkein's day, St. Roddenberry's day (for Star Trek: Nemesis), St. Rowling's day, and even St. Wachowski day. I'm sure you can figure out which movies we took off to see on each of those days. In truth, I don't feel things like this cost money, since we're getting all the work we have done on time anyway. Adding in extras like that just make it a little more fun. I go out of my way to treat my employees with respect and that may be why, when I tell them a matter is not up for discussion, or that my decision is final, they generally leave it at that.
I've opened the article in a new tab and will be reading it in a few hours -- when I get to my nightly news, so maybe this is mentioned there, but:
So they're testing WinXP and KDE on a number of people to see which is easier to use. What is the testers' past experience? If you're dealing with people who work in an office environment, then they're used to the Windows interface already, which means XP has a major edge from the start.
Actually, we're not hiring now.
/. -- if private messages are possible, feel free to contact me and discuss this more.)
(I haven't had time to explore all features of
Goback and re-read my post. You missed my point - that your post comes across as "I'm the boss, what I say goes."
/. -- that there are a HUGE number of techies who are very much aware of their intelligence and skills. What they are not aware of is that they do not hold a monopoly on smarts. There seems to be a glass wall, built by the techies themselves, holding them back. Part of that wall is the attitude of, "I know something so you should (or have to) listen to me."
And just what part of that is so difficult to understand?
I'm not joking. When I started putting together the business, I had nothing, except credit card debt and a truck in my name (and a dog, if you count that). I'm the person who took every risk, who went to countless banks only to be turned down because the business was new, who went for several years with having to decide what bills to pay this month and what to pay next, who rarely got more than 5 hours sleep a day for the same several years, and went through ALL the other pains of getting business going.
Unless something goes VERY wrong, this will take care of my retirement, as well as my kids (when I have time to date/get married/have kids). After going through all the pains of starting this business, I have no desire to ever go through it again, nor to ever work for anyone else again. I started this business for me -- because it was what I wanted to do, because it would take care of my retirement, and because it would give financial security.
That also means it is MY responsibility. Not yours, not the coders', not my lawyers', not my accountant's, but MINE. While I may delegate decisions and functions, it's up to me. Which means I take the heat and the rewards.
I'm not a lawyer - but I know enough about licensing issues to spot -- and can you spot them better than my lawyer, whom I am paying to spot them? Yes, you have a wide variety of experience. But, for example, you only watched a sales staff try something. Can you tell me why it failed? Can you give me a market analysis explaining why the tactic didn't work, but why it looked good?
If you tell me you think we may have licensing issues and my lawyer doesn't, can you guess who I'm going to listen to?
I can see your overall point -- that you have a certain amount of knowledge and experience and it should be looked upon as a resource. While that is true, I've noticed -- especially on
There's another side to it. It's from boss-man's point of view. When you're dealing with your supervisor, you're dealing with someone who has either built the company, or worked hard to get into their management position. While you may be so eager to share your experience, you've forgotten that you're talking to some who, quite often, has even more experience. (It reminds me of when I was a teacher and students would try the same excuses every year, thinking they were original and air-tight. It never occured to them I may have tried the same excuses anywhere from 6-15 years ago.)
Having said all that (and a few other posts), I'll comment that, in reality, I run my company under very unique principles, based on the organization of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which involves respecting the uniqueness of each individual. (If you're not familiar with it, I don't have time to explain it here and now.) I make sure all the different viewpoints are taken into consideration. However, I've learned that usually the person who is continually making suggestions on how everyone else should do their job or what they should do often is doing it out of motives other than just helping. I spent enough time teaching in residential treatment and dealing with people with "messiah" complexes who have to "save the world" or always have the answer that I'm fed up with it. I'm very wary of the person who is always telling everyone else how everything should be done.
Even if you're not, you had better realize that, particularly in the technology field, you hire people for their expertise. Tell me why you would hire someone for their knowlege and experience, and then ignore their opinions on the areas they are uniquely quilified to comment on?
Go back and re-read the post. I gave an example, from my experience over 20 years ago, of what happened when I was directing a production. Later I make the point that there are many other factors. I get opinions. I pay people for their opinions. I weight them. Then I decide. Yes, I hire people for expertise in their fiedl. I'm sorry, but you seem to have missed the many parts where I went to pains to point out that a decision in one area is often impacted by situations across the board. I don't need an IT person to be telling me how to reform my accounting system. That's my account's job -- another person whom I pay for their expertise.
I'm not unique in this, but have you looked at it from the other side? Perhaps it might help you, who is so much wiser than your supervisors (who, contrary to popular belief rarely get their job through the "Mel Cooley" route of being related to the boss) to look at things from management's point of view. (Side note: This is a point that seems to come up a lot in Ask /. -- it seems a lot of the IT people here are too busy being intelligent, patting themselves on the back for it, and showing their intelligence to actually THINK about what's going on!)
I own my own business. Before that, I worked for a few local small businesses. I've also worked as a teacher, with numerous students telling me they knew much more about what they had to know to do Algebra well than I did. The first time I was in charge of people was when I was a teenager, when I was directing and producing a 2 hour dramatic (and sci-fi based with special effects!) production to air on local cable TV. It seems easiest to make my point with an example from that experience. I knew the script forward and backward. If someone called out a scene number (w/ over 100 scenes in a 2 hour script), I could tell you what happened, what actors and props were needed, what set it was on, etc. - everything about it. I could also tell you what scenes came before and after, as well as what the last scene any actor, prop, or set was used and what the next one they were in would be. I had to know all this, since I had nobody to help with continuity. Many times actors would make suggestions they thought would make it better. At first I tried to explain ("No, we can't add a punchline for comic relief here, since we're building toward something more dramatic 2 scenes down," or "I know you look better in that costume, but in the last scene, you were angry and took off and you've been tramping around in the woods, with no luxeries for 2 weeks in July, so you can't wear the sweater that makes you look stacked!") to the actors why or why not something would work. I found that often they were too focused on their own performances (as they should be) to keep the overall view in mind. Often they would say a suggestion whould make their scene better or add personality to the character. After a while I had so much to do I couldn't always explain why I had to (or decided to) say no to many requests. Many times I nixed an idea because it would completely destroy a scene that was important to another character, only to hear an actor walk away, mumbling under their breath, something about just wanting a quality production. What they did not see, and often could not see without the exhaustive time I had put into studying the script before I had cast any of them, was the big picture. I wasn't against quality, but I couldn't have someone changing one scene when it disrupted the overall story.
I find that happening in offices all the time. In my company, the employees do not need to know why I make a decision. The point is it's my business, I'm in charge, and it's my job to keep the business running. I may go with a system that costs more today. Maybe I've got a good relationship with the vendor and know that in another month I'll be buying video equipment instead of computer equipment and they can get it for me for wholesale.
The point is that, as an employee, you don't know why management is making their decisions. It's not your job to know and it's not their job to tell you. When I hire a coder, his/her job is to write code -- and possibly to give advice (when asked for) on overall computer systems. Maybe what I'm doing doesn't make sense to them. It doesn't have to. It makes sense to me. Maybe I'm spending more now because it's a tradeoff and I'd rather spend a few thousand extra on a LAN and save three times that much next month on video equipment. Maybe I'm getting equipment from one dealer because I can barter with him and keep my net cost down. It's not my job to tell an IT person why I'm doing something. It's my sho
I'm sorry, what were you saying? I was busy thinking about that woman I met at the gym today...
men thinking of sex every xx minutes
Actually, it's every 7 seconds, on average.
...And it will blink a light for communication. Once for "yes," and twice for "no" (or is it once for "no," and twice for "yes?).
To be honest, I didn't read the article. I figured, "Okay, they say there's x stars in the Universe. So what else are they going to say? Who counted, what part of the sky they sampled (I seriously doubt they counted the entire night sky and each of 70 sextillion stars) and they'll probably try to find a way to bring the figure home."
Seriously, so why read an article when the story is basically all revealed in the headline? Especially when the link is to CNN -- the "news" network that claims to be so important, but had no issue with wasting 8 hours a day for over a year covering something as "news worthy" as the O.J. trial?
70 sextillion? Or did I miscount 000's?
Actually, I did quite well in my math classes, when I was still seriously considering and working towards a Master's (until I decided to focus more on people and teaching instead). While there are a lot of situations where an actual picture won't work, you'd be surprised at how well visual learners can adapt and can create "visualizations" of abstract concepts in their heads. In order to grasp something, I often had two or three or more related visualizations in my head, overlapping, to avoid "contradictions."
Another point, one I should have mentioned earler: research has shown (and my experience backs this up 100%) that while it is possible for "visual" (not the best term, but let's stick with it for consistency) to sometimes understand how the more "concrete" learners perceive or learn, it is basically impossible for a "concrete" learner to understand a "visual" learner and see why there might be any advantage to that learning style.
You make some excellent points. The strongest of these is "the quote is selective and out of place." I would strongly agree with you there. I don't think this quotation should be at all directly applied to learning/teaching. I can see where visualization might be a problem with some types of programming, but I have also found that "visual" thinkers often do very well by creating their own ways to visualize abstract ideas.
Thanks for the URL. I'll check into it in the next day or two, when I expect to have more time.
Overall, with what I've seen about how people learn, I would never feel safe teaching anything to any group of people and insisting on using only one method of presentation.
"The habit of using pictorial aids, like any habit, is very difficult to get rid of. If, however, we take any responsibility for the effectiveness of our thinking habits, we should try to get rid of the habit as quickly as possibile, for it is a bad habit, confusing and misleading up to the point of being paralysing."
Anyone who would say that obviously has no knowledge of how people learn and how different people learn with different styles.
As someone who spent 10 years with learning disabled and emotionally disturbed students, I can say one of the most effective teaching aids for ANYONE is finding out how they learn and presenting material in the style in which they absorb it the best. Since I worked with those who had the most difficulty learning, I had to learn as much as possible about how we ALL -- disabled, "normal", or gifted learn.
In a nutshell, anyone who can make a statement like the one above is ignorant. It has the sound of someone who is so busy showing off how intelligent he or she is that he has yet to realize how little he knows about people.
Perhaps it was written by someone who does well with the style of learning he describes because he spends all his time in books and on the web and has not yet learned how to deal with the real world yet.
Let's see...
loves to change things from my post
and
love to change things from your comment.
Okay, so I added the "s" to keep the verb in agreement with the noun. To be technical, I should have written that word as "love[s]" with the braces to indicate a change.
On the other hand, if you look, I was basically staying with his quotation. If that one letter to keep the tense straight is so important to you, then I strongly suggest you get a video of Shatner's "Saturday Night Live" sketch -- the one where he tells everyone to "Get a life!" I suggest watching it for 2 reasons: 1) If you're that stuck up on the quotation differing by 1 letter, you are very much the kind of fan depicted in that sketch and described by Shatner when he was ranting, and 2) you seriously need to get a real life.
I used to pitch stories to Star Trek: The Next Generation. My agent was the same one that got Ron Moore started. She got me in the door and I would pitch stories over the phone (I'm told this is VERY rare) to Moore. Even though I did get a couple mentions (by reference, not by name) in "Hollywood Scriptwriter," I have to point out, before I make my comments, that Ron Moore is making a living writing for film and TV and I'm not (although my company will soon be producing video and digital film).
Ron likes to change things. He's the writer at ST:TNG who would frequently change things from the way they were. He wrote "Relics," the episode where Scotty is found in an old ship and says, "I'll bet Jim Kirk himself took the Enterprise out of mothballs to find me." Later he, with Brannon Braga, has Scotty see the gaping hole in "Generations" where Kirk was "killed."
Ron, as best I could tell, is a very intelligent, articulate, and friendly (if shy, it seemed) person. I would never wish him any ill will. However, he has shown that whenever he works with anyone else's material, he "loves to change things" (as Scotty once said). He seems to actually take delight in making sure he takes the original material and changes it enough to actually irritate fans of the original.
Once I saw his name attached to the project, I basically decided I was VERY unlikely to watch it. When I found out Starbuck was a woman, I was sure I wouldn't watch it. It completely destroys the "buddy" relationship that was so important to the original.