I am surprised to see this article on WSJ via Slashdot. I had written about exactly the same topic on 20th October 2005. My article was titled: Outsourcing Homework to India. It mentions the Rentacoder issue - "If you glance at rentacoder you will find several homework assigments up for outsourcing. In fact they have a Personal Project / Homework Help category. At present there are 88 open jobs in Homework category."
I wonder if WSJ writer has plagiarized my article. What do you think?
> Well, it was to be expected, outsourcing the jobs to a low paid area - workers that are paid fairly are less likely to cheat their employees.
I guess Enron executives were pretty lowly paid too and so they decided to defraud the company and public? What about WordCom? Were they lowly paid too?
It is easy to take an instance and bash the whole industry in general. But the reality is that there are crooks everywhere and salary has little bearing on the percentage of crooks. BTW: These people are paid rather well by Indian standards.
It is norm of forums like this to bash such articles. However the reality is that a large part of the content of the internet survives because people are willing to look into ads. Good sites like paidcontent or nick d's sites leverage on the ad market of the internet. Like television shows ads are an integral part of the content. Without ads the amount of quality content (along with some -non quality content too) will drastically go down. Sure there will be few people who would philanthropically put content out but compared to the current size of the internet that would be a miniscule minority.
When you are freeloading you are doing it at the expense of someone else. When you buy (and use) a cable descrambler you are passing on the cost to the paying customers. Television and internet market is analogous in some ways. Would television shows (except boring public service shows and church sponsored preachings) survive if people didn't pay for the content or viewed advertisements? It is the same with the internet.
I don't particularly care about doubleclick or any such companies. But the concern he raises is very genuine. Adblockers reduce the monetary incentive to publish content.
At the end of the day you need to pay bills and feed your family. Unless you are born with a silver spoon (or a dotcom millionaire), sooner or later you will have to put your philanthropic interests at hold while you are working on something that pays. What applies to an individual also applies to a society.
It also means it goes beeeeeeeeep on my GPL scanner and I discard that software like hot potato. Frankly if you want to make money make commercial software, if you want to contribute then make open source (I mean non-GPL licenses) software.
You cannot keep your leg in both boats.
BTW: Who are they going to sue next: Linspire? I heard they do not provide code for download!
I fully agree. Why use genetic engineering for treatment of diabetes or cancer or such diseases which affect but only few people! Who cares for them?
How much better would it be to use genetic engineering for better purposes like: 1. Create clone of Jr. Bush. It would be a shame to miss his leadership after two short terms. 2. Create version of pets who eat very little, never shed furs, very very handy to keep, maybe even tuck in your pocket and most of all be very obedient to you, even if you don't feed it on time. 3. Terminate all those rare animals by genetically neutering their species. After all who needs them? 4. Create trees which automatically lend themselves for logging 5. Selectively breed humans to weed out the nature conscious and environmentalists. They are such pests! 6. And cows which are born half-cooked, shaped to enable them to be burgarized.
I am being flooded with ideas. I am sure the congress wouldn't mind funding any of these
BTW: Before flaming read the post again:)
Google fires blogger: On credibility issue
on
Google Fires Blogger?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Normally in any company when you first join you have to develop credibility and trust. It is foolish to do something rash during that period if you want to keep your job. After you have proven yourself most companies are more lax with what you can do or cannot do, again within limits. Your capability to work on the fringes increases. In his case unfortunately he chose to somewhat critisize his employer in a public forum!
Not to mention he was surely under some form of NDA.
And about the complaints within the company about him? Not many many people likes to shake dirty linen in public, specially about a company which has made millions for them.
I think what google has done is well within its purview and frankly the rest of the world shouldn't be bothered with it.
What was he thinking?!
Looks like its time someone wrote few tips for bloggers. I can start with: 1. If you are working or planning to work for someone be careful what you blog 2. Blogging is like writing to the whole world, a feature which we often tend to forget. It isn't kansas anymore you know. 3. It is common for employers to google someone before hiring and keep a tab afterwords. I remember getting an email from JPM for mentioning just about my work there!
Ouch! That's inane comment! I have stayed in US for 6.5 years and now I have started my business in India. I have never faced any trouble on account of my US stay, sometimes it actually helped. And that is the general picture as I see and hear with my friends across the country.
> They had their water and electric cut off for a while, simply because they were Americans.
I don't know what you have seen in discovery channel but never will electricity and water be cut because you are an American! They are controlled by mostly government or closely regulated entities and they cannot and will not do any such thing. What comes to mind is most likely they didn't pay the bill in time.
Firstly you are better off hiring people who bring in problem solving and critical thinking skills.
Few tips on interviewing for these skills: Have typical questions in your interview where you ask for previous experiences where they demonstrated their problem solving ability. Give them hard questions and see how they approach them and/or solve them. Pose hyporthetical situations and see their response.
Even now you can selectively hire & fire to first get a proper team with the proper mix of skills and problem solving ability. Never be afraid to right-size.
Once the team is built to your satisfaction. Have a strong problem solver in a leadership/decision making rols, so he can take on more challenges.
On developing problem solving skills: 1. Have brainstorming sessions to solve cri6tical problems where people are encouraged to speak out and mistakes are forgiven. People get encouraged to speak out in an open forum and good ideas emerge. follow the 7 hats way. 2. Have sessions where real and imaginary problems are posed and time limit given to solve them. Evaluate the results and encourage the top performers while not discouraging others. 3. Recognize and reward good problem solvers and make your ploicy known
Slashdot Mirror
I am surprised to see this article on WSJ via Slashdot. I had written about exactly the same topic on 20th October 2005. My article was titled:
Outsourcing Homework to India. It mentions the Rentacoder issue - "If you glance at rentacoder you will find several homework assigments up for outsourcing. In fact they have a Personal Project / Homework Help category. At present there are 88 open jobs in Homework category."
I wonder if WSJ writer has plagiarized my article. What do you think?
> And frankly I consider refusing to look at obnoxious ads "freeloading".
:)
Well then you are "freeloading" at the expense of others
> Well, it was to be expected, outsourcing the jobs to a low paid area - workers that are paid fairly are less likely to cheat their employees.
I guess Enron executives were pretty lowly paid too and so they decided to defraud the company and public?
What about WordCom? Were they lowly paid too?
It is easy to take an instance and bash the whole industry in general. But the reality is that there are crooks everywhere and salary has little bearing on the percentage of crooks.
BTW: These people are paid rather well by Indian standards.
It is norm of forums like this to bash such articles. However the reality is that a large part of the content of the internet survives because people are willing to look into ads. Good sites like paidcontent or nick d's sites leverage on the ad market of the internet. Like television shows ads are an integral part of the content. Without ads the amount of quality content (along with some -non quality content too) will drastically go down. Sure there will be few people who would philanthropically put content out but compared to the current size of the internet that would be a miniscule minority.
When you are freeloading you are doing it at the expense of someone else. When you buy (and use) a cable descrambler you are passing on the cost to the paying customers. Television and internet market is analogous in some ways. Would television shows (except boring public service shows and church sponsored preachings) survive if people didn't pay for the content or viewed advertisements? It is the same with the internet.
I don't particularly care about doubleclick or any such companies. But the concern he raises is very genuine. Adblockers reduce the monetary incentive to publish content.
At the end of the day you need to pay bills and feed your family. Unless you are born with a silver spoon (or a dotcom millionaire), sooner or later you will have to put your philanthropic interests at hold while you are working on something that pays. What applies to an individual also applies to a society.
It also means it goes beeeeeeeeep on my GPL scanner and I discard that software like hot potato.
Frankly if you want to make money make commercial software, if you want to contribute then make open source (I mean non-GPL licenses) software.
You cannot keep your leg in both boats.
BTW: Who are they going to sue next: Linspire? I heard they do not provide code for download!
I fully agree. Why use genetic engineering for treatment of diabetes or cancer or such diseases which affect but only few people! Who cares for them?
:)
How much better would it be to use genetic engineering for better purposes like:
1. Create clone of Jr. Bush. It would be a shame to miss his leadership after two short terms.
2. Create version of pets who eat very little, never shed furs, very very handy to keep, maybe even tuck in your pocket and most of all be very obedient to you, even if you don't feed it on time.
3. Terminate all those rare animals by genetically neutering their species. After all who needs them?
4. Create trees which automatically lend themselves for logging
5. Selectively breed humans to weed out the nature conscious and environmentalists. They are such pests!
6. And cows which are born half-cooked, shaped to enable them to be burgarized.
I am being flooded with ideas. I am sure the congress wouldn't mind funding any of these
BTW: Before flaming read the post again
Normally in any company when you first join you have to develop credibility and trust. It is foolish to do something rash during that period if you want to keep your job. After you have proven yourself most companies are more lax with what you can do or cannot do, again within limits. Your capability to work on the fringes increases.
In his case unfortunately he chose to somewhat critisize his employer in a public forum!
Not to mention he was surely under some form of NDA.
And about the complaints within the company about him?
Not many many people likes to shake dirty linen in public, specially about a company which has made millions for them.
I think what google has done is well within its purview and frankly the rest of the world shouldn't be bothered with it.
What was he thinking?!
Looks like its time someone wrote few tips for bloggers. I can start with:
1. If you are working or planning to work for someone be careful what you blog
2. Blogging is like writing to the whole world, a feature which we often tend to forget. It isn't kansas anymore you know.
3. It is common for employers to google someone before hiring and keep a tab afterwords. I remember getting an email from JPM for mentioning just about my work there!
Ouch!
That's inane comment! I have stayed in US for 6.5 years and now I have started my business in India. I have never faced any trouble on account of my US stay, sometimes it actually helped.
And that is the general picture as I see and hear with my friends across the country.
> They had their water and electric cut off for a while, simply because they were Americans.
I don't know what you have seen in discovery channel but never will electricity and water be cut because you are an American! They are controlled by mostly government or closely regulated entities and they cannot and will not do any such thing. What comes to mind is most likely they didn't pay the bill in time.
Firstly you are better off hiring people who bring in problem solving and critical thinking skills.
Few tips on interviewing for these skills: Have typical questions in your interview where you ask for previous experiences where they demonstrated their problem solving ability. Give them hard questions and see how they approach them and/or solve them. Pose hyporthetical situations and see their response.
Even now you can selectively hire & fire to first get a proper team with the proper mix of skills and problem solving ability. Never be afraid to right-size.
Once the team is built to your satisfaction.
Have a strong problem solver in a leadership/decision making rols, so he can take on more challenges.
On developing problem solving skills:
1. Have brainstorming sessions to solve cri6tical problems where people are encouraged to speak out and mistakes are forgiven. People get encouraged to speak out in an open forum and good ideas emerge. follow the 7 hats way.
2. Have sessions where real and imaginary problems are posed and time limit given to solve them. Evaluate the results and encourage the top performers while not discouraging others.
3. Recognize and reward good problem solvers and make your ploicy known