Why would you think a replacement for meat would be healthy when the replacements for butter (margarine) and natural fats (transfer fats) turned out to be even less healthful?
Agreed. There will be a movement over the next 10 years to locate software development in "the business". "Corporate IT" as you describe it will administer the infrastructure and operate the environment. They will also set common standards to ensure consistent architecture and best practices across the enterprise.
We'll be making progress when the CIO is viewed as essential to the organization as the head of facilities.
Good examples and your points are valid - especially the last paragraph, which I think is IT's responsibility whether they are dealing with a customer or a colleague. Frankly, I'd be thrilled if the internal people at most companies were held to standards you're holding paying customers to.
As a manager in a service desk, I always have to remind everyone that the metrics are the start of the conversation, not the end of it. It's easy for people to substitute the number for the reason why you measure the number, and as soon as that happens, stupidity isn't far behind. All numbers can be gamed, so it ultimately comes down to someone actually paying attention to how well IT is serving the needs of the business as judged by the key decision makers in the business.
The fact that most people substitute "help desk measurements" for "IT measurements" freely in their minds is a sad commentary on the state of IT/business relations. IT should be doing a lot more than resetting passwords and replacing keyboards - they should be helping the business develop products and services that lead to success for the company.
You make many excellent points, yet I have to strongly disagree with this statement:
"everyone in the company is treated like a customer"
Unless you provide IT services to someone outside of your company, you're not working with customers, you're working with colleagues (simple test - how much is the person you're talking to paying for service?) This is a very different dynamic as a customer has less responsibility than a coworker - other people in your company have to follow policies and adhere to guidelines that customers don't. There's no real difference between someone asking for a new computer when their current system is perfectly fine and someone asking HR for an equal amount of money, yet the second request gets laughed out of the building. The real customer is the person who can make the decision whether to outsource IT or not.
Fixing this perception would get us a long way towards a better relationship between IT and non-IT parts of the business.
In a concrete example, imagine a bank owns a formerly AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) composed of Alt-A loans, which are better than sub-prime but less than prime. About 5% of the loans were delinquent, and there are no high-risk option ARM (above prime rate-mortgages) in the security. It is offered at 70 cents on the dollar. If you bought that security, you would be making well over 12% on your money, and 76% of the loans in the portfolio of that security would have to default and lose over 50% of their value before you would risk even one penny.
Let me say that again: seventy-six percent would have to default.
This would only be the case if the RMBS consists of whole mortgages. My understanding is that each mortgage was split into various income streams, with a stream getting the first x% of dollars obtained either through payments or foreclosure, one getting the next y% of dollars, and so on. Therefore, if your tranche only gets the last 10% of the repayment of the mortgage, getting less than 90% through a default where the property resale price + payments made falls more than 10% short means this tranche is worthless.
In your example, the sale of that RMBS at 70 cents on the dollar should have forced an immediate markdown of assets to show the worth of similar tranches at that value, but they are not forced to sell because of this. If the markdown forces them to sell assets to meet margin calls, there are sovereign wealth funds and other investors with money that would be willing to buy something below what it is worth so they should be able to sell if for market price which would be 70 cents or higher.
The fundamental issue is that these banks are considering tranches to be level 3 assets that do not have a market price so they can claim they are worth whatever their models tell them, whether their model is close to reality or not. These institution's models are so far from reality due to faulty premises that even a single sale considered to be non-distressed of these assets would require writedowns that would wipe out all of their capital. Their inability to sell these securities is in reality a refusal to accept the actual worth of these products, so they want their rich uncle to pay an inflated price for them.
It can also make sense in an industry where every IT-oriented aspect of your business is much the same as any other in your industry and more or less every IT problem has already been solved.
This hits the nail on the head. How many people are working at companies that have mature technologies. The business I'm in has far more opportunities for developing new products and services than we have money to fund. All of this new stuff requires new systems, processes, and support that doesn't exist anywhere now. How many companies are sitting around saying that technology can't improve them at all? Those companies can confidently move these processes outside the organization since they don't return on investment. For the rest of us, keep planning on doing more of what you've been doing.
This game has haunted me for 20 years. No save options at all, so after spending several hours playing through the game, this boss would slap me around like it was nothing. I didn't have the patience to spend several more hours powering up at once and Mom wouldn't let me leave the system on when it wasn't being used, so I never finished it. One of these days I'll knock this off my list.
Also, growing up in a small town I saw a lot of situations where "small-town charm" also meant small-town bigotry and small-town narrow mindedness. Nice if you're able to make friends with the owner, but if your nationality or skin color is different, you may wish you had a big box around where you could at least just be ignored like everyone else in the store.
Good post, yet I'd like to adjust that slightly...
religion is being replaced in our society even more than it has before by the indirect worship of materialism.
America in the second half of the 20th century and so far in the 21st would be more accurately described as an anti-material culture. Materialism would seem to imply a value of high quality goods, craftsmanship, that sort of thing - but look at the average diet, vehicle, and home of Americans and there's precious little of that to be found. Even our wealth is just a value stored in memory at your bank - people are working their whole lives to try to change one digit in one location from 0 to 1. Meanwhile actual material is being turned into electrical and electronic impulses that make a mometary impression then are gone.
This doesn't affect your point, which is important. My hope is that as connectivity continues to grow, building communities around shared personal values will transcend building them around property values.
Anyone who has heard audio from his lectures or read his books has heard him talking about the difference between the spotlight (conscious attention) and the floodlight (unconscious thought). He often said that most people could not handle more than 3 variables at the same time without using a pencil, and most real-life decisions involve considerably more variables than that.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense that for most people a decision made without directly using conscious thought would be superior to one "thought through". The anecdotes/.ers have related above only help reinforce this.
As it turns out the order and peace and quiet in a most societies is not kept by police or any forceful tactics, but by the fact that the majority of the citizens like it that way.
I love video game golf but have always disliked how much easier it is than real golf due to how much easier it is to be consistent. Even analog joysticks haven't proven to be a hinderance for 20 years of using push controllers to play golf.
Plus we may finally see an affordable swing tutor for golf, baseball/softball, and tennis. I'm intrigued...
Start your own services and get all the money from the throngs of folks starving for quality entertainment. Sounds like the conservative response to me. After all, isn't that how PAX-TV got to be the most-watched channel in the country?
Re:Full Disclosure doesn't apply for workers
on
The Naked Corporation
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Submit salary history with resume? How about submit salary history of potential team members so you can make an informed decision?
Simplest response is "Like your company, my previous employers consider that information confidential."
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you think a replacement for meat would be healthy when the replacements for butter (margarine) and natural fats (transfer fats) turned out to be even less healthful?
100% agreed. It's about the results and the relationships. You need both to be successful long-term.
Agreed. There will be a movement over the next 10 years to locate software development in "the business". "Corporate IT" as you describe it will administer the infrastructure and operate the environment. They will also set common standards to ensure consistent architecture and best practices across the enterprise.
We'll be making progress when the CIO is viewed as essential to the organization as the head of facilities.
Good examples and your points are valid - especially the last paragraph, which I think is IT's responsibility whether they are dealing with a customer or a colleague. Frankly, I'd be thrilled if the internal people at most companies were held to standards you're holding paying customers to.
As a manager in a service desk, I always have to remind everyone that the metrics are the start of the conversation, not the end of it. It's easy for people to substitute the number for the reason why you measure the number, and as soon as that happens, stupidity isn't far behind. All numbers can be gamed, so it ultimately comes down to someone actually paying attention to how well IT is serving the needs of the business as judged by the key decision makers in the business.
The fact that most people substitute "help desk measurements" for "IT measurements" freely in their minds is a sad commentary on the state of IT/business relations. IT should be doing a lot more than resetting passwords and replacing keyboards - they should be helping the business develop products and services that lead to success for the company.
You make many excellent points, yet I have to strongly disagree with this statement:
"everyone in the company is treated like a customer"
Unless you provide IT services to someone outside of your company, you're not working with customers, you're working with colleagues (simple test - how much is the person you're talking to paying for service?) This is a very different dynamic as a customer has less responsibility than a coworker - other people in your company have to follow policies and adhere to guidelines that customers don't. There's no real difference between someone asking for a new computer when their current system is perfectly fine and someone asking HR for an equal amount of money, yet the second request gets laughed out of the building. The real customer is the person who can make the decision whether to outsource IT or not.
Fixing this perception would get us a long way towards a better relationship between IT and non-IT parts of the business.
Now THAT is a great show title. Somebody get the Robot Chicken guys working on this...
In a concrete example, imagine a bank owns a formerly AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) composed of Alt-A loans, which are better than sub-prime but less than prime. About 5% of the loans were delinquent, and there are no high-risk option ARM (above prime rate-mortgages) in the security. It is offered at 70 cents on the dollar. If you bought that security, you would be making well over 12% on your money, and 76% of the loans in the portfolio of that security would have to default and lose over 50% of their value before you would risk even one penny.
Let me say that again: seventy-six percent would have to default.
This would only be the case if the RMBS consists of whole mortgages. My understanding is that each mortgage was split into various income streams, with a stream getting the first x% of dollars obtained either through payments or foreclosure, one getting the next y% of dollars, and so on. Therefore, if your tranche only gets the last 10% of the repayment of the mortgage, getting less than 90% through a default where the property resale price + payments made falls more than 10% short means this tranche is worthless.
In your example, the sale of that RMBS at 70 cents on the dollar should have forced an immediate markdown of assets to show the worth of similar tranches at that value, but they are not forced to sell because of this. If the markdown forces them to sell assets to meet margin calls, there are sovereign wealth funds and other investors with money that would be willing to buy something below what it is worth so they should be able to sell if for market price which would be 70 cents or higher.
The fundamental issue is that these banks are considering tranches to be level 3 assets that do not have a market price so they can claim they are worth whatever their models tell them, whether their model is close to reality or not. These institution's models are so far from reality due to faulty premises that even a single sale considered to be non-distressed of these assets would require writedowns that would wipe out all of their capital. Their inability to sell these securities is in reality a refusal to accept the actual worth of these products, so they want their rich uncle to pay an inflated price for them.
It can also make sense in an industry where every IT-oriented aspect of your business is much the same as any other in your industry and more or less every IT problem has already been solved. This hits the nail on the head. How many people are working at companies that have mature technologies. The business I'm in has far more opportunities for developing new products and services than we have money to fund. All of this new stuff requires new systems, processes, and support that doesn't exist anywhere now. How many companies are sitting around saying that technology can't improve them at all? Those companies can confidently move these processes outside the organization since they don't return on investment. For the rest of us, keep planning on doing more of what you've been doing.
This game has haunted me for 20 years. No save options at all, so after spending several hours playing through the game, this boss would slap me around like it was nothing. I didn't have the patience to spend several more hours powering up at once and Mom wouldn't let me leave the system on when it wasn't being used, so I never finished it. One of these days I'll knock this off my list.
No, just references.
if you think nanotech coming before AI is a bad thing. Let the conspiracy theories begin!
Also, growing up in a small town I saw a lot of situations where "small-town charm" also meant small-town bigotry and small-town narrow mindedness. Nice if you're able to make friends with the owner, but if your nationality or skin color is different, you may wish you had a big box around where you could at least just be ignored like everyone else in the store.
when you pry it from my sweaty, overstuffed dead hand.
religion is being replaced in our society even more than it has before by the indirect worship of materialism.
America in the second half of the 20th century and so far in the 21st would be more accurately described as an anti-material culture. Materialism would seem to imply a value of high quality goods, craftsmanship, that sort of thing - but look at the average diet, vehicle, and home of Americans and there's precious little of that to be found. Even our wealth is just a value stored in memory at your bank - people are working their whole lives to try to change one digit in one location from 0 to 1. Meanwhile actual material is being turned into electrical and electronic impulses that make a mometary impression then are gone.
This doesn't affect your point, which is important. My hope is that as connectivity continues to grow, building communities around shared personal values will transcend building them around property values.
Anyone who has heard audio from his lectures or read his books has heard him talking about the difference between the spotlight (conscious attention) and the floodlight (unconscious thought). He often said that most people could not handle more than 3 variables at the same time without using a pencil, and most real-life decisions involve considerably more variables than that. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that for most people a decision made without directly using conscious thought would be superior to one "thought through". The anecdotes /.ers have related above only help reinforce this.
+1000000 insightful - thanks for the quote!
Sacrebl.eu!
Sure, and ESPN used to show sports instead of poker and crappy sports-reality series. Whatever, geezer!
Plus we may finally see an affordable swing tutor for golf, baseball/softball, and tennis. I'm intrigued...
and be HEALED, brother! The power of CERN compels you!
A draft proposal wasn't added either.
we won't have to think of the children anymore!
Start your own services and get all the money from the throngs of folks starving for quality entertainment. Sounds like the conservative response to me. After all, isn't that how PAX-TV got to be the most-watched channel in the country?
Simplest response is "Like your company, my previous employers consider that information confidential."