Apple does do it. What do you think that 10% student discount is?
Also, I second the others who question your assertion that price discrimination is becoming less popular. It's never been popular when done poorly, and isn't usually noticed when done well. To wit: Old Navy, The Gap, and Banana Republic are all owned by Gap Stores (GPS). They get their clothes from the same factories. But they are marketed differently in different stores and with different tags, and people will pay a lot more for the same shirt from Banana Republic than Old Navy.
It might still, sometimes. But they have to disclose banking relationships now, as well as personal holdings and past recommendation performance. It really has gotten a lot better since the new regulations after the bubble burst and the I-banking scandals.
But you've got to consume research intelligently. Look at more than just the recommendation, and look in more than just one place, then use your brain to figure out what makes sense. And if you can't read a financial statement, you probably shouldn't even bother--index funds and ETFs are cheaper and give a better average return (after trading costs) anyway.
I'm a buy-side analyst (that is, someone who consumes the research of the "sell-side" analysts and decides where my firm should allocate money based on their and my own research) and I have to say that it doesn't really work like that. There are a few "gloom and doom" types who always seem negative on everything, but by and large most analysts are too positive.
I would actually greatly prefer it if sell-side analysts were always saying things would fail for specific reasons. I generally find research to be much more valuable if it gives detailed arguments why a stock I'm interested might *not* work. If I'm interested, I probably already know why it might work. But people like to have their preconceptions confirmed, which is why most analysts are positive on everything. Sell-siders are compensated as much (usually more) based on client satisfaction as on actual prediction performance.
Now, some of these guys really don't know what they're talking about. But they usually do provide you with pretty good info, and they usually do have good access to management. Don't pay too much attention to their recommendations, which are disproportionately positive--but do pay attention to their arguments and data. Any given research report tends to have 1-3 "stories" that the analyst views as key to the future performance of the stock.
I don't directly cover Sony, but I do know that the performance of the PS3 is undoubtedly the #1 story in the coming years. The quote about "too many features" sounds like it might be taken out of context, but clearly that's *not* the main factor in whether the PS3 will succeed. The best research I've seen views the main factors in the PS3 story as (1) whether developers will find the 360 significantly preferable to the PS3 (the PS3 is getting a late start this time, and if it's too much more difficult to write for than the 360 then the games will be late or non-existent), and (2) whether Sony can get an online service comparable to Live up in a timely and affordable way.
Then there is that blu-ray gambit, and the fact that Sony is still recovering from the DRM music problem, and that there other divisions aren't very profitable and there might be infighting in corporate. With all that in mind, I don't see caution about Sony's stock as a bad thing.
But if you have any special insight into the PS3 before the demos, post it! I'm personally amazed that more IT (and in this case, Consumer Discretionary) analysts don't read/.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Either that or your just too dim to understand what the parent was talking about. That would also explain how someone who claims to be in favor of strict, precise meanings of words would refer to himself as a "Nazi".
From Wikipedia. Whatever you think about M$, the distinction between "open source" and "shared source" will be worth knowing going forward, and I'm skeptical of any source that claims Linux was the province of "the blue-haired ponytail set" in 2001. I don't even know what that means.
Excellent point. On the other hand, it's certainly possible that no one in the Bush camp had heard of Vint Cerf before Europe started making noises about giving over control of DNS to an international group. Maybe they thought Al Gore really had invented the Internet?
You make some good points, but I'm not sure that the idea of the government recognizing public service itself is bad. What's bad is the cronyism, the recognition of questionably deserving recipients (Jack Nicklaus? Is playing golf well and being paid millions for it really constitute distinguished service?), and maybe even a board whose compensation isn't given proper oversight. Although I don't know about that last bit for sure.
What this feels like to me is a mix between Knighthood, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and political party in the White House any given year sucking each other's lollipops. What would be legitimately cool would be an American Knighthood bestowed only on 1-2 deserving people a year. Keep the bar raised high, have to nominating committee serve for a small stipend and the prestige of serving on such a committee, and give us something we can be proud of. As is, it's just another bit of propaganda to mock, and I think we're all get sick of that (both the propaganda and the mocking).
And of course the real shame is when deserving recipients like Vint Cert and Robert Kahn are overlooked on/. because the merits of the award itself are so questionable. The world needs more Nobel Prizes, and fewer Walk of Fames.
Granted, "Informative" isn't quite right, and "Interesting" doesn't come close. Maybe "Insightful"? But speaking as a male with genitalia, this comment, while worthy, is certainly *NOT* funny.
I mean, I know here at/. we don't all get the opportunity to actually use the genitalia as intended as often as we might like, but that doesn't make it funny!
Having read both Ptolemy's Almagest (the name given to his work by future Arabic scholars, meaning "The Greatest" IIRC) and Copernicus's work, I have a LOT more respect for Ptolemy. Ptolemy built up a system of practical geometry that explained the data available. His system got very complex, but it was consistent, and he addressed far more than Coperincus did. Everything from the shape of the Earth (Sphere? Ellipsoid? Cylinder?) to the movements of the planets, to how far Alexandria was from Rome.
Copernicus, on the other hand, just kind of said "No, the planets revolve around the sun because it's easier that way". Which is true--only he didn't even show WHY it was easier, because he didn't grok the advanced geometry and trig that goes into figuring stuff like this out. Copernicus wasn't even the first to posit that the Earth revolved around the sun (the idea is briefly addressed in Almagest), and he certainly didn't offer any convincing models--those would come with Brahe and especially Kepler. But he was connected reasonably and for some reason is celebrated by history. Sort of the Columbus of math and science.
Two final points: 1) At the time of Copernicus, if you were actually going to use a celestial model to navigate, Ptolemy's system worked much better, because it explained what we observe. Copernicus just drew some circles and cribbed it to roughly match up with real results--he didn't do the work, didn't understand that the data showed elliptical orbits in a heliocentric model, and if you'd used a heliocentric model to navigate you'd have been lost at sea. Which is one of the main reasons the heliocentric model wasn't adopted earlier.
2) You can construct a fully robust mathematical model of the motion of the solar system that puts Mercury at the center, or yourself, or some asteroid. It's just very complex. Think about it long enough, maybe draw some figures, and blow your mind.
Anyway, Ptolemy should be taught after Euclid in high school geometry.
Very good point, I realized that shortly after...not long after I realized that I hadn't formatted my initial point correctly. If I had been around in the late '60s, I would blame it on the drug use that went along with repeated screenings of 2001.
Cutting edge visuals and cinematography presented with a sweeping score, a healthy dose of symbolism, and slow pacing...all released at a time when a significant proportion of the moviegoing public was experimenting with marijuana and hallucinogenics.
Seriously, the word of mouth publicity about what a great movie this was to see while stoned and/or tripping had a LOT to do with its success. I had a professor who claims he saw it two or three times a week when it was out, and then years later saw it sober and couldn't believe how long some of the scenes took to unfold while nothing was happening. You don't need drugs to appreciate the film, but they don't hurt.
You also don't need to have read the books to appreciate the film, and in my mind having read them DOES hurt. This is a big example of a movie ignoring a lot of what makes a book good, and it seems to get a free pass because of what it did visually. The movie and the books are both good, but in totally different ways.
Cutting edge visuals and cinematography presented with a sweeping score, a healthy dose of symbolism, and slow pacing...all released at a time when a significant proportion of the moviegoing public was experimenting with marijuana and hallucinogenics.
Seriously, the word of mouth publicity about what a great movie this was to see while stoned and/or tripping had a LOT to do with its success. I had a professor who claims he saw it two or three times a week when it was out, and then years later saw it sober and couldn't believe how long some of the scenes took to unfold while nothing was happening. You don't need drugs to appreciate the film, but they don't hurt.
You also don't need to have read the books to appreciate the film, and in my mind having read them DOES hurt. This is a big example of a movie ignoring a lot of what makes a book good, and it seems to get a free pass because of what it did visually. The movie and the books are both good, but in totally different ways.
If an ugly human caused death in the same way that poison causes death--i.e., if the human were merely the instrument--then I'm not sure they would be called homicidal. And if they were, the poison would be just as "homicidal" as they ugly human.
Also, I don't see how either is sociopathic. And don't accuse me of not getting the joke, because your whole post is based on the premise of not getting the Windows 98 joke!
Generic-Man is right on. At most really large corporations, a CEO will spend 70-90% of his time in meetings. Often his presence is primarily to do with appearances. It's like having the King present--everyone is on their best behavior, does their best work, and considers the project that much more important. The CEO showing up at an employee's event gives that event credibility in the mind of the employees, and it validates his work.
The CEO is generally one smart dude, but he by no means has to be the smartest. In a large corporation it's just physically impossible for him (or her) to know everything that's going on. He just needs to be able to guide the ship, motivate employees, inspire confidence in clients and investors, and make the occassional high level decision with input from his staff.
The efficacy of "invite" based marketing is very interesting. Certainly it worked like gangbusters for GMail and for various social networking sites (eg facebook). In a less formal way, for IM clients like ICQ and AIM as well. I think that the common denominator is social interaction. Perhaps that's why they are spouting off about being a social browser that allows better blogging, posting, trolling, flamebaiting, etc. The blogs and forums could be a path to market share.
I also think that social "invite" marketing works much better for free services like e-mail, IM, and web browsing. MCI ran into a bit of a backlash with their aggressive Friends and Family marketing, because it resulted in people pressuring friends and family who were by definition long-distance into subscribing to a commercial phone plan that may not have been a good fit. Then again, Verizon seems to be doing pretty well with its In Plan. Of course, neither of those have the exclusivity element that GMail did initially and that Flock seems to be going for--but realistically, it's not all that exclusive if you can just go to a web site and sign up.
I think Flock looks weak for a number of reasons--ideally Google will buy it out, but outside of the founders and VC's fantasies it seems clear it will die an also-ran. But is invite marketing here to stay? Should it be?
It looks like it won't be doing anything in terms of functionality that a dedicated FireFox user couldn't get via extensions. That said, it doesn't look like it intends to compete on functionality. The name, page layout, and co-opting of GMail's invite viral marketing all make clear that they're going to go for broke on the presentation and marketing. Hey, it worked for the iPod--there are plenty of mp3 players out there with greater functionality, but people like how the iPod looks and will seek it out.
That said, people will pay through the nose for an mp3 player. Between M$'s bundling and the open-source movement, how exactly does a start-up web browser plan to make money? Honestly, if there's a niche in the market I would think it would be for ultra-secure browsers, not for flashy hip browsers.
Well, I haven't read the whole thread, but I'd be amazed if you're not being out and out roasted for a questionable sense of entitlement and for the authoritative tone you used to describe an industry you've really only just dipped your toes into. That said, people with a lot of varied experience will be posting, so hopefully they'll clear up some misconceptions that you and others might have.
I think a big misconception is the idea that a BS in anything should be hired by a company like Microsoft or Google as developer right out of college. People all over the world want that job, and if you think you deserve better pay and perquisites than a kid working his ass off in Bangalore--or anywhere--you'll have to prove it. What's more, there's always going to be a demand for nuts and bolts "in-house" guys. I'm not sure that there's ever going to be *any* demand for 20-somethings with vague ideas about "next generation user interfaces"--at least, not since 1999.
Also, you may not have written this article with/. in mind, but as you no doubt have already realized by this point in the thread, implying that people working in what must be the most common/. workspace by FAR aren't productive and should immediately start looking for a new job because their company can't succeed may not have been the best way to win over the masses. It at least cancels out the automatic karma boost you get for providing an excuse to complain about work. And maybe M$ does give all its developers offices--they're still putting out generally crappy products, and they're looking like they're going to get left in the dust on new tech by Google and Yahoo.
I think your only defense here is that you're *just* talking about developers, developers, developers. In finance, I've worked on open desks that make my current cube feel like a Fortress of Solitude. My supervisor worked on the same loud, open desk where everyone could see everyone else's work and hear their phone conversations, and he was pulling in well over seven figures GBP. An open floor is just better for communication, and that can be important in collaborative work. Besides that, who wants an office without a window? And don't try to tell me that everyone should have an office *with* a window--that would result in either a lot of giant offices or a lot of empty buildings.
The point is, if I were still on an open floor I'd *never* have the nerve to cruise/. at work, because everyone could see. And if I had my own office--well, let's just say that when I saw the episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza started taking naps under his desk, I immediately started thinking about when I could get an office. Maybe you're a self-motivated, responsible worker, but most recent grads need more than a modicum of supervision to keep them on task.
I guess my final point is that you seem to be doing to management exactly what you accuse them of doing to you. That is, saying that you know how to do their job better than they do, despite the fact that you aren't trained in it. Are there a lot of truly crappy managers out there? Of course. Is a degree in management a good predictor of managerial ability? Probably not. But everyone thinks that they can be a manager/executive, just like everybody thinks they can be a politician. The truth is that it's harder than it looks. Management makes decisions that affect a lot of different groups, and it's usually impossible to make decisions that each individual group agrees with wholeheartedly. While you may feel entitled to things like well-paid overtime, a private office, and de facto managerial control over your time and projects that you take an interest in, it's management's job to define your job in the best interests of the company.
In the end, I think you're right to think that you should have left earlier, and management was probably right to let you go. It wasn't a good fit. Whether you can find a good fit without changing your expectati
Haven't most intelligent people opining about business and economics, oh I don't know, taken Intro to Econ? Because several of the highly-modded comments on this thread seem to be writing without basis about things like outsourcing, which is admittedly complex and about which there are many partially-intuitive but ultimately dangerous, stupid, and false myths.
The simple Econ 101 version that I'm referring to is that reducing barriers to trade benefits everyone except for the domestic producers. Restricting trade most harms domestic consumers. Since outsourcing is a trade of a service, in this case engineering services, importing engineering services from providers who have a lower opportunity cost benefits everyone except for domestic engineers. "Bribing Congressmen" to put unfair restrictions on such trade most harms domestic consumers of bridges, elevators, circuts, etc.
I realize that this thread is full of domestic engineers, but I don't see why you guys deserve to make $100K instead of $60K (or, in some cases, to work in engineering instead of an office) more than some poor sap in India or China who *really* worked his way to the top deserves to make $20K instead of $1K (or, in some cases, to work in engineering instead of subsistence farming). If you're really somehow better engineers, then the market will reward you. There is always a niche for the best, and they will be paid accordingly. But you don't get to be the best just by having a sense of entitlement, and by definition not everyone can be the best just because they tried.
And if the "bureaucratic higher ups" are really mismanaging their companies, then start your own and whip their ass in the open market. Just don't pay the investment bankers too much when you're raising funds--I work in finance, and those guys and their fixed 7% fee really *are* sleazeballs.
12 divided by 135 is 10.5? Not quite...you've mixed up your numerator and denominator. P/E is just price per share divided by earnings per share, not earnings divided by price times 100. I think 12 is probably too high for earnings per share anyway, but I'm not sure.
So right idea, but the result is a P/E of more like 100, which is absurdly high unless you assume very good growth prospects. That is, if you think future earnings will justify the current price then you'd still be willing to pay the current price, and many analysts think exactly that.
But Google isn't going to be cheap by any measure, and I think there are probably more attractive investments. Actually, since this is/. I think I should emphasize that if you work in tech you should invest outside of tech. Otherwise all of you eggs are in the technology basket and a bad turn could ruin you--something many of us no doubt already found out during the previous tech bust. But the lesson is to diversify. Don't make the stock of the company you work for your major investment, and try to avoid even the industry if you can. Look at what happened to Enron workers if you still don't believe me.
Having interned at a media buying company whose clients often advertised on a wide variety of search engines (this was about two years ago, before Google had really started to dominate) I'm a little confused. Your comment seems very well thought out and reasonable, but in my experience it also seems a lot like how things are already done, at least in the case of the search engines I worked with.
Click-thru rate is astonishingly small--something like one in a thousand. So the buyer pays for impressions first and foremost, so many dollars (or cents) for so many thousands of times the ad is seen. Click-thrus are also kept track of and earn a higher rate and a cookie is set to keep track of whether the viewer actually buys a product from the web site. If there is a click-thru purchase, the web site gets paid much more for that than an individual impression, of course. The cookie also works so that the buyer can look at the banner ad but not click on it--if he just sees the ad and ends up placing an order a week later without having ever clicked on it the search engine still gets paid for it, though usually not as much as a straight click-thru purchase.
So impressions, click-thrus, and purchases are kept track of and charged accorindingly. In fact, during my high school internship my job was to format the reports of number of views, clicks, purchases, et al. for the client. As far as I know, the impression-based advertising model is in place online on most search engines, and has been for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the best PA comics, and it basically does sum up the entire article, doesn't it? Cartoon is worth 1000 words and all.
Apple does do it. What do you think that 10% student discount is?
Also, I second the others who question your assertion that price discrimination is becoming less popular. It's never been popular when done poorly, and isn't usually noticed when done well. To wit: Old Navy, The Gap, and Banana Republic are all owned by Gap Stores (GPS). They get their clothes from the same factories. But they are marketed differently in different stores and with different tags, and people will pay a lot more for the same shirt from Banana Republic than Old Navy.
It sounds like you know more about getting rich than staying rich. Best of luck.
Um...likewise? And how valuable could your time be if you found a chance to post that?
It might still, sometimes. But they have to disclose banking relationships now, as well as personal holdings and past recommendation performance. It really has gotten a lot better since the new regulations after the bubble burst and the I-banking scandals.
But you've got to consume research intelligently. Look at more than just the recommendation, and look in more than just one place, then use your brain to figure out what makes sense. And if you can't read a financial statement, you probably shouldn't even bother--index funds and ETFs are cheaper and give a better average return (after trading costs) anyway.
I'm a buy-side analyst (that is, someone who consumes the research of the "sell-side" analysts and decides where my firm should allocate money based on their and my own research) and I have to say that it doesn't really work like that. There are a few "gloom and doom" types who always seem negative on everything, but by and large most analysts are too positive.
/.
I would actually greatly prefer it if sell-side analysts were always saying things would fail for specific reasons. I generally find research to be much more valuable if it gives detailed arguments why a stock I'm interested might *not* work. If I'm interested, I probably already know why it might work. But people like to have their preconceptions confirmed, which is why most analysts are positive on everything. Sell-siders are compensated as much (usually more) based on client satisfaction as on actual prediction performance.
Now, some of these guys really don't know what they're talking about. But they usually do provide you with pretty good info, and they usually do have good access to management. Don't pay too much attention to their recommendations, which are disproportionately positive--but do pay attention to their arguments and data. Any given research report tends to have 1-3 "stories" that the analyst views as key to the future performance of the stock.
I don't directly cover Sony, but I do know that the performance of the PS3 is undoubtedly the #1 story in the coming years. The quote about "too many features" sounds like it might be taken out of context, but clearly that's *not* the main factor in whether the PS3 will succeed. The best research I've seen views the main factors in the PS3 story as (1) whether developers will find the 360 significantly preferable to the PS3 (the PS3 is getting a late start this time, and if it's too much more difficult to write for than the 360 then the games will be late or non-existent), and (2) whether Sony can get an online service comparable to Live up in a timely and affordable way.
Then there is that blu-ray gambit, and the fact that Sony is still recovering from the DRM music problem, and that there other divisions aren't very profitable and there might be infighting in corporate. With all that in mind, I don't see caution about Sony's stock as a bad thing.
But if you have any special insight into the PS3 before the demos, post it! I'm personally amazed that more IT (and in this case, Consumer Discretionary) analysts don't read
Presumably, they were introduced by their mothers.
Either that or your just too dim to understand what the parent was talking about. That would also explain how someone who claims to be in favor of strict, precise meanings of words would refer to himself as a "Nazi".
From Wikipedia. Whatever you think about M$, the distinction between "open source" and "shared source" will be worth knowing going forward, and I'm skeptical of any source that claims Linux was the province of "the blue-haired ponytail set" in 2001. I don't even know what that means.
Excellent point. On the other hand, it's certainly possible that no one in the Bush camp had heard of Vint Cerf before Europe started making noises about giving over control of DNS to an international group. Maybe they thought Al Gore really had invented the Internet?
You make some good points, but I'm not sure that the idea of the government recognizing public service itself is bad. What's bad is the cronyism, the recognition of questionably deserving recipients (Jack Nicklaus? Is playing golf well and being paid millions for it really constitute distinguished service?), and maybe even a board whose compensation isn't given proper oversight. Although I don't know about that last bit for sure.
/. because the merits of the award itself are so questionable. The world needs more Nobel Prizes, and fewer Walk of Fames.
What this feels like to me is a mix between Knighthood, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and political party in the White House any given year sucking each other's lollipops. What would be legitimately cool would be an American Knighthood bestowed only on 1-2 deserving people a year. Keep the bar raised high, have to nominating committee serve for a small stipend and the prestige of serving on such a committee, and give us something we can be proud of. As is, it's just another bit of propaganda to mock, and I think we're all get sick of that (both the propaganda and the mocking).
And of course the real shame is when deserving recipients like Vint Cert and Robert Kahn are overlooked on
Granted, "Informative" isn't quite right, and "Interesting" doesn't come close. Maybe "Insightful"? But speaking as a male with genitalia, this comment, while worthy, is certainly *NOT* funny.
/. we don't all get the opportunity to actually use the genitalia as intended as often as we might like, but that doesn't make it funny!
I mean, I know here at
Having read both Ptolemy's Almagest (the name given to his work by future Arabic scholars, meaning "The Greatest" IIRC) and Copernicus's work, I have a LOT more respect for Ptolemy. Ptolemy built up a system of practical geometry that explained the data available. His system got very complex, but it was consistent, and he addressed far more than Coperincus did. Everything from the shape of the Earth (Sphere? Ellipsoid? Cylinder?) to the movements of the planets, to how far Alexandria was from Rome.
Copernicus, on the other hand, just kind of said "No, the planets revolve around the sun because it's easier that way". Which is true--only he didn't even show WHY it was easier, because he didn't grok the advanced geometry and trig that goes into figuring stuff like this out. Copernicus wasn't even the first to posit that the Earth revolved around the sun (the idea is briefly addressed in Almagest), and he certainly didn't offer any convincing models--those would come with Brahe and especially Kepler. But he was connected reasonably and for some reason is celebrated by history. Sort of the Columbus of math and science.
Two final points: 1) At the time of Copernicus, if you were actually going to use a celestial model to navigate, Ptolemy's system worked much better, because it explained what we observe. Copernicus just drew some circles and cribbed it to roughly match up with real results--he didn't do the work, didn't understand that the data showed elliptical orbits in a heliocentric model, and if you'd used a heliocentric model to navigate you'd have been lost at sea. Which is one of the main reasons the heliocentric model wasn't adopted earlier.
2) You can construct a fully robust mathematical model of the motion of the solar system that puts Mercury at the center, or yourself, or some asteroid. It's just very complex. Think about it long enough, maybe draw some figures, and blow your mind.
Anyway, Ptolemy should be taught after Euclid in high school geometry.
Very good point, I realized that shortly after...not long after I realized that I hadn't formatted my initial point correctly. If I had been around in the late '60s, I would blame it on the drug use that went along with repeated screenings of 2001.
Cutting edge visuals and cinematography presented with a sweeping score, a healthy dose of symbolism, and slow pacing...all released at a time when a significant proportion of the moviegoing public was experimenting with marijuana and hallucinogenics.
Seriously, the word of mouth publicity about what a great movie this was to see while stoned and/or tripping had a LOT to do with its success. I had a professor who claims he saw it two or three times a week when it was out, and then years later saw it sober and couldn't believe how long some of the scenes took to unfold while nothing was happening. You don't need drugs to appreciate the film, but they don't hurt.
You also don't need to have read the books to appreciate the film, and in my mind having read them DOES hurt. This is a big example of a movie ignoring a lot of what makes a book good, and it seems to get a free pass because of what it did visually. The movie and the books are both good, but in totally different ways.
Cutting edge visuals and cinematography presented with a sweeping score, a healthy dose of symbolism, and slow pacing...all released at a time when a significant proportion of the moviegoing public was experimenting with marijuana and hallucinogenics. Seriously, the word of mouth publicity about what a great movie this was to see while stoned and/or tripping had a LOT to do with its success. I had a professor who claims he saw it two or three times a week when it was out, and then years later saw it sober and couldn't believe how long some of the scenes took to unfold while nothing was happening. You don't need drugs to appreciate the film, but they don't hurt. You also don't need to have read the books to appreciate the film, and in my mind having read them DOES hurt. This is a big example of a movie ignoring a lot of what makes a book good, and it seems to get a free pass because of what it did visually. The movie and the books are both good, but in totally different ways.
If an ugly human caused death in the same way that poison causes death--i.e., if the human were merely the instrument--then I'm not sure they would be called homicidal. And if they were, the poison would be just as "homicidal" as they ugly human. Also, I don't see how either is sociopathic. And don't accuse me of not getting the joke, because your whole post is based on the premise of not getting the Windows 98 joke!
Generic-Man is right on. At most really large corporations, a CEO will spend 70-90% of his time in meetings. Often his presence is primarily to do with appearances. It's like having the King present--everyone is on their best behavior, does their best work, and considers the project that much more important. The CEO showing up at an employee's event gives that event credibility in the mind of the employees, and it validates his work.
The CEO is generally one smart dude, but he by no means has to be the smartest. In a large corporation it's just physically impossible for him (or her) to know everything that's going on. He just needs to be able to guide the ship, motivate employees, inspire confidence in clients and investors, and make the occassional high level decision with input from his staff.
The efficacy of "invite" based marketing is very interesting. Certainly it worked like gangbusters for GMail and for various social networking sites (eg facebook). In a less formal way, for IM clients like ICQ and AIM as well. I think that the common denominator is social interaction. Perhaps that's why they are spouting off about being a social browser that allows better blogging, posting, trolling, flamebaiting, etc. The blogs and forums could be a path to market share.
I also think that social "invite" marketing works much better for free services like e-mail, IM, and web browsing. MCI ran into a bit of a backlash with their aggressive Friends and Family marketing, because it resulted in people pressuring friends and family who were by definition long-distance into subscribing to a commercial phone plan that may not have been a good fit. Then again, Verizon seems to be doing pretty well with its In Plan. Of course, neither of those have the exclusivity element that GMail did initially and that Flock seems to be going for--but realistically, it's not all that exclusive if you can just go to a web site and sign up.
I think Flock looks weak for a number of reasons--ideally Google will buy it out, but outside of the founders and VC's fantasies it seems clear it will die an also-ran. But is invite marketing here to stay? Should it be?
It looks like it won't be doing anything in terms of functionality that a dedicated FireFox user couldn't get via extensions. That said, it doesn't look like it intends to compete on functionality. The name, page layout, and co-opting of GMail's invite viral marketing all make clear that they're going to go for broke on the presentation and marketing. Hey, it worked for the iPod--there are plenty of mp3 players out there with greater functionality, but people like how the iPod looks and will seek it out.
That said, people will pay through the nose for an mp3 player. Between M$'s bundling and the open-source movement, how exactly does a start-up web browser plan to make money? Honestly, if there's a niche in the market I would think it would be for ultra-secure browsers, not for flashy hip browsers.
Well, I haven't read the whole thread, but I'd be amazed if you're not being out and out roasted for a questionable sense of entitlement and for the authoritative tone you used to describe an industry you've really only just dipped your toes into. That said, people with a lot of varied experience will be posting, so hopefully they'll clear up some misconceptions that you and others might have.
/. in mind, but as you no doubt have already realized by this point in the thread, implying that people working in what must be the most common /. workspace by FAR aren't productive and should immediately start looking for a new job because their company can't succeed may not have been the best way to win over the masses. It at least cancels out the automatic karma boost you get for providing an excuse to complain about work. And maybe M$ does give all its developers offices--they're still putting out generally crappy products, and they're looking like they're going to get left in the dust on new tech by Google and Yahoo.
/. at work, because everyone could see. And if I had my own office--well, let's just say that when I saw the episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza started taking naps under his desk, I immediately started thinking about when I could get an office. Maybe you're a self-motivated, responsible worker, but most recent grads need more than a modicum of supervision to keep them on task.
I think a big misconception is the idea that a BS in anything should be hired by a company like Microsoft or Google as developer right out of college. People all over the world want that job, and if you think you deserve better pay and perquisites than a kid working his ass off in Bangalore--or anywhere--you'll have to prove it. What's more, there's always going to be a demand for nuts and bolts "in-house" guys. I'm not sure that there's ever going to be *any* demand for 20-somethings with vague ideas about "next generation user interfaces"--at least, not since 1999.
Also, you may not have written this article with
I think your only defense here is that you're *just* talking about developers, developers, developers. In finance, I've worked on open desks that make my current cube feel like a Fortress of Solitude. My supervisor worked on the same loud, open desk where everyone could see everyone else's work and hear their phone conversations, and he was pulling in well over seven figures GBP. An open floor is just better for communication, and that can be important in collaborative work. Besides that, who wants an office without a window? And don't try to tell me that everyone should have an office *with* a window--that would result in either a lot of giant offices or a lot of empty buildings.
The point is, if I were still on an open floor I'd *never* have the nerve to cruise
I guess my final point is that you seem to be doing to management exactly what you accuse them of doing to you. That is, saying that you know how to do their job better than they do, despite the fact that you aren't trained in it. Are there a lot of truly crappy managers out there? Of course. Is a degree in management a good predictor of managerial ability? Probably not. But everyone thinks that they can be a manager/executive, just like everybody thinks they can be a politician. The truth is that it's harder than it looks. Management makes decisions that affect a lot of different groups, and it's usually impossible to make decisions that each individual group agrees with wholeheartedly. While you may feel entitled to things like well-paid overtime, a private office, and de facto managerial control over your time and projects that you take an interest in, it's management's job to define your job in the best interests of the company.
In the end, I think you're right to think that you should have left earlier, and management was probably right to let you go. It wasn't a good fit. Whether you can find a good fit without changing your expectati
Haven't most intelligent people opining about business and economics, oh I don't know, taken Intro to Econ? Because several of the highly-modded comments on this thread seem to be writing without basis about things like outsourcing, which is admittedly complex and about which there are many partially-intuitive but ultimately dangerous, stupid, and false myths. The simple Econ 101 version that I'm referring to is that reducing barriers to trade benefits everyone except for the domestic producers. Restricting trade most harms domestic consumers. Since outsourcing is a trade of a service, in this case engineering services, importing engineering services from providers who have a lower opportunity cost benefits everyone except for domestic engineers. "Bribing Congressmen" to put unfair restrictions on such trade most harms domestic consumers of bridges, elevators, circuts, etc. I realize that this thread is full of domestic engineers, but I don't see why you guys deserve to make $100K instead of $60K (or, in some cases, to work in engineering instead of an office) more than some poor sap in India or China who *really* worked his way to the top deserves to make $20K instead of $1K (or, in some cases, to work in engineering instead of subsistence farming). If you're really somehow better engineers, then the market will reward you. There is always a niche for the best, and they will be paid accordingly. But you don't get to be the best just by having a sense of entitlement, and by definition not everyone can be the best just because they tried. And if the "bureaucratic higher ups" are really mismanaging their companies, then start your own and whip their ass in the open market. Just don't pay the investment bankers too much when you're raising funds--I work in finance, and those guys and their fixed 7% fee really *are* sleazeballs.
12 divided by 135 is 10.5? Not quite...you've mixed up your numerator and denominator. P/E is just price per share divided by earnings per share, not earnings divided by price times 100. I think 12 is probably too high for earnings per share anyway, but I'm not sure. So right idea, but the result is a P/E of more like 100, which is absurdly high unless you assume very good growth prospects. That is, if you think future earnings will justify the current price then you'd still be willing to pay the current price, and many analysts think exactly that. But Google isn't going to be cheap by any measure, and I think there are probably more attractive investments. Actually, since this is /. I think I should emphasize that if you work in tech you should invest outside of tech. Otherwise all of you eggs are in the technology basket and a bad turn could ruin you--something many of us no doubt already found out during the previous tech bust. But the lesson is to diversify. Don't make the stock of the company you work for your major investment, and try to avoid even the industry if you can. Look at what happened to Enron workers if you still don't believe me.
Having interned at a media buying company whose clients often advertised on a wide variety of search engines (this was about two years ago, before Google had really started to dominate) I'm a little confused. Your comment seems very well thought out and reasonable, but in my experience it also seems a lot like how things are already done, at least in the case of the search engines I worked with.
Click-thru rate is astonishingly small--something like one in a thousand. So the buyer pays for impressions first and foremost, so many dollars (or cents) for so many thousands of times the ad is seen. Click-thrus are also kept track of and earn a higher rate and a cookie is set to keep track of whether the viewer actually buys a product from the web site. If there is a click-thru purchase, the web site gets paid much more for that than an individual impression, of course. The cookie also works so that the buyer can look at the banner ad but not click on it--if he just sees the ad and ends up placing an order a week later without having ever clicked on it the search engine still gets paid for it, though usually not as much as a straight click-thru purchase.
So impressions, click-thrus, and purchases are kept track of and charged accorindingly. In fact, during my high school internship my job was to format the reports of number of views, clicks, purchases, et al. for the client. As far as I know, the impression-based advertising model is in place online on most search engines, and has been for a while.