Yeah, I was going somewhere else with it (but I did get your point and I do agree). Go hard at first then slightly loosen the reigns shows the seriousness of the situation (i.e. Yahoo is in serious trouble).
I really hope it's a matter of starting from square one. To me this reeks of something that looked good on paper to execs. They needed to drop a bunch of employees quick without it looking bad (or rather as good as it could possibly look). The idea was tighten down by getting rid of the "slackers", which is great in theory, however working from home doesn't necessarily correlate with "slacking off" (as has been pointed out here repeatedly). In reality they just selected an attribute they are allowed to discriminate on (as opposed to sex, religion or skin color) and fired those people. Performance had nothing to do with it, but that was the excuse. Now they are trying to frantically back up the "reasoning" behind this with false metrics. In the end they would have been better off just randomly firing people. That way you don't get the dead sea effect of the weakest people clinging to the company (the people that can't easily get a job elsewhere).
This is not a far cry from firing all the men because, "Men aren't as good at multitasking, and we need good multitaskers to keep Yahoo alive." That's the stereotype and that's exactly what Yahoo is doing. They are stereotyping a group and using that as the reason they are getting rid of them. People would be less upset by a lottery, or, I don't know.. real metrics, where they fire the actual slackers. Of course, as that has been pointed out, it takes actual effort to go through reviews and real metrics to decide who is worth keeping and who should leave.
Yes, false consensus effect. "If I were working at home I'd be slacking off, therefor everyone working from home must be slacking off."
It's also a matter of perspective. The last place I worked at I had measurable better performance the days I worked at home. More code was written, more bugs fixed etc. I'm willing to bet sales and some of service would have been glad if I was forced to work from the office all days. Why? Aside from them assuming I was slacking (one of the directors was caught running an airplay server chock-o-block full of anal porn at work.. so we know what he assumed I was doing at home), they couldn't get a hold of me any time they wanted by popping into my "office" (my office with a door had since been replaced with an "open concept" region) and interrupting me any time of the day. Generally it was to ask questions they could answer themselves, but would take significantly more effort than the energy it took to walk to my desk. If you subscribe to the school of thought that an interruption kills 15-20 minutes productivity, then it would be fair to assume I would have essentially 0 productivity on the days I was in the office. Of course to the sales and service staff I wasn't being productive if I wasn't answering their questions (despite that not being my job). Their expectation was I should be able to answer "simple questions" and still pound out code (as well as slip in their pet features).
Using time tracking software we found I had about an 85-15 split in office. 15% was writing and working on software I was responsible for, the 85% was "other stuff" (interruptions, meetings, emergency bug fixes on other people's code...). Working from home that split changed to 10-90 (90% software and 10% communication). To balance things out I'd work from home some days and from the office others. It was understood my office days would generally be unproductive.
My experience may not be directly comparable, but my point was perspective matters as well. To the software team I was best working from home, to sales and service I was most "productive" in office (well.. up until the deadline on the feature/fix their customer "needs" started slipping). To some quick efficient communication is key and that's what is labelled "productive". In software, yes we need to communicate with the team, but once things are sorted (api, architecture etc) then programming is generally a very private task that requires little or no input from others. I find gtalk or similar sufficient for most communication while knee deep in code (and team members could always get hold of me quickly, despite the rest of the organization being cut off).
All I care about when hiring are the coding skills demonstrated to me in the interview.
I have to agree with you there. I am a little biased towards a degree (if experience is lacking), but I've seen people midstream university that can code circles around guys with "20+ years experience". Some people get software, others don't. I don't think school really has anything to do with that. Depending on what is being worked on the math background can help, but it's not like you need a CS degree to know the difference between a O(n^2) and O(nlogn) solution. Plus having a degree doesn't guarantee any kind of competence.
I think the biggest plus for someone without a degree is it shows they put effort into learning something themselves. I know too many people that graduated with CSc degrees that never learned to code (as in really code, they could slap something together to get a decent grade on an assignment.. but it's not proper software). Some of those students got straight 'A's. Heck, I didn't have any passion for coding until my last year when stuff really clicked. I could see the design errors in my own solutions and seek out ways to fix those deficiencies.
It's like how there are people who slap a DB together with no thought for logical design vs physical, those who will insist on 3NF then those who can on the fly write a physical db layer that is denormalized where it should be and can rationalize and clearly describe what they did where and why (i.e. they had a thought process and one beyond, "this is what the book told me to do"). I want to work with critical thinkers, not people who can jump through hoops.
And most autos allow you to shift gears now, so your complaints about gear selection no longer apply.
Not to mention many now rev match on downshifting. I recently had a rental with a 6 speed classic auto (i.e. non dual clutch) and it did not feel anything like the auto transmission with "manual mode" from 5 years ago. Quick sharp shifts that happened when I signaled (rather than waiting and deciding if that's what it wants to do) and perfect rev matching on downshifts. Yes it did nanny on downshifts (won't let you over-rev) but it was happy to let me hit the (too low) rev limiter on a late upshift. What happened to cars that let you dip into the redline? If the redline on the tach is 7k rpm I expect to be able to rev to at least 7250rpm before hitting a limiter (this particular vehicle had no yellow or orange region before the red on the tach).
He had managed to worm his way into a middle-class government job, but he'd hit the ceiling of where he could go without a BA.
And there's the rub. If you are sufficiently intelligent you can get by without a degree for some time. I know two excellent software developers that didn't complete University. One graduated highschool at 16 (from a prestigious private school) then dropped out of University due to huge money offers during the.Com bubble. Another decided he'd had enough with tech support and learned to code. Smart guy, would have done fine in University but he started working right after highschool then got himself a decent job in online advertising (during the porn boom, when porn was making huge bucks online).
Both are great coders and have excellent business sense, and both have run into issues with not having a degree (specifically working in the US). One ended up having the company move to Canada to keep him (lead dev), the other got himself a degree so he could move to the US.
I also have some friends in the gaming industry (music and art), that got picked up by a AAA before they graduated. They can get jobs in Canada no problem, but can't go over to the UK or down to the US. Their portfolios are great and have had people seek them out, but no degree means they can't get work visas.
Not the same as needing a degree to even get a job as a citizen, but same underlying theme: what you can do doesn't matter if you don't meet the bar of having a bachelors.
I'm similar. I use a laptop for my main dev environment. Unfortunately it won't do dual external monitors (I specifically found laptops what would do dual monitors when docked and had 1080P 15" screens for on the go at my last employer). My current employer (me) cheaped out. I currently use a 21.5" 1080P external and the 1600x900 laptop screen as a secondary (the lowest resolution I'll ever do on a laptop, 720P is useless). It works quite well.
I have a 24" 1080P monitor as well but the gama is weird on it and it looks horrible from an angle (LG flattron TN panel led). Worst monitor I have ever used and it wasn't even cheap for a TN. Next monitor will be a good IPS panel and preferably higher resolution and 16:10 rather than 16:9. I had two 22" 16:10 on an Ergotron neo-flex stand and it was great. Great stand that is quite reasonable (just over $100). I love how you can adjust the height with one finger. I'm now considering one of their sit stand solutions so I can stand while I work. Pretty much everyone at my previous job ended up with one of their dual stands. Running a 22" portrait was a bit of a stretch (basically it'd be stuck at one height), but it was doable.
Anyhow the disparate screen sizes works for me. Back in university had a 19" 1440x900 and a 15" lcd (forget if it was 4:3 or 5:4). Worked quite well though I would have killed for two 19" 5:4 monitors.
That actually made me laugh out loud. The sad thing is that most likely reflects reality.
You have got to be pretty out of touch to think doing that is a good idea. It's not one of those things that "looks good on paper" then takes a nose dive. It was a bad call from the get go.
Of course it could be worse. Every front page story could be a shoddy summary and link to a Dice.com "article". Personally I'm still reeling over the How to use a Linux Virtual Private Server "article". What's worse is they moved the "article" from Dice.com to slashdot itself to, I dunno, give it more credibility?
"Hey, this old fluff piece we wrote has something about Linux! We should post a story about it!"
"Shoot, they didn't like that it's a Dice.com article"
"I KNOW.. we'll move it to the slashdot domain.. that way it'll be credible!!!"
"Awesome idea!!!"
*back pats all around*
Quite right. I noticed that as well. Of course TFA has the following line:
Feeding the 416 horsepower motor of the top-of-the-line Model S Performance edition is a half-ton lithium-ion battery pack slung beneath the cockpit; that combination is capable of flinging this $101,000 luxury car through the quarter mile as quickly as vaunted sport sedans like the Cadillac CTS-V.
You'd think the NYT could at least get the pricing right.
As with getting a job, it's often who you know not what you know.
When I started contracting on the side I had let my friends know about my interest in other work. Someone contacted me one day with something that sounded interesting so I went forward with it. I was quite open with my day job about it. They of course weren't totally cool with it, but they had no legal standing as it didn't conflict with my day job responsibilities or dance into NDA items. Of course they had a right to feel uncomfortable, because I ended up leaving for my side job.
Finding work shouldn't be an issue if you have a decent collection of friends in various fields. Even my lawyer was asking me about doing some project with her if I had time and now the people I used to work with are asking if I have time for their friends seeking on software people. There are always small businesses that need software and companies that need part time resources on contract. I think the issue is making sure you are legit (meaning you have proper business license, are dealing with taxes correctly etc). If you are someone who can come in and save the day (fix some other dev's f-up) then people will love you and you'll have more work than you can handle. It's just getting your first gig and setting yourself up for business that are the "difficult" part.
Of course if stuff starts taking off expect to drop your day job. Keeping up your own company and working for someone else isn't much fun. Would you rather work OT working on some BS feature sales demanded last (for single time at best) or be making a bunch more working for yourself getting back what you deserve for every hour put in?
Yeah seems crazy expensive. Last time I was in the US I bought a $10 AT&T flip phone and a $50 plan (they unlucked the sim so I could throw it in my real phone). The $50 (well $60 if you include the POS phone I had to buy to get a sim) was unlimited voice text and more data than I could use (way more than 500mb but I don't remember how much). Verizon's plan sounds as bad as Canadian carriers.
The DRM was definitely silly and I think that's what held it back. I had a couple MD players. In the era of 128mb solid state and cd mp3 players they were awesome. Lasted a month on a single AA (cd mp3 players would last a few days at best on 2xAA). Add extra memory cheap as compared to solid state. Super durable storage (much more resilient than CDs).
The Canadian software was a lot more lenient on copying mp3s over (converting to AAC). IIRC you could copy an mp3 to devices 3 times before syncing it back as deleted off a device. Stupid limitation when with comparable devices you could make as many MP3 cds as you wanted or copy to mass storage type devices with no limitations. Other huge down side was not being able to get digital copies back off the device via the USB cable. You could use the optical out and record from that, but no drag and drop. It was a great device to plug into a mixer when doing a jam or even a show (high quality recording), but you couldn't easily get the digital file off. You should have been able to just grab it via USB like a comparable device, but that would encourage copyright infringement or something. Normal Sony behavior.
I loved the format. I could have a few different mixes, throw them in my backpack and not worry. Carry an extra battery for when it finally got low and I was good to go. No skipping, pretty small (for the era) and reliable as could be. I really think the DRM and not licensing it were the reasons it never took off. That and not being able to use it as mass storage. In university as a computer science student having that as storage would have been extremely useful. Oh well. One more dead format to add to the pile.
Well the up and coming I was talking about used to be members of Tegan and Sara (who are doing fine in this digital era) and tour with Mother Mother (who is doing fine as well and is quite new). They aren't working their way up to a bigger bar. Of course they had real connections so it makes things easier. There are still ways to make money in music (and lots of it), but touring is a necessity. Once there is a fan base direct selling to your fans is possible (which means more money in their pocket). Look at how well Radiohead did with In Rainbows.
True fans want to support their favorite musicians so they can make more music. Not everyone is a leach and current stats appear to support that (heavy downloaders are also heavy purchasers of music). Maybe you don't pay for any music, but assuming everyone else is the same is false consensus bias. People are still buying music. It hasn't increased at projected rates, but it has increased. Surprise, surprise you can't make money off streaming that does pico payments for listens. But at least you're getting paid for exposure.
People still like to purchase music. I really doubt radio airplay royalties were the majority of any musicians income and that's the analog.
Basically streaming is advertising to sell digital download (or physical, I buy vinyl since it usually comes with digital as well and like collecting the vinyl) and of course promote live performances. I know a few people in the music business.. one band is just starting out and while they aren't doing amazing they are doing ok (but have to tour to do so). It has never been easy for indie or up and coming, the thing is now indie and up and coming bands don't have to sign their souls over to some record label to make a name for themselves.
BB isn't a BMW. They'd like to be one, but their new phone is more like the first generation of Hyundai Genesis priced like a BMW. Only difference being they had some history but became irrelevant, so basically worse off than someone new to a segment. And contrary to your argument they are trying to argue features/specs as a reason to buy not quality, mystique or exclusivity.
My point was that they can't afford to just target business anymore. People are happily plugging away on whatever they have now. The last company I worked at everyone moved from their old BBs to iPhones and loved it (except for the IT manager, who said they were worse than managing the BBs). They are now offering something different, not better, so that's what they need to differentiate on. They'd like to think it's better, but in reality they haven't done anything groundbreaking so it's just different. As a Canadian I'd love to see RIM succeed, but I'm afraid it might be too little too late. If they were beating the competition on price and pushing being different, then I'd think they could get some market penetration (which is what they desperately need to get it moving as a platform). Only time will tell.
Yeah qnx is cool (I worked in embedded and can't disagree with that), but them getting their qnx based OS going has taken forever and a day. Doing something on top of Linux (or userspace on top of android) would have gotten them out quicker.
Looks like they are trying to compete directly with Apple and Samsung. Looks like around $650 in Canada ($150 with 3 year shackles.. which is about $500 credit towards a phone). If businesses go back to them, yeah it could work at that price (it's not as though they are paying more than an iPhone they are already supplying their sales guys with), but a bit cheaper would have given an extra push.
$359 Nexus 4 vs $650 Q10 for me as a consumer.. the Nexus wins out for sure. Then I can buy the next Nexus as soon as it comes out and hop to the next cheapest carrier at that time.
I didn't read anything about it being locked, but I assume it's carrier locked (that's the norm in Canada). That's BS for travelling. Maybe big corps don't mind paying roaming fees, but I tend to grab a cheap sim card any time I cross the boarder and save myself hundreds in roaming and data fees.
Admittedly I'm not the target market, but at this point I'd think it'd be best for BB to appeal to as broad a market as possible. If they could profit at $350/phone then they should saturate the market, rather than pricing high now, then dropping the price like the Playbook. Nothing makes your product look more unappealing than staging it as a premium product then dropping the price because it doesn't live up to the premium status.
That isn't to say I dismiss your point outright, but I think I need to see some actual data before I accept your point.
You are quite right to doubt him.
Relative upwards mobility (in the US) is quite limited from everything I've read. Generally you end up in the same income quintile as your parents. Absolute income may be higher (hopefully, if you want to keep up with inflation), but relative income stays the same.
The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and the middle income shuffle around. In Canada we're finding the "middle class" quintiles (middle 3 groups) are spread quite wide now. A family income of $40K-$125K is considered "middle income". A family making $125K is a whole different standard of living and level of financial security from one making $40K. If a tax policy benefits people that make more than 70K but less than 125K can we actually call it a tax break for the middle class? The US middle class looks a lot more compact (by some quick googling). Of course that's because the wealth is a lot more concentrated at the top in the US. In the US you have to make >380K to be a 1%er. In Canada a mere 280K will get you into the 1% club.
At $69 for the usb model I would have purchased one 5 months ago when I broke my arm. The chording keyboards I found were quite pricey (so I didn't want to take the risk) and half qwerty on my mechanical keyboard barely go me up to what this guy claims he can do on his chorded keyboard (and took a lot of practice). I'm curious about learning curve on this.
On the negative side, the hardware looks amateurish (ghetto decals that look like they'd peel off in a week, buttons with very little movement that you bottom out each stroke). It also looks like you can't currently purchase it. If this is a Slashvertisement then not having it actually available for sale on the website is pretty damn short sighted (miss out on any impulse purchases).
I remember the first time I saw a self cleaning toilet (in France). I have yet to see one in Canada or the US.
Where I live we just picked up on open air public urinals to prevent street urination (only a few hundred years late if compared to other countries). Self flushing but not self cleaning (gotta keep the unionized city workers in work).
I don't think California is a "right to work" state.
But the issue of Poaching or Employees going to a competitor is a problem. Because the company invests in these employees and then they go out to their competitor, to give them value. It is like paying your competitors bills.
Of course if you don't invest in your employee they are worth little to you as well. If you make your employee worth more (which even just working on good projects will do) then you have to be ready and willing to pay more.
I think the real issue is the complete inadequacies in most companies Human Resource Departments. They need to be active in making sure each worker is getting their market value rate, as well insuring they have opportunity to grow and advance in the organization. Otherwise we have what we have now. Get a job work there for a few years to boost your resume and skills, realize you job is leading you nowhere, then you go to an other company for higher pay and a better position and repeat. Leaving the company that you left having to hire a replacement for you, and probably having to pay the rate your new job got combined with having to train them with the skills needed to work in the organization.
I completely agree. Where I live the few smart tech companies pay well above their competition. They want/need to keep their star performers. The cost of hiring and training is too much (financially) and the morale cost of losing someone is too much. Even if an employee leaves for a "good" reasons (spouse got a better job in another town that's a great opportunity), it makes other employees think about changing roles and positions. If someone leaves for more money to something that also looks interesting... Look out! It might not be a mass exodus, but expect turnover rates to increase.
The last place I worked at did do a proper 3rd party wage review just before I left. That's something that needs to happen a lot more often than every 3 years, especially when your hiring/training cost are astronomical. It would take at least 1 month for someone to start producing some useful code, 3 months to be pretty much normally productive (though still asking lots of questions) and 6 months to get comfortable with the codebase. This was inherited code and my learning curve was worse than that (I had to learn the codebase myself, I taught newcomers which sped things up.. and slowly the codebase improved making it somewhat easier, though still filled with landmines). You'd think in a situation like that they would want to be as competitive as possible (at least until the code is easily maintainable). Hiring a contractor to work on that particular code meant either a long term hire or hiring an ex employee.
I left for greener pastures (much higher wage despite retention offer of higher wage and bonus, telecommute, very flexible hours, more important role in company etc). It wasn't immediate but a few left after me and others were kicking it around. They saved one (for the time being) with increased wage and more responsibility/power (he's making decisions, and good ones that weren't being made before.. gives me some hope for the company). Of course that's after the seeds of dissent being sown. The damage has been done. Had I been either happy with my job or compensated well enough I wouldn't have bothered looking elsewhere (stats I've said it takes more than a 20% wage increase to get someone tempted to leave.. 30% if the employee is happy). People don't leave for the same wage or less unless they are really really unhappy. The norm is for them to become disengaged and basically just put in their 8 hours and leave. They'll just put in the bare minimum and compartmentalize their work life.
Back on topic: What Apple and others did is horrendous. Good developers are a limited resource and hence valuable. They manipulated the work market so they didn't have to compete to maintain employees and hence keep down the salary of talent. It's not like Apple couldn't have afforded to pay more, of course that would have hurt their earnings and hence stock (and Steve's income).
My thoughts exactly. I pretty much never rebooted my Linux desktop. Laptop.. yes because hibernate didn't work right.
Some people also set their browser to delete cookies every time they close the browser (I usually set one to do this so I have something clean for testing).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I was going somewhere else with it (but I did get your point and I do agree). Go hard at first then slightly loosen the reigns shows the seriousness of the situation (i.e. Yahoo is in serious trouble).
I really hope it's a matter of starting from square one. To me this reeks of something that looked good on paper to execs. They needed to drop a bunch of employees quick without it looking bad (or rather as good as it could possibly look). The idea was tighten down by getting rid of the "slackers", which is great in theory, however working from home doesn't necessarily correlate with "slacking off" (as has been pointed out here repeatedly). In reality they just selected an attribute they are allowed to discriminate on (as opposed to sex, religion or skin color) and fired those people. Performance had nothing to do with it, but that was the excuse. Now they are trying to frantically back up the "reasoning" behind this with false metrics. In the end they would have been better off just randomly firing people. That way you don't get the dead sea effect of the weakest people clinging to the company (the people that can't easily get a job elsewhere).
This is not a far cry from firing all the men because, "Men aren't as good at multitasking, and we need good multitaskers to keep Yahoo alive." That's the stereotype and that's exactly what Yahoo is doing. They are stereotyping a group and using that as the reason they are getting rid of them. People would be less upset by a lottery, or, I don't know.. real metrics, where they fire the actual slackers. Of course, as that has been pointed out, it takes actual effort to go through reviews and real metrics to decide who is worth keeping and who should leave.
I suspect it's a simple case of psychology..
Yes, false consensus effect. "If I were working at home I'd be slacking off, therefor everyone working from home must be slacking off."
.. so we know what he assumed I was doing at home), they couldn't get a hold of me any time they wanted by popping into my "office" (my office with a door had since been replaced with an "open concept" region) and interrupting me any time of the day. Generally it was to ask questions they could answer themselves, but would take significantly more effort than the energy it took to walk to my desk. If you subscribe to the school of thought that an interruption kills 15-20 minutes productivity, then it would be fair to assume I would have essentially 0 productivity on the days I was in the office. Of course to the sales and service staff I wasn't being productive if I wasn't answering their questions (despite that not being my job). Their expectation was I should be able to answer "simple questions" and still pound out code (as well as slip in their pet features).
It's also a matter of perspective. The last place I worked at I had measurable better performance the days I worked at home. More code was written, more bugs fixed etc. I'm willing to bet sales and some of service would have been glad if I was forced to work from the office all days. Why? Aside from them assuming I was slacking (one of the directors was caught running an airplay server chock-o-block full of anal porn at work
Using time tracking software we found I had about an 85-15 split in office. 15% was writing and working on software I was responsible for, the 85% was "other stuff" (interruptions, meetings, emergency bug fixes on other people's code...). Working from home that split changed to 10-90 (90% software and 10% communication). To balance things out I'd work from home some days and from the office others. It was understood my office days would generally be unproductive.
My experience may not be directly comparable, but my point was perspective matters as well. To the software team I was best working from home, to sales and service I was most "productive" in office (well.. up until the deadline on the feature/fix their customer "needs" started slipping). To some quick efficient communication is key and that's what is labelled "productive". In software, yes we need to communicate with the team, but once things are sorted (api, architecture etc) then programming is generally a very private task that requires little or no input from others. I find gtalk or similar sufficient for most communication while knee deep in code (and team members could always get hold of me quickly, despite the rest of the organization being cut off).
All I care about when hiring are the coding skills demonstrated to me in the interview.
I have to agree with you there. I am a little biased towards a degree (if experience is lacking), but I've seen people midstream university that can code circles around guys with "20+ years experience". Some people get software, others don't. I don't think school really has anything to do with that. Depending on what is being worked on the math background can help, but it's not like you need a CS degree to know the difference between a O(n^2) and O(nlogn) solution. Plus having a degree doesn't guarantee any kind of competence.
I think the biggest plus for someone without a degree is it shows they put effort into learning something themselves. I know too many people that graduated with CSc degrees that never learned to code (as in really code, they could slap something together to get a decent grade on an assignment.. but it's not proper software). Some of those students got straight 'A's. Heck, I didn't have any passion for coding until my last year when stuff really clicked. I could see the design errors in my own solutions and seek out ways to fix those deficiencies.
It's like how there are people who slap a DB together with no thought for logical design vs physical, those who will insist on 3NF then those who can on the fly write a physical db layer that is denormalized where it should be and can rationalize and clearly describe what they did where and why (i.e. they had a thought process and one beyond, "this is what the book told me to do"). I want to work with critical thinkers, not people who can jump through hoops.
And most autos allow you to shift gears now, so your complaints about gear selection no longer apply.
Not to mention many now rev match on downshifting. I recently had a rental with a 6 speed classic auto (i.e. non dual clutch) and it did not feel anything like the auto transmission with "manual mode" from 5 years ago. Quick sharp shifts that happened when I signaled (rather than waiting and deciding if that's what it wants to do) and perfect rev matching on downshifts. Yes it did nanny on downshifts (won't let you over-rev) but it was happy to let me hit the (too low) rev limiter on a late upshift. What happened to cars that let you dip into the redline? If the redline on the tach is 7k rpm I expect to be able to rev to at least 7250rpm before hitting a limiter (this particular vehicle had no yellow or orange region before the red on the tach).
People who carry anything in the back pocket of a pair of jeans are terminally uncool..
That's why I wear a fanny pack.
Actually, not all of the slashdot crowd wear cargo pants.
Yeah right. And next thing you're going to try and tell me is that not all of the cargo pants are the kind you can zip into shorts.
He had managed to worm his way into a middle-class government job, but he'd hit the ceiling of where he could go without a BA.
And there's the rub. If you are sufficiently intelligent you can get by without a degree for some time. I know two excellent software developers that didn't complete University. One graduated highschool at 16 (from a prestigious private school) then dropped out of University due to huge money offers during the .Com bubble. Another decided he'd had enough with tech support and learned to code. Smart guy, would have done fine in University but he started working right after highschool then got himself a decent job in online advertising (during the porn boom, when porn was making huge bucks online).
Both are great coders and have excellent business sense, and both have run into issues with not having a degree (specifically working in the US). One ended up having the company move to Canada to keep him (lead dev), the other got himself a degree so he could move to the US.
I also have some friends in the gaming industry (music and art), that got picked up by a AAA before they graduated. They can get jobs in Canada no problem, but can't go over to the UK or down to the US. Their portfolios are great and have had people seek them out, but no degree means they can't get work visas.
Not the same as needing a degree to even get a job as a citizen, but same underlying theme: what you can do doesn't matter if you don't meet the bar of having a bachelors.
*writes CDN and initials it*
He paid in content delivery networks?
Canadian dollar is CAD. Which is finally worth less than the USD once again.
I'm similar. I use a laptop for my main dev environment. Unfortunately it won't do dual external monitors (I specifically found laptops what would do dual monitors when docked and had 1080P 15" screens for on the go at my last employer). My current employer (me) cheaped out. I currently use a 21.5" 1080P external and the 1600x900 laptop screen as a secondary (the lowest resolution I'll ever do on a laptop, 720P is useless). It works quite well.
I have a 24" 1080P monitor as well but the gama is weird on it and it looks horrible from an angle (LG flattron TN panel led). Worst monitor I have ever used and it wasn't even cheap for a TN. Next monitor will be a good IPS panel and preferably higher resolution and 16:10 rather than 16:9. I had two 22" 16:10 on an Ergotron neo-flex stand and it was great. Great stand that is quite reasonable (just over $100). I love how you can adjust the height with one finger. I'm now considering one of their sit stand solutions so I can stand while I work. Pretty much everyone at my previous job ended up with one of their dual stands. Running a 22" portrait was a bit of a stretch (basically it'd be stuck at one height), but it was doable.
Anyhow the disparate screen sizes works for me. Back in university had a 19" 1440x900 and a 15" lcd (forget if it was 4:3 or 5:4). Worked quite well though I would have killed for two 19" 5:4 monitors.
That actually made me laugh out loud. The sad thing is that most likely reflects reality.
You have got to be pretty out of touch to think doing that is a good idea. It's not one of those things that "looks good on paper" then takes a nose dive. It was a bad call from the get go.
Of course it could be worse. Every front page story could be a shoddy summary and link to a Dice.com "article". Personally I'm still reeling over the How to use a Linux Virtual Private Server "article". What's worse is they moved the "article" from Dice.com to slashdot itself to, I dunno, give it more credibility?
"Hey, this old fluff piece we wrote has something about Linux! We should post a story about it!"
"Shoot, they didn't like that it's a Dice.com article"
"I KNOW.. we'll move it to the slashdot domain.. that way it'll be credible!!!"
"Awesome idea!!!"
*back pats all around*
Quite right, I came to >102K with all the options added in.
Feeding the 416 horsepower motor of the top-of-the-line Model S Performance edition is a half-ton lithium-ion battery pack slung beneath the cockpit; that combination is capable of flinging this $101,000 luxury car through the quarter mile as quickly as vaunted sport sedans like the Cadillac CTS-V.
You'd think the NYT could at least get the pricing right.
As with getting a job, it's often who you know not what you know.
When I started contracting on the side I had let my friends know about my interest in other work. Someone contacted me one day with something that sounded interesting so I went forward with it. I was quite open with my day job about it. They of course weren't totally cool with it, but they had no legal standing as it didn't conflict with my day job responsibilities or dance into NDA items. Of course they had a right to feel uncomfortable, because I ended up leaving for my side job.
Finding work shouldn't be an issue if you have a decent collection of friends in various fields. Even my lawyer was asking me about doing some project with her if I had time and now the people I used to work with are asking if I have time for their friends seeking on software people. There are always small businesses that need software and companies that need part time resources on contract. I think the issue is making sure you are legit (meaning you have proper business license, are dealing with taxes correctly etc). If you are someone who can come in and save the day (fix some other dev's f-up) then people will love you and you'll have more work than you can handle. It's just getting your first gig and setting yourself up for business that are the "difficult" part.
Of course if stuff starts taking off expect to drop your day job. Keeping up your own company and working for someone else isn't much fun. Would you rather work OT working on some BS feature sales demanded last (for single time at best) or be making a bunch more working for yourself getting back what you deserve for every hour put in?
Yeah seems crazy expensive. Last time I was in the US I bought a $10 AT&T flip phone and a $50 plan (they unlucked the sim so I could throw it in my real phone). The $50 (well $60 if you include the POS phone I had to buy to get a sim) was unlimited voice text and more data than I could use (way more than 500mb but I don't remember how much). Verizon's plan sounds as bad as Canadian carriers.
The DRM was definitely silly and I think that's what held it back. I had a couple MD players. In the era of 128mb solid state and cd mp3 players they were awesome. Lasted a month on a single AA (cd mp3 players would last a few days at best on 2xAA). Add extra memory cheap as compared to solid state. Super durable storage (much more resilient than CDs).
The Canadian software was a lot more lenient on copying mp3s over (converting to AAC). IIRC you could copy an mp3 to devices 3 times before syncing it back as deleted off a device. Stupid limitation when with comparable devices you could make as many MP3 cds as you wanted or copy to mass storage type devices with no limitations. Other huge down side was not being able to get digital copies back off the device via the USB cable. You could use the optical out and record from that, but no drag and drop. It was a great device to plug into a mixer when doing a jam or even a show (high quality recording), but you couldn't easily get the digital file off. You should have been able to just grab it via USB like a comparable device, but that would encourage copyright infringement or something. Normal Sony behavior.
I loved the format. I could have a few different mixes, throw them in my backpack and not worry. Carry an extra battery for when it finally got low and I was good to go. No skipping, pretty small (for the era) and reliable as could be. I really think the DRM and not licensing it were the reasons it never took off. That and not being able to use it as mass storage. In university as a computer science student having that as storage would have been extremely useful. Oh well. One more dead format to add to the pile.
Well the up and coming I was talking about used to be members of Tegan and Sara (who are doing fine in this digital era) and tour with Mother Mother (who is doing fine as well and is quite new). They aren't working their way up to a bigger bar. Of course they had real connections so it makes things easier. There are still ways to make money in music (and lots of it), but touring is a necessity. Once there is a fan base direct selling to your fans is possible (which means more money in their pocket). Look at how well Radiohead did with In Rainbows.
True fans want to support their favorite musicians so they can make more music. Not everyone is a leach and current stats appear to support that (heavy downloaders are also heavy purchasers of music). Maybe you don't pay for any music, but assuming everyone else is the same is false consensus bias. People are still buying music. It hasn't increased at projected rates, but it has increased. Surprise, surprise you can't make money off streaming that does pico payments for listens. But at least you're getting paid for exposure.
People still like to purchase music. I really doubt radio airplay royalties were the majority of any musicians income and that's the analog.
Basically streaming is advertising to sell digital download (or physical, I buy vinyl since it usually comes with digital as well and like collecting the vinyl) and of course promote live performances. I know a few people in the music business.. one band is just starting out and while they aren't doing amazing they are doing ok (but have to tour to do so). It has never been easy for indie or up and coming, the thing is now indie and up and coming bands don't have to sign their souls over to some record label to make a name for themselves.
BB isn't a BMW. They'd like to be one, but their new phone is more like the first generation of Hyundai Genesis priced like a BMW. Only difference being they had some history but became irrelevant, so basically worse off than someone new to a segment. And contrary to your argument they are trying to argue features/specs as a reason to buy not quality, mystique or exclusivity.
My point was that they can't afford to just target business anymore. People are happily plugging away on whatever they have now. The last company I worked at everyone moved from their old BBs to iPhones and loved it (except for the IT manager, who said they were worse than managing the BBs). They are now offering something different, not better, so that's what they need to differentiate on. They'd like to think it's better, but in reality they haven't done anything groundbreaking so it's just different. As a Canadian I'd love to see RIM succeed, but I'm afraid it might be too little too late. If they were beating the competition on price and pushing being different, then I'd think they could get some market penetration (which is what they desperately need to get it moving as a platform). Only time will tell.
Yeah qnx is cool (I worked in embedded and can't disagree with that), but them getting their qnx based OS going has taken forever and a day. Doing something on top of Linux (or userspace on top of android) would have gotten them out quicker.
Looks like they are trying to compete directly with Apple and Samsung. Looks like around $650 in Canada ($150 with 3 year shackles.. which is about $500 credit towards a phone). If businesses go back to them, yeah it could work at that price (it's not as though they are paying more than an iPhone they are already supplying their sales guys with), but a bit cheaper would have given an extra push.
$359 Nexus 4 vs $650 Q10 for me as a consumer.. the Nexus wins out for sure. Then I can buy the next Nexus as soon as it comes out and hop to the next cheapest carrier at that time.
I didn't read anything about it being locked, but I assume it's carrier locked (that's the norm in Canada). That's BS for travelling. Maybe big corps don't mind paying roaming fees, but I tend to grab a cheap sim card any time I cross the boarder and save myself hundreds in roaming and data fees.
Admittedly I'm not the target market, but at this point I'd think it'd be best for BB to appeal to as broad a market as possible. If they could profit at $350/phone then they should saturate the market, rather than pricing high now, then dropping the price like the Playbook. Nothing makes your product look more unappealing than staging it as a premium product then dropping the price because it doesn't live up to the premium status.
That isn't to say I dismiss your point outright, but I think I need to see some actual data before I accept your point.
You are quite right to doubt him.
Relative upwards mobility (in the US) is quite limited from everything I've read. Generally you end up in the same income quintile as your parents. Absolute income may be higher (hopefully, if you want to keep up with inflation), but relative income stays the same.
There are tons of articles online on the subject. Here's a cute little video that explains relative vs absolute income change. They claim the upper and lower quintiles to be "sticky" (i.e. less likely to see movement). They seem to have some interesting research on the subject of economic mobility.
The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor and the middle income shuffle around. In Canada we're finding the "middle class" quintiles (middle 3 groups) are spread quite wide now. A family income of $40K-$125K is considered "middle income". A family making $125K is a whole different standard of living and level of financial security from one making $40K. If a tax policy benefits people that make more than 70K but less than 125K can we actually call it a tax break for the middle class? The US middle class looks a lot more compact (by some quick googling). Of course that's because the wealth is a lot more concentrated at the top in the US. In the US you have to make >380K to be a 1%er. In Canada a mere 280K will get you into the 1% club.
At $69 for the usb model I would have purchased one 5 months ago when I broke my arm. The chording keyboards I found were quite pricey (so I didn't want to take the risk) and half qwerty on my mechanical keyboard barely go me up to what this guy claims he can do on his chorded keyboard (and took a lot of practice). I'm curious about learning curve on this.
On the negative side, the hardware looks amateurish (ghetto decals that look like they'd peel off in a week, buttons with very little movement that you bottom out each stroke). It also looks like you can't currently purchase it. If this is a Slashvertisement then not having it actually available for sale on the website is pretty damn short sighted (miss out on any impulse purchases).
You need to expand your knowledge-base.
I remember the first time I saw a self cleaning toilet (in France). I have yet to see one in Canada or the US.
Where I live we just picked up on open air public urinals to prevent street urination (only a few hundred years late if compared to other countries). Self flushing but not self cleaning (gotta keep the unionized city workers in work).
I don't think California is a "right to work" state.
But the issue of Poaching or Employees going to a competitor is a problem. Because the company invests in these employees and then they go out to their competitor, to give them value. It is like paying your competitors bills.
Of course if you don't invest in your employee they are worth little to you as well. If you make your employee worth more (which even just working on good projects will do) then you have to be ready and willing to pay more.
I think the real issue is the complete inadequacies in most companies Human Resource Departments. They need to be active in making sure each worker is getting their market value rate, as well insuring they have opportunity to grow and advance in the organization. Otherwise we have what we have now. Get a job work there for a few years to boost your resume and skills, realize you job is leading you nowhere, then you go to an other company for higher pay and a better position and repeat. Leaving the company that you left having to hire a replacement for you, and probably having to pay the rate your new job got combined with having to train them with the skills needed to work in the organization.
I completely agree. Where I live the few smart tech companies pay well above their competition. They want/need to keep their star performers. The cost of hiring and training is too much (financially) and the morale cost of losing someone is too much. Even if an employee leaves for a "good" reasons (spouse got a better job in another town that's a great opportunity), it makes other employees think about changing roles and positions. If someone leaves for more money to something that also looks interesting... Look out! It might not be a mass exodus, but expect turnover rates to increase.
The last place I worked at did do a proper 3rd party wage review just before I left. That's something that needs to happen a lot more often than every 3 years, especially when your hiring/training cost are astronomical. It would take at least 1 month for someone to start producing some useful code, 3 months to be pretty much normally productive (though still asking lots of questions) and 6 months to get comfortable with the codebase. This was inherited code and my learning curve was worse than that (I had to learn the codebase myself, I taught newcomers which sped things up.. and slowly the codebase improved making it somewhat easier, though still filled with landmines). You'd think in a situation like that they would want to be as competitive as possible (at least until the code is easily maintainable). Hiring a contractor to work on that particular code meant either a long term hire or hiring an ex employee.
I left for greener pastures (much higher wage despite retention offer of higher wage and bonus, telecommute, very flexible hours, more important role in company etc). It wasn't immediate but a few left after me and others were kicking it around. They saved one (for the time being) with increased wage and more responsibility/power (he's making decisions, and good ones that weren't being made before.. gives me some hope for the company). Of course that's after the seeds of dissent being sown. The damage has been done. Had I been either happy with my job or compensated well enough I wouldn't have bothered looking elsewhere (stats I've said it takes more than a 20% wage increase to get someone tempted to leave.. 30% if the employee is happy). People don't leave for the same wage or less unless they are really really unhappy. The norm is for them to become disengaged and basically just put in their 8 hours and leave. They'll just put in the bare minimum and compartmentalize their work life.
Back on topic: What Apple and others did is horrendous. Good developers are a limited resource and hence valuable. They manipulated the work market so they didn't have to compete to maintain employees and hence keep down the salary of talent. It's not like Apple couldn't have afforded to pay more, of course that would have hurt their earnings and hence stock (and Steve's income).
Reboots aren't as necessary in Linux.
My thoughts exactly. I pretty much never rebooted my Linux desktop. Laptop.. yes because hibernate didn't work right.
Some people also set their browser to delete cookies every time they close the browser (I usually set one to do this so I have something clean for testing).