I've lived in Scottsdale for the past 2 years, having previously lived in Chicago and Silicon Valley. The vast majority of developers here are C# developers who would rate between a B- and a D if graded on their development skills. The vast majority of development jobs in Phoenix are also centered around C#; seeing as most web-based startups are using Java or LAMP as their underpinning technology, Phoenix's labor pool and developer job opportunities simply aren't aligned to maintain a robust startup environment. Additionally, development jobs pay anywhere from 30-50% less than other major coder cities. Lower cost of living be damned; if companies are looking to hire C# developers for $70k/year, they're not going to attract top talent. Chicago, San Jose, Austin... you could spend an afternoon listing all of the cities that are healthier for startups and talented developers. And, all of these issues are just the tip of the spear - we haven't even addressed the political climate in Arizona. Good luck convincing talented developers here on an H1B that Arizona is a safe place to live and work.
RIM should abandon QNX, and run either Android, WebOS, or even Firefox OS instead. Maybe Firefox OS is exactly what RIM needs to both go-to-market faster (since QNX still isn't ready, and this arguably is more so) and ingratiate itself with a development community.
Yahoo still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a news aggregator? A search engine? An email service? An online gaming site? A social network? A web hosting company? A bookmark sharing site? A photo sharing site?
Yahoo reminds me of that old SNL skit - it's a floor wax, and a desert topping. Only Microsoft comes to mind as a parallel when reviewing the absolute scattershot approach to online monetization that Yahoo has taken, but M$ has a host of other products / services (ok, just Office & Windows) that keep it's bottom line solid, allowing it to experiment w/ various approaches online until it finds a "hit". Yahoo doesn't have the luxury of online experimentation that M$ does; it needs to find a magic formula and stick with it, which it seemingly refuses to do.
BTW, I bet dollars to donuts that in ~5 years, Yahoo, AOL, and IAC (Ask.com) merge. They could call themselves "That 90's Web Company". LOL
Shutting down Desktop search really sucks. GDS was an amazing productivity tool and will be sorely missed; it was and still is so much better than the native search faculties available on Windows and OS X. The review I wrote about GDS in '05 still stands.
Dear Creators of Opa - Honestly, what were you thinking? Opa is basically another crack at the same approach that ColdFusion tried years ago, and failed at. Opa isn't Object Oriented, meaning that developers working in an OOP language (Java,.NET, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, etc) will have a tougher time making the transition - it also means that Opa can't implement or support standard Design Patterns, which is a huge mistake IMnsHO. The sample code on the Opa site shows a mix of Opa functions, database interaction, markup language, CSS, Javascript... what a mess. Haven't we all learned that clean separation of functional application concerns is the only way to write scalable, enterprise-class programs yet? Opa doesn't appear to support any database beyond it's own build-in, slightly obfuscated one, meaning it will gain no enterprise/business traction. As much as I like to see new programming languages succeed, I have to agree w/ a lot of the other posters on/. - Opa is dead on arrival.
I'm a little surprised more/.'ers aren't familiar with HP's software and services division. HP is considered to be one of the "Big 4" of enterprise infrastructure, service, and asset management, along with CA, BMC, and IBM. HP's acquisition of EDS strengthened their professional consulting position, and put them squarely in competition with IBM as their main software/services competitor.
Enterprise software is basically a license to print money. Companies and governments spend inordinate amounts of cash on the Big 4's closed-source software, enterprise license agreements, support contracts, and implementation services. If HP is anything like CA or IBM, they're making the vast majority of their money on enterprise software and services, and very little on PC's and devices. Spinning off or selling their PC / device manufacturing business made sense for IBM, and it makes sense for HP, especially in light of the consumer competition in that space. There simply isn't the same competition in the enterprise space, hence why the Big 4 can charge the inflated prices they do for their software and services.
I'm a Firefox user on my laptop, and decided to download it for my Droid X. It runs so painfully slow, however, as well as having some odd behaviors (double-tap to zoom causes it to zoom WAY in, rather than the more measured zoom approach of the default Android browser) that I uninstalled it.
Wish Mozilla would release a lighter weight, faster, more user friendly browser for mobile...
Agree completely. Certification in ITIL demonstrates not only that you understand technology, but that you understand how technology works to support the goals and processes of the business.
I only spent 10 seconds looking at the website of ExtJS' producer, Sencha.
But... the first thing I noticed is that ExtJS is available both as open source, and as a commercially licensed product that one pays for.
Errrr... OK. So, which is it? Frankly, any software product that is available as both open source and as a commercially licensed product is... well, it's scary. The last thing I want is an "open source" framework where the producing company has the ability to pull the rug out from under me and start charging me, or claiming that any product I've personally developed that uses their code infringes on their IP.
I'm all good with commercial / closed source software - don't get me wrong. Capitalism rocks and all - go America. But, pick a license and stick with it. The whole license bifurcation thing is just too shaky.
Didn't anyone listen to Mr. Miyagi? Open source yes? OK. Open source no? OK. Open source maybe? Squish like grape.
The original poster asked if working in the Help Desk could act as a springboard for a meaningful career in IT. It can; my post is just the tip of the iceberg in how one could parlay their help desk experience into a broader career in IT.
You can deride ITIL as a fad, or a buzzword, but the fact remains that billion-dollar companies are choosing to use ITIL, which is an open process framework, of their own accord. There is value in standardizing the way that IT companies manage their operations along an open process framework, in the same way that there is value in standardizing an operating system along an open technology (eg, Linux) or standardizing applications development along an open standard (eg, Ruby).
Regarding "service management", my personal definition is meaningless. There is an accepted industry definition for what an IT service is, which is again provided via open frameworks such as ITIL and Cobit.
And, no, I don't have a six-sigma black belt. I gotta keep some of my street cred, after all.;)
I work for one of the 5 largest independent software vendors in the world. We sell a help desk product, which accounts for the lionshare of revenue in that product category.
If you're starting off in the help desk, be aware that working in a help desk is part of a much larger ecosystem known as IT Service Management. If you're interested in furthering your career, explore as much information around the ITSM space as possible, especially as it relates to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) process framework.
According to Gartner, of those publicly traded companies which have revenues in excess of $1 billion/yr, 90% of them either have implemented an ITIL process framework, are in the process of implementing one, or are strongly considering implementing one. ITSM is a huge marketplace, with tons of opportunity, and few active practitioners who are both experienced and forward thinking. It's a perfect place to write your own ticket and have a strong future in IT, as well as work with multi-national companies in shaping how they manage IT.
Recognizing the help desk's (or Service Desk) place in this ecosystem will help you parlay your position into having a role in shaping how IT organizations define, build, launch, operate and improve IT Services back to their customers.
Service Desk forms a critical part of an IT organization, where Incidents, Problems and Changes are managed and communicated. Known how Change interacts with Release and Configuration Management. Know how these in turn work in tandem with Capacity, Availability, Service Level Management, etc.
ITSM professionals are in demand. I'm currently hiring 4 ITSM professionals, whose salaries are in the $125k - $150k range. Many of the individuals currently working for me started off in help desk. It's all about your own personal initiative. If you see a help desk gig as a dead end, it will be. However, if you can see the larger picture, you can work your way up to a very rewarding and profitable career in IT Service Management.
David Flanagan is responsible for writing O'Reilly's old, unreadable JavaScript books... not a lot of confidence that he did much better on Ruby. If an O'Reilly book has been written by Flanagan, I don't buy it.
I thought of this issue years ago, and had actually sat down and done the math at one point... basically, to solve the time discrepancy, just slightly lengthen the second. Everything lines up.
Of course, every book, piece of software, scientific instrument, medical equipment,... well, basically everything in human civilization... would need to be re-build, re-calibrated, re-programmed, re-manufactured, etc. If nothing else, we'd stimulate the living hell out of the world's economy.
I incorporated/after/ contact with Dell, and ended up using a completely different name. Only Dell received the company name, and it still appears on junk mail from every possible vendor you could imagine, from shipping supplies to credit cards to health insurance to whatever. Dell sold my contact information to the world.
AmeriTrade is simply selling your information to third parties.
Dell does this. I know this for a fact - I gave Dell my information while setting up a business account for a small consultancy that I was running a few years back out of my house. I hadn't yet formalized the business legally, but gave Dell the name that I was going to use for my business. Within weeks, I began to receive snail-mail spam using the business address that I had only given to Dell. No one within Dell was stealing my information - Dell sells information about their customers to make a buck.
AmeriTrade very likely does the same thing. After you give your email, snail mail, phone, etc info to them, they turn around and earn a buck or two by selling your information to other companies.
For the sake of underwriting "free" television, I'm OK with broadcasters putting ads that can't be skipped, but that are refreshed occasionally in shows that I record. Additionally, if a show has non-removable advertisements, that removes the ability for a broadcaster to prevent me from re-distributing the show on P2P networks or video sharing sites. The show's original broadcaster and advertiser information is now bundled with the show, so no material harm occurs to those parties if I redistribute the material - in fact, they benefit from the additional exposure.
For shows that I purchase, however, I want them ad-free. If I purchase a show, that means I am subsidizing it (at least, a very very small portion of it), and don't want to deal with ads as a bonus to purchasing it. I would also be willing to waive my right to re-distribute the material, but not willing to waive my right to create copies of the material for my own backup & archival purposes.
I think that's a fair arrangement. In fact, I'd be willing to have my representative sign legislation to this effect.
Google already turned off its Search API for new registrations; only those already w/ accounts can continue using the web services-based search API. I believe their AJAX API, which is less useful, is still open.
Google should acquire Wikipedia. This act would guarantee Wikipedia's long-term health, shield it from concerns about capacity handling and server space, and allow it to tap directly into Google's advertising platform to generate revenue.
I bought this magazine for the article
on
Bill Gates on Robots
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
And it was basically a 3 page long pitch for Microsoft, and how their software is going to revolutionize the robotic platform with Windows and their multi-threaded process framework.
Thanks for the commercial for MS, but this didn't deserve to be the front-page article of SciAm. SciAm just lost some points in my eyes after pimping this BS from MS out.
I built a robot in jr high that could walk up and down stairs. The robot had two legs, w/ four feet, two on each side. Each leg was bound to the robot's body using a turning motor in the center of the leg (which was really just a tubular pipe about 1 ft in length). Each leg had one foot on the end, which had a flat, circular surface that was adjoined on a small 1" pipe, attached to the end of the leg. The feet could spin freely at the endpoint of the leg. So, when the legs spun, the feet rotated around. Gravity moved the feet flatly towards the floor. Walking up stairs, the robot would have two feet on the current stair, with the next two rotating upwards or downwards towards the next stair. I built in a little button on both sides of the robot's body that would alternate the direction of the leg motors, so when the robot got to the top of the stairs, it would bump the wall, change direction and walk back down. About every 3 weeks I'd change the batteries and put it back in action. Pity my poor parents, having to walk over my robot anytime they wanted to go up or down the stairs for about 3 months!
You have a point... I should have specifically referenced the Google Cache in my initial post. Though, I'm not certain what the parameters are around the cache - i.e., how long it's stored for, when it's updated, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, thought I was logged in for that comment. Sorry about that.
I've lived in Scottsdale for the past 2 years, having previously lived in Chicago and Silicon Valley. The vast majority of developers here are C# developers who would rate between a B- and a D if graded on their development skills. The vast majority of development jobs in Phoenix are also centered around C#; seeing as most web-based startups are using Java or LAMP as their underpinning technology, Phoenix's labor pool and developer job opportunities simply aren't aligned to maintain a robust startup environment. Additionally, development jobs pay anywhere from 30-50% less than other major coder cities. Lower cost of living be damned; if companies are looking to hire C# developers for $70k/year, they're not going to attract top talent. Chicago, San Jose, Austin ... you could spend an afternoon listing all of the cities that are healthier for startups and talented developers. And, all of these issues are just the tip of the spear - we haven't even addressed the political climate in Arizona. Good luck convincing talented developers here on an H1B that Arizona is a safe place to live and work.
RIM should abandon QNX, and run either Android, WebOS, or even Firefox OS instead. Maybe Firefox OS is exactly what RIM needs to both go-to-market faster (since QNX still isn't ready, and this arguably is more so) and ingratiate itself with a development community.
Get your ITIL v3 Expert / Manager certification. Jobs for ITIL Experts / Managers start at about $150k and work up from there.
Yahoo! should merge with Ask, AOL, and Lycos. They could call themselves That 90's Web Company.
Yahoo still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a news aggregator? A search engine? An email service? An online gaming site? A social network? A web hosting company? A bookmark sharing site? A photo sharing site?
Yahoo reminds me of that old SNL skit - it's a floor wax, and a desert topping. Only Microsoft comes to mind as a parallel when reviewing the absolute scattershot approach to online monetization that Yahoo has taken, but M$ has a host of other products / services (ok, just Office & Windows) that keep it's bottom line solid, allowing it to experiment w/ various approaches online until it finds a "hit". Yahoo doesn't have the luxury of online experimentation that M$ does; it needs to find a magic formula and stick with it, which it seemingly refuses to do.
BTW, I bet dollars to donuts that in ~5 years, Yahoo, AOL, and IAC (Ask.com) merge. They could call themselves "That 90's Web Company". LOL
Shutting down Desktop search really sucks. GDS was an amazing productivity tool and will be sorely missed; it was and still is so much better than the native search faculties available on Windows and OS X. The review I wrote about GDS in '05 still stands.
Mathieu, I'll take this up with you over email then. I appreciate the response. - DrGroove
Dear Creators of Opa - Honestly, what were you thinking? Opa is basically another crack at the same approach that ColdFusion tried years ago, and failed at. Opa isn't Object Oriented, meaning that developers working in an OOP language (Java, .NET, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, etc) will have a tougher time making the transition - it also means that Opa can't implement or support standard Design Patterns, which is a huge mistake IMnsHO. The sample code on the Opa site shows a mix of Opa functions, database interaction, markup language, CSS, Javascript... what a mess. Haven't we all learned that clean separation of functional application concerns is the only way to write scalable, enterprise-class programs yet? Opa doesn't appear to support any database beyond it's own build-in, slightly obfuscated one, meaning it will gain no enterprise/business traction. As much as I like to see new programming languages succeed, I have to agree w/ a lot of the other posters on /. - Opa is dead on arrival.
I'm a little surprised more /.'ers aren't familiar with HP's software and services division. HP is considered to be one of the "Big 4" of enterprise infrastructure, service, and asset management, along with CA, BMC, and IBM. HP's acquisition of EDS strengthened their professional consulting position, and put them squarely in competition with IBM as their main software/services competitor.
Enterprise software is basically a license to print money. Companies and governments spend inordinate amounts of cash on the Big 4's closed-source software, enterprise license agreements, support contracts, and implementation services. If HP is anything like CA or IBM, they're making the vast majority of their money on enterprise software and services, and very little on PC's and devices. Spinning off or selling their PC / device manufacturing business made sense for IBM, and it makes sense for HP, especially in light of the consumer competition in that space. There simply isn't the same competition in the enterprise space, hence why the Big 4 can charge the inflated prices they do for their software and services.
I'm a Firefox user on my laptop, and decided to download it for my Droid X. It runs so painfully slow, however, as well as having some odd behaviors (double-tap to zoom causes it to zoom WAY in, rather than the more measured zoom approach of the default Android browser) that I uninstalled it. Wish Mozilla would release a lighter weight, faster, more user friendly browser for mobile...
Agree completely. Certification in ITIL demonstrates not only that you understand technology, but that you understand how technology works to support the goals and processes of the business.
I only spent 10 seconds looking at the website of ExtJS' producer, Sencha. But... the first thing I noticed is that ExtJS is available both as open source, and as a commercially licensed product that one pays for. Errrr... OK. So, which is it? Frankly, any software product that is available as both open source and as a commercially licensed product is ... well, it's scary. The last thing I want is an "open source" framework where the producing company has the ability to pull the rug out from under me and start charging me, or claiming that any product I've personally developed that uses their code infringes on their IP.
I'm all good with commercial / closed source software - don't get me wrong. Capitalism rocks and all - go America. But, pick a license and stick with it. The whole license bifurcation thing is just too shaky.
Didn't anyone listen to Mr. Miyagi? Open source yes? OK. Open source no? OK. Open source maybe? Squish like grape.
The original poster asked if working in the Help Desk could act as a springboard for a meaningful career in IT. It can; my post is just the tip of the iceberg in how one could parlay their help desk experience into a broader career in IT.
;)
You can deride ITIL as a fad, or a buzzword, but the fact remains that billion-dollar companies are choosing to use ITIL, which is an open process framework, of their own accord. There is value in standardizing the way that IT companies manage their operations along an open process framework, in the same way that there is value in standardizing an operating system along an open technology (eg, Linux) or standardizing applications development along an open standard (eg, Ruby).
Regarding "service management", my personal definition is meaningless. There is an accepted industry definition for what an IT service is, which is again provided via open frameworks such as ITIL and Cobit.
And, no, I don't have a six-sigma black belt. I gotta keep some of my street cred, after all.
I work for one of the 5 largest independent software vendors in the world. We sell a help desk product, which accounts for the lionshare of revenue in that product category.
If you're starting off in the help desk, be aware that working in a help desk is part of a much larger ecosystem known as IT Service Management. If you're interested in furthering your career, explore as much information around the ITSM space as possible, especially as it relates to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) process framework.
According to Gartner, of those publicly traded companies which have revenues in excess of $1 billion/yr, 90% of them either have implemented an ITIL process framework, are in the process of implementing one, or are strongly considering implementing one. ITSM is a huge marketplace, with tons of opportunity, and few active practitioners who are both experienced and forward thinking. It's a perfect place to write your own ticket and have a strong future in IT, as well as work with multi-national companies in shaping how they manage IT.
Recognizing the help desk's (or Service Desk) place in this ecosystem will help you parlay your position into having a role in shaping how IT organizations define, build, launch, operate and improve IT Services back to their customers.
Service Desk forms a critical part of an IT organization, where Incidents, Problems and Changes are managed and communicated. Known how Change interacts with Release and Configuration Management. Know how these in turn work in tandem with Capacity, Availability, Service Level Management, etc.
ITSM professionals are in demand. I'm currently hiring 4 ITSM professionals, whose salaries are in the $125k - $150k range. Many of the individuals currently working for me started off in help desk. It's all about your own personal initiative. If you see a help desk gig as a dead end, it will be. However, if you can see the larger picture, you can work your way up to a very rewarding and profitable career in IT Service Management.
David Flanagan is responsible for writing O'Reilly's old, unreadable JavaScript books... not a lot of confidence that he did much better on Ruby. If an O'Reilly book has been written by Flanagan, I don't buy it.
I thought of this issue years ago, and had actually sat down and done the math at one point... basically, to solve the time discrepancy, just slightly lengthen the second. Everything lines up. Of course, every book, piece of software, scientific instrument, medical equipment, ... well, basically everything in human civilization ... would need to be re-build, re-calibrated, re-programmed, re-manufactured, etc. If nothing else, we'd stimulate the living hell out of the world's economy.
I incorporated /after/ contact with Dell, and ended up using a completely different name. Only Dell received the company name, and it still appears on junk mail from every possible vendor you could imagine, from shipping supplies to credit cards to health insurance to whatever. Dell sold my contact information to the world.
AmeriTrade is simply selling your information to third parties.
Dell does this. I know this for a fact - I gave Dell my information while setting up a business account for a small consultancy that I was running a few years back out of my house. I hadn't yet formalized the business legally, but gave Dell the name that I was going to use for my business. Within weeks, I began to receive snail-mail spam using the business address that I had only given to Dell. No one within Dell was stealing my information - Dell sells information about their customers to make a buck.
AmeriTrade very likely does the same thing. After you give your email, snail mail, phone, etc info to them, they turn around and earn a buck or two by selling your information to other companies.
For the sake of underwriting "free" television, I'm OK with broadcasters putting ads that can't be skipped, but that are refreshed occasionally in shows that I record. Additionally, if a show has non-removable advertisements, that removes the ability for a broadcaster to prevent me from re-distributing the show on P2P networks or video sharing sites. The show's original broadcaster and advertiser information is now bundled with the show, so no material harm occurs to those parties if I redistribute the material - in fact, they benefit from the additional exposure.
For shows that I purchase, however, I want them ad-free. If I purchase a show, that means I am subsidizing it (at least, a very very small portion of it), and don't want to deal with ads as a bonus to purchasing it. I would also be willing to waive my right to re-distribute the material, but not willing to waive my right to create copies of the material for my own backup & archival purposes.
I think that's a fair arrangement. In fact, I'd be willing to have my representative sign legislation to this effect.
Google already turned off its Search API for new registrations; only those already w/ accounts can continue using the web services-based search API. I believe their AJAX API, which is less useful, is still open.
Google should acquire Wikipedia. This act would guarantee Wikipedia's long-term health, shield it from concerns about capacity handling and server space, and allow it to tap directly into Google's advertising platform to generate revenue.
And it was basically a 3 page long pitch for Microsoft, and how their software is going to revolutionize the robotic platform with Windows and their multi-threaded process framework.
Thanks for the commercial for MS, but this didn't deserve to be the front-page article of SciAm. SciAm just lost some points in my eyes after pimping this BS from MS out.
I built a robot in jr high that could walk up and down stairs. The robot had two legs, w/ four feet, two on each side. Each leg was bound to the robot's body using a turning motor in the center of the leg (which was really just a tubular pipe about 1 ft in length). Each leg had one foot on the end, which had a flat, circular surface that was adjoined on a small 1" pipe, attached to the end of the leg. The feet could spin freely at the endpoint of the leg. So, when the legs spun, the feet rotated around. Gravity moved the feet flatly towards the floor. Walking up stairs, the robot would have two feet on the current stair, with the next two rotating upwards or downwards towards the next stair. I built in a little button on both sides of the robot's body that would alternate the direction of the leg motors, so when the robot got to the top of the stairs, it would bump the wall, change direction and walk back down. About every 3 weeks I'd change the batteries and put it back in action. Pity my poor parents, having to walk over my robot anytime they wanted to go up or down the stairs for about 3 months!
You have a point... I should have specifically referenced the Google Cache in my initial post. Though, I'm not certain what the parameters are around the cache - i.e., how long it's stored for, when it's updated, etc.