Sorry, I was responding to the next post down, which said, "Lie and then learn the language before you get found out."
You are really right, you have to pick the right domain in which to become an expert. But you can use some good tools to pick the domain: how many jobs are there with that domain (the more the better), what is average salary for domain experts, and so on. Even if you are not in a good bargaining position with your current boss, you will be with the next.
The next thing is, you need to prove your expertise, and this is where blogging / screen-casting comes in. To the maximum extent permissible by your company, you have to 'give your knowledge away' through blogging etc. This then proves without a doubt your expertise. It is a new world. Those who give away their knowledge win.
I have, I think, a good nose for what a good domain is, and which domains 'stink'. You have to develop your own nose.
No, I didn't lie. I made no statement about my JavaScript skills before getting the job. I did make statements about being able to do the job in JavaScript. I knew about the performance gains in the V8 / Chakra JavaScript engines, and I knew that even though I would need to write some somewhat complex code, the JavaScript engines could handle it.
I got the contract for three reasons. First, I am a domain expert in a pretty technical area. I know about software development, and I am also an expert in another field. That is another story, see below. Second, through long, painful practice, I have become a good writer / speaker / screen-caster. I can present well. In the process of applying for the job, I recorded several screen-casts that explained exactly how I would go about solving the problem. Those screen-casts were sent from person to person until the entire hiring team knew that I was the right person for the job. Third, I didn't have any questions about whether I could perform. I was confident of being able to pull it off, and in fact, I certainly did do so.
About being a domain expert - while at MS, I was a 'heat seeking missile'. I would only work on hot projects, and in each project I worked on, I learned more than almost anyone else on the team about how best to work with the technology. I had one manager who wanted me to work on a 'dog' project, and I just would not do it; I switched jobs to another group that had a project I believed in. Being a domain expert, in my opinion, is the highest ROI that a developer can make. Don't just be a code jockey. Be a code jockey and an accounting expert, or be a code jockey and a construction estimation expert, or be a code jockey and a compiler expert. This is how you pull off the 'feat of getting a job writing a large JavaScript program without any JavaScript experience.'
When you are working at a company, the idea is to make your best effort to be the deepest domain expert in that particular field in the entire company. If you are in accounting, read every available relevant book on accounting. If you are at a company writing software to do computational fluid dynamics, then really understand the math, the available theories about best practices, and so on.
What I was responding to was the statement "If you think there's a glut of contract IT workers now, just wait.", and what I'm saying is that there is no glut. There *never* has been a glut of competent people. The summary basically says, oh no, some baby boomers are going to retire and work less and be contractors, and that if you think that the current glut (that is causing you to not have work) is bad, just you wait, because it is going to get worse to the tune of 10,000 workers retiring (and maybe becoming contractors, gasp) every day. WTF, who cares, be an employee, be a contractor, whatever, get whatever you can make the market pay, and don't whine about it. If you want more, do something about it. With regards to expectation of high wage, damn right, I expect. If someone wants me, they have to pay. If they want cheaper, I'll be happy to recommend some more junior developer. If someone else doesn't expect a high wage or benefits, and that is all they feel they are worth (retired or not), then that is probably what they are worth.
Regarding the tension between full-time employees vs. contract workers, the market will straighten this out. Adam Smith had it right. When I left (level 63), total salary plus benefits was $150k. Now I bill at a rate that is quite a bit higher per hour, even including benefits. Some people will opt for the security of having a blue badge, and consider that it is not worth the effort to be a consultant. I left behind a number of non-vested stock grants, and have since more than made up for that lost ground via higher billing.
Personally, I have a different problem. I *can't afford* to be a full-time employee. There are not many jobs that have a salary at > $200k (see the various salary surveys), and I can't afford to take a pay cut in order to be an employee. If you are going to stay at MS, even though MS pays 'better' than many other companies, it still takes a *huge* effing effort to get to >= $200k + benefits. As an aside, one of my friends (at GM level) has been at MS for maybe 20 years, and is finally at $350k, and when out drinking one night, he said that the amount of pain he went through to get to his level was so not worth it. Being a contractor is just an easier, happier life.
First of all, there is no glut right now of competent IT workers. I have lots of buddies (most elderly, so to speak, I'm 52) who have absolutely no shortage of work. I don't see it. I am a contract worker now - bill at a greater rate than I ever have in my life, and have more work than I know what to do with. I turn down 2 out of 3 contracts. I think that people who are not getting IT work need to hone their skills until they have jobs/contracts forced onto them.
I used to work at Microsoft - I never even *came close* to being stack ranked out. I am not saying that no one was ever incorrectly ranked at the bottom, but I never saw it. The people I saw at the bottom end of the stack rank - I could see the point that the managers were making. One dude was competent, but spent *way* too much time goofing off. And while Microsoft is mostly filled with competent people, make no doubt about it, there are plenty of semi-competent people there. There needs to be a system to get rid of the dead weight.
Now granted, I am not lazy. I am versed in OO and functional programming. I have developed many large projects in JavaScript, as well as C#. I have written books, written over 1000 blog posts, recorded over 150 screen-casts, and etc. I took a job writing a large system in JavaScript without knowing the language, then taught myself the language, including the functional programming / lamda / closure aspects in 3 weeks. I was 50 at the time. So don't whine about being old and not having the skills. If you don't have them, then get them. If you have them, then you probably have work. And if you have the skilz and don't have work, then blog / screen-cast, and you will have work in short order.
World wars are a remarkably ineffective way to control population. Best estimates are that 50M people died in WWII. This is only 1/3 of the people born in India since 2001, when they passed 1B.
Sooner or later, the law of averages says that 7 people in a building with cell phone towers will develop brain tumors. We must obey the law of averages, otherwise plan for a visit from the LOA Police!
But the problem is, sometimes you HAVE to. As an example, I sometimes work in a huge documentation system that uses GUIDs to tag samples, and the docs are stored as XML files, and you have to grep and find the file that contains the sample, create a list of the corresponding docs and snippets, and process the snippets in a particular way, then submit a text file back to the doc system. I don't have a choice about my sources or the format of the file that I have to submit. So, I have to process text files, and Monad didn't help.
Shells are often used for managing systems and networks. I think that PowerShell will do an adequate job at this, although it seemed to be more complicated than necessary to me.
Unix shell scripts are also incredibly good at manipulating text files, using awk, grep, sed, cut, etc. I tried to do such a task with PowerShell and found it wanting. I revered to Windows Services for Unix (basically the Korn shell).
For those who don't know, a monad is a notion in functional programming languages that is a way to structure computations in terms of values and sequences of computations using those values. Monads allow the programmer to build computations using sequential building blocks, which can themselves be sequences of computations. This is not dissimilar to how PowerShell works, but really, I when manipulating text files, I don't want to be dealing with functional programming language abstractions.
A) The author's first point was that there was no mac os - it was a rom instead. There was a mac clone (somewhat portable lunch box style) made in Boulder, CO. They would even buy old macs to remove the rom and put it in their portable. The company was killed by Apple very quickly. Apple could has as easily licensed the rom! Software is software, whether in a rom or on a floppy!
The the author made the point that licensing would not work because PCs were incapable of running the mac os. What about making mac clones? What about modifying the pc to include video cards that could run the mac os?
At that point, I decided that the author didn't know what he was talking about, and quit reading...
I think that the author of the article demonstrated some key misconceptions about the function of underwriters in IPOs. If the only function of an investment bank were to distribute new stock, any idiot could do so.
However, the key function of an underwriter / investment bank is to CREATE A MARKET. This includes some activities such as buying stock if the stock proves too weak too soon. They often have contracts that compensate them if the stock maintains a certain price for a certain amount of time. This is why IPO managers want to allocate stock to known people who will not sell and take a quick profit. There is no such protection with Google - anybody who buys the stock through the IPO can sell at any time (I believe - I have not read through Google's IPO site). I am, of course, not privy to the details of Google's IPO contract with their underwriters, however, it seems that the IPO manager would not want to guarantee stock prices when the manager has absolutely no control over who buys the stock and when they will sell.
I predict that the Google IPO will fail miserably - I don't predict this because I want to see it - I just think that given market dynamics, this is what will happen. Until a market is established for a stock, an IPO wants to be carefully managed, and Google is side-stepping that management process.
For one, I will be watching the price, and if and when it breaks, I will sell short. And I bet that I'll make at least a few dollars on the trade.
Anyone who is contemplating buying google owes it to themselves to read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre. It is as relevant and educational today as when it was written 70 years ago!
I certainly may be proved wrong, and will be willing to learn something new. We'll all see soon, won't we!
I always wondered when MS was going to do this. Presumably, MS hasn't entered the PC hardware business so as to not alienate their hardware partners. I can see the progression:
MS ships game console.
MS ships PC that doubles as game console.
For a few dollars less, you can buy a PC that doesn't do the game console thing.
For quite a few dollars more, you can buy a kick ass machine.
I see this as their strategy to finally enter the hardware market.
I read an interesting story a while back (perhaps on/.) where the author made the point that even when MS is sued by the Gov, MS still wins. With legal maneuverings, legal delays, and etc., by the time the courts are ready to impose a remedy, MS has already taken down their opponents. And the costs and penalties are insignificant when compared to the immense value of being intrenched in the market.
The main complaint from the European Commission's antitrust ruling against Microsoft is that Microsoft locks people into Windows because most people who use Windows will use Microsoft proprietary formats. This is certainly true. My aunt Millie will upload all of her pictures, and perhaps some music into Microsoft applications. It then becomes far too daunting for her to switch to any operating system other than one from Microsoft.
This is Microsoft's main ploy - it locks aunt Millie into using Microsoft operating systems basically forever.
Now, Microsoft has set a precedent for licensing its formats to Linux distributions.
The real problem is that it is evil to use Microsoft formats, regardless of the operating system.
Contrary to previous posts, this is NOT a good thing.
What many employeers (me included) want to know is that you can write a system that is thousands of lines long. Just about anyone can acquire enough competence to write sample programs. Not all programmers who finish school have the capacity to design and write a more complex system.
So pick something that needs doing and do it. It could be shareware. It could be participation in an open source project. It could be something for your own enjoyment. But it should be more complex than an example program.
This will accomplish several things: 1) You will get more experience and confidence. 2) You will be able to demonstrate something tangible to prospective employers. 3) You may reap rewards directly from the project.
I have filed my own paperwork on a couple of trademarks, and the total cost is less than $500. If I remember correctly, the cost of the final filing is about $350, which goes to pay an attorney employed at the patent and trademark office. If you are careful, and understand what can be trademarked, and what cannot, it is really rather easy.
Acquiring such a trademark means that it is somewhat easier to enforce that others do not use the trademark in their own product names.
I am a US citizen who has lived and worked extensively in Bangalore, India. I have seen the wonderful benefits to even the poor when foreign money comes into India. (Manual laborers command tripple the salary of just a few years ago.)
I can't feel that it is bad that a hungry family in India is able to earn enough money for food and shelter.
And when are we going to get over this nationalism / tribalism? What is it that makes us feel benevelant towards a United States human being and competitive towards an Indian human being?
'Nationalism' only came into being around the year 1800 - there was a phase said by a prominent European politition at that time: 'Now that we have created Italy, we need to create Italians'. A little bit of education about nationalism shows that was a calculated creation of those who wanted it for their own benefit. Remember that there was a prominent political party in Europe that came into power around 1933, that had 'Nationalism' as one of the words in its name....
There is another vision to take of this thing. There is a lot of content that is not being released on the web because it is too expensive to produce, and the author / creator must get compensated for their time. Examples of this are first run / highly popular books, such as those on the NY Times best seller list. Such an author would be willing to sell an electronic copy of their work for much less money if they could be assured that the would sell more than one copy.
I can imagine a world where I can buy first run books to read electronically for 50 cents. This would be worth it to me. I am as happy reading a book on my computer as I am reading it in paper - perhaps happier as I can search. It would be worth it to the author. They are compensated for their extraordinary effort in writing the book.
I can see the possibility that 'trusted' computing platforms do give me something that I don't currently have. They give me access to content that simply will not be made available if there is no 'trusted' computing platform.
And, at the same time, nobody's arm is twisted. If you don't want the content, then you don't need to have an implementation of something like Paladium.
What if we could move to a world where *everything* is online. All content is available. Some of it is free, as in free beer and etc. Some of it is not free, and it is within the rights of the author to decide which category he wants to place his content.
Actually, in my opinion, this *is* going to happen, whether I want it or not, or whether anyone else wants it or not.
I see a lot of posts on/. that advocate that all information should be free. Some idiot even said "why should someone own the intellectual property rights to something just because they created it."
This is just like someone saying, "Why should you be able to mold your children's values in the direction that you choose, just because you *created* them."
My point is that if I create some intellectual property, I get to decide what to do with it, not you or anybody else on the web, and Paladium helps. And at the same time, it will make it far easier for me to release my content to a much vaster audience. And I believe that there will be much more content available to me post-Paladium.
Slashdot Mirror
Oooh, not rock again!!!!
Sorry, I was responding to the next post down, which said, "Lie and then learn the language before you get found out."
You are really right, you have to pick the right domain in which to become an expert. But you can use some good tools to pick the domain: how many jobs are there with that domain (the more the better), what is average salary for domain experts, and so on. Even if you are not in a good bargaining position with your current boss, you will be with the next.
The next thing is, you need to prove your expertise, and this is where blogging / screen-casting comes in. To the maximum extent permissible by your company, you have to 'give your knowledge away' through blogging etc. This then proves without a doubt your expertise. It is a new world. Those who give away their knowledge win.
I have, I think, a good nose for what a good domain is, and which domains 'stink'. You have to develop your own nose.
No, I didn't lie. I made no statement about my JavaScript skills before getting the job. I did make statements about being able to do the job in JavaScript. I knew about the performance gains in the V8 / Chakra JavaScript engines, and I knew that even though I would need to write some somewhat complex code, the JavaScript engines could handle it.
I got the contract for three reasons. First, I am a domain expert in a pretty technical area. I know about software development, and I am also an expert in another field. That is another story, see below. Second, through long, painful practice, I have become a good writer / speaker / screen-caster. I can present well. In the process of applying for the job, I recorded several screen-casts that explained exactly how I would go about solving the problem. Those screen-casts were sent from person to person until the entire hiring team knew that I was the right person for the job. Third, I didn't have any questions about whether I could perform. I was confident of being able to pull it off, and in fact, I certainly did do so.
About being a domain expert - while at MS, I was a 'heat seeking missile'. I would only work on hot projects, and in each project I worked on, I learned more than almost anyone else on the team about how best to work with the technology. I had one manager who wanted me to work on a 'dog' project, and I just would not do it; I switched jobs to another group that had a project I believed in. Being a domain expert, in my opinion, is the highest ROI that a developer can make. Don't just be a code jockey. Be a code jockey and an accounting expert, or be a code jockey and a construction estimation expert, or be a code jockey and a compiler expert. This is how you pull off the 'feat of getting a job writing a large JavaScript program without any JavaScript experience.'
When you are working at a company, the idea is to make your best effort to be the deepest domain expert in that particular field in the entire company. If you are in accounting, read every available relevant book on accounting. If you are at a company writing software to do computational fluid dynamics, then really understand the math, the available theories about best practices, and so on.
Glad you like the rant ;-)
What I was responding to was the statement "If you think there's a glut of contract IT workers now, just wait.", and what I'm saying is that there is no glut. There *never* has been a glut of competent people. The summary basically says, oh no, some baby boomers are going to retire and work less and be contractors, and that if you think that the current glut (that is causing you to not have work) is bad, just you wait, because it is going to get worse to the tune of 10,000 workers retiring (and maybe becoming contractors, gasp) every day. WTF, who cares, be an employee, be a contractor, whatever, get whatever you can make the market pay, and don't whine about it. If you want more, do something about it. With regards to expectation of high wage, damn right, I expect. If someone wants me, they have to pay. If they want cheaper, I'll be happy to recommend some more junior developer. If someone else doesn't expect a high wage or benefits, and that is all they feel they are worth (retired or not), then that is probably what they are worth.
Regarding the tension between full-time employees vs. contract workers, the market will straighten this out. Adam Smith had it right. When I left (level 63), total salary plus benefits was $150k. Now I bill at a rate that is quite a bit higher per hour, even including benefits. Some people will opt for the security of having a blue badge, and consider that it is not worth the effort to be a consultant. I left behind a number of non-vested stock grants, and have since more than made up for that lost ground via higher billing.
Personally, I have a different problem. I *can't afford* to be a full-time employee. There are not many jobs that have a salary at > $200k (see the various salary surveys), and I can't afford to take a pay cut in order to be an employee. If you are going to stay at MS, even though MS pays 'better' than many other companies, it still takes a *huge* effing effort to get to >= $200k + benefits. As an aside, one of my friends (at GM level) has been at MS for maybe 20 years, and is finally at $350k, and when out drinking one night, he said that the amount of pain he went through to get to his level was so not worth it. Being a contractor is just an easier, happier life.
First of all, there is no glut right now of competent IT workers. I have lots of buddies (most elderly, so to speak, I'm 52) who have absolutely no shortage of work. I don't see it. I am a contract worker now - bill at a greater rate than I ever have in my life, and have more work than I know what to do with. I turn down 2 out of 3 contracts. I think that people who are not getting IT work need to hone their skills until they have jobs/contracts forced onto them.
I used to work at Microsoft - I never even *came close* to being stack ranked out. I am not saying that no one was ever incorrectly ranked at the bottom, but I never saw it. The people I saw at the bottom end of the stack rank - I could see the point that the managers were making. One dude was competent, but spent *way* too much time goofing off. And while Microsoft is mostly filled with competent people, make no doubt about it, there are plenty of semi-competent people there. There needs to be a system to get rid of the dead weight.
Now granted, I am not lazy. I am versed in OO and functional programming. I have developed many large projects in JavaScript, as well as C#. I have written books, written over 1000 blog posts, recorded over 150 screen-casts, and etc. I took a job writing a large system in JavaScript without knowing the language, then taught myself the language, including the functional programming / lamda / closure aspects in 3 weeks. I was 50 at the time. So don't whine about being old and not having the skills. If you don't have them, then get them. If you have them, then you probably have work. And if you have the skilz and don't have work, then blog / screen-cast, and you will have work in short order.
Boeing have spent billions on creating plastic airplanes to get more efficient travel. This thing would fly like a brick.
See if you can run with the big dogs.
World wars are a remarkably ineffective way to control population. Best estimates are that 50M people died in WWII. This is only 1/3 of the people born in India since 2001, when they passed 1B.
I much prefer 0xC0C0BABE to 0xDEADBEEF
FWIW, the name of the Microsoft proposed ISO standard is "Office Open XML", not "Open Office XML", nor OOXML. Be accurate, please.
Sooner or later, the law of averages says that 7 people in a building with cell phone towers will develop brain tumors. We must obey the law of averages, otherwise plan for a visit from the LOA Police!
But the problem is, sometimes you HAVE to. As an example, I sometimes work in a huge documentation system that uses GUIDs to tag samples, and the docs are stored as XML files, and you have to grep and find the file that contains the sample, create a list of the corresponding docs and snippets, and process the snippets in a particular way, then submit a text file back to the doc system. I don't have a choice about my sources or the format of the file that I have to submit. So, I have to process text files, and Monad didn't help.
Unix shell scripts are also incredibly good at manipulating text files, using awk, grep, sed, cut, etc. I tried to do such a task with PowerShell and found it wanting. I revered to Windows Services for Unix (basically the Korn shell).
For those who don't know, a monad is a notion in functional programming languages that is a way to structure computations in terms of values and sequences of computations using those values. Monads allow the programmer to build computations using sequential building blocks, which can themselves be sequences of computations. This is not dissimilar to how PowerShell works, but really, I when manipulating text files, I don't want to be dealing with functional programming language abstractions.
The the author made the point that licensing would not work because PCs were incapable of running the mac os. What about making mac clones? What about modifying the pc to include video cards that could run the mac os?
At that point, I decided that the author didn't know what he was talking about, and quit reading...
However, the key function of an underwriter / investment bank is to CREATE A MARKET. This includes some activities such as buying stock if the stock proves too weak too soon. They often have contracts that compensate them if the stock maintains a certain price for a certain amount of time. This is why IPO managers want to allocate stock to known people who will not sell and take a quick profit. There is no such protection with Google - anybody who buys the stock through the IPO can sell at any time (I believe - I have not read through Google's IPO site). I am, of course, not privy to the details of Google's IPO contract with their underwriters, however, it seems that the IPO manager would not want to guarantee stock prices when the manager has absolutely no control over who buys the stock and when they will sell.
I predict that the Google IPO will fail miserably - I don't predict this because I want to see it - I just think that given market dynamics, this is what will happen. Until a market is established for a stock, an IPO wants to be carefully managed, and Google is side-stepping that management process.
For one, I will be watching the price, and if and when it breaks, I will sell short. And I bet that I'll make at least a few dollars on the trade.
Anyone who is contemplating buying google owes it to themselves to read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre. It is as relevant and educational today as when it was written 70 years ago!
I certainly may be proved wrong, and will be willing to learn something new. We'll all see soon, won't we!
Please send this to everyone in your address book, NOW.
If a man (or woman) comes to your front door and says he (or she) is conducting a survey and asks you to show them your ass, DO NOT do this.
This is a SCAM!!!!!!!! He (or she) just wants to see your ass.
I wish I'd gotten this yesterday.
MS ships game console.
MS ships PC that doubles as game console.
For a few dollars less, you can buy a PC that doesn't do the game console thing.
For quite a few dollars more, you can buy a kick ass machine.
I see this as their strategy to finally enter the hardware market.
I read an interesting story a while back (perhaps on /.) where the author made the point that even when MS is sued by the Gov, MS still wins. With legal maneuverings, legal delays, and etc., by the time the courts are ready to impose a remedy, MS has already taken down their opponents. And the costs and penalties are insignificant when compared to the immense value of being intrenched in the market.
This is Microsoft's main ploy - it locks aunt Millie into using Microsoft operating systems basically forever.
Now, Microsoft has set a precedent for licensing its formats to Linux distributions.
The real problem is that it is evil to use Microsoft formats, regardless of the operating system.
Contrary to previous posts, this is NOT a good thing.
So pick something that needs doing and do it. It could be shareware. It could be participation in an open source project. It could be something for your own enjoyment. But it should be more complex than an example program.
This will accomplish several things: 1) You will get more experience and confidence. 2) You will be able to demonstrate something tangible to prospective employers. 3) You may reap rewards directly from the project.
Acquiring such a trademark means that it is somewhat easier to enforce that others do not use the trademark in their own product names.
I am a US citizen who has lived and worked extensively in Bangalore, India. I have seen the wonderful benefits to even the poor when foreign money comes into India. (Manual laborers command tripple the salary of just a few years ago.) I can't feel that it is bad that a hungry family in India is able to earn enough money for food and shelter. And when are we going to get over this nationalism / tribalism? What is it that makes us feel benevelant towards a United States human being and competitive towards an Indian human being? 'Nationalism' only came into being around the year 1800 - there was a phase said by a prominent European politition at that time: 'Now that we have created Italy, we need to create Italians'. A little bit of education about nationalism shows that was a calculated creation of those who wanted it for their own benefit. Remember that there was a prominent political party in Europe that came into power around 1933, that had 'Nationalism' as one of the words in its name....
I can imagine a world where I can buy first run books to read electronically for 50 cents. This would be worth it to me. I am as happy reading a book on my computer as I am reading it in paper - perhaps happier as I can search. It would be worth it to the author. They are compensated for their extraordinary effort in writing the book.
I can see the possibility that 'trusted' computing platforms do give me something that I don't currently have. They give me access to content that simply will not be made available if there is no 'trusted' computing platform.
And, at the same time, nobody's arm is twisted. If you don't want the content, then you don't need to have an implementation of something like Paladium.
What if we could move to a world where *everything* is online. All content is available. Some of it is free, as in free beer and etc. Some of it is not free, and it is within the rights of the author to decide which category he wants to place his content.
Actually, in my opinion, this *is* going to happen, whether I want it or not, or whether anyone else wants it or not.
I see a lot of posts on /. that advocate that all information should be free. Some idiot even said "why should someone own the intellectual property rights to something just because they created it."
This is just like someone saying, "Why should you be able to mold your children's values in the direction that you choose, just because you *created* them."
My point is that if I create some intellectual property, I get to decide what to do with it, not you or anybody else on the web, and Paladium helps. And at the same time, it will make it far easier for me to release my content to a much vaster audience. And I believe that there will be much more content available to me post-Paladium.