Of course you can love what you do and still burnout due to bad leadership, bad environments,
This is certainly much less of a problem than discovering that you hate your line of work. I'm doing something I really find interesting, and I'm getting paid for it. I also get a huge helping of bureaucracy, beancounting and politics. Whatever-- the grass is not that greener somewhere else in that regard.
But yes, as an engineer, things are most frustrating when you're given some task to do but not provided the tools, the time, or just plain forbidden to do it well. You'd like the serenity to not let it affect you, but if you like your work, you've got emotional involvement in what you're working on. Management crippling your project also cripples your ability to feel good about your work.
Who among those here assembled know how to bootstrap a DG Nova or Eclipse minicomputer (the latter of which has dynamic microcode loaded from floppy at boot time), can ascertain file attributes on a DEC PDP11 with STAT, know the FAT protocols under RDOS, or how to load/run diagnostics from paper tape? Hell, for that matter, how to thread and mount a R-R mag tape transport
They have a process that's good enough to detect those bugs, so they'll be able to fix them...
but clean, tight code will protect against only so much bloat and overcomplex design.
It's interesting-- you're sort of reverse-engineering the MS development process here. There are four separate hierarchies to any project: The Program Managers, responsible for bloat and overcomplexity, the Devs, responsible for bug-ridden code and patches, the Devs in Test, responsible for finding bugs by testing code with code, and the Testers, responsible for finding bugs by playing with the software and UI.
You see? Only one quarter of the bureaucracy is actually writing code. One quarter of the bureaucracy pulls features out of their asses and changes them at random. The other half of the bureaucracy logs bugs in RAID-- anything from memory leaks to crashes to "Oh shit they rebranded XP Server.NET to Windows 2003 at the last frigging minute creating 3567 instances of the wrong name being used. Whoops!" Half of the thousands of people working on Vista have their job performance measured by the number of verifiable bugs they report. Half of the people are chugging along quite merrily if the other quarter is delivering total crap up until they start trying to ship.
The most efficient utilization of that bureaucracy may well be haphazard ASAP delivery of buggy spaghetti code... you've got half your organization tasked with finding and enumerating bugs in a piecemeal fashion. Sounds like they're fighting that inertia and trying to be more proactive about clean code, and less reactive to their huge test infrastructure.
Labels are so much more powerful than folders! They're medata tags, not buckets! When you begin using gmail more powerfully, you begin to realize that storing messages in folders feel about as useful as having them on diskettes when you could have them in a relational database. Sheesh. Can yahoo can give me the intersection of my news label and my subscriptions label, or my purchases label and my travel label? (maybe, I dunno)
But more than that, I have to say advanced filters are key to webmail for me. I can route the spam that comes from free newsletters right to the trash. Out of principal, I previously would unsubscribe from the obnoxious newsletters that don't allow you to separately unsubscribe from their spam, but with gmail I never see the "special offers." There are quite a few decent letters I'm much happier to be subscribed to now.
Oh, thanks. I was really confused. I'm here checking yahoo mail for the first time in months thinking, this still sucks turdmuffins compared to Gmail...
Apple's decision was about cost, plain and simple.
I agree that the decision had very little to do with power or performance, and a lot to do with cost and supply, it is not quite that simple.
Note that they've been building OS/X on Intel from day one. OS/X debuted in early 2001. Apple started getting G5s from IBM in early 2003. Prior to then, their primary supplier was Motorola/Freescale, and what they were supplying was not exactly great.
The decision to get the G5 from IBM was Apple's way of buying more time for an architecture it was already planning on killing. The eventual claim that "IBM couldn't deliver" was a foregone conclusion, regardless of what IBM could deliver at any price. The performance of new PowerPC chips may be at odds with the FUD being spouted by Apple, but that is insufficient to stop the momentum towards x86 that is at least as old as OS/X.
And so, as the grandparent post states, there's now a scramble to justify the move from a performance standpoint. I don't believe that was the rationale at all.
You're pretty far off base on the claim that IBM doesn't make money on anything physical. Sure, it may not be anything close to "most" of IBM's revenue, but IBM's hardware revenue for a single quarter is larger than Novell's market cap. Even after the sale of the PC division, it still had $5.5 billion in hardware revenue for the 2nd quarter with higher margins than the $12 billion in services revenue. link.
What I've always found stunning is that companies account for layoffs as massive one time charges against earnings. Gosh! All these severance packages sure cost a lot! But I guess when you're paying a big lump sum for zero work, maybe it sort of acts that way.
This is great for everyone. Thank you Japan, and keep the photos coming. Best of luck with the sample return.
As an aside, to Japanese spacecraft have particular trouble with solar flares? Or just horrible luck? Didn't they have a Mars probe stagger past that planet but not make orbit for about the same reasons?
According to IBM that's feet, not pages, and it prints duplex: "Print at up to 330 linear feet (100.6 m) per minute (1,440 2-up duplex letter impressions or 1,354 2-up A4 duplex impressions)."
I get enough junk mail, and the forests of our planet dont need another reason to be cut down.
This is why I'm always careful to recycle the solicitations I get from the Sierra Club and the National Resource Defense Council. The Sierra Club is especially persistent.
I don't believe that licensing software to provide free services counts as an acquisition. Buying the company that's selling you the software-- that's an acquisition. But I don't think they're ready to acquire Microsoft. Perhaps they could afford Novell.
The problem with Vint, though, is having sufficient decoupling and supply integrity. But I'm sure Google knows this, and has Vint hooked up to a regulator and a few nonofarads just to be safe.
Because both Foxtrot and CmdrTaco are referring to this Nintendog thing and I still haven't heard about from more boring conventional sources. Or real human beings. I don't know what this latest brain-sucking innovation in kiddie electronics is, but if it's anything like a FurbyTomigotchiPokemon, I'll puke.
You're right, of course, but it would be most interesting if a software package such as Firefox could follow the course of the iPod-- be a huge success not because it is a bigger or geekier music player, but because it is a better designed music player, and cool, hip, a status symbol, etc et al whatever. So will Firefox grow just because it is more pleasant? Will it grow becuase it becomes chic?
Except for Forbes. Forbes loves to intimate that Linux is doomed as often as possible, so that they get lots of page views from angry zealots. And CNET will of course report anything.
Actually, if you froogle a look at the price of IBM's PPC970 JS20 Blade and the equivalent PPC970 XServe G5, the prices don't seem to be all that different. Top500 #5 MareNostrum uses JS20s, although I have to admit I haven't compared it to the Big Mac (#14) to figure out who got the most bang for their processors with different chipsets and such.
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But yes, as an engineer, things are most frustrating when you're given some task to do but not provided the tools, the time, or just plain forbidden to do it well. You'd like the serenity to not let it affect you, but if you like your work, you've got emotional involvement in what you're working on. Management crippling your project also cripples your ability to feel good about your work.
You see? Only one quarter of the bureaucracy is actually writing code. One quarter of the bureaucracy pulls features out of their asses and changes them at random. The other half of the bureaucracy logs bugs in RAID-- anything from memory leaks to crashes to "Oh shit they rebranded XP Server .NET to Windows 2003 at the last frigging minute creating 3567 instances of the wrong name being used. Whoops!" Half of the thousands of people working on Vista have their job performance measured by the number of verifiable bugs they report. Half of the people are chugging along quite merrily if the other quarter is delivering total crap up until they start trying to ship.
The most efficient utilization of that bureaucracy may well be haphazard ASAP delivery of buggy spaghetti code... you've got half your organization tasked with finding and enumerating bugs in a piecemeal fashion. Sounds like they're fighting that inertia and trying to be more proactive about clean code, and less reactive to their huge test infrastructure.
But more than that, I have to say advanced filters are key to webmail for me. I can route the spam that comes from free newsletters right to the trash. Out of principal, I previously would unsubscribe from the obnoxious newsletters that don't allow you to separately unsubscribe from their spam, but with gmail I never see the "special offers." There are quite a few decent letters I'm much happier to be subscribed to now.
Oh, thanks. I was really confused. I'm here checking yahoo mail for the first time in months thinking, this still sucks turdmuffins compared to Gmail...
Let's hope gas stations stick to this plan in the next few days.
Note that they've been building OS/X on Intel from day one. OS/X debuted in early 2001. Apple started getting G5s from IBM in early 2003. Prior to then, their primary supplier was Motorola/Freescale, and what they were supplying was not exactly great.
The decision to get the G5 from IBM was Apple's way of buying more time for an architecture it was already planning on killing. The eventual claim that "IBM couldn't deliver" was a foregone conclusion, regardless of what IBM could deliver at any price. The performance of new PowerPC chips may be at odds with the FUD being spouted by Apple, but that is insufficient to stop the momentum towards x86 that is at least as old as OS/X.
And so, as the grandparent post states, there's now a scramble to justify the move from a performance standpoint. I don't believe that was the rationale at all.
I know, which is why I explicitly said the hardware revenue had higher margins than the global services revenue.
You're pretty far off base on the claim that IBM doesn't make money on anything physical. Sure, it may not be anything close to "most" of IBM's revenue, but IBM's hardware revenue for a single quarter is larger than Novell's market cap. Even after the sale of the PC division, it still had $5.5 billion in hardware revenue for the 2nd quarter with higher margins than the $12 billion in services revenue. link.
http://mirrordot.org/stories/5f281d8294a2f11becb28 7b476c6bb6b/index.html
What I've always found stunning is that companies account for layoffs as massive one time charges against earnings. Gosh! All these severance packages sure cost a lot! But I guess when you're paying a big lump sum for zero work, maybe it sort of acts that way.
As an aside, to Japanese spacecraft have particular trouble with solar flares? Or just horrible luck? Didn't they have a Mars probe stagger past that planet but not make orbit for about the same reasons?
According to IBM that's feet, not pages, and it prints duplex: "Print at up to 330 linear feet (100.6 m) per minute (1,440 2-up duplex letter impressions or 1,354 2-up A4 duplex impressions)."
I don't believe that licensing software to provide free services counts as an acquisition. Buying the company that's selling you the software-- that's an acquisition. But I don't think they're ready to acquire Microsoft. Perhaps they could afford Novell.
Could be a telecom providing DSL or a cableco providing broadband. I wouldn't put it past Adelphia, Comcast, Qwest...
The problem with Vint, though, is having sufficient decoupling and supply integrity. But I'm sure Google knows this, and has Vint hooked up to a regulator and a few nonofarads just to be safe.
Because both Foxtrot and CmdrTaco are referring to this Nintendog thing and I still haven't heard about from more boring conventional sources. Or real human beings. I don't know what this latest brain-sucking innovation in kiddie electronics is, but if it's anything like a FurbyTomigotchiPokemon, I'll puke.
Could you now please define--with exclusivity--Lake, Pond, Brook, Stream, River, Sea, Gulf, Bay, Ocean, Hill, Mountain and Continent?
You're right, of course, but it would be most interesting if a software package such as Firefox could follow the course of the iPod-- be a huge success not because it is a bigger or geekier music player, but because it is a better designed music player, and cool, hip, a status symbol, etc et al whatever. So will Firefox grow just because it is more pleasant? Will it grow becuase it becomes chic?
Except for Forbes. Forbes loves to intimate that Linux is doomed as often as possible, so that they get lots of page views from angry zealots. And CNET will of course report anything.
What was OS/2 Warp, then? The desktop environment that was "nicer" than Win95 has gotten lots of attention here-- when did that come out?
Actually, if you froogle a look at the price of IBM's PPC970 JS20 Blade and the equivalent PPC970 XServe G5, the prices don't seem to be all that different. Top500 #5 MareNostrum uses JS20s, although I have to admit I haven't compared it to the Big Mac (#14) to figure out who got the most bang for their processors with different chipsets and such.