The ability to have custom compile time library dependencies. I don't have a printer. USE=-cups means that I don't have to worry about cups at all. It isn't just the extra package, it it maintaining it, tracking vulnerabilities..
Similarly, I can build without LDAP support. Often things that Debian's default builds do not do. And if it boils down to rebuilding a significant part of the distro for my customisation, apt-get really offers no benefits.
apt offers incredible benefits if the binaries provided by the distro do what you want. Ports works when they don't.
But IMHO the biggest problem is more fundamental. As a management philosophy, it assumes that all systems are more or less equivalent, have the similar configurations and the same tasks.
The goal of that philosophy is to drive the systems towards that ideal state. If you start dealing with every system as individual, then you simply run out of men and time trying to manage every system individually.
Keep in mind that individuals can store only so much information in their heads, Documentation helps, but it needs to be created and maintained. The less overhead work that needs to be done, the better for systems administration.
There is a reason why Unix scales far better than Windows. You don't need to manage individual desktops.
Oh, and you wouldn't need more powerful PCs. On the other hand, data would go onto the servers and end users would use thin clients (or easily replaced PCs with no local data). This allows for IT to service more users while maintaining far fewer real systems.
The remote management systems of our IT department are powerful; but they still cannot cope with Windows XP.
Perhaps that is your problem? Your IT department is trying to administer an OS designed to run on one host with a unique setup in a replicated manner. In which case, you either need a change of platform, or more people.
As long as the business people get equally involved in the IT side, sure. If this involves working the same hours as IT, they do it. They stay up to date on all the latest IT issues (they should have known about the WMF stuff the day it was announced). If their system gets infected, they stay along with the IT folks until the damage is repaired. They stay on call when systems go down.
If you need to work through weekends and holidays, you do. This applies to _all_ the business people, whether technical or not.
Not acceptable? sucks. IT has enough on its plate. Really.
Sounds very reasonable, but doesn't work very well in practice, if only because IT usually doesn't show much interest in other people's requirements -- certainly our team has never asked for them.
Did _anyone_ bother to talk to IT about this? Or is your IT department so busy fighting fires that they don't have the time? How often has IT been given the option of actually participating in the decision making process?
If the IT department has to work properly, they need support. Right now, end users are generally capable of screwing up their systems, and IT has to take the shit. Responsibility without power.
IT would still be busy setting standards without being directly involved in, or even understanding, the business. Only they would no longer do any real work.
Actually, to set the standards, they would have to understand the business. Standards setting is _not_ a pure IT function, it is a managerial function.
What we need to do is dismember IT as a department, leaving only the most essential tasks there, and integrate the IT people with the other teams.
Who decides what an essential task is? One of the primary responsibilities of IT as I see it is to keep the entire network running. Yes, this might suck for the individual. But the benefit to the many outweighs the cost to the few. If that isn't good enough for you to be able to work, you need to talk to your management about this.
You come up with the requirements, IT comes up with the budgeting. Then your management decides if you can or cannot afford it.
Keep in mind that people intensive tasks don't scale. Automation does. Some of us are working out a formal theory of system administration. A good place to start would be the infrastructure management website at http://www.infrastructures.org/. Familiarise yourself with this, then sell the idea to your IT staff _and_ management.
The cost of maintaining unique hardware and software configuration is very high.
>i>The fundamental reason for this, I suppose, is that the metrics IT uses as a measure of success tend to be completely unconnected with the goals of the business they have to support.
So why don't you add that to your requirements list, and convey it to the IT department? Then let them discuss the tradeoffs between their goals and yours, until you come to a reasonable compromise.
This may involve switching software, and the costs involved in training.
IT will balk at spending an extra $2,000 for a more powerful PC, even though it is needed for the exploitation of an investment of $500,000.
IT may need to maintain spare parts for that system. The IT department also has to have service contracts for it. When the shit hits the fan, they are the people who have to stay up late. These things can cost significantly above the 500K number.
Perhaps it would be an interesting experiment to have people responsible for their own systems. IT will just set the standards, and vet your systems regularly for compliance. If you aren't compliant, you are fined and shouted at. If the systems go down due to something you did, it becomes your responsibility to fix them. If you download a worm and it hits the network, then _you_ are responsible.
These are "desktop replacements" and sold as "gaming laptops". They aren't meant for your traditional laptop use, but for those people who need lots of computing power, and have less space, this is nice. Think of this as a powerful version of a Mac mini, including monitor and keyboard.
Some of us have access to electric power while travelling[1], but porting along a desktop is much harder.
[1] AC power supply in a train. This might not make sense to most Americans who drive or fly.
The problem is that the Internet is _not_ a quarantined corporate network, with a single global policy. If I want to develop a new protocol with a bunch of people all over the world, restricting what I can do is a bad thing.
I wonder what would happen if people simply moved back to BBS connectivity. Slow, but hands off for providers. Don't create content on the Internet. I am sure that the _majority_ of us can live with unlimited dialup. Hell, it might actually be better to move back to a trusted network world, where you actually know the administrators of the systems you are connecting to.
It depends on your work. If the work involves lots of concentration for long bursts of time (creative implementation work), then closed doors are better. If you work on short interrupt cycles like a typical manager has to (creative work consisting of generating ideas, but not implementations), then the open door policy allows for more work done.
The article you referenced speaks about open doors allowing information to pass in. We call it the Internet around here.
For some people, the portability of a laptop with the power of a desktop is important. I can get power on the move (for the rare times that I am commuting for over an hour). But carrying a desktop along is... painful.
Just did a simple search on a few different cities on monster.com and it seems that there's about 10 or 11 times more positions available to java programmers than ruby and python combined.
It could also mean that it takes you 10 to 11 times as much effort to do the same work with Java as you would with Python or Ruby, and hence you need more programmers. Or it could be that the average Python/Ruby programmer is good, and you don't end up with the average crap Java programmer and hence get better results from fewer people.
Who is with me in asking for an amendment limiting all laws to one topic, 200 words or less, and only can pass with a signature of the President and a signature of a random person with a 3rd grade education who agrees that even they understand the law?
All laws should come with unit tests demonstrating the spirit of the law. Instead of limiting the length of the law, get examples. The law _is_ code, just formatted badly. This of a FORTRAN programmer writing VB code.
Actually, if you do things right, then the per head cost of infrastructure actually reduces as things scale up. This does require lifestyle adjustments though, which will not be popular in the US. It does involve reducing the dependency on private transport, and small suburban houses with yards. You go in for public transport, apartment complexes, community parks, fibre to the apartment block and internal wiring done by the apartment owners instead of DSL, etc....
I tend not to ask questions. I put up my requirements upfront, and if the employer doesn't think that (s)he can deliver what I want, we go our separate ways. Since I am sitting in that interview, I have shown the willingness to work for your company. I don't get a high on the environment, I do get high on the work available. And that is clearly stated upfront.
If what you're saying was true and relevant the salaries wouldn't be rising nearly as quickly in Bangalore - companies would just spread their net and hire further away. That in itself shows that it isn't that eas
That is exactly what is happening. Bangalore is just hyped up, but currently the growth is in Chennai and Gurgaon (call centers), Pune and Kolkota (Software), Hyderabad (embedded, with too much demand and too small a technical population after Bangalore won the marketing war), Madurai (software for backend/maintainance services).
Chennai and Pune are also getting other backoffice stuff outsourced, including legal and financial.
Salaries in Bangalore will rise for a bit more, but that is mostly because people are not willing to relocate to Bangalore any longer. Engineers would just prefer to avoid Bangalore for their quality of life.
As for products, I suspect that the Indian industry would rather move directly into services. Far more profitable, and generates sustained revenue rather than trying to break into a Microsoft dominated market.
What I am seeing is that more and more companies are starting their own offshore arms instead of paying wipro and co. This is basically changing the employment landscape in the US from technical to entry level tech support, and marketing.
Of course, as India globalises, the same companies will open offices in India and just send trained people from here to the states, or the margins will be better here and they will cut down on the US market (as I said to a friend once, there isn't a market for 20000 USD cars, but there is a market as large as, or larger than the current US population for USD 10000 cars). Big difference in markets.
Slashdot Mirror
The ability to have custom compile time library dependencies. I don't have a printer. USE=-cups means that I don't have to worry about cups at all. It isn't just the extra package, it it maintaining it, tracking vulnerabilities..
Similarly, I can build without LDAP support. Often things that Debian's default builds do not do. And if it boils down to rebuilding a significant part of the distro for my customisation, apt-get really offers no benefits.
apt offers incredible benefits if the binaries provided by the distro do what you want. Ports works when they don't.
But IMHO the biggest problem is more fundamental. As a management philosophy, it assumes that all systems are more or less equivalent, have the similar configurations and the same tasks.
The goal of that philosophy is to drive the systems towards that ideal state. If you start dealing with every system as individual, then you simply run out of men and time trying to manage every system individually.
Keep in mind that individuals can store only so much information in their heads, Documentation helps, but it needs to be created and maintained. The less overhead work that needs to be done, the better for systems administration.
There is a reason why Unix scales far better than Windows. You don't need to manage individual desktops.
Oh, and you wouldn't need more powerful PCs. On the other hand, data would go onto the servers and end users would use thin clients (or easily replaced PCs with no local data). This allows for IT to service more users while maintaining far fewer real systems.
The remote management systems of our IT department are powerful; but they still cannot cope with Windows XP.
Perhaps that is your problem? Your IT department is trying to administer an OS designed to run on one host with a unique setup in a replicated manner. In which case, you either need a change of platform, or more people.
As long as the business people get equally involved in the IT side, sure. If this involves working the same hours as IT, they do it. They stay up to date on all the latest IT issues (they should have known about the WMF stuff the day it was announced). If their system gets infected, they stay along with the IT folks until the damage is repaired. They stay on call when systems go down.
If you need to work through weekends and holidays, you do. This applies to _all_ the business people, whether technical or not.
Not acceptable? sucks. IT has enough on its plate. Really.
Sounds very reasonable, but doesn't work very well in practice, if only because IT usually doesn't show much interest in other people's requirements -- certainly our team has never asked for them.
Did _anyone_ bother to talk to IT about this? Or is your IT department so busy fighting fires that they don't have the time? How often has IT been given the option of actually participating in the decision making process?
If the IT department has to work properly, they need support. Right now, end users are generally capable of screwing up their systems, and IT has to take the shit. Responsibility without power.
IT would still be busy setting standards without being directly involved in, or even understanding, the business. Only they would no longer do any real work.
Actually, to set the standards, they would have to understand the business. Standards setting is _not_ a pure IT function, it is a managerial function.
What we need to do is dismember IT as a department, leaving only the most essential tasks there, and integrate the IT people with the other teams.
Who decides what an essential task is? One of the primary responsibilities of IT as I see it is to keep the entire network running. Yes, this might suck for the individual. But the benefit to the many outweighs the cost to the few. If that isn't good enough for you to be able to work, you need to talk to your management about this.
You come up with the requirements, IT comes up with the budgeting. Then your management decides if you can or cannot afford it.
Keep in mind that people intensive tasks don't scale. Automation does. Some of us are working out a formal theory of system administration. A good place to start would be the infrastructure management website at http://www.infrastructures.org/. Familiarise yourself with this, then sell the idea to your IT staff _and_ management.
My point is that it isn't the language per se which is at fault. It is the programmer.
The problem is bad coders. Instead of the application giving root, now it just gives the attacker access to your data.
Root was one step in getting to the data, now you don't need to jump through that hoop.
The cost of maintaining unique hardware and software configuration is very high.
>i>The fundamental reason for this, I suppose, is that the metrics IT uses as a measure of success tend to be completely unconnected with the goals of the business they have to support.
So why don't you add that to your requirements list, and convey it to the IT department? Then let them discuss the tradeoffs between their goals and yours, until you come to a reasonable compromise.
This may involve switching software, and the costs involved in training.
IT will balk at spending an extra $2,000 for a more powerful PC, even though it is needed for the exploitation of an investment of $500,000.
IT may need to maintain spare parts for that system. The IT department also has to have service contracts for it. When the shit hits the fan, they are the people who have to stay up late. These things can cost significantly above the 500K number.
Perhaps it would be an interesting experiment to have people responsible for their own systems. IT will just set the standards, and vet your systems regularly for compliance. If you aren't compliant, you are fined and shouted at. If the systems go down due to something you did, it becomes your responsibility to fix them. If you download a worm and it hits the network, then _you_ are responsible.
These are "desktop replacements" and sold as "gaming laptops". They aren't meant for your traditional laptop use, but for those people who need lots of computing power, and have less space, this is nice. Think of this as a powerful version of a Mac mini, including monitor and keyboard.
Some of us have access to electric power while travelling[1], but porting along a desktop is much harder.
[1] AC power supply in a train. This might not make sense to most Americans who drive or fly.
The problem is that the Internet is _not_ a quarantined corporate network, with a single global policy. If I want to develop a new protocol with a bunch of people all over the world, restricting what I can do is a bad thing.
The rules change on the open Internet.
I wonder what would happen if people simply moved back to BBS connectivity. Slow, but hands off for providers. Don't create content on the Internet. I am sure that the _majority_ of us can live with unlimited dialup. Hell, it might actually be better to move back to a trusted network world, where you actually know the administrators of the systems you are connecting to.
And you thought Perl was unreadable?
It depends on your work. If the work involves lots of concentration for long bursts of time (creative implementation work), then closed doors are better. If you work on short interrupt cycles like a typical manager has to (creative work consisting of generating ideas, but not implementations), then the open door policy allows for more work done.
The article you referenced speaks about open doors allowing information to pass in. We call it the Internet around here.
Google came first for slashdot. And then it got duped.
For some people, the portability of a laptop with the power of a desktop is important. I can get power on the move (for the rare times that I am commuting for over an hour). But carrying a desktop along is ... painful.
Just did a simple search on a few different cities on monster.com and it seems that there's about 10 or 11 times more positions available to java programmers than ruby and python combined.
It could also mean that it takes you 10 to 11 times as much effort to do the same work with Java as you would with Python or Ruby, and hence you need more programmers. Or it could be that the average Python/Ruby programmer is good, and you don't end up with the average crap Java programmer and hence get better results from fewer people.
Who is with me in asking for an amendment limiting all laws to one topic, 200 words or less, and only can pass with a signature of the President and a signature of a random person with a 3rd grade education who agrees that even they understand the law?
All laws should come with unit tests demonstrating the spirit of the law. Instead of limiting the length of the law, get examples. The law _is_ code, just formatted badly. This of a FORTRAN programmer writing VB code.
Actually, if you do things right, then the per head cost of infrastructure actually reduces as things scale up. This does require lifestyle adjustments though, which will not be popular in the US. It does involve reducing the dependency on private transport, and small suburban houses with yards. You go in for public transport, apartment complexes, community parks, fibre to the apartment block and internal wiring done by the apartment owners instead of DSL, etc....
You assume the OP is male.
But what if we don't want to go up the management ladder? FWIW, my current position is two levels down from the CTO, and definitely not management.
I tend not to ask questions. I put up my requirements upfront, and if the employer doesn't think that (s)he can deliver what I want, we go our separate ways. Since I am sitting in that interview, I have shown the willingness to work for your company. I don't get a high on the environment, I do get high on the work available. And that is clearly stated upfront.
When you build the AI, let us know, please.
It is far easier to build manufacturing robots, than to write a decent AI.
And people complain that there is nothing new in Vista
We call that Unix out here
Until you want to have the same change done over a large server farm, and would rather do it in one place and replicate that change everywhere.
If what you're saying was true and relevant the salaries wouldn't be rising nearly as quickly in Bangalore - companies would just spread their net and hire further away. That in itself shows that it isn't that eas
That is exactly what is happening. Bangalore is just hyped up, but currently the growth is in Chennai and Gurgaon (call centers), Pune and Kolkota (Software), Hyderabad (embedded, with too much demand and too small a technical population after Bangalore won the marketing war), Madurai (software for backend/maintainance services).
Chennai and Pune are also getting other backoffice stuff outsourced, including legal and financial.
Salaries in Bangalore will rise for a bit more, but that is mostly because people are not willing to relocate to Bangalore any longer. Engineers would just prefer to avoid Bangalore for their quality of life.
As for products, I suspect that the Indian industry would rather move directly into services. Far more profitable, and generates sustained revenue rather than trying to break into a Microsoft dominated market.
What I am seeing is that more and more companies are starting their own offshore arms instead of paying wipro and co. This is basically changing the employment landscape in the US from technical to entry level tech support, and marketing.
Of course, as India globalises, the same companies will open offices in India and just send trained people from here to the states, or the margins will be better here and they will cut down on the US market (as I said to a friend once, there isn't a market for 20000 USD cars, but there is a market as large as, or larger than the current US population for USD 10000 cars). Big difference in markets.
EMPs can do the trick.