i read a great article by a writer who tried out for the show. sorry, too long ago, can't find it.
but the writer's observation was that the selection process was not about finding great trivia experts.
lots of pale PhDs and chessmasters show up and crush the trivia test. they don't pass the interview or mock game. it's about finding people that the audience will identify with and root for.
the audience roots for attractive, 'regular' people. not geeky, alienated and alienating eggheads.
many of their examples are quite old (win 3.1/win 95 references can be found).
they don't like mouseover effects in menus and list controls. but these effects are now ubiquitous. at this very moment, i can mouse over menu options in Mozilla, causing them to become raised in button-fashion.
these mouseover effects seem helpful to me in finding my way in a complex gui. perhaps they need to update their own usability studies.
the jury is out on whether high speed rail systems are economical. the fingers are typically pointed at systems in Europe or Asia that aren't analogous to the geography and population density of much of the United States.
part of the cost and inefficiency of air travel is caused by our hub-and-spoke air network system. this forces a lot of connections and short hops that could be unnecessary.
James Fallows wrote an interesting book about the very-near future of air travel. He makes the case that we need smaller regional airports and smaller high efficiency jets. These would allow many of us to make direct city-to-city flights without the need to go thru congested hub cities.
Check out Fallow's Free Flight at Amazon.
Free Flight
exaggerated? unfair description of top vendors?
on
Orwellian Tech Support
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I subscribe to salon so i've the read the whole article ad-free.
Although i hate bad tech support as much as the next guy, i thought the article was over-the-top. it sounds like tech-support stereotyping. the author has been permitted to omit identifying information. I wonder if salon really did due diligence on this piece.
The writer says he works for one of the top three computer manufacturers. Presumably he's talking about PCs. Who would that be? Dell, HP, IBM?
I've dealt with Dell. Sorry, they are simply not nearly that bad. I'd say the same for HP, although they are less competent than Dell. I've dealt with IBM on the server side. They are far better than the writer describes.
Some posters seem to think he is talking about Indian tech support. The writer never said that, and all the names are English/American. I have generally found Indian tech support to be really bad, but they haven't been able to authorize replacement parts. That has always been done by usa-based Level 2 support. At the writer's company, they regularly authorize replacements (see "givers" in the article).
An interesting article, I conclude, but not to be taken literally. It is an encapsulation of all that is wrong with tech support. But not a fair representation of Dell, HP, or IBM support.
BTW, the Salon website is really dragging today. I've been getting timeouts. The Slashdot Effect strikes again!
this works sometimes. but consider the person in a earlier post, who can do hardware hacking, but is really (or soon will be) a software engineer.
yes he can fix the machine for Cousin Billy. but the fact is , this work is worth 30-50 bucks per hour. much less than his software engineering is worth.
to make this in the least bit worth while, our engineer needs to charge Cousin Billy 80-100 bucks an hour.
Cousin Billy is saving the expense of a trip to compusa, or whereever. but the real expense is borne by our software engineer whose time is worth a lot more than compusa guy's time.
i try to help Cousin Billy whenever i can. but the fact is, the compusa guy could do a better, faster job than me because he does it every day. if i was going to charge for it (and make it worth my time) i'd have to charge Cousin Billy 100 bucks an hour.
Cousin Billy probably would happy to pay me the 25 bucks the job is worth. but i wouldn't accept money if only to avoid the misconception that 25 bucks is what my time is worth.
maybe i should tell Billy that i need to bring it home to work on it. and then drop it off at Compusa.;)
you need to narrow the field a bit by defining your requirements. do you want uml/high level analysis tools for people who only do analysis and never write code? or do you want something that lives closer to the actual end result, presumably a relational database?
i assume the later (because i have nothing to say about uml tools). if you do serious design work for medium complexity apps, you can immediately eliminate drawing tools like visio and toys like access.
visio is simply a clip art tool for diagrams. a fine one, but not for your task. Access is closer to what you are doing, but a toy nevertheless.
The good tools in this space target multiple databases, and should support code generation and reverse engineering.
The big dog here, with at least 60% of the market is ERWin (now owned by Computer Associates, I think). This product was the market leader for several years. However, it was sold two or three times in the span of a few years. This caused it to stagnate. ERWin today is solid but a bit dated.
Embarcadero ERStudio is much newer, and so it has a more intuitive interface, and better support for HTML publishing and the like. It has some support for reading ERWin models. But because the release in the last year/18 months is essentially a new product, you might find bugs, even crashes.
Don't underestimate the value of reading ERWin models. There are a ton of them out there, and you don't want rebuild them all from scratch.
Tools like Popkin are very complex for the highest end market. If you are a consultant, you would not want to adopt a product like this, unless you serve a very specialized market. You would never be able to introduce a product like Popkin into a smaller site. The complexity of the tool would overwhelm the complexity of the project. Despite the power of the tool, it is very dated, and benefits from a locked-in customer base. I doubt they are finding many new customer sites.
All these tools are very expensive for an individual to purchase. And they have significant annual support fees (think 3000 to license a single user copy, and 750-1000 each year thereafter, for ERStudio or ERWin).
You really need to get the support if you are going to use these products. If you find a signficant problem in mid-project, you'll have a lot of money riding on a timely fix or workaround.
this is a great idea. I'm a dba (a flavor of syadmin) and a developer. Not a "wears two hats, expert at neither" that you see in small shops or MS shops. Got several years of doing each intensely.
this skill combination makes you qualified to work on large projects and gives you the deep admin skills needed to implement/make production ready the app you've developed.
my observation has always been that sysadmins as a group have fewer people skills than developers or people who work closer to the user. Are you user-friendly? Do you tolerate poor or changing requirements? These are bigger issues for developers.
a lot of sysadmins can't write code. Or can only write job-scheduling scripts, however complicated. this is really different from implementing business functions. are you interested in solving the business problem? (a lot of sysadmins here think they solve the business problem. The customer doesn't. the customer thinks the apps that implement their business functions are what solves their problems.)
if you love sysadmin, you should probably stick with it. but if you want to really extend your skills you can become a one-stop shopping expert.
I can't agree with the suggestion that you try OSS work as a way to get started. most customers don't understand it, some are afraid of it. and frankly it's a lot tougher than a lot of commercial programming. better to work your way up to it doing commercial work, getting a paycheck while you learn. an hr rep doesn't understand a job reference from an OSS project.
if you think it is a good personality match, go for it.
An organized walkout will appear to be exactly what it is... A premeditated attempt to screw the company. This is a time-honored union tactic. This is a not a professional tactic. You should all be highly skilled, highly paid professionals. Time to grow up. Meet (you, individually) with the boss. Make no reference to what others say or feel. Lay out all that you do and make your case for the raise that will make all this worth it. When they say no, then give your full notice (two weeks minimum). If you are key guy on the project then give a longer notice. Maybe a month.
Then leave. Vote with your feet. If there really are better paying jobs available to you with better working conditions, then prove it.
If you orchestrate a company failure, word will get around. Your references will suck.
Remember. Professionals get paid more than union guys. Don't be seduced by union tactics. In the long run, a union will make programmers rule-driven, trapped by seniority rules, with the old COBOL deadwood guys making all the money.
If you really have the tech chops, that is. If you are worse than average, then a union might raise your level.
Slashdot Mirror
but the writer's observation was that the selection process was not about finding great trivia experts.
lots of pale PhDs and chessmasters show up and crush the trivia test. they don't pass the interview or mock game. it's about finding people that the audience will identify with and root for.
the audience roots for attractive, 'regular' people. not geeky, alienated and alienating eggheads.
many of their examples are quite old (win 3.1/win 95 references can be found).
they don't like mouseover effects in menus and list controls. but these effects are now ubiquitous. at this very moment, i can mouse over menu options in Mozilla, causing them to become raised in button-fashion.
these mouseover effects seem helpful to me in finding my way in a complex gui. perhaps they need to update their own usability studies.
the jury is out on whether high speed rail systems are economical. the fingers are typically pointed at systems in Europe or Asia that aren't analogous to the geography and population density of much of the United States.
part of the cost and inefficiency of air travel is caused by our hub-and-spoke air network system. this forces a lot of connections and short hops that could be unnecessary.
James Fallows wrote an interesting book about the very-near future of air travel. He makes the case that we need smaller regional airports and smaller high efficiency jets. These would allow many of us to make direct city-to-city flights without the need to go thru congested hub cities.
Check out Fallow's Free Flight at Amazon. Free FlightAlthough i hate bad tech support as much as the next guy, i thought the article was over-the-top. it sounds like tech-support stereotyping. the author has been permitted to omit identifying information. I wonder if salon really did due diligence on this piece.
The writer says he works for one of the top three computer manufacturers. Presumably he's talking about PCs. Who would that be? Dell, HP, IBM?
I've dealt with Dell. Sorry, they are simply not nearly that bad. I'd say the same for HP, although they are less competent than Dell. I've dealt with IBM on the server side. They are far better than the writer describes. Some posters seem to think he is talking about Indian tech support. The writer never said that, and all the names are English/American. I have generally found Indian tech support to be really bad, but they haven't been able to authorize replacement parts. That has always been done by usa-based Level 2 support. At the writer's company, they regularly authorize replacements (see "givers" in the article).
An interesting article, I conclude, but not to be taken literally. It is an encapsulation of all that is wrong with tech support. But not a fair representation of Dell, HP, or IBM support. BTW, the Salon website is really dragging today. I've been getting timeouts. The Slashdot Effect strikes again!
but are there no chicks in geekland? is every geek guy out of shape?
i look at the pics and think for the first time that , hey, i look pretty good!
but now comes selfdoubt! maybe if you spent an hour in a gym once, you can't be a true geek.
help me, i'm having an identity crisis! my mother doesn't buy my clothes. am i really a geek?
yes he can fix the machine for Cousin Billy. but the fact is , this work is worth 30-50 bucks per hour. much less than his software engineering is worth.
to make this in the least bit worth while, our engineer needs to charge Cousin Billy 80-100 bucks an hour.
Cousin Billy is saving the expense of a trip to compusa, or whereever. but the real expense is borne by our software engineer whose time is worth a lot more than compusa guy's time.
i try to help Cousin Billy whenever i can. but the fact is, the compusa guy could do a better, faster job than me because he does it every day. if i was going to charge for it (and make it worth my time) i'd have to charge Cousin Billy 100 bucks an hour.
Cousin Billy probably would happy to pay me the 25 bucks the job is worth. but i wouldn't accept money if only to avoid the misconception that 25 bucks is what my time is worth.
maybe i should tell Billy that i need to bring it home to work on it. and then drop it off at Compusa. ;)
stores.
128m USB2.0, 30 USD after rebates
i assume the later (because i have nothing to say about uml tools). if you do serious design work for medium complexity apps, you can immediately eliminate drawing tools like visio and toys like access.
visio is simply a clip art tool for diagrams. a fine one, but not for your task. Access is closer to what you are doing, but a toy nevertheless.
The good tools in this space target multiple databases, and should support code generation and reverse engineering.
The big dog here, with at least 60% of the market is ERWin (now owned by Computer Associates, I think). This product was the market leader for several years. However, it was sold two or three times in the span of a few years. This caused it to stagnate. ERWin today is solid but a bit dated.
Embarcadero ERStudio is much newer, and so it has a more intuitive interface, and better support for HTML publishing and the like. It has some support for reading ERWin models. But because the release in the last year/18 months is essentially a new product, you might find bugs, even crashes.
Don't underestimate the value of reading ERWin models. There are a ton of them out there, and you don't want rebuild them all from scratch.
Tools like Popkin are very complex for the highest end market. If you are a consultant, you would not want to adopt a product like this, unless you serve a very specialized market. You would never be able to introduce a product like Popkin into a smaller site. The complexity of the tool would overwhelm the complexity of the project. Despite the power of the tool, it is very dated, and benefits from a locked-in customer base. I doubt they are finding many new customer sites.
All these tools are very expensive for an individual to purchase. And they have significant annual support fees (think 3000 to license a single user copy, and 750-1000 each year thereafter, for ERStudio or ERWin).
You really need to get the support if you are going to use these products. If you find a signficant problem in mid-project, you'll have a lot of money riding on a timely fix or workaround.
this skill combination makes you qualified to work on large projects and gives you the deep admin skills needed to implement/make production ready the app you've developed.
my observation has always been that sysadmins as a group have fewer people skills than developers or people who work closer to the user. Are you user-friendly? Do you tolerate poor or changing requirements? These are bigger issues for developers.
a lot of sysadmins can't write code. Or can only write job-scheduling scripts, however complicated. this is really different from implementing business functions. are you interested in solving the business problem? (a lot of sysadmins here think they solve the business problem. The customer doesn't. the customer thinks the apps that implement their business functions are what solves their problems.)
if you love sysadmin, you should probably stick with it. but if you want to really extend your skills you can become a one-stop shopping expert.
I can't agree with the suggestion that you try OSS work as a way to get started. most customers don't understand it, some are afraid of it. and frankly it's a lot tougher than a lot of commercial programming. better to work your way up to it doing commercial work, getting a paycheck while you learn. an hr rep doesn't understand a job reference from an OSS project.
if you think it is a good personality match, go for it.
An organized walkout will appear to be exactly what it is... A premeditated attempt to screw the company. This is a time-honored union tactic. This is a not a professional tactic. You should all be highly skilled, highly paid professionals. Time to grow up. Meet (you, individually) with the boss. Make no reference to what others say or feel. Lay out all that you do and make your case for the raise that will make all this worth it. When they say no, then give your full notice (two weeks minimum). If you are key guy on the project then give a longer notice. Maybe a month. Then leave. Vote with your feet. If there really are better paying jobs available to you with better working conditions, then prove it. If you orchestrate a company failure, word will get around. Your references will suck. Remember. Professionals get paid more than union guys. Don't be seduced by union tactics. In the long run, a union will make programmers rule-driven, trapped by seniority rules, with the old COBOL deadwood guys making all the money. If you really have the tech chops, that is. If you are worse than average, then a union might raise your level.