How is one expected to gain that kind of experience when no one will hire you without the experience?
Because companies don't want to hire people unless they absolutely have to. HR departments are in the business of disqualifying people, not hiring people.
Most of it is due to middle management's inability to understand the concept of hiring entry-level employees and then teaching them the business so they can become valuable members of the company.
Entry-level means:
NO EXPERIENCE.
ZIP. ZILCH. NADA. NULL SET. ZERO.
NONE.
SPELL IT:
N-O-N-E.
Advertising for an entry-level employee with five years experience is an exercise in flagrant cynicism. It is part of an overall goal of making the workplace a joyless shithole.
To get job security, developers need to position themselves as highly effective business-value generators,
..and since nobody knows what the (*&%#)@$ that means, it provides every company with an automatic, built-in excuse to fire anyone, anytime, for any reason.
Business 1 Employees 0
working with the rest of the company to solve common goals.
Goal of the company: fire everyone as quickly as possible to save money so we can afford extra buffalo wings with our catered lunch.
Goal of the employee: to try and stretch seven weeks of stagnant, inadequate wages to pay for 12 months of rent, since ain't no FUCKING WAY this job is going to last two months.
Companies and employees no longer have common goals because middle management has put a great deal of thought and effort into making the workplace a toxic, hostile, adversarial environment which makes it much easier to keep the Just-In-Time-Fired(tm) policy generating quarterly revenue savings and bonus checks.
Working 80 hour weeks for piss-wages in a 19th century management structure is way way WAY past obsolete, and the workplace is a festering sphincter of liars, cheats and misery. Let's talk about fixing it instead of trying to be a "team player." We could start by replacing office politics with something that doesn't actively and constantly diminish good ideas and positive thinking.
As long as there is this constant goal of "obsoleting" "old" technology. This happens on programming projects all the time. "Oh look! It works! Let's start over!"
It takes developers two years to even approach a reasonably efficient workflow with new tools. The reason people don't use 90% of the features of new software is because they don't have time. It's replaced by something entirely new within a few months.
Same thing with consoles. "Better graphics! Faster polygons! Faster sound! Faster! Better! Easier! More! More! More!" Nobody cares any more. There isn't time to have fun. We have to run and stand in line at Best Buy to replace everything again.
Enough. It's the same product in a different box. Progress is worth working towards.
As wonderful as it might be to have a new Star Trek series, there is one axiom about this process: It is absolutely impossible for a creative person to efficiently obtain approval for a new project from a large company.
Proof:
Disney turned down Lord of the Rings
Sony turned down Everquest
Electronic Arts tried to cancel the Sims three times
MGM turned down Gone with the Wind
Now, if they don't mind spending $10,000 a day from the moment they make the first phone call, great. Otherwise, find a way to do it without conference rooms, or it's going to be nothing but anguish.
...and then James T. Kirk, galactic hero, Captain of the most storied vessel in Starfleet history, arbiter of peace between the Federation and the Klingons, a man who literally and singlehandedly saved Earth numerous times...
...falls down the stairs and is buried in an unmarked grave on an uninhabited planet right after the Enterprise is destroyed for the fourth time in a Star Trek movie.
Let's give 'em all a big round of applause, folks!
And Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan was the best movie.
Agreed, with ST IV and ST VI in second and third place.:)
have management become so out of touch that they no longer know what questions to ask?
Yes. They are unqualified incompetent idiots more interested in what condiments are available at the sandwich bar than actually doing their job properly.
And since they have mastered the art of shoveling enough bullshit to support a four-foot deep eight MPH current in every hallway in the building, they never have to explain why they never accomplish anything.
many CIOs increasingly look to certification and accreditation standards as "market signals" indicative of professional quality and reliability. This represents the laziest and most dangerous kind of cover-your-ass thinking by C-level executives.
That's the point of the article. Idiot liar cheats fucking over good candidates with subjective criteria for disqualification while hiring the other blow-dried liar cheat who happens to run a company which employs "certified" programmers.
I'll guess this particular form of "fuck you" employment practice has probably cost 10 million qualified people good jobs recently. Makes for a great community when everyone has to move 100 miles to find work every few minutes.
Maybe, just maybe, we've reached the end to downsizing.
Well, good for you. It's a little late, of course, but I suppose if management could have, they would have sold the fucking paint off the walls too.
About half of us have moved on, not only from "IT" but also from corporate "culture" altogether.
It no longer matters how much a salary is when management can gladly fire people with a few minutes notice for no reason. Now, if employees could stop making house payments with a few minutes notice for no reason, THEN you would hear some bitching.
but your reaction doesn't bear a whole lot of resemblence to the actual article.
Because it would be redundant. This has been argued over and over again. Intellectual property (or whatever the phrase is) cannot be made "obsolete" by whatever new technology, or the economy will collapse, period.
Then, suddenly, media companies will start turning on their protection flags and it will be too late to do anything about it.
Is there truly anything on television worth watching, much less watching again? I think by the time the media companies start turning on these protection flags nobody will be watching any more.
1) The history of copyright, complete with exhaustive descriptions of the piano roll and the Monarchy.
2) A sob story about some poor honest member of the global audience who can't watch the latest Hollywood crap-fest because they don't have eight copies of it arranged so they are never more than 10 yards from at least two of them.
3) Ringing, strident statements about how Anything can be copied(tm) do you hear me??!?! WELL, DO YOU??!?!?!?!?!!?!
4) The argument then swerves into the ever-popular "in the future, the Internet will make copyright obsolete and artists will all live in a Utopian paradise where everything is free, free, free like the book they spent 4,000 hours writing which is at this very minute available on 4,000 warezzzzzzz sites for your convenience"
5) This is usually followed by the standard "books are worthless, music is pointless, art is disposable, inspiration is a commodity" argument which offers the idea that because something can be cheaply copied, it has somehow become worthless.
Throughout each of these discussions, there is always support for "well, we'll just copy it anyway" which is why this argument has long since lost even the remotest shred of credibility.
There is only one question that needs to be answered. Is there any set of conditions under which the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth" people will just pay for the fucking movie/book/CD/whatever?
being on the shelf at day zero right next to the brand new hardware is important to support a new machine.
Isn't it interesting how the entire "business case" process is backwards when it comes to the big companies?
A small company would have to have market share in order to get publishers to develop for their console. A small company would have to overcome the "chicken and egg" problem.
Tall Dollars Inc. just has to say "here's our new product" and everyone (including developers) lines right up.
is an sdk for this or the GBA even possible for an indie developer to access and/or use?
FUCK no.
Well, not without that nice tall fee. $2 million for a calculator game. Anyone with the slightest shred of remaining sanity has long since given up on the "game industry."
After being lied to, cheated, and fucked over repeatedly. Yeah, I guess that qualifies as a "poor attitude."
inability, or unwillingness, to play nice with others (manifest throughout your post)
No, it's the inability or unwillingness of others to be able to hear and believe the truth about the modern workplace. "Play nice with others" is just another euphemism for "team player" which is, in turn, a euphemism for "don't complain when we dump wet shit all over your career."
Long as you keep eating shit, everyone's happy. Complain, and you suddenly have a "bad attitude" and you're not being a "team player."
you blame all of your problems on others and take no share for your own, it's sure sign that the problem isn't with the others.
Yeah, so if I say "it's all my fault people lied to me and cheated me" then I'm an enlightened team player, right?
The length of your rant compared to the scant quantity of information you convey is another.
What would you like to know? Wanna know about the "permanent" jobs that lasted a few weeks? Jobs that were accepted in place of other offers which were subsequently lost? Wanna know about the "programming" jobs that became "non-programming" jobs days after being hired?
How about the jobs where the first week of work I had no desk, and had to sit next to a copy machine (for hours on end with nothing to do) like a pet? Or maybe the jobs where I was required to attend day-long meetings several times a week where management literally screamed at me (and others) that we weren't getting our work done, then fired us all weeks later?
Perhaps you'd like to hear about the manager who forced us all, as if tormenting a small animal, to do projects the wrong way, only to later complain to upper management about the fact it was done wrong? Would you like to hear about that manager's promotion? Would you like to hear about how that manager fired 200 people the following month, myself included? Would you like to hear about my "performance evaluation" from that manager (used as justification to fire me with two hours notice) who claimed I was "totally incompetent to perform the job of programmer" after personally hiring me because I had years of senior-level experience with dozens of technical references?
How about the four jobs in a row, none of which lasted longer than two months (all department-wide layoffs)? How about the overpriced benefits? Maybe you'd like to hear about co-workers who spent nearly all of their productive time in meetings complaining about me (and others) in months-long successful campaigns to get us all fired?
Would you like to hear about the financial ruin? Or how about the repeated financial ruin? How about the five months where I could only afford one meal a day?
All I did was graduate from college and try to do a good job. That used to be enough. Not any more. I watched a concentrated and sustained effort to destroy my career, and it worked. I am now 100% unemployable.
But you still won't believe me. You'll give middle management the benefit of the doubt, because after all, they're wearing $2000 suits. They must be right.
And right to fuck with the former employees. They're just whining because they're hungry.
Any negotiation as what kind of work you'll be doing needs to be dealt with before you sign the contract.
What contract? Employers don't offer contracts. They don't have written job descriptions. They have nothing. You sign nothing. They make no promises, and they take full advantage by firing you a few weeks after your four interviews.
Employment negotiations are usually:
"Here's the job. 40% under market salary. No benefits. Layoffs already announced for next quarter. Take it or leave it."
End of negotiation.
Is your company allowed to suddenly decide that it doesn't like paying you and still expect you to work?
Sure. No raises. Weekends. Unpaid overtime. Benefit cuts. Below average salaries. No bonuses. No guaranteed salary. Happens all the time.
The idea is that you find a job where "what you're told" resembles "what you want" enough to make things pleasant.
No such thing. Companies aren't interested in what employees want. In fact, employees who make suggestions are immediately promoted to the top of the layoffs list as "troublemakers" and people who aren't "team players." (Team player is corporate-speak for "agree with us even when we are wrong.")
Look, you can come up with disaster scenarios all day long
This isn't fiction. I've seen it at every single full-time job I have ever had except one. I've seen people gainfully employed at 9AM literally shoved/thrown bodily from the building at 11:15AM.
People always make a point of "meeting people halfway." Yet the liars and the cheats never have to meet anyone. They are allowed to go on ruining people's lives and destroying their careers with absolutely no limits whatsoever. Anyone who complains isn't being a "team player" and is next out the door.
Companies are so false any more it isn't even worth arguing about. Getting hired is the economic equivalent of Magellan's Voyage, yet getting fired is as simple as ordering a sandwich. We even have television shows now glorifying arbitrary layoffs. Firing people is trendy. The suffering of the powerless gets good ratings.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, it means that you need to earn the company more than you cost it.
Umm, no. It means you get down on your knees and beg for your job on a daily basis.
And no company will EVER honestly state what an employee "earns" for them.
How is one expected to gain that kind of experience when no one will hire you without the experience?
Because companies don't want to hire people unless they absolutely have to. HR departments are in the business of disqualifying people, not hiring people.
Most of it is due to middle management's inability to understand the concept of hiring entry-level employees and then teaching them the business so they can become valuable members of the company.
Entry-level means:
NO EXPERIENCE.
ZIP.
ZILCH.
NADA.
NULL SET.
ZERO.
NONE.
SPELL IT:
N-O-N-E.
Advertising for an entry-level employee with five years experience is an exercise in flagrant cynicism. It is part of an overall goal of making the workplace a joyless shithole.
To get job security, developers need to position themselves as highly effective business-value generators,
..and since nobody knows what the (*&%#)@$ that means, it provides every company with an automatic, built-in excuse to fire anyone, anytime, for any reason.
Business 1
Employees 0
working with the rest of the company to solve common goals.
Goal of the company: fire everyone as quickly as possible to save money so we can afford extra buffalo wings with our catered lunch.
Goal of the employee: to try and stretch seven weeks of stagnant, inadequate wages to pay for 12 months of rent, since ain't no FUCKING WAY this job is going to last two months.
Companies and employees no longer have common goals because middle management has put a great deal of thought and effort into making the workplace a toxic, hostile, adversarial environment which makes it much easier to keep the Just-In-Time-Fired(tm) policy generating quarterly revenue savings and bonus checks.
Working 80 hour weeks for piss-wages in a 19th century management structure is way way WAY past obsolete, and the workplace is a festering sphincter of liars, cheats and misery. Let's talk about fixing it instead of trying to be a "team player." We could start by replacing office politics with something that doesn't actively and constantly diminish good ideas and positive thinking.
Oh, and yes, I'm bitter.
I'm also right.
Sony turned it down. Twice. It took three years to get it green-lighted.
As long as there is this constant goal of "obsoleting" "old" technology. This happens on programming projects all the time. "Oh look! It works! Let's start over!"
It takes developers two years to even approach a reasonably efficient workflow with new tools. The reason people don't use 90% of the features of new software is because they don't have time. It's replaced by something entirely new within a few months.
Same thing with consoles. "Better graphics! Faster polygons! Faster sound! Faster! Better! Easier! More! More! More!" Nobody cares any more. There isn't time to have fun. We have to run and stand in line at Best Buy to replace everything again.
Enough. It's the same product in a different box. Progress is worth working towards.
Waste is not.
As wonderful as it might be to have a new Star Trek series, there is one axiom about this process: It is absolutely impossible for a creative person to efficiently obtain approval for a new project from a large company.
Proof:
Disney turned down Lord of the Rings
Sony turned down Everquest
Electronic Arts tried to cancel the Sims three times
MGM turned down Gone with the Wind
Now, if they don't mind spending $10,000 a day from the moment they make the first phone call, great. Otherwise, find a way to do it without conference rooms, or it's going to be nothing but anguish.
...and then James T. Kirk, galactic hero, Captain of the most storied vessel in Starfleet history, arbiter of peace between the Federation and the Klingons, a man who literally and singlehandedly saved Earth numerous times...
...falls down the stairs and is buried in an unmarked grave on an uninhabited planet right after the Enterprise is destroyed for the fourth time in a Star Trek movie.
:)
Let's give 'em all a big round of applause, folks!
And Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan was the best movie.
Agreed, with ST IV and ST VI in second and third place.
have management become so out of touch that they no longer know what questions to ask?
Yes. They are unqualified incompetent idiots more interested in what condiments are available at the sandwich bar than actually doing their job properly.
And since they have mastered the art of shoveling enough bullshit to support a four-foot deep eight MPH current in every hallway in the building, they never have to explain why they never accomplish anything.
many CIOs increasingly look to certification and accreditation standards as "market signals" indicative of professional quality and reliability. This represents the laziest and most dangerous kind of cover-your-ass thinking by C-level executives.
That's the point of the article. Idiot liar cheats fucking over good candidates with subjective criteria for disqualification while hiring the other blow-dried liar cheat who happens to run a company which employs "certified" programmers.
I'll guess this particular form of "fuck you" employment practice has probably cost 10 million qualified people good jobs recently. Makes for a great community when everyone has to move 100 miles to find work every few minutes.
I think "I don't know" would probably be management's answer to about 80% of questions. Long-winded bullshit would be the answer to the other 20%.
There are a bunch of IT workers looking for jobs
1999 called. They want their headline back.
the bottom line is your credentials,
No. Employers don't care about credentials, other than an M.D., or Law degree.
experience
As long as it is in the exacting and specific job being applied for
and toolset,
which will always be just different enough from the company "standard" that it automatically disqualifies everyone.
Maybe, just maybe, we've reached the end to downsizing.
Well, good for you. It's a little late, of course, but I suppose if management could have, they would have sold the fucking paint off the walls too.
About half of us have moved on, not only from "IT" but also from corporate "culture" altogether.
It no longer matters how much a salary is when management can gladly fire people with a few minutes notice for no reason.
Now, if employees could stop making house payments with a few minutes notice for no reason, THEN you would hear some bitching.
but your reaction doesn't bear a whole lot of resemblence to the actual article.
Because it would be redundant. This has been argued over and over again. Intellectual property (or whatever the phrase is) cannot be made "obsolete" by whatever new technology, or the economy will collapse, period.
Education bureaucrats waste large amounts of money.
In other news, the sky was reportedly blue this morning and there seems to be a large amount of water west of Oregon.
More late-breaking news as it becomes available. We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument about text editors.
Then, suddenly, media companies will start turning on their protection flags and it will be too late to do anything about it.
Is there truly anything on television worth watching, much less watching again? I think by the time the media companies start turning on these protection flags nobody will be watching any more.
Articles like this one follow a familiar pattern:
1) The history of copyright, complete with exhaustive descriptions of the piano roll and the Monarchy.
2) A sob story about some poor honest member of the global audience who can't watch the latest Hollywood crap-fest because they don't have eight copies of it arranged so they are never more than 10 yards from at least two of them.
3) Ringing, strident statements about how Anything can be copied(tm) do you hear me??!?! WELL, DO YOU??!?!?!?!?!!?!
4) The argument then swerves into the ever-popular "in the future, the Internet will make copyright obsolete and artists will all live in a Utopian paradise where everything is free, free, free like the book they spent 4,000 hours writing which is at this very minute available on 4,000 warezzzzzzz sites for your convenience"
5) This is usually followed by the standard "books are worthless, music is pointless, art is disposable, inspiration is a commodity" argument which offers the idea that because something can be cheaply copied, it has somehow become worthless.
Throughout each of these discussions, there is always support for "well, we'll just copy it anyway" which is why this argument has long since lost even the remotest shred of credibility.
There is only one question that needs to be answered. Is there any set of conditions under which the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth" people will just pay for the fucking movie/book/CD/whatever?
Four Dollars??? FOUR DOLLARS???
Those GREEDY BASTARDS!!!
</sarcasm>
The manga industry is being outsourced.
Absolutely impossible. Manga authors can't be "outsourced" or it becomes a different manga.
Manga is sold at ridiculously inflated prices in the U.S.
Oh, please. $4.95 for 200 pages isn't "ridiculous" by any means.
Anime is generally a field full of annoyances
Yeah. $4.3 billion worth.
being on the shelf at day zero right next to the brand new hardware is important to support a new machine.
Isn't it interesting how the entire "business case" process is backwards when it comes to the big companies?
A small company would have to have market share in order to get publishers to develop for their console. A small company would have to overcome the "chicken and egg" problem.
Tall Dollars Inc. just has to say "here's our new product" and everyone (including developers) lines right up.
It's sad that every industry is setting the quality of its product by how much freaking money they pump in to make it.
:)
The word is spelled E-G-O.
is an sdk for this or the GBA even possible for an indie developer to access and/or use?
FUCK no.
Well, not without that nice tall fee. $2 million for a calculator game. Anyone with the slightest shred of remaining sanity has long since given up on the "game industry."
One suspects your poor attitude
After being lied to, cheated, and fucked over repeatedly. Yeah, I guess that qualifies as a "poor attitude."
inability, or unwillingness, to play nice with others (manifest throughout your post)
No, it's the inability or unwillingness of others to be able to hear and believe the truth about the modern workplace. "Play nice with others" is just another euphemism for "team player" which is, in turn, a euphemism for "don't complain when we dump wet shit all over your career."
Long as you keep eating shit, everyone's happy. Complain, and you suddenly have a "bad attitude" and you're not being a "team player."
you blame all of your problems on others and take no share for your own, it's sure sign that the problem isn't with the others.
Yeah, so if I say "it's all my fault people lied to me and cheated me" then I'm an enlightened team player, right?
The length of your rant compared to the scant quantity of information you convey is another.
What would you like to know? Wanna know about the "permanent" jobs that lasted a few weeks? Jobs that were accepted in place of other offers which were subsequently lost? Wanna know about the "programming" jobs that became "non-programming" jobs days after being hired?
How about the jobs where the first week of work I had no desk, and had to sit next to a copy machine (for hours on end with nothing to do) like a pet? Or maybe the jobs where I was required to attend day-long meetings several times a week where management literally screamed at me (and others) that we weren't getting our work done, then fired us all weeks later?
Perhaps you'd like to hear about the manager who forced us all, as if tormenting a small animal, to do projects the wrong way, only to later complain to upper management about the fact it was done wrong? Would you like to hear about that manager's promotion? Would you like to hear about how that manager fired 200 people the following month, myself included? Would you like to hear about my "performance evaluation" from that manager (used as justification to fire me with two hours notice) who claimed I was "totally incompetent to perform the job of programmer" after personally hiring me because I had years of senior-level experience with dozens of technical references?
How about the four jobs in a row, none of which lasted longer than two months (all department-wide layoffs)? How about the overpriced benefits? Maybe you'd like to hear about co-workers who spent nearly all of their productive time in meetings complaining about me (and others) in months-long successful campaigns to get us all fired?
Would you like to hear about the financial ruin? Or how about the repeated financial ruin? How about the five months where I could only afford one meal a day?
All I did was graduate from college and try to do a good job. That used to be enough. Not any more. I watched a concentrated and sustained effort to destroy my career, and it worked. I am now 100% unemployable.
But you still won't believe me. You'll give middle management the benefit of the doubt, because after all, they're wearing $2000 suits. They must be right.
And right to fuck with the former employees. They're just whining because they're hungry.
Any negotiation as what kind of work you'll be doing needs to be dealt with before you sign the contract.
What contract? Employers don't offer contracts. They don't have written job descriptions. They have nothing. You sign nothing. They make no promises, and they take full advantage by firing you a few weeks after your four interviews.
Employment negotiations are usually:
"Here's the job. 40% under market salary. No benefits. Layoffs already announced for next quarter. Take it or leave it."
End of negotiation.
Is your company allowed to suddenly decide that it doesn't like paying you and still expect you to work?
Sure. No raises. Weekends. Unpaid overtime. Benefit cuts. Below average salaries. No bonuses. No guaranteed salary. Happens all the time.
The idea is that you find a job where "what you're told" resembles "what you want" enough to make things pleasant.
No such thing. Companies aren't interested in what employees want. In fact, employees who make suggestions are immediately promoted to the top of the layoffs list as "troublemakers" and people who aren't "team players." (Team player is corporate-speak for "agree with us even when we are wrong.")
Look, you can come up with disaster scenarios all day long
This isn't fiction. I've seen it at every single full-time job I have ever had except one. I've seen people gainfully employed at 9AM literally shoved/thrown bodily from the building at 11:15AM.
People always make a point of "meeting people halfway." Yet the liars and the cheats never have to meet anyone. They are allowed to go on ruining people's lives and destroying their careers with absolutely no limits whatsoever. Anyone who complains isn't being a "team player" and is next out the door.
Companies are so false any more it isn't even worth arguing about. Getting hired is the economic equivalent of Magellan's Voyage, yet getting fired is as simple as ordering a sandwich. We even have television shows now glorifying arbitrary layoffs. Firing people is trendy. The suffering of the powerless gets good ratings.
It's UNFAIR. It's WRONG.