Nobody can pull out the old emails and pull a trick like this if they've been deleted. And if you save them, you're violating policy, so you're screwed either way.
Run away, if you can, from places like that. TFA says to keep a daily record of what you've done. I've worked at a place where that was violating policy, and was a firable offense. Needless to say, I ran away, when I could. (They also prohibited managers from saying anything good about people on their reviews (I'm not joking or exaggerating) -- basically, they wanted to be able to fire you in a trouble-free manner, and they wanted you to help!)
I don't think the "chip in a key" was necessarily intended to foil the professional auto thief, or someone otherwise that determined. Your car can always be flat-bedded away (alarm systems with pitch sensors probably help here). But it'll keep your next door neighbor's kid's punk friends from taking your car for a little adventure, without having to hassle with a Club.
I would kill to have some good AS in a chess program that runs on modern systems. The problem with the ones I've played, at least, is that if you don't feel like thinking for forever and want a "light" game, all you can do is crank down the amount of time the computer has to think. The result I've seen is that the computer still achieves a superior position, but sometimes when it's thinking and the time runs out, somehow it feels it just has to play whatever move it was considering at the time, even if its evaluated score was way less than prior candidate moves it may have been considering. I would like to see a chess program that, when set to say "beginner", for example, better emulates an actual beginner, in all aspects of the game.
Unless you're doing a nation-wide search, there just won't be that many jobs that you realistically qualify for that you'd need a dbms. (Spamming your resume far and wide for things you barely have a single buzz-word in common with is pointless and just makes you appear desperate and undesirable like all the others that do that.)
With a simple text editor, I keep track of:
company name
email addy
web site
what part of town they're in
job title
job description (buzz-words)
my approx. degree of fit
dated history of my attempted contacts, including actual text of customized cover letter (I usually make these very short) and the filename of the customized resume
I put them in order of my interest in them.
Leave your computer on when you're home, with that file loaded, so when the phone rings, you can make a mad dash to answer with the phone by the computer, and immediately scroll down to see the goods on the company who's calling, so you don't get something confused and sound like an ass (been there, done that).
I also use a physical notepad, to take to interviews. The first page contains my std list of questions that I ask of every potential employer (sometimes I end up asking slightly more questions in an interview than the interviewer). The following pages contain the answers, one page per company (it probably helps after you've done a couple, and they can see that you've had other interviews/interest in you/competition).
I'll also print out the section for that company from my text file and stuff that in there, to take along and read right before the interview, to make sure my memory is fully refreshed and not partly confused with another company's stuff and my conversation history with them.
...only 16 percent were completed on time, on budget and fulfilling the original specifications.
For all I know, the other 84% simply weren't budgeted correctly.
More than half of the cost overruns amounted to at least 50 percent of the original budget. Of the projects that went off schedule, almost half took more than twice as long as originally planned.
So what? What if costs and time where 10 or 100x over what was estimated? These aren't absolute numbers, they're deltas relative to some dubious baselines. The implication is that nerds suck, but maybe it's the mba's that don't know how to realistically budget software projects?
Then there's the option of writing something new. [...] The costs associated with this are large.
And there's also the issue that most companies don't know how to "do software". If a company manufactures widgets, the PHB's there don't know how to select and retain software engineers, and the methodologies/processes to run a development project and team of developers. A dotcom I was at previously was exactly this -- a bunch of mortgage execs who simply didn't know what they were doing, and were in waaay over their heads.
But for many of these ultra-expensive enterprise applications where it seems they just collect a lot of money from you, but then require you to do tons of programming to make the tool useful...
Heh, prolly the idea is that you then go back to that company for consultants/expertise in that proprietary language, to program/customize it to your business' needs, becoming an even more ultra-expensive proposition.
Don't assume. Two possible scenarios (among prolly others):
1) They have no intention of hiring someone that answers the job posting.
a) They're establishing that they can't find anyone qualified for the position, making it H1-B eligible.
b) They've already picked out a candidate, or plan to only fill it internally, but regs, such as if it's a govt. job, require them to announce it publicly.
2) Overworked programmer bitches to his boss about being overworked, and that they really need to add another body. Boss just wants him off his back so he says okay and tells HR to put up an ad. HR puts out the notice of the job, and responses fill an inbox or db somewhere. Boss never calls HR back to get a list candidates, because he doesn't care. Developer assumes company tried but couldn't find anyone.
Sorry, but when you're testing the knowledge of the candidate, your knowledge is being tested too.
That should deserve an Insightful mod. No one wants to work at a place that's clueless or screwed up (unless you have to), and the kinds of questions that are asked and how they're worded is one of only a few major clues available to the interviewee into what it might be like to work there.
Maybe I should start up my own certifying authority company. All I have to do is take money from people, issue them certificates saying whatever they want me to say, and profit? Sounds great!
You left out: Get people to trust you as a CA. Verisign was around since the day I became aware of https, and I nominally trust them. It's different story with the Grishnakh Certificate Authority. (Nothing personal.)
Does Verisign review the source code for the controls that its certificates are applied to? I think not.
Beside the point -- signing only verifies who it's from. Similarly with PGP-signed email -- no guarantee is made that there won't be anything in there that might ruin your day.
One more thing: I'd heard that schools can use freshman physics and calc to "weed out" students. Presumably the idea is that if you can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps/learn via osmosis (or magic), you won't survive the higher level coursework. Well, that's fine, but as long as that attitude remains, and the emphasis is on just getting through all the material that a textbook says should be covered in x weeks, and not making sure most everyone is following it, then they aren't going to get any larger numbers of kids going into it.
They should concentrate instead on getting better at teaching the material, esp. how to tackle, or maybe even just how to get started on, the problems. In freshman physics in our sessions with the TA, he would just berate us in frustration because we couldn't do any of the homework problems. The nature of it for me and my peers at the time was that we could understand the solutions to the example problems, with a little effort, but were then totally lost when it came to the problems we were supposed to do. It was like the example solved one was supposed to help us, but it didn't seem to have any apparent correlation. We needed to be taught better how to think in the needed ways, how to typically get started, and how to make that connection between what the samples were telling us and the homeworks (if there indeed was supposed to be any correlation), not just factoids out of a textbook and then you're on your own.
But not supporting all the unprotected, unpatched Win95-WinME systems out there that mom and dad and grandma run, they've missed the mark. Except for XP Home, people who run W2K and XP pro and 2003 server all want to know what's going on. I want to know exactly what files it thinks are bad and wants to remove, and why, and then be prompted whether to go ahead or not, not just a tool with a dum-dum-only mode.
From the page to manually download it, there's a link to this KB article on enterprise deployment, that shows an example script calling the tool with a "/q" parameter. Are there others? I have no desire to run anything that automatically deletes things. I prefer tools to have a mode where it tells you what it would do, and then you can decide whether to trust it and let it.
Also note from that same article, at the very end, how to disable its reporting your infection status back to MS.
Well you never say something can't be done -- you're right, you'll look like boneheads. But if you feel out the customer a little, and try to gauge their tolerance level to being told on occasion "this is not wise in the long run", you can probably steer as much as possible them away from mistakes you'll have to (charge them to) fix later. Afterall, your job is not just to implement the software, but to advise them. It's their gold, so they get the final say, but as much as you can give them the impression of the truth of the situation, that you're the experts in the area of software design, and they are not, without sounding too arrogant, the better.
Although such effort can be misdirected, it's still a noble and worthwhile goal. Chasing imaginary potential requirements without any basis is detrimental, but if you've done your job and grilled the customer and got inklings of likely future directions, or your prior experience with that customer or that problem space or industry gives you a strong almost panic-like urging to architect in certain kinds of flexibility, that's a good thing.
It's also good to look at loosely the cost of each proposed "overdesign". If it's adding all kinds of complexity and extra work, for a requirement that potentially might never come, then maybe it's not worth it. But there are some such things that are relatively free. That is, you have to design something anyways, so you just think about it a while beforehand and design in the things that don't add to the work, but just yield a different design than might have first come to mind.
(Wow, parent deserves an Insightful mod.) I love it -- create an entry in the bug tracking system for the unrealistic schedule, as a manager-created unresolved "defect" in the project.
My concern is, what if there is no next big invention? I'm not saying that there won't be one, just that there doesn't necessarily have to be one. Or not here.
Parent should be modded higher than 3. Name recognition is not only a huge deal to Joe Sixpack, but also to companies and governments and other organizations. I'm still stuck supporting Netscape 4.x, because large sector(s) of the federal govt. had standardized on it and still have it as the only browser they use. They probably don't even know who makes Netscape browsers anymore, or what goes into them, but the name lends it some legitimacy in their eyes, on the level of Internet Explorer, that miscellaneous obscure open source browsers will never have. Even if Firefox becomes prevalent, it won't have the perceived legitimacy of corporate backing that PHB's, etc. want to see, like it or not.
Front loading the analysis usually uncovers many things that were ignored.
Which should include, depending on the developer's situation, time for interruptions, such as customers calling, and having to suddenly run off and put out a fire somewhere in already installed/was-supposed-to-be-working code. Also include time for mandatory corporate "training" that comes due every now and then, filling out forms/dealing with corporate bureaucracy for travel reimbursement et al. Also include any system downtime that frequently recurs, such as periods of not being able to get into email or connect to a resource, or where the connection is so ridiculously slow that you read a book in between mouse clicks (try vss over vpn cross-country!). So assign me 20 tasks Mon morn that I've estimated each at "a couple of hours", but despite MS Project showing everything adding up neatly, don't expect them all done by Fri evening.
Slashdot Mirror
Run away, if you can, from places like that. TFA says to keep a daily record of what you've done. I've worked at a place where that was violating policy, and was a firable offense. Needless to say, I ran away, when I could. (They also prohibited managers from saying anything good about people on their reviews (I'm not joking or exaggerating) -- basically, they wanted to be able to fire you in a trouble-free manner, and they wanted you to help!)
I don't think the "chip in a key" was necessarily intended to foil the professional auto thief, or someone otherwise that determined. Your car can always be flat-bedded away (alarm systems with pitch sensors probably help here). But it'll keep your next door neighbor's kid's punk friends from taking your car for a little adventure, without having to hassle with a Club.
I would kill to have some good AS in a chess program that runs on modern systems. The problem with the ones I've played, at least, is that if you don't feel like thinking for forever and want a "light" game, all you can do is crank down the amount of time the computer has to think. The result I've seen is that the computer still achieves a superior position, but sometimes when it's thinking and the time runs out, somehow it feels it just has to play whatever move it was considering at the time, even if its evaluated score was way less than prior candidate moves it may have been considering. I would like to see a chess program that, when set to say "beginner", for example, better emulates an actual beginner, in all aspects of the game.
Heh, and probably protected by a "PIN (Personal Identification Number) number"!
PETA urges us all to just say no to duck tape.
With a simple text editor, I keep track of:
company name
email addy
web site
what part of town they're in
job title
job description (buzz-words)
my approx. degree of fit
dated history of my attempted contacts, including actual text of customized cover letter (I usually make these very short) and the filename of the customized resume
I put them in order of my interest in them.
Leave your computer on when you're home, with that file loaded, so when the phone rings, you can make a mad dash to answer with the phone by the computer, and immediately scroll down to see the goods on the company who's calling, so you don't get something confused and sound like an ass (been there, done that).
I also use a physical notepad, to take to interviews. The first page contains my std list of questions that I ask of every potential employer (sometimes I end up asking slightly more questions in an interview than the interviewer). The following pages contain the answers, one page per company (it probably helps after you've done a couple, and they can see that you've had other interviews/interest in you/competition).
I'll also print out the section for that company from my text file and stuff that in there, to take along and read right before the interview, to make sure my memory is fully refreshed and not partly confused with another company's stuff and my conversation history with them.
For all I know, the other 84% simply weren't budgeted correctly.
More than half of the cost overruns amounted to at least 50 percent of the original budget. Of the projects that went off schedule, almost half took more than twice as long as originally planned.
So what? What if costs and time where 10 or 100x over what was estimated? These aren't absolute numbers, they're deltas relative to some dubious baselines. The implication is that nerds suck, but maybe it's the mba's that don't know how to realistically budget software projects?
And there's also the issue that most companies don't know how to "do software". If a company manufactures widgets, the PHB's there don't know how to select and retain software engineers, and the methodologies/processes to run a development project and team of developers. A dotcom I was at previously was exactly this -- a bunch of mortgage execs who simply didn't know what they were doing, and were in waaay over their heads.
Heh, prolly the idea is that you then go back to that company for consultants/expertise in that proprietary language, to program/customize it to your business' needs, becoming an even more ultra-expensive proposition.
1) They have no intention of hiring someone that answers the job posting.
a) They're establishing that they can't find anyone qualified for the position, making it H1-B eligible.
b) They've already picked out a candidate, or plan to only fill it internally, but regs, such as if it's a govt. job, require them to announce it publicly.
2) Overworked programmer bitches to his boss about being overworked, and that they really need to add another body. Boss just wants him off his back so he says okay and tells HR to put up an ad. HR puts out the notice of the job, and responses fill an inbox or db somewhere. Boss never calls HR back to get a list candidates, because he doesn't care. Developer assumes company tried but couldn't find anyone.
That should deserve an Insightful mod. No one wants to work at a place that's clueless or screwed up (unless you have to), and the kinds of questions that are asked and how they're worded is one of only a few major clues available to the interviewee into what it might be like to work there.
I'd look for a volleyball, paint a face on it and name him Wilson, and then talk to him and slowly go crazy...
You left out: Get people to trust you as a CA. Verisign was around since the day I became aware of https, and I nominally trust them. It's different story with the Grishnakh Certificate Authority. (Nothing personal.)
Beside the point -- signing only verifies who it's from. Similarly with PGP-signed email -- no guarantee is made that there won't be anything in there that might ruin your day.
One more thing: I'd heard that schools can use freshman physics and calc to "weed out" students. Presumably the idea is that if you can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps/learn via osmosis (or magic), you won't survive the higher level coursework. Well, that's fine, but as long as that attitude remains, and the emphasis is on just getting through all the material that a textbook says should be covered in x weeks, and not making sure most everyone is following it, then they aren't going to get any larger numbers of kids going into it.
They should concentrate instead on getting better at teaching the material, esp. how to tackle, or maybe even just how to get started on, the problems. In freshman physics in our sessions with the TA, he would just berate us in frustration because we couldn't do any of the homework problems. The nature of it for me and my peers at the time was that we could understand the solutions to the example problems, with a little effort, but were then totally lost when it came to the problems we were supposed to do. It was like the example solved one was supposed to help us, but it didn't seem to have any apparent correlation. We needed to be taught better how to think in the needed ways, how to typically get started, and how to make that connection between what the samples were telling us and the homeworks (if there indeed was supposed to be any correlation), not just factoids out of a textbook and then you're on your own.
But not supporting all the unprotected, unpatched Win95-WinME systems out there that mom and dad and grandma run, they've missed the mark. Except for XP Home, people who run W2K and XP pro and 2003 server all want to know what's going on. I want to know exactly what files it thinks are bad and wants to remove, and why, and then be prompted whether to go ahead or not, not just a tool with a dum-dum-only mode.
Also note from that same article, at the very end, how to disable its reporting your infection status back to MS.
Well you never say something can't be done -- you're right, you'll look like boneheads. But if you feel out the customer a little, and try to gauge their tolerance level to being told on occasion "this is not wise in the long run", you can probably steer as much as possible them away from mistakes you'll have to (charge them to) fix later. Afterall, your job is not just to implement the software, but to advise them. It's their gold, so they get the final say, but as much as you can give them the impression of the truth of the situation, that you're the experts in the area of software design, and they are not, without sounding too arrogant, the better.
It's also good to look at loosely the cost of each proposed "overdesign". If it's adding all kinds of complexity and extra work, for a requirement that potentially might never come, then maybe it's not worth it. But there are some such things that are relatively free. That is, you have to design something anyways, so you just think about it a while beforehand and design in the things that don't add to the work, but just yield a different design than might have first come to mind.
(Wow, parent deserves an Insightful mod.)
I love it -- create an entry in the bug tracking system for the unrealistic schedule, as a manager-created unresolved "defect" in the project.
My concern is, what if there is no next big invention? I'm not saying that there won't be one, just that there doesn't necessarily have to be one. Or not here.
I thought Windows Forms was going to be essentially deprecated anyways, when Longhorn is released, in favor of Avalon/XAML?
Parent should be modded higher than 3. Name recognition is not only a huge deal to Joe Sixpack, but also to companies and governments and other organizations. I'm still stuck supporting Netscape 4.x, because large sector(s) of the federal govt. had standardized on it and still have it as the only browser they use. They probably don't even know who makes Netscape browsers anymore, or what goes into them, but the name lends it some legitimacy in their eyes, on the level of Internet Explorer, that miscellaneous obscure open source browsers will never have. Even if Firefox becomes prevalent, it won't have the perceived legitimacy of corporate backing that PHB's, etc. want to see, like it or not.
Which should include, depending on the developer's situation, time for interruptions, such as customers calling, and having to suddenly run off and put out a fire somewhere in already installed/was-supposed-to-be-working code. Also include time for mandatory corporate "training" that comes due every now and then, filling out forms/dealing with corporate bureaucracy for travel reimbursement et al. Also include any system downtime that frequently recurs, such as periods of not being able to get into email or connect to a resource, or where the connection is so ridiculously slow that you read a book in between mouse clicks (try vss over vpn cross-country!). So assign me 20 tasks Mon morn that I've estimated each at "a couple of hours", but despite MS Project showing everything adding up neatly, don't expect them all done by Fri evening.