Huh? Investors invest money expecting a return. Expecting a return is not a flawed expectation when looking for somewhere to place your $$. Why do you think they invest the money? So a group of developers can work on free software because it's a fun thing to do?? They do not have a right to a profit, however they do expect the business they invested their money into to try to maximise its profit. If FOSS businesses are producing lower returns than closed source software houses with the same risk then the investors will just stop investing in open source and look for more profitable opportunities.
Hypothetical - someone writes a fantastic graphics application, lets call it BetterThanPhotoshop and open sources it. Having bumped into quite a few graphics artists I can say with confidence that the vast majority of them don't care diddly squat about discussing the innards of the project or who the authority is on the technical aspects of graphics software development. If the product was sold at $100 and someone grabbed a copy of the source and sold it at $50 - the exact same product - guess who gets the business? The problem here is that the year head start means absolutely nothing - in fact it is a liability - someone else comes along and gets all the requirements gathering, design, spec, testing etc for free and only has to pay for marketing and distribution, while the original developer has to pay for not only the marketing and distribution but also has to recover costs from the year of dev and so has a year of costs to make up on the second guy.
We are all quite aware that the business model is critical - I have not suggested otherwise. My question is around developing FOSS as part of a business model - is it viable in all situations? In many situations I am sure it is. Unless someone can show how the original developer in the above hypothetical would benifit using FOSS as part of their business model - my answer would be a resounding no. My comment is more in response to the general attitude by many on this site that all software should be open sourced. I am not aware of your personal opinion so am not assuming one way or the other in regards to your comment, rather making a general observation.
Thank you for commenting on something I have been puzzling over for quite some time. I keep hearing how FOSS is the way all software is heading. However the problem is it does not address niche markets.
To keep the discussion simple, let's say I develop a new graphics application that is perfect for graphics designers and much better than anything on the market at the moment in terms of speed, usability and features.
The problems I run into if I open source are: 1) If usability is great, who is going to want to purchase support? 2) If I open source it - I may sell a few copies until someone grabs the source code and starts distributing it for free. So how do my bills get paid??
Let's say this application takes a year to develop - that is a year of unpaid work that I will receive no benefit from besides a warm fuzzy feeling. Unfortunately warm fuzzy feelings do not pay the bills. Most developers who are looking at starting a business are already employed and well into their career and are not interested in writing an open source app just so they can land a job somewhere (working for someone else who started a business to make money). The entire point of starting a business is so that one doesn't have to work for someone else any more.
So in this instance how does one make money? Or does this new application just never see the light of day?
It is a fantastic entry level position. Many great coders I know started out in phone support or other similar jobs. It teaches you: *Communication skills with non-technical people. It always amazes me how bad some people in IT are in regards to communication with other people. The scary part is I find the more qualified someone is, the worse they are at communicating, it is almost as if they feel that communicating with non-IT people is beneath them. *Troubleshooting skills (so long as it is a non-scripted support role). You have to think on the fly - a customer on the other end of the line is not going to put up with an answer of "it's too hard - go away". You have to rapidly diagnose possible causes and propose solutions. *You learn to deal with incompetent / abusive people. Similar but not the same as learning communication skills. *Following tasks through to completion. The customer will just keep calling back if you dont fix the problem. You lose the concept of the 'too hard basket'. *Humility. You get out of the mindset of 'I am too good for X job'
I started out in IT in phone support and as much as I hated every moment of it, it has served a great purpose. I have since had no issues finding very well paid positions in development without a degree (and yes this was post-dot-com). However I was also doing freelance dev on the side as well as using the phone support pay checks to pay for some certification (however basic it was). If I was interviewing someone and they said they did Level 1 phone support for 2 years and did nothing else I would not hire them - not based on them having done phone support but based on them showing no personal motivation. In the type of position I am interviewing I need someone who is very pro-active in responding to issues, not someone who sits back and waits for someone to tell them what to do.
The key is to demonstrate personal motivation and desire to contribute ie work ethic. This has nothing to do with what types of jobs previously worked. It is quite pathetic the number of people when interviewed and asked the question 'why do you want to work here?' will go on for several minutes on what they will gain from the employment and do not bother to mention what they will contribute back. Even if you don't mean any of it - at least you have put some thought into it.
The big problem these days, especially with new grads, is that they expect to land a senior position irrespective of how little experience they have. For a senior position I do not care if a candidate can write an algorithm slightly more efficiently than the next candidate - I want to know how they will react in a situation that is not taught in their degree - eg how to handle several critical deadlines if it is impossible to meet all of them or how to react in the case of something going really bad. This is where I have found non-grads tend to excel - they do not expect a senior position straight away and those that are experienced generally have worked much harder to get where they are (and thus have gained more experience along the way). Having said that - there are many fantastic grads as well (and many pathetic non-grads).
A degree is purely a tool to help you, it is not the be all and end all as some seem to think it is.
The beautiful thing about the BSD license is that it gives you true freedom to do whatever you want with the code. Want to add bits and pieces and add your own license? Go for it. The only condition - you attribute the code to its original author (which is fair enough). You want to release a bugfix under the GPL? Fine. Except anybody can still use the original code without having to abide by the GPL.
"But what if somebody takes your BSD licensed code and puts it under the GPL (they CAN do that your license allows it)?"
In that case - the code that was written by the GPL developer would be GPLed, however that developer has no right to change the license on the original BSD licensed code. If the developer removes the BSD license and replaces it with a GPL license they have broken the terms of the license of the BSD'ed code (one of the few requirements is that the BSD license cannot be removed from the source code). Anyone can still use the original BSD'ed code under the terms of the BSD license irrespective of what future licenses are placed around software that uses this piece of code.
Like other posters have pointed out, once you get to government / enterprise size, software costing $928k is not that huge. In a previous job the average deal would have been >$100k in licensing alone for the software - per annum. Not support, not consulting, not training - just pure software licensing costs.
A lot depends on what software was required. There is the database of course, then the web servers, app server and then other third party apps that are used for everything from enquiry submissions through to systems integration. None of these are cheap. If this was done by a SI then there would likely have been multiple different vendors as part of the project. With each vendor charging several $100k for software licenses, the approx $1mill becomes quite believable.
"... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you."
Where in the previous post was this ever mentioned? So you have made up something the previous poster never said, then use your made up statement as proof that gun owners are unstable. I would laugh if I did not see this used time and time again.
"funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s)."
Here we go again
There was nothing unstable in that previous post. And yet again we have a repeat of the usual. Make up something about the previous post that was never there.
Read the study by Melbourne University. To quote the abstract of the study "The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths"
"The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."
First we look at what exactly the articles point is? Total development cost for all software included in a Linux distro? So we include every piece of software available in source form for a Linux distro?
Lets go through some of the top 10 packages that this article is claiming had Linux development costs associated with them: OpenOffice Started life as StarOffice as proprietary software with a lot of paid development continuing by Sun. This is available on Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIS. Hardly a development cost of Linux. gcc The gcc compiler was first released in 1987 before Linux was even conceived. It is available on numerous platforms. Hardly something that came to us due to Linux. Eclipse Developed for Java developers. Not exactly something that came to this world thanks to Linux. Mono Microsoft did all the r+d of.Net. Mono would not exist if it was not for Microsoft. Firefox This is thanks to Mozilla and is available on many platforms. Not exactly something that came about thanks to Linux.
This may be overly critical, however claiming that all these are development costs of Linux because they are available on Linux is like running a heap of open source apps on windows and claiming them as development costs for Windows. Porting something to Linux does not mean the entire development effort for the project is a cost to Linux.
Back to your point - you are quite correct in stating that many of these tools / applications would be available today if Linux had never existed.
slashdot thinking seems to be "what technical specs does this have and is the system open source? Because those are the only things that potential customers think about" - which is way off. Most of the market for iPods is not thinking "omgz I can't write non-proprietary applications for this so I won't buy it". Classic example - recently bought an MP3 player for girlfriend. Her requirements: "I want a pink iPod nano". Why? "because it looks good". There was no "honey, can you find me an Mp3 player where I can write non-proprietary applications" or "can you find me an MP3 player which plays ogg files" or "find me the MP3 player with the largest storage capacity". Just a plain and simple "I want a pink iPod nano because it looks good and can play my music". Obviously she is not alone, hence why Apple offer the nano in many different colours and don't worry about making the ipod non-proprietary. The majority of the market does not care.
Done this many times. If a player was particularly bad I would happily buy them a drink to make them feel better and console them on their horrendous run of "bad luck". Other times late at night / in the early hours we would actually stop the game if the drunk guy got up for a toilet break and wait for his return before resuming. The regs would always give filthy looks to anyone berating a bad player on their terrible play - you don't want them to leave, you want them to stay and have a good time losing their money and hopefully come back again in the future. All this talk of people not playing against obviously good players is a load of nonsense - spoken by people who have never actually played a live game at a casino in their life but consider themselves experts on the subject. I was always astounded at the number of terrible players who just kept returning and donating their money to the table.
Just like its in the best interest of the casino not to run tables like roulette as the losers will be chased away and never return to play anything else. Oh wait...
"RL poker has a lot more to do with psychology and being able to control your reactions. Hence the term, "poker face." Once you remove that, there's a lot more averaging, as everyone except complete dolts can get a list of rules that say when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run."
And this shows a complete ignorance of poker. When I played for a living (no cheating necessary) I loved playing against people who thought that. They would turn up wearing their sunglasses, pull the hood over their head thinking that poker was all about hiding their 'tells'. Then they would get cleaned out. Why? Because poker is predominately a maths / statistics based game. Before anything else you have to have a rock solid knowledge of what your odds are to complete certain hands. Through this alone you have an advantage over most players who think poker is all about a poker face. After this you spend time profiling players - what category do they fit in? Are they aggressive or passive? This gives you a rough indication as to the probability they are making certain plays or can be pushed off hands. You should be able to write a page or so on playing characteristics of your opponents after you have played against them for a few hours. You perform a statistical analysis of your hands - what starting hands return profits? Which ones return a loss but can increase your profits on other hands? What is your optimal bluffing frequency against different types of players? You will find there is a huge amount of game theory involved. You will find picking up on tells only accounts for a small fraction of your total profit for the night. And a good player most definitely does NOT have to rely on cheating to end up ahead - it just takes a lot of work.
Correct - if you are counting every player then the sum of money made by all players is negative. If poker were a purely random game with no skill then it would be impossible to come out ahead. However poker is also a game of skill. A good player can achieve positive returns even taking the rake into account. I know as I played for a living for a few months between jobs - as with anything else in life you have to be better than your competition. It takes shitloads of practice and study and to be honest playing for a living is much harder than a 'normal' job (eg your 'work' hours are generally 4pm - 4am, 6 days / week) but I must admit I miss it and it is certainly very achievable.
Professional poker players don't get 'interrogated in vegas'. The house does not lose against the players whether they win or lose, so does not care. It is quite common to have excellent players all sitting down at a table without the house batting an eyelid. Money in poker is made from other players, not the house.
Professional online players play orders of magnitude more hands than their bricks and mortar counterparts - thats why they do it. If you are better than those you play against in a casino game you get to play roughly 30 hands / hour against your opponents. If you multi-table online some players play in excess of 10 tables simultaneously at 60 hands / hour / table. Thats over 600 hands / hour online v 30 hands / hour in live play. Add in the lower rake online, no tipping etc and you can see how a good player can make far more online than in live play.
"First of all, if you are running a business you should not have to persuade your employees, coworkers, or higher ups."
In entry level perhaps, once you get any form of authority or responsibility you will always be persuading higher ups or employees. If your manager comes up with an idea and you disagree, you have to persuade them they are wrong. Just saying "you are wrong, take my word for it" will not suffice. This applies even moreso when dealing with customers. A customer will never just take your word for something. If you and co-worker come up with two different solutions to a problem, the manager will need to be persuaded which one is better. They have neither the time nor inclination to sit down and work through the fine technical details of both solutions.
"As far as getting customers, emailing as a form of communication is of course spam unless they contact you first via email for information. Cold calling is of course the same thing as telemarketing..."
Cold calling is generally used for marketing to generate leads, not to make sales. You will find when deals are in the order of $1mill plus nobody is going to say "yes, I want one" over the phone to someone who they have never talked to before. The point behind cold calling is to let potential leads know that you exist, then for sales to follow up. Which is why telemarketing generally falls under the marketing dept and not sales.
"As far as people traveling for that "big sales" meeting... I just never understood."
If I was going to lay out several mill on a product / service I would want to see in person the people I am buying from to go over the finer points. Sometimes these meetings can last for several days just to get the basic requirements not even touching on the closing stages.
"If you are a company in need of a product... Why do you need someone persuading you to buy theirs over someone else."
In large scale projects things generally go out to tender, generally leading to a short list of maybe 2 or 3 prospective vendors. In a large scale integration it is not a simple case of just asking the vendor what their product can do and then deciding - the price of the product / service will change dramatically depending on which options are deemed required. The potential customer will outline to all prospective vendors what will be required, it is up to the potential vendor to then outline back to the customer why their solution is the best option (whether it be price, scalability, reliability etc). The customer then decides which way to go. If you do not try to persuade the customer to buy your product / service, you do not get the business - simple as that. If you do not appear convinced that your solution will solve the customers problems how do you expect them to believe it will? This tender stage (read 'persuasion stage') is not just a nice to have, in most large companies it is a requirement for all large purchases.
"In fact, people with authorization to buy products or services should be hired on the sole fact they are not easily persuaded and do not take bribes from vendors."
What does bribes have to do with anything? The people in procurement weigh up things like ROI, reliability etc. If these people can never be convinced a product is the best for the job then they will never purchase anything will they?
That may be the case, but based on the hammering their share price took about a week ago it is possible that the GOOG bubble is in the process of bursting. Having broken downwards through the 400 mark that is no longer a level of support. Will be interesting what happens over the coming weeks.
After reading all the comments, I guess I was lucky (or unlucky, depending on which way you look at it). My last job I gave about 2 months notice, and they had me working until the very last day (where I still had full access to the system even when totally blind drunk after my farewell party). Yes, it was a large corporation. And yes, I did receive a great reference from them. On a side note - exit interviews are great when drunk - I highly recommend it as an experience! I became far more honest than I would have been if sober *grin*
Yes, I do read my responses (well most of the time at least):)
As I believe another response has already pointed out - firstly make sure you apply for many many jobs. Even if you get offered two out of all of them (as a first job this may be a bit optimistic), then maybe you cannot negotiate but you still have the option of going for the job of your preference. Starting out in your first job in the industry is always very very hard and generally you just take whatever anyone throws at you. Once you are in a job, you will start finding that recruiters prefer hiring people already employed to those out of a job, also as you are already employed time is on your side so you dont have to take any scraps offered but can start picking and choosing. As your skills and experience increase, you will have less competition for jobs you are applying for, which is where the bargaining starts coming into play. If asked what salary I am on when applying for a job, as a general rule I always overstate it (within a believable amount) - if your potential employer feels that you are already getting a pay increase by jumping over to them then dont expect them to raise their offer any higher. Also they feel that if you are paid well then there must be something really good about you.
On your second point - if you want X as a minimum, and they offer 1.25 * X - why would you want to push for more? You feel X is a fair amount, then be happy with it. The key is that when you define X to yourself - make sure it is an amount you would be comfortable with, not just a bare minumum. Once you start applying for positions above entry level you will generally be asked what pay you are looking for - you have to have a number ready to give them. Make sure its reasonable and if youre good youre generally in with a good chance of getting what you want.
Everyone on this site has had to start in the industry somewhere. Your first job will generally be crappy and underpaid, unfortunatley thats life. Consider it serving your time and earning your higher pay later on - the best way to get through this is set a target date (maybe 6 months, maybe 1 year) in the future when you will look for your next job. It's once you start going for your second or maybe third job that generally you can start negotiating. There are many new grads all with identical experience (studies, hobby coding etc), it's once you are in employment that you start differentiating yourself from others. The best way to put yourself in a good bargaining position is to make yourself unique - you need to be able to walk in somewhere and offer them something that everyone else (or at least most) competing for the job (treat it as a competition) do not have.
Not sure if this answered your question or not - hopefully it did (at least partially!). You will find that as your experience grows, you will start getting a feel for the whole negotiating process and how much you are worth on the market.
Slashdot Mirror
"the investors expectations are flawed?"
Huh? Investors invest money expecting a return. Expecting a return is not a flawed expectation when looking for somewhere to place your $$. Why do you think they invest the money? So a group of developers can work on free software because it's a fun thing to do?? They do not have a right to a profit, however they do expect the business they invested their money into to try to maximise its profit. If FOSS businesses are producing lower returns than closed source software houses with the same risk then the investors will just stop investing in open source and look for more profitable opportunities.
Hypothetical - someone writes a fantastic graphics application, lets call it BetterThanPhotoshop and open sources it. Having bumped into quite a few graphics artists I can say with confidence that the vast majority of them don't care diddly squat about discussing the innards of the project or who the authority is on the technical aspects of graphics software development. If the product was sold at $100 and someone grabbed a copy of the source and sold it at $50 - the exact same product - guess who gets the business? The problem here is that the year head start means absolutely nothing - in fact it is a liability - someone else comes along and gets all the requirements gathering, design, spec, testing etc for free and only has to pay for marketing and distribution, while the original developer has to pay for not only the marketing and distribution but also has to recover costs from the year of dev and so has a year of costs to make up on the second guy.
We are all quite aware that the business model is critical - I have not suggested otherwise. My question is around developing FOSS as part of a business model - is it viable in all situations? In many situations I am sure it is. Unless someone can show how the original developer in the above hypothetical would benifit using FOSS as part of their business model - my answer would be a resounding no. My comment is more in response to the general attitude by many on this site that all software should be open sourced. I am not aware of your personal opinion so am not assuming one way or the other in regards to your comment, rather making a general observation.
Thank you for commenting on something I have been puzzling over for quite some time. I keep hearing how FOSS is the way all software is heading. However the problem is it does not address niche markets.
To keep the discussion simple, let's say I develop a new graphics application that is perfect for graphics designers and much better than anything on the market at the moment in terms of speed, usability and features.
The problems I run into if I open source are:
1) If usability is great, who is going to want to purchase support?
2) If I open source it - I may sell a few copies until someone grabs the source code and starts distributing it for free.
So how do my bills get paid??
Let's say this application takes a year to develop - that is a year of unpaid work that I will receive no benefit from besides a warm fuzzy feeling. Unfortunately warm fuzzy feelings do not pay the bills. Most developers who are looking at starting a business are already employed and well into their career and are not interested in writing an open source app just so they can land a job somewhere (working for someone else who started a business to make money). The entire point of starting a business is so that one doesn't have to work for someone else any more.
So in this instance how does one make money? Or does this new application just never see the light of day?
It is a fantastic entry level position. Many great coders I know started out in phone support or other similar jobs. It teaches you:
*Communication skills with non-technical people. It always amazes me how bad some people in IT are in regards to communication with other people. The scary part is I find the more qualified someone is, the worse they are at communicating, it is almost as if they feel that communicating with non-IT people is beneath them.
*Troubleshooting skills (so long as it is a non-scripted support role). You have to think on the fly - a customer on the other end of the line is not going to put up with an answer of "it's too hard - go away". You have to rapidly diagnose possible causes and propose solutions.
*You learn to deal with incompetent / abusive people. Similar but not the same as learning communication skills.
*Following tasks through to completion. The customer will just keep calling back if you dont fix the problem. You lose the concept of the 'too hard basket'.
*Humility. You get out of the mindset of 'I am too good for X job'
I started out in IT in phone support and as much as I hated every moment of it, it has served a great purpose. I have since had no issues finding very well paid positions in development without a degree (and yes this was post-dot-com). However I was also doing freelance dev on the side as well as using the phone support pay checks to pay for some certification (however basic it was). If I was interviewing someone and they said they did Level 1 phone support for 2 years and did nothing else I would not hire them - not based on them having done phone support but based on them showing no personal motivation. In the type of position I am interviewing I need someone who is very pro-active in responding to issues, not someone who sits back and waits for someone to tell them what to do.
The key is to demonstrate personal motivation and desire to contribute ie work ethic. This has nothing to do with what types of jobs previously worked. It is quite pathetic the number of people when interviewed and asked the question 'why do you want to work here?' will go on for several minutes on what they will gain from the employment and do not bother to mention what they will contribute back. Even if you don't mean any of it - at least you have put some thought into it.
The big problem these days, especially with new grads, is that they expect to land a senior position irrespective of how little experience they have. For a senior position I do not care if a candidate can write an algorithm slightly more efficiently than the next candidate - I want to know how they will react in a situation that is not taught in their degree - eg how to handle several critical deadlines if it is impossible to meet all of them or how to react in the case of something going really bad. This is where I have found non-grads tend to excel - they do not expect a senior position straight away and those that are experienced generally have worked much harder to get where they are (and thus have gained more experience along the way). Having said that - there are many fantastic grads as well (and many pathetic non-grads).
A degree is purely a tool to help you, it is not the be all and end all as some seem to think it is.
The beautiful thing about the BSD license is that it gives you true freedom to do whatever you want with the code. Want to add bits and pieces and add your own license? Go for it. The only condition - you attribute the code to its original author (which is fair enough). You want to release a bugfix under the GPL? Fine. Except anybody can still use the original code without having to abide by the GPL.
"But what if somebody takes your BSD licensed code and puts it under the GPL (they CAN do that your license allows it)?"
In that case - the code that was written by the GPL developer would be GPLed, however that developer has no right to change the license on the original BSD licensed code. If the developer removes the BSD license and replaces it with a GPL license they have broken the terms of the license of the BSD'ed code (one of the few requirements is that the BSD license cannot be removed from the source code). Anyone can still use the original BSD'ed code under the terms of the BSD license irrespective of what future licenses are placed around software that uses this piece of code.
Like other posters have pointed out, once you get to government / enterprise size, software costing $928k is not that huge. In a previous job the average deal would have been >$100k in licensing alone for the software - per annum. Not support, not consulting, not training - just pure software licensing costs.
A lot depends on what software was required. There is the database of course, then the web servers, app server and then other third party apps that are used for everything from enquiry submissions through to systems integration. None of these are cheap. If this was done by a SI then there would likely have been multiple different vendors as part of the project. With each vendor charging several $100k for software licenses, the approx $1mill becomes quite believable.
Generally the conversation would go something like:
you: hey boss, can I improve Hibernate to do what we need it to do on this project and contribute the changes back to the project?
boss: sure, as long as you finish this project first and don't do any of that during work hours you can contribute back whatever you want.
"... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you."
Where in the previous post was this ever mentioned? So you have made up something the previous poster never said, then use your made up statement as proof that gun owners are unstable. I would laugh if I did not see this used time and time again.
"funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s)."
Here we go again
There was nothing unstable in that previous post. And yet again we have a repeat of the usual. Make up something about the previous post that was never there.
Read the study by Melbourne University. To quote the abstract of the study "The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths"
"The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did
not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."
Good point but it doesn't go far enough
First we look at what exactly the articles point is? Total development cost for all software included in a Linux distro? So we include every piece of software available in source form for a Linux distro?
Lets go through some of the top 10 packages that this article is claiming had Linux development costs associated with them: .Net. Mono would not exist if it was not for Microsoft.
OpenOffice
Started life as StarOffice as proprietary software with a lot of paid development continuing by Sun. This is available on Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIS. Hardly a development cost of Linux.
gcc
The gcc compiler was first released in 1987 before Linux was even conceived. It is available on numerous platforms. Hardly something that came to us due to Linux.
Eclipse
Developed for Java developers. Not exactly something that came to this world thanks to Linux.
Mono
Microsoft did all the r+d of
Firefox
This is thanks to Mozilla and is available on many platforms. Not exactly something that came about thanks to Linux.
This may be overly critical, however claiming that all these are development costs of Linux because they are available on Linux is like running a heap of open source apps on windows and claiming them as development costs for Windows. Porting something to Linux does not mean the entire development effort for the project is a cost to Linux.
Back to your point - you are quite correct in stating that many of these tools / applications would be available today if Linux had never existed.
slashdot thinking seems to be "what technical specs does this have and is the system open source? Because those are the only things that potential customers think about" - which is way off. Most of the market for iPods is not thinking "omgz I can't write non-proprietary applications for this so I won't buy it". Classic example - recently bought an MP3 player for girlfriend. Her requirements: "I want a pink iPod nano". Why? "because it looks good". There was no "honey, can you find me an Mp3 player where I can write non-proprietary applications" or "can you find me an MP3 player which plays ogg files" or "find me the MP3 player with the largest storage capacity". Just a plain and simple "I want a pink iPod nano because it looks good and can play my music". Obviously she is not alone, hence why Apple offer the nano in many different colours and don't worry about making the ipod non-proprietary. The majority of the market does not care.
iPod will be here for quite a while yet.
Done this many times. If a player was particularly bad I would happily buy them a drink to make them feel better and console them on their horrendous run of "bad luck". Other times late at night / in the early hours we would actually stop the game if the drunk guy got up for a toilet break and wait for his return before resuming. The regs would always give filthy looks to anyone berating a bad player on their terrible play - you don't want them to leave, you want them to stay and have a good time losing their money and hopefully come back again in the future. All this talk of people not playing against obviously good players is a load of nonsense - spoken by people who have never actually played a live game at a casino in their life but consider themselves experts on the subject. I was always astounded at the number of terrible players who just kept returning and donating their money to the table.
Just like its in the best interest of the casino not to run tables like roulette as the losers will be chased away and never return to play anything else. Oh wait...
"RL poker has a lot more to do with psychology and being able to control your reactions. Hence the term, "poker face." Once you remove that, there's a lot more averaging, as everyone except complete dolts can get a list of rules that say when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run." And this shows a complete ignorance of poker. When I played for a living (no cheating necessary) I loved playing against people who thought that. They would turn up wearing their sunglasses, pull the hood over their head thinking that poker was all about hiding their 'tells'. Then they would get cleaned out. Why? Because poker is predominately a maths / statistics based game. Before anything else you have to have a rock solid knowledge of what your odds are to complete certain hands. Through this alone you have an advantage over most players who think poker is all about a poker face. After this you spend time profiling players - what category do they fit in? Are they aggressive or passive? This gives you a rough indication as to the probability they are making certain plays or can be pushed off hands. You should be able to write a page or so on playing characteristics of your opponents after you have played against them for a few hours. You perform a statistical analysis of your hands - what starting hands return profits? Which ones return a loss but can increase your profits on other hands? What is your optimal bluffing frequency against different types of players? You will find there is a huge amount of game theory involved. You will find picking up on tells only accounts for a small fraction of your total profit for the night. And a good player most definitely does NOT have to rely on cheating to end up ahead - it just takes a lot of work.
Correct - if you are counting every player then the sum of money made by all players is negative. If poker were a purely random game with no skill then it would be impossible to come out ahead. However poker is also a game of skill. A good player can achieve positive returns even taking the rake into account. I know as I played for a living for a few months between jobs - as with anything else in life you have to be better than your competition. It takes shitloads of practice and study and to be honest playing for a living is much harder than a 'normal' job (eg your 'work' hours are generally 4pm - 4am, 6 days / week) but I must admit I miss it and it is certainly very achievable.
Professional poker players don't get 'interrogated in vegas'. The house does not lose against the players whether they win or lose, so does not care. It is quite common to have excellent players all sitting down at a table without the house batting an eyelid. Money in poker is made from other players, not the house.
Professional online players play orders of magnitude more hands than their bricks and mortar counterparts - thats why they do it. If you are better than those you play against in a casino game you get to play roughly 30 hands / hour against your opponents. If you multi-table online some players play in excess of 10 tables simultaneously at 60 hands / hour / table. Thats over 600 hands / hour online v 30 hands / hour in live play. Add in the lower rake online, no tipping etc and you can see how a good player can make far more online than in live play.
"First of all, if you are running a business you should not have to persuade your employees, coworkers, or higher ups."
In entry level perhaps, once you get any form of authority or responsibility you will always be persuading higher ups or employees. If your manager comes up with an idea and you disagree, you have to persuade them they are wrong. Just saying "you are wrong, take my word for it" will not suffice. This applies even moreso when dealing with customers. A customer will never just take your word for something. If you and co-worker come up with two different solutions to a problem, the manager will need to be persuaded which one is better. They have neither the time nor inclination to sit down and work through the fine technical details of both solutions.
"As far as getting customers, emailing as a form of communication is of course spam unless they contact you first via email for information. Cold calling is of course the same thing as telemarketing..."
Cold calling is generally used for marketing to generate leads, not to make sales. You will find when deals are in the order of $1mill plus nobody is going to say "yes, I want one" over the phone to someone who they have never talked to before. The point behind cold calling is to let potential leads know that you exist, then for sales to follow up. Which is why telemarketing generally falls under the marketing dept and not sales.
"As far as people traveling for that "big sales" meeting... I just never understood."
If I was going to lay out several mill on a product / service I would want to see in person the people I am buying from to go over the finer points. Sometimes these meetings can last for several days just to get the basic requirements not even touching on the closing stages.
"If you are a company in need of a product... Why do you need someone persuading you to buy theirs over someone else."
In large scale projects things generally go out to tender, generally leading to a short list of maybe 2 or 3 prospective vendors. In a large scale integration it is not a simple case of just asking the vendor what their product can do and then deciding - the price of the product / service will change dramatically depending on which options are deemed required. The potential customer will outline to all prospective vendors what will be required, it is up to the potential vendor to then outline back to the customer why their solution is the best option (whether it be price, scalability, reliability etc). The customer then decides which way to go. If you do not try to persuade the customer to buy your product / service, you do not get the business - simple as that. If you do not appear convinced that your solution will solve the customers problems how do you expect them to believe it will? This tender stage (read 'persuasion stage') is not just a nice to have, in most large companies it is a requirement for all large purchases.
"In fact, people with authorization to buy products or services should be hired on the sole fact they are not easily persuaded and do not take bribes from vendors."
What does bribes have to do with anything? The people in procurement weigh up things like ROI, reliability etc. If these people can never be convinced a product is the best for the job then they will never purchase anything will they?
Reminded me of this... Portability
Netcraft confirms this
About the only thing missing from your post is a comment on how iTunes sucks because Ogg Vorbis isnt the default format...
I want a world where kickball is referred to by its proper name - FOOTBALL
That may be the case, but based on the hammering their share price took about a week ago it is possible that the GOOG bubble is in the process of bursting. Having broken downwards through the 400 mark that is no longer a level of support. Will be interesting what happens over the coming weeks.
After reading all the comments, I guess I was lucky (or unlucky, depending on which way you look at it). My last job I gave about 2 months notice, and they had me working until the very last day (where I still had full access to the system even when totally blind drunk after my farewell party). Yes, it was a large corporation. And yes, I did receive a great reference from them. On a side note - exit interviews are great when drunk - I highly recommend it as an experience! I became far more honest than I would have been if sober *grin*
Yes, I do read my responses (well most of the time at least) :)
As I believe another response has already pointed out - firstly make sure you apply for many many jobs. Even if you get offered two out of all of them (as a first job this may be a bit optimistic), then maybe you cannot negotiate but you still have the option of going for the job of your preference. Starting out in your first job in the industry is always very very hard and generally you just take whatever anyone throws at you. Once you are in a job, you will start finding that recruiters prefer hiring people already employed to those out of a job, also as you are already employed time is on your side so you dont have to take any scraps offered but can start picking and choosing. As your skills and experience increase, you will have less competition for jobs you are applying for, which is where the bargaining starts coming into play. If asked what salary I am on when applying for a job, as a general rule I always overstate it (within a believable amount) - if your potential employer feels that you are already getting a pay increase by jumping over to them then dont expect them to raise their offer any higher. Also they feel that if you are paid well then there must be something really good about you.
On your second point - if you want X as a minimum, and they offer 1.25 * X - why would you want to push for more? You feel X is a fair amount, then be happy with it. The key is that when you define X to yourself - make sure it is an amount you would be comfortable with, not just a bare minumum. Once you start applying for positions above entry level you will generally be asked what pay you are looking for - you have to have a number ready to give them. Make sure its reasonable and if youre good youre generally in with a good chance of getting what you want.
Everyone on this site has had to start in the industry somewhere. Your first job will generally be crappy and underpaid, unfortunatley thats life. Consider it serving your time and earning your higher pay later on - the best way to get through this is set a target date (maybe 6 months, maybe 1 year) in the future when you will look for your next job. It's once you start going for your second or maybe third job that generally you can start negotiating. There are many new grads all with identical experience (studies, hobby coding etc), it's once you are in employment that you start differentiating yourself from others. The best way to put yourself in a good bargaining position is to make yourself unique - you need to be able to walk in somewhere and offer them something that everyone else (or at least most) competing for the job (treat it as a competition) do not have.
Not sure if this answered your question or not - hopefully it did (at least partially!). You will find that as your experience grows, you will start getting a feel for the whole negotiating process and how much you are worth on the market.