There is something to be said for intrinsic motivation. Ideally, Ben and Jerry would have found a qualified CEO that would have the same love of ice cream that they have. I think this would have been a much better option for them. Unfortunately, a person like that is much harder to find.
Harder still to find someone who is intrinsically motivated to run a competitive worldwide operation. Making tasty ice cream in an old gas station for your friends and neighbors to buy and eat is a hell of a lot more intrinsically motivating than exchange rates, tariffs, multi-national labor costs, questionable human rights practices in low cost source countries, etc. etc.
When I was younger, I thought I wanted to own and operate a small orange grove. Today I could afford to buy one, but I would only lose money at it. To make money you have to hire illegal labor to do the picking, and you also have to buy a grove large enough to get reasonable insurance against canker, med-flies, etc. If your grove is too small, there's a good chance (in Florida) that the state will force you to destroy all your trees if any canker is found. Buying a grove large enough to be a going concern means it has to be financed, and thus you have to make a good profit off the oranges to pay the loan. You also have to pump massive amounts of water out of the already overtaxed aquifer to ensure good crop yields, and other things that I wouldn't want to do. I'm intrinsically motivated to grow oranges, but not to make a competitive (or even break-even) business of it.
I consider $250k reasonable for a CEO and $36k reasonable for a factory worker.
Reasonable, yes. However, if you're CEO of a major international corporation handling bazillions of dollars worth of perishable product and turning better profits than most companies in your sector, you're going to be getting offers much higher than $250k per year, lots of offers.
Personally, I'd be in favor of capping CEO pay at 7x of the lowest paid employee and allowing him to double that pay in the form of Call options of his choice against company shares. So, if he's making $25K per month, in any given month he can opt to "buy" $50K worth of call options at current market value in lieu of salary (he would have to hold the options to term and then receive their residual value on expiration.) Options are highly volatile, if he does good things for the company valuation he can make quite a bit of money, if he tanks it, he gets nothing. Or, he can just take his $25K per month cash. Make him announce what he's going to do (options vs salary wise) one month before the options are priced. Analysts would have a field day watching the CEO's choices.
Once a cornerstone of its socially responsible identity, the company removed its salary cap on the compensation of its highest paid employee in 1994. The company historically limited the salary of its highest paid employee to no more than five times the salary of the lowest paid worker (though the ratio was revised to seven-to-one in 1993). With the removal of the cap, the gap between the highest and lowest paid employee has risen to unprecedented levels. The ratio was an astounding 16-1 in 1998 and is even higher once the current value of unexercised stock options are factored in! Of course, even under the former stringent salary cap, the ratio was misleading for it did not take into account stock options for executives.
http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/236/Patel,_Tupate_-_Paper.html
The best "Open" corporate structure I've ever head of was a company that had a policy where no person could make more than seven times as much money as any other person in the company.
Ben & Jerry tried that, gave it up after a few years... nobody wants to buy $23/quart ice cream and they just couldn't get competent executive management to stick around at 7x the salary of cost competitive labor.
I think "Cold" could possibly refer to the not-being-as-hot-as-the-heart-of-our-sun temperature range. Everything's relative, except absolute zero.
OK, but it would have to be hot relative to the surroundings in order to gain any worthwhile energy. I would say it would have to be really really hot.
"Worthwhile energy" can come from anything hot enough to boil water - the trick with fusion is doing it in a way that doesn't obliterate the machine that is attempting to get useful work out of the boiling water.
The cool thing about cold fusion is that it's not a free lunch. The sun is powered by hot fusion, all we need is a way to access that energy source in a smaller, more controllable fashion.
Superconductivity was a pipe dream, now it's room temperature superconductivity that's problematic, although higher and higher temperatures are being achieved.
The problem with "free energy" sources is that they would tend to self consume, the way stars do. It's not surprising that they are rare, but with all the variety in the universe, I would be surprised if there weren't some kind of "clean" form of nuclear power that fits in a small package.
I turned off my email auto checker. This simple change transformed my work environment from an interruptive process to one I'm in control of.
Dunno, I have my auto-checker turned on, complete with annoying little sounds for mail from "important people." This saves me from having to check to see if I have new mail, unless there really is some from someone important. It's e-mail, if I'm busy, it will wait.
Wish the same were true for the mobile spouse support line (cellphone).
I would never want that job... I can see how people might have been hurt by his remark, but taken in context (Jay Leno Show, hello?) it was really not offensive.
As for my monkey comment, it's not just directed at Indians, it applies to everyone - especially those who put themselves in a bad situation just so they could get something that doesn't actually help them.
America is still having trouble with the "keeping up with the Joneses" concept... I think it's basic human (and animal) nature - monkey see, monkey want.
The Model T's debut price in 1909 was $850 -- about $20,000 in today's dollars. Its lowest price in 1915, $440, is equivalent to ~$9,000 today.
Accounting for inflation, the Model T was far more expensive than the Yugo, and nearly 4 times the cost of the Tata.
I would hope that the world has learned a little about efficiency in the last 100 years. If nothing else, the basic supply chains that provide sheet metal, rubber, glass, etc. should be much more efficient today than they were in 1909.
They can get better quality for $2500, if they have a labor pool that doesn't cost $100K/year/head for a bunch of lazy slugs.
India is a kind of scary place, they have the potential for greatness and a dirt cheap economy, but I have yet to see those two come together with the kind of results you get out of China.
The rest of the world wants to have the same same standard of living that US and Europe enjoys today. You can't stop or prevent its progression.
That progression will stop itself, if the whole Earth lived like the US and Europe circa 2000, we (probably all land mammals) would be dead from the pollution within 20 years, if we could even find enough fossil fuel to make "the dream" come true.
The place I would look for the next hi-tech paradise is southern Ontario. It has all the characteristics Florida found that attract geeks and hi-tech companies.
Can't resist: is one of those characteristics lack of sunlight?
I find it really hard to contemplate moving more than 30 degrees off the equator - global warming hasn't messed up the sub-tropics yet.
A lot of the living location decision depends on personal history/preference, whether you are seeking or avoiding family, etc. Companies are swayed by financial incentives, etc., but people aren't so easy to shuffle around... even though the US macro economy is struggling mightily to make us all into a bunch of nomads.
Spend a couple of months learning C#. You can bash microsoft all you want, but most of the job postings (at least around here) are for.Net/C#. In todays economy, if you want a job, you need to know what employers want, not so much what you want.
I'd focus on developing portable skills, rather than narrower focus languages like C#, objective C, etc.
I know this will seem foreign to most of the current generation of graduates, but I would suggest a strong grounding in assembly coding for any processor.
It's a good knowledge to have, but a bad way to deliver a project (of any significance) on schedule.
You can develop your own libraries, etc. and become somewhat more efficient, but I'd hate to have to rebuild my toolchain every time I change architectures.
I've totally lost count of how many languages I know...but a quick count says it's at least 30.
(sarcasm)Did you applied for a position at my company last week? Expert in 30 languages, diverse technologies too...(/sarcasm)
I have used 30+ "languages" in my life, but there's a world of difference between using and knowing in depth. Anyone who presents themselves as "expert" in more than a half-dozen evolving technologies has revealed a great deal about what a low standard they hold for an "expert" ranking.
I graduated in 1990 and immediately found work in C programming, which evolved into a C++ job around 1996. When I have looked around for work, Java seems to be much more "rapidly employable" than C++, but the few C++ jobs that are available tend to pay better.
Learning programming in the 80's, of course I started with BASIC, and Fortran was just a slight twist of phrase away... I still encounter Fortran occasionally, but it's pretty widely acknowledged (even by the people who still use it) as dinosaur speak. Any serious new development around me tries to get out of Fortran as quickly as possible.
Java was "the way of the future" in 2003, I'm not sure the future is here yet, and I'm not sure Java will ever "perform" on-par with C++. I program in Qt these days, and it is delivering the cross platform promise, in C++, as well as Java ever has.
If I were 20 again, I'd probably focus on Java, but, being where I am, I certainly have no regrets and don't think I'll give up my C++ unless I have to.
It's not so much about being a luddite, it's more about having realistic expectations of moving "cutting edge" technology into life safety arenas.
A NASA engineer condensed the entire shuttle ground-control systems into a single app that ran on a single PC, and he carried that app around in his pocket on a 3.5" floppy for a long time (mostly to tick off his managers, or so the story goes...) The shuttle ground control systems at the time resembled the Apollo hardware more than any modern PC - but NASA kept using the "outdated" hardware because it was more reliable. I believe they have finally modernized, but that takes a lot of time and money to do the qualification.
When you're doing 115mph at 5000 feet, you don't want to have Vista in control and decide to take a break on critical systems like guidance, collision avoidance, or even navigation, and you really don't want to reboot and pray that it starts functioning normally again before there is a serious problem. Yes, we have amazing technology today, and yes there are better choices than Vista for real-time control systems, but if you've watched the DARPA urban challenge, you'll get a sense of how good we are at automating things like collision avoidance in an uncontrolled arena, even with the best available hardware and software put together by top-notch teams vying for prize money and prestige.
I have kept an eye on powered parachute craft over the years, I wasn't familiar with the 100+ mph variety, I imagine they would need a bit more runway for takeoff at least. They are a very cool concept, but when I think of something like this driveable plane (I agree with the other posters that it's more that than a flying car), I am thinking more of mid range transportation, in the 300-800 mile range.
I lived near a big park, and worked in a building with a parking garage that was always empty on top, I thought hard about the powered parachutes, but since the commute was only 20 minutes by bicycle, I figured that commuting to work was a poor excuse to play with a fan-on-the-back device.
Slashdot Mirror
There is something to be said for intrinsic motivation. Ideally, Ben and Jerry would have found a qualified CEO that would have the same love of ice cream that they have. I think this would have been a much better option for them. Unfortunately, a person like that is much harder to find.
Harder still to find someone who is intrinsically motivated to run a competitive worldwide operation. Making tasty ice cream in an old gas station for your friends and neighbors to buy and eat is a hell of a lot more intrinsically motivating than exchange rates, tariffs, multi-national labor costs, questionable human rights practices in low cost source countries, etc. etc.
When I was younger, I thought I wanted to own and operate a small orange grove. Today I could afford to buy one, but I would only lose money at it. To make money you have to hire illegal labor to do the picking, and you also have to buy a grove large enough to get reasonable insurance against canker, med-flies, etc. If your grove is too small, there's a good chance (in Florida) that the state will force you to destroy all your trees if any canker is found. Buying a grove large enough to be a going concern means it has to be financed, and thus you have to make a good profit off the oranges to pay the loan. You also have to pump massive amounts of water out of the already overtaxed aquifer to ensure good crop yields, and other things that I wouldn't want to do. I'm intrinsically motivated to grow oranges, but not to make a competitive (or even break-even) business of it.
I consider $250k reasonable for a CEO and $36k reasonable for a factory worker.
Reasonable, yes. However, if you're CEO of a major international corporation handling bazillions of dollars worth of perishable product and turning better profits than most companies in your sector, you're going to be getting offers much higher than $250k per year, lots of offers.
Personally, I'd be in favor of capping CEO pay at 7x of the lowest paid employee and allowing him to double that pay in the form of Call options of his choice against company shares. So, if he's making $25K per month, in any given month he can opt to "buy" $50K worth of call options at current market value in lieu of salary (he would have to hold the options to term and then receive their residual value on expiration.) Options are highly volatile, if he does good things for the company valuation he can make quite a bit of money, if he tanks it, he gets nothing. Or, he can just take his $25K per month cash. Make him announce what he's going to do (options vs salary wise) one month before the options are priced. Analysts would have a field day watching the CEO's choices.
Once a cornerstone of its socially responsible identity, the company removed its salary cap on the compensation of its highest paid employee in 1994. The company historically limited the salary of its highest paid employee to no more than five times the salary of the lowest paid worker (though the ratio was revised to seven-to-one in 1993). With the removal of the cap, the gap between the highest and lowest paid employee has risen to unprecedented levels. The ratio was an astounding 16-1 in 1998 and is even higher once the current value of unexercised stock options are factored in! Of course, even under the former stringent salary cap, the ratio was misleading for it did not take into account stock options for executives. http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/236/Patel,_Tupate_-_Paper.html
The best "Open" corporate structure I've ever head of was a company that had a policy where no person could make more than seven times as much money as any other person in the company.
Ben & Jerry tried that, gave it up after a few years... nobody wants to buy $23/quart ice cream and they just couldn't get competent executive management to stick around at 7x the salary of cost competitive labor.
I think "Cold" could possibly refer to the not-being-as-hot-as-the-heart-of-our-sun temperature range. Everything's relative, except absolute zero.
OK, but it would have to be hot relative to the surroundings in order to gain any worthwhile energy. I would say it would have to be really really hot.
"Worthwhile energy" can come from anything hot enough to boil water - the trick with fusion is doing it in a way that doesn't obliterate the machine that is attempting to get useful work out of the boiling water.
The cool thing about cold fusion is that it's not a free lunch. The sun is powered by hot fusion, all we need is a way to access that energy source in a smaller, more controllable fashion.
Superconductivity was a pipe dream, now it's room temperature superconductivity that's problematic, although higher and higher temperatures are being achieved.
The problem with "free energy" sources is that they would tend to self consume, the way stars do. It's not surprising that they are rare, but with all the variety in the universe, I would be surprised if there weren't some kind of "clean" form of nuclear power that fits in a small package.
I turned off my email auto checker. This simple change transformed my work environment from an interruptive process to one I'm in control of.
Dunno, I have my auto-checker turned on, complete with annoying little sounds for mail from "important people." This saves me from having to check to see if I have new mail, unless there really is some from someone important. It's e-mail, if I'm busy, it will wait.
Wish the same were true for the mobile spouse support line (cellphone).
We can all have flying cars and robotic dogs, if we can ever get cold fusion or (insert favorite non polluting free energy source here) working.
It is a good thing you aren't president Obama, or you'd have some splainin' to do to the Indians.
I would never want that job... I can see how people might have been hurt by his remark, but taken in context (Jay Leno Show, hello?) it was really not offensive.
As for my monkey comment, it's not just directed at Indians, it applies to everyone - especially those who put themselves in a bad situation just so they could get something that doesn't actually help them.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/avo/webcam/redoubt-2.jpg
You know, a model specific racing program using these would be competitive, cheap, and likely safe (due to the relatively low speeds.)
Would be more entertaining to watch than go-kart racing, more rollover potential!
America is still having trouble with the "keeping up with the Joneses" concept... I think it's basic human (and animal) nature - monkey see, monkey want.
The Model T's debut price in 1909 was $850 -- about $20,000 in today's dollars. Its lowest price in 1915, $440, is equivalent to ~$9,000 today.
Accounting for inflation, the Model T was far more expensive than the Yugo, and nearly 4 times the cost of the Tata.
I would hope that the world has learned a little about efficiency in the last 100 years. If nothing else, the basic supply chains that provide sheet metal, rubber, glass, etc. should be much more efficient today than they were in 1909.
They can get better quality for $2500, if they have a labor pool that doesn't cost $100K/year/head for a bunch of lazy slugs.
India is a kind of scary place, they have the potential for greatness and a dirt cheap economy, but I have yet to see those two come together with the kind of results you get out of China.
The rest of the world wants to have the same same standard of living that US and Europe enjoys today. You can't stop or prevent its progression.
That progression will stop itself, if the whole Earth lived like the US and Europe circa 2000, we (probably all land mammals) would be dead from the pollution within 20 years, if we could even find enough fossil fuel to make "the dream" come true.
No-one even knows what Nebraska is anymore.
Google maps is your friend, some of the clueless are actually learning how to look things up on their smartphones today.
The place I would look for the next hi-tech paradise is southern Ontario. It has all the characteristics Florida found that attract geeks and hi-tech companies.
Can't resist: is one of those characteristics lack of sunlight?
I find it really hard to contemplate moving more than 30 degrees off the equator - global warming hasn't messed up the sub-tropics yet.
A lot of the living location decision depends on personal history/preference, whether you are seeking or avoiding family, etc. Companies are swayed by financial incentives, etc., but people aren't so easy to shuffle around... even though the US macro economy is struggling mightily to make us all into a bunch of nomads.
It's strange they listed entire countries as hotspots.
Not really, I imagine they (and their intended audience) just don't know enough about the countries in question to say anything interesting.
I can tell you about two streets in Melbourne, Florida that are a "hotbed" of tech startups, but do you even know/care where Melbourne is?
it is the kind of place that inspires people with money to take a punt at a seemingly dumb idea.
Remember that: inspire people with money.
Spend a couple of months learning C#. You can bash microsoft all you want, but most of the job postings (at least around here) are for .Net/C#. In todays economy, if you want a job, you need to know what employers want, not so much what you want.
I'd focus on developing portable skills, rather than narrower focus languages like C#, objective C, etc.
I know this will seem foreign to most of the current generation of graduates, but I would suggest a strong grounding in assembly coding for any processor.
It's a good knowledge to have, but a bad way to deliver a project (of any significance) on schedule.
You can develop your own libraries, etc. and become somewhat more efficient, but I'd hate to have to rebuild my toolchain every time I change architectures.
I've totally lost count of how many languages I know...but a quick count says it's at least 30.
(sarcasm)Did you applied for a position at my company last week? Expert in 30 languages, diverse technologies too...(/sarcasm)
I have used 30+ "languages" in my life, but there's a world of difference between using and knowing in depth. Anyone who presents themselves as "expert" in more than a half-dozen evolving technologies has revealed a great deal about what a low standard they hold for an "expert" ranking.
For what it's worth:
I graduated in 1990 and immediately found work in C programming, which evolved into a C++ job around 1996. When I have looked around for work, Java seems to be much more "rapidly employable" than C++, but the few C++ jobs that are available tend to pay better.
Learning programming in the 80's, of course I started with BASIC, and Fortran was just a slight twist of phrase away... I still encounter Fortran occasionally, but it's pretty widely acknowledged (even by the people who still use it) as dinosaur speak. Any serious new development around me tries to get out of Fortran as quickly as possible.
Java was "the way of the future" in 2003, I'm not sure the future is here yet, and I'm not sure Java will ever "perform" on-par with C++. I program in Qt these days, and it is delivering the cross platform promise, in C++, as well as Java ever has.
If I were 20 again, I'd probably focus on Java, but, being where I am, I certainly have no regrets and don't think I'll give up my C++ unless I have to.
It's not so much about being a luddite, it's more about having realistic expectations of moving "cutting edge" technology into life safety arenas.
A NASA engineer condensed the entire shuttle ground-control systems into a single app that ran on a single PC, and he carried that app around in his pocket on a 3.5" floppy for a long time (mostly to tick off his managers, or so the story goes...) The shuttle ground control systems at the time resembled the Apollo hardware more than any modern PC - but NASA kept using the "outdated" hardware because it was more reliable. I believe they have finally modernized, but that takes a lot of time and money to do the qualification.
When you're doing 115mph at 5000 feet, you don't want to have Vista in control and decide to take a break on critical systems like guidance, collision avoidance, or even navigation, and you really don't want to reboot and pray that it starts functioning normally again before there is a serious problem. Yes, we have amazing technology today, and yes there are better choices than Vista for real-time control systems, but if you've watched the DARPA urban challenge, you'll get a sense of how good we are at automating things like collision avoidance in an uncontrolled arena, even with the best available hardware and software put together by top-notch teams vying for prize money and prestige.
I have kept an eye on powered parachute craft over the years, I wasn't familiar with the 100+ mph variety, I imagine they would need a bit more runway for takeoff at least. They are a very cool concept, but when I think of something like this driveable plane (I agree with the other posters that it's more that than a flying car), I am thinking more of mid range transportation, in the 300-800 mile range.
I lived near a big park, and worked in a building with a parking garage that was always empty on top, I thought hard about the powered parachutes, but since the commute was only 20 minutes by bicycle, I figured that commuting to work was a poor excuse to play with a fan-on-the-back device.