My company uses Tenrox (a timesheet system) and MS Project Enterprise to track projects.
Apparently (IANAPM) line items show up in the timesheets, people update the timesheets with estimated time-to-completion and hours worked, and the schedule automatically adjusts in Project.
It's probably only good if you're a Windows shop, though. The Tenrox system has the worst of both worlds, web-based, but uses ActiveX controls, so you need IE [sigh]. I also don't know how well it works.
Have you examples from the software market? I'm particularly interested in this customer that would demand a superior product, but be willing to pay more and/or wait longer than for a sucky product.
Companies in such a market would easily attract the best and brightest of developers, as the work would be somewhat less sucky.
I don't see the clash with economic theory. Remember, what the market is optimizing for are successful (=increasing-profit) companies, not "good" products in an engineering sense.
Competition = schedule and cost overruns as competitors scramble to one-up each other on bid outrageousness
Lack of regulation = no floor on quality = bug-ridden
Customer demands a superior product, but isn't willing to pay the price = promise superior product, deliver inferior one
Disposable executives + stock-option compensation = short-term thinking = execs don't care if the company develops a reputation for not delivering on promises; they'll be somewhere else by the time that catches up with the company.
Are there any factors (that have ever been instantiated in the real world) that work against those four?
Nobody will pay enough for software that isn't done half-assed, so you go with half the resource you need and slave-drive them to get it out when the customer wants.
If you push back at the customer, and say "you can have it in twice the time or at twice the cost", then they will just buy from someone else who accepts the constraints.
Also, if your company is publically-traded or has more than a few investors, their profits must continually grow at a continually growing rate. You can't just keep raising the cost of your sofware, so you need to keep the staffing levels low, so they spend all their time on death marches.
Clueful management can't save you... ours knows the stuff we're doing is a bad idea, but it's either that or go out of business now. At least if they hold on for a while then they might be able to cash-out.
If anyone believes there are software development jobs, anywhere in the world, not held to these constraints, let me know... I will sleep with whomever I have to to get one.
Prisoner's Dilemma... the capitalist does what looks to be right for him, but screws himself and the other guy in the process. It's also a time-horizon thing... making people poor so you get richer is good for you in the short term. Everyone doing this, thereby making everyone poor, is bad for you in the long term. (Yes, I know economics is not zero-sum; neither is it infinite-sum)
Totally random example: FooCorp offshores production of their stuff. This lowers costs (and maybe prices), increasing profits, and so is an Obviously Good Business Decision. All other companies follow suit. With only McJobs left, the local economy collapses. Nobody can afford to buy FooCorp's products, and they go out of business.
Interesting. A society of plenty would indeed avoid these problems. We could have a "gift economy", similar to what we have today in open-source software. With enough wealth to go around, concentration of it ceases to be a problem.
Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" site has a story called "Manna", which lays out a (utopian?) vision of such a society. Basically, abundant energy + really good recycling + robots = material goods are essentially free. Stuff is produced according to an open-source-style model (individuals design things like clothes, and anyone can construct them - some designers are famous and widely used, most are not; like-minded people get together to design and build projects like space elevators).
There's also another fallacy people throw around in these discussions: "Rich people buy stock with their money, which provides capital for businesses, who provide jobs, etc."
There's only one problem with that - buying stock doesn't get any money to the company, unless you're buying into an IPO. The money goes (minus middlemen's commissions) to the former owner of that stock. Chances are that's another rich person...
Therefore, the stock market is (mostly; except for IPOs, middlemen and the occasional small investor) simply circulating money amongst the investor class.
Just because economics is not zero-sum does not mean it's infinite-sum, either.
None of this matters, though - it's obvious that frictionless offshoring will lead to the entire world having the same standard of living, and no country / region / whatever will be able to rise above it (because all jobs will leave if they do). The few at the top will be living in fortified BurbClaves somewhere, and the rest of us will be starving in mud huts.
The folks at the top sure like enjoying that American standard of living.
Somehow I doubt that any company's going to go to the Third World for their executives, though it would save an awful lot of money.
Fortunately (in a karmic sense), their actions are going to destroy the American standard of living; then they get to share the mud huts with the rest of us.
A former manager of mine blames the epidemic of short-term "looting" planning amongst executives to this.
Executives are (pretty much) disposable employees just like us, these days. Back when people could work for one company for 20-30 years, reture and draw a pension, executives wanted / needed their companies to be successful in the long term. (Their future salaries and pensions depended on it!)
Nowadays, executives know they've got a few years at best at that company, and pensions are a thing of the past, so why not plunder all you can in the next year or two, even if it kills the company in the long term? It's no skin off their nose.
The world is not a zero-sum game. Just like the US got through an equalizing of its wages/prices internally, so will the world.
Quite true. However, as long as some country / region / whatever is broke and hungry, the jobs will stay there, and other places will have to reduce their standards of living to compete (that would be what equalization is).
When Wal-Mart comes to a town, there isn't some equilibrium established between Wal-Mart's prices (floating up?) and local stores' proces (floating down). Wal-Mart simply sells at prices that are unsustainable for small businesses.
Why won't the same thing happen to labor?
Even if the world did come to some kind of average (the lowest moving up and the highest moving down) instead of racing to the bottom, think about what the average would be. Imagine the population-weighted average standard of living of the world, today. Best-case, the world's standard of living would end up there (maybe it could float upwards from there, from the economic gains of free trade, if you don't believe in concentration of wealth).
Work as hard as you can to make employees "disposable", send every last thing you can overseas, then complain nobody in the U.S. wants to get into the field.
They'll get no sympathy except from Congress, who will raise the H1B limits to help IBM out with their "problem".
The demand for IT talent in India is driving up the price of wages. If you live in the US, this is Good News. Eventually, if wages keep rising, it will be cheaper to do the work here than to outsource it.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The work will go to an even-cheaper place. Repeat until the whole world is third-world (what will we call third-world then?). It will all be required to stay there, as well (if wages go up in any country, *whoosh* jobs migrate to other, cheaper countries).
(This assumes frictionless offshoring; we're not quite there yet, of course).
if you're so dissatisfied with your job, instead of feeling entitled to satisfaction, why not find a job that you will like?
The alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ covers one angle of this; essentially, if you're a natural sysadmin-type, no matter what job you take, you'll end up fixing your own computer, then other people's, etc. until you've suddenly become a sysadmin again.
I've been pondering going into auto mechanicry or electricianing (both of which I have some aptitude for), both to escape the offshoring and to get away from the bullshit that pervades every aspect of corporate programming / IT. My therapist points out that that sort of thing can actually make depression worse, as now you don't feel like you're realizing your potential.
I've really noticed Slashdot being a depressive influence. During my darker times I have to give it up, to try to fight the downward spiral.
Reading Slashdot for long enough, you start to wonder when corporations are simply going to take over the government, make slavery legal again, and start charging lifetime subscriptions for products you can only use for a year.
The fact that all the depressing things reported here are true doesn't help. Knowing that you / your industry / society / etc. is heading towards a race-to-the-bottom cliff, and not being able to do a damn thing about it, is awfully depressive.
Andrew Solomon (referenced above) mentioned in a "Bush Survival Guide" of antidepressant tips I got for Xmas:
Recent research has shown that depressed people have a more accurate worldview than the non-depressed. The same research also says that a more accurate worldview is not an advantage.
I think our (geeks') analytical abilities allow us to easily see things that ordinary people would rather ignore, in order to save their sanity. (Examples: the uselessness of company loyalty, the direction of society, etc.)
Programming and IT are racing to the bottom awfully fast. If these industries are what you experience most of, you can (fallaciously) extrapolate that to other industries. For example, in my dark moments, I've wondered why cars don't yet require subscriptions to keep driving. I've also wondered when restaurants are going to make you start signing waivers before you eat there.
Likewise, we can fallaciously extrapolate the dismal quality of software to other industries. (See the old "if cars were like computers" joke). I spent a couple years in support at my company; some customers actually like our product, though, after my experience, I'm surprised that our boxes ever boot up at all, much less occasionally do something useful. I can recognize now that that's a warped perspective.
LIAM NEESON: Well, he is the chosen one. He will bring balance to the force. I'm training him.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Yoda told you no, muthafucka. What the fuck is wrong with yo, bitchass? I'll fuckin' kill you! I'm gonna be a fuckin bad ass in the next two fuckin movies, you know. My toy has a fuckin lightsaber.
I dont know why this resentment over jobs going to India.
It's not India particularly; it's where this is all leading.
Today, jobs go to India. This causes Indian wages to rise. Then jobs leave India for somewhere even cheaper.
Repeat this enough times. Now the entire world is living at the same standard of living - the lowest standard of living that exists today.
It's impossible to rise above it - as soon as wages go up in some area, whoosh go the jobs to the cheaper areas. An equilibrium is established at the bottom.
Execs will probably still live in fortified BurbClaves here and there, while the rest of us get to starve out there with the biomass.
This isn't really good for the execs either, long-term, but because of Prisoner's Dilemma, it doesn't matter.
if I'm a hard worker, I'm not going to be happy about having half my money given to some lazy bum.
It would be wonderful to actually know what the correlation between "lazy" and "poor" is, or between "hardworking" and "wealthy". It's certainly not 100%, even though many people in political debates use the terms interchangeably.
If you could prove evolution it would no longer be a scientific theory -- would then be a scientific law.
No, no, no. Laws are not promoted theories. (A link to an explanation of this should be posted with every story referencing evolution).
Theories predict a "why", and use experiments to try to prove or disprove the theory. For example, we theorize that electricity affects the heart's function. To test, we grab a bunch of people, subject some but not others to electric shocks, then measure the rates of heart defibrillations in each group.
Laws are simply observational statements. The Law of Gravity states that any two objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers-of-mass.
Note that the Law of Gravity does not make any attempt to explain "why" the objects attract each other (though there are theories attempting to explain it). All it means is that nobody has ever seen any two objects that did not attract one another in this way.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently (IANAPM) line items show up in the timesheets, people update the timesheets with estimated time-to-completion and hours worked, and the schedule automatically adjusts in Project.
It's probably only good if you're a Windows shop, though. The Tenrox system has the worst of both worlds, web-based, but uses ActiveX controls, so you need IE [sigh]. I also don't know how well it works.
On the other hand, sysadminning will not dry up until well after programming has all gone offshore, so it may be better to embrace the new job.
Companies in such a market would easily attract the best and brightest of developers, as the work would be somewhat less sucky.
I don't see the clash with economic theory. Remember, what the market is optimizing for are successful (=increasing-profit) companies, not "good" products in an engineering sense.
- Competition = schedule and cost overruns as competitors scramble to one-up each other on bid outrageousness
- Lack of regulation = no floor on quality = bug-ridden
- Customer demands a superior product, but isn't willing to pay the price = promise superior product, deliver inferior one
- Disposable executives + stock-option compensation = short-term thinking = execs don't care if the company develops a reputation for not delivering on promises; they'll be somewhere else by the time that catches up with the company.
Are there any factors (that have ever been instantiated in the real world) that work against those four?Nobody will pay enough for software that isn't done half-assed, so you go with half the resource you need and slave-drive them to get it out when the customer wants.
If you push back at the customer, and say "you can have it in twice the time or at twice the cost", then they will just buy from someone else who accepts the constraints.
Also, if your company is publically-traded or has more than a few investors, their profits must continually grow at a continually growing rate. You can't just keep raising the cost of your sofware, so you need to keep the staffing levels low, so they spend all their time on death marches.
Clueful management can't save you... ours knows the stuff we're doing is a bad idea, but it's either that or go out of business now. At least if they hold on for a while then they might be able to cash-out.
If anyone believes there are software development jobs, anywhere in the world, not held to these constraints, let me know... I will sleep with whomever I have to to get one.
Totally random example: FooCorp offshores production of their stuff. This lowers costs (and maybe prices), increasing profits, and so is an Obviously Good Business Decision. All other companies follow suit. With only McJobs left, the local economy collapses. Nobody can afford to buy FooCorp's products, and they go out of business.
Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" site has a story called "Manna", which lays out a (utopian?) vision of such a society. Basically, abundant energy + really good recycling + robots = material goods are essentially free. Stuff is produced according to an open-source-style model (individuals design things like clothes, and anyone can construct them - some designers are famous and widely used, most are not; like-minded people get together to design and build projects like space elevators).
There's only one problem with that - buying stock doesn't get any money to the company, unless you're buying into an IPO. The money goes (minus middlemen's commissions) to the former owner of that stock. Chances are that's another rich person...
Therefore, the stock market is (mostly; except for IPOs, middlemen and the occasional small investor) simply circulating money amongst the investor class.
If one region tries to increase its standard of living, won't all the jobs go to other places (who are still sitting at the bottom)?
None of this matters, though - it's obvious that frictionless offshoring will lead to the entire world having the same standard of living, and no country / region / whatever will be able to rise above it (because all jobs will leave if they do). The few at the top will be living in fortified BurbClaves somewhere, and the rest of us will be starving in mud huts.
Somehow I doubt that any company's going to go to the Third World for their executives, though it would save an awful lot of money.
Fortunately (in a karmic sense), their actions are going to destroy the American standard of living; then they get to share the mud huts with the rest of us.
Executives are (pretty much) disposable employees just like us, these days. Back when people could work for one company for 20-30 years, reture and draw a pension, executives wanted / needed their companies to be successful in the long term. (Their future salaries and pensions depended on it!)
Nowadays, executives know they've got a few years at best at that company, and pensions are a thing of the past, so why not plunder all you can in the next year or two, even if it kills the company in the long term? It's no skin off their nose.
When Wal-Mart comes to a town, there isn't some equilibrium established between Wal-Mart's prices (floating up?) and local stores' proces (floating down). Wal-Mart simply sells at prices that are unsustainable for small businesses.
Why won't the same thing happen to labor?
Even if the world did come to some kind of average (the lowest moving up and the highest moving down) instead of racing to the bottom, think about what the average would be. Imagine the population-weighted average standard of living of the world, today. Best-case, the world's standard of living would end up there (maybe it could float upwards from there, from the economic gains of free trade, if you don't believe in concentration of wealth).
They'll get no sympathy except from Congress, who will raise the H1B limits to help IBM out with their "problem".
(This assumes frictionless offshoring; we're not quite there yet, of course).
I've been pondering going into auto mechanicry or electricianing (both of which I have some aptitude for), both to escape the offshoring and to get away from the bullshit that pervades every aspect of corporate programming / IT. My therapist points out that that sort of thing can actually make depression worse, as now you don't feel like you're realizing your potential.
Reading Slashdot for long enough, you start to wonder when corporations are simply going to take over the government, make slavery legal again, and start charging lifetime subscriptions for products you can only use for a year.
The fact that all the depressing things reported here are true doesn't help. Knowing that you / your industry / society / etc. is heading towards a race-to-the-bottom cliff, and not being able to do a damn thing about it, is awfully depressive.
Andrew Solomon (referenced above) mentioned in a "Bush Survival Guide" of antidepressant tips I got for Xmas:
Programming and IT are racing to the bottom awfully fast. If these industries are what you experience most of, you can (fallaciously) extrapolate that to other industries. For example, in my dark moments, I've wondered why cars don't yet require subscriptions to keep driving. I've also wondered when restaurants are going to make you start signing waivers before you eat there.
Likewise, we can fallaciously extrapolate the dismal quality of software to other industries. (See the old "if cars were like computers" joke). I spent a couple years in support at my company; some customers actually like our product, though, after my experience, I'm surprised that our boxes ever boot up at all, much less occasionally do something useful. I can recognize now that that's a warped perspective.
If you're worried about having an excuse, simply don't tell anybody (except the necessary medical folks).
... according to extensive research conducted on late-night pay-cable movies.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Yoda told you no, muthafucka. What the fuck is wrong with yo, bitchass? I'll fuckin' kill you! I'm gonna be a fuckin bad ass in the next two fuckin movies, you know. My toy has a fuckin lightsaber.
(from http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/99/Jun/menace.ht ml
)
Today, jobs go to India. This causes Indian wages to rise. Then jobs leave India for somewhere even cheaper.
Repeat this enough times. Now the entire world is living at the same standard of living - the lowest standard of living that exists today.
It's impossible to rise above it - as soon as wages go up in some area, whoosh go the jobs to the cheaper areas. An equilibrium is established at the bottom.
Execs will probably still live in fortified BurbClaves here and there, while the rest of us get to starve out there with the biomass.
This isn't really good for the execs either, long-term, but because of Prisoner's Dilemma, it doesn't matter.
Theories predict a "why", and use experiments to try to prove or disprove the theory. For example, we theorize that electricity affects the heart's function. To test, we grab a bunch of people, subject some but not others to electric shocks, then measure the rates of heart defibrillations in each group.
Laws are simply observational statements. The Law of Gravity states that any two objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers-of-mass.
Note that the Law of Gravity does not make any attempt to explain "why" the objects attract each other (though there are theories attempting to explain it). All it means is that nobody has ever seen any two objects that did not attract one another in this way.