Isn't it ironic that the government could build a system so physically bomb-proof, yet so susceptible to misuse? I'm surprised the government didn't go the exact opposite way. I wish they had; I'd have a lot less SPAM.
Wouldn't we have invented many of those things, if not more, without WWII? The spirit of invention and imagination was well illustrated by the World's Fair. Perhaps, if it weren't for the interruption the war caused, we would have built even better versions of these things.
What you're describing about private corporations represents today, after the war. Do you think the same would be true about corporations today if the war hadn't happened? I personally think so, since I believe patents and the squelching of new ideas is the natural and inevitable result of a capitalist society.
It is so true, though. Humans have a special knack for killing other things. Maybe this is our real purpose on Earth after all?
When I said WWII not happening, I meant the reason for it happening as well, of course. I see your point, though; would we have jet aircraft or rockets? Even though jet aircraft and rockets were used to kill, the also have non-lethal uses. Would we even had gone to the moon?
I apologize for not being more clear. What I meant was if WWII did not happen because there was no reason for it to happen. Hitler never came to power, etc. Of course the world would not be a better place if the conditions that led to WWII were not addressed.
Also, you are completely right, all, to say that a great deal of technology developed from WWII for killing people. What I was thinking of is what other kinds of technology besides weapons would have arisen?
Yet another project abandoned because of WWII. It makes me wonder, if WWII hadn't happened, what would the world be like now? It seems we've stopped dreaming. Sure, we've made new technology because of WWII, but it is mostly technology to kill people.
How would the family be today? Would we have to have the husband and wife work just to pay the mortgage? Because businesses learned that they can exploit women just as much as men to make money during WWII, it changed our family structure forever.
I have to wonder; would we have flying cars today hadn't it been for WWII? Ah heck, probably not. After all, there is so much money in tires that some tire corporation would probably lock up the technology with litigation somehow.
Have not run into this yet. I'm particularly sensitive to fan noise (emotionally -- I hate that ringing noise!). I find it fun when, after I started getting all annoyed, to run the hardware test disk, which revs up all nine fans, to get perspective.:-)
I guess by running it on a 1.6 Ghz. G5 w/1.25G of memory, I didn't notice. If I had less memory, I probably would have seen it cause more swapping. Thanks for the info!
I'll have to give that a try. OpenOffice in particular seems to be far more efficient than Word (even on the Macintosh where it is running using the X-Windows interface). I guess I'm just really impressed at what the open-source community does.
Companies seem to forget the crazy idea of not making their employees want to leave to keep their ideas from getting into the hands of the competition.
Companies are supposed to do whatever they think they can get away with to maximize their profits. That's capitalism. When the government agency assigned with forcing reason onto the situation drops the ball, however, the majority of the blame lies with them.
I agree that capitalism can lead to unethical behavior by corporations. Isn't the above analogous to saying that a police officer is guilty of murder when they fail to catch the guy who pulled the trigger? Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I think it makes my point: the person holding the gun has at least the majority of the blame.
$20-dolla'? There must be a catch -- ! Thanks for that -- I'll look into it! I'm currently running a Extigy on my PC for sound production, which I really like. But, it was $150!
I can't find a PC that has the options my PowerMac G5 has for the same price of $1,500. For example, the G5 comes with digital in-out. I'd have to buy add an Audigy to the PC to get that kind of functionality. Plus, the G5 is far quieter than a PC (although the fan noise it does make is annoying in a very quiet room; not white-noise). If you take what you get altogether and integrated, you still get more with Apple...
...until you try to buy one from the one or, if you're lucky, two Apple dealers within 100 miles who absolutely will not take returns and will charge you $100 an hour for repairs (for those people who do not repair their own PCs). This is where the Apple really falls short, IMHO. I am forced to deal with people who have the attitude, "What are you going to do -- buy it somewhere else???" Insert evil-cackle here. Imagine, a salesman saying to you, "Good thing you didn't register it. If you did, you'd be stuck with it." when I returned my iMac for an upgrade to a full G5 tower instead. Yes, I offered to give them $1,500 more when you count in the 20" studio display and RAM upgrade I bought, yet they still gave me 'tude like that.
Oh, that and the software problem. Adobe has stopped supporting FrameMaker 7 for the Macintosh. Now, I have to use OpenOffice, which is -- frankly -- clunky on the Mac. As if I'm going to shovel out $400 for Office. Yikes.
I understand the frustration. What should M$ do in this case, though? They must be allowed to add new features to their software.
I've run into problems with people's concept of Word myself. I use FrameMaker 7 for everything and do not own a personal copy of Office. When people send me Word documents, I use the Word Viewer to view them. But, when they send me Word documents to edit, I have to tell them I do not have Word (I can use it as RTF, but that usually messes-up the formatting). There is always this silence, like I've just rocked their world. "How can you not have Word," says the person who got it with their OS. "Everybody has Word. And you are a Computer Scientist?" They look like I've betrayed them or something, like I'm not a real computer user at all. It makes me chuckle.
Now that I've added a PowerMac G5 to my setup, it'll get worse. I'm running OpenOffice, but I'm still going to upgrade from FrameMaker to InDesign and stay as far away from Word documents as I can. Now I'll get the looks from not only avoiding Word, but using a Mac (even though I run Windows XP, Debian Linux, and AmigaOS 3.1 along with it -- it's a hobby).
I agree -- and this isn't necessarily a M$ thing either. In a corporation, it makes sense to have processes running on seperate machines simply because, if one of the machines come down, it limits the loss of revenue by having one application down instead of many.
I know what you mean. When I first learned about personality types, I tried to change my personality as I talked to people. I wasn't fooling anyone. Now, I just be myself, but know what a person really means by their behavior.
I find myself wrong most of the time and this is a great opportunity to help me learn something new. Will you provide more examples for me that illustrate that the vast majority of people want a structured environment? I've read some materials to the contrary, like Douglas McGregor's "The Human Side of Enterprise", which talks about two theories: X and Y, which describe a kind of employee. Theory X is the kind of employee you speak of: one who is not internally motivated and requires a "structured environment that removes responsibility for decisions", which you so aptly wrote. Theory Y is the kind of employee who wants to do a good job and does not need this structure because they are motivated to learn how to do it right and act on that knowledge.
Certainly there are many people who enjoy structured environments, and from my perspective, I find that there are many people who also enjoy unstructured environments where they can express themselves. My anecdotal experience has shown a 50-50 split; perhaps your experience has been different?
This book is for people like me who do not have this common sense. What you take for granted is, for people like me, something to struggle for. I have such a trail of social failures communicating on the Internet that I've built this account with this cryptic name just so that I can make my mistakes without it haunting me for the rest of my life. Most people have the common sense to use a pseudonym; I didn't, which only illustrates further that I'm one of those unfortunate people without the sense I should have. I envy you, and those many other people, who find communicating so natural.
Re:How will they know what the barriers are?
on
Geeks in Management?
·
· Score: 1
But without knowing the job, they won't know the real barriers from the crap any lazy slob claims is a problem.
That's a great point -- the manager must have at least some understanding of the job, even if it is just cursory. What the good manager knows is that the person they are managing knows a lot more and, with proper guidance, will want to do a great job.
Hardly. If that was the case, no one would ever be able to switch careers. If your manager can only hold one skill set in memory, you need another manager.
True. I've also found that the technology field is unique in that, because the technology changes so often, it takes a rare person to keep up with the technology alone, much less learning the finer points of human interaction. It is certainly possible, though, and anyone who can master both is a valuable manager indeed!
But if they don't know what the job requires, how will they encourage that? How will they be able to evaluate that? If you don't know the jobs of your workers, you'll have to base your assessments upon something other than their skills.
I can relate to this. One time, I had a manager tell me that, since they could not understand what I did as a programmer, that the only thing they have to go on is how many hours I worked. It is easy to imagine how frustrating that was for me. The manager was clearly a bad manager, particularly since the reason I worked a forty hour week is because my output was at least five times that of the other engineers and I did not have enough work to do for the forty hours, much less more. You're absolutely right: a manager must have at least a minimum understanding of your value. The really good managers, like the one I worked for at GE, knew how to gauge this using objective goals and reasonable metrics. He could not write a line of code, but he had a yardstick with which to gauge my value. A good manager seeks to understand this. Unfortunately, there a lot of bad managers, as you pointed out, that do not take the time to understand a person's value. Luckily, it does not take knowing the details of a person's job function to understand the value, just a prudent set of metrics and observations.
You're completely right -- in fact, your sentence "You don't need to give direct orders, you create an environment where orders are given but in such a way that your people don't feel they're being ordered" is a perfect summary to the book's chapter. Carnegie includes a lot of examples of how to do exactly what you've said. You're lucky to have this kind of people sense!
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Isn't it ironic that the government could build a system so physically bomb-proof, yet so susceptible to misuse? I'm surprised the government didn't go the exact opposite way. I wish they had; I'd have a lot less SPAM.
Wouldn't we have invented many of those things, if not more, without WWII? The spirit of invention and imagination was well illustrated by the World's Fair. Perhaps, if it weren't for the interruption the war caused, we would have built even better versions of these things.
What you're describing about private corporations represents today, after the war. Do you think the same would be true about corporations today if the war hadn't happened? I personally think so, since I believe patents and the squelching of new ideas is the natural and inevitable result of a capitalist society.
It is so true, though. Humans have a special knack for killing other things. Maybe this is our real purpose on Earth after all?
When I said WWII not happening, I meant the reason for it happening as well, of course. I see your point, though; would we have jet aircraft or rockets? Even though jet aircraft and rockets were used to kill, the also have non-lethal uses. Would we even had gone to the moon?
I apologize for not being more clear. What I meant was if WWII did not happen because there was no reason for it to happen. Hitler never came to power, etc. Of course the world would not be a better place if the conditions that led to WWII were not addressed.
Also, you are completely right, all, to say that a great deal of technology developed from WWII for killing people. What I was thinking of is what other kinds of technology besides weapons would have arisen?
Yet another project abandoned because of WWII. It makes me wonder, if WWII hadn't happened, what would the world be like now? It seems we've stopped dreaming. Sure, we've made new technology because of WWII, but it is mostly technology to kill people.
How would the family be today? Would we have to have the husband and wife work just to pay the mortgage? Because businesses learned that they can exploit women just as much as men to make money during WWII, it changed our family structure forever.
I have to wonder; would we have flying cars today hadn't it been for WWII? Ah heck, probably not. After all, there is so much money in tires that some tire corporation would probably lock up the technology with litigation somehow.
How many decades behind are we, anyway?
Have not run into this yet. I'm particularly sensitive to fan noise (emotionally -- I hate that ringing noise!). I find it fun when, after I started getting all annoyed, to run the hardware test disk, which revs up all nine fans, to get perspective. :-)
Me too -- I got the update as soon as it came out and everything does seem to work better. It was needed.
I guess by running it on a 1.6 Ghz. G5 w/1.25G of memory, I didn't notice. If I had less memory, I probably would have seen it cause more swapping. Thanks for the info!
I'll have to give that a try. OpenOffice in particular seems to be far more efficient than Word (even on the Macintosh where it is running using the X-Windows interface). I guess I'm just really impressed at what the open-source community does.
Since it is running Linux, and you can get great software like OpenOffice, Gimp, FireFox, for free, is it really stripped-down?
Companies seem to forget the crazy idea of not making their employees want to leave to keep their ideas from getting into the hands of the competition.
Yep. Like Bill Gates said to Homer Simpson while his goons were trashing his house, "I didn't get rich by writing checks!"
I agree that capitalism can lead to unethical behavior by corporations. Isn't the above analogous to saying that a police officer is guilty of murder when they fail to catch the guy who pulled the trigger? Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I think it makes my point: the person holding the gun has at least the majority of the blame.
$20-dolla'? There must be a catch -- ! Thanks for that -- I'll look into it! I'm currently running a Extigy on my PC for sound production, which I really like. But, it was $150!
Thanks for the heads-up!!!!
I can't find a PC that has the options my PowerMac G5 has for the same price of $1,500. For example, the G5 comes with digital in-out. I'd have to buy add an Audigy to the PC to get that kind of functionality. Plus, the G5 is far quieter than a PC (although the fan noise it does make is annoying in a very quiet room; not white-noise). If you take what you get altogether and integrated, you still get more with Apple...
...until you try to buy one from the one or, if you're lucky, two Apple dealers within 100 miles who absolutely will not take returns and will charge you $100 an hour for repairs (for those people who do not repair their own PCs). This is where the Apple really falls short, IMHO. I am forced to deal with people who have the attitude, "What are you going to do -- buy it somewhere else???" Insert evil-cackle here. Imagine, a salesman saying to you, "Good thing you didn't register it. If you did, you'd be stuck with it." when I returned my iMac for an upgrade to a full G5 tower instead. Yes, I offered to give them $1,500 more when you count in the 20" studio display and RAM upgrade I bought, yet they still gave me 'tude like that.
Oh, that and the software problem. Adobe has stopped supporting FrameMaker 7 for the Macintosh. Now, I have to use OpenOffice, which is -- frankly -- clunky on the Mac. As if I'm going to shovel out $400 for Office. Yikes.
I understand the frustration. What should M$ do in this case, though? They must be allowed to add new features to their software.
I've run into problems with people's concept of Word myself. I use FrameMaker 7 for everything and do not own a personal copy of Office. When people send me Word documents, I use the Word Viewer to view them. But, when they send me Word documents to edit, I have to tell them I do not have Word (I can use it as RTF, but that usually messes-up the formatting). There is always this silence, like I've just rocked their world. "How can you not have Word," says the person who got it with their OS. "Everybody has Word. And you are a Computer Scientist?" They look like I've betrayed them or something, like I'm not a real computer user at all. It makes me chuckle.
Now that I've added a PowerMac G5 to my setup, it'll get worse. I'm running OpenOffice, but I'm still going to upgrade from FrameMaker to InDesign and stay as far away from Word documents as I can. Now I'll get the looks from not only avoiding Word, but using a Mac (even though I run Windows XP, Debian Linux, and AmigaOS 3.1 along with it -- it's a hobby).
I agree -- and this isn't necessarily a M$ thing either. In a corporation, it makes sense to have processes running on seperate machines simply because, if one of the machines come down, it limits the loss of revenue by having one application down instead of many.
Heh heh, this was a pretty good read. Have you considered creative writing?
Interesting! I'll definitely pick up this book.
I know what you mean. When I first learned about personality types, I tried to change my personality as I talked to people. I wasn't fooling anyone. Now, I just be myself, but know what a person really means by their behavior.
I find myself wrong most of the time and this is a great opportunity to help me learn something new. Will you provide more examples for me that illustrate that the vast majority of people want a structured environment? I've read some materials to the contrary, like Douglas McGregor's "The Human Side of Enterprise", which talks about two theories: X and Y, which describe a kind of employee. Theory X is the kind of employee you speak of: one who is not internally motivated and requires a "structured environment that removes responsibility for decisions", which you so aptly wrote. Theory Y is the kind of employee who wants to do a good job and does not need this structure because they are motivated to learn how to do it right and act on that knowledge.
Certainly there are many people who enjoy structured environments, and from my perspective, I find that there are many people who also enjoy unstructured environments where they can express themselves. My anecdotal experience has shown a 50-50 split; perhaps your experience has been different?
This book is for people like me who do not have this common sense. What you take for granted is, for people like me, something to struggle for. I have such a trail of social failures communicating on the Internet that I've built this account with this cryptic name just so that I can make my mistakes without it haunting me for the rest of my life. Most people have the common sense to use a pseudonym; I didn't, which only illustrates further that I'm one of those unfortunate people without the sense I should have. I envy you, and those many other people, who find communicating so natural.
That's a great point -- the manager must have at least some understanding of the job, even if it is just cursory. What the good manager knows is that the person they are managing knows a lot more and, with proper guidance, will want to do a great job.
Hardly. If that was the case, no one would ever be able to switch careers. If your manager can only hold one skill set in memory, you need another manager.True. I've also found that the technology field is unique in that, because the technology changes so often, it takes a rare person to keep up with the technology alone, much less learning the finer points of human interaction. It is certainly possible, though, and anyone who can master both is a valuable manager indeed!
But if they don't know what the job requires, how will they encourage that? How will they be able to evaluate that? If you don't know the jobs of your workers, you'll have to base your assessments upon something other than their skills.I can relate to this. One time, I had a manager tell me that, since they could not understand what I did as a programmer, that the only thing they have to go on is how many hours I worked. It is easy to imagine how frustrating that was for me. The manager was clearly a bad manager, particularly since the reason I worked a forty hour week is because my output was at least five times that of the other engineers and I did not have enough work to do for the forty hours, much less more. You're absolutely right: a manager must have at least a minimum understanding of your value. The really good managers, like the one I worked for at GE, knew how to gauge this using objective goals and reasonable metrics. He could not write a line of code, but he had a yardstick with which to gauge my value. A good manager seeks to understand this. Unfortunately, there a lot of bad managers, as you pointed out, that do not take the time to understand a person's value. Luckily, it does not take knowing the details of a person's job function to understand the value, just a prudent set of metrics and observations.
You're completely right -- in fact, your sentence "You don't need to give direct orders, you create an environment where orders are given but in such a way that your people don't feel they're being ordered" is a perfect summary to the book's chapter. Carnegie includes a lot of examples of how to do exactly what you've said. You're lucky to have this kind of people sense!