With regard to
1. Does it allow me to raise my price? Not really applicable to most decisions, but one way of a company making more money.
2. Does it allow me to cut costs? Attacking the bottom line.
3. Does it allow me to increase productivity? Can I sell more, do more, create more?
4. Does it mitigate risk? Will it prevent, or compartmentalize, a problem that would cause us to bleed cash?
I see management ignore these factors every day. They basically do what they want to do or whatever the latest salesperson to walk in the door tells them is good, often ignoring internal experts. Hell, at my company- 8 years ago, they specifically took people warning of project failure off of the project because it was "upsetting the consultants" and then a year later... it failed horribly.
Meanwhile good IT will let you do all those four things and yet is ignored. And not just passively ignored but "SHUT UP OR BE FIRED" ignored.
Because IT can show you which sales people (who are treated like gods) are creating territories full of non-profitable customers.
Because IT can not only allow- but make the customers eager to- enter their own orders- saving you customer service costs and allow you to do the same work with a lot less people.
Because IT can take a 4 week manual process which sometimes completely failed and turn it into a 2-3 day process which is fully accountable.
Because unlike electricity or water, IT changes constantly-- every single day-- and if your company doesn't keep up, the next thing you know you are a year behind your competitors and their costs are 10% lower than yours and you are hemorrhaging customers.
IT is a lump of clay that can be sculpted into anything.
---
We recently found out that one of the other non-IT departments basically wrote a "system by spreadsheet" which requires over a dozen people to maintain. Their director is protecting them from being automated by IT because he would lose most of those people. So don't come talking to me about "IT COSTS". I think it is really a battle for headcount among the departments.
I'm starting to read articles on a severe upcoming advertising crunch during the recession. So it will be like they sold themselves out and then the switzer only paid $5 bucks.
You tell them, spend $10 mill and we will get you $50 mill in sales. They say... nah, how about $3 mill and $10 million in sales.
And this is for a multi billion dollar corporation.
---
They throw away software that has been fixed of all issues and buy packages recommended by salespeople that never works as promised for several years (at which point they throw it out and get new stuff... again!!!) I think that is because the tax laws incent new capital investments over maintaining/upgrading existing software.
the movie (and I) was not talking about the number of drug users but the rate of drug users (i.e. percentage).
while those are the only legal drugs- the movie showed a amsterdam junkie openly smoking crack cocaine (without fear) on the streets and related that they were approached by polite dealers of other hard drugs while walking down the street. The movie said they are "illegal but decriminalized". It also said (as i would expect) that it is very peaceful without all the murder and other skankiness associated with drug use in the U.S.
I imagine that a U.S. citizen who went there and took hard drugs and then got into some kind of trouble might find it to be very serious tho.
Meanwhile, the movie also showed streets in LA littered with little balloons (and drug users). The balloons apparently being the delivery method for heroin currently. The current scourge here in the U.S. is meth type drugs. We can't buy cold medicine now without signing for it.
I have friends in austin, dallas, houston, and san antonio -- so all of mid to southeast texas basically. We grew up in houston together but went to a variety of universities and stay in touch. Mostly programmers and engineers. Mostly all for multi-billion dollar corps or tiny 10 person shops- not much in the middle.
It might have been on showtime-- It think it was on Sundance tho- and I think it is called "America's Drug War".
The guy's parents died from alcohol and tobacco- his brother died from drugs- I think he had another sibling that died from alcohol too. His parents actually died at fairly advanced ages after a long happy imbibing and smoking life. He showed one tombstone and I thought "well that was a fairly long life actually".
I do not recall if he was addicted to anything. His brother became seriously addicted *after* he was sent to a halfway house. he discovered while filming the movie that their housekeeper was doing heroin.
I wonder if one reason drug use is so low in Amsterdam is that the people with real problems just go ahead and die.
I'd say for someone with your experience we would be 5 to 20% lower but with mildly better benefits. It would only convince you to switch positions if you thought you would work here at least five years or maybe even retire from here.
I agree that it is off-topic (tho it was technically a tangent to the Ayn Rand comment) but not intended as flamebait.
I just recently saw a movie on the drug war and it was pretty upsetting (including fairly substantial and substantiated evidence) that the CIA under reagan (who I voted for) ran cocaine into america to support their revolution in central america.
The bits about private prisons was very disturbing. I've known for quite a while that we imprison people in the US at a higher rate than the rest of the world.
But to see an LA policeman relating how the CIA contacted him to ignore selected drug lords in an open public meetings (and to see the CIA director's obvious distress) was pretty shocking to me so I guess it was waiting to spew out somewhere.
It pulled no punches-- drug users were shocking dregs in some cases. But so are extreme alcohol and tobacco users.
We have so many bad laws related to this area- and now that they are tying "any drug sales == support for terror" they are able to ignore civil rights at increasing levels.
Then you get some cheesehead like this guy wanting to ban the equivalent of posting anonymous hand bills and it is extremely irritating.
We incarcerate more people than china. We strip away a very particular group of people's voting rights through selective drug law enforcement. We have double the drug use of Amsterdam (where drug use is legal).
We use some H1B's (and try to get them green cards).
We pay a "decent" salary-- my buds at HP earn roughly 10% more-- those in the oil field earn about 20% more (but have a history of frequent layoffs). We have solid benefits that exceed those of the oil field and HP.
The reality is- we are about to lose positions because we cannot even get under-qualified people to apply for them. Now part of it is that we require people with at least a couple other jobs experience under their belt. Part of it is that being a big corp, our bureaucracy is pretty harsh. I have a friend who was sucked into Schluberje (sp) recently and there you literally have to take a driving class (as a frikkin programmer???) as part of your job duties. Bureaucracy gone mad. I'm sure many of you have seen office space--- we are 3x office space. It really takes a special person to fit in a large corporation. Jobs that would take 2 hours at a small company (and be very satisfying) may take three months. I even know of one project that was finished a year ago and it is still stuck waiting to be prioritized for release.
Sarbanes Oxley takes all the joy out of being a programmer. It just sucks the life out of it. Coders like to code 32 hours a week-- not 32 hours per quarter. You can't even maintain your coding skills at those levels.
I think the IT Worker crunch IS coming- and it is going to be wicked nasty starting in about 2012.
Exactly- the cost of preserving an article which is browsed infrequently is near zero. These are text articles in most cases- probably under 1k compressed and zero bandwidth.
I think it is time for any signifcant secrets to be inside a separate network with a different operating system-- and one that is built from the ground up to be secure from buffer over run attacks and similar performance enhancing flaws.
Having been through a hard computer science course with lots of hard science and math, I found the logical and deductive skills of people who went through easier courses to be poor.
While 25 hours of hard logic courses might do it, you can't just take away 21 hours of math and physics and only leave four hours of logic.
Since universities do not have a need for 25 hours of different logic courses, math and hard science courses will have to do as a substitute to build the necessary brain muscles. It's not about knowing plank's constant- it's about learning how to take a very hairy problem and simplify it until it is solvable.
Specifically, if you are running a 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 campaign this is basically a reboot. Existing characters are not compatible with the new rules. This is not an addition or change but a restart.
Derth of graduates Sinking Dollar and rising foreign currencies. Rising foreign inflation and wages. 1/3 of the workforce retiring between now and 2013.
Sometimes I'm outbid in the last few minutes (sometimes grossly outbid when two or three others get involved). Sometimes I get it for way under my bid. Sometimes I get it for above my starting bid but below my maximum bid.
I like the automatic bidding. I've never been "sniped" for 50 cents or a dollar. The bid is almost always a few notches above and at what someone else considers a "fair" price.
One minor difference between CNN and FOX reporting of the election last night
--- CNN X% Clinton Y% Obama
X% McCain Y% Huckabee Z% Paul
---
FOX X% Clinton Y% Obama
X% McCain Y% Huckabee
Paul was getting a respectiable 5 to 7% of the vote and he was completely erased from existence by FOX. This is like excluding him from a debate when he got a higher % of the vote than another candidate who was not excluded.
Slashdot Mirror
But Irish...
With regard to
1. Does it allow me to raise my price? Not really applicable to most decisions, but one way of a company making more money.
2. Does it allow me to cut costs? Attacking the bottom line.
3. Does it allow me to increase productivity? Can I sell more, do more, create more?
4. Does it mitigate risk? Will it prevent, or compartmentalize, a problem that would cause us to bleed cash?
I see management ignore these factors every day. They basically do what they want to do or whatever the latest salesperson to walk in the door tells them is good, often ignoring internal experts. Hell, at my company- 8 years ago, they specifically took people warning of project failure off of the project because it was "upsetting the consultants" and then a year later... it failed horribly.
Meanwhile good IT will let you do all those four things and yet is ignored. And not just passively ignored but "SHUT UP OR BE FIRED" ignored.
Because IT can show you which sales people (who are treated like gods) are creating territories full of non-profitable customers.
Because IT can not only allow- but make the customers eager to- enter their own orders- saving you customer service costs and allow you to do the same work with a lot less people.
Because IT can take a 4 week manual process which sometimes completely failed and turn it into a 2-3 day process which is fully accountable.
Because unlike electricity or water, IT changes constantly-- every single day-- and if your company doesn't keep up, the next thing you know you are a year behind your competitors and their costs are 10% lower than yours and you are hemorrhaging customers.
IT is a lump of clay that can be sculpted into anything.
---
We recently found out that one of the other non-IT departments basically wrote a "system by spreadsheet" which requires over a dozen people to maintain. Their director is protecting them from being automated by IT because he would lose most of those people. So don't come talking to me about "IT COSTS". I think it is really a battle for headcount among the departments.
but more to the point...
I'm starting to read articles on a severe upcoming advertising crunch during the recession. So it will be like they sold themselves out and then the switzer only paid $5 bucks.
I'm afraid you missed the memo.
A lot of my friends are going to these lately and report being happy with them. They must have passed some critical point of quality.
I do not have one myself yet. With carpal tunnel, I'll probably stick with wood pulp.
You tell them, spend $10 mill and we will get you $50 mill in sales.
They say... nah, how about $3 mill and $10 million in sales.
And this is for a multi billion dollar corporation.
---
They throw away software that has been fixed of all issues and buy packages recommended by salespeople that never works as promised for several years (at which point they throw it out and get new stuff... again!!!) I think that is because the tax laws incent new capital investments over maintaining/upgrading existing software.
It's slashdot...
sometimes on slashdot, it mods you.
But thanks for calling attention to how horribly my attempted ironic joke was modded, you insensitive clod!
hehehe
That will be a little hard since you have no contact email. B)
Are you from Google? Is this a hiring contest?
the movie (and I) was not talking about the number of drug users but the rate of drug users (i.e. percentage).
while those are the only legal drugs- the movie showed a amsterdam junkie openly smoking crack cocaine (without fear) on the streets and related that they were approached by polite dealers of other hard drugs while walking down the street. The movie said they are "illegal but decriminalized". It also said (as i would expect) that it is very peaceful without all the murder and other skankiness associated with drug use in the U.S.
I imagine that a U.S. citizen who went there and took hard drugs and then got into some kind of trouble might find it to be very serious tho.
Meanwhile, the movie also showed streets in LA littered with little balloons (and drug users). The balloons apparently being the delivery method for heroin currently. The current scourge here in the U.S. is meth type drugs. We can't buy cold medicine now without signing for it.
I have friends in austin, dallas, houston, and san antonio -- so all of mid to southeast texas basically. We grew up in houston together but went to a variety of universities and stay in touch. Mostly programmers and engineers. Mostly all for multi-billion dollar corps or tiny 10 person shops- not much in the middle.
It might have been on showtime-- It think it was on Sundance tho- and I think it is called "America's Drug War".
The guy's parents died from alcohol and tobacco- his brother died from drugs- I think he had another sibling that died from alcohol too. His parents actually died at fairly advanced ages after a long happy imbibing and smoking life. He showed one tombstone and I thought "well that was a fairly long life actually".
I do not recall if he was addicted to anything. His brother became seriously addicted *after* he was sent to a halfway house. he discovered while filming the movie that their housekeeper was doing heroin.
I wonder if one reason drug use is so low in Amsterdam is that the people with real problems just go ahead and die.
I'd say for someone with your experience we would be 5 to 20% lower but with mildly better benefits.
It would only convince you to switch positions if you thought you would work here at least five years or maybe even retire from here.
I agree that it is off-topic (tho it was technically a tangent to the Ayn Rand comment) but not intended as flamebait.
I just recently saw a movie on the drug war and it was pretty upsetting (including fairly substantial and substantiated evidence) that the CIA under reagan (who I voted for) ran cocaine into america to support their revolution in central america.
The bits about private prisons was very disturbing. I've known for quite a while that we imprison people in the US at a higher rate than the rest of the world.
But to see an LA policeman relating how the CIA contacted him to ignore selected drug lords in an open public meetings (and to see the CIA director's obvious distress) was pretty shocking to me so I guess it was waiting to spew out somewhere.
It pulled no punches-- drug users were shocking dregs in some cases. But so are extreme alcohol and tobacco users.
We have so many bad laws related to this area- and now that they are tying "any drug sales == support for terror" they are able to ignore civil rights at increasing levels.
Then you get some cheesehead like this guy wanting to ban the equivalent of posting anonymous hand bills and it is extremely irritating.
Among the larger financial supporters of the coalition against drugs in america
Tobacco Companies
Alcohol Companies
Private Prison Companies
We incarcerate more people than china.
We strip away a very particular group of people's voting rights through selective drug law enforcement.
We have double the drug use of Amsterdam (where drug use is legal).
We use some H1B's (and try to get them green cards).
We pay a "decent" salary-- my buds at HP earn roughly 10% more-- those in the oil field earn about 20% more (but have a history of frequent layoffs). We have solid benefits that exceed those of the oil field and HP.
The reality is- we are about to lose positions because we cannot even get under-qualified people to apply for them. Now part of it is that we require people with at least a couple other jobs experience under their belt. Part of it is that being a big corp, our bureaucracy is pretty harsh. I have a friend who was sucked into Schluberje (sp) recently and there you literally have to take a driving class (as a frikkin programmer???) as part of your job duties. Bureaucracy gone mad. I'm sure many of you have seen office space--- we are 3x office space. It really takes a special person to fit in a large corporation. Jobs that would take 2 hours at a small company (and be very satisfying) may take three months. I even know of one project that was finished a year ago and it is still stuck waiting to be prioritized for release.
Sarbanes Oxley takes all the joy out of being a programmer. It just sucks the life out of it. Coders like to code 32 hours a week-- not 32 hours per quarter. You can't even maintain your coding skills at those levels.
I think the IT Worker crunch IS coming- and it is going to be wicked nasty starting in about 2012.
who are willing to work for $20 an hour with a masters degree.
Exactly- the cost of preserving an article which is browsed infrequently is near zero. These are text articles in most cases- probably under 1k compressed and zero bandwidth.
Can't link it but they had a show on it recently.
The families on the show were seriously messed up by water.
The host had himself tested and they found about 150 chemicals in his bloodstream- including some things banned 20 years ago.
My thoughts exactly "Germany says - please don't hold CEBit here again for at least a couple decades- we do not need your money!"
I think it is time for any signifcant secrets to be inside a separate network with a different operating system-- and one that is built from the ground up to be secure from buffer over run attacks and similar performance enhancing flaws.
Having been through a hard computer science course with lots of hard science and math, I found the logical and deductive skills of people who went through easier courses to be poor.
While 25 hours of hard logic courses might do it, you can't just take away 21 hours of math and physics and only leave four hours of logic.
Since universities do not have a need for 25 hours of different logic courses, math and hard science courses will have to do as a substitute to build the necessary brain muscles. It's not about knowing plank's constant- it's about learning how to take a very hairy problem and simplify it until it is solvable.
Specifically, if you are running a 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 campaign this is basically a reboot. Existing characters are not compatible with the new rules. This is not an addition or change but a restart.
Derth of graduates
Sinking Dollar and rising foreign currencies.
Rising foreign inflation and wages.
1/3 of the workforce retiring between now and 2013.
Erasing his existence in the race.
Erasing his existence from the debate (when guiliani had a lower vote total too).
I agree fox chose to remove him from the list-- but come on-- there were *five* bloody candidates.
It was a conscious decision on their part to do so.
I must be misunderstanding something...
I have bought about 60 items.
I put in the maximum fair bid I'm willing to pay.
Sometimes I'm outbid in the last few minutes (sometimes grossly outbid when two or three others get involved).
Sometimes I get it for way under my bid.
Sometimes I get it for above my starting bid but below my maximum bid.
I like the automatic bidding. I've never been "sniped" for 50 cents or a dollar. The bid is almost always a few notches above and at what someone else considers a "fair" price.
One minor difference between CNN and FOX reporting of the election last night
---
CNN
X% Clinton
Y% Obama
X% McCain
Y% Huckabee
Z% Paul
---
FOX
X% Clinton
Y% Obama
X% McCain
Y% Huckabee
Paul was getting a respectiable 5 to 7% of the vote and he was completely erased from existence by FOX. This is like excluding him from a debate when he got a higher % of the vote than another candidate who was not excluded.