We replaced him with 6 infosys guys (who make 1/3 what he did) and a project lead for them (who makes 2/3 what he did). They couldn't match his output, so several projects were rescheduled or outright cancelled.
So for only 2 & 2/3 the cost and several deferred or cancelled projects, management showed successfully that *no one* is irreplacable.
The main reason we went to one of these in 1996 was cost savings.
The main reason we dumped it and went back to corporate staff in 2001 was cost savings. That and the fact that our executives couldn't order them to work overtime to meet impossible deadlines set without asking them if the promised features were possible.
It looks like in 2008 that we will be going out again. The contractor has promised us the moon, the stars, and complete delivery of an identical B2C website with all current business logic implemented in 5 months and 3 weeks. Yes we all had a good laugh. But it is going to happen.. probably this way.
They promise under 6 months and get contract. At 3 months they try to cut scope AND push the date back to 9 months. At 9 months they deliver a non-working, undocumented pile of crap that causes immense pain for 3 to 6 months. A lot of features that currently work will be cut and never reimplemented. Finally in about 18 months, the new site will be working properly. It will have a lot of hard to maintain crap under the covers and we will spend 3 years fixing bugs. However the real problems (basic architecture) will never be fixed by management and so the entire thing will eventually fall over again from lack of basic maintenance (no ROI so no approval).
And you would be like the yahoos at my company that were shocked when their "cost savings" resulted in 3 days of complete outage at the new cheaper "rehosting" site at IBM. Being executives, they papered over the complete collapse, loss of customers, loss of business, massive amounts of unscheduled over time by a dozen people, and loss of a couple quality people after that fiasco which resulted in several major projects being canceled since there were no longer resources (even offshore/infosys) resources that could do the work.
SOX and the control procedures businesses implement (30 days to do what used to take us 7 days) drive IT costs up. Their solution here? Enforce the procedures on what remains of IT while farming the work out to contractors who have no procedures and install live to production without any controls of any kind... but it's okay because they are not company employees they are not covered by the control procedures.
Of course there is no documentation... and the way they get things running can't be duplicated.
I find your post interesting and I have posted similar with regard to microsoft.
I see
* Certain posts go almost immediately to +5. * A lot of use of "overrated" to neg-mod people.
I had suggested to Cowboyneal at least 8 months ago that the negative moderation is getting out of hand and most often wrong while the positive moderation is usually correct so there should be more meta moderation of neg's than positives.
However, now I am beginning to think enough big players have stooge accounts here that the entire process is suspect. I think Cowboy needs to get some people he trusts to take a cold hard look at the moderation histories and IP addresses and clean house. He could probably do it productively himself since I suspect we are talking under a thousand bogus accounts.
I have been in situations like this and I did open the packages right there at the register. It takes them extra time before the register is free, but we are all clear that I'm getting the advertised product.
I've most often done this with video cards which look re-wrapped to make sure all the parts are in the box.
The risk of insulting, confusing, or misinforming a customer is too high for a large corporation.
My developers write up what their tasks do. I prepare my proposed communications which is a writeup of their writeups and submit it to the BA's.
They rewrite and adjust it in various politically sensitive fashions (I'm getting fairly good- they only changed about 5 words last time) and then submit it to the communications department. They review it and put it into the weekly communications bundle.
In terms of customers to us- they complain to their tech rep who enters a ticket. The business analysts review the tickets and select a batch to work. They talk to the tech rep and to a few customers about the potential changes. They write up interface requirements and send them to architecture. Architecture validates that this won't step on something else or duplicate something else. If not, then it is sent to the group and separated into bugs and projects. These are grouped into a release. The developers get the projects- the maintenance programmers get the bugs. Usually, only developers would need to talk to anyone (bugs are pretty clear). They talk to the business analysts.
They code their changes and unit test them and prepare hordes of fairly useless documentation to comply with SOX. I do various status reports, clear roadblocks, and review their solutions for design issues (sure it would work but does this fit with the way the rest of the program is designed and will it be easy to maintain) and handle scheduling to make sure everything arrives at the same time.
The entire thing is cross tested and then delivered to the testing department. We continue working while they start with a few months overlap and finally produce a "final" build which they test a couple more times and then finally it all goes live.
Not all projects at the corp work this way- some are in older languages and still program based (vs release based) and their changes kinda dribble out. The developers on those are two layers isolated from customers too.
This all comes from when a developer says something correct but politically stupid to customers. It causes lots of pain for the managers and executives (who were spinning like mad) and so they make policies that only politically aware people talk/email/send notices to end customers.
you are not allowed to consult with the customers (That's a BA) (and you are not allowed to talk to the people that talk directly to customers very often either). writing the specification (That's the designer or architect) getting the specification approved (Project Manager) user-interface testing (Okay maybe you except at super large companies) load-testing (ITQA, or not done because too expensive) support and maintenenance for the life-cycle of the project (usually handed over to programmers stuck on the maintenance and support crew) as well as the actual implementation (this is you- and before you are finished, you are over allocated to two other projects at "highest priority" to fix as well.
Ron Paul is the only candidate who is saying what he really believes in (and has consistently voted for) instead of carefully spin doctored positions.
He's against abortion (I disagree with him there- tho I do agree the government shouldn't pay for it) He really is for small government (and regularly votes down any expansion of government programs, spending, etc.)
He's pretty naive that leaving the corporations without the government to oppose them would work out (corporate corruption of our government is our biggest problem and is leading us to facism/corporatism)
The fact is that we have been lead to pay for a lot of things that we shouldn't have to. Government should be small. And then it would take less of your money in taxes and you could give it to charities of your choice. And a lot of real people would really suffer. People would get sick and not get better.
But the converse is that the government is going to be controlling what we eat, smoke, and drink because our self-abuse costs everyone else money. Since they are paying for us, they get a say on our behavior.
I am in support of Ron Paul. I think he is unelectable because the republican party is against him. I listen to a lot of talk radio and the conservative shows are just merciless. They hate his guts. And it's ironic because he's really what a lot of republican voters want.
---
I think all the other candidates are untrustworthy. I think they will say they believe positions A,B,C when they really believe positions C,F,G. Once elected they will push C,F,G and completely drop A,B which is supposedly why you voted for them.
While I disagree with about 40% of Ron Paul's positions, I trust him. I think he is telling us honestly what he believes in. I know his district has repeatedly reelected him again and again. I might be mistaken but i think that he's one of the *two* real military veterans running. I think the rest are more likely to be Bush type war hawks- getting us into wars and getting a lot of kids killed (but not "their" kids).
---
For the record, my position is social liberal, fiscal conservative. I.e. Let people do what they want in their own lives and keep the *federal* government out of what should be *state* business. So pro-people doing whatever they want with their bodies, anti national health care, schooling, pro-national defense, pro-lower taxes (but also pro much less programs). I don't think something should be considered for charity unless it really is for the poor (no donating for opera houses which only rich people can go to).
It doesn't matter if you think your company can make 100% profits and double its stock every year.
You should NEVER... EVER... have more than 20% of your retirement in anything. And 20% is if you are a wild eyed gambler or have less than $100k.
Otherwise, you limit your exposure to any given area to 5%. If you have "small" amounts of money (under $500k), you get that diversification by using mutual funds or ETF's.
Otherwise, you are not investing- you are really just gambling. And in many cases with worse odds than they will give you in Vegas.
People who are not programmers seem to have a hard time understanding that 7 years java experience is not equal to 7 years.net experience.
They understand it when they hire you, but three months later they need a "senior developer" and they re-org you on to a team they would never hire you for.
In my view, since you tube earns advertising dollars (and gives people like her a cut in some circumstances) from advertisers paying for people like you and me who go to the site who see their ads, then it isn't fair use.
If she wants to use the song in her own video- cool. If she wants to post that video without any advertising- cool tho shaky.
Why shaky...
Okay so I video dogs, you, random birds, etc. with a copyrighted song playing. Then I run those videos in a bar. You can't do that without paying a fee. It's not whats on the video- it is that you are playing the song in a place presumably to draw people there to spend money.
Since you are using another person's creation to earn money, it's fair that you pay them money for that creation. Earning money includes barter. I am fairly rabidly anti copyright- and think it should stop after 28 years and think that you should have to pay a fee every year or it falls into the public domain (to prevent crap like happy birthday and "it's a wonderful life" from happening). But if you are going to earn money from someone else's recent creation, then you should pay a share to the person that made the thing making you money.
And sorry- but a baby dancing to silence or random unknown music isn't interesting- it's because it is prince's song that it is interesting.
If she is using someone else's copyrighted material and anyone is earning money off of it besides the creators without their permission, then she is infringing.
I'm sorry but I think those all apply here.
Written in 1984, it is only 24 years old- so even by the original jeffersonian copyright rules which I prefer & support the song should have another four years to go.
And sony doesn't miss the roughly nine grand I have very specifically not spent on their products since they pissed me off back in 2001. But I won't buy from them again and I tell all my friends they suck.
There are lots of alternatives these days.
And as the first poster says-- why do they get to use $33 labor in india and then REQUIRE that we pay full retail for it while giving breaks to people in other countries.
The flu early this century disproportionately killed the more healthy.
Essentially the old and young could not mount a strong enough defense to kill themselves. In healthy people, their cells dissolved themselves trying to fight the virus.
Cut and paste.../tmp/gutsy-wrestling-babes-dvd-i386.iso.torrent/home/-------/Ubuntu/gutsy-dvd-i386.iso 4336.0 of 4336.0 MB at 63.49 KB/s 16 hours, 59 minutes, and 51 seconds
Slashdot Mirror
OTH, we had an employee that quit.
We replaced him with 6 infosys guys (who make 1/3 what he did) and a project lead for them (who makes 2/3 what he did). They couldn't match his output, so several projects were rescheduled or outright cancelled.
So for only 2 & 2/3 the cost and several deferred or cancelled projects, management showed successfully that *no one* is irreplacable.
It's a cycle.
The main reason we went to one of these in 1996 was cost savings.
The main reason we dumped it and went back to corporate staff in 2001 was cost savings. That and the fact that our executives couldn't order them to work overtime to meet impossible deadlines set without asking them if the promised features were possible.
It looks like in 2008 that we will be going out again. The contractor has promised us the moon, the stars, and complete delivery of an identical B2C website with all current business logic implemented in 5 months and 3 weeks. Yes we all had a good laugh. But it is going to happen.. probably this way.
They promise under 6 months and get contract.
At 3 months they try to cut scope AND push the date back to 9 months.
At 9 months they deliver a non-working, undocumented pile of crap that causes immense pain for 3 to 6 months. A lot of features that currently work will be cut and never reimplemented. Finally in about 18 months, the new site will be working properly. It will have a lot of hard to maintain crap under the covers and we will spend 3 years fixing bugs. However the real problems (basic architecture) will never be fixed by management and so the entire thing will eventually fall over again from lack of basic maintenance (no ROI so no approval).
This is an excellent example of a mis-moderated post.
If I could, I would give it "+1, Ironic"
IBM's entire raid setup for our corp went bad.
It took them days to get it back operational.
Apparently one of the controllers went bad and slowly corrupted the entire raid before they caught it.
And you would be like the yahoos at my company that were shocked when their "cost savings" resulted in 3 days of complete outage at the new cheaper "rehosting" site at IBM. Being executives, they papered over the complete collapse, loss of customers, loss of business, massive amounts of unscheduled over time by a dozen people, and loss of a couple quality people after that fiasco which resulted in several major projects being canceled since there were no longer resources (even offshore/infosys) resources that could do the work.
SOX and the control procedures businesses implement (30 days to do what used to take us 7 days) drive IT costs up. Their solution here? Enforce the procedures on what remains of IT while farming the work out to contractors who have no procedures and install live to production without any controls of any kind... but it's okay because they are not company employees they are not covered by the control procedures.
Of course there is no documentation... and the way they get things running can't be duplicated.
I find your post interesting and I have posted similar with regard to microsoft.
I see
* Certain posts go almost immediately to +5.
* A lot of use of "overrated" to neg-mod people.
I had suggested to Cowboyneal at least 8 months ago that the negative moderation is getting out of hand and most often wrong while the positive moderation is usually correct so there should be more meta moderation of neg's than positives.
However, now I am beginning to think enough big players have stooge accounts here that the entire process is suspect. I think Cowboy needs to get some people he trusts to take a cold hard look at the moderation histories and IP addresses and clean house. He could probably do it productively himself since I suspect we are talking under a thousand bogus accounts.
If I had moderation points, I would moderate your post "Interesting".
I have been in situations like this and I did open the packages right there at the register. It takes them extra time before the register is free, but we are all clear that I'm getting the advertised product.
I've most often done this with video cards which look re-wrapped to make sure all the parts are in the box.
I agree with the others in this thread.
Noise is very significant for me. I'll drop a resolution (1600x1050 to 1200 x 800) to get back my fraps.
But I absolutely cannot bear the noise from the high end cards.
The risk of insulting, confusing, or misinforming a customer is too high for a large corporation.
My developers write up what their tasks do.
I prepare my proposed communications which is a writeup of their writeups and submit it to the BA's.
They rewrite and adjust it in various politically sensitive fashions (I'm getting fairly good- they only changed about 5 words last time) and then submit it to the communications department. They review it and put it into the weekly communications bundle.
In terms of customers to us- they complain to their tech rep who enters a ticket. The business analysts review the tickets and select a batch to work. They talk to the tech rep and to a few customers about the potential changes. They write up interface requirements and send them to architecture. Architecture validates that this won't step on something else or duplicate something else. If not, then it is sent to the group and separated into bugs and projects.
These are grouped into a release. The developers get the projects- the maintenance programmers get the bugs. Usually, only developers would need to talk to anyone (bugs are pretty clear). They talk to the business analysts.
They code their changes and unit test them and prepare hordes of fairly useless documentation to comply with SOX.
I do various status reports, clear roadblocks, and review their solutions for design issues (sure it would work but does this fit with the way the rest of the program is designed and will it be easy to maintain) and handle scheduling to make sure everything arrives at the same time.
The entire thing is cross tested and then delivered to the testing department. We continue working while they start with a few months overlap and finally produce a "final" build which they test a couple more times and then finally it all goes live.
Not all projects at the corp work this way- some are in older languages and still program based (vs release based) and their changes kinda dribble out. The developers on those are two layers isolated from customers too.
This all comes from when a developer says something correct but politically stupid to customers. It causes lots of pain for the managers and executives (who were spinning like mad) and so they make policies that only politically aware people talk/email/send notices to end customers.
How in the heck is Fry's selling the "more expensive Vista Premium" along with $400 worth of parts retail cost for $349 if the OS is so expensive?
Perhaps Microsoft is now charging Frys and other OEM vendors basically the same price (at a huge discount) for both versions of Vista.
In my experience at a large corporation
you are not allowed to consult with the customers (That's a BA) (and you are not allowed to talk to the people that talk directly to customers very often either).
writing the specification (That's the designer or architect)
getting the specification approved (Project Manager)
user-interface testing (Okay maybe you except at super large companies)
load-testing (ITQA, or not done because too expensive)
support and maintenenance for the life-cycle of the project (usually handed over to programmers stuck on the maintenance and support crew)
as well as the actual implementation (this is you- and before you are finished, you are over allocated to two other projects at "highest priority" to fix as well.
Not really.
Ron Paul is the only candidate who is saying what he really believes in (and has consistently voted for) instead of carefully spin doctored positions.
He's against abortion (I disagree with him there- tho I do agree the government shouldn't pay for it)
He really is for small government (and regularly votes down any expansion of government programs, spending, etc.)
He's pretty naive that leaving the corporations without the government to oppose them would work out (corporate corruption of our government is our biggest problem and is leading us to facism/corporatism)
The fact is that we have been lead to pay for a lot of things that we shouldn't have to. Government should be small. And then it would take less of your money in taxes and you could give it to charities of your choice. And a lot of real people would really suffer. People would get sick and not get better.
But the converse is that the government is going to be controlling what we eat, smoke, and drink because our self-abuse costs everyone else money. Since they are paying for us, they get a say on our behavior.
I am in support of Ron Paul. I think he is unelectable because the republican party is against him. I listen to a lot of talk radio and the conservative shows are just merciless. They hate his guts. And it's ironic because he's really what a lot of republican voters want.
---
I think all the other candidates are untrustworthy. I think they will say they believe positions A,B,C when they really believe positions C,F,G. Once elected they will push C,F,G and completely drop A,B which is supposedly why you voted for them.
While I disagree with about 40% of Ron Paul's positions, I trust him. I think he is telling us honestly what he believes in. I know his district has repeatedly reelected him again and again. I might be mistaken but i think that he's one of the *two* real military veterans running. I think the rest are more likely to be Bush type war hawks- getting us into wars and getting a lot of kids killed (but not "their" kids).
---
For the record, my position is social liberal, fiscal conservative. I.e. Let people do what they want in their own lives and keep the *federal*
government out of what should be *state* business. So pro-people doing whatever they want with their bodies, anti national health care, schooling, pro-national defense, pro-lower taxes (but also pro much less programs). I don't think something should be considered for charity unless it really is for the poor (no donating for opera houses which only rich people can go to).
Anyway-- late tired and rambling/blathering.
It doesn't matter if you think your company can make 100% profits and double its stock every year.
You should NEVER... EVER... have more than 20% of your retirement in anything. And 20% is if you are a wild eyed gambler or have less than $100k.
Otherwise, you limit your exposure to any given area to 5%. If you have "small" amounts of money (under $500k), you get that diversification by using mutual funds or ETF's.
Otherwise, you are not investing- you are really just gambling. And in many cases with worse odds than they will give you in Vegas.
People who are not programmers seem to have a hard time understanding that 7 years java experience is not equal to 7 years .net experience.
They understand it when they hire you, but three months later they need a "senior developer" and they re-org you on to a team they would never hire you for.
It's just crazy.
Of course.
And part of market forces is aggressively identifying when a marketer is lying about what they are selling.
And part of market forces is trying to get them fined if they are engaging in fraud.
See my other post.
In my view, since you tube earns advertising dollars (and gives people like her a cut in some circumstances) from advertisers paying for people like you and me who go to the site who see their ads, then it isn't fair use.
If she wants to use the song in her own video- cool.
If she wants to post that video without any advertising- cool tho shaky.
Why shaky...
Okay so I video dogs, you, random birds, etc. with a copyrighted song playing. Then I run those videos in a bar. You can't do that without paying a fee. It's not whats on the video- it is that you are playing the song in a place presumably to draw people there to spend money.
Since you are using another person's creation to earn money, it's fair that you pay them money for that creation. Earning money includes barter. I am fairly rabidly anti copyright- and think it should stop after 28 years and think that you should have to pay a fee every year or it falls into the public domain (to prevent crap like happy birthday and "it's a wonderful life" from happening). But if you are going to earn money from someone else's recent creation, then you should pay a share to the person that made the thing making you money.
And sorry- but a baby dancing to silence or random unknown music isn't interesting- it's because it is prince's song that it is interesting.
That applies fine to her *personal* use.
It doesn't apply to posting it on a site with advertisements.
Her video attracts people to the site and advertisers pay the site for those visitors.
If she wants to put the video on a personal site with no advertising then cool.
Freedom to leave a particular country is increasingly immaterial.
If she is using someone else's copyrighted material and anyone is earning money off of it besides the creators without their permission, then she is infringing.
I'm sorry but I think those all apply here.
Written in 1984, it is only 24 years old- so even by the original jeffersonian copyright rules which I prefer & support the song should have another four years to go.
Yes including the goods that we now compete with them to purchase.
Like oil
Like food
Like beachfront property
Like disney vacations
Like front row seats at the $300+ concerts
Like the best shows and rooms in vegas
We are becoming second class citizens in our own countries.
No... of course not
And sony doesn't miss the roughly nine grand I have very specifically not spent on their products since they pissed me off back in 2001.
But I won't buy from them again and I tell all my friends they suck.
There are lots of alternatives these days.
And as the first poster says-- why do they get to use $33 labor in india and then REQUIRE that we pay full retail for it while giving breaks to people in other countries.
This sounds like a wto case in the making to me.
Man... showing my age. And my fatigue levels.
The flu early this century disproportionately killed the more healthy.
Essentially the old and young could not mount a strong enough defense to kill themselves. In healthy people, their cells dissolved themselves trying to fight the virus.
Cut and paste... /tmp/gutsy-wrestling-babes-dvd-i386.iso.torrent /home/-------/Ubuntu/gutsy-dvd-i386.iso
4336.0 of 4336.0 MB at 63.49 KB/s
16 hours, 59 minutes, and 51 seconds