Yes that is true. I'm saying that unless you pay top dollar, you can't have instability and retain the cream of the crop.
So the business has a choice of keeping everyone and saving 20-30% on salaries or being ruthless and being faced with equally ruthless behavior by its employees.
And when the good people leave- you are *stuck* with the worst. You cannot afford to fire anyone when the two sub performers are the only two people left.
Whenever we (humans) are stronger than others we take advantage of that strength.
In the end, being able to fight more safely will end up with us killing more people.
---
However, the longer we put off killing people, the worse the mess is going to be when we start again. We will forget and at least one nation is going to start up something really nasty during the next 50 years. Probably a billion people will die.
For what it is worth- indian resources are up to $35 an hour with onshore indian resources at $65 an hour PLUS $1k monthly housing allowance. The end is near for this kind of activity. Those rates do not reflect last week's sharp currency depreciation of the dollar.
And yet... we can sell the same movie in china for $2.49 and $19.99 in america and ban reimportation. (or even better the same drugs for $.10 vs $5.50 and ban reimportation).
IT suggests, warns, pleads, complains and is ignored.
Outside consultants and service companies promise the moon and the stars and are listened to by management.
End result.. millions of dollars in savings!*
*oh.. well sure production was down for three days (average income: $120million a week so hmmm...$30 million in cost?) but the executives get to choose how things are scored so that was counted as an emergency that had nothing to do with the cost savings (even tho it was a result of the cost savings).
There is a difference between firing 1 person (and everyone agrees there was likely cause) and firing 15 people.
I'm observed that firing the "dead wood" in the second fashion resulted in losing about 50% of our highest quality employees over the next 18 months. Many of them had been here for 10 or more years. Prior to this the company was strongly against mass firings or layoffs. So people who valued that stayed despite lower pay.
If you are good- and you can make $120k, then why the hell would you stay at a company for $106k unless there is some non-financial incentive? That is exactly what happened here.
The result is a lot of canceled projects- failed projects- etc. when a key resource for the project suddenly disappears into tech consulting or the oil field.
I agree. While the national economists have been saying this would not be a problem and trees would grow to the sky, the financial guys on local talk radio ("StreetTalk") have been worrying about the sub prime mortgage and resulting recession for about two years.
If anything they reacted about 8 months too early.
Meanwhile using the "official" rates, $1.77 buys what $1 did in 1987.
The government just has too much vested interest in understating inflation. It raises veterans benefits, social security, and many other CPI based raises.
Sox reduced my actual time to develop from 32 hours a week to about 60 hours per 2 months over the space of 3 years. I was getting so few "aha I found it" hits debugging and coding any more that I went into project management (more money and I could get Sox out of the way of my people- plus the wrists are not what they used to be either).
Offshoring has moved a lot of the fun work too- now they give "tickets" to our guys who use canned solutions-- giving all the longer analysis over to cheaper labor. We've lost people over the ticket issue.
You become a coder because you *love* coding and then they make you do paperwork (up to 10 pages for a 1 line change).
For my needs (EQ, email, occasional funny video) a $17 AT&T DSL account would be fine. It's okay because of occasional torrent related surges that I keep my $55 cable line.
Aye. Probably 99% of the site benefit to me. I was so glad to find a source for the comics I grew up with (Adam Strange and others)... most of which either are or should be out of copyright after 45 to 50 years. The only way to get them hard copy would have been prohibitively expensive if even possible since many issues are not for sale often.
Typically, an IT degree (required by corporations for the job) costs about $50,000 (not counting the lost income for 4 years) to $80,000 (2 to 4 more years). Corporations complain they cannot find fully trained labor, refuse to train, and then won't pay enough to cover the cost of education for the position.
One key advantage indians currently have is attending schools with lower costs (because their professors make 1/10th what a US professor does and the cost of living is 1/10th of the US).
These advantages are *very* temporary. Cost of living is screaming up in the entire world. Wages remain stagnant here but the "good stuff" keeps going up because now wealthy people from the entire world are competing for those few Aspen chalet's and California beach front properties.
Very valid points. There really is a limited supply of really talented programmers. Talented programmers become expensive regardless of which country they are sitting in.
There are four key factors * Offshoring has resulted in a big dip in US programmer creation (colleges being closed in some cases it is dropped so much). * baby boomer retirement starts in 2010 and just goes on for the next 10 years after that creating a huge labor shortage. * The decline of the dollar against every other world currency. * Growth of Indian and Chinese (etc.) economies are starting to suck up excess smart people for their own needs.
There is also a couple1 sub-factors. I have found indian programmers do not have the same communication and "face" problems as programmers from asian cultures. It can be fits to work with a chinese person who is embarrassed to tell you they are failing before they actually fail and on top of that they leave out every third word in emails and documentation.
IT Managers have no way of knowing if an IT person is productive or not. The only way they know when they are being ridiculous is when you fail.
Fail earlier and they will not push so hard.
You can make the same money working 40 hours a week as you do working 60 hours a week (6 figures +).
Oh-- and those indian programmers got 10% more expensive last week in one day because of currency changes. And we have at least two more interest cuts on the way that will damage the currency but save a lot of homeowners so further currency depreciation is likely. I recently saw a burn rate for Infosys personnel from a project estimate. For onshore resources they are now more expensive ($65/hr + $1k a month housing allowance) than US resources including our benefits.
I think the great offshoring wave is going to stop quickly now... and maybe our wages will start recovering.
The fact is good trained experienced programmers are worth $100k regardless of the nation they are sitting in. As a result of that fact, labor costs in india and china have been going up 40% a year before you take into account the dollar dropping and their currencies rising.
The key point is that if you buy solar today and it works at a basically fixed cost for 25 years, you will probably be paying 1/3 the price for power at that point.
So you buy $50,000 solar now- it generates $2k a year solar power now. That's a 25 year pay out. But... it generates $6k a year in 20 years. That's a 9 year pay out.
Of course, to be fair, you also have to ask if you put $50,000 in the bank now, would it be $150k in 20 years? And it probably would be.
It's a bit of a side point, but electricity has tripled in cost since the mid 1980's (20 years).
So in about 80 years, we could reasonably expect the price of electricity to be 3x3x3x3 (81 timex) as expensive as today. Basic inflation.. and not as scary as it seems since our wages will be close to correspondingly higher.
For any product for which demand exists and for which there is limited supply, there is a set of prices that are low enough (law of demand) that all items will sell. Of these, pick the highest: this represents the most money that you can make, while still selling all the items in your inventory.
Please read my post in that context. I think it might make a bit more sense to you.
You don't have to sell everything to make the most profit. You often make a higher profit setting a price so high that you do not sell a lot of your product.
If there was no option except computers without operating systems on them, there would be a solution.
1) Installation routines would get a lot better. 2) There would be a separate business right next to the big box store that installed OS's (like there is an eye doctor "Next" to TSO, not "in" TSO). 3) BIOS might get a lot smarter. 4) Folks would mail order computers that came with an O/S. 5) You would buy the O/S separately and then pay a small fee to have it installed (like video cards).
Slashdot Mirror
Why do that when they can simply read it off of eBay.com Trust & Safety forums.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/26/144210
Sorry the moderator doesn't like reality (humans kill and oppress humans.. a lot).
This: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=310189&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=20768721
is an example of an offtopic post.
My post was a response to a thread in the topic.
I'm shocked... shocked to discover poor moderating taking place.
blah
Yes that is true.
I'm saying that unless you pay top dollar, you can't have instability and retain the cream of the crop.
So the business has a choice of keeping everyone and saving 20-30% on salaries or being ruthless and being faced with equally ruthless behavior by its employees.
And when the good people leave- you are *stuck* with the worst. You cannot afford to fire anyone when the two sub performers are the only two people left.
Do you feel there will not be another world war in the next 1000 years?
You are correct that we have not had a large war for an unusually long period.
Let's hope for the best and plan for the worst.
Whenever we (humans) are stronger than others we take advantage of that strength.
In the end, being able to fight more safely will end up with us killing more people.
---
However, the longer we put off killing people, the worse the mess is going to be when we start again. We will forget and at least one nation is going to start up something really nasty during the next 50 years. Probably a billion people will die.
And homonyms! ;)
Yet mysteriously absent from http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html and other homonym lists!
For what it is worth- indian resources are up to $35 an hour with onshore indian resources at $65 an hour PLUS $1k monthly housing allowance. The end is near for this kind of activity. Those rates do not reflect last week's sharp currency depreciation of the dollar.
And yet... we can sell the same movie in china for $2.49 and $19.99 in america and ban reimportation. (or even better the same drugs for $.10 vs $5.50 and ban reimportation).
That is not the case here (fortune 500 company).
IT suggests, warns, pleads, complains and is ignored.
Outside consultants and service companies promise the moon and the stars and are listened to by management.
End result.. millions of dollars in savings!*
*oh.. well sure production was down for three days (average income: $120million a week so hmmm...$30 million in cost?) but the executives get to choose how things are scored so that was counted as an emergency that had nothing to do with the cost savings (even tho it was a result of the cost savings).
There is a difference between firing 1 person (and everyone agrees there was likely cause) and firing 15 people.
I'm observed that firing the "dead wood" in the second fashion resulted in losing about 50% of our highest quality employees over the next 18 months. Many of them had been here for 10 or more years. Prior to this the company was strongly against mass firings or layoffs. So people who valued that stayed despite lower pay.
If you are good- and you can make $120k, then why the hell would you stay at a company for $106k unless there is some non-financial incentive? That is exactly what happened here.
The result is a lot of canceled projects- failed projects- etc. when a key resource for the project suddenly disappears into tech consulting or the oil field.
I agree. While the national economists have been saying this would not be a problem and trees would grow to the sky, the financial guys on local talk radio ("StreetTalk") have been worrying about the sub prime mortgage and resulting recession for about two years.
If anything they reacted about 8 months too early.
You can use the rule of 72.
2% inflation is 100% compounded inflation every 36 years.
3% inflation is 100% compounded inflation every 24 years.
Electricity prices have roughly tripled (5.4 cents to 15.1 cents) in 22 years.
Hershey Bars have gone up 150% in 23 years. http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq5.html#restaurant
Milk is up over 150% ($1.98 to $5.50) since 1987. http://www.inthe80s.com/prices.shtml
Meanwhile using the "official" rates, $1.77 buys what $1 did in 1987.
The government just has too much vested interest in understating inflation. It raises veterans benefits, social security, and many other CPI based raises.
If I was at a place that fired people like that, I would start looking immediately.
Heck, we had one layoff two years ago and have lost a couple dozen quality people since then who were prompted to look elsewhere by the event.
I guess if you pay top dollar you can get away with more firings. If your pay is average, you will lose your best people if you fire their buds.
Sox reduced my actual time to develop from 32 hours a week to about 60 hours per 2 months over the space of 3 years. I was getting so few "aha I found it" hits debugging and coding any more that I went into project management (more money and I could get Sox out of the way of my people- plus the wrists are not what they used to be either).
Offshoring has moved a lot of the fun work too- now they give "tickets" to our guys who use canned solutions-- giving all the longer analysis over to cheaper labor. We've lost people over the ticket issue.
You become a coder because you *love* coding and then they make you do paperwork (up to 10 pages for a 1 line change).
I pondered this last night.
For my needs (EQ, email, occasional funny video) a $17 AT&T DSL account would be fine. It's okay because of occasional torrent related surges that I keep my $55 cable line.
Aye.
Probably 99% of the site benefit to me.
I was so glad to find a source for the comics I grew up with (Adam Strange and others)... most of which either are or should be out of copyright after 45 to 50 years. The only way to get them hard copy would have been prohibitively expensive if even possible since many issues are not for sale often.
Typically, an IT degree (required by corporations for the job) costs about $50,000 (not counting the lost income for 4 years) to $80,000 (2 to 4 more years).
Corporations complain they cannot find fully trained labor, refuse to train, and then won't pay enough to cover the cost of education for the position.
One key advantage indians currently have is attending schools with lower costs (because their professors make 1/10th what a US professor does and the cost of living is 1/10th of the US).
These advantages are *very* temporary. Cost of living is screaming up in the entire world. Wages remain stagnant here but the "good stuff" keeps going up because now wealthy people from the entire world are competing for those few Aspen chalet's and California beach front properties.
Very valid points. There really is a limited supply of really talented programmers. Talented programmers become expensive regardless of which country they are sitting in.
There are four key factors
* Offshoring has resulted in a big dip in US programmer creation (colleges being closed in some cases it is dropped so much).
* baby boomer retirement starts in 2010 and just goes on for the next 10 years after that creating a huge labor shortage.
* The decline of the dollar against every other world currency.
* Growth of Indian and Chinese (etc.) economies are starting to suck up excess smart people for their own needs.
There is also a couple1 sub-factors.
I have found indian programmers do not have the same communication and "face" problems as programmers from asian cultures. It can be fits to work with a chinese person who is embarrassed to tell you they are failing before they actually fail and on top of that they leave out every third word in emails and documentation.
IT Managers have no way of knowing if an IT person is productive or not. The only way they know when they are being ridiculous is when you fail.
Fail earlier and they will not push so hard.
You can make the same money working 40 hours a week as you do working 60 hours a week (6 figures +).
Oh-- and those indian programmers got 10% more expensive last week in one day because of currency changes. And we have at least two more interest cuts on the way that will damage the currency but save a lot of homeowners so further currency depreciation is likely. I recently saw a burn rate for Infosys personnel from a project estimate. For onshore resources they are now more expensive ($65/hr + $1k a month housing allowance) than US resources including our benefits.
I think the great offshoring wave is going to stop quickly now... and maybe our wages will start recovering.
The fact is good trained experienced programmers are worth $100k regardless of the nation they are sitting in. As a result of that fact, labor costs in india and china have been going up 40% a year before you take into account the dollar dropping and their currencies rising.
The key point is that if you buy solar today and it works at a basically fixed cost for 25 years, you will probably be paying 1/3 the price for power at that point.
So you buy $50,000 solar now- it generates $2k a year solar power now. That's a 25 year pay out. But... it generates $6k a year in 20 years. That's a 9 year pay out.
Of course, to be fair, you also have to ask if you put $50,000 in the bank now, would it be $150k in 20 years? And it probably would be.
Okay. I see your point. I was reacting to a sub-part out of context.
Probably too tired to have been posting.
It's a bit of a side point, but electricity has tripled in cost since the mid 1980's (20 years).
So in about 80 years, we could reasonably expect the price of electricity to be 3x3x3x3 (81 timex) as expensive as today. Basic inflation.. and not as scary as it seems since our wages will be close to correspondingly higher.
I was disagreeing with your point:
For any product for which demand exists and for which there is limited supply, there is a set of prices that are low enough (law of demand) that all items will sell. Of these, pick the highest: this represents the most money that you can make, while still selling all the items in your inventory.
Please read my post in that context. I think it might make a bit more sense to you.
You don't have to sell everything to make the most profit. You often make a higher profit setting a price so high that you do not sell a lot of your product.
If there was no option except computers without operating systems on them, there would be a solution.
1) Installation routines would get a lot better.
2) There would be a separate business right next to the big box store that installed OS's (like there is an eye doctor "Next" to TSO, not "in" TSO).
3) BIOS might get a lot smarter.
4) Folks would mail order computers that came with an O/S.
5) You would buy the O/S separately and then pay a small fee to have it installed (like video cards).
etc.