All this tells us is that people will change their opinion depending on what "the news" tells them. Spin a story one way and you've got a hero. Put a different emphasis on it and you create a villain.
Maybe if the truth came out, and was laid before the public with no interpretation, value judgements or commentary they would be in a position to make up their own mind (sometimes I just can't help but laugh as I'm writing this stuff) and come to a conclusion of their own.
He has come into a new organisation and needs to find out who's who. He needs to identify the competent managers (AKA threats), the lazy ones, and the idiots. A good way to do that is to drop a problem on the organisation, then sit back and see how it plays out. It's more of an exercise in office dynamics than a budgetary cut.
What the OP needs to do is adopt a similar position. See which teams and departments come out of this change ahead of the game and which ones are the losers. Then make sure he nails his colours to the right mast and wait for the next step up the career ladder.
I would move some of the IT related spend into a different budgetary category.
I expect from your question that you are one of the junior members of the organisation. The management will already have made plans for some token cuts to non-essential areas (though that could still include you) and found ways to preserve their empires, and maybe even surreptitiously carve out a little more besides, with financial shenannigans - that's their job.
You new director doesn't actually want any reductions in overall spend - that would be silly. He/she/it just wants to look like they are making a splash as a new appointee. That's how they gain their reputation and more importantly: their bonus.
The only thing to look out for is if your manager is somewhat clueless in playing the game at this level and actually believes the diktat that's come down from on high. If so, just put in a transfer to a different department. Your boss will be too busy wondering what hit them to worry about you.
Is secret information still secret information if it's no longer secret?
Well, yes. Provided you use a definition of "secret" as: information that would be useful to an enemy" then if the information is useful to an enemy it is still classified as secret. The problem with the current scenario (which is really just censorship, pure and simple - though not very good censorship) is that it there is a difference between military thinking that uses the above definition and common sense. The military, by asking it's personnel if they wouldn't mind, please, not looking at secret information that's in the public domain is just showing how far removed it is from both common sense and any clue of what the public thinks of them.
When reviewing this debacle (among others) you'd be forgiven for asking out loud whether is bunch is worth dying, or killing, for.
Actually defining a person, organisation or a state as an enemy automatically assumes guilt. I believe that since 2001 the opposite has also been true: that being guilty automatically makes you an enemy in the eyes of the state. It's even likely that being accused is now enough to invoke the "enemy" status and therefore have your rights as a human being revoked.
If nobody else can understand the stuff you wrote, then you have created a problem and it's up to you to solve it. If you are prepared to do that, then fine. Be a slave to your code for the rest of your career.
However, if you want to write code and move on then you can act professionally and create product that others can take off you and use as your legacy. it can still be complex - just so long as you can explain in the documentation why it is complex and what the (complex) functions actually do. You never know: those who follow might even learn something valuable from your output - rather than learning not to go anywhere near your stuff in the future.
in the UK padding your CV seems to be sort of expected
No. Maybe 20 years ago but now if you can *prove* that a candidate lied: doesn't have the degree they claimed, didn't work (or left under a cloud) for a given company, weren't doing a particular job then that's one of the few grounds for dismissal.
However in the FB age, it's easy to check up on peoples' claims, so telling porkies is futile. Worse than that, every tech job, EVERY tech job goes through a recruitment agency <spit>, shiver, I feel unclean even just typing the word. So you only have to report back to them that the candidate was lying and they'll be dropped instantly - or at least the agency will tell you they've been dropped. The agencies are so desperate for a placement that anything which could damage their standing (I nearly wrote "reputation") is taken very seriously - though that's never stopped *them* inventing stuff, themselves.
and that's: "I don't know, but I can do some research and find out".
Almost none of the questions I've seen have provided enough information to get past the "it depends" stage. That they make candidates make wild-assed-guesses and then try to justify them is possibly a good way to test for poor managerial qualities, but the answers never have the level of explanation that the real life answers have. The days when a back-of-the envelope calculation is enough are long gone (and probably never existed int he real world anyway). So it's good to see a major employer rejecting them. Shame it didn't happen 20 years ago/
I'm told map makers have been doing this forever. They move symbols slightly, change the placing of text and introduce new, insignificant features. All to stop other publishers from copying their maps, or using them as the basis for maps they pass off as their own work
Since you have to ask on an internet forum how to do this task, it's apparent you haven't done it before - or have any particular skills in management consultancy. If you had, two things would happen: (1) you'd know how to do the assessment and (2) you'd know not to ask a bunch of geeks how to solve a non-technical, management problem.
So we can assume that the CFO who gave you this task is him/her-self not very good at choosing the right person to do a job. (Alternatively, you've wandered in to a minefield of office politics and are being set up as someone's fall guy by powers you are unaware of). That probably answers the question about the IT manager - they aren't good, because the person who selected them for the job makes poor personnel decisions.
In fact, the CFO doesn't even appear to be very good at keeping the finances under control, if he/she is allowing the IT department to overspend to such a degree.
To answer your specific question, I'd go back to the processes that are in place. Check over the IT manager's past few annual reviews. What were the targets? Were they met? If not, what remedial action was taken? What weaknesses did he/she have identified and what was done to fix these?
If the answer is that there IS no review / personnel development programme in place, that explains your IT guy. If the reviews are failing to identify problems, then it sounds like the reviewer needs fixing, too. You can also get consultancies like Gartner to do assessments of the IT operation and it's efficiency. It could simply be that the CFO has unrealistic expectations of what it costs to run a modern IT department.
the public trust of the corporation extended to the time on their website.
So should the corporation not broadcast any documentaries, for fear that they might contain an inaccuracy. Or not broadcast any news reports on the offchance that one of the "facts" is untrue?
It's clearly ridiculous for a person or a corporation to not do anything in case it is wrong - and in the case of time, trivially wrong. The BBC make lots of mistakes - frequently very high profile mistakes every year (some costing £100 million). Maybe they should be closed down to stop them making any more.
This fear of criticism is a paralysing effect that is bad for everybody. Let them make the inconsequential mistakes (and the second mistake was the governors') and focus their efforts on the BIG issues - and trying, please, to get them right.
That's not the point. Whether another body agreed that there was a complaint is irrelevant. The problem is how the BBC (not its trust) deals with this complaint and every other complaint they receive, in general.
To complain that a clock somewhere is inaccurate is trivial. To then decide to take it away simply because it is inaccurate is a massive over-reaction. The sensible reaction would be to say "Yes it is, now go away". If every clock that was a little bit off was removed, the world would have no clocks left.
As to all the other complaints the BBC receive, these are normally numbered in single digits. Occasionally a programme might get as many as a few dozen complaints (out of an audience in the millions). That they choose to take these trivial objections and paltry numbers seriously is ridiculous. It also acts in an anti-democratic way - that the views of a tiny minority of excessively vocal individuals is enough to affect the lives (albeit the leisure activities) of millions, by denying them opportunities to see programmes that the vast majority of people don't feel have anything wrong with them.
the BBC Trust upheld a complaint that it was inaccurate
OK, so it's inaccurate - that just puts it in the same class as every clock in the world, excluding the global standards (and even they don't agree when you get down to small enough time divisions).
This is a systemic problem with the Beeb. They take every complaint or criticism "personally". If a programme draws a few complaints then an apology gets issued. If an interviewee uses a "bad" word on live TV an apologist instants says sorry. The corporation seems to have this view of itself as being infallible and that every mistake is the cause for some self-flagellation.
Although I can see why they have this view: they are publicly funded from a virtually compulsory source (have a TV? you gotta pay) and have made a whole string of astoundingly stupid blunders in the past - and this pronouncement is just one more. However they really should build a little self-confidence and learn to stand up and say to their critics "screw you - yes, we make mistakes... live with it".
Now, where is the difference between a normal human being taking a pic of currrent happenings or the reporter?
Just so long as the reporters getting this training realise that they are next for the chop - just as soon as reader-submitted "news" becomes more plentiful.
If you want to see the world, then focus on that. Take some time (not 2 or 3 years, a few months) and do your travelling. However, get involved in it and leave your techy bits behind.
If you feel unable to spend time apart from your computers, then spend the time writing your software as that will be apparently what you value most highly. Part of growing up is getting to know yourself: are you more content doing software on your own, or can you put that to one side and do something completely different that is also important to you? Maybe this episode will help you learn something about yourself - nerd or explorer?
So will these "minimum standards" now become a de-facto definition of "good" and (in law) "negligent" behaviour. I.e. if you don't meet these standards, you will be held accountable for security breaches, maybe even have any insurance cover withheld.
I think you're confusing communism with a surveillance society. Sure, the USSR encouraged a climate of fear, but that was because the regime was poor and having the citizens in a continual state of fear is the cheapest way to control them. The way that the USA and other western democracies used to use to control their citizens was the threat of taking away their wealth and lifestyle. They've now discovered that the same goals can be achieved much cheaper by the use of fear - so they've adopted the tactics of the totalitarian regimes. It's true that dictatorships and poorly run communist states are poor, but it's not a requirement of communism to monitor and terrorise its population - it's just the easiest way to keep them subjugated.
I'm guessing what we have here is a junior programmer who's acting up because he is in the presence of senior staff, who are better paid than him, but don't have his spread of buzzwords. It's a sign of inexperience to assume that you're better, simply because you have been taught all the trendy buzzwords. I doubt that the older guys transgressions are anything really significant - maybe he cocked up a RCS entry once and maybe he doesn't know some of the stuff that the new kid does.
However I would not be at all surprised to learn that Old Guy is more than pulling his weight where it counts: producing reliable stuff that is efficient, well documented, properly tested and on time. What New Kid fails to recognise is that in a short time, some other New Kid will be sniping at HIM for the same reason he's whining on now.
Those (enlightened, safe) parts of the world with gun controls generally have the same sensible controls over ammo, too. So being able to print a gun leaves you with a rather cheesy ornament since you can't get any bullets to fire from the thing. That's probably just as well since places that don't permit people to shoot each other generally have a population that knows nothing about guns: how to maintain them, load them or shoot them. So putting a weapon in the hands of inexperienced people is probably the dumbest thing you can possibly do.
it's when things go wrong that voice menus and web sites just seem to make simple problems into complicated ones.
My experience is that when things go wrong the LAST person you want to have to deal with is an under-trained, demotivated human who just wants you and your problem to go away. They'll tell you whatever gets you out of their way and woe betide anyone who rocks up to their counter within 5 minutes of going-home time.
Few of the studies have reproducible results and fewer are able to draw hard, unambiguous, numerical conclusions from their data. So it doesn't make much difference whether american students or penguins were used as test subjects - unless the study was on the motivational effect of raw fish.
I, for one, plan to buy one of these and write them a happy letter! (of course, I am not looking to improve the mechanics of my bike riding, only how stupid I look doing it)
Not advisable. With obviously incorrect sales pitches, such as this, there is gold to be extracted.
What you have (apart from a number of happy but evil customers who gave this as a present to someone they didn't like) is a mailing list with the names and addresses of some very gullible people and people with low control over their impulse to buy junk. This is worth far more than SPAM lists as the clientele is proven to buy pointless items, and to fall for the dumbest advertisements.
It may even be that the value of the list far exceeds the development cost of the flawed product and could even be the covert line of business - with the bicycle pedal just being a front for the real business: identifying people with more money than sense.
The basic problem with Ultra-HD is that nobody can see it. You'd have to be sitting so close to the screen to appreciate the difference (from "normal" HD) that your eyes couldn't see the whole screen. Add on to that. that the data stream would be so highly compressed to fit into the available bandwidth that the only difference would be the resolution of the artifacts. What you have is the video equivalent of an audio bandwidth extending into the 100's of kHz. great for any dogs listening, or eagles watching your TV, but utterly pointless for humans, unless their motivation is so immature that they feel the need to have something impractically better than the guy next door's, no matter what the cost - or usefulness.
Slashdot Mirror
'Based on what you've heard ...
All this tells us is that people will change their opinion depending on what "the news" tells them. Spin a story one way and you've got a hero. Put a different emphasis on it and you create a villain.
Maybe if the truth came out, and was laid before the public with no interpretation, value judgements or commentary they would be in a position to make up their own mind (sometimes I just can't help but laugh as I'm writing this stuff) and come to a conclusion of their own.
Quite. Maybe more people would want to go into Computer Science if they didn't have to mess around with programming
He has come into a new organisation and needs to find out who's who. He needs to identify the competent managers (AKA threats), the lazy ones, and the idiots. A good way to do that is to drop a problem on the organisation, then sit back and see how it plays out. It's more of an exercise in office dynamics than a budgetary cut.
What the OP needs to do is adopt a similar position. See which teams and departments come out of this change ahead of the game and which ones are the losers. Then make sure he nails his colours to the right mast and wait for the next step up the career ladder.
What strategy would you use
I would move some of the IT related spend into a different budgetary category.
I expect from your question that you are one of the junior members of the organisation. The management will already have made plans for some token cuts to non-essential areas (though that could still include you) and found ways to preserve their empires, and maybe even surreptitiously carve out a little more besides, with financial shenannigans - that's their job.
You new director doesn't actually want any reductions in overall spend - that would be silly. He/she/it just wants to look like they are making a splash as a new appointee. That's how they gain their reputation and more importantly: their bonus.
The only thing to look out for is if your manager is somewhat clueless in playing the game at this level and actually believes the diktat that's come down from on high. If so, just put in a transfer to a different department. Your boss will be too busy wondering what hit them to worry about you.
Is secret information still secret information if it's no longer secret?
Well, yes. Provided you use a definition of "secret" as: information that would be useful to an enemy" then if the information is useful to an enemy it is still classified as secret. The problem with the current scenario (which is really just censorship, pure and simple - though not very good censorship) is that it there is a difference between military thinking that uses the above definition and common sense. The military, by asking it's personnel if they wouldn't mind, please, not looking at secret information that's in the public domain is just showing how far removed it is from both common sense and any clue of what the public thinks of them.
When reviewing this debacle (among others) you'd be forgiven for asking out loud whether is bunch is worth dying, or killing, for.
enemy and guilty
Actually defining a person, organisation or a state as an enemy automatically assumes guilt. I believe that since 2001 the opposite has also been true: that being guilty automatically makes you an enemy in the eyes of the state. It's even likely that being accused is now enough to invoke the "enemy" status and therefore have your rights as a human being revoked.
If nobody else can understand the stuff you wrote, then you have created a problem and it's up to you to solve it. If you are prepared to do that, then fine. Be a slave to your code for the rest of your career.
However, if you want to write code and move on then you can act professionally and create product that others can take off you and use as your legacy. it can still be complex - just so long as you can explain in the documentation why it is complex and what the (complex) functions actually do. You never know: those who follow might even learn something valuable from your output - rather than learning not to go anywhere near your stuff in the future.
in the UK padding your CV seems to be sort of expected
No. Maybe 20 years ago but now if you can *prove* that a candidate lied: doesn't have the degree they claimed, didn't work (or left under a cloud) for a given company, weren't doing a particular job then that's one of the few grounds for dismissal.
However in the FB age, it's easy to check up on peoples' claims, so telling porkies is futile. Worse than that, every tech job, EVERY tech job goes through a recruitment agency <spit>, shiver, I feel unclean even just typing the word. So you only have to report back to them that the candidate was lying and they'll be dropped instantly - or at least the agency will tell you they've been dropped. The agencies are so desperate for a placement that anything which could damage their standing (I nearly wrote "reputation") is taken very seriously - though that's never stopped *them* inventing stuff, themselves.
Almost none of the questions I've seen have provided enough information to get past the "it depends" stage. That they make candidates make wild-assed-guesses and then try to justify them is possibly a good way to test for poor managerial qualities, but the answers never have the level of explanation that the real life answers have. The days when a back-of-the envelope calculation is enough are long gone (and probably never existed int he real world anyway). So it's good to see a major employer rejecting them. Shame it didn't happen 20 years ago/
I'm told map makers have been doing this forever. They move symbols slightly, change the placing of text and introduce new, insignificant features. All to stop other publishers from copying their maps, or using them as the basis for maps they pass off as their own work
I have been asked ....
Since you have to ask on an internet forum how to do this task, it's apparent you haven't done it before - or have any particular skills in management consultancy. If you had, two things would happen: (1) you'd know how to do the assessment and (2) you'd know not to ask a bunch of geeks how to solve a non-technical, management problem.
So we can assume that the CFO who gave you this task is him/her-self not very good at choosing the right person to do a job. (Alternatively, you've wandered in to a minefield of office politics and are being set up as someone's fall guy by powers you are unaware of). That probably answers the question about the IT manager - they aren't good, because the person who selected them for the job makes poor personnel decisions.
In fact, the CFO doesn't even appear to be very good at keeping the finances under control, if he/she is allowing the IT department to overspend to such a degree.
To answer your specific question, I'd go back to the processes that are in place. Check over the IT manager's past few annual reviews. What were the targets? Were they met? If not, what remedial action was taken? What weaknesses did he/she have identified and what was done to fix these?
If the answer is that there IS no review / personnel development programme in place, that explains your IT guy. If the reviews are failing to identify problems, then it sounds like the reviewer needs fixing, too. You can also get consultancies like Gartner to do assessments of the IT operation and it's efficiency. It could simply be that the CFO has unrealistic expectations of what it costs to run a modern IT department.
Whatever you do, tread very, very carefully.
the public trust of the corporation extended to the time on their website.
So should the corporation not broadcast any documentaries, for fear that they might contain an inaccuracy. Or not broadcast any news reports on the offchance that one of the "facts" is untrue?
It's clearly ridiculous for a person or a corporation to not do anything in case it is wrong - and in the case of time, trivially wrong. The BBC make lots of mistakes - frequently very high profile mistakes every year (some costing £100 million). Maybe they should be closed down to stop them making any more.
This fear of criticism is a paralysing effect that is bad for everybody. Let them make the inconsequential mistakes (and the second mistake was the governors') and focus their efforts on the BIG issues - and trying, please, to get them right.
To complain that a clock somewhere is inaccurate is trivial. To then decide to take it away simply because it is inaccurate is a massive over-reaction. The sensible reaction would be to say "Yes it is, now go away". If every clock that was a little bit off was removed, the world would have no clocks left.
As to all the other complaints the BBC receive, these are normally numbered in single digits. Occasionally a programme might get as many as a few dozen complaints (out of an audience in the millions). That they choose to take these trivial objections and paltry numbers seriously is ridiculous. It also acts in an anti-democratic way - that the views of a tiny minority of excessively vocal individuals is enough to affect the lives (albeit the leisure activities) of millions, by denying them opportunities to see programmes that the vast majority of people don't feel have anything wrong with them.
the BBC Trust upheld a complaint that it was inaccurate
OK, so it's inaccurate - that just puts it in the same class as every clock in the world, excluding the global standards (and even they don't agree when you get down to small enough time divisions).
This is a systemic problem with the Beeb. They take every complaint or criticism "personally". If a programme draws a few complaints then an apology gets issued. If an interviewee uses a "bad" word on live TV an apologist instants says sorry. The corporation seems to have this view of itself as being infallible and that every mistake is the cause for some self-flagellation.
Although I can see why they have this view: they are publicly funded from a virtually compulsory source (have a TV? you gotta pay) and have made a whole string of astoundingly stupid blunders in the past - and this pronouncement is just one more. However they really should build a little self-confidence and learn to stand up and say to their critics "screw you - yes, we make mistakes ... live with it".
Now, where is the difference between a normal human being taking a pic of currrent happenings or the reporter?
Just so long as the reporters getting this training realise that they are next for the chop - just as soon as reader-submitted "news" becomes more plentiful.
If you want to see the world, then focus on that. Take some time (not 2 or 3 years, a few months) and do your travelling. However, get involved in it and leave your techy bits behind.
If you feel unable to spend time apart from your computers, then spend the time writing your software as that will be apparently what you value most highly. Part of growing up is getting to know yourself: are you more content doing software on your own, or can you put that to one side and do something completely different that is also important to you? Maybe this episode will help you learn something about yourself - nerd or explorer?
So will these "minimum standards" now become a de-facto definition of "good" and (in law) "negligent" behaviour. I.e. if you don't meet these standards, you will be held accountable for security breaches, maybe even have any insurance cover withheld.
countries lived under communism ...
I think you're confusing communism with a surveillance society. Sure, the USSR encouraged a climate of fear, but that was because the regime was poor and having the citizens in a continual state of fear is the cheapest way to control them. The way that the USA and other western democracies used to use to control their citizens was the threat of taking away their wealth and lifestyle. They've now discovered that the same goals can be achieved much cheaper by the use of fear - so they've adopted the tactics of the totalitarian regimes. It's true that dictatorships and poorly run communist states are poor, but it's not a requirement of communism to monitor and terrorise its population - it's just the easiest way to keep them subjugated.
However I would not be at all surprised to learn that Old Guy is more than pulling his weight where it counts: producing reliable stuff that is efficient, well documented, properly tested and on time. What New Kid fails to recognise is that in a short time, some other New Kid will be sniping at HIM for the same reason he's whining on now.
and entirely circumvent gun control laws ...
Those (enlightened, safe) parts of the world with gun controls generally have the same sensible controls over ammo, too. So being able to print a gun leaves you with a rather cheesy ornament since you can't get any bullets to fire from the thing. That's probably just as well since places that don't permit people to shoot each other generally have a population that knows nothing about guns: how to maintain them, load them or shoot them. So putting a weapon in the hands of inexperienced people is probably the dumbest thing you can possibly do.
... are STEM graduates who are willing to work for the pittance most companies intend to pay. The shortage is of salaries, not candidates.
it's when things go wrong that voice menus and web sites just seem to make simple problems into complicated ones.
My experience is that when things go wrong the LAST person you want to have to deal with is an under-trained, demotivated human who just wants you and your problem to go away. They'll tell you whatever gets you out of their way and woe betide anyone who rocks up to their counter within 5 minutes of going-home time.
Give me a computer every time.
Few of the studies have reproducible results and fewer are able to draw hard, unambiguous, numerical conclusions from their data. So it doesn't make much difference whether american students or penguins were used as test subjects - unless the study was on the motivational effect of raw fish.
I, for one, plan to buy one of these and write them a happy letter! (of course, I am not looking to improve the mechanics of my bike riding, only how stupid I look doing it)
Not advisable. With obviously incorrect sales pitches, such as this, there is gold to be extracted.
What you have (apart from a number of happy but evil customers who gave this as a present to someone they didn't like) is a mailing list with the names and addresses of some very gullible people and people with low control over their impulse to buy junk. This is worth far more than SPAM lists as the clientele is proven to buy pointless items, and to fall for the dumbest advertisements.
It may even be that the value of the list far exceeds the development cost of the flawed product and could even be the covert line of business - with the bicycle pedal just being a front for the real business: identifying people with more money than sense.
The basic problem with Ultra-HD is that nobody can see it. You'd have to be sitting so close to the screen to appreciate the difference (from "normal" HD) that your eyes couldn't see the whole screen. Add on to that. that the data stream would be so highly compressed to fit into the available bandwidth that the only difference would be the resolution of the artifacts. What you have is the video equivalent of an audio bandwidth extending into the 100's of kHz. great for any dogs listening, or eagles watching your TV, but utterly pointless for humans, unless their motivation is so immature that they feel the need to have something impractically better than the guy next door's, no matter what the cost - or usefulness.