We've tried Monster and Craigslist, as well as several trade journals. Zero success. Ironically, the only job posting that has ever had a suitable candidate respond was the first one we posted, for free, on Google Base.
We have also tried resume books. Also zero success. Too many of them are out of date or no longer on the market. We are in a more stable industry tenure-wise though, so that may have some impact.
Looking for advertised positions is a fools errand. I personally have always had the best success researching companies to find out who is growing and find the right person there to talk to. All of our other staff have been through referrals. Networking is critical.
That's about what I am at on a monthly average as well. They are kidding themselves if they think data usage of smart phones isn't going to double each year. They are going to have to prepare for it one way or another; starting to agree that exclusivity is making the problem a lot worse as it eliminates incentive to build up the network.
If I remember correctly, AT&T has about 2,000 towers currently. Microcells like the old Ricochet modems mounted to street lights would do more for areas that saturate existing bandwidth, and when you talk about rural areas it seems like you need an aerial platform to make density work.
But artificial scarcity is the key to margin... so... don't expect much change.
They could at least try and get a "roaming" agreement in place with all the wifi providers for transparent access, but all that really ends up doing is saturating the USM bands.
Ultimately, the macrocell concept needs to be ditched and they need to deploy a whole lot of mini and micro cell sites in urban areas and high density buildings. If you use the backhaul properly, you don't have the problem with last quarter-mile connectivity being wireless.
GP is right that the tiers become obsolete too quickly; most of what iPhone users do is low-volume web browsing-- there is just a lot more of it now than ever before. When video calling comes to the iPhone expect the same big step in usage. Service providers should focus on catering to growing demand rather than maximizing profits on current or year-ago demand levels and hoping a disruptive technology doesn't put them out of business!
They place 90% of the ads and respond to the remaining ads. They drownd out individuals. Well, except for the underqalified, mostly Indian or Middle Eastern candidates. Hard work pays off....that and focus on small businesses.
We are guilty of making some low-ball offers lately. In our case (which will vary between companies of course), it is about managing risk. We are happy to take on someone at 20% discount to what they should be getting (in terms of what people started at 3 years ago), because it gives us a chance to build our team faster. In six months, we are able to hire 9 people instead of 4 if we can get a 20% discount. In a year, we can bring their salaries up and give great bonuses as well. We are able to grow, hire more people, and manage cash flow all at the same time.
Most people seem to think it is better than waiting two months for a position to open up. For some people, they can do better in the short-term, but long-term we think our approach makes everybody a winner.
We have a few recruiters sending us resumes. The only time we ever get good people from them are when there are lots of people sending us resumes directly. This puts us in the situation where we have to decide between someone with an artificially inflated salary and significantly higher risk profile if they quit in that first year.
We also have the very real risk that the recruiter starts playing both sides of the game and going after our employees. Far too many of them are really unethical.
We now just try and spam-block them on email and phone systems it has gotten so bad.
Always do leg work yourself and never rely on just a recruiter. More leg work gives you much better exposure than a recruiter ever will. But I am in a different industry (consulting engineering), so YMMV.
The real question to me is if books should be napsterized; while most ebook prices themselves are reasonable, the restrictions placed on them are not. Some books are still far too expensive, especially when you already have a dead tree version. Will be interesting to see.
The problem there is external exchange of data. Good luck explaining the changes to a client if he doesn't know which A-1 he is looking at. (While the conventional system of putting the information in the title block is clear, most cms systems don't manage this information...)
Does the legislative language create adequate specificity such that legal interpretation is clear? Does it provide adequate clarity that the "common man" should understand their rights and obligations under the law? Does the current framework create a government of, by, and for the people?
Do bills that legislators can't read before voting on create a solid legal foundation for future interpretation?
Air works great until you get people in the flight path restricting operations. Check out John Wayne Newport Beach, or Santa Monica airports for good case studies.
It also works great until you need to expand for additional capacity. Take a look at Lambert St. Louis airport for a classic failure story there... Or ORD, IAD, and LHR... Relevant to this story, also take a look at SFO, LAX, and SJC runway expansion plans and explain to me how that is a better investment.
Trains in dedicated right-of-ways work extremely well in comparison.
There are at least 4mm annual passenger transit between the two cities by air today, with average round-trip tickets coming in at $250. Air travel has hidden costs as well, and both ticket and underlying hidden costs will rise over time.
If fares were $100 each way, and travel didn't increase, it would pay for itself in 20 years. (if, if, if...)
A bullet train can also help reduce highway travel and associated spending, whose capital outlay is comparable on a cost-per-passenger mile basis.
Just because it is a lot of money doesn't mean it is a bad investment...
This bullet train proposal has been going around for at least six years; it isn't a federal funds land-grab. The seeking of stimulus funds has much more to do with the current economic situation.
Coastal California is a metropolitan area in and of itself; there is a significant number that commute between SD-LA, or LA-SF. it is similar to the eastern seaboard, but commute distances are 30-50% longer, and there is much less matrix commuting.
The only problem with this is that it needs to be faster-- 250-280mph would make it more attractive.
Not entirely accurate on the mp3 comparison; they became popular with rip-mix-burn, and continued to grow with better portables and later iTunes music store. We array thesame point today.
This is significant because content feeds devices which feeds more content and keeps the ecosystem growing. Opening up licensing is a big step in this direction, as is standard formats and drm-free content.
As for the degree and statistics, the challenge is to remove artificial scarcity first. If people want to learn, textbooks are a great place to start (or expand on what wikipedia created). Inspiring teachers are a real scarcity, but there are many things in place for decades that help multiply their capacity. I agree that commons licenses don't create opportunity out of thin air, but working to spread knowledge can at least help.
Apple does have a beef with the RJ45 jack, in that it is "too big." It was also not designed for repetitive plugging and unplugging.
I just hope Apple will stick with something for more than a single hardware iteration, and make sure no dongles are required.
But, ethernet isn't exactly ideal for many applications. We'll see how this one plays out in the end-- if it can balance low-end and high-end needs to allow for just one connector type.
Yeah-- I was an architecture student. First night without sleep no problem. Second night... a little wired and not allowed to play witty xacto knives. Walking home after the third night, nothing but halucinations. Curse you, dr. Pepper!
That used to be the case, but we have successfully argued for it in every jurisdiction we have tried. With the 2008 NEC, claiming it is a COPS system will quickly let you eliminate an EPO in the traditional sense.
Dating back to 1993, there was never a NFPA requirement for a single button to kill everything; they allowed you to combine HVAC and power into a single button if desired.
Even that can over-simplify the problem; when you have to take one system offline, what redundancy to you have left? Will one drive failure take you down?
To the GP's point, the problem isn't going from 1x 5x9s to 2x 4x9's, usually companies try to do 2x 3x9's facilities instead.
Redundancy is not Reliability is not Maintainability.
There is also N/2 redundancy when you talk about EPO systems-- each button only kills one cord per server, so you have to actually hit two buttons to shut everything down...
Increased complexity increases risk; the most elegant redundant systems are never tied together, and provide the greatest simplicity. The others ensure job security until the outage happens...
Unless you were doing maintenance in the second facility when a problem hit the first. That is what real risk management is about; when you assume hot-hot will cover everything, you have to make sure that is really the case. Far too often there are a few things that will either cause data loss or significant recovery time even in a hot-hot system when there is a failure.
Even with hot-hot systems, all facilities should be reasonably redundant and reasonably maintainable. Fully redundant and fully maintainable can be a pipe-dream.
The Tier Guidelines as Uptime Institute presents it is utterly useless beyond C-Suite penis posturing. However, it is important for a company to establish what their needs are.
However, most serious players customize it based on their own needs and risk assessments. Redundant UPS systems create a more valuable benefit than redundant utility transformers as an example. Redundant generators offer less benefit than redundant starting batteries and proper maintenance and testing. Mechanically, over-sizing some critical systems can provide as much benefit as redundant chillers (as long as you have multiple chillers), as the biggest risk is pull-down time.
Looking at a lot of data centers, if the main facility or projects person leans more towards electrical, you see lots of electrical redundancy but no mechanical redundancy. Opposite is also true.
Most important thing is to understand limitations of existing systems, and ensure proper maintenance is taking place...
Because few consumers make choices based on energy efficiency; style, color, and brand are more likely to be deciding factors that efficiency of a single tv. When you talk about 30 million TVs though it makes a much bigger difference.
Regulation is the only way to force manufacturers to produce goods that they would have no other incentive to do otherwise, even if it is better.
Residential power is pretty highly subsidized: a 5kVA service only has a 10% premium over a 20 MVA service, despite being about 20% more expensive on a per-unit basis. When you factor in non-time-of-day rates, power appliances draw when not in use during the day are extremely subsidized.
While some regulation is insane (such as AQMD issues for standby generators), there are few alternatives in this area.
As much as I appreciate your points, look at Ricochet, service from ~1997, and the little shoeboxes are still slung from streetlights around several cities. It was only 28kbps, but why haven't we been able to repeat it at a higher bandwidth?
Hopefully the point wasn't that pay $40 per month for full access-- then you are back at the telco model.
Most of these systems are so cheap to operate that recovering money from customers is just a waste of time. Enhance the user experience and keep it open! Save money in the process!
If you have other problems you need to fix (it is too much of a good thing and keeps deadbeat geeks in your restaurant all day drinking free refills of Mountain Dew)... then either drop the service or limit access duration.
Right now I am in Thailand using an EDGE connection to post this... for $6/month and access around the country. If US carriers could get the prices down to this level then there would be no reason to use WiFi...
As an IEEE member, I expect to have easy, free access to all their standards, boring as they may be: I am a consulting engineer and every so often I need an obscure standard for one thing or another. Why is it that they try to hit me up for another $20-250 each time for a PDF file?!
IEEE acts much more like a for-profit entity than a non-profit.
Combine that with the spam... And I wonder why I am still a member at all-- aside for the resume.
Slashdot Mirror
We've tried Monster and Craigslist, as well as several trade journals. Zero success. Ironically, the only job posting that has ever had a suitable candidate respond was the first one we posted, for free, on Google Base.
We have also tried resume books. Also zero success. Too many of them are out of date or no longer on the market. We are in a more stable industry tenure-wise though, so that may have some impact.
Looking for advertised positions is a fools errand. I personally have always had the best success researching companies to find out who is growing and find the right person there to talk to. All of our other staff have been through referrals. Networking is critical.
That's about what I am at on a monthly average as well. They are kidding themselves if they think data usage of smart phones isn't going to double each year. They are going to have to prepare for it one way or another; starting to agree that exclusivity is making the problem a lot worse as it eliminates incentive to build up the network.
If I remember correctly, AT&T has about 2,000 towers currently. Microcells like the old Ricochet modems mounted to street lights would do more for areas that saturate existing bandwidth, and when you talk about rural areas it seems like you need an aerial platform to make density work.
But artificial scarcity is the key to margin... so... don't expect much change.
They could at least try and get a "roaming" agreement in place with all the wifi providers for transparent access, but all that really ends up doing is saturating the USM bands.
Ultimately, the macrocell concept needs to be ditched and they need to deploy a whole lot of mini and micro cell sites in urban areas and high density buildings. If you use the backhaul properly, you don't have the problem with last quarter-mile connectivity being wireless.
GP is right that the tiers become obsolete too quickly; most of what iPhone users do is low-volume web browsing-- there is just a lot more of it now than ever before. When video calling comes to the iPhone expect the same big step in usage. Service providers should focus on catering to growing demand rather than maximizing profits on current or year-ago demand levels and hoping a disruptive technology doesn't put them out of business!
They place 90% of the ads and respond to the remaining ads. They drownd out individuals. Well, except for the underqalified, mostly Indian or Middle Eastern candidates. Hard work pays off. ...that and focus on small businesses.
We are guilty of making some low-ball offers lately. In our case (which will vary between companies of course), it is about managing risk. We are happy to take on someone at 20% discount to what they should be getting (in terms of what people started at 3 years ago), because it gives us a chance to build our team faster. In six months, we are able to hire 9 people instead of 4 if we can get a 20% discount. In a year, we can bring their salaries up and give great bonuses as well. We are able to grow, hire more people, and manage cash flow all at the same time.
Most people seem to think it is better than waiting two months for a position to open up. For some people, they can do better in the short-term, but long-term we think our approach makes everybody a winner.
We have a few recruiters sending us resumes. The only time we ever get good people from them are when there are lots of people sending us resumes directly. This puts us in the situation where we have to decide between someone with an artificially inflated salary and significantly higher risk profile if they quit in that first year.
We also have the very real risk that the recruiter starts playing both sides of the game and going after our employees. Far too many of them are really unethical.
We now just try and spam-block them on email and phone systems it has gotten so bad.
Always do leg work yourself and never rely on just a recruiter. More leg work gives you much better exposure than a recruiter ever will. But I am in a different industry (consulting engineering), so YMMV.
The real question to me is if books should be napsterized; while most ebook prices themselves are reasonable, the restrictions placed on them are not. Some books are still far too expensive, especially when you already have a dead tree version. Will be interesting to see.
The problem there is external exchange of data. Good luck explaining the changes to a client if he doesn't know which A-1 he is looking at. (While the conventional system of putting the information in the title block is clear, most cms systems don't manage this information...)
Does the legislative language create adequate specificity such that legal interpretation is clear? Does it provide adequate clarity that the "common man" should understand their rights and obligations under the law? Does the current framework create a government of, by, and for the people?
Do bills that legislators can't read before voting on create a solid legal foundation for future interpretation?
Something needs to be fixed.
Air works great until you get people in the flight path restricting operations. Check out John Wayne Newport Beach, or Santa Monica airports for good case studies.
It also works great until you need to expand for additional capacity. Take a look at Lambert St. Louis airport for a classic failure story there... Or ORD, IAD, and LHR... Relevant to this story, also take a look at SFO, LAX, and SJC runway expansion plans and explain to me how that is a better investment.
Trains in dedicated right-of-ways work extremely well in comparison.
There are at least 4mm annual passenger transit between the two cities by air today, with average round-trip tickets coming in at $250. Air travel has hidden costs as well, and both ticket and underlying hidden costs will rise over time.
If fares were $100 each way, and travel didn't increase, it would pay for itself in 20 years. (if, if, if...)
A bullet train can also help reduce highway travel and associated spending, whose capital outlay is comparable on a cost-per-passenger mile basis.
Just because it is a lot of money doesn't mean it is a bad investment...
This bullet train proposal has been going around for at least six years; it isn't a federal funds land-grab. The seeking of stimulus funds has much more to do with the current economic situation.
Coastal California is a metropolitan area in and of itself; there is a significant number that commute between SD-LA, or LA-SF. it is similar to the eastern seaboard, but commute distances are 30-50% longer, and there is much less matrix commuting.
The only problem with this is that it needs to be faster-- 250-280mph would make it more attractive.
Not entirely accurate on the mp3 comparison; they became popular with rip-mix-burn, and continued to grow with better portables and later iTunes music store. We array thesame point today.
This is significant because content feeds devices which feeds more content and keeps the ecosystem growing. Opening up licensing is a big step in this direction, as is standard formats and drm-free content.
As for the degree and statistics, the challenge is to remove artificial scarcity first. If people want to learn, textbooks are a great place to start (or expand on what wikipedia created). Inspiring teachers are a real scarcity, but there are many things in place for decades that help multiply their capacity. I agree that commons licenses don't create opportunity out of thin air, but working to spread knowledge can at least help.
Apple does have a beef with the RJ45 jack, in that it is "too big." It was also not designed for repetitive plugging and unplugging.
I just hope Apple will stick with something for more than a single hardware iteration, and make sure no dongles are required.
But, ethernet isn't exactly ideal for many applications. We'll see how this one plays out in the end-- if it can balance low-end and high-end needs to allow for just one connector type.
Yeah-- I was an architecture student. First night without sleep no problem. Second night... a little wired and not allowed to play witty xacto knives. Walking home after the third night, nothing but halucinations. Curse you, dr. Pepper!
That used to be the case, but we have successfully argued for it in every jurisdiction we have tried. With the 2008 NEC, claiming it is a COPS system will quickly let you eliminate an EPO in the traditional sense.
Dating back to 1993, there was never a NFPA requirement for a single button to kill everything; they allowed you to combine HVAC and power into a single button if desired.
Even that can over-simplify the problem; when you have to take one system offline, what redundancy to you have left? Will one drive failure take you down?
To the GP's point, the problem isn't going from 1x 5x9s to 2x 4x9's, usually companies try to do 2x 3x9's facilities instead.
Redundancy is not Reliability is not Maintainability.
There is also N/2 redundancy when you talk about EPO systems-- each button only kills one cord per server, so you have to actually hit two buttons to shut everything down...
Increased complexity increases risk; the most elegant redundant systems are never tied together, and provide the greatest simplicity. The others ensure job security until the outage happens...
Unless you were doing maintenance in the second facility when a problem hit the first. That is what real risk management is about; when you assume hot-hot will cover everything, you have to make sure that is really the case. Far too often there are a few things that will either cause data loss or significant recovery time even in a hot-hot system when there is a failure.
Even with hot-hot systems, all facilities should be reasonably redundant and reasonably maintainable. Fully redundant and fully maintainable can be a pipe-dream.
The Tier Guidelines as Uptime Institute presents it is utterly useless beyond C-Suite penis posturing. However, it is important for a company to establish what their needs are.
However, most serious players customize it based on their own needs and risk assessments. Redundant UPS systems create a more valuable benefit than redundant utility transformers as an example. Redundant generators offer less benefit than redundant starting batteries and proper maintenance and testing. Mechanically, over-sizing some critical systems can provide as much benefit as redundant chillers (as long as you have multiple chillers), as the biggest risk is pull-down time.
Looking at a lot of data centers, if the main facility or projects person leans more towards electrical, you see lots of electrical redundancy but no mechanical redundancy. Opposite is also true.
Most important thing is to understand limitations of existing systems, and ensure proper maintenance is taking place...
Because few consumers make choices based on energy efficiency; style, color, and brand are more likely to be deciding factors that efficiency of a single tv. When you talk about 30 million TVs though it makes a much bigger difference.
Regulation is the only way to force manufacturers to produce goods that they would have no other incentive to do otherwise, even if it is better.
Residential power is pretty highly subsidized: a 5kVA service only has a 10% premium over a 20 MVA service, despite being about 20% more expensive on a per-unit basis. When you factor in non-time-of-day rates, power appliances draw when not in use during the day are extremely subsidized.
While some regulation is insane (such as AQMD issues for standby generators), there are few alternatives in this area.
As much as I appreciate your points, look at Ricochet, service from ~1997, and the little shoeboxes are still slung from streetlights around several cities. It was only 28kbps, but why haven't we been able to repeat it at a higher bandwidth?
Hopefully the point wasn't that pay $40 per month for full access-- then you are back at the telco model.
Most of these systems are so cheap to operate that recovering money from customers is just a waste of time. Enhance the user experience and keep it open! Save money in the process!
If you have other problems you need to fix (it is too much of a good thing and keeps deadbeat geeks in your restaurant all day drinking free refills of Mountain Dew)... then either drop the service or limit access duration.
Right now I am in Thailand using an EDGE connection to post this... for $6/month and access around the country. If US carriers could get the prices down to this level then there would be no reason to use WiFi...
As an IEEE member, I expect to have easy, free access to all their standards, boring as they may be: I am a consulting engineer and every so often I need an obscure standard for one thing or another. Why is it that they try to hit me up for another $20-250 each time for a PDF file?!
IEEE acts much more like a for-profit entity than a non-profit.
Combine that with the spam... And I wonder why I am still a member at all-- aside for the resume.