A candidate has a one-sided opportunity to present themselves in their resume and cover letter. An employer has a one-sided opportunity to present themselves on their job ad and website.
The interview is a place where both parties meet in the middle and try to present their best face.
Listed references are not especially reliable, as they are hand-picked.
So, both parties are forced to dig for more information on what each other are really like. An employer checks facebook, myspace, linkedin, and google, along with running a background check. An interviewee might check google as well as professional associations, former employees. All these measures are generally worthless, but they do give another data point or two.
One of our candidates admitted to having a DUI on his application. A couple other things on his resume made us suspicious of whether it was a pattern or just an isolated incident, and some googling actually made us comfortable that it was the latter.
Almost anybody trying to hire people realizes the success isn't just in pure qualifications, but people's ability to work with the team.
The proprietary protocols are for automated trading; you need an edge against others in determining value if you are trading something with volatility or dynamic valuation so you are able to get in and out at optimal prices and times. The 100-day EMA might be established by the "market", but the optimal price for a transaction is another story.
I was thinking a nice disruptive application would be to build micro TOR servers that you can plug in on the unsecured ports of a small business internet connection. Create a "community duty" to share some of your bandwidth without the typical security risks.
Or, another fun application would be to plug it in a timer that goes on at a set time every day or hour allowing you to have a cheap "backup firewall" to wake-on-lan machines on a network.
Hell, throw in an external (or integrated) battery, a wireless 3g modem, and the thing could be a great little remote status system (sensaphone type thing).
Could be fun...
Re:You can't win if you don't play
on
Linked In Or Out?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
While there is truth in what you are saying, control constantly shifts between employe[e/r] in the game. For small companies, you will never be able to out-shine the "big guys". That doesn't make the pay or opportunity less, but it changes the advertising dynamics.
As for facebook profiles, it is hard to look at a potential candidate puking up a lung and take them serious. When you hire someone, it is hard to weigh sources of information, given the limited and controlled environment of an interview.
What you say is true, but it is always easier to evaluate someone with a connection than a complete unknown. Also, it is more effective to recruit from friends of employees than a faceless ad or recruiter.
I had always been careful about separating my online and offline self, but did break down recently and become active on linkedin. I hate giving up the privacy, but it is an easy way to network. I appreciate the importance of being able to find potential employees and clients. And, since one of my old major clients is laying off thousands of people who could bece future clients, might as well give up.
Fortunately, google doesn't index whois yet, so parts of my identify are still intact.
The problem is the percentage of blocked/unknown callers is up dramatically over a year ago. 60% of my office calls are now blocked due to cell phone operator, badly managed phone systems, and other reasons that elude me. Of this group, the vast majority are actual clients, and then there are the sales people and recruiters.
I originally had the voicemail system put people in "Hell" with unknown numbers, but too many actual clients got stuck there.
The only solution I can find is reliable caller ID.
How do you balance this individual need against an organizations's need for continuity of operations in the event of your death or incapacity to perform work? There needs to be some sort of business continuity procedure in place that lists all root passwords (ideally highly compartmentalized). Who is the backup person, and how do you control their access.
With most data centers, the solution at a physical level is to go to a secured, automated key cabinet that requires authentication and manages check-in and check-out of any keys for emergency use.
With most public buildings, the solution is to have a master key that just about anybody that thinks they are sufficiently important enough will have a copy of. (While I was in school I had a key that would provide full access to all buildings, offices, steam tunnels, and I believe the Chancellor's office-- as an engineering aide!)
As an owner of a small engineering firm, I would encourage you to make sure you have passed the FE exam prior to looking for a job. The FE exam application I believe asks if you have ever been convicted of a felony, so passing suggests that you are "clean." (Taking the LEED exam might be an added bonus as well, but just for the sake of showing you are serious about 'green'.) If you are really scared, focus more on smaller companies where HR won't be your biggest obstacle.
We have 25 people, and have done background checks on two applicants and Facebook/Myspace searches on six or eight people. (To be honest, most of the latter type are focused on figuring out if the person is male or female.) You do background checks on people that you don't have any information on-- that aren't direct referrals.
Actually, since the iPhone is an applicance and there is never a new copy of software created that is a much more difficult case to argue. When you have a CD of a software package, the license agreement is the scam to allow you to copy it to the computer, make another copy to run it in RAM, and possibly make yet another copy for purposes of backup.
For a phone, you are just using their black box, and modifying the code on that box may run afoul of FCC requirements, and distributing the modified code could be problematic, but a program to modify the code isn't.
The ultrasonic things won't scare rats or mice off, but it will keep them from coming back.
The only real solution for a service garage is to keep everything in hard pipe. It's too easy for rodents to get in, and given enough time they will eat through everything.
If you use more of a distributed or zone wiring approach, everything needs to be in metal cabinets.
We actually had Active Power in our office the other day touting this solution. It isn't bad unless you have over about 400kW of load.
This is significantly different than a containerized generator in that it is intended to be integrated completely in the factory, so you just bring in unconditioned power to the box and it sends out conditioned power.
However, if you have a big system, it isn't exactly modular (yes, you can go up to 1.2MW, but you have to put the generator externally).
There was an article in IEEE Spectrum about a 200MW containerized data center that similarly missed the mark: People aren't using containers the way they need to in order to make it a truly effective solution. PUE's are still way to low compared to what is possible, and as far as I can tell, nobody has really solved the management issues properly.
It's a shame, Boxer is much better aligned to the/. crowd. Feinstein just responds to my letters with an "it is important to protect the entertainment industry" form letter when I complain about the DMCA or similar legislation.
Paid wifi is dying because they charge too damn much for it! I bought an unlocked $250 3G dongle because it would pay for itself on a two week trip.
The traditional telco model of paying off your infrastructure after 6 months of service and making pure profit until the end of days is why high speed internet is such a mess in the first place. These paid providers need to switch to a pricing model where they keep closer to a 30% margin over operating costs or they will become completely irrelevant.
I would say that a more logical outcome is that MSFT would finally split itself up into a low-growth company and a speculative high-growth company. The low-growth company might have its days numbered, but the remainder can prosper without the MS legacy and beuracracy.
There is a difference between being "debt free" and "fiscally responsible." Some issues are constrained by cash flow, some are constrained by earnings growth, and some things are simply investments. The key to financial success is to control your expenses so that you live below your means.
Carrying debt isn't a sign of bad financial planning as long as that debt is doing work for you. If you are paying 20% interest on debt, there is no way that money can be working for you... unless you are in the drug trade I guess.
Even more at issue is the fact that Google's offering compete directly with Microsoft's server offerings. Apple was just licensing a connector component for handhelds to use MS Servers.
S-Corp or C? S-Corp and LLC have pass-through taxes, so retained earnings become a liability if you don't get distributions.
If it is either of the two, ask to see the shareholder agreement first. It should disclose compensation, distribution (think dividend), and sales terms. It should also indicate any binding non-compete clauses.
While it is great to get a share in a growing business without significant capital risk, it is also a great way for the owner to screw you.
Interesting point. Personally, the thank-you letters from a good candidate give me a warm fuzzy feeling that they are serious. One of my partners will rule people out for not giving them. Often they sound far too desperate, but a nice, concise letter written within 24 hours of an interview really goes far.
I'll thank you when I get something from you.
That is exactly what I mean by the entitlement generation. The issue is creating a point of mutual benefit. When the benefit goes all to one party, the balance is off and a healthy engagement is not possible.
Oh Bullshit! I own a small engineering firm and have interviewed over 40 people in the past 12 months. Made offers to about five, and hired three. Still have about five unfilled positions.
We contemplated hiring a few H1Bs, because those were the only people that responded to us through Monster (well, other than recruiters wanting 30% first year salary). Some were actually citizens or Canadians, but all of the same ilk-- will work for anything, but difficult to divine what skills they really had.
As for the 87% of remaining candidates, they were awful. Send a freaking thank-you letter! Research the company in advance! Understand what they do and how you think you might fit in.
As for the Entitlement Generation-- you better get over it quick. Hoping to make 10% more starting than last year's graduates isn't a very logical strategy. Figure out what you need to make starting to survive, and work up from there. If you are as good as you think you are then you will get rewarded in time... and you will gain valuable experience.
As for firing H1Bs first, that is just the dumbest, most protectionist idea ever. You need to keep the people with the best value when you are cutting back, independent of national origin. Since many H1Bs are underpaid, they do have an advantage on the denominator but not necessarily on the numerator.
Granting new H1Bs now is pretty stupid politically, but doesn't make much of a difference in the real world. Deny them to companies that are laying people off or to the independent contractor job shops, but keep the only viable immigration option for talented people that actually want to move here open!
Unit sales increased by 1%, but revenue decreased by 12%. That is directly caused by MS having to reduce prices on their Netbook XP. They had to reduce this price to keep Linux off the netbooks.
Older people generally fear change, and many depression-era people don't like spending money on things that aren't a necessity.
I think it is much more important to contain costs of broadband while increasing speed and availability to allow for new applications... even if I don't ever anticipate using them.
Slashdot Mirror
A candidate has a one-sided opportunity to present themselves in their resume and cover letter. An employer has a one-sided opportunity to present themselves on their job ad and website.
The interview is a place where both parties meet in the middle and try to present their best face.
Listed references are not especially reliable, as they are hand-picked.
So, both parties are forced to dig for more information on what each other are really like. An employer checks facebook, myspace, linkedin, and google, along with running a background check. An interviewee might check google as well as professional associations, former employees. All these measures are generally worthless, but they do give another data point or two.
One of our candidates admitted to having a DUI on his application. A couple other things on his resume made us suspicious of whether it was a pattern or just an isolated incident, and some googling actually made us comfortable that it was the latter.
Almost anybody trying to hire people realizes the success isn't just in pure qualifications, but people's ability to work with the team.
$10/user/year for the proposed fees.
$40/user/life for the license.
Drop in the bucket compared to the initial infrastructure deployment. In an efficient business, service would be almost free after 12 months.
The proprietary protocols are for automated trading; you need an edge against others in determining value if you are trading something with volatility or dynamic valuation so you are able to get in and out at optimal prices and times. The 100-day EMA might be established by the "market", but the optimal price for a transaction is another story.
I was thinking a nice disruptive application would be to build micro TOR servers that you can plug in on the unsecured ports of a small business internet connection. Create a "community duty" to share some of your bandwidth without the typical security risks.
Or, another fun application would be to plug it in a timer that goes on at a set time every day or hour allowing you to have a cheap "backup firewall" to wake-on-lan machines on a network.
Hell, throw in an external (or integrated) battery, a wireless 3g modem, and the thing could be a great little remote status system (sensaphone type thing).
Could be fun...
While there is truth in what you are saying, control constantly shifts between employe[e/r] in the game. For small companies, you will never be able to out-shine the "big guys". That doesn't make the pay or opportunity less, but it changes the advertising dynamics.
As for facebook profiles, it is hard to look at a potential candidate puking up a lung and take them serious. When you hire someone, it is hard to weigh sources of information, given the limited and controlled environment of an interview.
What you say is true, but it is always easier to evaluate someone with a connection than a complete unknown. Also, it is more effective to recruit from friends of employees than a faceless ad or recruiter.
How did you know my real name was blue?
I had always been careful about separating my online and offline self, but did break down recently and become active on linkedin. I hate giving up the privacy, but it is an easy way to network. I appreciate the importance of being able to find potential employees and clients. And, since one of my old major clients is laying off thousands of people who could bece future clients, might as well give up.
Fortunately, google doesn't index whois yet, so parts of my identify are still intact.
Privacy is an illusion.
PK
The problem is the percentage of blocked/unknown callers is up dramatically over a year ago. 60% of my office calls are now blocked due to cell phone operator, badly managed phone systems, and other reasons that elude me. Of this group, the vast majority are actual clients, and then there are the sales people and recruiters.
I originally had the voicemail system put people in "Hell" with unknown numbers, but too many actual clients got stuck there.
The only solution I can find is reliable caller ID.
How do you balance this individual need against an organizations's need for continuity of operations in the event of your death or incapacity to perform work? There needs to be some sort of business continuity procedure in place that lists all root passwords (ideally highly compartmentalized). Who is the backup person, and how do you control their access.
With most data centers, the solution at a physical level is to go to a secured, automated key cabinet that requires authentication and manages check-in and check-out of any keys for emergency use.
With most public buildings, the solution is to have a master key that just about anybody that thinks they are sufficiently important enough will have a copy of. (While I was in school I had a key that would provide full access to all buildings, offices, steam tunnels, and I believe the Chancellor's office-- as an engineering aide!)
No, it is so we know which personal pronoun to use, nothing sinister.
As an owner of a small engineering firm, I would encourage you to make sure you have passed the FE exam prior to looking for a job. The FE exam application I believe asks if you have ever been convicted of a felony, so passing suggests that you are "clean." (Taking the LEED exam might be an added bonus as well, but just for the sake of showing you are serious about 'green'.) If you are really scared, focus more on smaller companies where HR won't be your biggest obstacle.
We have 25 people, and have done background checks on two applicants and Facebook/Myspace searches on six or eight people. (To be honest, most of the latter type are focused on figuring out if the person is male or female.) You do background checks on people that you don't have any information on-- that aren't direct referrals.
It only takes 0.2% hit rate to make spam profitable. Good luck educating the bottom.
You have to increase the marginal costs to stand a fighting chance.
Actually, since the iPhone is an applicance and there is never a new copy of software created that is a much more difficult case to argue. When you have a CD of a software package, the license agreement is the scam to allow you to copy it to the computer, make another copy to run it in RAM, and possibly make yet another copy for purposes of backup.
For a phone, you are just using their black box, and modifying the code on that box may run afoul of FCC requirements, and distributing the modified code could be problematic, but a program to modify the code isn't.
The ultrasonic things won't scare rats or mice off, but it will keep them from coming back.
The only real solution for a service garage is to keep everything in hard pipe. It's too easy for rodents to get in, and given enough time they will eat through everything.
If you use more of a distributed or zone wiring approach, everything needs to be in metal cabinets.
We actually had Active Power in our office the other day touting this solution. It isn't bad unless you have over about 400kW of load.
This is significantly different than a containerized generator in that it is intended to be integrated completely in the factory, so you just bring in unconditioned power to the box and it sends out conditioned power.
However, if you have a big system, it isn't exactly modular (yes, you can go up to 1.2MW, but you have to put the generator externally).
There was an article in IEEE Spectrum about a 200MW containerized data center that similarly missed the mark: People aren't using containers the way they need to in order to make it a truly effective solution. PUE's are still way to low compared to what is possible, and as far as I can tell, nobody has really solved the management issues properly.
It's a shame, Boxer is much better aligned to the /. crowd. Feinstein just responds to my letters with an "it is important to protect the entertainment industry" form letter when I complain about the DMCA or similar legislation.
Paid wifi is dying because they charge too damn much for it! I bought an unlocked $250 3G dongle because it would pay for itself on a two week trip.
The traditional telco model of paying off your infrastructure after 6 months of service and making pure profit until the end of days is why high speed internet is such a mess in the first place. These paid providers need to switch to a pricing model where they keep closer to a 30% margin over operating costs or they will become completely irrelevant.
I would say that a more logical outcome is that MSFT would finally split itself up into a low-growth company and a speculative high-growth company. The low-growth company might have its days numbered, but the remainder can prosper without the MS legacy and beuracracy.
There is a difference between being "debt free" and "fiscally responsible." Some issues are constrained by cash flow, some are constrained by earnings growth, and some things are simply investments. The key to financial success is to control your expenses so that you live below your means.
Carrying debt isn't a sign of bad financial planning as long as that debt is doing work for you. If you are paying 20% interest on debt, there is no way that money can be working for you... unless you are in the drug trade I guess.
Even more at issue is the fact that Google's offering compete directly with Microsoft's server offerings. Apple was just licensing a connector component for handhelds to use MS Servers.
S-Corp or C? S-Corp and LLC have pass-through taxes, so retained earnings become a liability if you don't get distributions.
If it is either of the two, ask to see the shareholder agreement first. It should disclose compensation, distribution (think dividend), and sales terms. It should also indicate any binding non-compete clauses.
While it is great to get a share in a growing business without significant capital risk, it is also a great way for the owner to screw you.
Stay away from a partnership, period.
IANL, but IAASBO (small business owner).
Interesting point. Personally, the thank-you letters from a good candidate give me a warm fuzzy feeling that they are serious. One of my partners will rule people out for not giving them. Often they sound far too desperate, but a nice, concise letter written within 24 hours of an interview really goes far.
That is exactly what I mean by the entitlement generation. The issue is creating a point of mutual benefit. When the benefit goes all to one party, the balance is off and a healthy engagement is not possible.
Oh Bullshit! I own a small engineering firm and have interviewed over 40 people in the past 12 months. Made offers to about five, and hired three. Still have about five unfilled positions.
We contemplated hiring a few H1Bs, because those were the only people that responded to us through Monster (well, other than recruiters wanting 30% first year salary). Some were actually citizens or Canadians, but all of the same ilk-- will work for anything, but difficult to divine what skills they really had.
As for the 87% of remaining candidates, they were awful. Send a freaking thank-you letter! Research the company in advance! Understand what they do and how you think you might fit in.
As for the Entitlement Generation-- you better get over it quick. Hoping to make 10% more starting than last year's graduates isn't a very logical strategy. Figure out what you need to make starting to survive, and work up from there. If you are as good as you think you are then you will get rewarded in time... and you will gain valuable experience.
As for firing H1Bs first, that is just the dumbest, most protectionist idea ever. You need to keep the people with the best value when you are cutting back, independent of national origin. Since many H1Bs are underpaid, they do have an advantage on the denominator but not necessarily on the numerator.
Granting new H1Bs now is pretty stupid politically, but doesn't make much of a difference in the real world. Deny them to companies that are laying people off or to the independent contractor job shops, but keep the only viable immigration option for talented people that actually want to move here open!
Unit sales increased by 1%, but revenue decreased by 12%. That is directly caused by MS having to reduce prices on their Netbook XP. They had to reduce this price to keep Linux off the netbooks.
Older people generally fear change, and many depression-era people don't like spending money on things that aren't a necessity.
I think it is much more important to contain costs of broadband while increasing speed and availability to allow for new applications... even if I don't ever anticipate using them.