(Comments added for week ending Sun 01 Dec 2002) | View Other Weeks
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 01 Dec 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Palm programming | Sun 01 Dec | PC |
| Does it sound like a good idea to learn Palm programming? I do web programming and have possible requests for Palm applications. I think it might be hard to learn but dont mind as long as theres a lot of demand for it. I know C but dont have any real business experience with it. I have a feeling I can learn fast enough but then again wont know until after spending time on it. In other words, my question is: is there really a lot of demand for Palm applications, is that demand likely to continue for long, and can someone who is not used to worrying very much about memory limitations learn it in a reasonable amount of time? |
| Sun 01 Dec | Agnus Moorehead | I think the latest pricing moves by Dell in the PocketPC arena, assuming they are copied by the other PocketPC hardware vendors, is going to pretty much kill of the Palm hardware platform in the next 12-24 months, except (maybe) for the extreme sub-$100 Palm throw-aways.
Given this hypothesis, you might want to consider learning the PocketPC platform instead. Get this |
| Sun 01 Dec | prograndma | I primarily do mac OSX programming, and server-side java programming. I am working on something for a hospital, and want to create a handheld version of the client. And that dell device is just what I need. this might be more related to Marvin Motherboard's post, so I apologize for redundant questioning. 1) What tools do I need? (Agnus says they are free. What exactly should I download?) 2) What type of dev box shoud I get? I can theoretically spend about $2K on a dev machine, but am paying for my experiment out of pocket , so I would like to minimize costs. thus if I can get what i need for $599, great! I get paid a lot and can write off equipment, so I don't want to get a pile of crud just to save money, but I will ONLY be using this machine for pocketPC development. Any suggestions are appreciated! |
| Working remotely without pain ? | Sun 01 Dec | Evgeny Goldin |
| Hello, There are many applications for remote connections. Did any of you succeed to do it without noticing the difference ? I dont mean *any* difference (say, diff in colors and resolution arent important), what I actually care is diff in speed. So far, a couple of programs I tried all gave a noticeable and painful delay for all my actions ... What about the built-in service of Windows XP ? What Im trying to achieve is to work (and not mimic working) remotely from the laptop sitting inside the LAN. The network connection is wireless. Is it possible or theres no chance ? Thank you ! |
| Sun 01 Dec | Stephen Jones | Wireless netwrk connections are slow. The old standard was 1Mbps and that was never achieved. To make things worse the speed drops drastically as you move away from the base station. My advice is to get a long run of CAT5 , two RJ45 connectors, and borrow a crimper. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Simon Lucy | Current wireless products are much better, though it always depends on the environment. You should get in a reasonable environment the quoted 11Mb using 802.11b. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Stephen Jones | The tests I've seen for 802.11b suggest an average much, much slower than the quoted max. The same roonm as the base station might get you the max speed. As you said, it all depends. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Ryan LaNeve | I get a full 11Mbps with my D-Link wireless AP as long as I'm within 50 feet or so. In other words, it pretty much only saves me the hassle of a cable running across my floor. It goes about 200-300 feet before complete signal loss. But as long as a signal is there - no matter how weak - the Remote Desktop Services (aka, Terminal Services) of Windows XP Pro work just fine, assuming the settings are tweeked correctly. I use RDS over a VPN connection with a cable modem to work from home and, other than being limited to a single monitor with RDS, there's no difference from being in the office. Having said that, I actually don't use RDS to do anything other than administrative type work. All coding I do running locally so that I get back my second monitor. The only issue there was using a revision-control system built to work over TCP/IP (that is, getting *off* of VSS). Sure, the initial 'Get Latest' isn't as zippy as being in the office, but it's still more than adequate. And once that's complete, the remote connection is no longer needed until check-in time. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Nick Hebb | I don't wear a pyramid hat made of tin foil, believe in conspiracy theories, and all that - but on the subject of wireless I've got to admit that I'm a little paranoid. It started out when a former co-worker swore he could 'feel' the wireless signal in his home network. It freaked him out, so he reverted back to a hardwired network. I looked into the subject, and a study commissioned by the Canadian government found that a small percentage of people could feel the signals. Another study (published in Nature, I believe) found that the use cell phones will produce a temperature elevation in the brain. The temperature elevation is slight in adults, more pronounced in teenagers, and significant in young children. The long term effects are not known. Since I have young children, I decided against a wireless home network. I'm not trying to spread my paranoia, but I'm not sure that the march toward onmnipresent wireless signals a good thing in the long run. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Nat Ersoz | The reason that cell phones can elevate skin temperature is that it is so close to the skin. Since radio waves dissipate as 1/r^2, where r is the distance between the transmitter (phone) and receiver (skin), the proximity of an 802.11 wireless transmitter (30 mW) to your face is far less than that of a cell phone (750-1000 mW). Bottom line: I'd doubt anyone's claim that they can feel 802.11 E&M waves when they are in the vicinity. In fact, 'the vicinity' is much larger than you might think. I went 'war driving' several times in the last month, just to see what I could see. Put the laptop in the car, put my Cisco card in 'listen mode' and fired up 'AirSnort' http://airsnort.shmoo.com/ . I found that while driving my kids to football practice I encoutered on average 3 wireless access points per mile along the drive. There might be more, but I was driving at 30-40 mph, so I may have missed some along the way. About 1/3 of those were WEP encrypted, the others were in the clear. So, in other words, as you drive along the streets in your cars, you're encountering other people's 802.11 wireless stations. Does your friend feel those? Additionally, I was trying to crack my own WEP at home, just to see how vulnerable the known 'initialization vector' vulnerability is. I ran many FTP downloads to get the packet capture size up, but never found any 'interesting' packets (see the airsnort page for the definition of 'interesting'). It turns out that thought perhaps a bad design, the 802.11 vulnerability is not so bad as reported - at least when used as a home network. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Albert D. Kallal | There has been a number of threads here. As mentioned, by far and away the best solution is windows terminal server. That is the RDP protocal. It is also the same stuff used for win xp remote support. I use it daily, and it rocks. As mentioned in this thread, you can hardly tell the difference. In other words, anything faster that a 56k modem is great. TS is even workable on a modem. Since the wireless network is quite a bit faster, then 56k, then RDP is ideal…. If your server is running IIS, then you can actually web-enable any software you have with a few mouse clicks using this technology! (why bother re-writng for the web!). Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada Kallal@msn.com |
| Sun 01 Dec | Ryan LaNeve | Sorry, but I have to chime-in on something... Running a desktop application via Terminal Services/RDP does not, in any way, 'web-enable' the application. In my opinion, to say an application is 'web-enabled' because it can be run over TS/RDP is a gross misrepresentation and belittles the work of those who do actual conversions from desktop to browser-based application. I've sat in far too many product demos where the sales rep (or even technical rep in some cases) will utter the phrase, 'it runs through a browser', when in fact they're doing nothing more than initiating the TS/RDP connection using the web-interface for TS/RDP. I now walk out of such meetings when such a rediculously misleading statement is made. How can I possibly believe anything else the person says from here on out? Don't get me wrong - I love TS/RDP, and I certainly use it to run traditional desktop apps from a remote location. But never in a million years would I say 'I 'web-enabled' the app'. |
| Why some programmers are 2+ times more productive? | Sun 01 Dec | Mac |
| What do you guys think of this article? The programmers stone http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality After spending several hours reading all the chapters, I still cannot exactly grasp the important points. If any of you can elaborate itd be greatly appreciated. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Mac | I don't know why the tailing '/ro' were cut off. The full path is http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/ |
| Sun 01 Dec | Scot | There is not much new under the sun. These ideas have been around in different belief systems / religions for a long time. From what I can see, there are many half-truths followed by faulty conclusions... or should I say non-sequiters. IMO, there is a reason it is hard to understand... and the problem is not with you. |
| Sun 01 Dec | J. D. Trollinger | Although 'M0' keeps coming up and seems to be some kind of key concept, I can't find it defined or explained anywhere on the site. The whole thing seems like a bunch of gibberish to me. |
| Sun 01 Dec | X. J. Scott | Hoo boy! One of my favorite sites... breaking into the domain of jouel's word. When World's Collide! (It's like that episode of Seinfeld where George didn't want his girlfriend to meet his other friends.) I admit this guy sounds like a crackpot but I read all his stuff a while back and I like it. The way he presents it makes it sound kooky, particularly with this 'M0 entity' thing, but I thing it's a sound hypothesis worthy of further exploration. His central thing is that people are socialized to become addicted to dopamine, and hence to 'boredom products', meaning things being the same today as they were tomorrow. People don't like change. They are threatened by it. They will kill to stop change. Why is that? He says because we are socialized this way. THe process through which we are socialized is called 'the M0 entity' which he talks about liek its some sort of supernatural being with a mind of its own, but its really just a name to describe the idea that the process itself is self-perpetuating. I don't think he actually believes the process is a 'entity', just that describing it as one conveys more of the idea of how powerful the process is by virtue of it's addiction. Anyway, so he proposes that when things don't change too much, you get happy due to elevated dopamine levels. He thinks you get addicted to this surge of opiates - just like a heroin addict. Children who ask too many questions of the teacher threaten the teacher's state of boredom and routine and thus must be medicated with Ritalin. Engineers who ask too many questions threaten the company's bordom state and are laid off or run out of town or put on Prozac. Politics as usual prevails. People are asleep. Are we attacking iraq? Well then we must always attack Iraq. Are we not attacking Iraq? Well then we must never attack Iraq. Things must stay the same. Internet chat rooms must stay the same. Anyone who threatens the internet chat room's stasis must be driven away. Blah blah blah. Anyway, he suggests some ways in which his hypothesis can be proven correct or disproved -- he is not married to his conjecture, he just thinks it's interesting and explains a LOT. As do I. I think it's a really cool idea. Yes, the m0 thing is explained in there somewhere but I too had a hard time finding it. It took me a while to digest all the stuff and I got rather excited about it. It seems fighting the M0 entity means not backing down from fighting BS and flushing your Ritalin and Prozac down the toilet. Maybe spending less time on the internet and playing video games. Maybe taking up swords and overthrowing the government. Who knows! It's worth looking into and I found it a really exciting idea. |
| Sun 01 Dec | . | much of that website is pure crackpot, but a lot of it is very interesting. good link. not sure if labelling people as 'mappers' and 'packers' helps the author's case, but his examples do seem to correspond to those folks who have a 'clue' and those who don't, within my sample space. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Intern | there are some interesting ideas, but serious problems with that author's 'research.' For instance: From http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r3/index.html: 'Little Known Fact: When he was a student, Neils Bohr's tutor was Soren Keirkegaard, the creator of existentialism, who personally bit him on the neck and turned his mind so far inside out it nearly went all the way around.' Soren Kierkegaard died in 1855, Niels Bohr was born in 1885. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Albert D. Kallal | What an excellent question. (but for sure a not a good website!!). I have to admit, that Peopleware and a good number of books talk about how a top developer is MANY TIMES productive as the others on the team. However, none of those books actually makes an effort to understand why! Is there any traits that developer has, or any methods that the developer uses that could analyzed, and trained / explained to other developers? One could perhaps just dismiss the whole issue, and just assume it is a issue of intelligence. Just like some students perform much better then other students. Is there any reasons beyond just better intelligence that makes a top student better then lessor performing students? It would bet that it is probably is just one of intelligence. However, there still may be some things that can be taught. Is there a list of habits, and approaches that top notch developers use? By the way, the numbers for studies show that on software teams there is a MUCH larger variance then just two times. In fact, several studies show 28 times the difference. That means one developer working for 1 month will produce 28 months worth of work compared to other developers. That is over 2 years!! In fact, this means often that 1 developer can output more work then whole rest of the team combined. Gee, I certainly for one would like to find out if there is anything that can be learned from these kinds of talented star developers… Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada Kallal@msn.com |
| Sun 01 Dec | Matthew Lock | I think being productive in programming equates to knowing lots of little shortcuts which add up to a lot of time saving. One of my colleagues refuses to use regular expression and recently spent 8 hours building a routine to validate an email address in PHP. I built the same code using a regular expression in 30 minutes. In this case I was 16 times more productive than my colleague. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Gregg Tavares | I agree with Matthew's point. The more stuff you know about the more possible *quick* solutions you have at your finger tips. I'm not a Java programmer but my Java friend who is very fast says that the main thing about Java is knowing all the libraries inside and out because more often then not there is already a library that already does what you need. Obviously that's not all of it but it helps. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Intern | 'It would bet that it is probably is just one of intelligence. However, there still may be some things that can be taught.' I wasn't aware that the world has settled on standard definitions of 'intelligence.' ;-) I know many very intelligent people that completely suck at computer programming. I do think the reciprocality guy might be on to something or other, but since so much of what he writes is anecdotal, sketchy, false, or nonsensical, you kind of have to discredit the whole enterprise. The recent fringe psychology trend (which isn't so 'fringe'...it is mentioned in many mainstream articles) of linking attention deficit disorder and autism with attributes necessary to be a good programmer are suspect at best. I know people diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and they would not make good programmers. I know some very good/productive programmers, and they don't seem to exhibit any ADD symptoms. Probably 80% of what it takes to become one of those 28-times-as-productive programmers is just caring enough about your work to be that productive, and continually improving yourself so you can be that productive. I don't think that figure is unique to programming. There are surgeons who are 28 times better than other surgeons. There are writers 28 times better than other writers. There are pro basketball players (Michael Jordan) who are 28 times better than other pro basketball players. People have looked into this type of 'genius' performance in the past, and have narrowed down a lot of the variables to simple 'desire' and 'practice.' Check out http://www.gladwell.com for an interesting article about 'physical genius.' |
| Sun 01 Dec | T. Norman | It all comes down to training and talent. Other endeavors have people who are 2-10 times as productive as the average Joe. That's just the variability of the human being. For example, most people cannot run a single mile in 6 minutes. Yet there are hundreds of marathon runners who can run 26 consecutive miles at that pace or faster. In basketball, some players average 2 points a game, and others average 20+ points. Some people can play chess against a dozen people simultaneously and beat all of them. There are math problems that can be solved by some students in a few minutes while others will take hours or never solve it at all. What is interesting is that the most productive programmers (in terms of time to complete a given task) tend to write the least number of lines of code, and the number of lines of code per unit of time does not vary much from programmer to programmer. The reason the superprogrammer is so productive is not that he/she is churning out ten times the lines of code per day; it is that they use far fewer lines of code (in a proportionately smaller amount of time) to accomplish the same task. |
| How to start oversea project outsourcing? | Wed 27 Nov | Jack |
| I have been a consultant for 5 years with good tracking record and still employed in US. But with no sign of job market turnaround and probably more and more project outsourcing to foreign countries (simple reality of capitalism), I am seriously entertaining the idea of jump gun (proactive!) – to work as liaison/project management on outsourcing projects. Recently I have been corresponding with a consulting company that also wants to do oversea outsourcing (again, simple reality of capitalism). I want to equip myself with more knowledge when the discussion gets more serious. Can anybody provide me some info on how to get started with oversea project outsourcing, or where I can find information? Any information (legal, tax, ...) would be helpful. I myself is Chinese citizen. Many thanks and good luck to you all. |
| Wed 27 Nov | -j | I really hate this topic. With high unemployment in the US Tech area right now, why in hell should you do this? The idea behind capitalism/business should not be greed (as it appers to be here) but creation of valid long term sustained economic growth. Small companies in the US support 90%+ of the economy that's feeding you!!! Small compaines that create jobs that create familes who buy cars that need homes, ad nauseum. Too many people in my backyard (and that poor guy in Jacksonville with 1 pack of balogna, I feel for ya, and hang in there) are hurting for jobs right here. Like their skills aren't good enough - you're just too greedy to help them out. Sure your profit margin will be lower, but that's what's so screwed up now. Be a human above all else, and possess compassion for those around you. Then get yourself a lawyer who specializes in international contracts and bring that work back into the US! My 0.02 |
| Wed 27 Nov | Jack | I don't think I like this topic either, but I am nobody and I can't change the fact that more and more companies outsource projects overseas. I just finished a two-day training of WSAD5 and half of the trainees are from Satyam. They are going to get my job sooner or later. And the company's CIO already recommended all software projects to be outsourced (domestic or oversea). I can't make much difference for the sociaty and I am not a civil rights activist, I in some way just want to see what I am up to. |
| Wed 27 Nov | anon | You may hate the topic, but ignoring it won't change anything. In addition, it is unfair of you to pick on Jack. Jack was just stating how the markets work, and trying to figure out how to protect himself. Smart move, Jack. I expect I will lose my job and that I will have a very difficult time finding a new one, partly because more and more work is being outsourced overseas. This is similar to what happened to the textile workers. I am doubtful that programming is going to be a viable profession in the U.S. 10 years from now (except for very small niches). I suppose I will need to change careers. I have no idea what I will do. For the sake of argument, let's assume you are right. Companies shouldn't be so greedy. The reality is that they are. The philosophical and moral questions you raise are interesting, but are not practical. Companies are greedy. Companies have always been greedy. Companies will always be greedy. Companies will try to save costs. The direct costs of programmers in China, or India are one-tenth of the costs of a programmer in North America, Western Europe, or Japan. Therefore, companies will outsource to China and India. You may not like that. I don't like that. I don't see a viable way to prevent it. The next step is to try to figure out how we can be relevant. Jack has the right attitude. Apparently, there was a book written in the early 1990's on this topic by Ed Yourdon: 'Decline and Fall of the American Programmer' http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013191958X/qid=1038433972/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-9150676-6564040?v=glance&s=books From the summary on Amazon, I gather that Yourdon believes that the only way for American (Western European and Japanese) programmers to stay relevant is to improve the quality of their code. Would someone who has read his book care to comment? Based upon what I have seen of management decisions, I don't think most companies care about quality. Most companies treat programmers as grunts. My experience is that most companies want programmers that can bang out code as fast as possible. The result is unmaintainable spaghetti code, but it was cheap to develop. Therefore, I don’t buy Yourdon’s solution. I’m sorry your thread was highjacked Jack, but it is an interesting topic. I know this may be another emotional topic, but please let’s keep things professional and polite. Please take another moment when replying to make sure you use reason, not emotion. I thank you. |
| Wed 27 Nov | mackinac | Yourdon seems to have changed his mind and later wrote 'Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer'. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0139561609/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/002-2410317-2533617?v=glance&s=books But I have not read either one. |
| Wed 27 Nov | ... | Probably the lead role will go to westeners, with cheap labour doing the grunt work. At the moment industry has a notion about software development that has been created by westeners developing software. What industry does not know is the effect of different temperments of the Western and Eastern software developer. Who gets going when the going gets tough, who do you think? When there's nobody else's idea to steal and you've gotta do it yourself, who will do it first? Overseas outsourcing will be the worst thing that even happened to IT, eventually it will be stopped for all but the most trivial of developments because in about 5 years industry will figure out that it doesn't work. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Stephen Jones | Dear -j, If you wish to be a racist, all well and good (though why you should expect somebody who describes himself as Chinese to take the side of 'fellow Americans' is beyond me). However, please don't try to pass off your economic protectionism as philanthropic concern for the rest of humanity. It is even more hypocritical coming from somebody in a profession dedicated to automating people out of jobs -- though as I have said on anoither thread computing hasn't even been that successful at that. Jack, as far as I can tell outsourcing to India (China is way behind in software development, but the place where all the hardware manufacture is outsourced to) and to a much lesser extent other Asian countries falls into three categories. First very basic data entry stuff; Yale, I believe, outsourced the scanning and subsequent OCR'ing of much of its library to Cambodia; the company that was given the job of checking up on the criminal records of teachers in the UK brought many educational institutions to a halt this September because it had send off all the paper forms to Dehli go be entered into computers more cheaply. There are not really many interesting openings there and the work is likely to dry up in the next ten years once the old records are online and people get out of the habit of using paper forms. The second is where projects, or software applications, are developed on their own in India. There is a multi-billion dollar Indian software industry with some pretty heavy players in it. So if you feel like competing against some pretty lean and hungry twenty-somethings, and earning a third to a quarter of the salary you get back home, away you go. The third type of outsourcing is where a company sends a large part of its project to be done by coders in Taiwan or Bangalore because they are under the illusion it is economic to have their software developed by people speaking a different language who are a dozen time zones and as many culture zones away. If you're lucky enough to find a large company that has the money to try and clean up the mess it's got itself into then great. If you are in a company that is thinking of outsourcing, then first of all tell your boss it's a lousy idea (not too emphatically but let it remain on the record) and then when it all hits the fan, put on your martyred look and explain that you were against the idea in the first place, but that for the sake of the company you will spend the next couple of years cooped up in five star hotels in tropical paradises (hint - don't let them outsoure to places like Mongolia). Anyway I'm off on holiday tomorrow to Sri Lanka, which is full of people -j thinks should not be given the chance to have a decent job. If I get an internet connection set up I'll post a few more thoughts on the subject. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Stephen Jones | Dear ... (by the way are theseminimalist names some sort of statement I'm missing) When you count to ten you are using the Hindi number system. I believe about 30% of the programmers at Microsoft come from the sub-continent. the best manual for Red Hat Linux was written by a Bangladeshi, and a long list of etc.s There are probalby many differences between 'western' and 'eastern' programmers, but I doubt if they have anything to do with their attitude to code. Or perhaps, as this is Joel's site, you are comparing the East Coast to the West Coast. Now there you'll have a point :) |
| Wed 27 Nov | nerdles | i could be missing something, but I thought the 'overseas outsourcing' thing was big about 5 years ago, and has now been discredited? i don't really think being a liasion between a fucked team of developers in bangalore and a fucked company in the US (or wherever) is really much of a step up from being a fucked developer or consultant, yourself. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Prakash S | SIGH! I have a feeling this thread is going to snowball into the one like the H1-B thread! Anyways, to answer the original question: Many people are trying to leverage their domain knowledge in staring outsourcing projects. Identify your domain area that you are going to work on. Then identify companies that want work outsourced, and finally find companies in India who are interested in such work. Things to look out for: . You will be the point man with respect to the domain area, and in most cases explaining the domain area to the people, you are outsourcing the project too. (I am assuming that you do not have a person proficient in your domain working at outsourcer’s site.) . Give the companies a Pilot project, see if it lives up to your expectations, and then take it from there. Give them clear deliverables, timeline, etc. If you do wish to outsource to India, I know a few companies who are interested in such work. Drop me a line. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Prakash S | -j The basic tenets of business of business are “make” a product for as less as possible and sell it for as much as possible. This is the basic principle on which almost all companies are based. They continently forget the social responsibility associated. With software, all things being the same, except that A charges $100, while B$ charges 5 – who would you go with? Obviously, A. Going with B is difficult to justify. More of development roles will be shifted to places like India for this reason. There are opportunities for people with very good communication skills, computer knowledge and domain knowledge in the outsourcing industries. Many people have lost white-collar jobs due to automation and more jobs will be lost in the future (See Tom Peters books, Project 50, etc). Organizations like to concentrate on their core competencies and outsource the rest. Nike does this, they research, advertise and brand. They do not own a single manufacturing unit. |
| Wed 27 Nov | software engineer | 'Organizations like to concentrate on their core competencies and outsource the rest. Nike does this, they research, advertise and brand. They do not own a single manufacturing unit. ' The assumption implicit in outsourcing programming is that 'software engineering' is like manufacturing, or like some other type of engineering. It isn't. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Prakash S | It has not got there yet, but the basics are the same. |
| Wed 27 Nov | software engineer | no, it really isn't. most engineering projects (a bridge, a dam, a car, a pacemaker) you design a lot of shit up front so that you can produce a jewel that doesn't change once you finish. the point of software is that it should be flexible and easily modifiable so that you can adapt it to your needs as you go along. this is not really amenable to the outsourcing model, where you ship off a blueprint and expect a 'product' to be shipped back. it works a bit better with shrinkwrap, but even then the upgrade cycle is usually so fast (3 - 9 months) such that it takes too long to communicate with a faraway team, even with the magic of the internet. even Joel, who is mr. boring engineering methodology, does not outsource, for these very reasons. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Alberto | Whats the difference between sitting in New Delhi coding, and sitting in your home office, 20 miles up the road coding? You have fast internet, fax, phone, copier, and of course the same stuff installed on your PC. What is different? I mean this seriously, I'm not trying to stir people up. What is different? Why does one work and the other doesn't? |
| Wed 27 Nov | Malcolm | I think the reality is that, given a competent programmer who can easily communicate in English there's not much difference in theory. The same types of jobs that a programmer 20 miles away could do, could be done from across the world. But in my experience the reality is much different. Successful telecommuters work in roles that respect the fact that they aren't having regular face-to-face communication with coworkers. This might mean that they are working on a very well defined, separate project (e.g. we have a driver for printer X, please write one for printer Y), are the lone supporter of some legacy system (noone else has a clue about this payroll system, so I might as well maintain it from my cabin in the Ozarks), or have some mechanism in place to ensure regular communication (e.g. Fridays in the office). Managers don't tend to use overseas outsourcing for these types of situations, in my experience. They feel that they can eliminate an entire team (and the associated costs) by outsourcing a whole project or subproject. And I think they achieve similar results as they'd see if they sent half of their dev team 20 miles down the road, and added a 1/2 day delay between all communications. |
| Wed 27 Nov | analyst | Stephen Jones, how was -j being racist? |
| Wed 27 Nov | Matt Conrad | < |
| Wed 27 Nov | Albert D. Kallal | I will tell ya why this does not work!! I as a habit tend to avoid these posts. But, I shall put in my 3 cents worth her also. First, Ed Yourdon’s book. – Decline and Fall of the American programmer. Gee, too bad old Ed did not release the book this year! There is a defeatist theme in the book from the point of view that we here in North America are doing a poor job (and thus risk loosing the whole industry to over seas companies). However, most the of the book is on software management, and software quality. He did seem to believe that in the early 1990’s we where going to loose the software industry to foreign competition. (the book was published in 1992). Of course for the next 8 years the industry absolutely boomed in north America. So, it really was crappy title for other wise a EXCELLNET BOOK. It also was before any hint of the internet existed (which by the way, does/would support the concept of outsourcing). Ed also was very vocal in the year 2000 speaking tour. So, I have to say that this guy sees publishing opportunities, and likes a bit of controversy thrown in. However, that book is really not about the decline of the software industry, but what practices should be adopted for good software development. It is very good book on software methodologies, and has good chapters on software metrics. It certainly belongs on any good software developers shelf, and I can see my hard cover copy as I type this. Hence, it is a excellent book. It is actually dated a bit, since the whole PC and net revolution REALLY picked up steam in the mind 90’s. So, much is written about mainframe, and pc type stuff in his book. Don’t let the title of the book fool you, it is an excellent book on software development, and what good companies should do. By the way, I was NOT aware of the “Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer'. I never heard of this title, nor seen a review. Hum, perhaps I will order a copy. Now, back to this outsourcing issues. First, a good many y2k projects were in fact outsource to places like India. However, y2k work was 100% drone dead beat work. Scan and replace code. Add some y2k “offset” to every date value. Real low value in the sense that any good developer would avoid this type of work anyway. Also, the y2k work was easily outsourced since no usability, and designs had to be communicated to the other end. (this is most important!). When software has to have a lot of usability, and testing with users, it is has to be done with the target audience. Outsourcing does not lend it self well to this type of development model. It turns out a lot of system type software does NOT need usability type stuff. Hence, software that does not need “end” user testing, or a lot of user interaction is a great candidate for outsourcing. If you are writing a driver, or a database engine, a large portion of the project has NO UI. These types of software was thought to be a perfect candidate for outsourcing. However, most of that kind of software is also exactly perfect for Open Source. Hence, work on database engines such as MySql, and the ton of “OS” level type work we see is now see is open source. (Linux for example). Thus, much of the real stuff that is good candidate for outsourcing is also good for open source. This is another reason why I believe outsourcing did not take off. (in other words, much of what can be outsourced is being done already). The other main problem with outsourcing is the usability/designs/interface stuff cannot occur very well when the project is outsourced. This is especially the case when language barriers exist. Even culture can hamper this. I have had many beers with some project managers who have in fact outsouced software projects. I don’t have time here..but the stories are amazing! (they actually flew over about 30 people from another country!). Now, if you are going to outsource software, then you need an excellent analyst, and someone who can write VERY GOOD functional specs. If you don’t have those skills, then outsourcing is not possible. To have those skills means you are an excellent communicator, AND also a excellent designer. If you are looking to become a “outsourcer” person, then you better have great analyst abilities. If you can write up excellent specs and designs, then you can probably do well as an outsourcer. That means that your specs AND designs are very good. (by the way, those companies overseas are desperate for these types of people, since they are the “KEY” to making this whole process happen). With out excellent designers and analysts on this end, the outscoring cannot occur. Of course, if we have no more programmers here, then we will not have people capable of design something to outsource…will we? You are not going to create a good analyst without that analyst have good designs and programming skills. Hence, if we loose too many jobs, then outscouring will not work. If a compnay tries to get rid of too many develoers, they will also loose the ability to outsource! The other big issue that that everyone has overlooked: Coding is a small part of the cost of software! Everyone here is fixed on the idea that coding is the hard part. I hate to bust every ones bubble, but coding is not the hard part. It is the design and the functional spec that is the hard part. The problem thus today is that most companies DO NOT properly design and spec the software. Companies do a TERRIBLE job of design and specking out software. The problem here is that to outsource a project the spec and design must be done correctly! If companies finally did start specking and designing the software correctly, then the cost of developing software where would drop so much, as to make the need to outsource disappear! In other words, the second a company gets to the point where they can outsource, they have also reached the point where it will not need to outsource! I don’t understand why this is not obvious to people. With good software designs, and good specs, the code practically writes it self. Further, the better the designs and specs, the smaller time is spent on coding. Have any of you actually looked at a software company today? A VERY SMALL portion of the staff actually write code. Companies with first rate designs and spces can bang out code in less time that you can get the folks across the ocean to read the design and figure out what is wanted. So, outsourcing really can’t work..can it, since once a company figures out how to outsource, it just eliminated the need to do so… Besides, you have not heard the stores I have!! Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada Kallal@msn.com |
| Thu 28 Nov | -j | Stephen, Let me re-phrase in simple programmer speak since your head is up your compiler: 1. Write a business plan. 2. Periodically revise it. Now, I will put on my peril-resistant glasses and invert the compiler-head operation according to so I can see the light too: 1. Creating jobs is easy. 2. Running a business is a joke. If it's so easy to create jobs today in the US, it must be 2x easier to do in another country. And since I can save 0.08 in the process, it's worth every penny. I'm going to sleep well tonight knowing thus, and have my quarterly estimates revised tommorrow. -j |
| Thu 28 Nov | Beka Pantone | Hi Albert D.,
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| Thu 28 Nov | | Oh sh*t, I am agreeing with Albert. Maybe I need medication. (Sorry Albert, it just doesn't happen very often :-) Having said that coding is simple, you should see some of the code that an ex employer got when outsourcing part of a project to an Indian company (their people were even sitting in our offices...) *shudder* |
| Thu 28 Nov | Stephen Jones | Dear analyst, -j was saying that it was wrong to create jobs for Indians and citizens of other countries when the same jobs could be given to American citizens. You could argue that he is not being racist since he doesn't care about whether the American citizen is of negro, inciian or chinese origin but there doesn't seem to be a word for being prejudiced against and discriminating against all other nationals, (or people from other States/towns/neighborhoods/streets)depending on how fine you want to tune it). Parochialism describes the attitude well, but doesn't imply the active discirimination -j is asking for, and tribalism, which describes the phenomenum perfectly, might easily be understood. It is a pity there doesn't seem to be a term for it, because the combination of pretending to be mutlit-cultural within one's own national boundaries but discriminating in every possible aspect against those from other countries is rampant in the USA and EU. If I said why give the job to a spick or jew or chink or wog when there lots of poor white boys unemployed then everybody would be after my blood and not just for the offensive terms. Yet it is considered quite OK to say don't give the job to somebody in Mexico, Israel, China or India because there are programmers in Fort Lauerdale on their last pack of bolognese. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Stephen Jones | Dear -j If your last post is American style 'simple programmer speak' I can see why everybody is outsourcing as quick as they can. |
| Thu 28 Nov | analyst | Stephen Jones, nothing -j said was racist. His comment was a valid one, and it was about economics. Decisions identical to those you object to are made implicitly by citizens of succesful economies everywhere. That is, successful economies limit inbound immigration and they refrain from supporting people in poorer parts of the world. By your definition, that is racist. Do you donate your income to help poor people in other parts of the world? Are you racist yourself? |
| Thu 28 Nov | Stephen Jones | Dear analyst, We are not talking about limiting immigration here. We are talking about provate companies being expected to make their decisions on grounds of nationality. Both the US and the EU aggressively target export markets and preach free trade to the developing world, while setting up license schemes and giving out massive protectionist subsidies to their own lame ducks. It is true it's about economics. All tribalism is about economics. It's true it often succeeds. The whites in South Africa did pretty welll out of keeping most of the land to themselves. Now, how often outsourcing is a good idea, which is the other disicussion running through this thread is another thing. Biut it was -j who bought up the whole idea of keeping the jobs for the boys. And, what irritated me, tried to hide his old fashioned protectionism behind the cloak of caring and being against 'greedy' capitalism. |
| Thu 28 Nov | -j | This is really funny now. I was involved for a long time with a multilatteral investment fund (from G7 countries) inside an international bank devoted to creating economic growth in the Americas (all of them). I think I know what's up on this topic. And I'm tired of words, and should never have to defend keeping jobs in my country. I wish more pundit geniuses like S.J. would STFU and go try to improve the economy by creating industries instead of belly-hooing. Just look at Ben & Jerry's Ice cream as a company - profitable, ethical, and 'protectionist' - no worldcom there, and no layoffs either. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Albert D. Kallal | I want to clarify something I said here:
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| Thu 28 Nov | Albert D. Kallal | opps! I meant to say: >>When you outstouce, you better find a way to communicate those designs, or you find that your developers are writing what you *NOT* need! |
| Thu 28 Nov | Mr Jack | Stephen Jones: I believe the term is Jingoism. Never heard it used as Jingoist. But, hey, why not? |
| Thu 28 Nov | Tj | This would have been an interesting topic had it stayed ontopic. Having a job as the face of overseas workers sounds like a good US job to me, one that could reduce US unemployment. By the way, have computers put ma and pa out of business? |
| Thu 28 Nov | Chuck | This question is weird, because: if you actually possessed the skills necessary to successfully manage an offshore IT project, you could probably make a lot more money doing something a lot more straightforward than managing an offshore IT project. |
| Fri 29 Nov | We have it easy | No Albert, I agree with you that coding is easy. It is a trivial, mind numbing thing to do. Even what the others here mention is not exactly hard work - given the same pay etc, what would you rather do, write code, or dig roads? Write code, or watch patients die? |
| Sat 30 Nov | FlyVFly | Indian companies are not stupid... They hear all that you say, and then have ways round them. Objections and Refutations 1. Coding costs are insignificant anyways / Design is the hard part Answer: See Infosys and 'Global Delivery Model' ... Simply.. put cheaper Indian labor on american shores to do customer interaction, system design, u i design etc. And ship away all that you can to india where its even cheaper to get it done. Remember these companies work 24x7... so someone finishes an algorithm outline by close of business in the US, the indian team is waiting to take it up, write code, test it and respond with improvements before our american-shore buddy comes into work the next morning. Think incredibly tight developmetn timelines, very agile programing teams. 2. Cultural differences: Sorry... That point doesnt hold. Come over meet some people in India... and you'll know what I'm talking about. (I went to an Ivy League School to study Computer Science and Economics... and most of my friends have Masters and PhD's from the best uiniversities in the US) Young metropolitan India... fits in very easily in the US context... Metropolitan in a country of a billion people means that... HUGE and CROWDED. (I am in a city with 14 million inhabitants... In comparision, Boston felt like a small village) The people who keep mentioning 'cultural differences' usu. seem to speak of dusty village roads and argicultural subsistence economies. As if India was seen thru the lense of a Discovery Channel cameraman. They need to wake up and see the metropolitan, corporate india that we live in, (Infact, my life in New York wasnt very different than here. Except maybe the nightlife here is much more fullfilling.) 3. Language Differences? Most of us have formal educational instruction in English before that in any other language. Think about it... The first words i learn were 'Apple, Ball, etc...' (PS: Dont mock my spelling... Ask joel to add a spell checker instead. ) 4. Communications Issues: Secure Instant Messaging NetMeeting VideoPhones Cellphones Airplanes Need I say more? (Actually... Havent met my largest customer ever! Only had virtual contact with them) 5. Unsilled Programers? Can you say CMM level 5. Please check the SEI site and find out how may Indian development centers have that appraisal vs. non-indian development centers. (I dont necessarily agree with everything SEI says, but we Indians can spot a marketing opportunity when we see it. A SEI certification summararily answers all client questions about competence and quality) -V [Run a tiny (25 ppl) software company in India. (soon to be) CMM Level 3 appraised. Main clients all over South East Asia and Australia. Lived long enough in the US to know that there is no difference] |
| Sat 30 Nov | Jack | Just got back from a 2-day trip. Kind of disappointed because a 'how-to' question turned into politics (sigh!). Maybe this forum is not the place for this type of question considering the fact that the majority of us are developers. Some thoughts. I do think we are working in a fucked-up industry - software. Bill Joy once said programmers cannot handle software. I think you need bright minds with humble attitude to really deliver quality software. However, the reality of the industry is against us. On the one hand, there are books 'Teach yourself Visual Basic in 24 hrs' and oversea programmers who don't even need a H1-B visa to work on projects; on the other hand are the managers who only know playing (down) the numbers. We consultants are squeezed in the middle. And we have to play their rules of the game. If the management can let go off all agency employees in one day to cut cost (without considering the loss caused by the sudden-death of the ongoing projects), what can't they do!!! Management play number any way they want like Enron does its accounting. Even it may not be a wise decision to outsource to oveasea, they do it and they will. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Albert D. Kallal | I don’t know what other people mean when they say cultural differences, but I sure as the heck know what I mean!!! When I say cultural differences, it has NOTHING to do with dirt roads. Cultural differences in my definition are just that: differences in human behaviors that occur between different cultures. These types of differences make the world a wonderful and interesting place. However, these differences most certainly make a difference in the software development process. In fact, cultural differences is NEAR THE TOP of the list in challenges that a company will face when outsourcing a major project. The companies I talked too have found the whole process not very workable. For example, when talking to people from India, they tend to nod their heads in a kind of a approval and understanding when in fact they don’t understand! In the west, we tend to take this type of behavior as a “yes, I understand and agree” You don’t think that is a problem? I know of company that had a room full of developers from India, it was only after 6 weeks of intense meetings and seminars did the western developers find out this cultural difference! They had to start over simply because simple body languages is different between the cultures.The developers here had NO IDEA when the person they were talking to understood them, and when they DID NOT!!! The result was that they had to throw out about two months worth of meetings and work. Once this difference was discovered, then the things progressed a lot better. Gee, the project is now two months behind schedule, because people tend to nod their heads in approval. This is clearly an example of small cultural differences turning into a huge cost over run. People’s Names: Some of the names of these people were so long, that in fact I talked to project managers who actually made mistakes in their employee evaluations. They actually reprimanded the hell out of one programmer, and threationed to send him back home. The problem was, that programmer was actually one of their “star” top programmers. Later, it was realized that the wrong person just got totally reamed out. This mistake was due to the first names being so long, that when reading the spreadsheet, the wrong person was being talked too! (the spreadsheet needed to be widened more, to realize that the first name was different!!). You can imagine some of morale problems that arise when stuff like that happens! Both the developer team, and the managers will not respect each other after mistakes like this happen (in fact, the mistake was never actually released to the developer team!). Names where so long, and caused such problems in simple meetings and phone conferences. On the company intercom, the secretary has difficulty even paging people!! Things go so bad that the company eventually did the following: You “insert name here that takes up more room this actual comment!!” are now going to be called ; Bob And you, “insert name long name……………..” are now going to be called John. In other words, just to facilitate cultural differences in names, they actually started assigning simple names! I can write PAGES OF examples where simple cultural differences caused huge problems!. Huge my friend! So, I not sure what other people mean by cultural differences, but to come here and tell they don’t make a difference has got to even MORE FUNNTY then the above stories! Now, don’t get me wrong, I not saying a cultural difference is bad, I simply state that they exist. No one can say the cultural differences do not have a factor in these projects (that is nuts!!). Differences can certainly be dealt with, and in extreme cases, even the peoples names have to be Americanized to facilitate easy communication. I am sure that any decent developer has heard of, or understands the concepts from the Mythical Man Month The whole book talks about the software process, and very clearly states that software is the result of communication. Cultural differences MOST CERTAINTILTIY will, and do effect the software process. In fact, it effects it more then most types of human endeavors, since software is NOT a physical product. In fact, software is the result of communication between people. In fact, the whole essence of software is about communication of ideas between people. As mentioned, you can certainly outsource, but by the time your figure out how to do it just right, you then reached the point where outsourcing will not save you much money. The companies I know that have done this, will not do it again. There are certainly some successes in outsourcing. For sure some companies may have had better success. However, no one can tell me that culture do not make a difference, be it a plus, or a minus to a project…it does make a difference, and more in the case of software. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada Kallal@msn.com |
| Sat 30 Nov | J D Trollinger | '2. Cultural differences: Sorry... That point doesnt hold. ' I don't think anyone meant ganesh and shiva, public urination, and reverence for cows. What people meant by cultural differences, is that Indian teams typically flake out the minute any thing gets shaky, and that they don't come up with any solutions that are original or interesting. Overseas shops are adequate for solving problems that have already been solved many times before, but not very good at innovation.See '...''s post above. '5. Unsilled Programers? Can you say CMM level 5. ' CMM level 5 has nothing to do with skilled programming. It is a set of procedures to follow so that you dont NEED skilled programmers, you just need someone to follow the recipe so that you don't get sued. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Albert D. Kallal | Also, to anyone reading this, I apologize for posting in a thread that hints, or some how even promotes the idea that other cultures by nature do a poor job in the software industry. I in no way doubt, or even question the ability of countries like India to produce first rate developers. In fact, they clearly have above average number of math and computing people as a culture. This is something to be proud of, and India is knowing through out the word as nation strong in math and computing. I do of course stand by my statements that cultural differences exist, and will effect projects. However, this is a huge difference than other people in this thread commenting that somehow as a nation India’s software developers cannot cut it. That is kind of statement is absurd!, and find even the fact that I participated in such a thread makes my stomach turn! Once again, I do apologize for just the “fact” of participating in a thread that would somehow hint that these people can not develop first rate software. Sincerely, Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada Kallal@msn.com |
| Sat 30 Nov | never look back | Oracle will moving most of their corporate accountiing operations to India. All professional work that can be done over networks can be moved to where qualified labor is less expensive. It's a reality. The thing to do is learn how to operate effectively in this new environment. Resisting it is like resisting technology itself...whether it's good or bad from your percpective, it marches relentlessly forward. Understanding other cultures and how to work with globally distributed teams is becomming mandatory. Whether or not you would prefer that things revert to a previous comfort zone is irrelevant. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Ian Stallings | Being one of the fellows j is talking about, being unemployed and hating it, it does stir up my anger when I hear of outsourceing simply because we have so many here willing to take pay cuts just to survive in this shitty economy. We didn't create it, but we have to live in it. We want to feed our family, pay our bills, pay our taxes, etc. So if there are so many here in the US that are unemployed then why do comanies insist on outsourcing jobs to other countries? Because it's cheaper right? So if that money goes to another county doesn't that make our own economy suffer even more? It's a circle just like any other in life. If the US economy goes to shit there will be no h1bs and no outsourcing to other countries. Where is the money going to come from? How is anything going to happen in the US if we outsource everything? I think his point was valid and you tried to put your own slant on it putting words into j's mouth. Before you go making another preconceived opinion maybe you should check you own opinion about what he is trying to saty actually means. Maybe it does have something to do with tribalism. Lets peer into that thread a bit more .. what kind of leader would sell his own tribe out simply to for financial gain? That's not the kind of leader I want. Yes I think home should come first, that's not being selfish or racist or even jongoistic. Would you not care for your own tribe before you cared for others? If so does that make you a bad person for thinking that? Not everyone thinks the way you do Stephen and that does not mean we can be dismissed with the racist label. Some of us are against internationalization because we know that it only helps the few elite, not the whole. |
| Sat 30 Nov | analyst | Prakash, the argument that something is OK simply because it's more profitable for private companies is not valid. Companies are just legal abstractions intended to protect shareholders from risk. The ability to make profits derives from many privileges we, as a society, grant to those legal abstractions. For example, we grant the right to define and own something called intellectual property. Our police and courts will enforce that abstraction to the benefit of those legal abstractions. So profit is not some magical thing. It's the result of a negotiated social agreement. We frequently re-negotiate that agreement. For example, we require companies to avoid harming citizens in the conduct of their business, even though it might be more profitable for them to do so. We require companies to provide safe workplaces for their workers, and to pay them on time. We have a set of conditions to maintain a fair social contract between profit and society. Large scale outsourcing of IT work is a relatively new issue for our society. If it causes excessive damage to our society, then there's no reason our society shouldn't renegotiate the social contract again. Remember too that outsourcing benefits a relatively small part of society, being managements and shareholders. In IT at least, it does not usually result in cheaper products. It just results in higher profits. In economic terms, it is a transfer of wealth from workers to management. |
| Sat 30 Nov | analyst | CMM-5, like certifications generally, means nothing. There are only 12 companies worldwide with CMM-5, and seven of those are Indian. Match that up with the structure of the IT industry and ask yourself how relevant is CMM-5 as a useful indicator of capability. |
| Sat 30 Nov | dont be such a dork. | Seen the movie 'Office Space?' Now, imagine a 'Bollywood' version of that movie. That's the end result of overseas outsourcing. I say let the Indians build payroll apps and take care of Oracle's internal accounting. If you are building backoffice apps for an insurance company, getting laid off is probably the best thing that could ever happen to you... |
| Sat 30 Nov | analyst | Why don't we let the guys building backoffice apps for insurance companies decide what's best for them? |
| Sat 30 Nov | Prakash S | ananlyst, I agree with u wihich is why I mentioned social responsibility, which these companies 'forget'. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Stephen Jones | Let's get some things straight. -j You want me to find jobs for AMERICANS. I've never even been to the USA. I'm a UK citrizen who works in Saudi Arabia for nine months a year and spends the other three months in Sri Lanka. I haven't lived in the UK since 1978 and the two towns I have lived in longest in my whole life are Madrid and Barcelona. My doctors are Sri Lankan and Egyptian, my dentist is Sri Lankan, my boss is Saudi, my office mates are Americans, my students are Saudi, my cleaner is Sri Lankan, my electrician is Bangladeshi, amd my sys admin is Indian. Who are the 'my own' I'm supposed to be looking after. Ian Putting 'one's own first' is the definition of tribalism or racialism. You can argue whether it's a good thing or not and it doesn't imply all of the nastier accretions that you probably associate with racism but that is what it is, so if the cap fits, wear it. Analyst All the people I mentioned at the top of my post have one thing in common. The software on their computers is nearly all American. The rest of the world has been payng billions to the US for its software. Has it not ocurred to you that if there is an 'implied contract' the rest of the world is not going to be very happy if one of the terms is 'you pay for us to discriminate against your workers'. And one of the main reasons America is top for software development is that it made it so easy for people to go over there and work. In General Nobody here appears to have read Adam Smith. He made the obvious statement that the butcher doesn't provide you with meat because he likes you but because he stands to gain. The whole point of classical economic theory is that the common good is achieved by everybody following their own self-interest, and it is the self-interest of the employer to maximize his profits and minimize his expenses. You can argue that capitalism is a bad idea but don't expect the leopard to change his spots. The IT market was deformed by the .com mania. People were hired to do work that was uneconomic, and now that sanity has prevailed there is a glut. Yet most of the work that is still available cannot be outsourced because it's either system administration or customizing. Albert is quite right in that respect. Albert Your story is too good to be true! But what it does show is that there are some pretty dumb Canadian companies. Didn't the head honchos even think to ask 'What problems am I likely to have outsourcing to India?' They could simply have posted on this forum and Prakash or me would have told them straight off that saying 'yes' and then trying to find out later what you have said yes to, would be number one problem. It is a survival technique caused by bad management; exposure to good 'western' management cures it in a couple of months or less. And they can't even be bothered to learn the guys names and think they can try and assess them. And they made the spreadsheet too small; I suppose the system would have choked altogether if they hired Indonesians because they normally don't have a surname. Simple rule for personnel work in a multi-cultural environment; have a separate field for moniker and ask the worker what he wants to be called. Jack Your original posting is too general for people to give you specific advice. The devil is in the details, but I think you're getting some idea of the pitfalls. I would tend to agree with the other poster who said domain knowledge is the key. FlyVFly You certainly honed your marketing techniques in the USA. Yes, your vibrant metropolitan India does exist at one level, but it exists somewhat like KDE exists on top of an X-Window manager which exists on top of a bash shell which ......... Joel wrote an excellent article on the phenomenum; he called it the 'law of leaky abstractions.' |
| Sun 01 Dec | Albert D. Kallal | >>Albert Your story is too good to be true! But what it does show is that there are some pretty dumb Canadian companies. Didn't the head honchos even think to ask 'What problems am I likely to have outsourcing to India?' They could simply have posted on this forum Gee, now there is an answer eh? The problem was that the Canadian company was dumb!! So in other words, if I outsource to a good company, the solution is post on “Joel on Software”, as one cannot expect that company to provide any kind guidance in these types of situations?. So, in theory, the Canadian company is dumb, and to use the India company, you need to first post on this board? Gee, ok…that sounds real good to me. >>would have told them straight off that saying 'yes' and then trying to find out later what you have said yes to, would be number one problem. No, I DID NOT SAY the problem was accountability, and understanding what management said. I did not say the problem was remembering what was agreed to. (again, a common problem in all companies). Every company in the world has that above problem. I CLEARLY said, that the problem was developers here could not get clear feedback as to when the other teams “got it”. If I am explain something to you, I need some kind of feedback as to if you understand the problem, so then I can go on to the next problem/concept. That is not the above issue of accountability, and “remembering” what management said. Totally different issue. If I am explain something to you, and if no indication of you not understanding the problem is given, I will as natural course of the matter go on to the next concept (this is simply how humans communicate). As mentioned, this is a critical process of communication of ideas. If I can’t tell when you do, or do not understand the problem..then we are in big trouble. And, oh by the way..I was being rather nice here..as I do have more stories!!! I mean either the company has to write out a perfect technical spec, or do as suggested in this thread, bring over part of the outsourcing group over to help with the designs (and then send parts of that back home). Right now, I doubt this whole process from what I know now. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada Kallal@msn.com |
| Sun 01 Dec | mackinac | >>> On the company intercom, the secretary has difficulty even paging people!! <<< The problem here is not that the names are too long, but that the company had paging. |
| Sun 01 Dec | analyst | Stephen, no-one's asking you to do anything. The discussion is about the operation of firms in the American economy. In terms of economists, try Keynes or Galbraith. |
| Development Workstation | Wed 27 Nov | Marvin Motherboard |
| Im planning on buying a new workstation for Visual Studio.NET C++ development. My budget for the system (including monitor or monitors) is $2250. I am willing to purchase components from different vendors and assemble the system myself. What should I buy? |
| Wed 27 Nov | Tj | I found a bunch of nice links here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/31/1255/9162 I'd just buy a notebook personally though. ;) |
| Wed 27 Nov | Heston Holtmann | http://www.ncix.com/usa/pc.php http://www.ncix.com/canada/pc.php Highly dependable and competative on orders in Canada. Probably even bet for the USA. Complete customization of systems, much better then DELL's pc builder! If they don't have a part listed, call them, they will accomodate you! |
| Wed 27 Nov | D Angelo | www.sillworks.com |
| Wed 27 Nov | Kevin Jackson | A laptop is now my first choice for programming platform. Has been for the last 3 years. Mine happens to be a dell (dood). |
| Wed 27 Nov | sam | In my last job, I did development work on an 800MHz Dell laptop. It was new enough to have a nice big screen (exactly the same display area as my 17' monitor, as it turned out), and with a USB keyboard and mouse on a keyboard tray, I almost never noticed that I was actually using a laptop. It was nice to be able to pack up and go when I needed to give a presentation, work from somewhere else, whatever. With your budget, you can probably get a 17' LCD as well for acres of additional desktop area. (= |
| Wed 27 Nov | mph119 | You want to go here: http://arstechnica.com/guide/system/index.html |
| Wed 27 Nov | Mike Swieton | Well, if your looking at a desktop I'd suggest a dual-processor+dual-moniter system. I haven't done the math, but you should be able to throw one together w/ cheap moniters at just under budget. Dual athlon's are pretty cheap to set up. But then again, I compile my code often, and now work extremely well in a dual (or currently triple) head setup. YMMV. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Marvin Motherboard | Dual monitors -- definately. I'm thinking about dual processors. Does it significantly speed up builds? How about SCSI or ATA RAID? Will they significant reduce build times? |
| Wed 27 Nov | Project Builder | Marvin, Truth be told a processor with a lot of L2 cache, standard memory and a Large (1.5 - 2x memory) swap file on each Hard drive used is more important then number of processors in a Visual C build (CL, the compiler, spawns only one process, but it does peg the CPU hit). So my order of purchase priority would be first memory, multiple hard drives (I don't think RAID would by very useful so I would not do mirroring or stripping, unless you are storing your source on the machine) then multiple processors. I use a dual processor box at my place of employment to build the software for the project I am on and I have found the extra processors do help, but memory helps more. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Chris Tavares | Multiple processors won't really help you out much as far as compile times go. However, they DO help tremendously in debugging multithreaded apps. There are some bugs that don't show up on a uniprocessor machine that will pop up on a multi-CPU box. The only way to find them is to debug on a multi-CPU system to begin with. That and it's nice to be able to run winamp and not have the music slip when you compile. ;-) |
| Thu 28 Nov | Mr Jack | Multiple monitors definetly. I reckon you will find a better compile time improvement by spending your extra money on extra computers to use as a compile farm with Xoreax Incredibuild than by boosting the power of your main one. Not quite sure whether the .Net version of Incredibuild is available yet. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Bill Tomlinson | I'll put my vote in for dual (or more) monitors. Also, I'll go against trend and recommend RAID 1. Lots of motherboards come with an IDE RAID controller built in, and hard drives are pretty cheap. But not for speed, but for uptime. Sure, you're backing up your crucial data (source repository, business documents, etc) offsite. But people generally underestimate the time that it would take to get their main workstation back up to it's current state if the disk fails. That is, if you're like me and have your computer extensively tweaked and have tons of software installed (and I think that this is true for most programmers). If all you do is install windows, visual studio, and office and then never make any configuration changes, it's a different story. For the same reason, I'd suggest a UPS. Just a low end one that gives you five minutes to save everything and shut down cleanly. |
| Thu 28 Nov | M. | Don't get SCSI, they are incredibly noisy. I would get dual LCDs, they are more comfortable than CRT and take less space. For quick and easy backups, I use a ZIP drive. Much faster and easy to use than a cd-r. What else? I generally have found that ergonomy is much more important than speed in a computer. If you don't get the fastest processor of the moment, but a slightly slower one, you can save a lot. And so on. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Troy King | > Don't get SCSI, they are incredibly noisy. Hmm, let's see... noisy drives vs drives that FAIL EVERY YEAR. Let me think that one over. IDE is cheap consumer crap not made for a professional. Three times my only safety has been my backups to CD-ROM when my IDE drives have failed. Meanwhile, my co-workers with SCSI haven't lost a drive yet. |
| Fri 29 Nov | Just me (Sir to you) | I used to go for screen real-estate and fast disks, but nowadays I prefer a good notebook. - portability: take it where you want to be for the day. Sometimes a change of scenery realy works. - No noise: this requires some evaluation and extra work. Make sure that under normal conditions the processor fan does not come on (force throttle processor if necessary). Throw out the HD that came with it and replace it with a noiseless one (IBM has very nice disks where even with your ear to the case you can't even tell they are spinning) Performance on modern hardware should be no problem, VS.NET is quite spiffy. Make sure you to max out on memory and you will be fine. |
| Fri 29 Nov | Peter Ibbotson | BTW buy a matrox dual head card. (G550 is I think the current model number) It was the only card that looked to windows XP like two proper video cards. This means you can set seperate resolutions on both. Some of the other cards I tried (ATI Radeon VE) treated the display as one very wide system (eg 2048 * 768). Personally on my desk I have a LCD screen at 1024x768 + a 21' monitor at 1280x768 which works well as the mouse moves naturally from on to the other. Both Nvidia and ATI may have moved their drivers on, but for development purposes the somewhat poor 3D performance of the Matrox may not matter (Plus the card is around $100) |
| Fri 29 Nov | Mike Swieton | Dual-proc compiles: Under VC a poster above stated that the compiler doesn't spawn more than one thread. I've never used VC, so whatever. Obviously there's no gain in that case. However: under Unix systems (i.e. Linux), the make program can compile in n threads (make -j n), if your Makefiles are arranged properly (i.e. depenancies). This is the reason my next machine will almost certainly be dual-processor. The only other thing I'm considering is have two uniprocessor boxes using the distcc program to compile my projects. Depends on what your platform is, but think about it. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Yaniv | I do lot of development. And I just bought a pro-star laptop. I love it! Just a little heavy though. Here is the model I bought. http://pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=5654 |
| Unemployment Woes | Wed 27 Nov | anonymous |
| Am I the only computer professional that cannot find a job in Jacksonville, Florida? Ive been looking for the past 3 months with no luck. Does anyone know what state is the best state for IT professionals? I need a job quick--Im on my last pack of bologne! |
| Wed 27 Nov | Matt H. | There's some insurance company in Jacksonville, FL that has like 500 coders as employees and is CMM-Level 5. I can't remember the name. I read about them in ComputerWorld or InfoWorld a couplea weeks back. What's your skillset? |
| Wed 27 Nov | Bella | You are in a career that does not even require a high school diploma. Certification is non-existant. Nurses, plumbers, and construction workers have MUCH more rigorous standards and procedures to go through. There are tons of jobs, just not with the inflated salary you think you deserve. Stop asking for an unreasonable salary. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Those with knowledge will survive | This guy could be a genius, I don't know....so don't take this as a profile of you. But, I do have a 'theory' about the current 'unemployment woes' of computer/IT professionals: Three years ago, if you could 'click a mouse' ... you had a job. Most employers were desperate and everyone wanted to be an 'html coder'. People were dropping out of school to join in on the next 'gold rush'. Of course a lot of companies were laying people off, but really they were 'trimming the fat' (bye-bye mouse-clickers). My first job out of college (computer science and engineering degree) I took a job on the I*NET team of a financial institution. First, that was a mistake. Never again will I work for a company where software supports the main product. But, I remember how desperate they were to find people. We were working with J2EE/EJB/JSP/Servlets/XML/Buzzwords ... and they hired this one girl that had 'JSP' experience at a ridiculous salary. I remember being in a Java class our company sent us too and hearing her ask the question 'what's a heap?' That's the type of crap that drove me crazy. I would have to hand-hold her during some of the most basic java coding and she was making a ton more than me. I digress. My point is...I feel that the people that a) don't know crap and/or b) are asking way too much are having a hard time finding jobs. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Those with knowledge will survive | Damn, I mangled my post. Turn this sentence: Of course a lot of companies were laying people off, but really they were 'trimming the fat' (bye-bye mouse-clickers). into: Now, a lot of companies are laying people off, but really they are 'trimming the fat' (bye-bye mouse-clickers) |
| Wed 27 Nov | anonymous | I have a degree in Engineering and I have been working as an Analyst for the past 4 years. Every job I apply for, the recruiter says they recieved about 400 resumes for the position. So my theory is the one who lies on their resume will survive. |
| Wed 27 Nov | mackinac | Things are bad all over. The stock market has been going up the past few weeks, but the job market is still in the duldrums. The only area that I have heard any indication of improvement is in government/defense work. |
| Wed 27 Nov | nerdles | the government is allocating huge amounts of money to 'bioterrorism defense.' find a university hospital and glom onto an IT project there. |
| Wed 27 Nov | ... | The job market is fucked.fucked.fucked.com so don't be too hard on yourself, ignore the fools who intimate that it's because there is something wrong with you. Many companies dont even have enough work for the staff that they have, Many permanent staff who are twiddling thumbs at the moment, fortunately while paid. Many large companies are 'holding on' to people for fear of starting an unemployment snowball. Recession begins with unemployment, so the feds pulling strings here for sure. Of course, contractors have been let go immediately. Good luck. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Glad to know, who I know | Those with connections will survive. network, network, network It will most likely find you your next job. And it will most likely allow you to keep your current job if your company falls on hard times. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Those with knowledge will survive | >>>>>>>>>> The stock market has been going up the past few weeks, but the job market is still in the duldrums. >>>>>>>>>> Of course, everybody here does realize that we are now in the blackhole known as 'thanksgiving/christmas'. Who hires during this time period (regardless of job market)? Unless there is a desperate 'we need this right now' need. In January, new budgets go into effect and new positions are created. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Those with knowledge will survive | But, the thing is...I've seen people get jobs in this economy. For example, my company was possibly (if they could come up with money in the budget) interested in hiring someone in May/June timeframe. My old college roommate told me about a guy that was graduating with his Masters degree in May. A really smart guy (so yes, Networking is a good thing). We brought him in and liked him alot, but we just didn't have the money to hire him. But, I talked to my roommate and this guy was hired a month after we interviewed him. So, he had no trouble getting a job. Like I said, People have no skills or they want too much money. For example, I have about 3 1/2 years experience. I can imagine that my resume would surface to the top because I have some good experience and I'd come cheap. Whereas, a lot of people with 10+ years experience who are asking for $100+K salaries will have a harder time. Some of the more experienced workers will have to come down a bit on their salary demads. Also, after about 1 1/2 years in J2EE-buzzword-land I decided to get out of that and get into more engineering type of work. I'm working with C++. I'm working with windows desktop and handheld platforms. I'm working with the palm platform. My company is involved in location services, wireless, and GPS. All cool, fun stuff. My experience might be different than the 1,333,483,323 'Java/html coders' that are fighting for jobs. I'm not denying that the economy is also a major factor. But don't discount the fact that 'No skills' (or skills that a lot of people have) or asking too much money are definitely great factors in the 'unemployment' rates. |
| Wed 27 Nov | Bella | Firms also wait until after Tksgiving/Xmas to do layoffs. Those waiting to interview in Jan are going to keep waiting. I predict layoffs will spike upwards come January. But good luck to all. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Simon Lucy | People with experience aren't given the opportunity to come down on their salary, or rate, expectations. In a market like this, cheap is best. Actually employing someone with experience is seen as necessarily expensive before they ever get near interviewing. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Katie Lucas | I did have this issue myself looking for a role - I was willing to take a 25% paycut from my last role to have a stable job just down the road from where I live (like, a ten minute drive) but the company wouldn't hire me. They'd have liked to, apparently, but they didn't believe I'd stay there... I, personally, find this bonkers. Companies won't pay enough to retain decent staff, they're laying off people left, right and centre and in the middle of this, they're not hiring hugely experienced people who they can get for a bargain because they happen to be close because they're worried about a DISTANT FUTURE?!?!?! In the end, they went with someone cheap enough that they were convinced they wouldn't jump ship when the market picked up. Huh???? |
| Thu 28 Nov | Simon Lucy | I am never disappointed in underestimating recruitment agencies. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Inquire Within | It's certainly true that the workers are simply asking for way too much money and they don't have enough of the right sorts of skills. We're looking for a candidate with 8 years experience architecting OO systems in C++ for shrinkwrap sofnware. Should have expertise in DSP, mixed-signal board layout, SQL, COBOL, PL/I, FORTH and assembly. Should be expert specialist in creation of large (17M+ pages), high-volume (40M hits/day) web systems. Should be completely familiar with all aspects of Cadence VLSI design tools. Should have experience running a business, international accounting rules and intellectual property law as well as 3d cad software, photoshop and high-impact plastic extrusion molding. Should have extensive skill and documented ability in high-level negotiation and political lobbying. Extensive travel will be required. We expect you to go the extra mile, willing to work nights, weekends and holidays as necessary. The jobs pays $26k to start. Relocation will be necessary. There are benefits as this is a contractor position but this can be reevaluated after 36 months. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Katie Lucas | Heh. Housemate is currently job hunting. Now, not being funny, it's a small market he's in. Small. Seriously. I mean, there are two companies currently 'looking' for someone. And he's about the only person looking. This is because the field is in nuclear-magnetic resonance physics.... One of the companies is FIFTY YARDS from the house. I mean, we can see the damn place from the kitchen. Their experiments interfere with the wifi equipment in the house. They need someone, currently have no-one doing that job, would hire him at the drop of a hat but can't work out when enough people will be in the office to approve the hire budget. Not for some months anyway. Maybe then... The other place wants a doctorate in nuclear magnetic resonance physics, but prefereably one with 3 to 4 years C++ and some solaris sysadmin skills as well... So it's not just IT that's like that. |
| Thu 28 Nov | Bella | Well, it makes sense to me. If salaries DID resume their upwards ascent (which they won't), Let's face it, you'd be out the door in a heartbeat. |
| Thu 28 Nov | cheapo | Most hires are done through recommendations, so the more (employed) people you know in the industry, the better. I've had to change jobs twice in the last two years, and both have come through recommendations by someone working there. My unsolicited resumes never get any results. |
| Fri 29 Nov | Dustin Alexander | I'd been in the job market, looking for a job, for more than six months. This is in the Minneapolis area, which is usually a technological hot spot. The first thing that I tried was consulting agencies. This did not work. I had about fifteen agencies looking and after a few months, they wouldn't call me back. I called a few of them and one or two had gone out of business in that time. Bad news. Its not that my resume is bad. I've had jobs with many big name companies and over five years of experience leading teams of programmers and large multi-million line projects. And I was asking for dirt cheap pricing. I told the agencies I was willing to work for $20.00/hour if they could place me. Still no go. So, after six months of this, I was forced by dwindling cash reserves to take a data entry job through a service/consultancy company for $11.00/hour. And it turned out to be the best decision in my life. The job turned out to be a completely automatable position. I wrote some software in three weeks that was saving them tens of thousands of dollars per month. VPs of a fortune 1000 company were congratulating me and requesting my resume. Needless to say, when the contract ended, I was immediately offered a better job for more than twice the pay as a project lead. This one has the potential to save the company more than a million per month in two months of development. I guess my point is, you have to get your foot in the door. A lot of these companies don't realize the financial benefits of having a top coder in their hire. All they see is the initial consultancy expense. If you can get in at a low price and start saving them money and making contacts, you WILL start to catch their attention. |
| Fri 29 Nov | Tj | Dustin, that anecdote makes me feel better about this day. That's how the world should work, that you can get a job and find out that one of your skills can totally change things. I imagine that you probably had to face the fact that people were 'made redundant' though. Did you catch any flak for that? |
| Fri 29 Nov | Disgruntled Unemployed worker | Dustin that's a very encouraging story. I've been passing up jobs that pay $11.00 an hour. Maybe I need to rethink my decision. Was the company you took the job for a small, medium, or large company? |
| Fri 29 Nov | JesseVentura | Is the scene in MN that bad? I grew up in minneapolis and left about 6 years ago. I don't remember it being a 'technological hot spot.' ;-) But even so... $11/hr is pretty bad. Even $20/hr is pretty bad. During two summers in high school I made $13/hr holding the 'SLOW' sign for the DoT in road work areas. I made about $33/hr all through college. My mom runs a non-profit health care agency that uses a simple web/db thing (migrating to .Net) and the consultants she uses are all making about $60/hr. And they are based in BRAINERD. What types of positions were you trying to get, and what firms were you using? |
| Fri 29 Nov | Those with knowledge will survive | Yeah. I was wondering about the $11/hr and $20/hr numbers myself. Those are scary numbers. |
| Fri 29 Nov | Dustin Alexander | 'I imagine that you probably had to face the fact that people were 'made redundant' though. Did you catch any flak for that?' Fortunately, the three projects I've worked on for this company were either special projects [financial auditing, error detection] or things where I was making other people's lives easier without replacing them. I deliberately avoided suggesting solutions that would replace more than a few workers. I like to think that I have a heart, especially in this day and age where we all need one... 'Was the company you took the job for a small, medium, or large company? ' The companies value was placed at 3.3 billion last year, so I'd wager it could be considered large. :-) 'Is the scene in MN that bad? I grew up in minneapolis and left about 6 years ago. I don't remember it being a 'technological hot spot.' ;-) But even so...' It's pretty bad. Its getting better, but it's pretty bad. I've got some former co-workers who worked with me on another project that are out of work now. One of them has 25 years of programming experience, everything from assembly, engineering, chemical modeling, C, Cobol, Java. The man has written disk level controllers and file systems, for christ's sake. He is working for Best Buy doing phone based customer service at $11/hour. What does that tell you? 'Yeah. I was wondering about the $11/hr and $20/hr numbers myself. Those are scary numbers. ' I'm making a bit more than that now. Still, I'd take another $11/hour job in a minute if I can't find something higher than that after this project is done in early February. You have to keep the ball rolling. Eventually, something will break. Actually, your concerns were my concerns a few months ago. Part of the reason I didn't have a job, was that I was unfailing in my expectations of another $75/hour position like the ones I'd been working before. In my arrogance, I almost lost everything I owned and managed to dig myself over $30,000 into debt. It was only when I was forced to take a position I considered to be below my level that opportunities and doorways began opening for me. In a sense, I am coming to believe that the universe has a way of showing you your faults, and making you ante up to them. |
| Fri 29 Nov | JesseVentura | Jeez, I hope things pick up in Minnesota. I was there for awhile this summer, and was thinking of staying. I love the summers (don't really care for the winters. ;-))However, I did a quick cost of living analysis, and I could save more money out east, so I went back to NYC. The crappy thing about Minneapolis, in particular, is that the nice parts of it are all pretty expensive nowadays. I can save more making $90K in NYC and splitting a 2 bedroom than I could making, ulp, $11/hr and splitting a 2 bedroom in MN. Not to mention, most of the jobs in MPLS are out in the burbs, and the traffic sure hasn't gotten any better in the past 10 years... Anyway, good luck! |
| Sat 30 Nov | Bella | > I imagine that you probably had to face the fact that people were 'made redundant' though. Did you catch any flak for that? Hello ! That's what computers have been doing since 1950. Can you name ANY IT work that you did that was NOT making manual human intensive labor obsolete? > I was wondering about the $11/hr and $20/hr numbers myself. Those are scary numbers. Why? That's seems in line with the training and qualifications required in the IT field. (Which are zero). To call yourself a programmer, you need about as much training and certification as the guy who hands you shoes at the bowling alley. I hope you have not been living your life thinking you deserve more, and that your salary was not just a function of a temporary supply/demand imbalance! > He is working for Best Buy doing phone based customer service at $11/hour. What does that tell you? It tells me that he has horrendous career management skills. What an absolute retard. Talk about shortsighted. You take a loan, retrain, change careers, build your skills, job hunt, work pro-bono, etc. This guy had to be an awful programmer if he is able to make such incredibly boneheaded decisions. > I'd been in the job market, looking for a job, for more than six months... In my arrogance, I almost lost everything I owned and managed to dig myself over $30,000 into debt That's quite a six months. Were you also doing an 8 ball of cocaine for breakfast and hiring hookers 10 times a day? People don't lose everything and go 30k in debt just from being unemployed for a few months. Sounds like a result of reckless, irresponsible depression self-pity spending sprees. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Bella | Actually, I take back my comments about salary. A wedding photographer makes $5000 a night. One can make six figures and work 20 days a year. And it takes zero certification and degrees. So it's all about market forces, and the perceived value of your services. THAT'S why we got paid insane rates in the boom, NOT b/c we are such talented, intelligent people. For those looking for non-IT work, break free of the brainwashing that degrees are the road to money. That is the furthest thing from reality. Supply and demand prevails yet again. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Disgruntled Unemployed worker | Bella you have made good points. I graduated from FSU with a degree in Industrial Engineering. Soon afterward I started my business. Four years later I decided I'm not ready to run a business but decided to return to the work world. All throughout my college career everyone was telling me that engineers make good money. If you have a college degree you are almost guaranteed a job. Well the reality of it, I know guys with masters in engineering from Ga Tech making less than system adminstrators with no college diploma. They only have an MCSE. They guy from Ga Tech is making about $65.000 a year, and the guy with the MCSE is making about $70,000. If you bought in to the notion that you need a college diploma to make money, then you would have fallen into the trap me and my Ga Tech friend fell into. Now I have $40,000 in student loans and is looking for a job and my friend with the MCSE has no loan debt, making much more than me with no college degree. So my point is, your value is not determined by a degree or some finite ideology. It is determined by what people think you are worth to them. It is determined by the value and urgency of the problem they are trying to solve. An example is the value of security software before 9/11 vs the value of security software after 9/11. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Bella | Boy, these 2 lines are gems. Understanding this is worth more than getting an MBA. So it's all about market forces, and the perceived value of your services. Your value ...is determined by what people think you are worth to them. It is determined by the value and urgency of the problem they are trying to solve. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Dustin Alexander | 'To call yourself a programmer, you need about as much training and certification as the guy who hands you shoes at the bowling alley. ' For about the first five minutes. After that you get fired. I don't think I've ever held a position or employed someone in a position beneath me where someone could pretend to know what they are doing and not get removed in a heartbeat. If you are working on a project with co-workers like that or bosses that irresponsible, I think you should take a long hard look at your own career choices. Just how valuable are you if your peers can know nothing and still get by? 'It tells me that he has horrendous career management skills.' Hmm.. Interesting. Perhaps you missed my previous points about the job market being non-existant? This guy went the same routes I did. He had over ten agencies, was sending out resumes to every classified add. We even had a group cold calling companies looking for work. Turns out the average job opening was getting hundreds of responses. 'That's quite a six months.' I'd been left with a company to take care of. When our largest client got consumed by a competitor and discarded our chief IT project, it left a smaller client with a complimentary code base out of luck. Instead of dissolving the company and leaving the client footing the bill for an unfinished product, I employed some of my previous workers part time to finish the job. That cost me all of my savings and quite a considerable amount of debt... |
| Sat 30 Nov | There's still milk in the udder | It does take skill to be a good software developer, good software developers are generally talented, intelligent people. At the moment these skills are not in demand, and, more than anything else, too many people are in the field purely because of the hype about the money that people were earning, most of the hype was rubbish anyway. So the guy handing out bowling shoes and the skilled software developer are on an equal footing in terms of formal qualifications, so what, it's about ability, not paperwork. My take is that at the moment most companies are belt tightening and have very few projects on the slate, this is causing a drop out in the number of people in the industry, by no means are only the best people working, much of the best contracted talent is twiddling it's thumbs at the moment, if the economy takes a year to rebound and companies start doing projects again, a lot of the employed drone workforce is going to be found out. Our IT department has dropped from 14 to 6 people over the last year, and guess what, we did'nt keep the best people, we kept the cheapest people, as soon as we are ready to do something 'big' again we'll have to get rid of most of them. Result: Soaring rates for those with the ability. |
| Sat 30 Nov | Disgruntled Unemployed worker | Remember this saying as a principal guiding point. 'In life you can't predict, you can only prepare. Only those who are most prepared when opportunities knock will survive.' -Disgruntled Unemployed worker |
| Sat 30 Nov | soaring rates | 'Result: Soaring rates for those with the ability. ' I hate to agree with Bella, but I don't think there will be 'soaring rates' for people doing standard crud desktop/enterprise apps ever again. The untold truth is that most software is not hard like quantum physics is hard, it is hard like plumbing is hard. That is, it takes about 6 months of training to become proficient enough to pass as qualified. Most programmers do the same project over and over again. Most business programming is just a lot of 'if/then' statements. Being a programmer often _IS_ the same as being a 'brickie,' only you don't have a bricklayer's union to protect you from being squeezed. |
| Sat 30 Nov | | Bella, what's your point? That people are not allowed to discuss their unemployment? That it's all their fault? If that is your point, you are wrong. The economy has crashed, demand has dried up. Are you just trying to be provocative? |
| Sat 30 Nov | theInquirer | Bella's just upset because he's been building backoffice apps for a decade and has nothing to show for it other than a bad attitude, an estranged wife, and some kids who are now calling someone else daddy. |
| Sun 01 Dec | X. J. Scott | Sculpting marble figures is not hard at all. It doesn't require any training or certifications. THere are no standards in the industry. You can take someone with no skills and put them to work with no training working in a bowling alley, or sculpting marble figures. It's the same thing really. Menial, unskilled labor that can be done by anyone. Or what about painting? You don't need to hire some painter with a fancy art degree to paint the story of creation on the ceiling of the sistine chapel. Why pay some idiot named Michelangelo some absurd rate for this sort of work. The process of creating a mural is well understood and has been for centuries. It's like plumbing -- maybe 6 months of training at the most, and you can turn any bloke off the street into a renaissance figure painter. |
| Sun 01 Dec | There's still milk in the udder | Well said, X.J. Everything on the surface is easy. Plumber, someone who can join a couple of plastic pipes together. Electrician, someone who can join a couple of wires. World champion cyclist, someone who can peddle a bit faster. Programmer, someone who can put together a few if/then statements. etc. Every task requires a skill, software development is a very large field, requiring on one hand, vast amounts of knowledge, and on the other, just enough to get the job done. The dot com boom introduced a large number of the latter type of developer to the industry. As soon as the requirements start to grow (it's dead right now) those of us who are capable of much much more than stringing together a couple of if statements are going to do very well. In the meantime, the 'if statement' developers can live in the illusion of being software development professionals. |
| Sun 01 Dec | soaring rates | ah yes, X.J... software is similar to sculpting or painting. udder, what exactly do you do that is 'much more than stringing together a couple of if statements?' do you two really think what you do is on par with michelangelo? or a even a 'world class cyclist?' You might need to lower your reality distortion fields for a while. I do believe that programmers should be able to make a fair living, but vastly exaggerating the worth of a programmer to the rest of the world, is sort of how we all got into the mess we are now... |
| Sun 01 Dec | T. Norman | The fact that there are no rigorous qualification standards for IT is a major part of the reason why the industry is so messed up today. Other professionals who had to pass rigorous and meaningful standards for entry such as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, physical therapists, and accountants rarely if ever have to worry about being unemployed. When the demand for programmers skyrocketed, it sucked in many people whose only prior programming experience was a 1-month Visual Basic or HTML class. Many if not most of them have remained incompetent because they have not taken the initiative to learn about the fundamental computer science concepts, and so their usefulness (if any) is strictly limited to the particular language or tool they have been working with. I have come across many programmers who don't know what O(nlog(n)) means, don't know how to do a binary search to find an element in a sorted array, and don't know how to do a simple SQL foreign key join with three tables. Of the programmers I've come across in my career, I wouldn't hire at least 1/3 of them. The lack of any meaningful certification standards has also made it more difficult for HR departments to identify qualified candidates. So their main criteria ends up being “X years of experience in language Y”. When the demand shrinks as is the case today, they end up with impossible standards such as “10 years of Java”. When the demand skyrockets, they hire anybody who can spell Java. If there were some proper standards for entry into programming (current certifications such as MCSD etc. do *not* meet that criteria!), the supply would not have skyrocketed to follow the exploding demand, and today there would not be a glut of pretenders still taking up space in the profession while so many good programmers are unemployed. Of course, some of you will say that it is impossible to create good IT licensing and/or certification standards because the field changes so much. I don't believe that is the case, because the fundamental concepts have not changed that much over the years. Most of it is the same old thing wrapped up in a new syntax. The standards should focus on a solid working knowledge of the concepts, not particular languages and tools. Any language-based testing should be only for the purpose of demostrating a practical application of the concepts – not testing for knowledge of the language's syntax. Other fields also change, but that does not make those professionals obsolete. New drugs come out all the time, but that does not render the pharmacist useless. The body of underlying knowledge they have allows them to quickly acquire the additional knowledge required to produce the new drug. Similarly, the underlying knowledge of the human body allows a surgeon to learn a new surgical technique or tool much faster than someone without any medical training. Passing the certification is an indicator that they have the knowledge base, ability and desire to pick up any new and relevant bits of knowledge as they emerge. Sure, there are bad individuals in all the licensed professions. But imagine how bad it would be if anybody could wake up one day and call themselves a doctor or lawyer. While it is true that rigorous professional certification standards are not a guarantee of competence, it does a good job of weeding out most of the pretenders and upholding job security for those who do know what they are doing. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Bella | > That cost me all of my savings and quite a considerable amount of debt... So being unemployed didn't cause your financial downfall, it was your business decisions and risk taking that backfired. Do not blame the economy on your unfortuante risk/reward outcomes.. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Bella | > Bella's just upset because he's been building backoffice apps for a decade and has nothing to show for it other than a bad attitude, an estranged wife, and some kids who are now calling someone else daddy. You can call it a bad attitude. I just call it as I see it. I have never been married. I do not have kids. I did leave IT to preempt that ineviatable aforementioned marital situation. But nothing to show? In the last decade, my critical & analytical thinking skills have been honed to levels I never imagined possible. I also call them 'see through the hype and bullshit' skills. Or a bad attitude, as you call it. My 'bad attitude' led me to go against the grain, sidestep the entire dotcom scam, and capitalize on my rates as a consultant since 1999, as all the lemmings left for IPO's that were clearly never to be. My 'bad attitude' also enabled me to make money in every one of these last 3 years of bear market conditions, when 95% of people just watched and prayed as their portfolios dwindled.. I have kept the books of my own S-corp, and almost know as much about taxes as a mediocre accountant. The computer literacy a programmer brings to a new career is scary and highly respected. Nothing to show? Oh yea, and I have enough money in the bank to cover about 15 years of living expenses. (10 if I get married and have 2.1 kids) |
| Sun 01 Dec | theInquirer | Bella, I have no idea if you have critically honed bullshit x-ray vision. By 'bad attitude,' i meant that every post of yours on this forum is an insane rant. And they usually aren't even funny. If you have 15 years of quid in the bank, retire! Maybe take a tour around the mediterranean like you razzed some 'walter mitty' in another thread about. Life's too short too spend it flaming people on the Joel on Software forum! |
| Sun 01 Dec | Those with knowledge will survive | When it comes to message boards, I say 'where a helmet'. Tone is just something that just can't be judged. I don't think Bella was flaming anyone. Most of the things were said matter-of-factly and I am quite interested in his opinions. For example, one of his first posts was this: >>>>>>>>>> There are tons of jobs, just not with the inflated salary you think you deserve. Stop asking for an unreasonable salary. >>>>>>>>>> There was really no response to Bella. But, as soon as the guy that said he took a salary at $11/hr chimed in, people thought his story was inspring (probably because of the 'raise' happy ending). Sometimes the truth is the hardest to hear and Bella doesn't fluff his posts up with gumdrops and lollipops. Take his advice as 'matter-of-fact', 'wear a helmet', and I bet you would find his posts more appealing. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Those with knowledge will survive | fudge. That was supposed to be 'wear a helmet' not 'where a helmet'. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Prakash S | Bella, I know what a C-Corp is, what is a S-Corp? DO you pay yourself a salary and pay taxes every week? Don't know many people who called the market right in the last 3 years. Cheers! |
| Sun 01 Dec | Prakash S | FYI: Enrollment in to the Computer Science program for undergraduates has dropped by about 15% in quite a few universities, at the same time grad school in computer science has seen more than 25-30% increase over the past 2 years. |
| Sun 01 Dec | . | T Norman, the existence of certification requirements for doctors and many other professionals actually have two roles. One is to ensure a certain minimum level of competence, as stated. The other is simply to protect the various professions from competition, in exactly the same way that programmers are now starting to see a need for protection. Once a profession can restrict employers to hiring from a certain pool, pay rates go up. Not only does the requirement for lengthy training exclude about 60 or 70 percent of people who would otherwise operate as, say, doctors, it also lets the profession control the numbers entering the university courses, and thus the amount of competition in the profession. Beautiful. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Bella | Very interesting stat, Prakash. People who are invested and entrenched in an IT career are probably using a master's degree as a way to find more job security or retool (A waste is you ask me, It's called 'throwing good money after bad.' ) Or, like the guy in Good Will Hunting said, 'One day you'll find out you paid $150k for an education you could have gotten for $8 at the local library' It can also mean that new grads who couldn't find work are continuing to grad school in hopes of 'riding out the storm'. (They won't) I am surprised to see a drop in undergrad, however. People (undergrad) who have nothing vested can make more clear, unbiased decisions. But on the other hand, people tend to ignore bad news, or think it won't appply to them. I'm sure the universities are still touting gov't studies showing that IT is a 'hot top 10 career'. Anything to sell you a degree. 15% may not be statistically significant either, based on normal fluxuations of enrollments. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Bella | Prakash, info about s-corps: http://www.ccsfo.com/basics/scorp.htm |
| Sun 01 Dec | Prakash S | Grad school enrollment has increased since a lot of students are comming back to complete therir PhD's, also people who have been laid off are starting their Graduate program. Students who have recently completed a BS or an MS, and have not found jobs are sticking with school. |
| Sun 01 Dec | Alberto | T Norman, Basically I agree with what you say. Interestingly, your comment 'I have come across many programmers who don't know what O(nlog(n)) means, don't know how to do a binary search to find an element in a sorted array, and don't know how to do a simple SQL foreign key join with three tables' leads to another question, and that is, just how relevant is 'wider knowledge'? I certainly know what O(nlog(n)) means, etc, mainly as I have a degree in mathematics, so while I have some qualifications I have no 'protective' quals certifying me as a member of a group of people who are accredited to write software. My solution to this has been to move into scientific/mathematics software development which is hard enough to keep the less talented out, but which interestingly, although well paid, rates tend to reflect more academic values rather than the silly corporate rates (which I did enjoy) paid over the last decade. |
| Sun 01 Dec | T. Norman | >'Not only does the requirement for lengthy training exclude about 60 or 70 percent of people who would otherwise operate as, say, doctors, it also lets the profession control the numbers entering the university courses, and thus the amount of competition in the profession. Beautiful.' Yes, the lengthy training requirements probably do exclude many from their desired professions, but I don't think it is artificially so. Should they dumb down the exams or reduce the content of the curriculum so more people can be doctors, lawyers or pharmacists? I don't think so, unless there is a bunch of useless material that can be discarded without affecting competence. They should find a way to make it less costly, but by no means should they lower the standards. At least 30% of programmers and software project managers should be doing something else for a living, because they are costing their employers more than the value they are providing, and are keeping some good programmers out of jobs. The term 'software professional' is becoming an oxymoron. |
| Sun 01 Dec | grad | Grad school in computer science is a waste of time, but so is most work as a programmer. I think I said that in another thread. Paying for a master's degree in 'software engineering' or 'IT' is definitely a waste of time and money. Getting a PhD in computer science may or may not be a waste of time and money. I am nerdy, and actually find many of the math-related topics in computer science somewhat interesting (I find the not-so-math related topics of CS REALLY BORING, which is why I myself, am not pursuing a PhD). So if you actually _like_ computer science, and are currently not making any money anyway, and can get into a PhD program where you are paid a stipend, that might not be such a bad life. A couple of my peers are in decent PhD programs, and whereas they have no spending money, they seem to have a lot of free time, and aren't too stressed out about anything in particular. If you were making $100K a year, and have payments on an Audi, and a condo, and were an oracle DBA... trying to go back to get CS PhD might not be the right life choice. I personally have a full time, stable job (at a government funded research lab that should stay afloat for at least a couple years). That pays pretty well. I have an LLC that I use for consulting side gigs, where I only do projects that I find 'fun,' and don't really charge a lot for them. I'm getting a part-time master's degree in molecular biology, 1/2 of which is being paid for by stable full time job. Two of my 'fun' projects at the moment are maintaing some systems for PhD/MD researchers at a local hospital. I am going to apply to medical school the year after next, when I finish up my master's degree, and will use the PhD/MDs as my letters of recommendation. I have saved 70% of the money necessary to pay for medical school. When I am a doctor I will work 15 shifts a month in the ER, and use the rest of the time to play piano, and research computational microbiology techniques. I'm not sure what the point of this last paragraph is, other than to illustrate that there are options other than taking a .NET training class in hopes of paying for your next year's worth of bologna. |
| Sun 01 Dec | grad | 'le |