Post #112,563
8/3/03 4:33:36 PM
8/21/07 6:30:35 AM
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Blame it on the boom
which sucked all the typists into the application development business. Now that they are here they aren't too likely to leave anytime soon. Worse, they have inflated opinions of their knowledge and they work cheaper than the skilled professionals.
Bottom line - market is wrecked. Management remains clueless and continues to buy whatever they see mentioned in the trade rags.
What can you do? Build wooden boats for a living?
Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. Once you take the time to learn it (to REALLY learn it) you will see that there is nothing out there (yet) to touch it. Of course, like all drugs, how dangerous it is depends on your character. It may be that once you've got to this stage you'll find it difficult (if not impossible) to "go back" to other languages and, if you are forced to, you might become an embittered character constantly muttering ascerbic comments under your breath. Who knows, you may even have to quit the software industry altogether because nothing else lives up to your new expectations.
--AndyBower
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Post #112,568
8/3/03 6:27:48 PM
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What can you do? Build wooden boats for a living?
My woodworking skills are poor, but I get your idea.
I also liked your other post to me about having a love for programming, many people lack that and just do it to earn money and barely know what they are doing. Mix Microsoft technology with "Fast Food" developers and you get disaster. Management has no clue what it takes to write decent code or how long it should take to get it done the right way, they always want it done as quickly as possible to move on to something else. I don't know about other areas, but here in St. Louis it is mostly a Microsoft shop. You even try to offer alternatives and they don't even want to consider it. Whatever Microsoft makes, and whatever they saw in the last trade show or magazine ad.
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Post #112,569
8/3/03 6:33:36 PM
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Not just the code.. recall Tufte's brilliant deconstruction
of the threat to merely clear thought! which Power Point represents across alas.. much more than stupid CIEIO meetings. The frequent assignment of \ufffd to seemingly random rankings of 'issues' - this tendency appears now to extend into areas very dangerous.. to life, and quite distant from the tawdry greed-refining of the bizness mentation. See his essay, The Cognitive Style of Power Point.
(I received my copies of the PP screed and (Edward) [link|http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000Rs&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e| Tufte's] observations of the misuse of NASA's prior data - that which led to the disregard of engineers' concerns, eliminating even a remote chance for heroic efforts to save the Shuttle crew. Beautifully printed, as always. Terse and sad.. to grok.)
Is it too large a stretch -?- to lay at the feet of the Billy n'Bally Beast - perhaps the entire crashing of the workforce / the Economy now ongoing? (Not that they were clever enough to premeditate the viral effects of their shoddy thinking; just that there was never a single concern re what this crap might engender in the lazy mind - to which they pander exclusively. They OWN this market and the droids they have fattened up.)
When we finally are able.. to ID and track the parallel reasons for the dissolution of all those comfortable sinecures, will we again Feel Good About Ourselves?
Ashton
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Post #112,571
8/3/03 7:49:58 PM
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Formula is for babies.
Not just the code.. recall Tufte's brilliant deconstruction of the threat to merely clear thought! which Power Point represents across alas.. much more than stupid CIEIO meetings. The frequent assignment of \ufffd to seemingly random rankings of 'issues' - this tendency appears now to extend into areas very dangerous.. to life, and quite distant from the tawdry greed-refining of the bizness mentation. See his essay, The Cognitive Style of Power Point. This is a symptom of a trend I have been noticing for some time: the desire to reduce acts of judgment to mere formula. For example, there was a recent thread on the BattleBots forum (over at Delphi), wherein most of the voices were arguing that the role of the judges should be streamlined. They should not judge the outcome of a robot fight based on Strategy, Aggression, or Teamwork, because those metrics are "subjective". Well, what the holy $%^&(* do they think the word "judge" means? We are rapidly approaching a culture which purposefully devalues judgment. I understand that they are following the almost religious fervor with which Americans work to remove bias from our judiciary system, our police force, our educators, our legislators. But bias is not the same thing as subjectivity. Remove bias, by all means; recuse the judge from his stock portfolio. But too many people then work to remove subjectivity, as if a policeman should only be allowed to arrest people whom they have not witnessed committing a crime. Part of that devaluation of judgment is IMO a natural (and irreversible) consequence of panculturated America--it is no longer sufficient to bring tough questions before wise counsel, since those tough questions are often culturally-bred and bound. Go ahead; ask Solomon to judge the actions of Microsoft: you'd find, I think, that he simply wouldn't have the enculturation to judge rightly. Because postmodern interaction is by definition cross-cultural interaction, in many cases informed subjectivity is found to be lacking. The role of judgment is being replaced by law and contract. Project management is no different. Managers crave the magic bullets which release them from the responsibility of judgment. They followed Six Sigma or read "Who Moved my Cheese?"--if there is internal strife, it's not their fault. They're just following the formula. The authors of Peopleware (Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister) have a great introductory book on Risk Management, called [link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633609|Waltzing with Bears]. In that book, they begin by making the startling assumption that risk is a good thing! Well, of course it is--there is no innovation without it. Will a good ad campaign reverse this trend? I doubt it. Maturity is rarely transmitted by broadcast. Build trust with the decision-makers wherever you find them, and leverage that trust into education where possible. Is it too large a stretch -?- to lay at the feet of the Billy n'Bally Beast - perhaps the entire crashing of the workforce / the Economy now ongoing? Nah--I lay the blame firmly at the feet of ignorant management. And their parents. When we finally are able.. to ID and track the parallel reasons for the dissolution of all those comfortable sinecures, will we again Feel Good About Ourselves? Doubtful. We will complete that Grand Project just in time to kick off and watch our grandchildren forget we ever tried.
I'm gonna go build my own theme park! With Blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the park!
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Post #112,590
8/4/03 6:46:08 AM
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Thou sayest (only better)
This is a symptom of a trend I have been noticing for some time: the desire to reduce acts of judgment to mere formula. Precisely: as in the computer-generated minimum-sentences for the Drug Warz - wherein a person with say, a month's supply of his fav escape-substance [instead of the statutory "week's" supply?] may receive 30, 40 years - much of it not reducible by any kind of behaviour. This further "Judge-obsolescence" was justified by such BS ideas as "Three Strikes": a slogan which began from an event near where I live - the kidnap and murder of Polly Klaas. Action. Media. Knee-jerk precipitate Reaction. (Everybody is against 'crime' - EZ political choice to go along with the mob.) I think you've nailed near the core - just another variant on non-responsibility via handy rote formula. I'd have to add-in of course, my fav: that language murder which characterizes all political yowling, and permeates much theological efforts as well. It's now spread quite far from that traditional venue. I certainly notice a great difference over 20, 10 years. Which brings us back to Billy obliquely, I think - the whole MicroSoft compound neologism thing (remember it started as Micro Soft). I don't know enough about the history of bizspeak to have noticed if the flood of meaningless TLAs followed M$ screwing with language - or if those were just shared contemporary trends. Somewhere amidst any identifiable causes of the langage-murder trend - there seems to be a connection too, between the "responsibility avoidance" and the intentional new language fuzziness all over. The CYA motive surely is also entwined with the plethora of lawyering which also chracterizes US decline: don't say 'it' very clearly and.. no one can require that you deliver 'it' either! (SCO-infected code, anyone?) Tufte at least got my attention (I've seen few PP 'presentations' live - though I have heard second-hand details, quite enough to grok the style). I can't extrapolate from his dissection, the magnitude of what this bad-thinking might have contributed to the general lying atmosphere of much business, except to realize too: the Enron-grade of deception is such pure criminality - it needs no fancy analysis. As to how many Murican Corps are near-to that level of corruption [?]. I think Confucious nailed it first and best though, and perhaps sufficiently.. concluding his small parable, ..thus if what is said is not meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. If that occurs then justice will go astray and the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence it matters above all else - that language be correct.And he wasn't even American. Ashton
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Post #112,598
8/4/03 10:05:32 AM
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Have you used MS Project?
It suffers many of the same issues as PowerPoint, in that the tool dictates, or at least strongly encourages, the workflow rather than simply enabling it. We've just installed it here and I'm supposed to start using it. The documentaion walks you through "assigning resources," but it hides very well how to "schedule people". What I mean is that I can create a Gannt chart, but so far I can't figure out how to make the scheduled items show up on the user's schedule. I would describe myself as a fairly sophisticated power user. If I can't figure out how to use this supposed project management tool to actually interact with the people doing the work, I imagine there are lots of non-tehnical managers creating lots of pretty charts that have no connection with what the people they're supposedly managing actually do. From what I've seen so far, this tool doesn't support management: it supports bad management. Oh, and total agreement with another of your points: I understand that they are following the almost religious fervor with which Americans work to remove bias from our judiciary system, our police force, our educators, our legislators. But bias is not the same thing as subjectivity. Absolutely. It's like [link|http://www.click10.com/news/2370015/detail.html|this one], where a lawyer wants to throw out a verdict because "he said it was learned that a nurse on the jury panel was giving medical information to the panel." It is damn near law that your opinion doesn't count for anything if you are actually qualified to voice it. ===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #112,600
8/4/03 10:34:58 AM
8/21/07 6:31:15 AM
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Yes and it is a joke
First off - it assumes you can reasonably estimate the duration of the tasks you have to perform. Second it assumes you can even identify all of the tasks up front. This is all well and good for barn building. Not so hot for software development. In fact, its completely wrong.
The cool thing about eXtreme Programming is you intuitively move forward in small steps and you generally get there with close to a minimal amount of wasted effort. The bummer is that you CANNOT predict with any accuracy the duration of the project overall. This drive M$ Project devotees absolutely batty.
A recent employer moved a guy who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag to project "tracker" which somehow during a management coup became project "manager". We took to calling him 'clippy' because all he did was email us M$ Project files to fill in with tasks and durations - which he then collated and presented to upper mgt.
Anytime I see "Wanted: Software Project Manager - Skills: MS Project" - I know its not someplace I want to work.
Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. Once you take the time to learn it (to REALLY learn it) you will see that there is nothing out there (yet) to touch it. Of course, like all drugs, how dangerous it is depends on your character. It may be that once you've got to this stage you'll find it difficult (if not impossible) to "go back" to other languages and, if you are forced to, you might become an embittered character constantly muttering ascerbic comments under your breath. Who knows, you may even have to quit the software industry altogether because nothing else lives up to your new expectations.
--AndyBower
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Post #112,602
8/4/03 10:48:40 AM
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I only want it for one thing
I want to be able to track who's working on what, and what can't be started until something else is completed. No, I don't think the time estimates will make a damn bit of difference, but as long as I know that project B can't start until project A is finished I'll be happy. Oh, and when I assign somebody to a project I want it to appear on their schedule. SO two things I want it for. And give them a channel to provide feedback. Three, three things I want it for.
Of course I could have gotten all the same things from [link|http://www.tutos.com|TUTOS], but that's a whole other argument.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #112,679
8/4/03 4:16:47 PM
8/21/07 6:34:16 AM
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Link's broken
Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. Once you take the time to learn it (to REALLY learn it) you will see that there is nothing out there (yet) to touch it. Of course, like all drugs, how dangerous it is depends on your character. It may be that once you've got to this stage you'll find it difficult (if not impossible) to "go back" to other languages and, if you are forced to, you might become an embittered character constantly muttering ascerbic comments under your breath. Who knows, you may even have to quit the software industry altogether because nothing else lives up to your new expectations.
--AndyBower
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Post #112,713
8/4/03 7:41:34 PM
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The Planning Game
I've used various different project tracking programs in the past and they were all poor at helping manage a project.
Since I've started using XP techniques to do projects, I've found that the planning game coupled with good iteration planning works great.
--
-- Jim Weirich jweirich@one.net [link|http://onestepback.org|http://onestepback.org]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
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Post #112,603
8/4/03 10:49:11 AM
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Excellent point
-drl
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Post #112,669
8/4/03 3:12:48 PM
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It is all too easy...
...to state what is wrong in IT today, but far more difficult to do something about it. Building wooden boats might be fun (as would a number of other fields), but I guess I'm not so cynical yet as to have given up on IT completely.
Yes, we often have poor quality tools/technologies to work with (M$ and non-M$), we have management that doesn't get it, and we have the influx of people from the typing pool as you identified. Yet each of us is capable of taking small steps to turn the situation around.
We can recommend for hire or hire (if in a position to do so) US citizens who do know their stuff. We can recommend or implement (if in a position to choose) those technologies that are well constructed. We can offer to enlighten management and/or members of the typing pool that might warrant it. Giving brown bag sessions is one approach that seems to work.
One other thing I've tried is that when a problem is identified and I know the solution, I don't 'auto-magically' fix it. Instead, I give the offending party some hints that will point them to how to correct the problem and also explain how to identify the root cause. This 'edu-ma-cation' seems to help some.
Still, I admit, it is difficult at times to stay positive about the current state of IT.
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Post #112,670
8/4/03 3:18:39 PM
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Re: It is all too easy...
Still, I admit, it is difficult at times to stay positive about the current state of IT.
I picked this profession because I thought it would be secure. I could never have imagined what came down.
There is nothing to be positive about. Computing systems are used mostly for one thing - to invade privacy and to track people. That is bad.
The other major use is to run devices. That is probably good. But that use is "a better mousetrap", not a better Big Brother.
There is nothing to make one optimistic, in any direction at all, about this business. Whatever you are doing, you are feeding a beast with a billion eyes.
-drl
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Post #112,673
8/4/03 3:46:47 PM
8/21/07 6:34:03 AM
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Oh well on that front
I used to teach CS at UCD. Night school. I mostly enjoyed it. I figured the best way to get a better coworker is to build one. It worked to some extent - I ended up hiring some of my better former students and was really pleased with the result.
BUT - at the moment I'm busy trying to get myself recommended for some work. The typists have taken over at the low end. I'm not willing to give away my profession. I'll gladly dig ditches for $5 an hour before I'll do enterprise IT for the $25 I'm being offered (for a lead/management gig no less).
Maybe it is time to get out.
Its not like anybody values my skills anyhow and I'm tired of living hand to mouth on month to month gigs. Think I can buy a house with these working arrangements? Doesn't look like it. Which means I can't sell the really expensive one I own and downsize either. I'm fucked.
Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. Once you take the time to learn it (to REALLY learn it) you will see that there is nothing out there (yet) to touch it. Of course, like all drugs, how dangerous it is depends on your character. It may be that once you've got to this stage you'll find it difficult (if not impossible) to "go back" to other languages and, if you are forced to, you might become an embittered character constantly muttering ascerbic comments under your breath. Who knows, you may even have to quit the software industry altogether because nothing else lives up to your new expectations.
--AndyBower
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Post #112,675
8/4/03 4:06:28 PM
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Astounding
I could justify getting that for myself, being short on talent, but you? Amazing.
-drl
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Post #112,694
8/4/03 5:43:40 PM
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Try Telcordia in Lisle Illinois
I know hey have a project on line but dont know if they are hiring,
thanx,
bill
who got into this business because I didnt want to work anymore.
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #112,686
8/4/03 5:08:47 PM
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How things have changed over the years
when my mother became a Manager at Woolworths, she had to learn what everyone in the store did and how to do it. That way she got a better idea of how to manage people in those jobs and even take over for them if needed.
Somewhere down the road, Managers stopped learning how the people they managed did their jobs. They have no idea what it takes to do the jobs of the people they manage, all they expect is quick results now. Thus was born the Pointy Haired Bosses of Dilbert fame. They lack the knowledge of those they manage and have no idea what it takes to get a job done.
Somewhere down the road, Woolworths went out of business when people would rather buy from Wal*Mart instead.
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