Mostly (when I was pimped out to them) they did almost exclusively "business constantly" work (read: outsourcing blame and repaying favours, greasing the revolving door, putting projects on a project code with an existing vendor instead of hiring staff who come out of the overall budget etc etc), they made tech stuff something to "throw in" as a bonus to some deals. Started out with reporting (remember crystal reports and oracle appex?) but that grows with kickbacks until they're subcontracting Fujitsu or CapGemini to manage desktops as part of a deal.
After a while the tech bit ended up being one of the biggest money makers they had, thanks to clever/corrupt SLA's which enabled them to have terrible staff who got paid nothing, and pocket the difference.
They had an nice/huge domino setup in the 2000's though(sol/sparc), and some of the excel macros the audit folks wrote and used allowed me to grow up from thinking that working ksh perl and c made me "better" than the windows folks.
They would share these 10mb+ packages of excel macros which were all compressed text, they extremely complicated and also controlled by various regulatory bodies, it was harder than most of the code we were writing for their backends...
Tl;dr -- nope, but if you ever see how some serious financial auditors code, you might stop dismissing the MS crowd so readily.
Yeah I had the same feeling; how could anyone writing something like an air traffic control system design it in such a way that some failure/exception in loading user settings causes the system to die?
This is probably a horrible mess of ancient java crap and the 5500 is just an arbitrary number that the store couldn't respond to in time before the app timed the con out; but having lived in mordor, a horrific data model which would enable this sort of thing to be a problem isn't too big of a stretch of the imagination.
My bigger question was what the hell kind of application needs 5k settings per user.....
I have a comparable story; dropped out of school at 15 and didn't touch education since (>15 years ago now), then spent a few years high and drunk: but I'd learnt perl from the camel even before then.
What do you think you are owed? If i hadn't read k&r or learning perl by myself I should then blame my teachers who hadn't read them either? Most of the best folk I've worked with found these things on their own too.
You feel you're "a lost diamond that the system left behind?"
Bitch, who are you blaming here? The only job I could get in that situation was as a cleaner, and I worked my way from there to where I am now while definitely fitting into your category of those the so called "system" couldn't deal with..
If I hadn't learnt to do our thing regardless should I blame someone else?
I think not. Work hard or don't; blaming the system for your failure, while there are people around you who demonstrably made it from worse situations than yours is pathetic in the extreme.
Yes, you are personally responsible for your own circumstances and society isn't going to take care of you if you don't work.
However, it's also incredibly shitty that society let you down enough at 15 to stay "high and drunk" for several years, which, for most kids, doesn't turn out well.
There's enough blame to go around. Taking personal responsibility and blaming the system aren't mutually exclusive.
I think I would actually be considerably worse off if I had behaved myself, made it through high school and gone to university than I am currently; I know it seems counterintuitive but my point was just that it makes no difference how things go for you in "the system" as my experience is that those who seem to have been let down by it and still work at our level are better than those who went through the traditional process.
Yes; clear case of survivorship bias.
Parent says that being failed by the system was a disadvantage. I say, come conversely that being ignored/misunderstood by my teachers/authorities/family then going wild/rebelling as a result for a bit was essential/positive part of my development..
I don't see any of those events as shitty or sad, I wouldn't be where I am without those experiences, right?
Yeah, that's survivorship bias; I'm not really talking about one experience being better than another though; the only reason I went into my story was to counterbalance OPs statement.
I was only trying to say that being failed by "the system" doesn't count as a measure when So many seem to make it regardless...
It's true that many seem to make it regardless, and the negative things we go through often make us stronger (when they don't kill us).
I wouldn't change anything in my own life. I also wouldn't wish some of the experiences I've had on anyone else. I don't think those statements are contradictory.
The Spartan children that reached adulthood may have been tougher than the kids we raise today, but that is not an argument in favor of the Spartan system.
Your view would be fair if it was openly stated to the smart kids in their young age. Knowing that they're on their own, whatever they end up doing would be an informed choice and their responsibility entirely.
This isn't what happens in reality though. Schools and teachers demand submission to their authority on the implied promise that they are going to take care of you. When children believe that, and then are let down, is it the children's fault?
Gifted kids have high IQ, but probably not high EQ. They're defenceless against bullshit and blind to multi-level messages at that age, like most other kids.
Personally I don't blame the school system. What it does is not fair, but fairness is a fairy tale. It is a tool of society, with a useful purpose, and some unfortunate side-effects. The parents of a kid that's let down by the system should however take charge and start telling him how things really work, and make the kid realise that it's just him now.
I knew I would draw some fire with that one :) . Telling people the system failed has them pointing the finger back at you. They've seen the system work plenty of times before so people that don't make it just suck.
I ended up fine and I don't really have a grudge, but that doesn't stop me from thinking the system is broken. I definitely wasn't the best student in the world but I don't see anything wrong with pointing out what happens to the kids that get left behind.
I've actually never seen "the system" 'work', in that I never willingly hire grads and almost none of my experienced staff have ever had a formal education. But then again I'm not doing hardcore algorithmic stuff in the valley.
My only point was that, at least in my experience and situation, school/'normal progression' means very little in reality. Aas such I don't think it can be used as any sort excuse for anyone's situation.
I was comprehensively failed by the education system in my country and it made no difference. Shit; having thay experience actually seems to be the trend that all the best people I've worked with share.
Smart people are smart people. Some keep going and end up as weird and twisted as us, and some don't.
The ones who kept going tend to be those who got to where they were in spite of their situation. Maybe your world is different to mine tho.
Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered.
Sometimes I have to have a standoff with some salaried dragonwoman or other who takes offence but that's on me and doesn't run downstream
-- as long as everything is being done why should this be a problem?
Productivity drops when you force people to work outside their peak schedule and as soon as you force school rules you immediately deteriorate your relationship with a subordinate because you're saying you don't trust them from the outset.
Someone takes the piss then reign them in. Starting from that position makes you a bad boss and an unhappy team is much less likely to scrape across the finish line each sprint than one who isn't...
Who is 'they' in that case? They for me is whoever is paying us to help them with their business.
If it's the contractors/team members then no. Ive unfortunately had several highly paid (4 figures uk/day) contractors who think themselves above certain tasks, or who refuse to do anything they didn't agree with who seem surprised when they get told to fuck off.
You're an overpaid contract dev and you're refusing to implement your points because you disagree with the architecture even after it was discussed fully, while on a k a day? Fuck those ballerinas. They won't be getting more work with us then.
We are there to help a business achieve a goal, nothing more.
In the United States there are strict definitions between contract roles (1099) and employees because it determines how you are taxed . I agree about the above certain tasks thing though.
Same in the UK. It's called IR35. Most contractors in the UK are Ltd companies and are structured as such to avoid a large amount of tax/National Insurance.
I downvoted you for arrogance. You obviously think your are better than those you "manage." Are you technical? Can you sling assembly? Ok, what about C? C++ maybe? I'm guessing you can't do any of that. Can you back up your talk?
Sounds like a good boss to me, and I know good bosses. Sounds like he doesn't have a lot of time for the kind of prima donna architecture astronaut who can't convince anyone else on a team that he's worth listening to but wants everything done his way anyway. Shall I tell you what you sound like right now?
I don't think any of your questions are relevant. He has expressed protecting his employees and he protects his work contracts. That's his job. If an employee cares more about getting his/her way than serving the customer, the manager has the right to not put up with that. And that has nothing to do with how technical either of them are.
I don't consider myself better then my team when taken as a whole, however I am the lead for a reason and I'm much closer aligned on how to maximise what we're delivering to the client as I have to actually deal with them. The reasons why I sometimes have to pick a worse solution to a problem are obvious to me but not always to my team, but that's the way it goes and I'm the boss.
An example? Once we had a requirement to have a user store for some group of apps and we came up with a really nice ldap solution, and two members of the team were really invested in the solution and the debates were endless on some technical details of the implementation. It was beautiful, as these things go.
Then I find out that there's an existing AD environment we can just hook up to instead of reimplementing functionality that already exists so I shitcan the project.
Does that make me arrogant or good at my job? My job is to help my clients, spending a few months implementing something that already exists just because some of my tech staff prefer our solution is not helping my client, yet these two members refused to implement the Code to interface the existing environment.
Disagreements happen, but refusing to do work you disagree with when you're a contracted professional is unacceptable.
As for my tech credentials, yeah I did a bit of ia32 back in the days where one might want to use 16 bit registers to avoid nulls if you get what I mean, wink wink, but never for profit. C? Yes, I was a c developer and I maintained boost on Solaris for a few years while maintaining as much ingnorance of c++ as possible and not really understanding any of it (mostly a packaging gig).
Today, we are further up the stack but I don't think it has much relevance.
I don't make unpopular decisions because I don't understand what the consequences are which seems to be your take; I just pick the battles we should be fighting for our clients and my comment was that I have little time for people who can't put the client ahead of what they want to work on.
You are hired for your technical ability but that's to further the goals of your client. You aren't working on your side project and refusing to work on things, even those we all don't want to be doing but which further our clients goals is unprofessional and I have no problem saying goodbye to those who do.
Its good to be strongly opinionated. Discussion is great. Multiple solutions and experimenting are good. Your design doesn't happen for some reason (and like above, it might not be because it's not the best solution) that doesn't mean you don't look like a spoiled child refusing to do what you're getting £1000/day to do, and unfortunately this attitude is more prevalent than you'd think.
From the top of my head in the last few years I have (and you have also probably) used the following to get software: rpm/yum, deb/apt, pacman, ports, sysvr4(Solaris), ips, homebrew, pkgin, npm, gem, pip, hex, cpan and hmmm probably a few others.
They all do pretty much the same thing, one might have prettier progress bars or a better cli but we're just talking compressed tars with some metadata files.
Competition is good and all that, but how much innovation do we need to drive in package managers? We have lots of tools all doing the same thing with negligible advantages over their competitors and I don't see it as a positive.
"I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS."
I checked the date of the post really carefully as well. That is certainly a change of direction.
I guess unity was the only thing driving Mir then? Is dropping one the same as dropping both?
Seems like good news to me, having a significant player like canonical contributing to the community instead of fragmenting without much benefit can't be bad can it?
I don't use it on the desktop anyway, but I hope that moves in this direction are rewarded by the community.
My (limited) understanding is that Gnome includes Wayland as an integral component, and so reverting to Gnome as default desktop for 18.04 will preclude use of the Mir graphical server.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by could whine? I did have to replace my AC adapter because the one in the box would not work any more. Dell shipped another one out next day.
The XPS 13 looks like the perfect machine for me but all these coil whine reports scared me away from it. Then I found out a friend of mine bought one (the XPS 15 though), and when I asked him about it he said he never noticed anything.
I really can't tell if it's only on some machines or if most people simply don't notice/don't care.
The XPS 15 does not suffer from coil whine. However almost all the XPS 13's will have it. Some will be quite others will be really loud. Its a gamble and shame on Dell for not fixing it after so many complaints
Mostly (when I was pimped out to them) they did almost exclusively "business constantly" work (read: outsourcing blame and repaying favours, greasing the revolving door, putting projects on a project code with an existing vendor instead of hiring staff who come out of the overall budget etc etc), they made tech stuff something to "throw in" as a bonus to some deals. Started out with reporting (remember crystal reports and oracle appex?) but that grows with kickbacks until they're subcontracting Fujitsu or CapGemini to manage desktops as part of a deal.
After a while the tech bit ended up being one of the biggest money makers they had, thanks to clever/corrupt SLA's which enabled them to have terrible staff who got paid nothing, and pocket the difference.
They had an nice/huge domino setup in the 2000's though(sol/sparc), and some of the excel macros the audit folks wrote and used allowed me to grow up from thinking that working ksh perl and c made me "better" than the windows folks.
They would share these 10mb+ packages of excel macros which were all compressed text, they extremely complicated and also controlled by various regulatory bodies, it was harder than most of the code we were writing for their backends...
Tl;dr -- nope, but if you ever see how some serious financial auditors code, you might stop dismissing the MS crowd so readily.