* Posts by Erik4872

487 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jan 2011

Page:

JavaScript survey: Devs love a bit of React, but Angular and Cordova declining. And you're not alone... a chunk of pros also feel JS is 'overly complex'

Erik4872

Doesn't paint JavaScript in the best light...

Wind the clock back to the pre-framework era for a second. JS is being twisted into so many things it was never meant for. It used to be a simple language for controlling page elements dynamically.and was never designed to be a real "programming language" in the traditional sense.

What boggles my mind is that the entire tower of frameworks, libraries and abstractions is built on such a rickety base. Just because every browser understands it, developers assume it's the best thing to build their entire world around. The fact that a coder-bootcamp graduate can't really be productive unless they're using some massive framework is not a good advertisement for the suitability of JS for all the things it's being pressed to do.

If only Flash and Java weren't such security nightmares, web development might have been different. The web is littered with different tries at putting in something more suitable -- I wonder if anyone is going to try again, or if they're so scarred by Silverlight/Flash/Java that they're just going to keep heaping junk on top of JS.

GlaxoSmithKline ditches IR35 contractors: Go PAYE or go home

Erik4872

Re: Whats wrong with temporary staff?

"Why is/was the IT industry so wedded to self employed contracting?"

I think it's disposability and accounting.

Salaries go in a different bucket than contractor invoices and through the magic of accounting the invoice bucket is much better to be in than the salary one.

The other "advantage" is that there's even more ability for the employer to treat their contractors like disposable garbage. In the US we have at-will employment and no emplyment contracts or statutory redundancy outside of unions or executives negotiating their own deals. That means my boss can walk over to me, say "I don't like your shirt, you're fired" and I have zero recourse. Other countries might have slightly more protections...I know France has a big permatemp problem because their employees enjoy a lot more rights than the rest of the world.

Erik4872

Is this a cost thing or legal thing?

In the US, the IRS says that independent contractors have a special status, mainly revolving around the fact that employers can't treat them as FTEs. This is, of course, not adhered to anywhere I've ever worked, but the letter of the law says employers can get in a lot of trouble for not paying their FTEs the way a W-2 employee usually gets paid (i.e. Social Security/Medicare and income taxes withheld by the employer.) Basically they can't get away with a contractor workforce just to avoid paying a person's full cost.

Is this what the IR35 thing is all about? Or is it the UK cracking down on the other thing US contractors like to do...setting up a corporation through which they pass all their personal expenses to offset income? Buying private insurance costs an arm and a leg, but it's less of a burden if you're allowed to write the entire thing off against your already-high contractor hourly wage. Being able to drive your "company car" to work and work on your "company-owned laptop" isn't too far a leap from there, and since the US tax system outside of W-2 income is self-reporting, audits are less than 2%, and everyone's doing it...I'm not surprised it happens.

Tesla has a smashing weekend: Model 3 on Autopilot whacks cop cars, Elon's Cybertruck demolishes part of LA

Erik4872

Re: How come it only happens to Tesla?

"Do they market their systems differently, in such a way that causes overconfidence?"

(a) Most people equate "Autopilot" with full self-flying (altitude-keeping, heading lock, speed maintenance) and will assume the car will drive itself and they can go make a sandwich/play on their phone/whatever. Cadillac has a system they call "Super Cruise" that keeps the car in the lane on large highways and is much more insistent about keeping your attention -- it's basically cruise control with automatic steering. It's not called autopilot because it isn't!

(b) Even though the prices are coming down, a Tesla is still way above the average price for a new car. This ensures that there will be some...exclusivity...and very entitled drivers among the crowd. I can just see some of them basically saying their time and mental energy is much too precious to spend watching the road.

Former Oracle product manager says he was forced out for refusing to deceive customers. Now he's suing the biz

Erik4872

Funny

IT and software are such weird beasts. Nowhere else in the real world can you just make up a product out of thin air and sell it as if it was ready to be shipped tomorrow.

Trump Administration fast-tracks compulsory border facial recognition scans for all US citizens

Erik4872

H-1B reform

If the only thing they're going to do is raise the fees for H-1B visas, that's pretty much no change. Companies using the H-1B for what it's intended for (bringing in talented foreign workers for a specific skill) will just have to pay more. Body shops using it to bring in cheap labor to allow an offshore outsourcer to staff on-site positions will also just pay more and nothing will change. All it will do is lower the margin a bit on an outsourcing deal and/or push more of the work offshore. We still have too many CIOs out there who have no idea how IT services are actually delivered, and they can't tell the difference between someone working for local wages and someone working for the minimum the outsourcer can get away with. (I think it's $60,000 USD, never adjusted for inflation. Not terrible for the Midwest, but poverty level wages for California/New York.)

Why can't you be a nice little computer maker and just GET IN THE TRUNK, Xerox tells HP in hostile takeover alert

Erik4872

End-stage capitalism on display

OK, in one corner you have Xerox who is still making copiers and document management stuff in an era where people don't print much. In the other corner, you have an ink and toner manufacturer that happens to sell printers, a range of garbage consumer PCs and a range of OK middle of the road business PCs. All this in an era where people don't print much AND when PCs are being used mainly for work while consumers are consuming on phones and tablets.

"Let's tie these rocks together and see if they float!"

I understand that both these companies are huge and have massive potential for being bled dry during the dismantling process. But, I think it's awful for the people still working there. A perfect example of this is DXC, which is in the process of being parted out, and my assumption is that the carcass is going to be sold to one of the big Indian outsourcers. HP Xerox is just going to cut and cut until they can no longer convince anyone to buy their products anymore, then suddenly dump 100,000 people out onto the job market.

In a world of infosec rockstars, shutting down sexual harassment is hard work for victims

Erik4872

Indeed

Second Dotcom Bubble conference culture is interesting. All those people up on stage at ToolCon 2019 love the attention. Being CTO of some startup means you have the unstated goal of having an architecture you can blog, tweet and con about. :-)

Erik4872

Rockstars get a free pass unfortunately

It's not just infosec -- rockstar salespeople, rockstar executives, rockstar people-who-invented-your-billion-dollar product -- they all unfortunately get free passes. Google just paid an executive to go away to avoid further sexual harassment charges, and employees are reporting behavior from management that indicates anyone who's a rockstar will have any bad behavior ignored, paid for or worked around. Many of the companies I've worked for have justified leaving some rainmaker salesperson alone and letting him do whatever by offsetting his insane sales figures with cost of goods sold and still coming up with a very positive number. Same reason you pay out the salespersons' insane expense accounts -- what's a $1000 steak dinner compared to a million in insanely high margin revenue?

Out of the sales/exec realm and into infosec/IT/development...there are just too many excuses companies can make for employees' bad behavior, and having a toxic personality is almost a badge of honor. Add to that the hero-worship culture and the secrecy/knowledge hoarding of infosec, and you've got quite a brew. I work with developers who happen to know a lot about various obscure systems that keep money flowing into our company...they're far from rockstars but they love the attention they get. Tech companies seem to be willing to go even further. If you're at a FAANG company, Microsoft, etc. and your stuff generates enough revenue, they'll just put a staff of handlers in front of you. (Saw this first-hand dealing with a couple of geniuses who built an Azure service our company is using.)

It's time to get rid of nerd culture and make people at least adhere to basic social norms. I know that's going to upset a lot of "freedom-loving" people who feel they can say whatever they want. But, if I went around making some of my opinions about our company known, I wouldn't be working there very long.

Tech CEO thrown in the clink for seven years for H-1B gang-master role: Crim farmed out foreign staff as cheap labor

Erik4872

Surprising to say the least

The big Indian consultancies (Tata, Infosys, Wipro, etc.) have all sorts of tricks to get around the visa rules. They're just not as obvious about it as this guy was. They've also paid the "lobbying fees" to mold the laws into a position where they can effectively work around them. I'm just surprised any executive actually got in trouble for this.

I'm not opposed to the H-1B program because it is a way for companies to easily bring in truly qualified people who possess a skillset that isn't readily available. I am opposed to the secondary labor market it creates in IT and development. I know the letter of the law says they have to pay a prevaling wage, but in my experience it never happens. It pushes companies to lower costs by offering them captive labor that will do whatever they ask for half the cost of an FTE. There's just no competing against that in organizations that hate having to spend anything on IT in the first place.

You've got (Ginni's) mail! Judge orders IBM to cough up CEO, execs' internal memos in age-discrim legal battle

Erik4872

Does email discovery work?

Here's a dumb question since I'm not a lawyer nor an email admin...

Isn't it possible for a company to just deliver an archive of emails that don't happen to contain whatever it is a legal discovery order is looking for? It would seem very easy to just remove messages containing phrases you don't want getting out there. I've worked at places where the workaround for this was to just not keep backups and have all email deleted within 30 days...but even if that were in place, I'd think that some suitably evil company would still selectively deliver "all their email."

Google engineering boss sues web giant over sex discrim: I was paid less than men, snubbed for promotion

Erik4872

'Outside the bubble' issues maybe?

From what I've seen, the biggest tech companies (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.) tend to be very insular. People I know who work at Microsoft say that the average employee just isn't going to get a much better employment deal elsewhere. As a result, people stay a long time...and why not? Microsoft pays the entire cost of employee health insurance, and takes care of just about every employee need. Ulku Rowe came from Chase (i.e. from The Outside.) It would be interesting to see how much of this was discrimination (highly possible) and how much was "she's not a lifelong Googler, she couldn't possibly be qualified." (equally possible.) It's kind of like what happens with law firms and fancy consulting firms...they just don't hire outsiders unless there's some critical skill need. They want to grow everyone up from a fresh young grad and don't want to have to unteach "bad habits" candidates may have picked up from other candidates.

Given Google's track record of hiring extremely vocal, opinionated Ph. D's for basically every position, I wouldn't be shocked if discovery in this case revealed more than a few messages about exactly why she wasn't qualified and what 3 jobs they were going to offer her instead. The evidence her lawyers uncover is potentially very interesting reading.

Larry Ellison tiers Amazon a new one: Oracle cloud gets 'always' free offer, plus something about Linux

Erik4872

Re: Always free services

"How can Oracle ever hope to sell anything based on "free"? "

https://edelivery.oracle.com. Download any Oracle SW package free! FREE I tell you!

Three years later..."We seem to have a record that you downloaded Oracle XXX Platinum Enterprise Edition media on xx/yy/zzzz. How's that going? Tell you what, how about I send one of our consultants to your office to do a complimentary health check? Oh, did I mention it's not optional? It is complimentary though..."

Oracle are the absolute kings of getting companies to pay for free things. I had a colleague who downloaded the VirtualBox extensions a while back get strong-armed by their licensing squad..."You do know that's not free...don't you? Oh, that's cool, tell it to the software auditor we're sending your way." They did this with Java...no product they offer is truly free, and if it is free, it's a strategy to put you in a position to pay later when they change the rules.

No one is willingly starting new business with Oracle these days.

Google age discrimination case: Supervisor called me 'grandpa', engineer claims

Erik4872

Re: Ageism

"To date, the company still hasn't figured out what went wrong."

Companies of any size don't do anything their management consultants don't tell them to. The whole "give us millions of dollars and we'll turn you into Facebook" digital transformation consulting package is being peddled around to companies who are scared of startups taking their market share. It's the lazy way out just telling companies to hire only millenials because they're digital natives...people forget that digital natives may be good tech users, but tech builders? Mileage may vary.

The company I work for bought the digital transformation package from their white shoe consultants of choice. One twist that I think is going to help them is this...we tend to be older due to hard-earned industry experience. They seem to be at least giving the older folks a chance and skilling them up rather than firing them and just hiring the first guy with an ironic beard.

You'll get good and bad people of any age. Firing anyone who has tribal knowledge is in vogue, but let's see what happens when the 25 year old unquestioningly working 90+ hours a week wants to settle down and have a life outside of work.

Enterprise Java spec packs bags, ready for new life under assumed name – Jakarta

Erik4872

Re: Typical of Oracle

"Just like Java as a language then?"

Not sure that's accurate...The 2000s were a very busy time for J2EE developers, and it's used in a lot of CS programs as a first object-oriented language. Maybe open-sourcing and getting it out from under Oracle's control somewhat will help, but very few people are voluntarily using anything even slightly connected with Oracle anymore. You sure don't see too many new Solaris deployments anymore.

That said, Java EE is going to be like COBOL. Lots of mission-critical, back-end code that companies are scared to touch, running millions of dollars' worth of business.

Cu in Hell: Thousands internetless after copper thieves pinch 500m of cable in Cambridgeshire

Erik4872

Re: Why is this such a problem in the UK?

From what I've read and heard from UK friends, most of the recent uptick in this kind of thievery is because of austerity and replacing most benefits with Universal Credit. Apparently there used to be a pretty decent support system in place for the unlucky/unemployed/underemployed, and it got cut back severely in the last few years. Parts of the north of England and Wales are almost completely deindustrialized...think US rust belt.

When you can't get work and have no financial support, you go for other options. I'd have to be pretty desperate to steal cable, especially live electrical cable, but you do what's needed I guess.

Microsoft Notepad: If it ain't broke, shove it in the Store, then break it?

Erik4872

Someone's pet project?

Microsoft seems to be releasing a lot of these odd one-off things lately. VS Code is a really good example where (I'm assuming) someone's pet project ended up taking on a life of its own. All the cool kids are writing in JavaScript, so why not write a text editor that lives in Electron and requires a gigabyte of dependencies pulled from 1000 sources?

I'm guessing it's because they're not constrained by the 3-year release cycle anymore, and the Windows OS itself is now a second-class citizen. So, they can emit anything they want, any time they want.

WeWork filed its IPO homework. So we had a look at its small print and... yowser. What has El Reg got itself into?

Erik4872

Re: Nice wheez

Indeed -- it seems like a lot of these startups are taking pages from the Theranos playbook. That's what different with this Dotcom Bubble...the last one, people were just totally delusional. This time, it seems they're being a little more deceptive.

All's fun until some forensic accountant at SoftBank starts unraveling whatever crazy rent-back scheme they have going after the founders relocate somewhere with no extradition treaties...

Erik4872

Not PCI compliant?

I'm assuming WeWork is one of those cloud-first companies. All the major cloud providers are PCI compliant -- at least their infrastructure is. What kind of rinky-dink payment app did they cook up? That's the only way they can explain their statement that they're not PCI compliant yet...even snap-together shopping cart apps store card details in a way that the PCI auditors won't frown on.

That said, stories about them and this filing make me believe they're just a totally delusional cult. Who out there thinks it's OK for a company a CEO owns to rent all of its office space it's rerenting from the same CEO and his cronies?? It almost makes me want to go found "LLC of Me, LLC" and sell my house to myself, pay myself rent, and immediately be able to deduct every single expense I incur maintaining the house from my income...but the IRS doesn't look kindly on self-dealing unless you're rich I guess.

Simons says don't push us: FTC boss warns regulator could totally break up big tech companies if it wanted

Erik4872

Won't happen

US politics is way too transactional to allow something like this to happen. How else do you explain the slap on the wrist Facebook just got, or the fact that they just kind of shrugged their shoulders at the whole Equifax mess?

I'm assuming the US is one of the only countries where it's acceptable to just hand a bag of money to government regulators (passing through many hands of course) and get what you want. Even if Facebook has to pay half that fine back in "donations," they still come out ahead and can continue unhindered. It's pocket change to these companies and a cost of doing business. And with Equifax...if it only costs me a few hundred million, the company stays intact, AND my insurers pay for the loss anyway, then there's no incentive to improve security.

I'm sure there are plenty of discussions being had that translate down to "how many hours' revenue will the potential fine cost me vs. the potential reward for the unethical practice at hand?"

Crunch time: It's all fun and video games until you're being pressured into working for free

Erik4872

"He think many will leave but they've locked to the firm by becoming partners."

Not even that...the more traditional law, accountancy and consulting partnerships just don't take "defectors." They want new hires fresh out of school for two reasons...they're easy to push around, easy to mold in their image, and they feel that experienced hires will have work habits from rival firms they would have to unteach before they're the kind of person that firm wants to make a partner. The bigger firms basically have a new-hire indoctrination where they teach newbies exactly how they want them to behave in front of clients...dressing, traveling, hosting dinners, giving presentations, how to speak, etc.

"I'm sure the games industry being new and desirable has a few years to go before the shines comes off like accountants but it'll happen."

The problem is that people who love to play video games think writing them is the coolest job ever. This has been a problem for ages...EA is famous for just using up new grads who would give appendages to work in the industry. I've seen things from the late 90s/early 2000s about big video game publishers just burning through people.

Erik4872

It's like new lawyers or investment bankers

The video game industry is horrible towards unsuspecting starry-eyed new grads who don't understand that they're being taken advantage of. Lots of IT and dev jobs are similar, but video games is the only one where you have a constant backlog of 500 sacks of fresh meat outside the factory gates will will gladly replace you if you don't want to work another month of 90-hour weeks. I don't care if game dev is the most exciting industry sector out there...working people to death in knowledge work positions is NOT normal.

I live near NYC so our comparatively-tame workplace gets a lot of refugees from investment banks and law firms. Associates there have a similar problem according to the IT bods we've hired. Exclusively Ivy League finance/MBA grads and the top 10% students of the top 14 law schools in the country are hired on annually to associate banker and associate lawyer positions. It's kind of like a graduation present for spending the money and making it into the Ivy League schools. At one end of the pipe is school, at the other is a life of luxury where you never have to worry about money again once you make partner/managing director. It's a once-in-a-lifetime shot at Easy Street, but inside that pipe is a miserable existence of years of toil. They work bankers and new lawyers to death. At least there's a reward at the end...I'd love to have my only worry to be whether to take the Bentley or the Rolls to the club. Game developers just get abused until they give up, then a new one takes their place.

FBI, NSA to hackers: Let us be blunt. Weed need your help. We'll hire you even if you've smoked a little pot in the past

Erik4872

Re: Its a body count thing....

"There's been a chronic shortage of skilled people in the UK for some time now "

Is that really true though? Here in the US, companies love to use that line (and a lot of money) to get favorable visa policy purchased/passed. I'm no MAGA guy, but I do think we could solve whatever shortage there is by investing in training and education of existing resources.

There's a difference between "skilled and trainable" vs. "drop-in replacement who has some esoteric combination of impossible-to-find skills."

Erik4872

Re: From outside the US

Just because some states have legalized pot, (a) it's not legal at the federal level, hence the issues they have with it and (b) it's not a protection against hiring discrimination.

The state I'm in decriminalized it, as in the laws are still on the books but personal possession is no longer a life-altering criminal conviction...it's similar to a traffic ticket and doesn't follow you the way a criminal conviction does. (In the US, if you're convicted of anything, the chances of working in the legal economy ever again are slim in the age of cheap background checks, which is another whole problem.) But, I used to work for an airline. They had a zero-tolerance policy even if you didn't work in safety-sensitive positions, and randomly tested people. In the 5 years I was there, I got picked twice and of course had to pass a test when being hired. Lots of employers are like that, especially if you're in a position where you're exposed to large sums of money or dangerous machinery.

Just because it's legal in your state doesn't mean private (or public federal) employers can't use it as a way to winnow down the applicant pool. I've wanted to experiment in the past but never did, mainly because I've worked in environments like this.

Erik4872

Re: Depends on your clearance level

I work with tons of ex-military, many of which were working on nuclear propulsion and other state-secret level stuff. Here's what I've been told...The clearance requirements seem like nanny-state stuff and morality hangups, but they're basically there to reduce risk. They're looking to avoid putting people in positions of trust who can be easily compromised. It's not just drugs...they're looking for people who can't manage their finances, for compulsive gamblers, and people who are concealing even small stuff. Examples would be Robert Hanssen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen) who was basically doing it for the money, not because he was a die-hard communist or anything like that. What if you had an "expensive" wife/glrlfriend who you can't keep happy on a government salary? Or if you had a compulsion to bet large sums on sporting events and you sometimes frequent "non-sanctioned" gambling environments? It would be much easier for people to apply pressure to you. Someone I worked with in the past was a nuclear officer on a sub, and he told me that the whole reason the clearance was required in the first place was because all someone needed to do would be to take some pictures and funnel some documents to the appropriate sources, and that simple act might get a lot of people killed or expose a critical secret that opened up a vulnerability.

I think they're relaxing the requirements because the attitude towards recreational pot use has changed. Not everyone agrees but it's no longer a given that anyone who does drugs is a dangerous hippie. And when the FBI/NSA is going after white-hat folks, I think they realize that not everyone applying or who might potentially apply is a traditional conformist 50s crew-cut type.

Front-end dev cops to billing NSA $220,000 for hours he didn't work

Erik4872

Pretty dumb

Another reply beat me to it with the perfect summary -- "Epic chutzpah." He must have thought the NSA was used to just throwing money into the fireplace on contractors and would never check...I'm actually surprised they did, but it goes to show you what's possible. To think you could get away with this when the country's largest surveillance arm is involved is amusing...if you were doing top-secret work that required you to work in a secure facility, shouldn't you assume you're being watched every second you're there?

The defense contractors employing this guy are the ones cleaning up though...and I hate this about all contracting firms. Why are they getting 100+% margin just for having access to the work? Contractors working directly with the agency/company would save tons of useless overhead.

NPM Inc settles union-busting complaints on third try – after CEO trolled for ordering internal mole hunt

Erik4872

The whole thing is surprising

I'm not shocked about the union-busting attempt. I worked in IT for an airline for a few years, and at that time the pilots weren't unionized (startup LCC.) My work put me in the pilots' orbit frequently -- and the stories of outright propaganda ahead of the vote were quite interesting. They never did anything that could be proven, but there was indeed some mole hunting going on too. All companies do this to try to identify the "troublemakers" and constructively dismiss them. It took 3 attempts but now the pilots are in a union; basically the airline isn't a startup anymore and they want to get paid the same way and have the same rules as their peers at major carriers. They definitely didn't want the publicity either, but trying to find the leak just made more noise.

What really surprises me more is the thought of a union of Silicon Valley/SF tech workers. I tend to lean more towards the pro-labor side but basically everyone in tech I've met is a staunch libertarian type who believes in their own bootstraps and their own superiority to their peers being the only protection they need. I know working at startups is a grueling grind of 90+ hour weeks and low pay, but I thought those types did it voluntarily for the vague hope they'd be millionaires someday. Maybe they realized that NPM is basically a giant CDN for JavaScript snippets and their only hope is Microsoft buying it to fold into GitHub.

I don't expect pro-union activity to be a trend in IT/dev until we wake up and decide we're a big-boy/girl profession now -- and I wonder if that's going to happen in the 25 or so years I have left in my working life.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

Erik4872

Designed by SW engineers

I'm guessing this is a product of that failed "GE Digital" venture they were trying -- where they wanted to hire Silicon Valley types and IoT-ify a notably fuddy-duddy company.

This sounds exactly like something software engineers come up with, then stare blankly when told no one outside their orbit will be able to use it.

- "OK guys, the product manager refused to sign off on a less-than-1-cent reset switch being added to the board and a hole drilled in the casing. You need to come up with a way to reset the bulb without a switch."

- "What should we do? The only interaction the user has with the bulb is placing it in the socket.........."

- "............That's it! Oh, no, wait...what if we make the sequence non-obvious?"

- "Nah, that'll cause frustration."

- "Nonsense, everyone has a phone these days with a stopwatch on it!"

- "I love it, genius idea!"

Brought to you by the software engineers who think cryptic gray-on-white thin line drawings with no explanations make great intuitive UI elements! (Although I do have to give them credit for not embedding a full Linux stack complete with unchangeable firmware containing years-out-of-date web server software, an open telnet port and credentials of admin/admin...that's a surprisingly common pattern in IoT design too.)

Hipster yap app chaps Slack finally strap into NYSE: Shares of 'WORK' open at $38.50 apiece

Erik4872

Selling tools to prospectors

It's tempting to say this is another Dotcom Bubble, but I think the dynamics are a little different. There's not as much cheerleading going on from the financial media as there was back in 1999, and companies aren't shipping 50 pound bags of dog food free to customers. But, it seems like these "startup/DevOps work tools" vendors would be taking the place of the e-commerce companies if we were to project the present back onto 1999/2000.

I guess we'll see what happens after the founders become instant billionaires. But Slack has competition, including Microsoft who is basically making Teams "free with purchase" for O365 subscribers. They're both super-bloated JavaScript front ends to instant messaging with similar features, so I wonder what the distinction is besides "not a Microsoft product" -- other than "Unicorn Startup X and Y use Slack."

IT pro screwed out of unused vacation pay, bonus by HPE after judge rules: The law is a mess but it's still the law

Erik4872

Beware spinoffs; they allow HR policy changes

I don't work for HPE, but this sounds like HPE used the opportunity of a spin-off to change policy, at least for the vacation days. Lots of companies are adopting an "unlimited vacation" policy. This means 2 things -- (1) you don't accrue any vacation payable on separation, and (2) your management and colleagues will guilt you into never taking any of your unlimited vacation. I've fortunately not had to deal with this yet, but have many stories recounted to me. Either the manager is in total crisis mode all the time and refuses to let you go even for critical stuff, and/or the new grads who haven't been beaten down by a big company yet are putting on a big show doing 70 hours or more a week. At the same time they're insinuating that anyone who works a normal workweek is a slacker and not committed to the team.

Side question -- other than a fire-at-will contractor, what "highly skilled technical professionals" have an actual employment contract in the US? The article said this guy actually had his compensation including bonuses and options spelled out for him.

BT to axe 90% of its UK real estate, retain circa 30 sites

Erik4872

Looks like they're learning from IBM

I remember reading that IBM did something similar to get rid of workers...consolidating everything down to "key locations" as a way to fire older people who had roots and families and didn't want to move hundreds or thousands of miles.

Not being in the UK -- is this similar to what happened when AT&T was demonopolized? I'm old enough to remember that working for AT&T used to mean lifetime employment and they had massive amounts of real estate and spare capacity because there was no reason for them to get rid of it. I can imagine BT has a similar situation now since they used to be state-owned and have quite a history.

It stinks for all the people they're throwing overboard, and those collaboration dens they're throwing all the remaining staff into look headache-inducing.

IEEE tells contributors with links to Chinese corp: Don't let the door hit you on Huawei out

Erik4872

This whole thing is getting nuts

It looks like we're in for another Cold War scenario. The US and other countries aren't really set up to deal with companies that have soft and sometimes hard control exerted by their host governments. It kind of works when only manufacturing is involved, but when state influence could be used to add backdoors to communications equipment it gets sticky. But that's the cost of dealing with this system. China exerts influence on key industries and companies when it makes sense strategically -- that doesn't happen much here. For all the money the US invested in keeping GM and Chrysler solvent, there was no talk of nationalizing the industry. Meanwhile in China, the government took a "whatever it takes" approach to avoiding the worst of the 2008 financial crisis by stimulating domestic demand, building massive infrastructure projects, etc. It's just a really different setup.

Already we're seeing China respond by moving their military systems to a homegrown OS, removing Cisco from their networks, and Huawei itself announcing they've developed their own mobile OS now that they don't have access to some Android features anymore. Not exactly a recipe for good future relations...

DXC Technology seeks volunteers to take redundancy. No grads, apprentices, and 'quota carrying' sales folk

Erik4872

Re: Sage Advice

"Never volunteer for redundancy. If your name's on the list you'll get the brown envelope anyway."

It depends on the situation. If you're a long-tenure person and you're being offered a better deal than you would get if they fired you later...then you should probably go for it. Of course, this is US-based advice...maybe the UK and Europe are a little more civilized about throwing people out when they're done with them?

Silence of the vans: Uber adds 'Plz STFU, driver' button to app for posh passengers using Black

Erik4872

That's pretty dehumanizing

This sounds like a feature that an introverted techie working for Uber dreamed up, thinking it was a brilliant idea. I've heard about this phenomenon where younger people are having trouble interacting directly with people because they're so used to phones and automated services. Maybe it's just catering to the audience? I could definitely see a bunch of well-heeled socially maladjusted nerds riding around San Francisco or San Jose who would use this.

Whatever it is, the "shut up and drive" button might be the push over the edge needed to get courts to treat their drivers as employees. At least in the US, contractors (especially in IT) are routinely treated like employees. The official rules are that you can't directly control their work, but this happens all the time. Uber telling a driver "pick up this passenger and take them here" is already on shaky ground, but add "and by the way, keep your mouth shut and don't speak unless spoken to!" kind of adds to the "employee direction." At best it's dehumanizing -- I thought we were done with the "domestic service" era except for the Larry Ellison level people of the world these days.

Microsoft waves the wizard wand, emits the Web Template Studio

Erik4872

VS Code = Emacs

The moment VS Code came out, with the ability to add extensions as a key component -- I immediately recalled memories of Emacs. For those who may not know, Emacs is a "text editor" on the GNU/Unix side of the house. Every single function you can possibly think of has had an Emacs extension written for it. Its core functionality is editing text, but it's capable of doing _everything_.

I also find these "app wizards" very interesting; it goes to show you how abstracted software development is now. As long as you're willing to live with your particular framework's abstractions and the performance hit, simple development is snapping together Legos in the right order. Complex operations are well hidden behind the curtain now unless you really need raw power and can't live with the speed reduction.

Do Xpect Custard Creams? DXC buys cosy New Jersey data centre, moves in with Credit Suisse

Erik4872

Re: Hmmmm

For the most part, finance customers aren't digitally transforming their HFT applications and other items that benefit from close proximity to major exchanges' data centers. All that stuff requires bucketloads of compute power and super-low latency...the cloud has too many software-defined abstractions for that.

Hi! It looks like you're working on a marketing strategy for a product nowhere near release! Would you like help?

Erik4872

Re: Cost centers

You're getting downvoted but it's absolutely true. For students with no practical experience, an MBA is the corporate equivalent of a commissioned military officer. Instead of going through OCS you immediately skip the whole enlisted phase and graduate into a leadership position. I've wondered how businesses can hire someone with no real work experience to lead complex efforts. I know the prevailing wisdom is that a manager can manage anything, but I have my doubts.

I think that's why there's so much regurgitation and why management consultancies are so profitable. It doesn't take a lot of effort to digest the latest business books into a PowerPoint presentation and throw in some buzzwords to wow the executives.

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

Erik4872

This is why companies outsource/offshore I guess

It's interesting how blame gets passed around.Boeing isn't to blame because they just accepted a box of electronics containing software. The electronic box manufacturer isn't to blame because Infosys/TCS/whatever the lowest bidder was wrote the software.

I guess that's a legitimate reason for companies to send all their development and engineering to a third party...only the last link in the chain gets blamed.

What a pain in the Azzz-ure: Microsoft Azure, SharePoint, etc knocked offline by DNS blunder

Erik4872

Ouch

All these PaaS and SaaS services, including the ones Microsoft uses to run Azure, run on real machines _somewhere_ and are subject to real-world on-prem style failures. Something foundational like DNS is horrible to lose because you basically have no way to get to anything to even start fixing the problem. Developers are used to all their abstractions and basically don't have any idea what to do when their call to a hostname fails. Azure AD would be another one...imagine not being able to even log in to systems to start troubleshooting without using some sort of emergency break-glass kind of access.

I'm not interested in 100 hour weeks, but if that weren't a requirement I'd love to work for one of the cloud providers. The systems they have in place to keep that massive tower of abstraction running must be amazing. But yeah, if you lose DNS your best bet is to get it back immediately.

Yet another UK.gov figure joins Amazon Web Services payroll

Erik4872

Re: Security experience

"never worked in cyber security at all in his entire career"

It worked out for Equifax...oh wait. :-)

In all seriousness, especially in government these executive positions have absolutely nothing to do with the work the agency does. This is precisely why tech companies sell directly to them. If you didn't know what your department does, and are getting pressure from the rest of government to reduce your budget, what better target for outsourcers and cloud providers? All these directors see is the money going out, so if someone comes along and says "I can make all your problems disappear for $X," and $X is less than what you're paying now...no brainer (until the change orders start rolling in...)

IT meltdown outfit TSB to refund all customers that fall victim to fraud in 'UK banking first'

Erik4872

The cycle continues

"The bank last month announced that it was bringing control of its technology and banking platform in-house as it plans to shift away from Sabadell's IT partner Sabis."

Large non-tech companies seem like they'll never understand that they actually need to have a handle on IT. It's not as simple as hiring a company to run the cafeteria or take out the garbage. Especially banks...rather than hire and train people to work on the core systems they have, it's cheaper to have half the population of India learn on your systems. Maybe now with cloud taking care of a lot of the hardware complexity, companies might find a few bucks in the couch cushions to hire a competent in-house staff to run all that outsourced hardware and -aaSes.

Either Facebook is building yet another massive bit barn in Iowa, and doesn't want you to know about it....

Erik4872

Silicon Prairie anyone?

"One of the reasons for the smoke and mirrors is the fact that, as soon as locals find out that a big online business comes to town, they lose their shit."

Local politicians in these rural communities are happy for tax revenue coming in, but the idea that these data center projects produce tons of local employment is wrong. Once the place is built, you pretty much have a couple of security guards, maybe some HVAC technicians, and a small number of hardware-swappers and cablers -- "smart hands," I believe they're called. Even the smart hands aren't needed as much anymore with the modular data centers cloud vendors are building. They'll just roll in shipping containers full of pre-racked hardware and roll in new ones once enough machines in any one container have hardware problems.

It's a shame too, because data center technician jobs used to be the stepping stone into IT for a lot of people. But, I doubt this is going to change anytime soon. Land is absurdly cheap and abundant in the middle of the country, as is the little labor you need. I just hate seeing local politicians bending over backwards for these companies, investing a ton of money to get them there, then have the company abandon them or not employ the local population.

Nutanix and HPE sitting in a Greenlake: That disavowed hookup has actually happened

Erik4872

Subscription Boxes As a Service (SBaaS)

If there's one thing that's going to define this Second Dotcom Bubble when we look back...it'll be the swapping of CapEx for OpEx.

I know MBAs tend to latch onto shiny things and _not let go_ until something shinier appears...but damn, it's been interesting seeing how quickly companies are jumping on the "give me your money every month forever" bandwagon. It's happened with public cloud and software, and now companies are thrilled about renting time on physical hardware IBM mainframe style.

Everyone is completely ignoring the fact that vendors are rolling out the red carpet, cashing in on cheap financing and just waiting for the time they have the lock-in and market forces to raise their prices. Public cloud is fine...just don't be surprised at the bill if you choose one of Amazon, Microsoft or Google's proprietary -aaS offerings.

Not a great day for Oracle: Top cloud exec jumps ship, analyst recommends cutting shares

Erik4872

Customers know better, don't they?

Does Oracle have any *new* customers? I'd think even the most clueless executive would have experience with their tactics for on-prem software. Imagine having your actual data under their control.

Iranian-backed hackers ransacked Citrix, swiped 6TB+ of emails, docs, secrets, claims cyber-biz

Erik4872

Citrix Cloud

What will be very interesting to see is what happens with Citrix Cloud. Presumably with full access to the corporate network, there have been a bunch of secrets uncovered, including methods for accessing customer environments. Citrix has been trying extremely hard to get customers subscribing to its software and taking the next step and hosting the control plane in Citrix Cloud. I doubt this is even going to register with decision makers, but techies might think twice.

There's no shortage of juicy targets...finding a zero day to access customers' environments would be a big win. Basically every hospital runs every Citrix product they ever released, and those Windows applications that XenApp/XenDesktop deliver tend to be line-of-business stuff where all the money and transactions are kept.

Fighting against security issues is a losing battle. No one cares because it costs more money and makes everything more inconvenient. But, I guarantee the CEO of most companies has the password "12345" both on his luggage and his corporate AD account. I've worked in places where we have to carve out password policy exceptions for executives because they just don't care. It would take something like credit card processing being down for a month or Facebook being offline for a week to get normal people to sit up and notice this in the current environment.

Germany, US staffers to be hit hardest as SAP starts shedding 4,400 bodies

Erik4872

The corporate employment cycle is shorter than a typcial career cycle

Unfortunately, it seems like companies have figured out that all they need to do is fire experienced people as soon as they ask for more money, then replace them with college grads who haven't been through an exploitation cycle yet. New grads don't find out until the first job or two that giving your entire life over to the company isn't going to get you anywhere unless you're climbing the management ladder.

The problem I see is that this firing cycle keeps getting shorter and shorter. People aren't allowed to be good at their jobs and have a career progression that includes salary growth. I'm also kind of skeptical that SAP is actually doing anything serious with AIMLBlockchain...I think they just need to appear to be doing so. SAP is boring backoffice financial and CRM software at its heart. Other than bolt-on machine learning stuff, what is actually being done in these fields?

Dratted hipster UX designers stole my corporate app

Erik4872

I'm hoping UX/responsive design is a phase

I'm 43 and I'm desperately afraid that UX/responsive design is going to be the thing that makes me seem like an old fart.

Do people actually enjoy having to think about what the little gray nub does, or what the line-drawing icon with no explanation text means? Do people like reading light gray text on a bright white background?

I know we're not going to go back to mainframe terminal screens or curses applications...but hiding functionality is just stupid in my opinion. With CSS and JavaScript doing what they can do these days, can't designers put a switch in the application that just says "Smart User <--> Dumb User" and let people choose?

Amazon throws toys out of pram, ditches plans for New York HQ2 after big trouble in Big Apple

Erik4872

Re: This happens all the time

"I know people who've been working for Google and other SF employers who're desperate to move away from $4500 rents, especially when they're looking at starting families."

We'd need the Second Dotcom Bubble to pop before it will make any difference. Companies are 100% bought into the idea that "disruption-enabling" tech talent only lives in Seattle, SF/SV and maybe NYC or Boston. Otherwise, why would they be paying $200K+ for SREs and developers even if they are swimming in more money than they can ever possibly spend? The tech companies are desperately trying to hang on to their top people, and whether or not it's true there is this perception that top tech talent is only interested in lavish upscale city living.

Even where I am in suburban NYC, around me the IT scene is quite boring...healthcare, education, a couple IT service providers and a handful of old-school companies that actually make physical products if you can believe it. If I wanted a Dotcom Bubble job I'd have to get on the train and go to the city...something I've managed to avoid since...surprise...I have a family that I'd like to see once in a while and a 3 hour daily commute isn't compatible with that.

What I think will happen is what you're describing...this latest crop of new grads will get tired of working crazy hours, might develop a life outside of the office and want to start families. I'm involved with a lot of AWS and Azure projects and I can tell Microsoft and Amazon are running their engineers ragged pumping out service after service every 2 weeks. Even the smartest, most work-focused people out there have a limit.

Erik4872

Re: This happens all the time

Basically all of the Rust Belt is in the same spot. Some cities have managed to bounce back...you could even say Detroit is at least on the right path now. The problem is image. I grew up in Buffalo which got hit very hard by offshoring and de-industrialization when I was young. I'm sure most of these cities submitted bids. Here's the problem...Amazon hires trainloads of new computer science grads and those new grads want the unattached hipster big-city lifestyle. Look at how much rent is in downtown Seattle or San Francisco. The new grads want nothing more than to work 90 hours a week in a preschool office space, then walk across the street to their $4500/month luxury studio apartment or spend time at the trendy shops and restaurants you know Amazon would have demanded be placed around its new HQ. Replicating that in a "regular" city would be artificial at best.

It's a shame because you're right...real estate is cheap and the people are very nice. But the most these cities ever get is call centers or mundane paper-processing centers. The executives don't want to live there and they know they can't attract "top talent" fresh out of school.

Erik4872

This happens all the time

I live near NYC, and it would have been nice to have another source of semi-stable employment to choose from. However, I think NYC actually made the right decision. The list of requirements and tax abatements that the city and state would have had to provide is astronomical. Long Island City (where they were planning on going) is crowded and has a public transport problem that isn't easily solved. It's right next to a very large housing project, so you know Amazon would eventually demand 10 square blocks cleared out to build their "techbro fortress".

I think New York was desperate to win one of these "corporate HQ beauty contests". For those not in the US, this happens every single time a company is thinking of expanding or doesn't get exactly what they want tax-wise from their HQ city. We in NY have high taxes and a pretty high cost of living compared to just about anyplace other than California. We _always_ lose these beauty contests because Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida bend over backwards to accommodate large corporations' every demand. Even if the HQ doesn't move, they move thousands of paper-pusher jobs to these cheaper locations that offer to build them buildings, give them free taxes, utilities and infrastructure, etc.

It would have been nice but $3 billion is a LOT of money to just give to an already rich company. Nothing wrong with a few incentives, but just bending over and asking what Amazon wants isn't smart either. I'm assuming they're going to pick Dallas or Atlanta.

Page: