http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

made many people angry, all the mediocre "cost centers".

But this advice is to people who want to make money. I don't. The only purpose
of money is to pay debts. I don't want debts nor properties. I'll merrily sing
along the joy of life while ants are busy digging holes in the ground and
filling it with stuff they may some day attempt to find joy with when they're
off work in their last days...

I don't care either for the name.  Probably duct tape expert would be more
precise than programmer.

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On 11/13/2011 17:40, nemesis wrote:
> But this advice is to people who want to make money. I don't.

No, I think this is advice to people who want to get paid more money for the 
same amount of work. Hence, you get to work less if you pay attention to 
these details.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 13/11/2011 10:08 PM, Darren New wrote:
> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

Interesting.

I love how I read "you should be able to explain your ideas to a bright 
8 year old or to the CFO", and I immediately wondered whether the CFO 
would be smart enough to comprehend something a small child can 
understand. ;-)

In my limited experience, managers are astonishingly stupid people. 
(Depending on how high up they are, generally. Some of the ones lower 
down actually *have* a clue...)

I also love how a large segment of people are all like "BS! The real 
world isn't like this! You're lying! You don't know WTF you're talking 
about! How made you an expert anyway?" Can you spell "denial"?

Having just said that, I'm not sure that *every* company is actually 
like this. From what I've seen, organisational culture varies from place 
to place.

For example, where I work, few people would try to take credit for 
somebody else's work, or steer the group towards a path of action that 
most benefits themselves. Because, frankly, if you did these things, you 
would be wasting your time. Achievement is not recognised nor rewarded 
here. Nobody ever gets pay rises for any reason. Nobody is thanked for 
their effort. So there's really no reason to try to out-do anybody else. 
(On the contrary, people's attitude is more one of "we're all in this 
together, we're all stuck in this dead-end, let's just make the most of 
it".)

Where my mum works, there's a lot of back-stabbing. Everyone has target 
statistics to meet. And that means that almost every single employee 
constantly operates on the basis of "how can I make this become somebody 
else's problem as fast as possible?" People will try to claim that 
something is another department's responsibility, they will try to dump 
jobs into somebody else's job queue, they will redirect callers to 
someone else - *anyone* else - because if you can just get *rid* of the 
work as fast as possible, you get the best stats.

Those poor unfortunate people who try to actually HELP THE CUSTOMER? 
They are the ones with the awful stats who end up getting hired. Welcome 
to defective management practices.

So in summary, I'm sure there are companies where everyone is very 
up-tight and constantly trying to stab everyone in the back and get the 
glory and the money. And there are other companies where everyone is too 
laid back to care. And companies somewhere inbetween.

What I *will* say is that, seemingly without exception, every 
corporation on Earth seems to regard programmers as "those unnecessary 
people we keep having to spend huge sums of money on; if only we could 
figure out how to get rid of them..." Nobody, anywhere, seems to value 
technical skill in the slightest.

I guess that's just a reflection of the larger issues in society. There 
was a time when people prized the highest-quality goods. Today everybody 
just wants to find the cheapest model on the market. Given the choice 
between a nice quality TV that works well and is easy to use, and a shit 
TV that's 85% cheaper, every single man, women and child will pick the 
cheap one, and then complain like hell that it's unreliable and horribly 
complicated to operate...

Also: This is why I've given up trying to get paid as a programmer. 99% 
of companies don't need anybody to write software for them. 95% of all 
software written is technically trivial. 100% of managers want the 
crappiest, buggiest software you can write. Because software that works 
properly doesn't add any value. (See above.)

On the other hand, the guy who fixes your mission-critical computer 
stuff when it breaks? That guy is seen as necessary and useful, and gets 
paid money. (In varying degrees.) Plus I can walk in the door and say 
that I already get paid to do that for a living. People take that kind 
of thing more seriously.

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Le 2011-11-14 05:50, Invisible a écrit :
> On 13/11/2011 10:08 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
>
> Interesting.
>
> I love how I read "you should be able to explain your ideas to a bright
> 8 year old or to the CFO", and I immediately wondered whether the CFO
> would be smart enough to comprehend something a small child can
> understand. ;-)

Technical issues?  They're probably equivalent.  However, an 8 year old, 
would probably have problems understanding how to hide profits in a 
tax-haven country...

>
> In my limited experience, managers are astonishingly stupid people.
> (Depending on how high up they are, generally. Some of the ones lower
> down actually *have* a clue...)

While managers are sometimes hired from the "old boys' network" and make 
Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss look like a rocket scientist, as someone 
once pointed out to me, managers have to supervise a team of people,or 
in the case of upper management, teams of teams.  They CAN NOT possibly 
know more than every member of each of these teams.  It's not their 
role.  And, as you point out, the further up the food chain you go, the 
less they know about each individual's field of experitse.  Besides, 
someone who did know more than all of her team members would be a 
horrible manager, micro-managing every one.

This, unfortunately means, that they will sometimes misundertand your 
explanations and will have to go to their management with their flawed 
view of your concerns, and may return with what they think is a "good 
compromise" that is totally unworkable.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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> Technical issues? They're probably equivalent. However, an 8 year old,
> would probably have problems understanding how to hide profits in a
> tax-haven country...

LOL.

>> In my limited experience, managers are astonishingly stupid people.
>> (Depending on how high up they are, generally. Some of the ones lower
>> down actually *have* a clue...)
>
> While managers are sometimes hired from the "old boys' network" and make
> Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss look like a rocket scientist, as someone
> once pointed out to me, managers have to supervise a team of people,or
> in the case of upper management, teams of teams. They CAN NOT possibly
> know more than every member of each of these teams. It's not their role.
> And, as you point out, the further up the food chain you go, the less
> they know about each individual's field of experitse. Besides, someone
> who did know more than all of her team members would be a horrible
> manager, micro-managing every one.
>
> This, unfortunately means, that they will sometimes misundertand your
> explanations and will have to go to their management with their flawed
> view of your concerns, and may return with what they think is a "good
> compromise" that is totally unworkable.

This is how competent management works, yes.

The problem seems to be that most managers apparently don't live in the 
real world. I'm not talking about not understanding computing or 
whatever. As you point out, managers hire other people to do that for them.

I'm talking about things like... The company is making several million 
dollars in losses annually because our order books are *empty*. Back 
when the order book wasn't empty, we were making a decent profit, but 
since our best salesmen left we're getting hardly any business. 
Activities which will not rectify this situation include:

- Firing people.

- Making all employees memorise the 12-point company objectives list.

- Having a meeting once per month where all the employees stop doing 
productive work to spend 2 hours listening to various financial officers 
describe the current health of the company in extraneous detail.

- Redesigning the employee performance appraisal process.

- Changing people's job titles.

- Reducing investment in vital laboratory equipment.

- Giving employees "team work evaluation" questionnaires to fill out.

- Replacing the entire sales team every 3 to 4 months.

- Lecturing employees about efficiency.

- Streamlining order processing via formal task analysis methods.

- Telling people [who haven't seen a pay rise in half a decade] that 
they should be willing to work unpaid overtime when the situation arises 
[even though we've got so little work on that people are sitting around 
the lab reading books and playing Flash games during office hours].

Activities which will improve the situation include:

- Hiring more sales staff and reducing turnover.

- Putting more resources towards customer liaisons.

- Producing a coherent marketing strategy.

Three guesses which set of activities top management are throwing all of 
their time and energy at...

Standing on the ground, it seems as if management have absolutely no 
idea what the problem is, and are blindly trying everything they can 
think of to figure out why we're losing so much money. And, standing on 
the ground, it seems bloody obvious that no sales = no profits. You 
would think that management would be urgently attacking the problem of 
massively increasing sales ASAP, given that we work in an industry with 
extremely high fixed overhead costs that can't be reduced. But nooo...

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

  I suppose I should be (and I *am*) very glad to be, at least at the
moment, in a job where I get to solve and implement real, interesting
programming problems (such as problems related to geometry, combinatorics,
low and high level program optimization, and so on) with immediate visible
results and payoff (namely: a playable computer game), where I make the
programming decisions and design.

  I have seen a glimpse of what the "real" world of commercial programming
is, though, as I temporarily had a training job in a much larger firm.
It was a nightmare. CEOs would promise clients results with absolutely
unrealistic dealines, without consulting the project manager, the lead
programmer or any of the development staff, forcing the otherwise very
competent developers to create a haphazard mess with little to no planning
in a record time, with the infrastructure of the project constantly changing
without proper information being delivered to the programmers (which caused
much of the work to have to be rewritten), with no clear instructions on
what should be done when, where and how, and what's worse, with the project
manager, who in this case was also the lead programmer, being forced to sit
in completely useless meetings with the clients and CEOs, where requirements
would constantly change and unrealistic expectations would be constantly
presented.

  At the end of this training period both me and the project manager more
or less silently agreed that I wouldn't continue. I'm glad I didn't. I ended
up costing the company much more money than I could deliver in amount of
work, to no cause of mine. Overall it was an unpleasant experience. (The
fact that the developers there were very competent makes the whole ordeal
even more unpleasant. With enough time and proper organization they would
have made an excellent job, if not for the stupidity of the higher-ups.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 14/11/2011 05:35 PM, Warp wrote:

>    I suppose I should be (and I *am*) very glad to be, at least at the
> moment, in a job where I get to solve and implement real, interesting
> programming problems (such as problems related to geometry, combinatorics,
> low and high level program optimization, and so on) with immediate visible
> results and payoff (namely: a playable computer game), where I make the
> programming decisions and design.

I love how when I did my "computer science" degree at uni, the entire 
course was predicated around the idea that you will be writing large 
enterprise systems which consist of a database backend, and a Java or 
HTML front-end, possibly with some middleware in the center. Because, 
seriously, that's all there is, isn't it? It's not like anybody writes 
device drivers, or industrial control software, or computer games, or 
compilers and interpretters, or anything that isn't an enterprise CRUD 
system...

...oh, wait. :-P

>    I have seen a glimpse of what the "real" world of commercial programming
> is, though, as I temporarily had a training job in a much larger firm.
> It was a nightmare. CEOs would promise clients results with absolutely
> unrealistic dealines, without consulting the project manager, the lead
> programmer or any of the development staff, forcing the otherwise very
> competent developers to create a haphazard mess with little to no planning
> in a record time, with the infrastructure of the project constantly changing
> without proper information being delivered to the programmers (which caused
> much of the work to have to be rewritten), with no clear instructions on
> what should be done when, where and how, and what's worse, with the project
> manager, who in this case was also the lead programmer, being forced to sit
> in completely useless meetings with the clients and CEOs, where requirements
> would constantly change and unrealistic expectations would be constantly
> presented.

You mean you worked for a Daily WTF 100 company?

Damn, that must have been fun.

Daft thing is, I imagine time and again it plays out like this:

Sales team: We will deliver this application in 3 weeks.

Dev team: What?! That's impossible! It would take at least 9 months to 
implement that kind of functionality.

Management team: But we told the customer it will take 3 weeks. YOU MUST 
DO IT IN 3 WEEKS!!

So the dev team go off and work heroic miracles to cobble together some 
barely-functional crock of junk in just 3 weeks. And then it gets 
delivered to the customer. And then management sit back and say "gee, I 
guess it *was* a realistic deadline after all; I'll remember that for 
the future..."

And so the cycle is perpetuated forever...

You must be *so glad* you don't work there now.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 14/11/2011 10:50 AM, Invisible wrote:

> Interesting.

I also find it interesting how I had to get out a dictionary no less 
than *seven times* while reading this article. All those people who keep 
telling me I have a really wide vocabulary? They don't know jack.

Again, also interesting is the term "profit center". Obviously everyone 
has heard of a "cost center" (it's what you assign stuff to when you 
need to buy stuff), but I have never, ever heard anybody say the words 
"profit center". Perhaps it's just because people don't argue about it 
quite so much?

(I also had to go look up WTF an MBA actually is, since I've never heard 
of one...)

“Let’s replace really expensive Cost Centers who do some magic which we 
kinda need but don’t really care about with less expensive Cost Centers 
in a lower wage country.”

That sounds pretty much like *exactly* how almost every company views 
programmers. These are useless people that cost huge amounts of money 
but don't generate any value. Surely there is some way we can get rid of 
them? *sigh*

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:12:41 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> All those people who keep telling me I have a really wide vocabulary?
> They don't know jack.

Just because you had to look stuff up doesn't mean you don't have a wide 
vocabulary.  I routinely consult a dictionary (there's one built into my 
Nook e-reader) when reading to make sure I understand what I'm reading.

Jim

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On 14/11/2011 8:12 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> but I have never, ever heard anybody say the words "profit center".
> Perhaps it's just because people don't argue about it quite so much?

In my line of business cost centres will incur costs and pass them onto 
profit centres sometimes indirectly. For instance a Maintenance 
department will buy spare parts and use man-hours which will be charged 
to a production cost centre. Which in turn will buy raw and or 
semi-finished products, convert these into finished products and charge 
the sum to a profit centre which will sell the finished products. The 
total profit or loss of the controlling area will be the aggregate of 
these monies after settlement.

And as Jim said every intelligent person uses a dictionary and often a 
thesaurus.



-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 11/14/2011 12:00 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> On 14/11/2011 05:35 PM, Warp wrote:
>
>> I suppose I should be (and I *am*) very glad to be, at least at the
>> moment, in a job where I get to solve and implement real, interesting
>> programming problems (such as problems related to geometry,
>> combinatorics,
>> low and high level program optimization, and so on) with immediate
>> visible
>> results and payoff (namely: a playable computer game), where I make the
>> programming decisions and design.
>
> I love how when I did my "computer science" degree at uni, the entire
> course was predicated around the idea that you will be writing large
> enterprise systems which consist of a database backend, and a Java or
> HTML front-end, possibly with some middleware in the center. Because,
> seriously, that's all there is, isn't it? It's not like anybody writes
> device drivers, or industrial control software, or computer games, or
> compilers and interpretters, or anything that isn't an enterprise CRUD
> system...
>
> ...oh, wait. :-P
>
Sounds like you went to damn near the same place I did. Note however 
that there where three other courses:

Electronic Engineering Technology- The people expected to write device 
drivers, and build shit that used something vaguely microprocessor like.
Electronics - The guys that built simple shit that didn't do more than 
use basic circuits, like switches.
Telecommunications - Where the people that couldn't, for some 
incomprehensible reasons "grasps" databases, or programming, and found 
all the stuff in the 'Computer Information Systems' course, "to hard!", 
despite the fact that, at the time, we didn't even need to deal with 
middleware, Java, HTML, or all that other stuff, just Dummy Terminals, 
some basic commands to the mainframe's file stores, to execute jobs, and 
COBOL, the simplest, stupidest, and most "human friendly", in terms of 
syntax, of the languages, at that time, or likely since (for some reason 
making them understandable by humans makes them useless for computers... 
lol)

We started out with the largest class they had ever had, like 60-70 
people, and by the third trimester where down to like 20, of which maybe 
12-14 graduated. Many of the rest ended up in telecom, where I presume 
they struggled to grasp how to dial modems.

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On 11/14/2011 12:12, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Perhaps it's just because people don't argue about it quite so much?

I can't imagine knowing the one term and not the other. That's weird.

> (I also had to go look up WTF an MBA actually is, since I've never heard of
> one...)

Probably more of an americanism? I still haven't figured out how your 
universities or undergraduate classes are named. :-)

> That sounds pretty much like *exactly* how almost every company views
> programmers.

Well, that's what he's saying. You have to go to either a technical start 
up, or to someplace like Microsoft or Google or Facebook or something like 
that where what they're selling is what you're producing.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 11/14/2011 13:19, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Nook e-reader) when reading to make sure I understand what I'm reading.

That too.  Indeed, it's so easy to look stuff up on the Kindle that when I'm 
reading, if I see a word that I know what it means but I don't know the 
definition, I still look it up.  Plus, I read books with lots of big words 
now, too. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 11/14/2011 9:35, Warp wrote:
> I'm glad I didn't.

Heh. I've had a few of those. After a while, I figured out how to avoid them 
during the job interview.  For example, if the interviewer asks "What's a 
deadline", and expects the answer "it's when we promised to deliver it to 
the customer", then you're fucked if you take the job.

I still remember a conversation I had back in the MS-DOS days.

"How long do you think it'll take?"
   "I don't know. I never did anything like this before."
"Give an estimate."
   "On the order of months."
"What does that mean?"
   "More than week, less than a year."
"Can you be more specific?"
   "Do you want me to lie?"
"How about February 17th?"
   "If you already promised it, why are you asking me?
    Why February 17th?"
"It's the customer's birthday."

Feh.  Nowadays, if they ask you how long a multi-week/multi-month project 
will take and they won't accept "I'll get back to you in 2 days with the 
answer", you're fucked.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 11/14/2011 11:00, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Daft thing is, I imagine time and again it plays out like this:

Nah. It's more like the salesman tries to sell something to the customer. 
The customer doesn't want it, but either the salesman can't convince the 
customer or won't leave the customer alone. So the customer says "I'll buy 
it if you have this [9-month-feature] ready next month." And of course the 
salesman promises it.

Salesman comes back and asks for it. Even *if* you pull off the amazing 
impossible, the salesman goes back to the customer, who *still* doesn't want 
the product, and the dev team is of course "spinning their wheels working on 
useless features."

I can't tell you the number of times I worked on urgent rush features that 
never ever got used.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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>> Perhaps it's just because people don't argue about it quite so much?
>
> I can't imagine knowing the one term and not the other. That's weird.

I'm surprised too. The only thing I can think of is that if you sell a 
widget, that *obviously* goes to the widget profit center. But if you 
have to buy 10 more PCs, does that go to the admin office cost center? 
Or does it go to the IT cost center? Or perhaps it goes to the project 
planning cost center, because it was them that wanted more admin staff? 
Or...

>> That sounds pretty much like *exactly* how almost every company views
>> programmers.
>
> Well, that's what he's saying. You have to go to either a technical
> start up, or to someplace like Microsoft or Google or Facebook or
> something like that where what they're selling is what you're producing.

As I understand it, a "technical startup" is a polite way of saying "you 
will be paid peanuts and in three months' time you will be unemployed 
again because the company has been liquidated".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 16/11/2011 9:56 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I'm surprised too. The only thing I can think of is that if you sell a
> widget, that *obviously* goes to the widget profit center. But if you
> have to buy 10 more PCs, does that go to the admin office cost center?
> Or does it go to the IT cost center? Or perhaps it goes to the project
> planning cost center, because it was them that wanted more admin staff?
> Or...

If the PCs are bought on a project the costs will be credited to the 
project. (To make things even more transparent financial bods view 
things from a banks point of view. So when you pay out from a cost 
centre or WBS that is a credit and pay in is debiting.) As long as you 
are within budget all is well. If the purchasing department buys the PCs 
they will charge the IT department who in turn will charge the Admin 
department the cost of the PCs plus labour and maybe an overhead. It is 
simple if your mind is wired like an accountant.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 16/11/2011 10:22 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 16/11/2011 9:56 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> I'm surprised too. The only thing I can think of is that if you sell a
>> widget, that *obviously* goes to the widget profit center. But if you
>> have to buy 10 more PCs, does that go to the admin office cost center?
>> Or does it go to the IT cost center? Or perhaps it goes to the project
>> planning cost center, because it was them that wanted more admin staff?
>> Or...
>
> If the PCs are bought on a project the costs will be credited to the
> project. (To make things even more transparent financial bods view
> things from a banks point of view. So when you pay out from a cost
> centre or WBS that is a credit and pay in is debiting.) As long as you
> are within budget all is well. If the purchasing department buys the PCs
> they will charge the IT department who in turn will charge the Admin
> department the cost of the PCs plus labour and maybe an overhead. It is
> simple if your mind is wired like an accountant.

Except that it seems to have a lot more scope for people to argue over 
who gets to actually pay for stuff. Which would perhaps be why I've 
heard plenty of people argue about cost centers, but I've never ever 
heard anybody use the phrase "profit center".

Alternatively, maybe my employer just doesn't *have* any profit centers? :-P

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On 17/11/2011 9:03 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Except that it seems to have a lot more scope for people to argue over
> who gets to actually pay for stuff. Which would perhaps be why I've
> heard plenty of people argue about cost centers, but I've never ever
> heard anybody use the phrase "profit center".
>

Your company probably does not need profit centres as from what I can 
gather it is a service company. That is, it provides a service not a 
product.

> Alternatively, maybe my employer just doesn't *have* any profit centers?
> :-P

Scary!

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Le 2011-11-17 04:43, Stephen a écrit :
> On 17/11/2011 9:03 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Except that it seems to have a lot more scope for people to argue over
>> who gets to actually pay for stuff. Which would perhaps be why I've
>> heard plenty of people argue about cost centers, but I've never ever
>> heard anybody use the phrase "profit center".
>>
>
> Your company probably does not need profit centres as from what I can
> gather it is a service company. That is, it provides a service not a
> product.
>

If it bills customers for that service, there there is technically a 
porift center somewhere.  Even if his employer was a government entity 
or a non-profit organization.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On 17/11/2011 02:06 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

> If it bills customers for that service, there there is technically a
> porift center somewhere. Even if his employer was a government entity or
> a non-profit organization.

I thought the Church was the only non-prophet organisation?

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On 17/11/2011 2:06 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> If it bills customers for that service, there there is technically a
> porift center somewhere.  Even if his employer was a government entity
> or a non-profit organization.

It is a mistake to use everyday logic or common sense when talking about 
accountancy. Profit centres are an accountancy concept and can be run as 
a separate business within a business often with its own company code 
but within the same controlling area and using the same chart of accounts.
In my work the whole thing is a bit of a pain it just adds complexity to 
an already complex SAP module.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 17/11/2011 03:04 PM, Stephen wrote:

> In my work the whole thing is a bit of a pain it just adds complexity to
> an already complex SAP module.

I've never heard of a simple SAP module. :-P

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On 17/11/2011 3:08 PM, Invisible wrote:
> On 17/11/2011 03:04 PM, Stephen wrote:
>
>> In my work the whole thing is a bit of a pain it just adds complexity to
>> an already complex SAP module.
>
> I've never heard of a simple SAP module. :-P

Fair point.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 11/16/2011 13:56, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> to buy 10 more PCs, does that go to the admin office cost center? Or does it

That's why accounting at a big company like AT&T or something is hugely 
complex. Don't forget that depreciation comes in there too, which tells you 
who gets billed for it if you change which profit center it is helping half 
way through the life of the cost, amongst other things.

> As I understand it, a "technical startup" is a polite way of saying "you
> will be paid peanuts and in three months' time you will be unemployed again
> because the company has been liquidated".

Only if you're naive enough to work for one like that. Some are indeed like 
that, and they suck in many who have never worked for one like that who 
believe the promises. On the other hand, if the start-up you're going to 
isn't inventing something that *you* think will be wildly successful (e.g., 
"We invented mind reading computers"), then you should be getting paid even 
more salary than you would be working a normal 9-5 job, *plus* some options. 
I.e., treat options as a nice bonus, not as part of your salary.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 18/11/2011 03:34 AM, Darren New wrote:
> On 11/16/2011 13:56, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> to buy 10 more PCs, does that go to the admin office cost center? Or
>> does it
>
> That's why accounting at a big company like AT&T or something is hugely
> complex. Don't forget that depreciation comes in there too, which tells
> you who gets billed for it if you change which profit center it is
> helping half way through the life of the cost, amongst other things.

The fun thing, of course, is that *computers* depreciate in a vertical 
downward line. Almost as soon as you take the computer out of the box, 
80% of its value has vanished. By this time next year, it will 
essentially be a very expensive doorstop. It must make accountants' hair 
tingle!

>> As I understand it, a "technical startup" is a polite way of saying "you
>> will be paid peanuts and in three months' time you will be unemployed
>> again
>> because the company has been liquidated".
>
> Only if you're naive enough to work for one like that. Some are indeed
> like that, and they suck in many who have never worked for one like that
> who believe the promises. On the other hand, if the start-up you're
> going to isn't inventing something that *you* think will be wildly
> successful (e.g., "We invented mind reading computers"), then you should
> be getting paid even more salary than you would be working a normal 9-5
> job, *plus* some options. I.e., treat options as a nice bonus, not as
> part of your salary.

Personally, I'd prefer job security. But apparently that's just me...

(Did you know, there are people who actually work FOR THEMSELVES? Crazy, 
crazy people...)

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On 18/11/2011 9:21 AM, Invisible wrote:
> (Did you know, there are people who actually work FOR THEMSELVES? Crazy,
> crazy people...)

I've been doing that since 1997 and maybe you are right.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 18/11/2011 10:25 AM, Stephen wrote:
> On 18/11/2011 9:21 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> (Did you know, there are people who actually work FOR THEMSELVES? Crazy,
>> crazy people...)
>
> I've been doing that since 1997 and maybe you are right.

As far as job security goes, working for yourself has to be the least 
secure job logically possible, surely...?

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On 18/11/2011 11:21 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 18/11/2011 10:25 AM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 18/11/2011 9:21 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> (Did you know, there are people who actually work FOR THEMSELVES? Crazy,
>>> crazy people...)
>>
>> I've been doing that since 1997 and maybe you are right.
>
> As far as job security goes, working for yourself has to be the least
> secure job logically possible, surely...?

You could say that and on the surface it looks right. But on the other 
hand I wouldn’t rate highly the job security of working in a company 
that does not make a profit and the workers can sit around reading and 
playing games. Especially if it is a division of an American company 
which does not seem to have a great interest in its British subsidiary. 
(Pause for thought.)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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>> As far as job security goes, working for yourself has to be the least
>> secure job logically possible, surely...?
>
> You could say that and on the surface it looks right. But on the other
> hand I wouldn’t rate highly the job security of working in a company
> that does not make a profit

I'm not saying that I have amazingly good job security. I'm just saying 
that anybody who works for themselves has even less than I do. (OTOH, 
it's quite plausible the money is better...)

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On 18/11/2011 12:12 PM, Invisible wrote:
> I'm not saying that I have amazingly good job security. I'm just saying
> that anybody who works for themselves has even less than I do. (OTOH,
> it's quite plausible the money is better...)

True, the money is generally better or the conditions are. That is you 
can be picky about which assignments you chose or like me at the moment, 
take a lot of time off work. Also true is that there can be lean periods 
where there is little contract work available. Being an independent 
contractor is not for everyone and I would not recommend it for you. But 
my point is that when you are a permie even if you think that you are in 
a secure job it is not always so. Almost 20 years ago I was made 
redundant from a permanent position with an oil company. I was very 
surprised as I thought that my job was safe as I was one of the better 
people in my department. Who knows what criteria they used for selecting 
who was to go. I’m sure that it was not merit as some of the people they 
kept on were real duffers. ;-)
Anyway, it turned out to be the best thing that has happened to me in a 
long while.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:21:00 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Personally, I'd prefer job security. But apparently that's just me...
> 
> (Did you know, there are people who actually work FOR THEMSELVES? Crazy,
> crazy people...)

Even crazier, here in the US, if you work for yourself, your options for 
reasonable health insurance are quite limited.

I know, I currently work for myself.  Not necessarily by choice, but in 
this job market, finding something permanent has been more challenging 
than I anticipated.

But the contract pay's not bad. :)

Jim

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On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:21:50 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> On 18/11/2011 10:25 AM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 18/11/2011 9:21 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> (Did you know, there are people who actually work FOR THEMSELVES?
>>> Crazy,
>>> crazy people...)
>>
>> I've been doing that since 1997 and maybe you are right.
> 
> As far as job security goes, working for yourself has to be the least
> secure job logically possible, surely...?

Depends on if you have skills people want to pay for.  I know some who 
have worked for themselves for most of their working lives and they've 
always been in demand.

Jim

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On 11/18/2011 1:21, Invisible wrote:
> By this time next year, it will essentially be a
> very expensive doorstop. It must make accountants' hair tingle!

I wouldn't go that far, unless you're an accountant. :-)

> Personally, I'd prefer job security. But apparently that's just me...

It's not just you, no. You can go to a company big enough to probably still 
be in business in 5 years, tho.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 19/11/2011 06:41 AM, Darren New wrote:
> On 11/18/2011 1:21, Invisible wrote:
>> By this time next year, it will essentially be a
>> very expensive doorstop. It must make accountants' hair tingle!
>
> I wouldn't go that far, unless you're an accountant. :-)

Random fact: Everybody thinks that accountants are boring old men in 
suits. The kind of people you'd hate to meet at a party. But in fact, 
every accountant and financial auditor I've ever met has been a) female 
b) beautiful and c) friendly. GO FIGURE!

>> Personally, I'd prefer job security. But apparently that's just me...
>
> It's not just you, no. You can go to a company big enough to probably
> still be in business in 5 years, tho.

Any company can fail. I guess the difference is that if a big company is 
going to fail, you'll know about it sooner before it happens...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Le 2011-11-19 01:41, Darren New a écrit :
> On 11/18/2011 1:21, Invisible wrote:
>> By this time next year, it will essentially be a
>> very expensive doorstop. It must make accountants' hair tingle!
>
> I wouldn't go that far, unless you're an accountant. :-)
>
>> Personally, I'd prefer job security. But apparently that's just me...
>
> It's not just you, no. You can go to a company big enough to probably
> still be in business in 5 years, tho.
>

Difficult to see.  Always in motion is the future.

For example, a year ago or two ago, no one would have refused a job at 
RIM.   Today, I don't think many people would want to go there.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On 11/19/2011 5:42, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Any company can fail. I guess the difference is that if a big company is
> going to fail, you'll know about it sooner before it happens...

Yep. That's why I'm always amused when people tell me Linux is better 
because "what if Microsoft stops supporting Windows?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> On 11/19/2011 5:42, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> > Any company can fail. I guess the difference is that if a big company is
> > going to fail, you'll know about it sooner before it happens...

> Yep. That's why I'm always amused when people tell me Linux is better 
> because "what if Microsoft stops supporting Windows?"

  I actually fail to understand your reasoning.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 11/19/2011 9:57, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> On 11/19/2011 5:42, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Any company can fail. I guess the difference is that if a big company is
>>> going to fail, you'll know about it sooner before it happens...
>
>> Yep. That's why I'm always amused when people tell me Linux is better
>> because "what if Microsoft stops supporting Windows?"
>
>    I actually fail to understand your reasoning.

It amuses me because they fail to take into account the extra pain caused by 
writing for something like Linux instead of Windows, in those situations 
where it matters, which is usually where the argument comes up. "You should 
avoid DirectX, and only use libraries that run on every platform, because 
Microsoft might stop selling Windows one day!"  There may be lots of reasons 
to avoid Windows, but the thought that Microsoft will fail before your 
company does is not one of them. Right up there with "we should avoid SQL, 
because what if we get so many customers that the sort of technology that 
runs AT&T's billing and Visa's credit card processing can't keep up with the 
demand for *our* product?"

Of course, in other situations, Linux is superior. But not because Microsoft 
might go broke.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:42:16 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Personally, I'd prefer job security. But apparently that's just me...
>>
>> It's not just you, no. You can go to a company big enough to probably
>> still be in business in 5 years, tho.
> 
> Any company can fail. I guess the difference is that if a big company is
> going to fail, you'll know about it sooner before it happens...

Nope, that's certainly not true.  Look at the likes of Enron, Tyco, 
Lehman Brothers - the list goes on and on.

The single largest training business in Australia & New Zealand closed 
all their doors overnight.  Nobody had any idea until it happened (other 
than the decision makers, that is, obviously they knew).

Jim

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