January 13, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item No More Lottery
January 13, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I tend to agree with you. Too many companies that never produced anything of any value to anyone except their stockholders, and owners of stock options.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
January 14, 2009 at 12:50 am
Don't know what its like in the US but in the UK its not just 'bad' businesses suffering. In fact if you business is managing to keep its doors open it can be seen as a success - profit or not!
I don't think this is an ideal moment to be entering any market, technology or otherwise and i think many good sound business plans, startup companies and new entrants will struggle regardless of the products and services they offer because people will be unwilling to take a 'risk' on new business.
I don't think there will be (m)any startups making millions over night, if you make any sort of profit i think it can be classed as a success.
Gethyn Elliswww.gethynellis.com
January 14, 2009 at 1:57 am
I think there'll still be start-ups in this economic downturn, (as I don't want to use the "r" word just yet...), it's just become a lot harder for those new ideas to get the begininning they need. On the upside, if any new company succeeds now, then it has to be really good.
People shouldn't be put off starting companies now, but just realise that they'd better be extremely good ideas.
January 14, 2009 at 2:30 am
I agree with Paul. These are difficult times and the new idea must be really good to make it work. Initially they may have to struggle a bit, but if the idea and its implementation is good chances are that they will succeed.
The same is the case of individuals. Ones with the brightest ideas and the hard working ones have a greater degree of success be it good times or difficult times.
"Keep Trying"
January 14, 2009 at 2:51 am
It's pretty funny, actually. All the flash-in-the-pan has been spent and now it's time to get back to the basics... if you still remember what they are. 😉 No more going out and buying something to help you do your work... you actually have to do the work instead. 😀 I think you'll find that those folks who have steadfastly keep their noses to the wheel and can actually write code without some code generator or debugger doing it for them are going to be the ones that actually survive the easiest in this economic downturn. They're the ones that know how the code actually works. They're the ones that know how to build stuff that works. Sure, the tools are great... if you have them, but when the tools don't quite make it or you don't have them, there's no more excuses... ya gotta use the ol' gray matter.
Case in point... Many companies who had aspirations of upgrading from SS 2000 to 2008 may put that off for now. That means that folks that still know how to get the most out of 2000 are going to be in demand. No excuses like "that can't be done in SQL"... it's gotta be done because there's no money for upgrades or the people to do the upgrades.
If you don't really believe there's that much work available in 2k, most of our production servers are at 2k and I've talked with a large number of Systems and Application DBA's who all say the same thing... they've skipped 2k5 and were getting ready to upgrade to 2k8 and those plans are now on hold because they either don't have the money to buy 2k8 or they don't want to spend the money on people to do the upgrade and all the necessary regression testing/rework. It would make an interesting survey... "What percent of your SQL Servers are at or less than the 2k level and has the economic downturn delayed upgrading?"
I won't even get into the GUI stuff.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
January 14, 2009 at 4:02 am
There's nothing wrong with coming up with a silly idea, which people want to throw money at, and then move on before they realise it's a silly idea. 🙂 It's just less likely to happen at the moment.
Keith
January 14, 2009 at 6:33 am
Of course no one's going to win another Internet startup lottery, biotech is the wave of the future! Now if I can just invent a bacteria that glows in the presence of WiFi signals that haven't been secured...
January 14, 2009 at 7:01 am
Ellis RemoteDBA (1/14/2009)
Don't know what its like in the US but in the UK its not just 'bad' businesses suffering. In fact if you business is managing to keep its doors open it can be seen as a success - profit or not! ...
In the US right now, I think the basic plan to fix the economy is to take the absolutely worst businesses and prop them up with vast amounts of taxpayer money.
The motto seems to be, "the taxpayers don't want your cars, but we're going to make them pay for 'em anyway!"
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
January 14, 2009 at 8:49 am
I had the "pleasure" to work for a Web startup company in Canada for a "short" while
It was quite different I'd say......... could be just a small company vs a big company though
But it was a bubble and let's I no longer envy startups
January 14, 2009 at 9:05 am
It's always a good time to start a business if you have an idea and are willing to work at it. You need funding, and I urge people to make sure they have enough to get going, but you don't need millions.
I finished reading Founders at Work (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430210788?ie=UTF8&tag=dkranchnet&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1430210788). The interesting thing is that of the successful founders, those that made a lot of money, the ones that started with very little money or funding really appreciated it. And a bunch of them recommend waiting to get VC funding. Bootstrap yourself, use relative/friends, and that way you'll really work hard and learn how to conserve cash.
January 14, 2009 at 9:14 am
I have worked for both large an small companies. I find that business economy is really a sector by sector issue. If you work for a company whose clients are in a shrinking sector, you are going to be in trouble. There are always companies that will grow in a recession. You just have to find recession-proof sectors to work in during a downturn.
Maybe start up a training course for middle managers on how to get a new job with no up-to-date skills. 😛
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
January 14, 2009 at 9:30 am
All right - I'll be the fly in the ointment. I have to say - it's actually NOT the responsibility of the employees in the early stages of a startup to focus on "profitability", at least not EVERY startup.
Notwithstanding the money craze of the late 90's with DotCOM's, startups are often at the bleeding edge of development, be it in our field, or any number of others like Pharma, etc.... In some cases, depending on what your idea is, it could in fact take years to get there (just tell me how you get ANY Pharma-related idea out in less than a decade).
The failure there was the same failure that happened with Madoff, which is - investors dropping huge sums of money into things they don't bother to research at all, and even understand whether they have ANY business value whatsoever. At the heyday of it, it seemed you could walk into just about any bank, with just about any Mickey Mouse project for a business plan, and 10's of millions were tossed your way. Reintroducing the concept of Due Diligence before investing is a somewhat healthy idea.
That being said - demanding that they become solvent immediately unfortunately will have the opposite effect of stifling their efforts in the "truly innovative" areas, which means that the truly worthy ideas will take a lot longer to hit the market.
So yes - it will help weed out a lot of the stupid ideas, but it will ALSO kill off a lot of very GOOD ideas as well....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
January 14, 2009 at 9:53 am
I have worked for two "dot-bombs" in the Columbia, SC area.
One of the "dot-bomb" companies developed an automatic loan approval system based on the rules to approve or decline a loan that the bank, who was the client, set up. I was hired on after the company went public. However those that were with the company before it went public made out like bandits if they sold the stock as soon as they could sell their "founder stock". The company had a great product and it was fun working with the other programmers and database guys. The company just had problems finding clients and keeping clients. I received raises while at the company, but towards the end, I was rewarded "bonuses" as options to buy the company stock. As soon as I received the options, they were upside down and remained so for the lifetime of the options.
Some programmers probably want to latch onto the next Microsoft or Google. But there are no guarrantees in life, career, or companies. I would prefer to be paid a fair salary instead of a promise of striking it rich with pre-IPO stock. I am currently employed with state government and the wages paid to state employees are significantly below what one earns in private industry. But I work with a great team and developing in .Net and C# (Yea! no VB).
I got my first experience programming on a DEC PDP-8 in the 1970's and I still enjoy programming. Last year I read an MSDN article about Visual Studio Tools for Office and the ability to develop programs and extensions for Microsoft Office. Seeing the power of those tools, I saw a need to develop a program that reads the Excel file that NASA publishes containing the schedule of events for Space Shuttle missions and transfers that schedule to Microsoft Outlook as calendar appointments.
Code Download:
http://www.codeplex.com/NasaStsTvSchedule
Article on the program development
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/NasaTvSchedule.aspx
But going with a start up? I think I would rather have money in hand rather than promises of wealth. There is also the balance of life issues versus work demands.
Ralph Hightower
January 14, 2009 at 9:57 am
If it's back2basics time, why is everybody focused on when The Economy™ will get back to its previous highs? Of course, by The Economy™ most people seem to mean The Schtock Market™. It's a proxy for what's going on in the broader economy, but mostly a lagging indicator and many of the indexes (like the Dow) have needed to be reshuffled for quite a while.
There've always been people looking to get rich quick. It happens when preparation meets opportunity, so keep your eyes and ears open... but I believe we're going to have to circle the drain a lot longer before the current workforce truly begins to relearn AND reapply The Basics™: work like a dog, sell your product like your job depends on it, spend like Scrooge (before those pesky ghosts had their way with him) and save for a rainy day.
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