March 10, 2009 at 9:47 am
As you can see, it has the desired effect. We went from one or more trivial, wasteful meetings a day, to an occasional Saturday meeting. I'd say it was once a month or so. Plus Bill would spring for lunch, and once we all went for a liquid lunch as well.
This only lasted about 6 months. Then the bubble was in the process of bursting, and eventually the company went belly up.
Honor Super Omnia-
Jason Miller
March 10, 2009 at 10:12 am
Jack Corbett (3/10/2009)
Ralph Hightower (3/10/2009)
Irish Flyer (3/6/2009)
David Reed (3/6/2009)
Our meetings are short and have agendas. They are for distributing knowledge quickly and evenly, not time wasting.
Hey, that's a good thing. Meetings without agendas are subject to wandering off course.
[sarcasm]What's an agenda?[/sarcasm]
This is why most people dislike meetings. There either is no agenda or the person leading the meeting is not "strong" enough to keep the meeting to the topic on the agenda.
Yup. I saw this happen @ the MVP Global Summit... where meeting participants staged more than one coup. In at least two cases, they brought their own PowerPoint decks, kicked the presenters off-stage and coopted the meeting. Great for entertainment value, but certainly not "productive" in the sense of accomplishing what the meeting was intended for. Heh. You never know what those wacky SQL MVPs will get up to!
:hehe:
March 10, 2009 at 3:43 pm
If you don't have the intelligence on how to obtain most of the items already mentioned when you are accepting a job offer, then you don't belong in IT. We are here to automate and maintain the assembly line type jobs that require unionization to ensure employee welfare is looked after. We are not here to work on the line itself.
Just my $.02.
March 14, 2009 at 6:39 am
dphillips (3/9/2009)
Samuel Johnson (3/7/2009)
"I know lots of you don't think unions are good..." Where does that come from? My guess is that just as many (in fact probably more) people working in IT approve of unions. The people who dislike unions the most are employers, for the obvious reasons."in fact" + "probably" sounds more like unverifiable bait than point of view.
Not bait, just my opinion. The fact that it's unverifiable is my exact point: the article makes an implicit ASSUMPTION that people think there is something wrong with unions, an assumption that isn't based on evidence. I'm pointing out that in the absence of evidence, my opinion (I very clearly said "my guess") is the opposite of the author's. Without clear evidence, neither of us should be making assumptions.
This I know: Most of the current unions deal with manual labor, and in most cases, extremely slow changes to working classes or process. IT is largely intellectual labor, and changes constantly, and deals in pay that is far more varied up and down the scale, with little means of consolidating that structure, because the technology changes too quickly for any to get too comfortable, which in turn, gives the edge to the employee/contractor, instead of the employer, negating the need of a union. Even in a depressed economy that balance still tilts toward the employee/contractor in this industry, albeit somewhat more restricted... the dot-com bust is just one example which proved that.
In the IT industry, only the large companies can afford redundancy of personnel accross their IT infrastructure. Those that cannot are of necessity willing to come to the bargaining table.
More or less what I said in a later post. Except that in my later post, I pointed out that we're kidding ourselves if we think this will last forever. Right now, databases are still a frontier industry, and demand for skilled labour outstrips supply, so we can demand the working conditions we want; but this will change, as technologies mature and many "skilled" roles become more simplified and/or automated (eg DB admin, complex querying etc). Web development is a case in point: when I first started out, I had friends who earned a fortune programming static HTML pages; now even good web application developers are ten-a-penny.
When this inevitably happens, some of us will retrain into entirely new industries (I'm a manager, which is quite portable), but quite a few will no doubt continue to work in databases. The advantage of unionising now would be to formally establish some of those benefits, and make them industry-standard while we still have the negotiating power.
Whether we would end up with a bureacratic, old-fashioned union or a flexible, non-confrontational modern one is entirely up to us - after all, we would be the ones to elect its leaders.
March 16, 2009 at 5:17 am
Samuel Johnson (3/14/2009)
databases are still a frontier industry
when I first started out, I had friends who earned a fortune programming static HTML pages; now even good web application developers are ten-a-penny.
When this inevitably happens
While I don't have the experience of some of the esteemed members of this forum, I do have about 14 years under my ever expanding belt. Well, 14 in the Sybase/SQL developer and DBA role. Then a few more years as a VB developer, and some more with big iron. Anyway, I don't think it is correct to refer to databases as a frontier. Part of this explanation deals with identifying trends and, as the saying goes, "Improvise, Adapt, overcome".
With that said, I do agree with the idea of DBAs / Developers eventually becoming a sort of commodity. But commodity doesn't necessarily equate to cheap. Simply, there's a finite supply of the commodity and (hopefully) an insatiable thirst for said commodity.
Please forgive the ramblings. I broke my ankle in a couple of spots, so the meds are making me a bit foggy. Fortunately, I cushioned the fall of my bike.
Honor Super Omnia-
Jason Miller
March 16, 2009 at 9:10 am
Glad you saved the bike :P, and heal soon.
I think IT overall is a bit of a frontier. It's maturing, but it's still not as mature as many other industries.
That being said, I'm not sure we'll get to the point of being everyday replacement tradespeople, like plumbers and electricians. I could be wrong, and I wouldn't mind more science in our work. Instead I think we'll get closer to doctors, architects, people that have to think creatively to solve problems, and perhaps have more self- or government- regulation.
March 16, 2009 at 9:20 am
Steve Jones - Editor (3/16/2009)
Glad you saved the bike :P, and heal soon.I think IT overall is a bit of a frontier. It's maturing, but it's still not as mature as many other industries.
That being said, I'm not sure we'll get to the point of being everyday replacement tradespeople, like plumbers and electricians. I could be wrong, and I wouldn't mind more science in our work. Instead I think we'll get closer to doctors, architects, people that have to think creatively to solve problems, and perhaps have more self- or government- regulation.
Right hand mirror is destroyed. Minor scrape on a side bag, and a tiny chip out of a peg. Other than that, nothing. Then again, it's 27 years old. Adds Character.
I don't think we'll go the way of the plumber. Simply because the environments we work in (or at least the ones I find myself in) require us to be much more intimate with the environment. It's hard to simply walk into a strange environment and know you've got to connect that supply hot water pipe to the faucet. (My apologies to the plumbers.)
Honor Super Omnia-
Jason Miller
March 16, 2009 at 9:56 am
How about
No pay cuts
Raises every year
No offshoring of our jobs
Pensions
Matching 401k
March 16, 2009 at 10:40 am
Jason Miller (3/16/2009)
Please forgive the ramblings. I broke my ankle in a couple of spots, so the meds are making me a bit foggy. Fortunately, I cushioned the fall of my bike.
Bummer, man. I had a near miss with that myself in December. Stupid bus decided to turn right from the left turn lane. I cushioned the bike and, fortunately for my ankle, my Gaerne riding boots had just enough armor to prevent more than some nasty bruises.
Lots of calcium and rest. Heal quickly!
March 17, 2009 at 12:22 am
Samuel Johnson (3/14/2009)
...Web development is a case in point: when I first started out, I had friends who earned a fortune programming static HTML pages; now even good web application developers are ten-a-penny.When this inevitably happens, some of us will retrain into entirely new industries (I'm a manager, which is quite portable), but quite a few will no doubt continue to work in databases. The advantage of unionising now would be to formally establish some of those benefits, and make them industry-standard while we still have the negotiating power.
Whether we would end up with a bureacratic, old-fashioned union or a flexible, non-confrontational modern one is entirely up to us - after all, we would be the ones to elect its leaders.
I respect the point of view that some jobs become standardized.
However, the IT industry is different in a major way: Skills age and become obsolete, rather than being inevitably commonized.
Technology will advance. The job roles considered advanced at this day and age will eventually pale with new technology, automation, etc. The IT frontier in general is always well ahead of the union phase (common methodical labor), and just behind the scientific and technology discovery phase. This frontier is always unfolding too many facets to lock down job requirements. Unionization attempts to produce better working conditions and agreements, but not new advances.
New technology always creates more jobs, as there are more and more ideas that can be linked together to create new ideas. No standardization or unionization will ever be able to be flexible enough to catch the development frontier. Rather, it flows the other way: some tasks standardize and fall into common execution and into common methodical labor, most fade away, and the frontier advances and creates more variables.
Current unions are largely made up of workers in job roles that basically have not changed much in several decades. This is in contrast to IT where the involved technologies have a life span of 10 to 15 years... most of the old technology goes away, not even settling into a common class, and most of that which does manage to hang on is either automated, or requires the few individuals that still know that technology, who usually command higher rates and benefits, without the need of a union.
IT does not and cannot model the value found in a union at all, unless somehow all future and yet unknown role types can be shoved into a common mold or a generalized distinction for unionizing.
My opinion: not likely to happen... ever... at least not in my lifetime. If it did, it would likely signal the end of advancement in general. That would be a sad day.
March 17, 2009 at 9:10 am
My brother-in-law got out of IT back in 2000 or 2001. He was sure that sysadmins would be eliminated by automation in the next 5-10 years.
We're not even close to that. I'm not sure that our jobs are very standardized.
However, that's not to say I think we couldn't benefit from some organization. Unions might not be the best model. Maybe the AMA or another professional group?
In any case, the idea was to have fun here with some things that we can't necessarily negotiate on our own.
March 18, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Lisa Fox (3/16/2009)
How aboutNo pay cuts
Raises every year
No offshoring of our jobs
Pensions
Matching 401k
Then go to work for the Government.
A coworker left to get a job with the State of AZ a little over a year ago. A few months later, I asked him if they were keeping him busy. He said they didn't have enough work to keep busy the people they already had -- but they were still hiring because they had a budget for X people so they had to have X people on the payroll. Whaddya wanna bet this agency is at this very moment arguing to the Governor that there is no place where they can reduce their budget?
Bigger budgets every year, no cutbacks ever (well, where a reduction in the increase of the next budget is called a cutback!) -- this only happens in Make Believe Land, i.e. government.
Tomm Carr
--
Version Normal Form -- http://groups.google.com/group/vrdbms
March 19, 2009 at 11:26 am
Unfortunately, that is the attitude in too many government agencies. Al Gore did a lot of work to try and get departments/groups to reinvent themselves in the mid-90s. He succeeded in pockets, but overall people in those jobs didn't want to think and make things better or more efficient, they just wanted to slog through their jobs.
There are places this is changing, however, and I hope that more and more groups will start to be accountable. Give back a budget if it's not needed. Many governments are in a deficit and a little responsibility here would reduce those.
March 19, 2009 at 11:35 am
I used to have a unionized government job. It sucked rotten eggs with arsenic sauce. 🙂
March 19, 2009 at 11:40 am
Steve Jones - Editor (3/19/2009)
Al Gore did a lot...
There are many who have attempted this. Some have succeeded. Try the Governor of UT... 4x10 36 hr work weeks.
And he didn't have to invent the internet to do it.
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