Actually, when "IT is the problem" it's usually the higher ups that are trying to shoehorn idiotic budgets together (without sacrificing executive perks/bonuses), and so they hire the cheapest staff they can get "to get the job done". Either that, or they're stupid enough to have being manipulated into having an "IT department" that's really just a proxy for all the vendors that continuously fleece the company (i.e. their IT skills go as far as filing support tickets and - sometimes - following up on them).

At any rate, you get what you pay for/invest in.

If you pay for quality IT, you'll very quickly realize why we "act so superior" sometimes. If you don't, then that's like complaining that all cars are bad just because your Yugo breaks down every 3 blocks. Remember, some cars are Mercedes Benz. However, they don't cost the same as a Yugo...

I would answer with the same to you bws...get some perspective. I'm not poor by any account, though I'm certainly not swimming in ca$h. I'm not based in the US nor do I have the ability to get one of the "cheap"(er) US phone plans so pay-as-I-go is my only choice when I travel to the US (which is often). This is very important for the same reasons your smartphone and tablet are important to you: keeping in touch with the fast-moving tech environment I work in.

I already got fleeced once by AT&T, and all because of a late "no credit left" message. I got the "0 data credit" left message at 8am, when i reality the actual point of running out of credit was 3am. So naturally I got fleeced for those 5 hours my phone was using data without a "bulk plan". Nevermind that I had ample credit in my pay-as-you-go account to renew the bulk plan had I been notified in a timely manner (or, at least, my data traffic stopped until a selection was made as to how I wanted to proceed).

Pay-as-you-go isn't JUST for the "poor, wretched masses yearning to have phones". It also serves a large portion of traveling, non-american (yes, such people exist in the world and are actually more numerous than americans) businessfolk who simply find it an easier (or as in my case, the only) option due to frequency of travel.

And yes - while we're not exactly destitute, few of us are happy with paying such abusive data rates when clearly such an overcharge is unwarranted.

So I second your sentiment: get some perspective - but first, get a bigger picture so that perspective is a bit better informed.

It's a space station! Or was I the only one who noticed? @~1:34

Actually, what I'm saying is that the decision is unethical when fueled by greed and/or (to a lesser degree) ignorance. It's everyone's right to want to turn a profit, but it's not your right to do so at the ruthless expense of the livelihoods of those who helped you get to where you are.

We should never forget those who helped us get to where we are.

The problem in America is that everyone wants to be rich - starting with the government. So everything is super expensive. If I can get the same service elsewhere for a lower "cost" (see previous post), why wouldn't I? Why is that unethical? What I'm saying is that it's unethical if I only consider the money aspect of it as the justification (so frequent these days), because then I'm selling all those who helped me get to where I am up the river simply to try to make a bigger buck.

However, if I'm getting fleeced by said resources and the opportunity presents itself to resolve that situation, getting similar service for a lower price, then I have every right to pursue that alternative. Isn't that what capitalism is about? (let's not get into the whole capitalism good-or-bad argument just yet :) )

This brings us to another important question that's being ignored: is it ethical for offshoring businesses to price their services so very low? That borders on dumping and is, as far as I see it, even more unethical than the original question. It's not because the cost of living in those countries is so very much lower (it rarely is anywhere)... It's that the outsourcing business owners in those countries are far more ruthless than their customers (i.e. they're even less willing to spread the wealth). Believe me, I know a little bit about that having been involved with several of them tightwads.

I'm a nearshore resource-turned-businessowner and I can tell you a couple of things that might make you reconsider the true "evils" of outsourcing.

First: the problem with outsourcing is a combination of greed and/or ignorance at the business level - the afflicted tend to think that it's the easiest way out of a tight spot with money, or (funnier still) a solid route to increasing their riches. It rarely is, and frequently ends up being quite the opposite.

Second: outsourcing makes PERFECT sense if and only if you can get the same (VERY close to, or - in rare cases - better) quality of workmanship that you would otherwise get, at a lower cost. And note that cost doesn't necessarily mean just money. You have to factor in communication difficulties, cultural rift, timezone shift, etc.

The outsourcing of a (set of) job(s) is NEVER unethical as long as the reasons are the right reasons (quality, cost-effectiveness, rare or hard-to-find skills, etc). The problem nowadays is that they rarely are, and the decisions are driven mostly by greed and/or ignorance (as noted previously) and justified by contrived excuses (poorly) disguised to appear to be solid reasons.

I've heard such nonsense as "for half the money, we can train these guys to do the same job this 12-year veteran can do", or my personal favorite "why should we care about the quality and maintainability of the work? as long as the bottom line is where it needs to be...."

Wow... your years last 13 months... no wonder your math is off - I'd have gone crazy too! Such an unlucky number of months to boot...

Actually, as a "nearshore" vendor, I can honestly tell you that your problem isn't just offshoring, per-se.

Your problem is a combination of rampant and irresponsible "offshoring sales" (i.e. companies selling services they're not really up to part to deliver based solely on price which, btw, borders on dumping), ignorant management who just eats up the "price" argument thinking they can get a mercedes benz for the price of a yugo, and their disillusionment after being conned for years by incompetent IT workers charging astronomic salaries while at the same time not being worth those salaries.

Think of it: how many times have you been in a position where you are mad that you're having to clean up some incompetent slob's IT messes and wonder why they weren't let go rapidly? If your answer is "not too often at all", then I envy you. Sadly, the truth is often the opposite case.

The combination of these morons charging an arm and a leg (comparatively speaking), and management that is less than informed is fatal: even less-than-smart managers will come to the realization that it's better to get sucky labor for cheap than do it expensively. Even worse: true-blue-idiot managers think they can actually do BETTER.

Granted - sometimes they will, but this is by far the exception, not the rule, and is such a crapshoot it ain't even funny.

Bottom line: you want to keep and protect your job? Stop worrying about keeping and protecting it, and start worrying about how you can bring more value, produce more, be more efficient, etc. In the end, if you get canned for it, then you were already on the chopping block anyway and just didn't know it.

If not, then you're much more likely to be considered a valuable resource and your cost to the organization will be more than justified.

Bottom line: when an employee's value matches or outweighs their cost to the organization, the employee is a keeper regardless. Most managers - even stupid ones - think in those terms.

Well, "enormity" is a matter of perspective. 500 years ago, it required an inconceivable effort for humans to cross the atlantic in days - it took an "enormous effort" to make that trip in weeks. Nowadays, we do it in hours - and dropping. It's not unreasonable to believe that a civilization sufficiently advanced to achieve efficient interstellar travel has likewise achieved a way to do so efficiently enough that it doesn't require such an "enormous" effort from their perspective. You also preclude the possibility of advances in science that would make interstellar travel not only cheap and affordable, but fast. Thus, it would only be a matter of time before the cosmos were explored by a sufficiently advanced civilization. From that perspective is why I doubt we'd have anything to fear - those aliens would probably be more interested in studying us and our evolution than anything else. The would probably gaze in wonder and awe at us when we achieve our first true AI, or our first true means of efficient interstellar transportation much in the same way as we gaze in wonder as chimps in africa "invent" new tools to reach new food sources.

I've always been of the mentality that one should never ask of others what one isn't willing to do oneself. However, if you're a manager you're not coding anymore - you're now relegated to a support role, really. And I don't mean moral/emotional. I've been on both sides of the issue and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the devs will look upon you sharing the all-nighter with some suspicion at first. But if you're smart, stay out of their way, and simply devote yourself to being their lackey with the little things so that they don't have to get distracted with them they'll appreciate it.

Brew fresh coffee. Take care of the food orders (and maybe go for special pick-up as a treat). Make sure anything that hinders their smooth progress is handled by you. Noise? Go deal with it. Something not where it should be and makes their life harder? Chase it like a rabbid dog and solve it. The best way to ensure their success (and thus cover your ass, if that's your persuasion) is to, precisely, do whatever you can to remove the obstacles to that success.

But heed the warning: if you're staying just so you can keep an eye on them, you're making a huge mistake. If you don't trust them in overtime, then you have no reason to trust them in normal work hours, and your problem is something much bigger and uglier.

Perhaps women are smart enough to realize that when they finally want to take the step into parenthood, having a "slave" IT job that requires them to be up at ungodly hours just to keep up and deal with with the lunacy that often plagues that field. Thus, they start doing the math and realize that their family is more important than being IT slaves. In those types of decisions, women are MUCH smarter than men...

I remember the days of VisualBasic, when it was billed as a means to facilitate the development of applications without requiring any real programming or software (or computer, for that matter!) expertise. I also remember what came after those days...

Simply put - though VB was "wildly successful" - but how many pieces of software built on it are still around *because they were built properly*? Most of those tools have been thrown aside because they were grossly inadequate in performance, architecture, design, etc.

I was a witness to countless fusterclucks and saw how many systems had to be re-done from scratch because some genius businessman believed what he read on the brochures only to realize that there was no such promise and now his hordes of customers were demanding delivery on the promises made. Needless to say, there were no shortage of *REAL* programmer jobs in those days :)

The problem was never with the language per-se, as I'm sure the problem won't be with Rev4. The problem was always with design, architecture, concepts, and implementation choices. As noted above by the xkcd reference, there's no substitute for clarity regardless of the tool you choose to implement your program.

I'm not knocking the tools themselves, I'm knocking the fact that they're billed as ways to "bring programming to the masses".

Just like not everyone should handle nuclear material or toxic substances or operate on a human body, not everyone should *program* computers. As such, the really big benefit I see for this kind of tool is as an end-user interface mechanism (or facilitator) - especially in conjunction with language recognition. There are some interesting ideas there that are definitely worth exploring...

I think a potential solution is a trial by a collegiate group of judges. 3 judges, 5 judges, something like that. In particular, because you eliminate the idiocy and lunacy of the jury (which, btw, I agree with your statements about them usually not being qualified to judge most "big" issues nowadays) but add a measure of counterbalance to having a single judge monopolize the decision/ruling process. By having multiple judges you essentially establish a "democracy". Fewer judges = quicker veredicts, because there is less deliberation needed. The problem then becomes: you'll need to increase the number of judges you can appoint to fill the quotas to cover all the cases that need covering - this means that you'll need to lower the standards by which judges are chosen (not that they're that high anyway... or maybe they are... I don't know :) ). You can see a pattern starting to form. However - in this approach you might have panels of judges that are experts (experienced? well versed? have a clue?) on specific topics. I.e. patent judges, murder judges, fraud and finance judges, etc. And maybe *THAT* will help a little more since now you're not being judged by ignorant people, but instead by people who would presumably be truly qualified or at least substantially qualified to judge the matter. Complex cases would bring in judges with different "specialties", etc. If more opinions are needed, the judges might even consult amongst each other for counsel - there are plenty of technological tools around for that kind of efficient collaboration nowadays. The problem of "jury of your peers" is that nowadays it often becomes difficult to find unbiased jurors or jurors that haven't heard about the case (i.e. might have pre-formed notions - don't recall what the legal term for that is). The information bombardment is constant and usually, the people less "connected" if you will are usually also less competent to judge the matter. Ironically, they would be the most attractive as potential jurors because of lack of bias. If none of the above works, I think we should fall back to that oldie but goodie: off with their heads!!