Agree, but not the price, but the poor bandwidth. I have an unlimited plan with 1 Mbit/s down 512 up (or is it 256 ... hmm) While I can get 900Kbit/sec on a good morning, during the afternoon rush hours I can barely get 128Kbit/s .... with this in mind, I barely try to click (ehm.. tap) on anything that I do not absolutely want to load and see....

And I have an iPhone that came with the plan and I live in Costa Rica and the best I can do about my shitty connection is b1tch about it on /. ... nothing helps ...

Agree mostly. What I forgot to mention is the difference between where I studied and started IT and where I live now.

In Hungary, I know a good number of really good programmers and network admins who dropped out of school. Actually the best ones I know dropped out of school or barely finished it (busy with work, projects).

Where I live now it is completely different. In Costa Rica everyone has a university degree, and what I feel is that people who are interested in IT at least get some degree in IT. In fact many who possess an IT degree have no interest in IT whatsoever. I also know a bunch of people here who absolutely suck in IT (mostly windows admins who then pick up a few cisco/linux useless certifications), call themselves IT engineers and are a disgrace to the profession. Network admins who do not know network masks (not to calculate, but to understand the concept), they cannot write any scripts (this is something any idiot HAS to pick up with a degree, because you have to take programming) and one specific gentleman I knew was proud of having only an old shitty machine at home he never turned on (completely uninterested in IT).

All in all: we agree. The most important thing is real-life experience. A degree is a nice plus I actually prefer. So if 2 guys show up with the same experience (and equal qualities and attitude) and one has a degree, I would go with the one who took the time to go through the 4+ years of schooling. I would hire the other one as well, I would just not encourage the use of "engineer" until an actual engineering degree is in his possession.

I was doing that too - both hiring people and almost not finishing my CS degree because I was able to find good jobs without the degree. Then I relocated and people started to ask for papers and I was happy I had them.

Now I am hiring people (I am a lead developer at a big company's small developer team), and I am looking for a degree, but would make an exception if someone good appeared at my doorstep. I actually do have a non-degree coder in my team who is good.

However, I have a problem with most self taught IT "engineers": they are not engineers. They do not have the education, they do not have the ASM classes, they do not know what is inside the machine, what was inside the machine 20 years ago and many of them are adorable PHP/JAVA/whatever developers, they have no clue what a proxy is, what a monolithic kernel is or why it is still important to save on bandwidth, even though we do not have 2400 bps modems.

Because of that, I would hire 100 IT college/University dropouts over anyone else with a degree of something non-technical.

There are exceptions though: we have some electric engineers in our IT team (not coders) and they have no clue about the profession (no disrespect for the profession at all, my dad is an electric engineer with a phd ).....

That said: it does bother me, when people call them "software engineer" and "network engineer" without a degree. I am OK with working them, employing them, but a title is a title and you have it when you earned it. (see; I inherited a "knight" title and do not use it because I wasn't the hero who earned it ... so it bugs me when people throw titles around they do not have - inherited or not)...

This is something the OP should really-really understand. If you want to stay sharp at either coding or unix or networking, you will be putting in extra hours at home.

I moved a year and a half ago into strange position. I am a "lead developer" who is also managing an office of developers. And I was just, huhhhh, going nuts. I thought I was developing ADD or losing my marbles for some time, when I tried something: I dropped all programming tasks, and starting managing the people, the projects and the office. Suddenly things started to go fine and I realized that the reason for my ADD/anxiety/failure was simply trying to do too many things at the same time. You can code 1-2-3- projects at the same time, however you cannot manage 1-2-3-4-5 projects and code 1-2-3+ projects at the same time.

You can manage maybe 1-2 projects (environments, whatever) and maybe work on one task, be it infrastructure or code.

The keyword here is:

Expect to be interrupted at whatever you are doing at any time. OFTEN. If you cannot take this, then well ... do not do it.

I am honestly thinking about going back to a coding only, design only (architecting) or even to my roots : Linux/unix/network....

I am in IT since '94-ish ... (92-ish?)

Same story and I think it is the most important point. My programmers respect me because besides managing the team I am also acting as "lead developer" and I am able to help at virtually any task they are doing.

Being a manager who know what you are actually managing in this profession is very-very valuable.

I had a manager at HP who had no IT knowledge whatsoever. He was a journalist. He could sit next to me and not understand a single thing I was doing. He had 0 ZERO ZILCH respect from the team. He was laughing stock.

Problem is: HR at many places do not understand these things. Our profession is very unique, because those who are good/OK at it are actually somewhat having this as a hobby (or passion) in most cases. You cannot tell the same thing about 99% of the professions.

Too late now, but how it should be, is that you fix bugs until specification is met and the product is tested and accepted.

Any further bugs, changes, requests should be paid. Sure you can get lifetime warranty on a knife or something simple. Not software. Even software giants' products reach their end of life and thus the end of support.

If you promised life-long fixes, well sir .. you fsck'd it up really bad..

I bought a heavy duty 2m x 2m x 0.8m rack. Built my own tray from wood and quality rails to suit my ergonomic needs. I host 5-6 machines, win/lin desktops, lin/osx minis, 2 mac laptops, 3 monitors and a 40' tv on it (ps3/mac mini), 3 UPSes (1000w) and a load of network stuff like hubs, modems, APs, time capsule and random projects (arduinos servos, crap).

I highly recommend the setup for a home office. I doubt that many companies would allow this at a public space. I actually worked at a DTP studio once where it was a "build your desk from warehouse racks" fetish thing going on. My rack is a "Gorilla rack" and it actually looks nice (precise, detailed, strong build) with no sharp edges or crappy finish.

I am planning of getting an extra ( to host projects, soldering station, parts) and put it behind me, then connect the 2 together with beams and/or steel braided wire. For overhead lighting and some strange project that involves overhead projection and head /object tracking....

Now back to ergonomics: I wanted an ergonomic desk for a long time, but always ended up asking myself: "OK, so where does my stuff go if I get this". The rack is flexible, you can sit or stand, ... as for adjusting on the fly.. well ... no way.... the last time I had to move it (polished concrete floor) I had to WD-40 the floor to move it a foot while almost crapping myself.

"bathroom" where you take showers
or
"bathroom" where you take dumps?

Why?

I will check Headroom out.

I like the linked track, however this is typically the music that can be very good for work when you know it, and very-very distracting when you are new to it.

Something minimalistic with some melody is Klaus Schulze + Pete Namlook : Dark side of the Moog. If you like what you linked, you will probably like that one too :) ....

Any compilation with "Goa" in the name would give an idea of how it is. Atmos, Yahel, Sun project, Etnica, Ken Ishi ( REZ game ), Goa Beach, Goa Year, Goa Spirit. Then there is "Dark side of the Moog" - that is worth checking out ... and any online radio's psytrance channel (if any). Yeah, you WILL find some annoying ones, watch out for names that should belong to cyborgs and space aliens. Generally anything with "Buddha" or "Tibet" will be something more relaxing :)

And here does my "psy-trance guide for nerds, music that matters" end, because it is really-really late here ....

Oh, almost forgot: yes, headsets are antisocial, but probably I chose a profession that makes me sit with a bunch of machines because I prefer the machines over the chatter about politics, yesterday's TV show or the actual soccer game. This way I do not have to pretend caring about all this and join the time-wasting conversation.

OK, that is not the case at my current place as we carefully filled the room with people who prefer darkness, headphones and their monitors over the above.

I swear I am not affiliated to Bose, but I really think the best thing I ever got for myself to aid work was a QuietComfort headset. I used studio Sony's for years and after 3-4 hours my ears/head was hurting from the pressure. I cannot use the in-canal blocking ones (I go nuts, they hurt and fall out) so I needed an other solution. (actually the Bose MIE 2 for iphone is comfy, but it is not blocking, nor has noise cancellation).

For me the around the ear/cup design is the most comfy with active noise cancelling. I know they actually mess with some frequencies in your music, but for trance/psy/goa/progressive they are awesome (actually for hip-hop or anything for a lot of bass too).. The cable also works well, if you rip it out it slips out, so a broken cable is a broken cable, not a new headset which I appreciate at the $300+ price tag.

I almost strictly listen to electronic music when writing code. Not the tuc-tuc-tuc jumpy-jumpy techno kind, but psychedelic trance, Goa or progressive trance. Anything with singing happens (if it does) when I am writing mails or have to do some non-coding (e.g. configuring) activities.

I do find music helpful with repetitive coding tasks. When I am stuck I prefer dead silence, but when you do routine stuff you did 1000 times it really helps to get the stuff done. That is when I prefer some really progressive stuff. When it is creativity time, it is goa/psy on the menu.

I also happen to wear my Bose Quiet Comfort without music from time to time. If there is noise, they are perfect cancelling it out. It does not take out speech directed to me, but works pretty OK with regular chatter, air conditioning, fans of machines, cars outside, weather (Costa Rican rain can be LOUD) and my favourite: our monthly generator test when they open up the container sized unit and run the diesel engines for 15-30 minutes.

For showing you are busy you usually put "go away" , "coding" or "write a mail instead" as an autoresponse in our internal jabber client. If they see you in headphones only emergencies warrant bothering anything else is jabber, email or our ticketing system.

+1 on that solution.

2 notes:

1. If you grow something out (e.g. mail server is too much simplified), you can simply install any Unix software from package or compile your own (e.g. Sendmail, Exim, or Apache/PHP if you want more modules, standard paths).

2. I honestly like the old server offering better. Lion's server IMO is dumbed down beyond dumb and after using the previous server (both on a mini and an actual Apple rack mountable server) it really is a step back in configurability

Either way, it is small, quiet, not too hot and very sparing on electricity. For sure it will serve 10-16 office workers, and it even works as a TimeMachine server. Just plug some Thunderbolt or FireWire disks in, raid them and you have decent backup for Macs and a NAS for the rest.

Buddhism is mostly free from what you explain here. They have suggestions, but they do not force anything on you whether you are a follower or not.... I believe the only religious view that strongly opposes hurting anything or anyone in general.

BTW, most religions teach good things, but somehow no one seems to follow them. Don't kill vs holy crusades, rich priests vs who goes to heaven - just to only bash my given religion and not to get into others'.

About the fear: that is how you control dumb people. You want dumb people, so you keep them scared, so you can control them. Instead of explaining why "don't kill", "don't steal", "hump your neighbors wife" it is easier to say: don't do it or you will rot in hell for eternity.

just my 2 cents. I don't have a problem with religion as far as religion does not force me to do anything I don't want to.