I think you'll like this song. It's about the problems MSIE developers have because of the lock in:

IE is being mean to me song

Full Disclosure: One of my employees, Scott, wrote this song (and I recorded it). The inspiration came from one of our dev teams that was constantly complaining about the problems the browser gave them.

I know I am completely biased but I have a high level of confidence that what I say is true even though it is subjective.

Many of my employees have told me that this is the best place they've worked at and I've had some of them break down in tears while they've said it. Other people we've invited to our Christmas dinner have said that the atmosphere is so positive in a way that they've never seen before. We play games for the last hour of every Friday for bonding. When we make sprint goals every 3/4 weeks, we go out somewhere and just play (canoeing, planetarium, movies). In our new division, which I've been running for the last couple years, we've never had anybody quit. At Christmas I offered to match donations to charities and I like philanthropy. Last few Christmas I've given things like PSPs, Nintento DSs and we have a gift giving competition with big prizes. I can't remember the last time anybody asked for a raise because I pay people fairly. We are all great friends yet we are all quite different. And the 2nd best company award in BC (Canada) is awarded based on what employees say in person to person interviews in private, not on what the owners say.

I agree that it is easy to deceive yourself and so I try to stay fairly conscious of the fact that it can happen. This is why I often ask for feedback and provide feedback. When people don't like what I'm doing, they do tend to tell me, and we always resolve it.

Here's the thing. I actually knew another financial advisor (he had a firm) that I felt was morally bankrupt. This was around the same time as I met the one I talked about above. The morally bankrupt one lost all his money and I know several of his employees who seem to all hate him. When I met my lawyer, the very nice and honest one I mentioned, he was not a partner and he is now a partner and very successful. In my personal experience, the morally upstanding people have succeeded in much higher proportion to those who haven't. I'm not saying there is a correlation between success and a moral compass but at the same time, I definitely haven't seen any signs of an inverse correlation as suggested by the Ferrari comment. The news may say different but all the morally upstanding Ferrari owners probably never make the news nor do they make for great movies.

Sunny

Wow, seriously?

How do this get modded up? It seems like the only kind of people that you can stereotype and prejudice safely are the rich. "Most" people that I know who own expensive cars or boats are amongst the nicest and most moral people I know. Not everything is like television or the movies.

I'm not sure whether it's worth admitting but I own a Ferrari and I would consider myself having a very high moral code. I treat my employees really well (One of my companies was rated 2nd best company to work for in BC), I pay all my business taxes (in an audit we were caught something like $50 for an accidental missing receipt out of millions) and I declare every last thing at the border.

I know that anecdote (especially personal anecdote) is not data but also my accountant is quite wealthy (he is one of the most morally upstanding accountants I know and somehow his clients are all rich. He is also a philanthropist.), my financial manager runs the Vancouver branch of a financial firm and he is upstanding. And believe it or not (and you probably won't), my lawyer is one of the nicest and one of the most honest and upstanding people I know.

Ok, so those people don't own a Ferrari (I actually don't know any other Ferrari owners), but one owns an expensive classic car and another owns a nice boat and they all could probably afford one.

So are there bad versions of the same? Of course. But being somewhat rich, I don't find that being rich has anything to do with being slimey. I know plenty of people who are both rich and poor who are morally bankrupt and morally upstanding. Generally speaking, in my circles though, the rich people are more morally upstanding as a proportion. That being said, my sample size is small and I'm sure I have a huge selection bias in who I associate with.

Sunny

At the voting booth, you are required to relinquish one of your stubs, either the real or fake one (it's up to you). The boss only has one to choose from.

Not sure if I like the entire idea, but this could be a workaround for your specific problem.

This is a response to these other postings.

Somebody asked this question on reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s3ww/would_you_hire_a_programmer_that_does_not_write/

A while ago my company interviewed someone who, in the course of some standard question, said that after the 5 o'clock whistle blows, they avoid computers totally. They don't have any hobbies involving their PC and often don't turn it on unless they are expecting an important email or need to look up directions. I followed up to ask how they got into programming and they said they took the right courses in college and now has had a few jobs doing it.

Would you hire a software engineer who isn't a hobbyist programmer? What if they avoid computers totally at home? Does it matter if a candidate has strictly a professional interest in software and just pretends it doesn't exist outside the office?

And was answered with this:

http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-10-08/no_hire.md
No, I Wouldn't Hire a Programmer That Has No Interest in Programming Outside of Business Hours

Here's another way to frame this question: Would I even interview a programmer who only works their programming job from 9-5? If not, why not?

The answer is remarkably simple. No, I would not interview them, for the simple reason that I don't know who they are and they don't know who I am. When I am hiring, my first and best source of prospective colleagues is my network. Industry people I know. Where do I get to know people? Conferences. Open source. Blogging. Twitter. I don't advertise my job openings on monster.com. So how did this person come to sit in front of me to tell me he(?) pretends software doesn't exist outside of the office?

I think you have to align your values with your complete hiring process, not just with your interview questions. If you value people who are passionate about their craft, you have to use a different means of selecting prospects than if you value having warm bodies sitting in chairs. If you want a warm body with a certain minimal competence in a chair, you use monster.com and recruiters to find people. if you value community and craft, you use your network and your community.

Done this way, questions like the above tend to take care of themselves.

The system works pretty well in Vancouver, Canada.

You can use coins as normal or you can dial a phone number to pay by credit card. Each meter has a number used to identify it.

The first time you use it, you have to register a license and your credit card number. After that, it remembers it based on your caller id I would imagine. You can register multiple cars no problem. It's a bit of a pain enter your license the first time you use it (it would be nice if you could try to use voice recognition first) but after the first time, it's pretty smooth.

The nice thing is that you don't have to go back to your car when you run out of time. To me, that is the biggest pain of street parking. Forget that you have to go half a block to pay for parking. If you have to run back from a few blocks, or in the middle of eating, that is even worse. With the system, we just call the number again and it asks if you want to extend your time. You just enter how many minutes.

I usually use it like this: (a) put in as many coins as I have and take a picture of the meter which has the id number with my iPhone (b) if I'm not back by the amount of time I got from the coins, I call and add time.

This is a fantastic idea and having used monitors in portrait mode (vertically oriented) instead of landscape mode, I can never go back. Better yet, there are many monitors that have a built in pivot. You can fit twice as many lines of code and still take very little desk space.

This monitor is a good example.

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/Monitors/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=bsd&cs=cabsdt1&sku=320-6272

It is 24" but if you scroll down, you will see how it probably doesn't take any more room than a 17" in landscape mode.

Seriously, as a developer, designer, writer, etc. this is one of the best upgrades you can make.

is cisco not a well established hardware vendor? http://www.thestreet.com/story/10508379/1/tech-rumor-of-the-day-juniper-cisco.html

The assertion that historic jets could shoot this target down may be true, however, the calculation appears flawed because you are assuming that:

(a) the plane is shooting directly up which means it needs to be able to have a completely vertical trajectory at the flight ceiling (or at least that the gun pod can aim directly up which does not seem to be the case from the photos though I could be wrong)

(b) that the range of its gun pod when shooting directly up is not less due to the effects of, say, gravity. I'm guessing that the range estimation of 3000m is assuming a target that is roughly horizontal from the plane. I suppose there could be an increase in range due to reduced air resistance at high altitudes though?