The Robot's Thoughts

This is a great article on compensating young employees who're looking for "growth". A halfway decent developer, if he's not too busy blogging, will probably double his productivity for the first 3 years of employment at a company (assuming he stays). This is because if they're keeping up with what's going on in the industry and not just doing what they're told, they're creating value without you having to train them. And that skillset is highly portable.

And of course, the experience and know-how he has of the internal mechanics of your company is something you can't get from the pool of job applicants. Its something he takes with him.

So having shitty raises for the people in the "trenches" is a really dumb idea. I know that once you get a reputation of having "shitty raises", anyone that knows anyone at the company that's applying for a job is going to tack on a premium to their base salary. Its fact.

So to recap, read the article. And having a system where "busting your hump" gets you a 4% raise, and doing nothing gets you a 3% raise, and you have a system that's going to be gamed so that people do nothing. And then, what're you really paying for?

Labels: corporate culture, money, personal, raises, ramblings, today's generation, Web Development

Its amazingly nice out. Its a pleasing view outside my office.

Also, I found this
its Microsoft's way of letting you run IE6 and IE7 on the same box. Which saves my team some hassle/headache later.

I'm glad class isn't in session because I've been scaling bits and pieces of the learning curve that is JEE5.0+Spring 2.5+Hibernate3+Hibernate Annotations.

Its the first time I've really felt you needed to 'smart' to do my job. I'm not trying to talk out my ass -- I don't feel smart attempting to get things done in Eclipse (the IDE du jour for Java development) -- but this isn't something that one master's easily. It feels like I'm pushing around furniture when what I'm really trying to do is toss around a frisbee.

So I was naturally a little pre-occupied when the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl came around. Since I decided not to make an insane road trip out of it (saving what little vacation I have for a planned for snowboarding trip with Greg over spring break) I figured I should at least watch it with someone.

Three different people asked me to hang out with them and watch the game that night. Rather than take DFR's advice from over Christmas break -- say "Yes" to any social invite -- if just to get you out of the house and meet more people -- I sat around, read, and lightly thought upon my problem. It took until halftime for me to shake off my funk and go over to Vanessa's, because she nagged me the most, and it was a good time.

The reason I'm writing this is because I feel like I've defined by problem: Java has traded idiomatic-ness (if that's a word) for its ability to have a gazillion interoperable frameworks. And that's great if you're mr. blub, trying to build a blub tower for the people of blubville. You've got a one-size-fits-all catch all language.

But there's no room for metis. Even where there might be definite beauty or craft, I'm at a point where it still feels I'm a woodworker trying to appreciate the work of a stonecutter. That's nice and all, but did you have to pick such a cold and heavy medium?

Hopefully I'll get to a java-happy-place. In time. It just feels like my experience with Ruby, Cocoa, and Python has a me always hearing a voice telling me in that faux-austrialian infomerical accent "There's got to be a better way! Call now!"

Anyway, I wanted to post two links I found that fellow programmers like CoyoteTechnica will find interesting. The first is titled "Java is an Evolutionary Dead End" and it sort of touches upon what I'm getting at: Code is meant to be read more times than it is to be written, so a concise language that's easily readable will be better than the overly-syntaxic world of java.

And the second, also by Bruce Eckel, is called "The Mythical 5%" and its a commencement speech that he gave to a bunch of Computer Science kiddies. I like it because its actually good advice and somewhat inspiring. I tried giving similar advice ("This is a field that involves constantly learning and re-learning to keep up") but came off as condescending and cruel. So forget what I would say and read the artcle. Its a good read.

Labels: links, personal, software, thoughts

The power grid is already more efficient than hydrogen fuel cells or ethanol or Bio-Diesel.

Labels: blogging, gas prices, pictures

The final whisper in the movie "Lost In Translation" -- people have been debating what Bill Murry says when he whispers in her ear.

Watch the video to find out.

Labels: links, movies, Reddit, youtube