KDBDallas

Repost of an article by Ted Dziuba on Saturday May 01, 2010.
Read the original article at: http://teddziuba.com/2010/05/why-engineers-hop-jobs.html

——-

What’s with all the hate on my generation? It started when somebody
quit Jason Calacanis’s industrial web spam startup, Mahalo, for a higher
paying position at a competitor. Invariably, Calacanis went apeshit on
the poor guy in a very public way, and this started a cascade of blogosphere
butthurt about people in software under thirty: that we’re unreliable,
that we’re lazy, that we’re entitled.

Well I’m as unreliable, lazy, and entitled as the next guy, but that’s not
why I’ve hopped jobs in the past. People in my generation have a very
low tolerance for bullshit, and software engineering, in general, is a
very high bullshit career. If you couple that with the standard load
of bullshit you would get from a non-technical Harvard MBA type boss —
like many CEOs that you find trying to get rich in Silicon Valley by
hiring some engineers to “code up this idea real quick” — it’s no
wonder that a good engineer will walk off the job after his one year
cliff vesting.

As an engineer, you are told that you’re “lucky to have a job”, because there are “a hundred people lined up
outside, ready to take it”. (As chance would have it, there are at
least a thousand lined up to take the job of rich prick who tells
people what to do). This backlash is the product of diseased
thinking. A CEO who makes an engineer work 80 hours a week is a driven
entrepreneur, but an engineer asking for a comfy chair is a prima
donna. So, when we are up to our knees in golf-course, martini-lunch
bullshit, don’t be surprised when we jump ship for a higher
salary.

I recognize the value of business people and
management. Somebody has to sell the code that I write, which in turn
puts food on my table. Since I am an engineer, I like
iterative optimization. Every time I have left a job, I have
further refined the requirements that a person must fill before I agree to work for him. After every job, I add one or two requirements to the list, and
I have found that my happiness at work improves dramatically with
every step.

This is my current list:

• The organization must need me at least as much as I need it.
• My direct manager must have a technical background — enough to understand why programming is hard.
• My direct manager must have enough experience or raw intelligence such that I can trust him/her to make decisions, even though I may not understand the reasoning.
• I must have absolute faith in the business plan.
• I must have absolute faith in “the business side” to execute that plan.

So, Jason, when that fellow quit Mahalo, he didn’t just leave you
in the lurch. He added something to his list. Maybe you should find
out what that is.

Major League Lacrosse (MLL) has just announced the 2010 ESPN broadcast schedule!

ESPN’s coverage will include six games live in high definition on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD, and 39 on ESPN3.com, ESPN’s 24/7 broadband sports network. The schedule will include the MLL All-Star Game, one semifinal and the MLL Championship Game.

The 2010 MLL television schedule kicks off on Saturday, May 22!

For my convenience your convenience I have created a web calendar with all the games (as currently listed. ie: number wise a few are missing, including the semifinal and championship games) (I will update the calendar with any new data I see)

You can subscribe to the calendar by using the following URL:
webcal://ical.me.com/kdbdallas/MLL%20Telecast%20Schedule%202010.ics
If your browser doesn’t open your calendar program, you will need to manually add the “shared” calendar in your favorite calendar program.

You can also view the calendar on the web by following the URL:
http://ical.me.com/kdbdallas/MLL%20Telecast%20Schedule%202010

Enjoy.

Official announcement can be viewed at: http://majorleaguelacrosse.com/news/pressreleases/?article_id=1652

I am very limited government (for the most part). However I know from the experiences in my life that health care is so bad that something has to be done and the government is the only *person* that has any type of ability. I don’t care if they have a public option or not, but they need to put in place some regulations (such as not denying for pre-existing conditions, and not raping us on price) If they did just those 2 things then I would be happy and my family would be able to get insurance. Currently we are forced to play Russian roulette with not only our lives but the life of our son.

What if you or someone in your family had something happen, and then say even years later you lose your job? You would look to get coverage some other way, but they won’t take you because of that pre-existing condition, or they will but want you to pay 2 mortgage payments worth every month, plus a huge deductible and 20-50%.

Even getting another job isn’t enough all ways. If that company is not large enough or is just getting setup with coverage they will drop the entire company or will charge everyone in the company so much that they can’t offer it…. (I have been in this exact situation so I know it’s true)

I agree that the Govt should not provide universal health care for everyone, and the current bills aren’t trying to do that. (we have read through many drafts of the bills because its so important to us) So using that as a reason to stop reform isn’t valid.

Hope that helps to explain my families views of health care reform.