February 3, 2016 at 9:08 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The New Operating System
February 4, 2016 at 2:09 am
Just for info, neither of the links in this article work. The link from "an interesting piece" shows an error saying "The website declined to show this webpage" as it wants you to log in. The other link "software is eating the world" requires you to register. It would be nice if the links in the article all work 🙂
February 4, 2016 at 5:38 am
William Rayer (2/4/2016)
Just for info, neither of the links in this article work. The link from "an interesting piece" shows an error saying "The website declined to show this webpage" as it wants you to log in. The other link "software is eating the world" requires you to register. It would be nice if the links in the article all work 🙂
The first link works fine - I can read the article and see the 30 comments on it without signing in to Medium - in fact I can't sign in as I have never registered with them.
The other link leads to the Wall Street Journal pay wall, and I am not interested in opening an automatially renewing (and re-charging) subscription that will start renewing in two months time at a rate that isn't specified (but is presumably much higher than the introductory offer of 1 euro for the first two months). So yes, that link is maybe not really a good one to put in a technical editorial, but n, you can't reasonbly claim that it doesn't work.
Tom
February 4, 2016 at 8:11 am
The first link on Medium works for me. If this is a problem, I'm not sure why. I don't think I've ever registered with Medium.
The Wall St Journal one works for me, but I don't have a subscription. However maybe they give you a free one each month. I know this worked last week.
Here's a better link from Andreeson: http://genius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-software-is-eating-the-world-annotated
February 4, 2016 at 9:14 am
Some good ideas (like open source software, open IT floor plans, and telecommuting) come out of startups and are adopted by the larger corporate establishment. However, much of the "big picture" and "radical change" concepts have proven not to pan out from a business perspective. There probably have been more failed startups than have been good practical ideas coming out of startups.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 4, 2016 at 10:18 am
IMO and experience, weak management has usually been the biggest problem in IT, no matter the size of the organization. Like you said, losing the factory mentality is critical and learning to harness and particularly coordinate the creative efforts of your people is what will most likely allow everyone to adapt and overcome. Maybe the management schools need to re-tool their own thinking as well with regards to managing an information based economy?
February 4, 2016 at 11:08 am
The problem I see is empowering and trusting people. Over the last 30 years I have worked for companies ranging in size from 5 to 4000 people in one location. As management layers were stripped over the years the incompetence of many managers was highlighted more and micro-management became a (near) norm. The worst situation was about a decade ago when any request to spend money was checked in the minutest detail. In one case after the MD got involved a few £100 were saved. The ensuing issues cost the company 30 - 100 times the amount saved.
February 4, 2016 at 12:04 pm
Eric M Russell (2/4/2016)
Some good ideas (like open source software, open IT floor plans, and telecommuting) come out of startups and are adopted by the larger corporate establishment. However, much of the "big picture" and "radical change" concepts have proven not to pan out from a business perspective. There probably have been more failed startups than have been good practical ideas coming out of startups.
A few misconceptins there, I think.
Telecommuting came out of fairly big established companies, not startups. ICL (with 20,000 employees worldwide at the time, so hardly a startup) for example, had people telecommuting in the late 60s and early 70s because it made sense (even in the days when 2400bps was a very high bandwidth for a domestic connection, and maybe 300 bps was the norm) and its predecessors (it was formed in 1968 by merging several well established companies and the computer-industry subsidiaries of some others - for them I suspect 1200 bps was the limit and 110 bps the norm) had had people telecommuting and proved it was a good workable thing. It was terrific for women who married and had children - they could work a few hours per day at home and still be there for the kiddies; some couples split the load, with both working from home part time and housekeeping/baby managing the rest of the time, and that was great for the company because it could retain people it had trained without imposing a commuting or living avay from home (some of my colleagues worked from home in the Orkney Islands) or having to find child-care arrangements.
Open IT floor plans came out of people without a clue how to get productive behaviour from employees, one of the worst mistakes ever made by industry. It is still reducing productivity in most software companies, because the people who have embraced it are not prepared to look at the evidence that in industries using highly qualified engineers and scientists compared to rooms holding between 3 and 8 people a great big open plan with 30 people in it produces far less output per head, and output of lower quality. Personally I hate working in a one-man office (it was one of the penalties of getting too much promotion) nearly as much as I hate the oversized open plan game, but I know from reading much research published in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s and from personal experience that over-sized open plan is a productivity disaster - maybe things have changed since then, but I doubt it.
As for open source software, I worked on the UK's Alvey Flagship project as the project's software architect (my colleague Brian Procter was the chief system architect, and my boss Colin skelton was the project manager) back in the late 80s. One of the things we did was develop enhancements to the Edinburgh Hope functional language, defining a new language Hope+ with various collaborators; the implementation (and a lot of input to the specification) came from Imperial College; it (the "+" has been dropped from the name, so it now has the same name "Hope" as its predecessor) is now available freely to anyone who wants it, despite the team in charge of the project having been employed by the biggest British computer company at the time, not buy any sort of startup; the source was available too, some time ago, but I wouldn't know where to find it now. In fact the whole open source game in the UK was originally a mixture of government and academic in the 1970s, 1980s eve, and late 60s (I don't know about earlier, I'm not old enough to have real computing experience before 1966): I was importing source developed for 48 bit word hardware at one of the London colleges and rebuilding it for ICT 1900 series 36 bit hardware to use it in lectures when I was at UEA in 1969-70 - any of our physics research students could take it and do what they liked with it, including taking it for use by their future employers - years (decades?) before any startup companies had the idea. In the 1968 IBM ws quite happy to send me technical documentation and source listings for no charge for some of its software when I was looking at the structures of computer languages for English Electric's NRL (so my outfit was a research arm of one of IBM's competitors) - are you going to tell me IBM was a startup in 1968?
Tom
February 4, 2016 at 12:10 pm
mjh 45389 (2/4/2016)
The problem I see is empowering and trusting people. Over the last 30 years I have worked for companies ranging in size from 5 to 4000 people in one location. As management layers were stripped over the years the incompetence of many managers was highlighted more and micro-management became a (near) norm. The worst situation was about a decade ago when any request to spend money was checked in the minutest detail. In one case after the MD got involved a few £100 were saved. The ensuing issues cost the company 30 - 100 times the amount saved.
Moving decisions up the management degree to a level where the decision maker is someone with no competence in the field affected by the decision is far too common; and it's even worse when the deciding manager is one of those all too common MBAs who thinks his or her MBA qualification means he has a better understanding if the issues than the enfgneer of scientist who is telling him his answer is going to be an extrelmely expensive utter disaster.
I don't recall seeing that happen before about the mid 90s - - is it something that has really got wose over the years?
Tom
February 4, 2016 at 1:16 pm
There is a difference between management and leadership. I know senior managers who I wouldn't follow out of a burning building.
I've known leaders that I would follow into one.
I've been a manager for around 2years. Realising that my staff are more technically competent is a painful experience but my staff value me for fighting their case, deflecting as many unnecessary meetings as I am able and articulating what I want to achieve rather than how I want it achieved.
I know that culture is the hardest thing to change but as a manager I can ask the question "why do we do it this way?" and hopefully have the skill to ask that question in a way that provokes a response of "actually, I don't know, it doesn't make sense".
In general IT staff just want to do interesting stuff. They didn't get into IT because they were scared of technology change. They may not like Change in work place or practice unless it can be linked to technical advancement..
New working practices get scarier the older you get. There comes a time when you just see change as the latest half baked fad and most times you will be right however that fad will contain the seed of a good idea. If, instead of outright rejection, you hunt for that seed then you can steer the change rather than be dragged along after it
February 4, 2016 at 1:18 pm
Rod at work (2/4/2016)
I hope that you're right, Steve. I work in the pubic sector but don't see the innovation that you describe. Again, I could say more but shouldn't.
It's rare, but some has happened in places. I know there were a few places when I lived in VA in the 90s that Al Gore pressed to banish bureaucracy. A few departments and agencies took this seriously and dramatically improved.
However, likely they're outliers and most people got lazy. I'd hope that as monetary pressures increase, and there is turnover in management, we see more change
February 4, 2016 at 1:20 pm
ccd3000 (2/4/2016)
IMO and experience, weak management has usually been the biggest problem in IT, no matter the size of the organization. Like you said, losing the factory mentality is critical and learning to harness and particularly coordinate the creative efforts of your people is what will most likely allow everyone to adapt and overcome. Maybe the management schools need to re-tool their own thinking as well with regards to managing an information based economy?
+100. I agree
February 4, 2016 at 2:00 pm
TomThomson (2/4/2016)
Eric M Russell (2/4/2016)
Some good ideas (like open source software, open IT floor plans, and telecommuting) come out of startups and are adopted by the larger corporate establishment. However, much of the "big picture" and "radical change" concepts have proven not to pan out from a business perspective. There probably have been more failed startups than have been good practical ideas coming out of startups.As for open source software, I worked on the UK's Alvey Flagship project as the project's software architect (my colleague Brian Procter was the chief system architect, and my boss Colin skelton was the project manager) back in the late 80s. One of the things we did was develop enhancements to the Edinburgh Hope functional language, defining a new language Hope+ with various collaborators; the implementation (and a lot of input to the specification) came from Imperial College; it (the "+" has been dropped from the name, so it now has the same name "Hope" as its predecessor) is now available freely to anyone who wants it, despite the team in charge of the project having been employed by the biggest British computer company at the time, not buy any sort of startup; the source was available too, some time ago, but I wouldn't know where to find it now. In fact the whole open source game in the UK was originally a mixture of government and academic in the 1970s, 1980s eve, and late 60s (I don't know about earlier, I'm not old enough to have real computing experience before 1966): I was importing source developed for 48 bit word hardware at one of the London colleges and rebuilding it for ICT 1900 series 36 bit hardware to use it in lectures when I was at UEA in 1969-70 - any of our physics research students could take it and do what they liked with it, including taking it for use by their future employers - years (decades?) before any startup companies had the idea. In the 1968 IBM ws quite happy to send me technical documentation and source listings for no charge for some of its software when I was looking at the structures of computer languages for English Electric's NRL (so my outfit was a research arm of one of IBM's competitors) - are you going to tell me IBM was a startup in 1968?
"Open Source". I've been scratching my head about this term for as long as I can remember hearing it. As I recall, it was more of a marketing response to Microsoft's perceived dominance (backed by their competitors) than a technical movement. No?
February 4, 2016 at 2:08 pm
David.Poole (2/4/2016)
I've been a manager for around 2years. Realising that my staff are more technically competent is a painful experience but my staff value me for fighting their case, deflecting as many unnecessary meetings as I am able and articulating what I want to achieve rather than how I want it achieved.
New working practices get scarier the older you get. There comes a time when you just see change as the latest half baked fad and most times you will be right however that fad will contain the seed of a good idea. If, instead of outright rejection, you hunt for that seed then you can steer the change rather than be dragged along after it
Good for you. The best managers I've worked for have been fighters; technically informed but keeping their eye on the bigger picture, shaping events and refereeing competing technical issues. Hopefully you can still carve out some technical play time for yourself. 🙂
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