A Personal Blog
Archive for February, 2004
Ensight is 30% Evil
Feb 23rd
Stemming the Tide of IT Saturation
Feb 23rd
I recently left life in Toronto. Arguably one of the continent’s most connected and technologically advanced cities. During the height of the dot-com boom it was “Silicon North” in the press, and for good reason. Most of the large IT companies had headquarters there. 360networks was born there. Good things happened to IT people in Toronto.
This attitude resulted in an incredible saturation in the IT marketplace. One job I applied for, and was shortlisted for, had more than 2500 applicants. It wasn’t unusual to see single, entry-level jobs, getting 500+ applicants. In fact, the IT recruiting agency in Toronto took off not to help candidates find jobs, but mainly to sort out the unqualified candidates. They became the work horses of corporations who were sick of getting IT-school grads applying to VP positions. Gaugers of real qualification, so to speak.
That’s one of the reasons I moved to Winnipeg. For this position there were 40 applicants. Of whom 6 were qualified. Not really much of a contest, in terms of competition. It’s definitely more nerve-racking to be the final 4 out of 2500 applicants, trust me.
Anyways….
Tech schools across the continent have started closing.
This can only be a good thing for the real IT people among us. You know what I mean. Those who aren’t like Bob.
The closing of the schools, hopefully, means less students seeking jobs that don’t exist, which will eventually filter down to only those who are actually qualified (or really want to be) IT people, instead of just those looking for a quick buck thanks to tech-school hype advertising.
The forces of free market economics at work in the job market. The timing couldn’t be better. The whispers of a job re-awakening are gaining strength (whether you believe them or not). At the same time, less people are entering this job market. A good thing for those of us who are qualified, have experience and have proven ourselves valuable to a variety of organizations over the years.
I’m not likely to leave my job anytime soon, unless I get a truly amazing offer at a company at least as good as HSC, but I wish the rest of the job seekers all the best!
Thoughts Out of Control
Feb 23rd
My thoughts on my new design are quickly getting out of hand. I went from 3-5 to nearly 25.
While requirements are good, and while I’m looking forward to a really high class site… I still haven’t even sat down to map out a structure, nevermind figuring out how I’m going to program some of these “good God, I’ve never seen this before” elements into MT.
Gah.
Bloggers Looking for Money
Feb 23rd
Ahh, the sweet smell of the evolution of an industry. Just a short 6 months ago, selling advertising on blogs was a fairly risky affair. As likely to get you money as to get you ostracized.
As long-time readers will know I tried several methods, including BlogAds, to generate enough cash to cover hosting fees. Well, several prominent bloggers have begun looking at ways to maximize the resource that is their blog.
Both Jeremy Z and Wine Boy have recently begun this search. I’m sure they’ll likely hit a few false starts, as everyone does, but I wish them all the best. Blogs, and bloggers, are maturing. The quality of what we’re offering is increasing. The value of our adveritising space will only go up.
Advertisers are smart to get in now, while it’s still cheap.
… It's Happening… OSS Browsers Taking Over…
Feb 23rd
… And it begins.
First, with an off-handed post in a non-IT forum that people should start using FireFox because it’s better, faster and meaner than IE.
…
Then, here at work IE stops work on my PC, so I have to switch to something else. Despite the attrocity that is the logo, I choose FireFox…
…
Then, I get an email from my previous work, asking what I thought of them removing IE and switching to FireFox…
…
The impossible has happened. A browser that can actually replace IE quite comfortably. Having used FF as my primary browser here at work for 3 weeks, I have only a few minor complaints, and none of these are issues the developers will be likely to fix… But all of them are the reason I haven’t yet switched at home:
1. No Google Toolbar (with PageRank) 2. No “render as IE” (c’mon, IE’s awful, but sometimes you just want to see how things work on the other side of the fence… And since the engine is freely available, it’d be a cinch to code) 3. Alt + V + C does not show sourcecode. I refuse to change the way I work just for a browser.
But, this is much smaller than my list of gripes with FireBird!
All of that said, I’m seriously considering switching to Thunderbird for email as well, since Outlook Express lacks any real spam filtering, and I’m getting so much obvious spam at home it’s not even funny. Imagine.
They may make an OSS junky out of me yet ;-)
