I just remembered, up at Grandma’s house, Chance pulled out an old story book. A vinyl 45 dropped out of it. Chance kept going on-and-on about wanting the black DVD.
I attempted multiple times to explain (to a 3 year old mind you) the difference between a record and a DVD. That was an interesting attempt at a history lesson.
I drove one of these yesterday. Honestly, I haven’t had that much fun driving since I sold the S4 *sniff*. The DSG on it is AMAZING. I spun out the tires on hot asphalt and it really flew. I can see why people are raving about it. This is one AT that traditional stick-shifters can’t thumb their nose at. It kicks ass.
I went up to Tahoe with Kid1 for a weekend with Grandma. We stopped by the Train Museum in Sacramento, and I only had to endure about 3 hours of “can we go for a train ride now?” type of questions.
As the formal IT guy for my parent’s business (which is over 4 hours away), I had to get a new PC for one of their dying 4-year old Todd Tokubo specials. I swang by a Fry’s on the way up to Tahoe and grabbed a GQ (standing for Great Quality) closeout for $200. Now, I haven’t bought a PC in a while, but $200 for a 1.8 GHz processor, 512 MB of DDR2, nVidia 6100 chipset (decent graphics), and an 80 GB HD seems amazing since Windows Vista is over half of the price. I couldn’t believe it. You could easily sink an extra $200 and have one decent computer that may actually play games.
Some of my friends have recently change job. No big deal, happens all the time in Silicon Valley. Not everyone blogs about it. In the comments, one of my other friends, who happens to have also changed his job recently, posted a link to “inspiring corporate confidence“. It’s a little hard to follow (like some of my writing), but here’s the gist. You either move jobs fairly frequently or you sit a jobs for a long time. In today’s world, if you sit at one job for too long, it’s a bad thing. The writer says if you don’t change jobs you should keep things at your current place of employment challenging by doing tasks similar to the following:
Keep learning new information. Attend the seminars and workshops recommended on your professional development plan (if you don’t have one, make one yourself); take a class at your community college (traditional or online); read a book from the best-selling list.
Become an expert in your industry or discipline. Read trade periodicals, visit vendors or listen in on meetings when they visit the office; go to professional conferences; earn professional designations; make presentations to groups with an interest in your field.
Continually expand your skill base. Learn a new software package through self-study, help from a friend, or a class; offer your services for special projects (sponsored by your company, a non-profit group, or another organization) to strengthen your planning, organizational, networking, and/or leadership skills.
Try out new ideas. You may be able to make changes to your daily activities without any corporate approvals. Even small improvements, made consistently over time, can keep your habits up-to-date and work results stellar.
I contend, these are great things to do even if you change jobs a lot. In fact, the main reason you like to change jobs a lot is to accomplish the things above. In larger companies (where people tend to settle longer), it can be actually quite difficult to do some of these self-improvement tasks. (Although, I have heard stories that HP and Lucent back in the day had people running their own real estate firms out of their cubes.) In the Valley, usually you need to change jobs to take a career step. I just advise you NOT to just change jobs for money.
How do I know I’m an old-school geek?
- I’m actually upset that Dragon Magazine got cancelled.
- I’m actually nostalgic about reading old pen-and-paper RPGs like this site.
- I make fun of people who I know weren’t alive when this logo actually meant something.
- I think it’s funny that comic books that I read in high school are now “critically acclaimed movies”. (Where’s the Watchmen?)
- New Order is still my favorite band
- 10 years out of college must start your qualification card for “old-school”
Tickle.com is pretty cool in the fact that they have all of these psychological tests to see where you
Here’s a link to all of their Career Tests:
These are just a couple. They’re fun, but just remember, that you make the decisions on your career direction. A poll once in a while just shakes up your thinking to make sure you know what you want to do.
Two extra years of college yielding you a six-digit income at a name company where you are going to be changing the business world and retire with a golden parachute and drive off to your private jet in your convertible Ferrari. I think that’s usually what people picture when they are thinking of going to “B-school”. Granted, I didn’t go to get my MBA (I actually flunked out of my MS program, but hey… who’s checking), but I would think that there is a bit of a reality dose coming.
First up: Business Week – Is the MBA Overrated?
Some startling numbers came to light. Only 146 of the 500 executives reported having MBAs, a surprising number considering the hundreds of thousands of B-school alumni with enough experience to qualify them for top jobs. What’s more, only 71 received MBAs from the top 10 B-schools, and two-thirds of those executives have degrees from just three institutions: Harvard Business School, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Second up: Guy Kawasaki – MBA on a page.
Here it’s probably not so much the actual link that goes to the “cheat sheet” of all biz terms, but the amount of flamage that he gets for his innuendo that MBA’s are not worth much.
I will say that having an MBA will most likely open doors for you, but your success WITH an MBA is still very much predicated on your experience and expertise without it. People have told me that it is much like the old Bill Cosby joke:
- What’s the big deal about cocaine?
- Well… it enhances your personality!
- Yeah, but what if you’re an a$$hole?
I think the same rules apply, a person who is on the road to success will definitely benefit from an MBA, but these are the same people who can benefit from failure as well.
It’s a bit scary when you think that you’re SOOOO unique, and then you realize… you’re not. So, I’m not the only lame-o blogger at work.
Thus, I’ve updated my “Friends” to include the peeps at work.
Yet another trip to the glorious Far East. Yet another trip on United, the flight was only delayed an hour and a half due to a plane replacement, but it’s better than the alternative.
The movies:
It’s always a good thing to read around and see what people are saying are good ways to (try to) hire people. Professional columnists are one thing. They often blur the line between what one should be doing as a hiring manager and as a candidate. I put a some stock in blogs because it’s typically from the viewpoint of someone with first hand experience. Here are some highlights that I REALLY agree with:
- Finding good programmers is hard in any language. And that a good programmer can be as effective as 5-10 average programmers.
- Average pay rates between equivalent programmers are out of sync and are based more on the language used than the skill of the programmer.
- You don’t need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can easily cross over from being a novice in any language in a matter of a few weeks.
…
Another obvious reason is that experts in any field are small in number, so your possible talent pool is limited. This leads managers and HR departments to settle for average or even below average developers. I believe this is the single biggest mistake a technology oriented company can make, regarding developers…
It’s a great read, and from my experience, I share a lot of underlying philosophies. Especially about separating the NEED for someone for someone who really wants and cares about the job. Motivated people with expertise are far more valuable for everyone on the job.
