winscape 2205

There is a new "Glbutt Ceiling". Programmers can't move up into management as easily as the slightly competent tech girls who learn a little, work a little, and move upwards. They guys would are good programmers are not considered for these positions, or are the first to be laid off for stating reality in the board room.

Easily offended folk leave now - non-PC content about The Real World follows Yes, I mean YOU!

The same effect is going on with the outsourcing as had been going on "for (;;)" in American business.

Guarantee all, Deliver excuses, Promise success, Add more people, Fire the experts who say it can't be done, Reorganize, Bring in new techniques languages managers, Scrap the project as undo-able.

Women Mgmt = Outsourcing = Reorg. They are all ways to NOT say that what the marketing team is promising cannot really be done in the time-frame. There is no back-step, or reevaluation that examines what is needed, and how it can be done. It's all "Bigger, Better, More" but without a realistic plan. All of the above promise and coddle and mislead, without any direct progress.

The only thing that Big Business has done well in 30 years is the Y2K bug. And when it went smoothly, everyone said it was too costly, because it didn't cost more to fix the problems.

New Orleans could have been an exact duplicate of Y2K - they could have spend hundreds of millions to shore up all the problem areas and been criticized for 2 decades about spending overruns and project delays and overtime costs. And when the hurricane K hit, nothing much would have happened and everyone could talk about how it could have been done cheaper by this firm or that firm and how it was a drain on money we needed for roads and schools in Texas. But New Orleans would be saved!

But America isn't interested in success in the future. They want cost savings in the Now.

China is going to rule the world if they stick with their centuries long policies. Move slow. Consider options. Consider other options. Reconsider options. In the mean time, the people with have to deal with the old technology.

Back in the Old Century (late 1990s), China was deciding which cell phone company to go with. Everyone had cell phones. The Euros, the Japs, the USians. We had all had them for over 5 yrs. I mean the good, little ones. Not the ones you laugh at in movies. It was coming down to a decision. Our's or their's? Stock market prices were changing over this. They "hemmed and hawed". Finally, a decision. ...None. The entire Chinese population would have to wait for the next generation of phones due out in a couple of years.

You tell an American that there is a thing in Europe that in pretty nifty, but we're not going to make one here for 2 more years (well, 3 with overruns). They would send in a commando team to steal the device, and someone would make a pirate site to host it, someone else would break it apart and make a local version that would "just happen" to come to market.

Patience, however pays. Waste is reduced. Design is enhanced. People are not used like Barbie dolls. Everyone gets a sense of "job well done" when you actually do the job from start to finish, instead of picking up someone else's half-design, modifying it a little, then being laid off, so the cycle can begin again.

This model cannot work! How can it be stopped?

-- Mabden