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Showing posts from September, 2022

Medium Story: The Dangers of Hiring Yes-Men: How Ignoring Reality Can Lead to Disaster

Yes, I worked in business software consulting and can affirm that people in my industry, too, do not want to hear the plain and simple truth, regardless of the implications of doing so. Photo by Floriane Vita on Unsplash A VP outsources software development to a distant country for pennies on the dollar, saving their organization millions of dollars over hiring domestic engineers and project managers. Years later, he comes to me for some extra work, requesting bug repairs and additions.  I advise them of the significant, major defects in the software caused by the cheap outsourced contractors' ignorance of (or disregard for) domestic laws, regulations, or third-party service conditions, weaknesses that put personal customer information and payment information at risk of leak. Is there any chance that VP would be grateful to me for pointing out these flaws in a project he oversaw, the "savings" from which he received a large bonus, probably the cause for his promotion to

There are better ways to invest your time than getting an MBA: A programmer Guide to start a Tech Company

I'll spare you the time of earning an MBA (please keep in mind that this is only applicable if you are starting a B2B product company; consumer is far more difficult to validate): Before you start your new business, decide what your product will be and who will buy it (I mean, who is the specific person in an organization that would need to make a purchase decision). Then go speak with two or three of those persons. Photo by LYCS Architecture on Unsplash If you can't figure out who those folks are at this point, you have an issue that won't go away even after you've spent a year constructing your product. If you don't have a market, try something else. If you can't get a meeting with those folks, you've got a problem that won't go away once you've produced your product. If you can't break into your market, try something else. When you meet with them, don't try to sell them on your idea. Tell them you're researching a market potential and

The harms of running the USPS like a business

Running government services like a company is a bad idea. The word itself, when applied to governance, makes no sense. Profit comes from running things like a company. But where do they want the money to go? Profits in a typical firm go to the proprietors. A company is a type of entity that is especially organized to transfer money from customers to private owners or shareholders.  Photo by Trinity Nguyen on Unsplash If it is not transferring wealth to owners, it is cannibalizing profits in order to produce an even better money vacuum that will suck up even more money for the advantage of the owners. That's it. A firm does not manufacture computers or operate online stores. A business is anything that delivers wealth to its stockholders in every way it can. So, if you want to operate government like a company, you want the profits to go back to the shareholders, which in the case of government are.... people. Which sounds suspiciously like the socialism that these people despise fo