My favorite UK TV producer once had to sell his house in Wimbledon and move to an apartment in Central London just to get his two adult sons to finally leave home. Now something similar seems to be happening in American IT. Some people are calling it age discrimination. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the strategy is clear: IT is urbanizing — moving to city centers where the labor force is perceived as being younger and more agile.
The poster child for this tactic is McDonald’s, based for 47 years in Oak Brook, Illinois, but just this summer moved to a new Intergalactic HQ downtown in the Chicago Loop. Not everybody has left the old digs. McDonald’s has opened a software division at the new HQ specifically working on McDonald’s cloud offerings, which is to say working on the future of McDonald’s IT.
The old guys and gals are generally back in the burbs, while the new Dev/Ops Cloud folks are in the city. This is likely by design. McDonald’s techies can get their Cloud training online in either location, but if you are in the suburbs you can’t get the Cloud charge codes because you are not going to the meetings downtown. Move to the city if you want to work on Cloud. Charge codes are the way they starve old practices at McDonald’s.
I don’t see this change in IT structure as an accounting function. It is a sunk cost tire problem. The corporations are seeing the issue, they can’t get their older staff to adapt to the innovations. Clayton Christensen covered this in a number of books.
What has changed at the board level is companies like Ford realize now that they are a software company that makes cars. Liberty Mutual said as much. The Internet of Things, Cloud, IT Innovation, have all struck a chord, and CEOs are listening.
The issue is finding how to get your staff to adapt to change. The new answer is to move. Starve the older teams with fewer charge codes, give them all the training they want since that is very cheap now and all online. Reward them for training and make it apart of their MBO (Management by Objectives). The training courses are now free across many corporations, (SafariBooks, PluralSight, INE, etc.).
As an old IT guy it is possible for me to see this as age discrimination and a sneaky (if expensive) workaround for laws against that practice. But it’s really more a matter of innovation discrimination, since fogies like me who are willing to do the classes and make the accompanying physical move — that is older workers who are eager for new experiences of all types — are generally free to join the future.
Still, the COBOL crowd will be pissed when they figure out what’s happening.
When I started work on this column the poster child wasn’t McDonald’s, it was Aetna, the giant health insurer, which earlier this year announced it was moving from Hartford, Connecticut, where it had lived for more than a century, to New York, NY. Though the $9 million in subsidies Aetna was to receive for this $85 million move got a lot of press, I really doubt they were doing it for the tax savings.
Here’s the rationale I was hearing from inside Aetna:
Aetna needed to move into the 21st Century.
The existing Hartford staff is mainly baby boomers stuck in 1990.
The move discharges the baby boomers who will not take the move package.
The IT department got to move into a city that is the capital of FinTech.
The transition would transform Aetna tech with less risk than if they stayed in Hartford with old IT thinking.
Then something funny happened: CVS offered to buy Aetna for $69 billion (the deal has yet to close) and strongly suggested Aetna remain in Hartford, closer to CVS HQ in Woonsocket — yes, Woonsocket — Rhode Island. So Aetna cancelled its move to Manhattan, giving back the city’s $9 million, also forcing me to flip this column on its head.
Here’s where I am going to make a bold prediction. IF the deal closes (it looks likely) and CVS buys Aetna sometime in the next few months, a come-to-Jesus meeting will be held in Woonsocket after which the combined company will resume that move into New York City.
Here is why. I have been noticing that many developers my age don’t want to learn something new. Docker is new. Cloud Foundry changes everything in software development. That knocks down multiple monolithic structures. When you look at IT performance you see some baby boomers, some, Generation X’ers, but more and more Y and Z generation who have adopted new ways of seeing IT. This problem is at the core of IBM, HP, Dell, and others. Baby Boomers can’t quit: they are broke if they do. But they also can’t adjust, so they strangle innovation to stay on top.
Ultimately companies sell their homes in Wimbledon, so to speak, moving into the big urban tech centers, urbanizing to join the biggest corporate headquarters real estate boom in history — a real estate boom ironically driven by virtualization.
My old friend Adam Dorrell’s company, CustomerGauge, is having an event on September 14th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. I’ll be there as host, moderator and valet parking attendant. CustomerGauge is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that measures and reports on customer feedback in real time.
On the flip side, putting all of your eggs in the “younger with no real experience” basket, gets you a Mineserver project where the chief “architect” is just a kid. And we all know how successful that “project” was.
My impression with many company moves is what I call the 20 minute rule. The company always seems to move to 20 minutes away from where the CEO lives, so if the CEO of the CVS group after the move lives in New York, then the company will move shortly afterwards (its what happened to Discovery Channel after all).
I question if most of what is going on is if the younger workers are simply lower cost to employ because they have less work experience than older workers. I am sure that if the money was there, the older workers would have no problem learning a new paradigm or programming languages or anything that would make their jobs easier, otherwise, why bother to learn a lot of new stuff if there is no incentive or reward to do so?
Moving from a low cost rural area to a high cost urban area just to change the abilities of the work force makes little sense.
But the Baby Boomers can’t move either (Gen Xer speaking). Neither can I.
Not with 3 kids, a dining room set and 3 cars. All of my junk won’t move downtown. It is more lifestyle discrimination. At 25, I could move into a 2 bedroom apt downtown and be happy stepping over a homeless person on the way to my high rise office every morning. Now, there is no way to fit my life into downtown spaces.
Once your in the burbs, you can’t leave!
While I get the point, how does it relate to moving the whole kit offshore? The whole cloud thing works from a laptop almost anyplace with a decent connection. Why bother with downtown, when you can outsource everything but sales?
I am not sure that I agree with the Cringe but he does make some sense. Getting us old programmers (I am 58 and building Windows apps in C++ and Fortran) to work on cloud apps is tough. Of course, we grew up in the cloud but we called it mainframes back then.
At college I trained in COBOL and moved to the city. After continuing to learn and picking up several languages and last coding in C++ I gave up on software development including and IT in all its forms. I am now a prostitute and dreaming of moving out of the city.
Clients in their 20s with no experience are a bit of a bother. I much prefer an older client who has looked after themselves and with more disposable income. Much like developers there are men who are better at sex than others. I personally like sex which is more artful with just the right feedback and of course communication. A younger man is almost alway going to be a throbbing hard twitching cock on legs and orgasm really fast which is good for my profit margins. Yeah, I know, but this is not everything.
I could always dust off my computing skills and entice the boss into a job with the promise of leaning over his desk and spreading my legs whenever he wants relief in exchange for a nice job title without too much work and a fat salary. If any senior management are in the market for this I’m all ears.
I work with a wide range of ages from students to graduates to engineers who’ve been working in the biomechanics and medical instrumentation field their whole lives and I see exactly what you are talking about – I spend a lot of time trying to be very open-minded about what my customers want.
The trouble is that very often what the new customers, fresh out of college, want is convenience and easy of use – they assume that accuracy and reliability are automatically included in anything that’s offered to them. Accuracy and Reliability are no longer selling points – nobody really cares any long. All they want is something that generates some numbers, is wireless, very small, and has a blue light.
I don’t know. I’m an old programmer and I’m tired of Java. Would be more fun to do something different. I also love Docker 🙂
Well, they used to say that General Motors was a health care company that made cars on the side.
That explains the terrible kiosks being installed in the McDonalds locations. I’m sure the intention is to off-load the ordering process so they don’t need to hire so many minimum wage workers, but the kiosks are so bad nobody wants to use them.
I’ve worked on interactive user interfaces for decades, and the McDonalds kiosks seem to ignore everything that has been learned over that time. Instead, it seems they were designed by kids under the direction of marketing managers.
If companies are smart they will take advantage of teleworking to allow their employees to work from anywhere.
I’m an old (61) programmer, working on iOS apps for the past 10 years, after working on .Net apps for the previous 10 years, after working on Unix apps for the previous 10 years… lather, rinse, repeat
My motto: Whatever skills pay the bills
Liberty Mutual has always been a company that at its core crunched numbers. Software is a natural evolution. McDonalds and Ford have this pesky problem where people expect physical products in exchange for money. They may increasingly rely on software, but they are not software companies who happen to ship physical things. Thinking so is deluded techie thinking.
I’m not sure how driving out workers with families qualifies as “innovation.” If they want to lose the deadweight, stop being passive aggressive and just fire them.
Of course, they may not actually be deadweight. Chasing the latest buzzword is fun, but it’s not actually innovation and it sure as heck not necessarily valuable for the company. It’s too easy to interpret “I don’t think that will be a good investment for the company as it doesn’t solve any of our problems better” as “I fear change.”
When the young developers live in the city center, the don’t need cars and typically rent with roommates.
If they don’t need cars and share rent on a place to live, they don’t notice that their salary isn’t keeping up with the price of cars and real estate until it is too late.
Eric Friedman said “Would rather have a B player in person than A player remote” on Twitter. I wholeheartedly agree. Cam sex is absolutely no substitute for a guy sticking a hard one in me.
https://twitter.com/EricFriedman/status/1025859012082974720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As an old programmer (still paying my San Francisco mortgage with COBOL), I see the issue a little differently. It’s not so much that more experienced developers don’t *want* to learn new stuff, it’s that they don’t have the time to do so. More established grown-ups often have families (I have three kids and a wife), volunteer responsibilities (I’m on the board of a local theatre company and am the photographer for another, as well as multiple positions at my kids’ schools), and, quite possibly, well established hobbies (sitting around waiting for a Mineserver to arrive.)
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Kids (the under 35 crowd) often don’t have these commitments and thus have the free time outside of office hours to learn the latest tech fad.
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So what’s really happening is that companies are trading experience and expertise for free training. If they were smart, they would simply set aside a couple of weeks a year for nothing but training on whatever new tech they are into.
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One of the smartest companies I ever worked with was one who decided to rewrite their entire system and, rather than hiring some company that didn’t know their business to do it, instead hired a bunch of contractors (myself included) to come in and do maintenance and support on their existing system while their regular staff — the ones with the experience and subject matter knowledge — designed and built the new system. To be honest, it was one of my favorite gigs — the old system was so rock solid there was basically nothing to do and a really good friend was one of the other contractors so we spent a lot of time yakking away.
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I don’t doubt that companies are doing this but it is short sighted and foolish, IMO. But then, that’s nothing new.
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On the other hand, maybe if Mineserver LLC moved from the back woods of Santa Rosa to a big city, maybe they might be able to get a Mineserver out the door. Of course, having younger employees hasn’t seemed to help with the Mineserver project.
Or, y’know, learn the new cloud stuff and Docker, move to the city and get the job. I quit my certain 3 letter company that does have a pretty well documented history of age discrimination and age 57, introduced an older IT workforce at my new company in the Big City to Docker and cloud stuff, got promoted to Director and I’m now having the time of my life.
Yeah, there are people who really don’t learn by DOING. It’s not enough just to learn this stuff, you have to show a mastery of it. You’ll only get there by taking the plunge an demonstrating an actual project. Do that with something on your own or take the bull by the horns and do it with a project at work.
Kinda surprised to see the guy who rags on IBM for age discrimination, giving all these companies a pass for doing the same thing.
Also, paying for really expensive office space in big cities to work on cloud stuff sticks of vanity on the part of the micromanagers running them.
IBM wants its employees to learn about Blockchain, Cloud and all other hip, new stuff. They can learn the new stuff on their own time and (it is hoped) get a good review, but in many cases, Cloud and Blockchain have nothing to do with their day-to-day work. So, you can view these folks as old and lazy, or see them as practical folks who know that expanding their knowledge in their current areas of concentration will help the customer much more than forays into these other technologies.
IBM just fired one of my friends even though the position was not eliminated and the customer was happy
This is what happens to older workers, past 30
Y is this legal ?
Although being one of the original COBOL generation (I started programming in 1967) I still work full-time running a New Zealand based software house.
It was interesting a couple of years ago to visit Air New Zealand and meet the team responsible for their main operations and booking package. Most of the team were older than me which was an unusual experience and I was surprised to learn the programs they still maintain are COBOL based mainframe ones.
I think the problem with so many organisations who were early adopters of IT is that by their very nature they were major companies who could afford the technology and people to drive it. Over the years their packages have been kept up to date with many patches, plug-ins and partial rewrites. The prospect of a full replacement terrifies the IT management as well as the financial people. We have seen so many big projects including rewrites that have overrun horrendously and in some cases had to be abandoned.
People considering replacement face the grim prospect of signing off on major expenditure that may well
not deliver any tangible short-term benefits to the company and for this reason alone become deferred as long as possible.
Technology is changing at such a pace that it is hard to pin down exactly the direction to take. I know many operations who toiled away to replace their main frame system with client-server technology only to now find they need to look at moving to the cloud.
It is interesting to look back to the 1970s when we operated many bureau systems with a central mainframe and dumb terminals linked by comms lines. A number of my younger colleagues expounded at length on the virtues of The Cloud and were astounded when I explained bureaus to them.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
@John Light: thanks for confirming what I’ve been saying from day one, that the McDonald’s kiosks are very, very poorly designed from a UI perspective. I hate using them, but they’re often faster than going to the counter.
The ironic thing is that these kiosks are making the wait times longer, as the orders come in faster, leading to more volume and more orders (there’s an article about this somewhere on the net that I’m too lazy to look up). I have been going to Rottin’ Ronnies for years and ever since they installed the kiosks the wait times have increased dramastically.
In Robert Townsend’s 1981 management book ‘Up The Organisation’ he recommended moving the company HQ every few years to only keep the keen people who’d follow you and sift out the dead wood.
Nice theory, but in practice you actually just keep all the people who are otherwise unemployable, so have no choice but to follow you.
People with skills just stay where they are and change employer.
Every innovation has its dark side. The cloud is no different. Urbanization of IT also has its risks and dark side. Move, standardize and centralize everything to the big American urban centers. What could go wrong?
Cloud IT is Socialist IT. Orwellian IT. To each according to his or her contribution. In the Cloud, IT is compelled to converge to the common because it will be bracketed by standards and eventually becomes a commodity. Since everyone’s the same, then IT becomes a utility to be commoditized, a meaningless non-differentiator, no more valued than a display or keyboard.
It’s ironic that Cringely brings up the “sunk cost tire problem”. IMHO he is blinded by innovation and won’t see (much less accept) its risks and downside in a balanced business decision.
The story of the Firestone 500 radial tire and the death, destruction and millions in litigation costs it created is a lesson for executives and IT organizations who were blinded by the cloud (Oops! I meant the radial tire).
I’m a baby boomer who lives in London in the suburbs about 7 miles west from the centre. Before 2000 i used to commute out of london to the Thames valley which was UK’s (poor) imitation of silicon valley.
Since 2005 I have pivoted and commute into central london. I also moved from doing permanent roles with enterprise software companies to contracting doing cloud devops. Its been a very successful move. -)
Also the reason for companies moving to the centre of big cities is millenials don’t want to move to where companies are. By locating in central london it allows anyone in or outside london to commute in (potentially 20 million people to draw on).
For example Amazon AWS are based in Slough west of London because its cheap. But have offices in Central London now for over 5000 people because millenials don’t want to live or commute to slough. -)
PS Actually it easy to commute from Wimbledon to Central London. -)
@John LIght
Have you noticed that the kiosks are being ignored and customers are going straight to the counter to order? I meet a friend at McD for breakfast once a week (long standing tradition) and the new layout sucks (just remodeled), the kiosks suck, and it sure seems to be emptier in the restaurant while I am there.
Also, if you want to pay by cash, which I do 50% of the time, you STILL have to go to the counter and pay for your order after using the kiosk. So I just always go to the counter.
Problem at our local MCDs is during the morning commuter breakfast rush, all the employees are busy manning the dual drive thru, so if you walk in you get terrible service unless you actually use the kiosk and pay by card.
This topic is getting far too serious.
I can see what you are saying. Where I work we are easily 20 years behind. We still actively support Windows Forms applications. But having said that like you I do study and keep pushing as best I can new ideas. But I think I have a bad feeling about your analysis. A lot of those upper management types have about zero understanding what those buzz words mean? They hear Docker and go that is new and exciting and think we need to do that. Yes you maybe need to do that but do they young guys really know the reason, how to break a large process into small enough components to really see the advantage? I wonder. Also this rush forward misses one very large point. If your org has not learned how to create SOLID software. If you are still avoiding Unit Testing and TDD in general, your producing crap and take that same crap software and try to use CI/CD, Docker, Azure Functions and your just compounding the mess you created over the years and increasing your technical deficit.
Solid is definately good. I like solid. The more solid the better.
This is a pretty bad column to be honest. Chicago was DESIGNED to have people work in a downtown core and commute to further flung residential areas which eventually became the suburbs. For as long as I’ve been alive, this is how it’s worked. Even more crucial: many of those young and (let’s be honest here) utterly abuse-able IT types are still living at home, if you haven’t noticed. Dad’s house probably isn’t a River North loft either.
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The CEO and PR all claimed the move was to “revitalize” McDonalds with the kind of environment that is on display outside its new offices. They’ve been trying really hard to rebrand as a top “dining” option in an era when everything can be delivered, down to absolutely absurd attempts at viral marketing.
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In the end, most people eat McDonalds because its cheap, fast and there’s one nearby. The vast majority of their customers are not using UberEats to get it and never will.
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Which leads me to believe that the problem here is one that should be very familiar in IT: executives and decision-makers aren’t eating their own dogfood (no pun intended). They want McDonalds to be an alternative, on the same par, with artisanal sandwiches at the local winebar, because that’s what they eat for lunch when they have the choice. This move says to me that they’re completely disconnected from their customers if they believe that’s an attainable (or even profitable) market to chase.
In the early 70s I worked for BACS which was the UK organisation handling all interbank transactions every day. They started out in central London and then relocated to Edgware into an old airplane factory. Timing was bad as they were in the mid stages of building a new money transfer system using the then new ICL 1900 computers.
The team was about 12 analysts and up to 100 programmers. When they moved most of the analysts and programmers left as they did not want to leave central London. It did have an upside for me personally as after only joining them for a few months I found myself responsible for the implementaton of the new system which at the time was Europe’s biggest IT project. At the age of 27 with new recruits it was a mighty challenge but we delivered it on time under budget. Nobody seems to do that these days. Why not ?
I work in New Zealand one of our clients is a major entertainment organisation we have worked with for 10 years. The atmosphere and working conditions in IT are very poor. So anybody who is any god and can work elsewhere moves on. The only ones left are those who can’t work elsewhere. So we have seen the level of competence plummet as the talent pool shrinks. Unfortunately of course over the last 10 years many new technologies have emerged meaning the team have to handle tasks such as configuring smart phones websites, smartphone apps and cloud apps they didn’t need to before. That ratchets up the danger level
for catastrophies.
As a note on the world of political correctness we have seen personnel morph into human resources and newer terms such as People Experience. Do we need to rename anti-personnel mines to become anti HR mines or anti PX mines ?
@trashtalk: “definately” is not a word.
@Mick G: From a technical perspective, I agree with what you said, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t think you get how the software industry works. Look at any major software player and you’ll see that their business model is not based on making “solid” software (which, I assume, means stable software that doesn’t crash often and is designed to be as bug-free as possible). The software industry is built around designing “new” features that no one wants or uses so that software companies have something to sell you. If they would remove this cruft from their software, it WOULD be a lot more stable, but it’s important for software vendors that people be unhappy with their software so that they will be motivated to buy “upgrades” that just introduce more bugs, but are advertised as “fixing” problems.
Guys like novelty. It doesn’t matter how young or poor or old or rich men become bored with the same old thing and tired with their wives in the bedroom for the same reason. Men also don’t appreciate what they have or what they could have. This is why I change my look and take new pictures for my escort profile. Believe me when guys see what they like they have no problem getting solid and springing the cash. Personally I’m more into quality myself so a fit rich guy with no problems getting solid and good taste and is a regular is my preferred kind of client. If he wants more then he’s looking for a wife and this is an entirely different and absurdly more expensive calculation.
Software quality was better back in the days when escorts were paid for by business expenses. After the late summer lull guys turn a bit funny as we enter the mating season. All that pent up frustration finds its release and we’re in for the long haul. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a relationship between escort use and launch conferance season.
Granville, you nailed it. I had some hope for McDonalds when they put in the $1 soda. They need to bring back supersize.
http://indiots2.com/
@Doug: “But the Baby Boomers can’t move either”
Well, as a baby boomer myself (not that I think our generation is any better than anyone else’s), I have to disagree with your above comment…..at least for us older boomers whose kids are grown up and moved out and gone and really, the old paradigm of bigger multi-bedroom house in the suburbs is not needed other than for reasons of habit (which is a horrible reason to base one’s financial or lifestyle decisions).
Around here, plenty of baby boomer “empty-nesters”……married or not…..are selling their homes in the suburbs and moving to a more urban environment. And, if that’s
No, Bob, I don’t think “age discrimination” is any kind of valid complaint. If a baby boomer wants to compete with for the jobs that are moving to the city, let them move there. The businesses moving there seem to feel it makes enough business sense to do so. Besides, alot of us boomers have enough equity built up in our homes that it makes sense to sell them and downsize, and use the profit to help pay for living and lifestyle. t
“…..companies like Ford realize now that they are a software company that makes cars.”
Okay, I don’t want to go on a big off-topic rant, and I don’t mean to pick on or single out Bob for saying this…..but as a baby boomer old-school IT guy who was (and is) also a gearhead, hot rodder, former mechanic, built lots of engines, etc…..the above is NOT true and I’m really getting tired of hearing it.
Yes, IT has become a HUGE part of automotive design and execution. No doubt about it. And the processors, the code they execute, the data they manage (and the multitude of high-tech controls that produce that data) in the modern automobile is amazing and wonderful….and fascinating too.
As one of a thousand examples, take a look at the software tools that simply read, display and allow you to change a fuel delivery or ignition timing “map” on any modern vehicle. Great stuff. And that’s just passenger cars, the innovation going on in racing is an awe-inspiring level of magnitude even greater.
But this does NOT mean that automotive companies are now “IT companies.” The introduction of IT has ADDED to existing mechanical design but it hasn’t replaced it! An internal combustion automobile is still an automobile…and it was 100+ years ago.
A combustion chamber, crankshaft/pistons, cylinder head/valvetrain, braking system, suspension, fuel, ignition, yadda yadda yadda are all still MECHANICAL devices and components that still require mechanical design. The IT part of it simply has added a new level of, well……IT (and all that includes) to the control of those mechanical components which, when combined with designs that make best use of that digital processing power (i.e., IT), has resulted in a quantum leap in automotive capability.
But…..Ford (and all of them) is still very much a mechanical engineer/design/manufacture/assemble company….albeit a global one with plenty of 21st century manufacturing technique. They now simply have ADDED an entire IT/software design component to it. A critical component, to be sure, but it has not replaced the basics.
They are not a software company that makes cars. They are a car company that makes software. To me it’s a big difference. Will be happy to debate this with anyone.
Many aspects apply to other functions, esp. Finance and Accounting.
The key phrase here is about attitude:
“…older workers who are eager for new experiences of all types — are generally free to join the future. “
Yea this isn’t making sense for me either…. Chicago has a lot of IT in the burbs that’s declining for sure (Moto…) and there’s more options in the city with the likes of Amazon etc. but the Metra is expansive and generally reliable. I know more people riding in from suburbia than willing to live anywhere in the city that’s semi affordable. And that last word is the rub here. Are you telling me the kind of package to make a competitive offer to a yuppie in Manhattan (factoring in cost of living) is really that much more attractive to the bean counters than a tenured guy in the burbs with institutional knowledge?
@Ken Dee. Thank you. I’m currently driving a rental car that has innumerable (to me) alarms, beeps, buzzes, flashing lights and myriad other features that are supposed to make me safer. This car warns me when there’s a car ahead — after I’ve already applied the brakes. It tells me that there’s a car next to me (after I’ve already seen it in my (widely adjusted) side mirrors. It flashes a light on the passenger’s side of the car and beeps to warn me of this. (This adds to my passenger’s consternation.)
The car has a menu of options from which I can choose what to display on the instrument panel. It will talk to my phone, it’ll accept input from my MP3 player. It’ll heat my behind (I found this out on a hot day when I bumped the switch.
Ah, but there’s simply no way to adjust the seat to someplace that’s comfortable. The wipers don’t go fast enough to clear the windshield in a downpour. There are strange supports and brackets that intrude into the car’s cargo space.
In short, the IT guys have run amok with this beasie. But the things that I really need a car to do? Not so much.
And by the way, am I really so lazy that I can’t get up and change the TV channel at home? I can’t even be bothered to use a remote? At what point is the tail solidly wagging the dog?
Saying (in year 2018) that Ford is a software company making cars is just like saying (in the year 1990) that Ford is a robotics company making cars and is just like saying (in 1910) that Ford is an assembly line company making cars.
Ford does not sell IT, robotics, or assembly services for it’s markets, it sells cars (or now trucks/SUV’s)… Unless you are selling IT you are not an IT company and therefore renders IT as company tool to help create your product or service.
If Ford thinks they are an IT company then they are quite misguided.
Who uses the word IT anymore? Legacy systems stayed in the suburbs, the innovation department moved to the inner city.
I personally don’t mind learning new things, but when IT companies have stagnated wages for so long and offshored everything that can’t be nailed down (and even some things that are), the older crowd is a bit more gun shy about dealing with new things. “You want me to learn this new stuff AND require me to move to a location where the cost of living is skyrocketing, all without a change in salary? Are you nuts?”
There are IT companies whose way of “keeping costs down” are to dump all of the “older, high priced” people and either hire in Manilla or simply hire a ton of new kids right out of school. This works until IT needs the institutional knowledge that was thrown out the door. Or when the “new kids” read employer reviews like on Glassdoor and decide to pass on these companies.
From the above: “My old friend Adam Dorrell’s company, CustomerGauge, is having an event on September 14th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. I’ll be there as host, moderator and valet parking attendant.”
@Roger — any chance you can stop by and get us an update on the mineserver issue?
I think it’s disingenuous to separate even the curious from the incurious if all you’re really doing is trying to cut a ton of staff so you can hire cheap kids. The basis is unimportant. Honestly, the higher you raise the bar the more likely it is that you only keep the loyal and the desperate; people with options don’t put up with it.
My company is scared to death to move the IT dept because things are going OK (not great, not bad) and even saving some rent money or cutting some expensive old guys isn’t enough gain to risk a bunch of folks finding new gigs rather than adding a bunch of commute time. It feels unhealthy, but given how short my commute is I’m not going to disabuse them of that postion. 😉
@Cringely – here is a link to sort of analysis that you used to do on IBM:
https://slate.com/business/2018/08/ibms-watson-how-the-ai-project-to-improve-cancer-treatment-went-wrong.html?via=homepage_recirc_recent
These are the new charge codes. These are the McCloud Change Codes. And to you, they’re gold. And the old farts back in Oak Brook don’t get them. Why? Because to give them to those guys is just throwing them away. They’re for cloud coders!
I’d wish those old farts good luck but they wouldn’t know what to do with it if they got it. And to answer your question, pal: why am I here? I came here because Ronald and McCheese asked me to, they asked me for a favor. I said, the real favor, follow my advice and fire those old farts because a loser is a loser.
Don’t try to e-mail or text the McCloud Charge Codes back to Oak Brook! Don’t think Ronald and McCheese didn’t think of that because they did.
What? No. They just did, okay?
They just did!
@Donald R. — I suspect that that’s a private event and I’m not invited. (Like most museums, the CHM hosts many events as a way of paying the bills.) I will say that if you’re in the area, it’s well worth visiting the CHM if you have any interest in the computer industry.
You make some very good points, but what about outsourcing? Has that stopped? That was the trend of shedding IT, not embracing it.Then of course there the ‘business logic’ and ‘tribal knowledge’ that the ‘old’ developers have. In what was a lifetime ago, I worked at an alarm manufacturer. It took awhile to get familiar with all the terms and then the logic, for example you never really turn off a security system, even when it’s disarmed because it may still have to process a fire alarm event. I don’t think many of the healthy young people in NYC eat at McDonald’s and probably have no idea of the complexities of retail food prep, storage, transportation, etc. My thinking – some small group of devs will develop a solution for one, then just change a few labels and stored procedures and reuse it for different industries. They’ll make a fortune in consulting and maintenance fees. Keep up the great work! Thanks.
For those who ask “what about outsourcing”, this setup of consolidating into cities is meant to support those efforts in this sense. It is easier to bring over H1B Visa workers and have them consolidated in a particular location, and cities are the best place, from the companies standpoint, for this consolidation. You have your outsourcing locations working with you consolidated locations. Very efficient from a coast standpoint, which at the bottom line is the real driver for these efforts.
However, I do think, depending on the job role, you can get greater innovation working together in an office than working from home (the latter of which older, suburbia based IT folks prefer). A lot of the profitable innovation that occurred or was enhanced in my IT career resulted from casual hallway/office conversations, lunches, informal meetings, etc. I found this difficult to duplicate the last few years of my career when I worked from home in suburbia – you have to make a greater effort, people are not as easy to reach (lots of folks signed on to IM but not responding), and you are surrounded by your home distractions.
Fortunately, after 40 years in IT making a good salary and wisely saving and investing, I’ve been able to retire with no need for any paid work unless I choose to do so. So this is not something I am wringing my hands over.
“Ford is a software company that makes cars?”
I’ve never heard that . But if they believe, that might be why they’re in danger of going bankrupt.
And maybe somebody said that to Elon and he believed it. If it were true–that software matters more than hardware in a vehicle, Tesla would be in good shape.
TESLA:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-03/tesla-s-model-3-is-the-best-selling-electric-car-in-the-u-s
http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla-q1-2018-vehicle-production-and-deliveries?ReleaseID=1062670
Elon Musk reminds me of Darius Tanz, who can do almost anything, even become president of the US, whose supercomputer invention, called Tess, is currently controlling a space flight to save mankind from an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Of course, he didn’t run for President, since he has no interest in politics or money.
“Ford is a software company that makes cars?”
…and Microsoft is a software company that makes a turkey!
As one that has had to move to four different states in a decade time span (without and with kids), I tend to cringe at some of the remarks in the article and in the comments section. As much as McDonald’s thinks they are going to be taking advantage of some supposed upside to downtown Chicago, my experience tells me this experiment will be less than a decade old. To be blunt, Chicago is starting to show signs of what happened with Detroit in the late 60s/early 70s, now more apparent with Mayor that cut the deal with McDonalds, Rahm Emmanuel, now cutting and running on what was envisioned as a 3rd or 4th term reign. The taxes for workers (white and blue) in the city are high, the infrastructure is showing its age, and the police/educational systems are at best compromised. As for bringing in H1-Bs to live and work in Chicago… one only has to have a couple of reports back in the home country of the lawless Chicago to turn that option into a joke as well.
“I question if most of what is going on is if the younger workers are simply lower cost to employ because they have less work experience than older workers.”
It may be a combination but I did see that there was a big push across all companies (public and private) to push out “seasoned” staff and replace them with green recruits. Single-focus jobs became the norm while cross-training withered. Pigeon-holing the folks with wide-and-deep corporate infrastructure knowledge lead to frustration and attrition. One left to be replaced by 3 rookies who (maybe) could resolve issues in 3 times as long. These rookies only got experience in one type of project and then left in similar frustration. Then the cycle repeated.
I attribute the nearly-identical reports across all large businesses as the result of standardized MBA degrees. A lack of understanding of IT with cost as the only commonality. Make each job a cog and replace cogs as needed. Who cares about corporate brain drain until 5 or 10 years down the road when that MBA will have moved on the leave the shell as a problem for someone else to fix?
“when that MBA will have moved on the leave the shell as a problem for someone else to fix” ????
Who uses the word IT anymore? Legacy systems stayed in the suburbs, the innovation department moved to the inner city.
[…] on why IT is urbanizing and “moving to city centers where the labor force is perceived as being younger and more agile“. Ironically the move to virtualisation in computing is having an effect in the real […]