WatTF? - Jim Murphy

This just in from the “Stuff you already Know Department”: Computer and Telecom jobs pay well in Canada.

I was looking for income distribution information in Canada from StatsCan - or anywhere really. I never did find the histogram I was looking for but I did find out how completely out of touch it think the StatsCan reports are.

In a 2007 Report: “Earnings in the Last Decade” there was some raw data that looked promising. Risking a severe social faux pas I have to say it always amazes me where the average household income levels sit for our supposedly rich country - ($35K). I know my wife and I don’t feel all that rich even though we make considerably more. In fact this feeling is what made me go looking in the first place. I we feel the pinch what are others doing? Again - we ain’t rich!

So here is a quick chart I put together that summarizes income distribution in 2002 for sectors where I find my friends and family working:

What suprised me the most is the choice of income binning. The definition of the quintiles shows at best anachronistic pay expectations. In my sector 41% - almost half of the population is binned in the$ 25/hr our more slot. This is just plain shoddy work. I know people in this industry that work from $20/hr at the low end to over $250 per hour and beyond. That distribution is neatly packed away in the >$25/hr or more category. This is actually the information I was looking for. What a joke. What’s more insidious is the implied systemic reenforcement that $25 is rich. Raise your sites guys.

When compared against other sectors you can see why the quintiles are defined as they are. For those in the golden triangle that like to promote advanced manufacturing as our core industrial strength and future - give your freakin’ head a shake. Pay is shit and work is slipping to Asia. Open your eyes.

So I’ve had a low priority background thread spun up for a year or so learning Ruby and more importantly for me Rails. Some of the guys at Mindreef have ported our Struts/Spring/Hibernate web app front end to Groovy + Grails so I’ve been watching that go pretty well. For a Java guy thast a pretty compelling way to go. But, nonethless I’m spending time with the Ruby Language in parallel.

I really like Rails/ActiveRecord/Scaffold - I think thats a significant innovation over the swamp that is XML configuration in Java. I’m going to keep learning Ruby but I constantly find syntax weirdnesses that make do a double take. Here’s a list of my ‘Ruby Smells’ that I’ll add to asI go:

1. Conditionals - anything other than false and nil is true

1 if (0)
2    puts "zero is true"

2. Equality - How many ways can you say it and quick what does each mean?

1 o.eql
2 ==
3 ===
4 o.equals

Quick now, quick!

3. Tease me with curlies.

1 def foo
2    puts "This method definition would look better with curly braces, end makes me feel like a VB programmer.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that."
3 end

Like:

1 def foo
2 {
3   puts "this would be better"
4 }

My brain is wired to use curly braces to guide my eyes when reading code, especially someone else’s code. I realize its not necessary or transparent so this is an area I will adjust but, then to see them liberally sprinkled everywhere else seems like a complete tease (blocks, Hash defs etc.).

4.@ Notation for instance fields and @@ on class fields and the $?

1 class cat
2   @wiskers=4
3   @@feet=4
4 end

A syntax only a mother could love. Syntax inspiration from Perl and PHP - not a good choice, IMHO.

Hopefully I’ll add more substantive Ruby Smells over time. Feel free to send me yours.

Ok so thats not a cool post title but I need to get this thought out of my head.

Why is Google Maps or Flickr at the center of every cool mashup ever made? My answer: because when you mashup you are gluing together components and usually making a very thin pseudo-application. Since Google Maps and Flickr is such an awesome applications/component your +1% of coolness rides the coat tails.

Programmable Web has a little pie chart showing the breakdown of its mashup index. Together Mapping (40%) and Photo (10%) make up 50% of mashups today.

I wish there we other compelling mashable components. I’m thinking of making one and would love to talk it out with a friendly collaborator that can tell me how stupid I am. Let me know if you have (or could formulate) opinions around mashups, rich graphics, infoporn and charting - especially if you think Google Charts is a nice first step.

Chris Anderson’s recent Wired article Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business reminded me of what might be real challenges in these indirect business models where your revenue comes from your non-primary identity. It seems there is the potential for pretty internal cultural clash or at least drifting away from things that pay the bills because its so far removed from the primary activities of most of the company.

The prime example in this category:  Google. where >98% of revenue comes from Adwords/Adsense.  The company has plenty of products that don’t have anything to do with these - like docs, earth, picassa etc etc.  They make money over here (Adwords) so they can build products over there. (Google Earth)  From a product management perspective it seems that creates a real tension.  And potentially a disconnect.

In the traditional model where you sell what you build there is an innate corrective mechanism.  If your product sucks then no one buys it.  So you improve it in certain ways then  sales increase.  You get to learn from the market and discover what works and what doesn’t.  Customers ask for stuff they would pay for (sometimes at least) and you build it.  The feedback loop is direct - still incredibly challenging to actually do effectively but but direct.

Now with indirect business models its hard to say what works.  If and when revenues plateau or, gulp, decline, for Google is it because they missed a feature in docs? or picassa or earth?  The product development folks are so far removed from where and how the money flows it seems its easy to get off course.

Am I just old school?  Or, is there something here to watch out for?

Its ingrained in our culture that you can be whatever you want to be if you just try hard enough. Schools and employee evaluations look at meeting standardized levels of ability, focusing on areas where we underperform. The everyday notion of self improvement implies that we should shore up our weaknesses to enhance our lives and the lives of those around us. Laudable but maybe we have the wrong perspective.

StrengthsFinder 2.0, a book, website and survey by Gallup Press leverages research of over 10 million people looking specifically at happy and successful people. Instead of looking at weakness, find your innate talents and guard against your “anti-talents”.

“People have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies”

I can’t help but recognize the negative focus on weakness as part of an overly industrialized approach to human development. Its as if there is a “one best way” for people to be. This point of view is so at odds with creative endeavors that I’m excited to recommend to anyone: buy the book, take the survey, find you talents and play to your strengths.

From the StrengthFinder 2.0 34 talent themes my Top 5 are:

• Command
• Competition
• Activator
• Input
• Self-Assurance

If you’re interested to know what those mean or what the output looks like download my personal Strengths Discovery Report. Though I imagine its much more interesting when its about you. I should add that the survey is more than just getting binned into these categories and getting a horoscope at the end. Your specific answers are cross-tabbed with over 5000 insights that give specific ideas on how to take action.

Thanks Larry for the recommendation.  You were right.

I have to agree with Jevon MacDonald concerning the non-existence of Enterprise 2.0.  I mean people are still defining Web 2 and we know it takes forever for the enterprise community to get with the digerati - if they choose to at all.

I agree that there are no budget dollars allocated to “Enterprise 2.0″ applications.  Its a style not a product.  Adding things like social networking, informed information push and light weight mashup to existing applications and projects is how Enterprise 2.0 will arrive.  Like SOA, you can’t buy it.

Of course that means that if you have a cool young Enterprise 2.0 software concept you need to think long and hard about what problem you solve and who’s already solving it or who’s in a position to incrementally tweak their incumbent product and swallow your market before it develops.

The SOA space continues to consolidate and Cape Clear’s acquisition by Workday is the latest headline.  I’m not in the know of how Cape Clear has actually been executing lately but suspect they don’t have as much customer momentum as they portray on the outside.  Hence the viability of becoming internal technology to a Saas provider like workday - and ceasing availability of thier ESB offering.

Details from the Release

• Workday has reached a definitive agreement to purchase Cape Clear Software, Inc.
• Cape Clear has been recognized as the industry’s leading ESB by top research firms, including Forrester.
• The acquisition will allow Workday to accelerate its efforts to support customers with packaged and custom Integration On Demand.
• Cape Clear will become Workday’s integration team, based in Dublin, Ireland, with additional resources in Walnut Creek, Calif.
• Annrai O’Toole, chief executive officer of Cape Clear, will join the Workday management team as Vice President, Integration.
• The Cape Clear solution will no longer be offered standalone and will be available only as part of Workday Integration On Demand.
• Workday will continue to support existing Cape Clear customers.
• Financial terms are private and Workday expects to complete the purchase in 30 days.

So is this a portfolio consolidation on the part of Greylock?  Given the level of investment over the years (sine 1999)and the fact that its really an internal private acquisition by another startup I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision. It does allow Annrai to continue to operate in Ireland which may be mostly whats its all about - dunno.

eWeek reported that LinkedIn will be launching the LinkedIn Research Network.

I’ve been an active LinkedIn user for years.  I like the ritual of adding folks to my network as a next step after you exchange cards/intro emails or face-to-face meetings.  Its a handy tool to keep building “relationship momentum”.  But I’ve been waiting to see what LinkedIn would do with this stream of social info.  It was my first exposure to a social network since it appealed to my stoggy business networking needs but has clearly been outpaced by the likes of mySpace and Facebook - at least for the < 25 group.

The financial research use case seems like a well targeted tool.  I’d be curious to track uptake - maybe through the number of unsolicited research requests I get about my customers or associates?  It sets a precedent for others directly taking advantage of MY social network connections - that isn’t directly tied to advertising.

My pet concept is to track rate of change by person and company of individual profiles and make this available to recruiters or others interested in tracking what a company is really doing.  Funny how obvious this semi-public resume primping telegraphs a person’s intent or taken in aggregate a company’s direction.  Seems like I get recommendation requests from people right before they plan to jump ship.

As I said earlier, 2 Chimps vs. 1 Gorilla? I’ll take the Gorilla every time.

1. Google doesn’t mind this deal going through at all. Google knows they will be able to outrun a “Microhoo.” Why do they know that? Because they’ve been able to outrun them both separately. As I said on Channel 5 news on Friday night: put two turkeys together and you don’t get an eagle.

Read more about the challenge of monetizing Email and IM - or the inability to in the rest of the post.

Presentations are emotional events, even when technology is the subject. So many technical presentations fail that. This is one of my favorite technology presentations. Its by Dick Hardt, CEO of Sxip.

He used Lawrence Lessig’s “influence” presentation format, who this past November gave an incredible, 18 minute presentation at TED entitled: How creativity is being strangled by the law.

Cool.