Posts made by StorageNinja

@tonyshowoff said in Nine Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds:

Well, I remember when a good engineer could make $125K a year, now they're lucky if they make $60K. In IT it's roughly a similar drop, but even lower, most IT guys I know make around $40K, some as low as $20K. That's just nationally. Obviously certain markets like Silicon Valley, New York, etc will be shift upward, but the difference is seemingly the same

A Good "Engineer" can still make 125K.
As far as software developers the BLS reports a median pay of 103K per year for 2016.
Network and Systems Administrator median pay for 2017 is $81,100.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/network-and-computer-systems-administrators.htm

The BLS tracks trending and historical data, and they show that these professions have outperformed the market, and have a forward projection to keep doing so.

I'm not saying the data points you have are anecdotes, but I"m curious why your sample size doesn't correlate with what the federal department whose job it is to track these things?

I will note that pay for SMB IT has gone to crap, but it was never that good to begin with. The majority of IT jobs are in enterprises (because large companies have small armies of people).

And I'm totally disregarding all those people on SW, especially those who threatened to kick my ass for pointing out ITT Tech was a scam, who claim they make $80K+ working at a local doctor's office or credit union

Doctor office IT is disappearing as private practices go away. Many are being absorbed into larger hospital systems (who have large central VDI teams etc), those that don't tend to 100% outsource their EMR, and people like Cerner become their MSP. Now Credit Unions and Regional Banks can still pay reasonable IT wages FWIW. There's a lot of trust and compliance in these sectors and while the smaller ones outsource the core financial platforms, there's still a lot of nitty-gritty stuff that needs to be done right or risk money/fines. 80K there isn't unreasonable.

@tonyshowoff said in Nine Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds:

Nine out of every 10 Silicon Valley jobs pays less now than when Netflix first launched in 1997, despite one of the nation's strongest economic booms and a historically low unemployment rate that outpaces the national average.

Can we clarify something? Wages DO NOT EQUAL Total Compensation.
Wages may be stagnant, but that doesn't mean compensation isn't up! (FWIW mine are not, and the raises for the time I've worked for a Vally Company they exceed inflation).

So If my base pay is said 100K, but they give me 50K in stock every year on a 4 year vestment schedule (1 year cliff, quarterly thereafter), then at the end of 4 years assuming the stock doesn't go up or down I"m looking at 300K in compensation tied to me staying there year over year.

Now let us say the stock goes up (Many Silicon Valley companies are hypergrowth companies). Lets say it doubles after the first year. Now that first grant is worth 100K instead of 50K (so 25K per year instead of 12.5K per year). So my first 365 days take home is now 125K at vest cliff. Lets also say the company is doing well and a variable bonus is paid out at 25% of the base so I'm at 150K on that 100K in base wages. Not bad? Now year two, let's say it doubles again. Now that first grant is going to deliver 50K per year, and the second grant will deliver 25K so I'm at 175K before bonus. This can continue to rise as long as the stock goes up (which can be stupid amounts for some companies) or as long as the RSU's keep getting refreshed every year (until whatever the RSU age limit is, so say 4 years). At this point, the base salary is a joke compared to the stock compensation. Now let's say I'm kicking ass and my companies becoming less popular, or the stock isn't doing anything fun and another cool company comes along and wants to hire me? They are not going to pay me 300K a year, but what they will do is offer me an even bigger pile of RSU's to offset the giant pile I have at vestment ( as well as the company is the next big thing so I can ride this mountain back up).

Also if I enrolled in ESPP and maxed it out at 15K for the year, that means if it doubles I got 30K in stock for 12.75K in post-tax money (assuming RSU's are bought at a 15% discount).

Now here's another scam... If I hold those RSU's and ESPP for a year from vestment (not a good idea initially for someone with low diversification, but for senior people not uncommon) then I can get taxed on that at Long-term capital gains rates rather than income tax rates. If I'm in a state that has it's own income tax structure (California, North Carolina) this delta can be massive. This tax dodge right here, and the fact that the company can pay you tomorrow, with a cheaper per $ asset today (Stock) is why wages are not going up. Given the choice between being paid 200K in cash, or 100K in cash, and 200K in stock that costs 50K today what muppet would want higher wages to pay more taxes on, and what company would want to burn more cash now on compensation?

Throw in the fact that companies will report "non-GAAP earnings" where they exclude forward stock liabilities (which is bullshit, but I digress) the company can look to outside investors to be more profitable than it is, but taking the stock compensation method.

@DustinB3403 said in Nine Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds:

To be fair, a lot of them likely do make a ton of money, just not for the area. But when a 1000 sq ft house cost $400,000 on the median your 6 figure paycheck is a joke.

Work for a Silicon Valley company, but do it while remote in a low-cost state. The ultimate scam.

The other thing that's annoying here is the use of Wages in this article. Wages are pay per hour. Salary is differnet (It's the pay tied to what is quoted per year and broken down for non-hourly work, or the sum).

@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

They are slow as fuck in most environments

Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?

Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).

Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?

Couldn't it do both?

Maybe, I mean you CAN control thin clients with GPO, but not normal thin clients.

Correct. The thin client itself I see managed by either thin client management tools (Terradichi) or by MDM API's.

@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:

if you are a SaaS vendor looking at building software that uses MongoDB somewhere, you'd better get a lawyer looking over this license and how it applies to you.

This is becoming a bigger issue as the biggest SaaS vendors hide behind this clause more and more with incredibly proprietary forks. They offer very little to no actual core development or contribution and it goes against the previous method of GPL code getting funding.

It annoys me, as the legal headaches of contributing internal only use code back will block some companies from using OSS, but I see it both ways.

The startups who are doing a lot of the core housekeeping of NOSQL platforms are learning they can't find a business model. This is getting messier and messier.

@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?

Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

Chromebooks just seem like the best physical solution for delivering it at the endpoint

Unless I need redirection capabilities that ChromeOS can't do.
Need serial redirection for a cheque reader?
Need WAN-efficient printer or scanner redirection that's seamless and can be managed by GPO to devices and work with EXISTING devices that are required for xxx compliance?

I LOVE Chromebooks as end devices. Sadly they don't work everywhere yet...

@travisdh1 said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

@jmoore said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

@Carnival-Boy I understand your point of view. However I will say that myself and probably others would change jobs if the pay and other conditions were right.

2. I'm stuck in xxx market for yyy reason. Despite TONS of jobs that would pay 40% more, I can't or am unwilling to work around it. On one side It's "My spouse doesn't want to leave her family". On the other, it's "I have a divorce and would effectively lose custody of my child". Some are stronger than others but they are at the end of the day a personal choice.

I found that when I was looking at a 40% increase in wages, it also coincided with a 75% to 150% rise in living expenses. Even id10ts can do that sort of math.

The fun game is there ARE jobs listed in Silicon Valley that "for the right candidate they would take remote". That's how I found mine. They generally don't mention the last part.

@DustinB3403 said in How do YOU demo VDI?:

VDI is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. You run a desktop environment for a set of users on a hypervisor in your server room or COLO.

or public cloud. Citrix, VMware can both run from AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud etc.

@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:

If I had a nickle for every customer that "...knows what VDI looks like and how it acts, hard to find anyone that doesn't use it or something that looks identical regularly." I could buy a single piece of nickle candy.
Not in the real world: "Showing off a physical thin client hardware device is kind of pointless as you can describe it perfectly... it's exactly like a normal computer running the thin client software, but with a smaller computer that costs "less" (often they cost more.)"

Assuming the demo can be done over an H5 client with H.264 I would have them login from their machine..

@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:

@DustinB3403 Maybe we should get back to the base question, since I already know how VDI works. I'll rephrase the question. When you walk in the door to demo VDI, what do you have with you?

My laptop, my phone, or my iPad. These days I show them WorkspaceOne (a SSO broker) as it honestly solves more remote access problems than VDI.

@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:

@scottalanmiller The customer MUST see their local printer, Electronic Signature Device, Meter Reader Scanner, Barcode Scanner, and a sundry of other business specific peripherals, Software and workflows function correctly before they agree to anything. The demo need to function for a time of up to a few weeks.

I'm not looking to argue about ANY aspect of VDI, just curious how others are doing it.

I used to work for a VMware partner. We maintained our own in-house environment that we could do PoC's off of. For the list you are describing you would have either a Horizon View, or a Citrix environment you can demo off of or a hosted environment that can demo some things. VMware has the "TestDrive" program that lets you use a hosted environment to test things. You would talk to the VMware or Citrix SE's to help use their solutions if you don't have one.

@JasGot said in How do YOU demo VDI?:

Cloud based VM on slow ASYNC cable ISP connection for large file usage when the file is in house

That's just stupid. If you move to hosted VDI, you move your files to it. NORMALLY you deploy VDI to the gravity well of where the data or latency sensitive application is.

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:

I bet the traditional thin client market is all but gone. The cost just doesn't make sense any longer. Given that alternatives are so common, so cheap, and so good, what use case remains for dedicated thin client branded hardware today?

While I agree we are seeing ChromeOS become a common thin client (it supports Horizon BTW) a few things in defense of the old brick...

1. Environmental. Some of the thin clients are designed to withstand crazy temperature, shock, dust etc. Throw in that they also are often ARM-based in leads into...

2. Low Power and weight. Every pound I put on an oil rig, needs 7 pounds of metal to float it. Go over 55 pounds and now fly something on a helicopter and need a boat. Weight above xxx requires another 2 man case for the marines, or can't fit in an overhead bin on a plane. There are MASSIVE niche markets where logistics of power and weight matter

3. Supply chain. Can I get a replacement in Kenya in under 4 hours? What about Bowerston OH in 2 hours? Shelf spares work for some, but having a spare PLUS a technician who will sort the migration of xxx matter to others.

4. Lifecycle tooling. Terradichi exists not because of PCoIP but because of their stateless Zero Clients ability to be destroyed and require ZERO effort to get full firmware etc upgraded to where it was before. As firmware security gaps become a bigger deal the lack of out of band lifecycle on a lot of IoT devices on ARM turn them from cheap to a nightmare. Aramco and other nation-state attack targets don't give a flying fuck about capital cost if it becomes the source of the next threat vector.

5. Compliance. A Wyse Thin client has passed xxx,yyy,zzz compliance requirements. They may be stupid tests that show if a child licks it, they don't die, or if it lights on fire it doesn't produce toxic smoke, but they sent them to a lab and spent the money.

6. Weird device redirection support as part of a certified end to end solution. Healthcare doesn't have the staff to verify workarounds, or 3rd party vendors like Impreveada may not certify your cheaper solution. A hospital who's spent a 9 figure some deploying EPIC and Cache doesn't give a shit about saving $50 on a thin client if they don't know up front "it's just going to work and my vendors will not complain".

7. Some thin client vendors will offer 10 years of support. Just like HDS VSP's, there is a market for people who don't have to replace everything in 3 years.

Not every company see's economic value in becoming an integrator.
I agree Chromebooks are a rising force in end-user computing (Google was a major sponsor at VMworld the past few years for this reason). ARM is powerful (I'm installing it on my PI3 this weekend). That said, VDI and thin clients are neither dying anytime soon, nor are they the future of End-user computing. I'd encourage you to watch Brian Madden's "is VDI Dead" session.

Youtube Video

@jmoore said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

@Carnival-Boy I understand your point of view. However I will say that myself and probably others would change jobs if the pay and other conditions were right.

I talk to a lot of people about changing jobs (My company pays decent money for referrals!) and I see more than I expected of the following...

1. I don't want to travel for work.

2. I'm stuck in xxx market for yyy reason. Despite TONS of jobs that would pay 40% more, I can't or am unwilling to work around it. On one side It's "My spouse doesn't want to leave her family". On the other, it's "I have a divorce and would effectively lose custody of my child". Some are stronger than others but they are at the end of the day a personal choice.

3. I'm unwilling to spend any time/money on acquiring any skills that would increase my value to employers above its current one.

4. I'm strangely loyal to a company that doesn't pay me enough.

Currently survey's show a LOWER demand for moving than at previous times, so labor that is willing to move can get paid a lot better than before.

@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

If the learned enough technology they would stop being a recruiter and get paid more doing Technology (I know one recruiter who did this).

That's why they don't learn the tech, but learning enough tech to be able to do the job seems like a logical level.
Plus I know recruiters who make way more than normal IT. But those know the tech, too.

You know what we call someone who knows enough IT, has good organizational and communication skills. An IT manager (or possibly a Project Manager). While it's true the high end (headhunters) can make bank, the majority of having this overlap I assume would leave before they get there.

@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

2. There are a LOT of industries where you don't have to know how to BUILD xxx to identify people who are good at it.

• Real Estate agents and Building Inspectors don't know every facet of building a building.
• Venture Capital (Don't know how to run every facet of a company but they know how to assemble a team).

Yes, BUT...

1. IT isn't one of those, at all. It's about as opposite of that as you can get.
2. Real Estate agents need tons of knowledge, training, and certification around those things before doing their jobs.
3. VCs know about their business. That's not like recruiting.

1. Agree to disagree...
2. I could become a real estate agent in a week. Let's not pretend the test is hard.
3. VC and Angel investors best value isn't the cash they bring to the founders, it's the people they bring to fill in the gaps. The relationships and talent. Do you need a head of sales or HR or marketing for the next billion dollars unicorn? As a founder, I"m going to talk to my VC. At the carnival level of this, you see this on SharkTank where you see someone pick Cuban on what is on paper a worse offer because they think he has the right connections to get them where they need to go.

Going on a port (wine and place) tour, and maybe a visit to the fortress in the morning. Flying out for Barcelona for one last night in EU before back to Texas.

Also trying to learn more k8 skills.

@NerdyDad said in I am going to start an ISP:

@Reid-Cooper Tell that to rural America that is still on less than 1 Mbps speed DSL while cities like New York, Dallas, and LA are pushing towards 1 Gbps. Given, it is the peoples choice to live in rural America, but the phone companies also have no interest in upgrading their infrastructure because the ROI is crap.

People who can't live without 50Mbps do not live live in non-rural area's. In theory, a WISP might open up housing markets for people like me who work remotely but the other inconveniences of rural life (no 1-2 hour delivery for groceries/Amazon, poor restaurant choice, crazy bad schools, long distance to airports, poor job opportunities for my spouse) stack the deck that the Total Addressable market is going to grow much except for area's JUST outside the city that a telco will eventually expand as they get denser.

You have to hope for a large enough TAM to break even, but NOT too BIG of one that Comcast comes in and fucks up your monopoly. Welcome to being an ISP where your break-even can't get too good before someone ruins it. Also, your access to capital for refresh can dry up at any moment, regulations could 10x your operational costs.

@jmoore said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:

@scottalanmiller Those are all good points. If I was a recruiter and cared about my job then I would want actual IT experience myself and follow a forum like this. Seeing what people contribute and their solutions would just be "gold" I would think when looking for someone.

Your viewpoint is based on outside recruiters actually caring that a person stays 1 day longer than 90 days (what it takes to get them paid), or that the people who use outside recruiters know how to judge talent and interview them properly (they don't, or why wouldn't they have in-house staff deal with this?) or that the people who use outside recruiters know how to broadly communicate their skills and network (to be blunt, they likely wouldn't be using an outside recruiter if they had a strong network).