Have you tried rebooting?

Icon 1 Bedroom Loft for Rental, Singapore!

// June 2nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Blogroll

I currently have a 1 Bedroom Loft Unit for rental at the ICON, Singapore.

The unit is tastefully done and will come fully furnished. If interested, please contact +65 82285492 / +65 90620235.

Available immediately! $4200 Neg.

External Facade

Kitchen

Dining Room

Entertainment Unit

Downstairs Toilet

Stairs

Upstairs Toilet with Sunken Bath

Upstairs Bedroom

Expensive Printer Ink

// May 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

Have you ever fallen into the trap where the printer that you bought was such a steal, only to find that when buying replacement cartridges that the cost of the replacements would potentially have bought you a new printer?

Today I came across this article explaining why HP printer inks are expensive and it is a very interesting justification from HP about how ink is expensive to develop and etc.

But seriously, like everything else, technology improves! And as it usually is, you get more for less. You don’t see mobile phones getting bigger with lesser features? You don’t see laptops getting smaller with lesser processing power. And you don’t see hard disks sizes larger and prices increasing exponentially? It is just the way it is with technology. And while I don’t know the exact numbers/dollars involved in developing new laptop, mobile phone or hard disks technology, I’m sure it is not cheap.

So how is that printer ink is still so expensive? I’m sure they sell buckets load of ink every year, so volume is not a good enough excuse either.

So for now, I suppose we shall all stick to writing on paper. Oh wait, do we still use lead pencils? 

Busy cloud…

// May 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blogroll

I have recently changed jobs, and have been pretty busy catching up with new technologies and products. So for those who are reading, blog updates will potentially be sparse until I get settled in…

Meanwhile stay tuned.

Does staff loyalty still exist?

// April 22nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Technical Know-It-All

Before I joined the work force many years ago, I never quite understood why employees these days rarely stay beyond 3-4 years in an organisation. Are those days where employees work for 10 years or so in a company gone, or is there something that either the employers/employees aren’t doing right?

Now, after being in the industry for a while and experiencing it first hand, I think I’m beginning to understand more. Here are my views from a techies standpoint.

1. Technically sound professionals are usually very loyal to an organisation if treated right. For techies, 2 key factors play a part in this. The opportunity to learn or upgrade their skills and their relationship with their reporting managers. While monetary returns are usually important, it is probably not the most important element when it comes to techies. Techies like to be challenged and need to stay sharp, that is why training is essential. Being stingy on training because of cost (economic conditions) is not exactly the best of excuses because cost is usually easily allocated to other departments that are perceived to be more important than the IT teams.

2. Relationship with the manager is probably the key factor behind staff loyalty that applies to all fields. If you can’t get along with your managers, no matter how much you like your job, it is always gonna be a challenge. Truthfully, there are only 2 ways around it. Live with it or just leave. Many experienced techies usually leave an organisation for greener pastures but lesser experienced techies will just live by it. I used to be in the “live by it” class, but I have come to realised that change might not be such a bad thing. I guess if its already bad, it can only get better right?

3. Company loyalty = Staff loyalty. Organisations these days are so much about dollars and cents that they forget that it is the people within it that drives the business. A happy staff equals a profitable company. Why don’t organisations realise this? Google isn’t up there because they slave drive their staff. Imagine programmers dragging their feet to meet a dateline, and marketing staff slacking off. How is that gonna help Google? Many companies are getting rid of the junior staff in favor of senior staff with the reason being, “bad economic conditions”. How many junior staff does it take to equal the salary of a senior director (that has potentially led the organisation into this mess)? Staff loyalty only exist if company loyalty exists. Period.

4. Cronyism is another big factor that deters many from staying in an organisation. While it is more discreet in Western work force, it is exceptionally prevalent in Asian organisations. Everyone likes to be boot-licked. Yes, I do agree. But we must be wary that it does not become a dominant culture. I’m not saying that all brown-nosers are incompetent, but the majority of them are. This will severely impact the organisations performance, not to mention that you will potentially lose valuable staff because of this. Techies like myself, just despise cronyism. Why? I suppose we are just geeky and we like to stand for whats right I suppose. .

Re-Training Technical Staff

// April 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

“We have a new product and you need to get up to speed with it. Please make sure you learn it up”

Sound familiar? I suppose it is something that we get all the time as techies. I do understand that, we are paid to be techies because of our ability to grasp technical concepts and understand them easily. But sometimes, I feel managers should understand that technology is not generic. There is a significant difference between the skillsets of an IT Engineer and a NASA Engineer. Agreed?

While it may be possible for an application engineer to be a database engineer overnight, it is usually very very difficult. Even if they were to achieve it, they are usually not going to be as good as someone who has been working with databases all their lives.  It is becoming so common these days with the various mergers and acquisitions in the industry, that tech staff have been asked to learn various contrasting disciplines and given little time to get up to speed on it.

I always believe that in order to convince a customer to purchase your product, you will have to first know and believe in your product. Obviously, that is not the case. Tech staff are constantly blamed for not knowing the product well enough and not enabling the sales team to perform better.

Bottom line is this. Give your techies time to get there, and provide significant investments to get there. Do not expect to have your techies learn a new skill without providing training and equipment. You don’t get good at riding a bicycle without a bicycle now, do you? If speed is of essence, invest in a new headcount. Contrasting disciplines are not easily attainable overnight. For example, don’t expect a Storage Area Network (SAN) expert to be a Wide Area Network (WAN) in 1 week. The only thing common between them is the word “network”.

Horses for courses!