Jul 3, 2006 | General
As many of you know, I’ve been turning some of my attention to the topic of finance and investing (the results of which you can find on my alternate blog at www.ThinkingAboutMoney.com). While most of my focus has been for somewhat more advanced investors, it occurred to me that there’s one beginners group that desperately needs financial education – new college graduates – specifically those with tech degrees.
New graduates with tech degrees suddenly find themselves making real money – in many cases for the first time in their lives. In our consumer society (devoted to separating us from our money), it’s not uncommon for them to quickly find themselves in debt and living from paycheck to paycheck.
So I wrote an e-Book called “The Graduating Geek’s Guide to High Finance” that contains the most important information they (if not everyone) needs to know about personal finance (the kind of information that isn’t taught in school). It also contains some of the career advice/wisdom that is traditionally handed down to newcomers from jaded industry veterans.
Sample topics include:
- Money Isn’t Everything.
- Wealth isn’t Income.
- Start Today, well actually – tomorrow.
- Think twice before you spend.
- Time is Money.
- The Tax Man cometh.
- A Piece of the Action.
- Stock and Stock Options.
- Investing.
- Start a business.
- Going Independent.
- Corporate Myths.
- Buying A House.
- Insurance.
- Trust No One.
The Graduating Geek’s Guide to High Finance is published as an e-Book for $3.99. Now available on amazon.com.
If you’re interested in a review copy, contact me via Email.
Jun 15, 2006 | General, Society & Politics
With news of Gates’ planned retirement from Microsoft, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on his extraordinary accomplishments:
- He founded Microsoft
- He managed to maintain a majority stake and control over Microsoft.
- He recruited a team capable of managing Microsoft (in so far as any company of that size and built-in degree of chaos can be managed).
- He built an organization strong enough to carry on running Microsoft without him.
- He’s leaving Microsoft so he can spend his time making the world a better place by working on health projects and reforming education (something desperately needed).
While one might credit some of these to being at the right place at the right time, and one might disagree with some of his actions along the way, one can’t help but being impressed by these absolutely remarkable accomplishments.
Given the resources he brings into play with his foundation, and his talents, it’s just possible he’ll make a real difference addressing these problems. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he makes more of a difference than some of the governments who are supposed to be addressing these problems.
I, for one, commend him on his decision, and wish him all success on this venture.
Jun 5, 2006 | General
I’ve been thinking about money.
Odd isn’t it that we in the technology field have so much to say on everything from technology to politics, but hardly ever talk about money? (at least our own – we’ll talk about a company’s money, especially when they are stupidly losing it).
For all that we tend to make a good living, it’s amazing how many of my friends find themselves struggling financially to various degrees. Is it possible that we’re so busy struggling to keep up with the newest .NET framework features or server technology that we never bother to learn about finance beyond the clich’s (set aside money for retirement, diversify through mutual funds, etc)?
I’ve always been one of the few authors and speakers who has incorporated economics and psychology into my work. I’ve long advocated the blasphemous idea that you should choose a technology based not on what’s new or cool, but based on what is the best economic choice. And we all know (though we don’t necessarily admit it) that many technological choices are actually emotional rather than rational (the pseudo conflict between VB .NET and C# being a classic example).
Anyway, it seems to me that since most people reading this are highly paid professionals, all of us (at least those who’ve been in the business for a couple of decades) should be pretty well off – possibly ready to retire. And I’m quite sure those who are newer to the profession would very much like to be pretty well off within a couple of decades (or sooner, preferably much sooner). But I also know that for most of us it doesn’t work out quite the way we hope. And that got me thinking. Thinking about money.
So I am about to “fork” this blog. I’ve decided that right now, along with continuing the semi-futile fight to stay up to date with the newest technology, I’m going to spend some time learning about money. I know a fair amount, but there’s a lot I don’t know, and I don’t trust any of those financial/investment web sites and books that claim to know “THE SECRET” to instant wealth (or even long term wealth). Instead, I’m going to study the topic, with the same focus that I’ve been known to apply to technological topics.
And I’m inviting you to come along for the ride. The best way to learn something is to teach it, so I’m going to write about the things I learn on a new site www.ThinkingAboutMoney.com. I invite you to join me for the ride.
Jun 1, 2006 | Society & Politics
The three comments on my previous post, along with some conversations elsewhere, have led me to think a bit on the nature of written communication in the information age.
Consider this comment: “You clearly don’t have any idea of what you are talking about. Unsubscription from the VB5 guy’s blog is in order” and the one that follows: “Surely you can have an opinion without resorting to personal comments.”
Now the interesting thing about the first comment isn’t that the reader disagrees with me – even most Microsoft folks will admit that google is still better on search (Gates implied as much at the D4 – All Things Digital Conference this week). It isn’t even that the reader made personal comments.
It’s that the personal comments were so mild.
It wasn’t too many years ago that virtually every forum or discussion board on the web was not only illiterate, but would frequently degenerate into massive “flame wars” where insults and personal attacks became the order of the day. Frankly, I haven’t noticed too many of those recently. In fact, take a random sampling of any discussion board from slashdot to most blogs and I think you’ll find them remarkably civil – at least compared to earlier days.
Some felt that the reason flame wars took place was the lack of immediate feedback that comes from posting on a discussion board. It’s easier to disregard someone’s feelings if you can’t see their expression while disagreeing with them. This still applies, but now it seems more common for people to respond critically to personal attacks. Perhaps as a result there is a sense that personal attacks reduce your own credibility? (If only that worked with political campaigns).
Another interesting phenomena I’ve seen is especially among younger people – the quality of their writing has improved dramatically. Fifteen years ago when teens showed up on our local BBS discussion boards, most of them could barely string a coherent sentence together (much less spell the words correctly). Today, thanks to Email and IM, teens write all the time, and the results are noticeable. Most may not be great writers, but the overall quality of writing has improved dramatically.
Between increased civility and better writing, participating in NET discussions has, frankly, become much more pleasant than it used to be – at least from my point of view. I’d be interested in hearing if any of you who have been around for a while have noticed this as well?
May 6, 2006 | Technology
One of the terms I hear often when people talk about search is relevance – which I interpret to mean the ability of the search engine to return the result you actually want. To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to this. Like most everyone else, I’ve been using google for a while, and the results were quite acceptable.
When amazon.com launched a9.com, I switched to it immediately because I was able to get the best of both worlds -Â it was serving up google’s results, plus giving me a small additional discount on may amazon.com purchases.
Last week I noticed something funny though – the search results I was getting didn’t seem as helpful as I had come to expect. In some cases I would type in a search term that I knew should quickly bring me to a particular site whose URL I had forgotten, but it wasn’t on the first or even second page. I couldn’t figure out what might be wrong. Then I took a closer look at the a9.com page – the web search was now by live.com – which I guess is the beta for Microsoft’s new search. I then retried some of the searches that frustrated me on google, and sure enough – the sites I was looking for were right there near the top. Google also proved much more understanding of spelling mistakes than live.com – a good thing since spelling is not my strong suit.
I don’t know what the future will bring in the search engine wars, but this is the first time that I’ve really had my nose rubbed in the fact that not all search engines are equal – and Microsoft indeed has a long way to go.
May 1, 2006 | Technology
It’s not every day I see an ad on TV that makes me laugh out loud, but tonight I saw one by Apple that pulled it off. Two men appeared on screen. On the left, a Bill Gates look-alike suffering from a very bad cold (one of 114,000 known viruses that knocks him down – aka causes him to crash – before the commercial is done). On the right, an “I wish I still looked like that” Steve Jobs imitator who is, of course, naturally immune from such illnesses.
The irony of course, being that today is also the day that MAC OS appeared on the SANS top 20 vulnerability list, a fact that was picked up by many news services. Of course the MAC and Safari has always had vulnerabilities – just a lot fewer than Windows and IE. And the fact that today Apple got a lot of bad press because SANS released a new list has more to do with hype and marketing than security.
The new from SANS only served to make the ad even funnier, though I suspect the humor is a bit darker than Apple had in mind.
Apr 25, 2006 | General
Earlier this month I was at the Dev Connections conference in Orlando. One of my most intriguing experiences was seeing a contrast between two of the speakers (sorry, I don’t remember which ones – call them A and B). Speaker A was showing off his latest and greatest combination cel phone – email – multimedia – camera – browser – toenail clipper device. He was describing how it allowed him to make use of every bit of “dead time” for answering Email and keeping in constant contact with work. Speaker B also had a nice phone, but she described how she only checked Email a couple of times a day – that because it made it easier to stay focused on work and concentrate.
The fact that software developers need quiet time to concentrate is undeniable – I think that’s the reason many of us work at night – there are fewer distractions. But what really interested me here was the contrast between the realtionship these two speakers have with their technology.
I love tech toys as much as most anyone, but I’ve become more and more aware of the degree to which the technology owns us, and the demands it places on our time. Cel phones give us connectivity, but also have the power to interrupt our lives multiple times each day. Windows is a powerful OS, but how many hours of my life have I spent installing, updating and configuring it? Frankly, I’d rather not think about it.
Of course, there’s nothing new about this. From cars to homes, we work as hard to keep and maintain them as they do to shelter and transport us. But somehow tech seems more invasive. And where homes and cars have a primary claim on our cash, tech seems to demand time. Time to learn, time to maintain and time to use.
One thing I bet we have in common – we don’t have enough time to learn and do all we want. Obviously, when you’re in the tech business, tech command a great deal of your time. But one can’t help but wonder – are all those extra gadgets really saving time? Or are they actually stealing it?