July 13th, 2005
I read an article written by "Ivan Tribble" (a pseudonym) over at the Chronicle. Ivan was part of a committee, at a small college, looking to hire a new professor. It just so happened that a couple of the people vying for the position also had web logs. Ivan's argument is that the majority of web logs are highly innapropriate for someone to get a job with - and that may be the case. However, one person, in particular, caught my eye:
Professor Turbo Geek's blog had a presumptuous title that was easy to overlook, as we see plenty of cyberbravado these days in the online aliases and e-mail addresses of students and colleagues.
But the site quickly revealed that the true passion of said blogger's life was not academe at all, but the minutiae of software systems, server hardware, and other tech exotica. It's one thing to be proficient in Microsoft Office applications or HTML, but we can't afford to have our new hire ditching us to hang out in computer science after a few weeks on the job.
Now, I have a real problem with this. It seems as if the position that this person is going for is not immediately related to technology, which is fine. However, Ivan seems to think that simply because this person has a web log that discusses technology, that he would immediately run off to another part of campus. Can't a person's hobbies be different from their profession? If a person had a web log dedicated to cooking, writing, politics, or philosophy - would that person immediately run off to be with people of a similar interest? The whole notion that having interests that aren't inline with your profession, and being vocal about them on the Internet, is a negative attribute is ludacrous.
Tags: academic, business, blog, blogging, blogs, research
1 Comment on 'Blogging is a 'Problem''
July 6th, 2005
Jobazaar is a new take on combining tagging with auction-style job sites. The premise for the site is that an employer makes a post offering up a job, prospect employees join and post their bid onto the job. This is all virtually identical to a number of other job-bid websites - a popular one being Rent-A-Coder. I'm going to review, first, the concept of job bidding and then the value added by this web site.
Job Bidding Personally, I really dislike job bidding. It may seem like a 'great way' to find work, considering that there are so many jobs listed (on popular job sites), but the truth is that in order to actually win a job you have to drop your total bid to a demeaning level. I find that for jobs that I would normally contract out to about $25/hour end up being close to minimum wage, instead - which is highly impractical. Personally, I feel that blind 'auctions' really are a better way to acheive a better result - since no one can know what the lowest bid is, no one can undercut it.
Jobazaar Differences The main difference between Jobazaar and any other job-bidding web site lies in the fact that it uses tags as a categorization system, and I'm not entirely sure if it works as intended. Application developers seem to be missing the fact that tagging does not make for a good 3rd party categorization system. It's good for finding your own items because you're the one writing the tags. You may say 'web' and 'perl', I may cay 'cgi' and 'lamp'. The advantage to having a strict categorization, like what Rent-A-Coder has, is that you know exactly where the jobs are that you want (for example 'Perl > CGI > Databases').
The two aspect of Jobazaar that I like is the fact that you can track job postings in your newsreader, using rss, and that they have a public blog available, soliciting feedback. Both of these are incredibly useful - and a smart decision.
In a nutshell, I don't think that Jobazaar adds that much value to the typical job-bid model, available elsewhere on the Internet, to warrant its existence. Unless it begins to gather a serious userbase (which it doesn't have, at this time), it may be too late for it to work at all.
Tags: jobazaar, programming, review, jobs, tags, tag, business, bid, auction
3 Comments on 'Jobazaar Review'
May 21st, 2005
A topic that has intrigued me, lately, is the freedom that some companies are giving to their employees - 'allowing' them to explore some topics that interest them (and yet, still benefit the company) and not just menial product-upgrades.
Probably the most widely known instance of this freedom is Google's 20% Time. Google allows their engineers to explore topics that interest them and yet are still related to the overall goals of Google. Products like Orkut, Google Movies, and other handy add-ons have come out of this.
The next case that I became aware of was the Atlassian Fedex Day. Even though it has nothing to do with Fedex directly, they're goal was to give the engineers a day to develop some new products, using new technologies, and ship them on the same day.
Finally, and probably my most favorite, the JotSpot Hackathon. JotSpot provided their engineers with pizza, drinks, and candy throughout the day, in turn creating handy add-ons which they felt would be of use. A lot of neat Ajaxy things came out of this which will greatly benefit the end-user.
It definitely seems that these freedoms (especially the all day hackathons) bring the employees together and allows them to have some fun with their otherwise drab working environment. This is something that I'm going to keep in mind as I start getting my company off the ground.
Tags: google, freedom, jobs, employee, business
3 Comments on 'Employee Freedom'
March 6th, 2005
With some recent buzz concerning social computing applications specifically targeted at making business connections, and I think some of them deserve a mention here (at the very least).
- LinkedIn - I got the chance to play around with this site and really enjoy this one concept: endorsements. To make a connection with someone, you must 'endorse' someone's work. This is very interesting: You end up getting this network built purely on trust. My assumption is that you won't add someone unless you feel completely secure in the fact that they'll be a good reference for you. Then, when it comes time to search for people to fill a position at a job you can easily see which people are most trusted and respected. I like this a lot. The amount of information that LinkedIn allows you to put up is impressive too, it gives you a better feel of who someone is. I'm definitely going to play around with this more and report back. (My Profile)
- Orkut - Google's semi-failed social computing application. One notable difference between this and the rest of the generic social applications is the ability to add business contact information. Profils have three views: Social, Romantic, and Business. This is interesting because Orkut has obviously pinpointed three target groups for their application and are hoping to provide specific information for each. Their business information leaves a lot to be desired, but it's a start in the right direction, I suppose. (Username: jeresig)
- Ryze - Another application similar to LinkedIn, with a notable difference: The amount of information that you are able to provide is severly limited. For example, there is no way to list skills that you may possess, clubs that you participate in, or even any information concerning your schooling. I'm not very pleased with the interface or with the way that personal information is presented. I really recommend LinkedIn over this application. (My Profile)
- Eliyon - This isn't purely social computing, per se, but more of an advanced search engine (and feels very scammy, but anyway). I was contacted a while back by one of their spiders requesting that I provide more information for my profile - I was intrigured. What this web site does is spider around the Internet looking for references to people and when they may have worked at a certain company - it seems to be very effective at doing this and is rather exciting! For example, I was able to find my old boss (when I worked at BrandLogic), even though no information was physically entered by him. The big issue with this 'service', however, is that in order to search for everyone from a corporation you must pay money, which kind of puts a crimp in the 'social' aspect of this application. (My Profile)
One interesting point about all of these applications: They all implement utilities to restrict the amount of communication (and potential spam) that you could receive. They set it up such that you can limit the number of connections away someone can be to view your profile, or even contact you. For the time being, I've placed no restrictions on my accounts to see the level of spam that is received.
Tags: applications, business, computing, social
Comment on 'Social Computing in Business'
