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Here I am at my third Starbucks location for the last 24 hours. I worked at the Starbucks location in Woodland Hills throughout yesterday. I started today at the Starbucks in Atwater Village, and I ended the day at a Starbucks in Canoga Park. Aside from Chipotle Mexican Grill, Starbucks Coffee Company must be one of the best investment choices to make today. A steady stream of customers can be observed at each of these locations, and a Starbucks location with a T-Mobile hotspot can be found almost anywhere.

I have recently been working at several cities. My service radius appears to encompass Corona and Calabasas Hills. The drive to Corona, which is approximately 55 miles away from my principle location, is quite enjoyable, even though the time to travel (1 hour) is comparable to my rush hour morning commute to cities such as Marina del Rey (24 miles in 1.25 hours) and Calabasas Hills (34 miles in 1.5 hours). Long commutes are simply a part of my life’s story. I’ve been commuting since high school (15 miles) and through my first year of college (56 miles). I love driving, especially when driving conditions are favorable.

I drive to distant locations, and I require quick access to the Internet in order to fulfill my responsibilities. T-Mobile and Starbucks provide the infrastructure for easy Internet access wherever I go. As long as I am at a city with a sizable population, I’m sure to find a Starbucks location, and I am almost always available when the shit hits the fan.

The worst-case cost for an average 30 day month is: 160USD (40USD for the connection on a monthly basis + 30 days * 4USD for a Venti Mocha Frappuccino®). The cost for easy access to the Internet can possibly be reduced to 80USD per month with Sprint’s Mobile Broadband Solutions, but I am willing to pay a premium price to work at a place where people hang out instead of a place where I am alone. 160USD per month is certainly worth access to the networks that I manage, and the connection has been very valuable when compared to the currently unreliable service at home.

Adam Knight exemplifies the burnt out tech worker and voices his frustration in AppleCared: My Life Inside Apple and AppleCare. Knight was employed as a customer care representative at Apple for four years before he decided to start a business venture with his friends. His daily responsibilities at AppleCare were mundane, and his position seemed not to have potential for personal growth. Knight suggests that desirable jobs are those which do not cause workers to suffer a “slow inner death.” Having to take the same types of calls, solve problems with scripted solutions, and receive usually negative customer reactions may shape a highly optimistic and friendly techie into a calloused and uncaring one. The transformation is accelerated as technicians realize the improbability of change in their work.

Knight’s job can be classified with other seemingly dead-end jobs that are routine, low-level, and require some technical expertise. Management typically reduces turnover for these jobs by providing incentives to workers. Knight states that Apple provides such benefits, which include healthcare and 401(k) retirement plans with some matching. Apple’s management was quite successful in keeping Knight for more than four years, but they were unable to minimize his growing dissatisfaction with his employment. An external catalyst, such as an opportunity with a high degree of failure, was simply needed for Knight to act.

Keeping Knight’s job from becoming a career and passively encouraging him to leave the company may have been an optimal business move for Apple Computer. It is easy for such a big established company to treat turnover lightly. There is almost no possibility that an Apple technical support representative can become a competitor to the company after all. Within most publicly traded companies, loyalty between company and worker is absent. A publicly traded company is most interested in short-term gains that please shareholders, instead of building long-term shareholder value through thoughtful development of a company through its workers. The proposed method, which is more active in countering turnover among workers, might not be applicable for large corporations and is recommended for young nimble companies.

Small companies within a niche of a specific industry might not be able to afford the pride that allows turnover to run rampant, even if such employee turnover is experienced in departments as critical as customer care. Affordability depends on a company’s position in a particular business sector, their ability to replace workers, and their workers’ utility to competing businesses. A representative that is skilled in communicating with customers of a particular business, for example, can be very useful to competing businesses. Representatives are usually aware of their company’s business flow. They are familiar with the problems that a company’s customers face, and they are knowledgeable of their solutions. Allowing such representatives to leave a company causes the company to incur obvious turnover costs.

Turnover causes companies to also incur hidden costs. Allowing even customer care representatives to leave a small company is, in essence, assisting other small companies in the same business sector to become tougher competitors. Inputs from these workers are very welcomed at competing businesses, and the reception of their inputs is almost guaranteed at small businesses. Gaining workers from a competing company is a way to level out the playing field, but simultaneously keeping workers from defecting to other companies and drawing workers from the competition makes the field more favorable to the company.

To minimize turnover among these workers, management needs to be more active. Churning or shuffling workers within the company is a possible solution. Having workers shift responsibilities makes the work place seem a little more dynamic. It makes it less boring. It allows workers to have experience with different parts of the company. Small companies have great potential for growth and opportunity. Providing more exposure of the business to workers grooms these workers to take up future opportunities that the company will provide.

Beyond the lazy basics of retirement plans and health insurance, management needs to actively develop the company through more constructive perks for their workers. Management can develop products, but unfortunately, most of these product developments do not implement themselves. It’s the people, stupid! People are capable of developing superior products and providing superior delivery to customers. Developing people is business development.

Education is the primary reason that churning workers is effective in minimizing turnover. Being more explicit about a company’s interest in educating or developing their workers personally displays the company’s loyalty and trust in their workers. Small companies may want to encourage loyalty within employees through formal education and training. Although there are risks in making a worker more marketable to competitors, these risks should be minimized through further actions by management. Surely, if their newly developed skills are useful to potential employers, their skills should be useful to their current employer. Increasing salaries is the common lazy approach that managers use to maintain workers after they have received certifications or developed new skills. A more active, well-planned approach will create an environment that makes a departure from the company unthinkable. Education of workers serves as a clear indication of the company’s motivation for worker development and retention. It evidences the company’s efforts against worker replaceability, and it is a great gesture of loyalty to its workers.

Smaller businesses face many of the same problems of bigger businesses. Small companies face job dissatisfaction among its workers and employee turnover. Smaller businesses, being more nimble, are able to use solutions that are infeasible to employ in monolithic companies. Small companies often consist of only core people; the minimum needed to function. Maintaining the core is imperative for small companies to succeed and grow. To develop a small business for growth, management needs to grow their workers into a team. They need to develop their team to develop their business. Once their team members are nearing their respective limits to contribute to the company, the company needs to expand those limits through formal training and education. Put simply, a commitment to the team instills a commitment to the company, and the success of a company with a committed team is boundless.

boot·strap tr.v. 1. To promote and develop by use of one’s own initiative and work without reliance on outside help [as if pulling one’s bootstraps to elevate oneself]

I love determining the source of technical problems and administering solutions, and my ability to do it in computing was fostered by my experience as an automotive technician. I was introduced to the concepts of flat rate and clock time during automotive shop in high school. People who earn a wage are very accustomed to the concept of clock time. They earn money on the number of hours that they work. Salaried workers work under a flat rate. They earn a predetermined amount of money over a specified time period, which is usually a year. The manner that a technical person is compensated, flat rate, clock time, or a mixture of both, affects efficiency, and this relationship is worthwhile to explore.

Some automotive technicians opt to be paid an hourly flat rate. Chilton’s service manuals are a common reference for determining how much time a task requires. If a technician is paid $20 per hour and a complete brake job is specified to require one hour, for example, the technician will be paid $20 to complete the task. The technician will be paid only $20 even if he can complete the job in thirty minutes or in six hours. If the technician is highly proficient and a steady stream of customers is supplied, the technician may be able to complete three brake jobs in an hour. This would allow this technician to earn $60 per hour. If this technician was able to perform consistently, the technician will earn the hourly flat rate of $20 per hour for 120 hours in a 40 hour work week. This technician would be earning three times more money than a colleague who is paid on clock time and is earning $20 per hour.

In the event that business is slow, people who work at a flat rate receive some pay that may be less than a worker on clock time, but the amount they receive is usually enough to keep these workers from looking for another employer that can supply them with more work. Retaining a proficient worker with a good average job completion time is generally a good business practice.

In order for the flat rate to be beneficial for both the company and the technician, the technician must possess skills that are above average and the company must be capable of providing a satisfactory supply of work. The worker will be able to produce results faster, which allows the worker to earn more income and generates more revenue for the company. The model seems more effective with smaller task units, since bigger task units tend to overrun their respective estimated completion times. It should be easy to see that a worker will consider abandoning a bigger task when it becomes obvious that the overall compensation is not worth the additional time and effort that is required to complete the task. This results in incomplete or untimely work, unhappy customers, an unhappy company, and a less than happy worker.

The lack of a standard reference for the amount of time a computing task requires is a significant problem in implementing a flat rate compensation arrangement. Technicians are perhaps the most accurate people in measurement, including estimates in the amount of time a task takes. Professional technicians understand that their reputation is always at stake when they express their technical opinions. This includes opinions on subjects such as feasibility, utility, and costs. Buyers should beware. There are also technically inclined laypersons, who perform computing tasks as a side job and are not interested in forming long-term commitments. So-called “technicians” who are looking for a simple “hit-n-run” are the people to avoid.

Making adjustments to the flat rate or estimated completion times to more closely match a proficient technician is a common pitfall among businesses, which can only see short-term cost reduction. This approach encourages the technician to place less priority on these companies’ tasks and seek other companies that are willing to pay a better flat rate or recognize an estimated completion time that is closer to the average. Businesses that focus on the short-term expore themselves to the risk of having their tasks’ completion times extended, losing their proficient technicians, and exposing themselves to technicians that are more expensive or less adept.

Paying technicians on a flat rate with a minimum fee as a retainer is an option to getting more small to medium technical tasks done quickly and efficiently. If a company receives benefit that is greater or equal to the costs incurred, and the technicians are content, then there should not be any reason that this arrangement needs change. Technicians that inflate short-term costs by adjusting time estimates or their flat rate will encourage companies to search for alternatives. Businesses that deflate or underestimate costs by adjusting time estimates or the flat rate encourage technicians to consider servicing other businesses, which are quite possibly competitors. In the long-run, the interests of the technicians and the businesses that they serve will drive their service terms to equilibrium.

A post on slashdot.org notes The Continuing American Decline in CS as evidenced by the dismal performances of US students at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

The original story at businessweek.com suggests that the poor showing of American students at the competition is A Red Flag in the Brain Game. Of particular interest are the responses to the article that are available on the businessweek.com site. Ignoring the movement of computer science curricula from intense, rigorous study of algorithms and theoretical computer science toward team and project management, many commentators present a pessimistic career outlook and unsatisfactory compensation for US software developers as the causes for their lack of motivation to excel.

As usual, these commentators blame external factors, which they implicitly suggest are beyond control. Today’s computer science, with the exception of programs that focus on theoretical computer science, places less significance on algorithm implementation. Computer science in the US is biased toward software reuse and extensible design. Many programmers are unable to create a robust implementation of quicksort, but they are able to perform their jobs with a simple qsort() function call.

The contest participants needed to independently study various algorithms more closely in order to be more competitive. These students are committed to their decision to be computer scientists in an environment where software development jobs are being outsourced and compensation is poor. They had the option to focus development of their competencies in low-level code fragment implementation and win competitions, or they could use their time in school to develop skills for the management of nontrivial software development efforts and prepare themselves to bring software engineering ideas to the industry.