Content farms: Troublemakers

There are some genuine concerns about the fair search; content farms apply SEO techniques to come on the top of search rankings and infest the results with not-so-valuable content. This is a double edged sword. First, Web searchers spend time in searching through these results, and secondly, loosing advertizing revenue to low value websites deters the future advertisers.

Content farms also increase overhead for Google. These not-so-valuable results have to be indexed, re-indexed, stored, managed, searched and presented.

Hail storm of search engines launches (recent years) has raised the bars for online search community; netizens expect better results, if not quicker. In the era of IBM Watsons, Google can’t let content farms spoil the party.

Error in judgment:

A Noble idea, without noble Karma, leads to nothing. At the first look, the Idea of attacking content farms appears to be bright and logical. But the way Google is tackling this problem is not going to make any difference in the long run.

Google does not have the semantics to pick valuable content over non valuable.  Stemming is the biggest stretch of linguistics inside Google search and no stemming algorithm can differentiate “content farm” from “content of the farm” (Artificially Intelligent).

Google runs on the keyword frequency analysis not on the contextual understanding. Content is judged important based on some input, say keywords. Same content can be more important for one set of keywords but not for others. In absence of semantic algorithms, reducing the relevancy of web results using some pre programmed algorithm, against the domain names, is against the free nature of the Internet. To kill a bad fish, no need to poison the water source.

Google has no way to segregate content of one website from another, except statistical proximities. Remember that Flubber movie; content farms are flubbers; predicting their shape is not possible. Google needs to judge their semantic overlap against the knowledge they represent. Otherwise, new domain names are sold at less than a dollar a month, and the Flubber can take new shape.

Google searches for the characters, it can neither understand what you are typing in, nor does it make sense of what a web page is conveying. Content farms have thrived on this weakness and SEO hormones. If the content farms decide to just reverse the order of their low value sentence, they will succeed in fooling statistical algorithmic changes.

I have been harsh on Google. But until it starts to apply semantics, syntactic and structural constructs in tandem, nothing is going to change for the web-searchers. Applying semantics is not easy and cannot happen overnight, so; in the mean time I have an extra suggestion.

One Suggestion:

I want to point towards Google’s SearchWiki, my personal favorite. SearchWiki was Google’s mass scale, collaborative search effort. It was a way of customizing and personalizing search results, by user. Each web searcher can re-rank, delete, add, and comment on every single result (domain), which Google throws at him. And his preferences will be applied in all future old/new searches.

SearchWiki was released on November 20, 2008 and discontinued on March 3, 2010. Google replaced it with two things, one was Google Stars and another was SideWiki for sharing annotations. But they are nothing like SearchWiki.

As a piece of unasked advice, let the web-searchers control the quality of their search results/domains (Till we have semantic capabilities). Let us decide on the content farms (Bring back SearchWiki); don’t impose. Someone’s pennies can be other ones wealth, let the content farms live; after all Wikipedia is also a great content farm.

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites – FreeDigitalPhotos.net


IBM Watson Innovation

IBM’s Watson, king of the Jeopardy game, has proven the obvious. On the final day of the game it defeated all time best of the Jeopardy (Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter ), winning $77,973. Credit for this victory goes to IBM, Dr. David Ferruchi and his teams. This is déjà vu of IBM’s Deep Blue Supercomputer match with the reigning World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov (May 1997).

“Deep Blue Supercomputer” is passé in front of IBM’s new innovation. Watson is context aware and artificially intelligent. It can resolve the context and ambiguity of English text; navigate through Terabytes of memory and look for right results.

Did I write “look for right result”, Oh! I am sorry it is a bad phrase; Watson is claimed to cognate the human brain’s cognitive process by its statistical experiences over “unstructured and structured” knowledge base. All is done under 3 seconds using ninety “IBM POWER 750” servers, 16 Terabytes of memory, and 4 Terabytes of clustered storage.  Its microprocessors are written for the software stack to address that need of specific applications (like Jeopardy).

Powerful hardware is combined with amazing algorithms to give high confidence answers.  Capitalist world will not ignore this golden goose. But for a general TV viewer and journalist “The Technological Apocalypse” is approaching; some are concerned about (even) the skilled jobs, like financial analysis, medical diagnostics, and technical support going Watson’s way.

Watson is not an invention, it is an innovation

Let me reconfirm, Watson is here to assist you; not to take over your jobs. A program which can answer “Toronto”  in the category of “U.S. Cities”, and is unable to judge the thread between Rocky 1, 2 and 3, can repeat the wrong answers of its competitors and can only play jeopardy; is not going to replace you, yet (longer yet). Knowledge and Questions are both created by humans and Watson does what he is told to do.

Breath easy, relax and recite this mantra 5 times “Watson is not an invention, it is an innovation”. Watson is to language semantics what iPhone was to mobiles. Watson brought various concepts of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Language Processing under one patched umbrella. To achieve what Watson just did has to be an effort of Machine learning experts, speech/knowledge representation/ information retrieval/ rule engine  engineers, Linguists, Ontologists, media artists, programmers and tons more. Scope of the Watson in confined only to a single sentence, it is the scale which deserves a standing ovation.

Watson Family

For the people in the domains of Language Semantics or Artificial Intelligence Watson is an “engineering marvel”, “modeling genius” and “marketing success”. It is the result of 100’s millions $ spend over four years. IBM has the budget for this and others don’t, so IBM can win jeopardy.  That said, it’s the winner which counts, not the others.

Keeping aside, the amazing publicity for IBM, and the top of the chart rating for Jeopardy; Watson is a big success for the whole Language Processing fraternity, we have struggled for years to make people understand the difference between “Google and Semantic” search. I am glad world is trying to understand (by itself) “How and What Watson just did?” Venture capitalists are bubbling up the Web 2.0; I believe Watson phenomenon will attract them to the technology which is the future of mankind.

Watson & the Future

Watson is fine tuned to play the game of Jeopardy; it understands the rules of the game.  It can take risks. But Watson is no thinking machine, it is a specialized machine to play jeopardy, it can resolve the context of small sentence or facts and then formulate an answer (using the deep/fast knowledge base).

In the practical world, Watson runs on very thin line. Its humongous infrastructure cannot be supported by mega businesses of today. It is fit for worldwide “repository/ service/ cloud” of question and answering. But real world problems/solutions are not one liner semantics. They are complex & infested with human traits of culture, intelligence, voice, taste, touch, vision, smell and emotions.

As a search engine Watson, stands face to face with Google search. Which is kind of dumb, fast, popular and a market leader. Making dent in the search engine market is not an option for Watson; it’s too expensive and slow for this area.

I am sure the creators of Watson have some interesting business proposition in mind. Those who ride an elephant have to feed him too.

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Wikileaking

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks needs no introduction, what may be left to achieve is a “Nobel Peace Prize” or an Oscar (like Ben Hur, or Titanic). Right now, offering this honor is more significant for the reputation of the award giving institutions.

WikiLeaks has changed the way we will look into the state/national/corporate governance, and the way sensitive information is shared online. WikiLeaks has proven a daring collaborative leaking model, what I call “Assange Model”, by grabbing the biggest-of-world by their balls and then holding on to them. This will shape the next big thing on the internet called Wikileaking (Just like personal blogs/blogging). Although, Wikileaking is not a word in any language, but it is a newly coined term that is in the process of entering the common use (neologism).

Wikileaking: Wash the “dirty lining” in the public, “Do not Keep Quite, Please”, “Mankind before Land kind”, “Do ask do tell”,” No liar left behind”, and “We the People, reserve the right to screw anyone”.

Wikileaking Framework

Leaking sensitive and sensational information on the Internet is not a new thing; it’s been done for decades. But it was relatively harder than what it is now. Every genuine informant has to answer some questions to him:

Where to leak? Is the platform safe? Can I get away? Will I be shielded? What if they come to know? What if I was wrong? They are stronger and well connected. Law never kept Blogger at par with Journalist. Blabbering on (social networking) can cost job. Internet usage can be traced.

Now you have some streamlined answers. Platforms and architectures are cropping up to address secrecy issues, such that, Wikileaking can enter mainstream internet.

Frameworks/applications like WordPress and bloggers.com (many more) were the major reason behind the rapid success of blogging. On the similar path, GlobaLeaks is a project to create worldwide distributed “Leak Amplification Network” supporting whistle-blowers all around the world. The final goal is to reach a network of independent organizations running GlobaLeaks Amplification Routers allowing anonymous submission of sensitive material to media (journalists, bloggers, activists, unions) at local/regional level.*

Wikileaking Websites:

Many websites are launched in recent months inspired by WikiLeaks (Follow on Twitter). These websites cater to the specific markets like Environment/Country/Region (NYT). This Buzz is similar to that of initial days of blogging. They are moving slow like an elephant but once they enter mainstream they will gain unstoppable momentum.

One such whistle blowing site is OpenLeaks. It is run by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Julian Assange’s former No.2 at WikiLeaks and a previous member of German hacker group the Chaos Computer Club. Germany based “Green Leaks” has more environmental friendly motto: “We publish big and little stories. Sometimes information will be of international significance, where it deals with climate-change, shared territory such as the oceans, international projects or the conduct of multi-national corporations and government.”

One more environment friendly leaker, EnviroLeaks “encourages ordinary people with access to embarrassing and potentially disruptive information, to submit it for review, with the intention of it being published as a publicly accessible article”.

The Balkans are not keeping secrets anymore “BalkanLeaks”. Russia’s answer to WikiLeaks- RuLeaks. How can Brussels stay behind ? BrusselsLeaks. Indonesia leaks.  Tunisia Leaks, and lot more.

Media like Al Jazeera has launched ““Al Jazeera Transparency Unit”,
and the New York Times are also setting up pipelines for leaking online information. Soon, every mainstream newspaper will have an online Wikileaking platform, same way as blogs.

Everyone has something to leak. Netizens have email address, blog, website, social networking profile in few years a Wikileaking profile will also be added, but it will be secretive. Credit for all this go to the spicy model by Julian Assange, “The father of Wikileaking phenomenon”.

Disclaimer:

We (AbhishekMehta.com) do not promote any website listed here as authentic or unauthentic. Please use your discretion while leaking sensitive information.

Facebook bubble

Welcome to the glamorous rebirth of Web 2.0. Now this is a world of real pundits for the virtual blasphemy. The Pundits of Citibank, Goldman Sachs, etc are of even higher breeding. Their words are sermons and “Thou” should follow. Goldman Sachs, from its holy tower, has sprinkled the Facebook with $50-billion valuations.

So, who cares?

The other Web 2.0 companies – that’s who.

Others also got the Mojo. GROUPON, Twitter, Linkedin, Zynga etc. and etc. are wasting no time; they are hiring bankers and planning to go public.

In the mean time, “We The People” should understand the new world order: In future, our dependence on Air travel will be minimized because families are connected through Facebook, do not look for cheap deals as we have GROUPON; “toys r not us” when Zynga gives online games and the institution of companionship is surplus because Playboy will be launched on Apple. That is why, Goldman Sachs has valued Facebook more than United, American, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines combined. Double the size of Starbucks twice that of DELL and much higher than EBay, Staples, TimeWarner and bla! bla!

Bubble Candy for Virtual Nirvana

Let me get off the jokes and into the reality. Here is why, I believe we are entering into the Web 2.0 valuation bubble.

Recent research published in ACM, “Business Impact of Web 2.0 Technologies”, author Stephen J. Andriole did a research, designed to measure the impact of the business value of all Web 2.0 technologies. Research was aimed at pharmaceutical, chemical, real estate/mortgage, information technology, and financial services industries. Regardless of the industry, author found a gap between what was expected by the businesses and what actually occurred (read more). I cannot agree more with the findings based on my own experience. Established players in industry are becoming less convinced and more tired of mega success model what Goldman Sachs is posing.

Market research has shown that up to 40% tweets are self promotions. And in November 2009, Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to an Australian company “USocial” for selling fans. USocial had package of buying 1000 to 1-million Facebook fans at varying price range. Nothing has changed; these activities are still very common for Twitter, Facebook etc. Does it make sense to claim 500-million users when hundreds of “USocial” exist in this world? It is like “A dollar saved is a dollar earned”, and now you have 2 dollars.

GROUPON has rejected a $6-billion offer from Google and is planning to go public. Google turned around and planned “Google Offers”. This proves that Web 2.0 models are not hard to replicate, and your competitors will reach your market without a Supply Chain Management hassle. That’s exactly what Facebook did to Myspace. Facebook made $500-million (estimated) profit last year. Valuations of 100 times current year earnings appear to be unimaginably bloated. This is déjà vu of dot com era.

Data sharing services of companies like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are going to face the “Online Privacy Axe”, sooner or later. If the companies based in USA can escape this onslaught then the Europe will put the restrictions. No one will let your company take the profit without getting the protection money. From Facebook’s billion dollar turnover to $50 billion valuation; each successive billion will increase the data privacy problems, exponentially.

At last, Warren Buffet’s investment lessons have always warned against the companies who are selling at very high P/E ratios, in the fast changing tech field, in highly competitive markets, in IPO and in Hype. Web 2.0 companies fits in all these categories.

Goldman Sachs has delighted the Web 2.0 communities with unbelievably high valuations of Facebook; others may soon follow the same path. It is more like “No Child left behind”; Of course! All screwed. Till now we were only concerned about huge investments in Web 2.0 product development, but now the stock market is getting involved. This transition has sealed the fate of Web 2.0 companies (and you know what that is).

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites – FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No blabbering

Career Woman

Success of any career depends on Networking. It is synonymous to social networking these days, so, correct your professional networking profiles. It does not matter, how many people you know; what matters the most is how many people know about you. Adding tons of friends in your profile and getting recommendations from Mr. XYZ is not the best way. It is the quality not the quantity what matters. Get connected with right people and let them know that you exist.

No commoditization

Brand image is best way to make your existence felt. Be a brand which sells, not a commodity to be consumed. The way you interact with your network has to be professional and only professional. Network is not interested in your itinerary, but in your concrete actions. Add value to your brand image by blogging, sharing information about your subject matters or indulging in intelligent discussions in your professional profiles. This brings constant improvement in your writing styles (also) and make you a student for life.

Follow the Basic instincts

Business and Marketing are the basic instincts of all human beings. Since the childhood we are trading, negotiating and selling our interests. No extra MBA degree is needed for career planning. Market yourself well – It is not the education but the achievements which stands out. Bring achievements before education, in your mind, in your life and of course in your resume. Business is the next important thing, never sellout cheaply and do not be afraid of asking more. In business, The worst case scenario is negotiation. For this year’s career planning, no extra business and marketing skills are needed, than what you already have.

Update the “Resume Diary”

Every book on self-improvement has one important lesson; get organized everyday. Try this on your resume too. Your resume is the mirror image of your professional life. Just like mirror of your dresser keep on looking at your resume daily or so. This is like maintain a “Daily Resume Diary”; what you remember today can skip out of your mind tomorrow. Resume Diary is “memoirs of you”. These memoirs will be your Nirvana on the day of professional Apocalypse.

Get your Bob Marley

Always keep a “Mentor”. Honest feedback from mentor can give you guidance and/or encouragement. A mentor shows you direction, gives you confidence, and stays in touch with market reality – which saves you time. Mentor can be human being or a “digital being” like website, magazine, journal, company or blogger.

Buy your iRobot

Buy the membership of at least one professional journal this year. And, it should be an online one. Membership of journal, societies or clubs helps you in becoming more informed. These are not regular papers written for masses, but for the specialists. Mainstream magazines are meant for mass readers, they do not have the kick to get you in higher orbits. And as you pay for them, you will value them more.

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At last, my suggestion is to keep yourself satisfied by doing what you want to do. Keep it real, but professional. Embellishment is bad but talent without direction is nasty. Have a great year ahead.

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites – FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Innovation in Stock Analysis

Can fast moving content, like news and social media blurbs, point to an emerging trends in the financial markets?

Hakia, the good old semantic engine, believes “YES”.

Hakia launched a new product called “SenseNews”, code named “1a1”, led by Dr. Riza Berkan, economists Prof Roman Frydman of New York University and Prof Onur Ozgur of University of Montreal. As “Technical Analysis” of the stock is study of price curve, SenseNews has invented a new curve, what they call “News Effect” curve. They have devised a mechanism to relate the breaking news and social media blurbs to the stock price impact.  I assume, “News Effect” curve show the valuations/predictions of a stock based on the linguistic analysis of the news/content, which are floating around the world for that company. Overweight or underweight recommendations based on the third dimension of the stock valuation, what I call, “Real-Time Stock Analysis”.

Good and bad news both have impact on the stock price; you don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to understand that. But Dr. Riza Berkan and Hakia team are veterans of Language Semantics. Their past efforts in understanding the complexity of unstructured text, semantically, make them qualified to undertake this adventure. However, the future verdict is still in the folded palm. As per their website, SENSEnews.com, service will be launching on January 6, 2011.

SenseNews claims:

1. It is  new indicator for stock and bonds.
2. It computes value and position of a stock based on, the breaking news and social media blurbs.
3. The SENSEnews stock indicator will show how news (good or bad) is moving in relation to the stock price.
4. It can inform you about the state of an industry based on emerging news.
5. All details are based on sentiments, speculation and interpretations of emerging content using linguistic technologies of Hakia. Factual and fundamental information/data supports the decision making.
6. It collects (more than 31000 sources for you) and semantically filters the news and social media content for you. {taking care of semantic overlap and relevance}
7. It aggregates the content, valuates it and tells you what position to take. (Buy/Sell)

Note:

Written content is based on my own experience in the field of Language Semantics, and leading the development of language aware products for financial industry. Features of SenseNews are gathered from presentations which Dr. Riza Berkan has given in previous months, along with the authentic information available on the Internet.

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites – FreeDigitalPhotos.net

copyright mess up twitter

This is real strange for me to understand, © 2010 Twitter means that they have copyright on twitter since 2010 only, or have they forgotten to upgrade it to the 2011 .. LOL.

Get it to 2011 my Twitter. You cannot afford such a mistake. After all its raining 50 billion dollar valuations these days…..Happy New Year. But I am giving them credit for getting it right on the Old Twitter UI. See below.

Companies For Sale

Success is build on failures, as every lesson learned is a teaching for next venture. Search Engine market-place is an overheated one, where bounty is as high as Google. That is why, so many companies fail in capturing this summit. This reminds me of an Indian saying, “Knights are the ones who fall in wars; how those will fall who crawls on their knees.” So, honoring the fallen Knights; let me walk you through some of big search engine shutdowns of 2010.

Cuil

Cuil was the biggest news of World Wide Web in 2008. Engine was talk of every media channel once it went live on July 28, 2008. Expectations were high and claims were even higher. Cuil was managed and developed by Anna Patterson and Russell Power, former Google employees. It had sufficient venture capital funding and claimed to have bigger search index than Google. Other interesting marketing point was company’s open claim that it will not log user’s search habits and IP addresses. But Cuil got buried under the expectations of its own burden. Falling share in search engine market, less then attractive looks, slow response time and Google as the adversary, Cuil took its last breath in September of 2010.

Reason stated for the shutdown of Cuil was a failed acquisition bid. Twitter account of Cuil is quite with no update since April 2010 but still being followed by 266 fans. Personally I was not a big fan of Cuil’s idea of re-indexing the www again, when it has been done by lots of other engines already, but I wish the team good luck for 2011.

Kartoo

Kartoo was my personal pick in visual clustering engines category. Being a fan of visual search, I must say that they had a nice flash based layout along with a balanced use of content and display. User-friendly features like: ability to save, load and print your visual map, zoom in and out of the clusters using the clicks were very handy features. But my personal feelings were not good enough for this engine to stay afloat.

In January 2010 KartOO closed down, removing all content from the website and with a thanks message to all its users. Kartoo was launched in 2001 by two brothers in France and has spread virally over the internet. One of my blog 2 years back showed my love for this engine.

Powerset

Powerset was for searching Wikipedia articles, and was acquired by Microsoft for a whopping 100 million dollars, August of 2008. Microsoft promised to integrate its capabilities in future search technology. First, it was in live search and then in Bing, I hope Powerset is used. In 2010, Powerset’s website started pointing to Bing.com, leaving die hard fans like me in disbelief. This was the only search engine on the internet which was showing some real natural language processing live results. Microsoft should listen to the fans and let the Powerset website up and running for good. (More on Powerset)

SearchWiki

Google! Where is my SearchWiki?
SearchWiki was Google’s mass scale, collaborative search effort. SearchWiki (more..) was a way of customizing and personalizing your search results. You can re-rank, delete, add, and comment on every single result, which Google throws at you. Many people used it religiously as this was a good way of improving the quality of the results in absence of natural language capabilities. SearchWiki was released on November 20, 2008 and discontinued on March 3, 2010.
Google replaced it with two things, one was Google Stars and another was SideWiki for sharing annotations. But users no longer have the option to annotate or re-order search results. Instead a user clicks on a “star marker” which makes the entry appear in a starred results list at the top of a new search

Clusty (A.K.A Yippy.com)

On May 14 2010, Clusty was acquired by Yippy, Inc., an Internet startup based in Fort Myers, Florida. Vivizmo Inc, the owner of Clusty.com (clustering engine) decided to sell it for an amount of 5.6 million$. Technically, Clusty is not dead but its transition from a clustering-engine to “I don’t know what” is nail in coffin.

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Investor, Inventors and partners of these unsuccessful efforts have surly learned their lessons. I wish them best of luck for 2011 and want to let them know their effort was not in vain.

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites – FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Football Worldcup Logo

‘Waka Waka -This Time for Africa’. But for English goalie Robert Green these are the horrible times. It looks like that whole of the Twitter world is going for his kill. Robert Green has become the clown of the Twitter in true sense.  Bloggers have crossed all the limits of wickedness after the game between USA and England, which ended in 1-1 draw. Robert Green, English goalkeeper conceived a goal on himself when he was not able to hold on to a simple ground kissing slow kick. Match ended in a well-earned draw but one tweet correctly defined the feelings of the English fans “New World Cup and same old England.”

Much before Television channels started asking about Robert Green’s boo-boo from their viewers, he was a proclaimed offender on Twitter with tweets defining his punishments. Here are some funny Tweets on Robert Green:

• – BP issue statement thanking England goalkeeper Robert Green for selflessly doing his bit to repair strained Anglo-US relations.
• – I’m bringing out a new condom! It’s called ‘Robert Green’ it is extra slippery and you won’t catch anything!
• – Has anyone seen the Robert green condoms? They are extra slippery and There is no chance of you catching anything
• – Robert Green handled that ball like BP handled the oil spill.
• – Robert Green stops kicks like BP stops oil spills.
• – Robert Green, you ballerina
• – My computer’s got the Robert Green virus. It can’t save anything.
• – From gulf: Robert Green is a Zionist
• – What do Robert Green and Michael Jackson have in common? They both wear gloves needlessly.
• – BNP to deport Robert Green.
• – Pres Barrack Obama to give honorary citizenship to Robert green.
• – Robert green, u r a hero in Scotland!!!
• – Prior to joining the UK Premier League, Green was a deepwater rig designer at BP.
• – Robert Green is lucky that he’s not from Colombia.

As soon as the game ended Robert Green, English goalkeeper, Tim Howard (US-goalie) were among the trending topics. Guess what, if Robert Green has ever used twitter he will never think about using it again. Most of the tweets, which were trending him, were ruthless, merciless and extremely emotional.

Ability of Twitter to make or break personal fan following of teams and players is absolutely unquestionable. A big lot of Football fans around the world have reputation of being unruly. On twitter, they are even more ruthless and the passion spreads speedily than forest fire. I am just wondering what would happen to Robert Green’s Wikipedia page, if it has not been locked.

IT Job Hunters

Recent report from dice.com “2009-10 Dice Tech Salary Survey Results” ** has highlighted the plight of IT industry, once again. As per the report 47% of workforce thinks that their employers have not provided any primary motivator for them in 2009. And as per Tom Silver of Dice, one third of U.S. Technology workforce visit their website every month.

Signals are clear; on recovery from recession we will face mass exodus, low retention and high attrition rate of employees. Dissatisfaction rate of employees in IT industry has always been higher as compared to the other fields, worldwide. This is not just the lone story of USA. In India, the hub of outsourcing, companies are also gearing for even higher attrition rates.

It will be naïve to blame recession for this rise in IT dissatisfaction index. Recession has hit every segment of economy and recovery is also more or less balanced. So, what is about this IT industry and knee jerk a reaction of its professionals? Why these professionals are always ready to come out on job boards and start digging? Is it arrogance or attitude? Is the lack of loyalty or self-interest driven mentality? I guess there is no single answer, and one needs to dig deep into the roots of this industry. Morals followed by IT industry are similar to the ones found in manufacturing but its modus operandi has massive influence on its values.

It’s a cliché but IT industry is constantly changing, evolving and hence, keeping its professionals on their toes. Demanding clients, launch of alpha/beta/gamma upgrades, perennial technological innovations and ever-miscalculated deadlines are the breeding grounds of IT Turks. These Turks hop from one orbit to another just following the footprints of their industry.

One problem nearly specific to IT – “The Older, the Wiser” does not fit into IT business model. This is the major reason why IT companies keeps on hiring from one window, while firing of older employees continues from the other. Rapidly changing technology also builds the pressure on experienced professionals for constant change. Lack of challenging assignments becomes a major reason for IT job-hunting and lacking latest skills is biggest reason for being hunted out. (IT Profession: Shots for lasting long)

“Brats of Dotcom” are another reason for high dissatisfaction in this profession. These guys have made tons of money for fixing bits and bytes during Y2K and Dotcom era. Money made during those time was much more then what IT professionals make today, in both relative and absolute terms. Company perks, ESOPs, lavish outings and outrageous bonus, these freebies do not exist anymore. But the memory is still alive, No wonder today’s IT professionals are dissatisfied and will remain so till the past glory is restored.

People with the IT backgrounds are often tempted to join entrepreneurship race. Internet and related businesses churn out maximum number of new age entrepreneurs then any other stream. Reason is simple; cost of bringing ideas out to the market is relatively low. No supply chain hassle, B2B, B2C, Collaboration, Online marketing and timeless deliveries makes Internet a much more viable option to start new businesses. Its not a surprise that many opt for their own plans than organizational game plans.

For IT professionals, outsourcing is always a real threat. Trouble beings when someone can do the job at lesser price, with almost same precision, having lesser/more experience. In business sense, you are knocked out or you will be. IT jobs involving streamlined processes can be outsourced with relative ease. So, as long as the professional is not supporting in core development, outsourcing ball can fall on him, anytime. Every IT professional knows this and tries to keep him safe.

Last and the most logical reason for IT job-hopping is Internet itself. Internet is way of life for IT professionals, and guess what, Internet has made our life easier. Online banking, gaming, dating, booking, shopping and many other “ings”, one such “ing” is job-hunting. Logically, who live their life on and for Internet are the most common user of online job sites. Its like, if you have Mc Donald’s next door, you are likely to be overweight.

Points made above are enough to understand the restlessness of IT professionals. IT industry has never been like traditional industries; it is restless profession producing restless professionals who are chasing the singularity dream. Aftereffects of recession are just another reason for job-hunting, the fault line of IT industry and professionals lies in this extract from Bible: “As you sow so shall you reap”.

Reference:

** “2009-10 Dice Tech Salary Survey Results”

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites – FreeDigitalPhotos.net