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innovativesjobs · 1 year ago

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Top Companies Hiring for Senior Software Engineer Jobs in 2024

Crack the Code: Top Companies Hiring Senior Software Engineers in 2024

The demand at Senior Software Engineers jobs is at an all-time high. With countless companies across industries vying for top talent, it can be overwhelming to identify the best opportunities. Fear not! We've curated a list of top companies actively seeking experienced engineers to join their ranks.

Tech Titans Leading the Charge

These industry behemoths are synonymous with innovation and offer unparalleled career growth opportunities:

FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google): The holy grail of software engineer jobs, these companies offer competitive salaries, cutting-edge projects, and a chance to work with the brightest minds in the industry.

Microsoft: A pioneer in software development, Microsoft continues to be a top choice for Senior Software Engineers jobs holders, offering a blend of stability and innovation.

Beyond the Big Tech: Promising Companies to Watch

While the FAANG companies are undoubtedly attractive, there are plenty of other exciting opportunities out there:

Unicorn Startups: Companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Stripe offer dynamic work environments and the chance to be part of something groundbreaking.

Fintech Giants: With the rise of digital banking and financial technology, companies like Stripe, PayPal, and Square are actively hiring Senior Software Engineers to drive innovation.

Healthcare Tech: As healthcare becomes increasingly digitized, companies focused on healthtech, such as Epic Systems, Cerner, and Athenahealth, are seeking top talent.

E-commerce Powerhouses: Amazon, Walmart, and other e-commerce giants require robust software infrastructure to manage their operations, creating ample opportunities for Senior Software Engineers.

Industry-Specific Opportunities

If you have a particular interest in a specific industry, consider these companies:

Automotive: Tesla, Ford, and GM are investing heavily in autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles, requiring skilled engineers.

Cybersecurity: Companies like Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and CrowdStrike are at the forefront of cybersecurity, offering exciting roles for engineers with a focus on security.

Aerospace and Defense: Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon Technologies are involved in complex software development projects, requiring highly skilled engineers.

Tips for Landing Your Dream Job

Build a Strong Portfolio: Showcase your projects and contributions to highlight your skills and experience.

Network Effectively: Connect with professionals in your desired industry to learn about job opportunities and gain insights.

Master the Interview Process: Prepare for technical interviews by practicing coding challenges and system design questions.

Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest technologies and industry trends to remain competitive.

Remember: The job market is dynamic, and new opportunities emerge regularly. Utilize job boards, company websites, and professional networking platforms to stay informed about the latest openings.

By understanding the landscape and tailoring your job search accordingly, you can increase your chances of landing a fulfilling Senior Software Engineer role at a company that aligns with your career goals.

#job

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secretcupcakesublime · 4 years ago

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Reducing the risk of design

Light, flexible, do even less, and more. Again and again, design culture encourages us to push rapidly to the point where design is a pure thread in the larger corporate spool and trim research and design operations. Writer and author Nikki Anderson describes the implications of this pressure to perform high speed research: "Once we are asked to synthesize at light pace, user research is a way for teams to take a shortcut — to create conclusions based on quick associations, thoughts, and quotes."

The effect is design based on assumptions, or incomplete user and customer knowledge. For example, a Fortune 500 company (let's call it Company Q) hired me to do a usability test for a complex user interface (usability testing includes a series of one-on-one sessions with actual users who are asked to perform different tasks when using a product or piece of software).

The study yielded what would possibly become identifiable patterns and when I was told to pause and send the results to the client immediately I was halfway through the research. My clarification of the need for more time to perform a detailed and nuanced review fell on deaf ears: "Just send a short video." I reticently submitted a video snippet of a user interface ( UI) struggling participant.

There was no time for context, background or nuance. Company Q product manager remembered the person in the video from a previous experience and dismissed his struggles: "He's a crank, we can't base decisions on him." Without discussing this serious UI problem, the company passed on.

This sales manager had been addicted to his client emotionally (see endowment effect below). This emotional attachment impeded his capacity to objectively assess the strengths and weaknesses of the product. It's no wonder that professionals are forming positive feelings about their products.

Comprehensible but also troublesome. As explained in an article about UX's ROI by UX guru Jared Spool, ignoring user needs carries a high cost: assume you get a lot of support calls, for example, because the design doesn't do anything that users expect. That's a high cost because of a bad judgment on the design. How expensive? The average cost of a single support call in North America is $15,56 according to HDI's Jeffrey Rumburg. Even though support calls only increase by 83,000 per month, the annual cost is more than $15 million.

Conversely, functions to solve interface issues. According to the McKinsey report, "The Business Value of Design": "One online gaming company found that a slight increase in the usability of its homepage was followed by a dramatic 25 percent increase in sales." Note: For this study, McKinsey tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies in multiple countries and industries over a five-year period. This interviewed or questioned their senior management and architecture members. The McKinsey team gathered more than two million pieces of financial information and reported over 100,000 design actions.

Such figures illustrate the direct financial costs of rushing market research and shortchanging customer and company interests. We also demonstrate the financial value of addressing consumer issues. I will shed light on the approaches used in this article to resolve these concerns: carefully choosing a study location; negotiating with stakeholders to provide ample time for review without disrupting the design process; making rational, evidence-based design decisions; engaging in design reduction. 1. Background Over Comfort: Why Location Matters

Where you carry out analysis, matters as much as the method of study. Consider the value of the venue before booking a room for your next interview with users. You may not want to book a quiet meeting room if the users operate with multiple distractions in a noisy environment. The user experience will actually help you determine the best research approach for collecting feedback (interviews, diary analyses, observation / contextual enquiry, usability tests, cognitive walkthroughs, etc.).

That is exactly what happened when our team conducted UX research for a major construction equipment manufacturer. We should have taken machine operators to a quiet showroom to ask them questions about the machinery and what was working well and what was not. That would have been the easy choice but the wrong one. Instead, we traveled to U.S. , Mexico, and Colombia construction sites where we observed operators using the equipment outside where it was dusty, dirty, and noisy.

Observations on the field included: chances of traffic accidents due to noise, and poor visibility in high winds. The challenge faced by shorter operators when they entered the cab for certain controls (operators in Latin America were, on average, smaller than their counterparts in the USA). The rapid corrosion of metal equipment on a construction site near the ocean, caused by salt.Observing consumers in their real-world work environment: Minimized the chance of solving the wrong problem, because we did not rely on sales or product second-hand knowledge (this occurs more frequently than you would think). We (the researchers) were allowed to hear the wind, see the dust and feel the bumps when riding on these massive machines. Given actionable information not collected in an office. Our study at sites in Mexico and Colombia has shown the old adage to be valid. Meeting users where they worked on a daily basis yielded rich, qualitative data which our client used to inform important design decisions. 2. Concession

That was a good result. Real-world problems were identified in the fieldwork in Mexico and Colombia, and stakeholders acted on that information. That's not always the case here. As happened with Walmart when management decided to change aisle and shelving design based on a customer survey, there is a temptation to make design decisions quickly based on incomplete information. When asked to customers if the stores were too cluttered they said yes. Walmart spent millions re-designing stores only to lose sales in excess of $ 1 billion. Sales increased when Walmart reverted to the cluttered aisles. What went wrong?

A poorly worded survey and inadequate study were undoubtedly two factors for the debacle. Walmart depended too much on what customers said and not what they were doing. In consumer and user experience the value of putting significant weight on what applications and consumers are doing is a cornerstone concept.

Underhill, a business and market research pioneer, is completely correct. Unfortunately, even when stakeholders decide to finance research (ride-alongs, shop-alongs, contextual inquiry), tremendous pressure is exerted to move forward when a UX or market study is completed, leaving little time for detailed examination.

The goal is to strike a balance between pace and thoroughness in these situations. Brand managers and other stakeholders have a lot of responsibility and are often under pressure to rapidly transfer goods into the market. Nevertheless, rushing the design process will result in the emergence of research into ignoring key user needs.

Compromise serves two purposes throughout the passage from study review to design. Firstly, it provides ample time for researchers to study, evaluate and report reliable and actionable results that will help the design team move forward. Second, as with any undertaking, a willingness to compromise sets a degree of confidence. 3. Decisions on better functionality

Compromise and trust are a solid basis for establishing a collaborative partnership between researchers, designers and stakeholders. These partnerships lead to an conducive environment for better design decisions. Those points tend to be simple, even transparent.Perhaps straightforward but not easily attainable. Why? For what? Human character. Human beings are subject to what psychologists term the endowment effect, the tendency simply because they belong to you to overvalue objects that you own. A typical example of selling a house is. You are emotionally attached to your house as the landlord, as you have put effort into repairs and upgrades. The house has pretty good memories. You live there, after all. The buyer does not say much of this. She just cares about the objective market value and for the least amount of money, she gets the best house. It is difficult for people to part from the object, a house in this case, once the endowment effect holds onto. Changing a UI or physical object in the sense of design is approximately equal to parting with it. For example, the product manager announced to me and a room full of stakeholders while reviewing a complex UI for a programmable logic controller: "My name is Jim, and I love this product." Honesty points. As predicted, Jim held fast to his conviction when I presented the report that the UI was perfect and didn't need change. He was attached, unsurprisingly, to the computer and the UI.

The evidence supports this statement. According to the McKinsey study listed above: "Less than 5 percent of those we surveyed indicated that their members could make rational design decisions." One of the challenges to making sound design decisions is the endowment effect. See A Designer's Guide to Good Decisions to learn how to avoid other can mistakes in making decisions.

Knowledge of the endowment effect and other decision traps leads to better design, as it helps us to make difficult decisions during the actual process. 4. Reduction of Architecture One such option is whether to delete from an current design or from early iteration of design. For instance, the image below left could easily be an early iteration of a mobile app. Few would dispute the power of simple, elegant, and engaging design. Sometimes, these results benefit from deliberate, thoughtful reduction. From the number and size of the elements on the screen to the simplicity or complexity of the color palette, it's all about the the design to the point that it's simple and easy to use without losing something significant.

A designer could also ask in the cleaner example (above right) if "This Month" and "165: Max Pulse" are required. If not, cutting them will be another downsizing. The point is not to discuss the specifics of the UI for this fake fitness program. Instead, designers will expect the "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" effect and recommend eliminating unnecessary elements of design. Effective strategies include: Gently remembering the dangers of a high cognitive load to stakeholders and other team members. Sharing cluttered designs with the team (any app or website will do) and asking them to quickly find a particular feature. Their battle to find the feature should make the case.Sharing video clips of your company's past research projects demonstrating how quickly users get overwhelmed while communicating with a crowded UI.

By adhering to this reduction strategy early in the design process, the company gains by reducing the risk of customer frustration, task or cart abandonment, and dissatisfied clients. Design reduction is important for creating engaging, user-centric design but works only when combined with robust user research that leads to informed design decisions. Conclusion

Since analysis, decisions, and the design process go hand in hand, the focus of this article has been on identifying the risks of user testing and design rushing. Mitigating this risk does not demand that research and design teams double in size. We have also introduced four concrete strategies that teams can quickly implement: Meaning over Convenience: Position matters. Either at home, in a café, or on a noisy construction site, perform UX and market research where consumers engage with your product.

Compromise Compromise If market customers can not necessarily demand a detailed review, compromise. The design team will move forward with minor design changes in the direction of the stakeholder, while promising not to make significant changes until the final review of the study is complete.

Better design decisions Allow better choices by keeping an eye out for the all-too-human propensity to get attached to a design you made. Reduction Remove redundant UI components leaving only what users and clients need to complete the task at hand.

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technicallyelegantruins · 4 years ago

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Reducing the risk of design

get in touch with us!

#b2b ecommerce #b2b content marketing #b2b seo #Ecommerce #socialmedia

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Résumé-Writing Tips to Help You Get Past the A.I. Gatekeepers It was inevitable: When companies made it simple to apply for a job online, applications poured in. To wade through this ever-rising tide of résumés, human resources departments are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence systems to pluck out the candidates deemed to be good fits. So while applying may be as easy as a mouse click, that résumé is much more likely to be screened out into oblivion than end up in front of a recruiter. To avoid getting caught by the résumé sifter, job seekers should understand the new systems, which have been spreading to more industries and positions. How it works So-called predictive hiring tools evaluate résumés by finding keywords related to categories like skills, experience and education, and weighting them according to the job requirements and any other factors the hiring company has specified. The system may weight applicants who have worked at certain companies more positively. It may infer how old a skill seems to be from where it appears in a job history. Artificial intelligence is used to understand what people mean to say — for example, if Carleton is a person’s name, an alma mater or a company the applicant worked for. The software systems can be less biased than human screeners because they can be programmed to ignore characteristics like age, sex, race and other protected categories. Giving yourself the best shot Making it through the automated screening can require tailoring your résumé, not just the cover letter, to each job you are applying for. Greg Moran, chief executive of OutMatch, a system that screens more than 10 million applicants a year for companies including Pepsi, Toyota and Walmart, confirmed that the following actions would help applicants avoid an automated rejection. Include in your résumé the same keywords, or similar ones, that the job posting uses for the knowledge, skills, experience and duties involved. Use the most relevant keywords in your most recent job listed. If you mention data analytics in a job 10 years ago but not in more recent work, the algorithm may give it less weight. Words like “significant,” “strong” and “mastery” in a job description can be clues that those skills will be weighted heavily, so they should be emphasized in your résumé and included on your descriptions of your more current experience. Quantify wherever possible. “Managed a team of five that increased sales by 40 percent over two years” works better than “Managed a team that significantly increased sales.” Make sure the system can “read” your résumé. In some systems, the PDF file format can make your résumé appear as a single image, so Microsoft Word may be a better choice. Fancy formatting like columns or added images can be less readable if the system is scanning left to right. Don’t try to trick the software with keywords in white text — the creators have already thought of that. Mention all your skills. The system may scan for specific experience with, for example, the programming language R or Tableau, so don’t lump them together as “experienced in data analytics.” If you are part of an underrepresented group, use terms that will let the system identify you to companies that are trying to diversify their work force. Pitfalls The artificial intelligence used by hiring systems can generate unintended harmful consequences, said Hong Qu, a race and technology fellow at Stanford. He is a creator of AI Blindspot, a set of practices that help software development teams recognize unconscious biases and structural inequalities that could affect their software’s decision-making. “The systems can still have their own forms of biases and may screen out qualified applicants,” Mr. Qu said. A company may put a priority on the résumés of software engineer applicants who went to the same universities as successful senior engineers in the industry. Applicants from women’s or historically Black colleges may be more likely to be rejected, for example, if the upper ranks of engineers in an industry are predominantly white men. “Getting the system right is more than debugging code and de-biasing training data, because the software is based on values-driven decisions with historical baggage,” Mr. Qu said. Biases engendered by the system can extend beyond screening. For example, recruiters can be subject to “automation bias,” giving an analysis more weight because it came from a computer system. Pooling candidates who have all made it through the screening for their next level of evaluation, rather than ranking them by scores bestowed by the software, can help alleviate this effect. Frequent audits are needed to understand whom the system is screening in — and out. It also needs to be designed with transparency, so humans can understand why any individual decision was made. An opaque system makes it hard to discover problems, Mr. Qu said. While the systems are becoming more widespread, they are nascent, and critics say there is little market incentive or government regulation demanding transparency. In fact, self-examination can unearth problems that may harm a company’s reputation. More than your résumé Increasingly, the one-click résumé drop-off is just the first step. More candidates are being asked to take skill and personality assessments and record answers to interview questions. OutMatch’s Mr. Moran said the additional tasks aimed to give a more complete picture to hiring managers and let applicants “tell their story.” Still, most applicants who are asked to submit extra information won’t have the chance to tell that story to a human. While percentages vary, Mr. Moran estimated that a system might typically deem 80 percent of candidates who submitted a résumé for an entry-level professional job to have the basic skills and competency to succeed in the role, leading them to be asked to complete one or more tests. Most test takers will then be asked to record a video interview. The information from the résumé, the tests and a transcript of the interview will be reviewed by artificial intelligence software. About 20 percent of those candidates will then speak to a recruiter. Asking more job seekers to do interviews does allow more candidates to demonstrate their suitability, said Michele Olivier, a career coach in Austin, Texas, but “it also means that there’s a bigger time commitment required at an earlier stage for more roles.” Previously, candidates who made it to the interview stage might have a one in 10 chance of getting the job, she said. Now, “with the new tools you may have the same time requirement” for a much slimmer chance. “Employers aren’t doing a good job of being mindful of how much they are expecting from candidates,” Ms. Olivier said. Karin Borchert the chief executive of the hiring software company Modern Hire, predicts resumes will become less important for entry-level professional jobs. Companies can evaluate qualities they are seeking, such as tenacity or problem-solving skills, through assessments and then incorporate feedback on new hires to improve those assessments, she said. Don’t neglect your other tools Mr. Moran cautioned applicants not to rely on the new systems alone to secure a job. He advises job seekers to make sure their LinkedIn profile is up to date and includes recommendations from managers and colleagues. Twitter or other public social media accounts should include “digital bread crumbs” of information highlighting skills, experience and interests. Candidates should also seek out people inside their target companies that can refer them for the position, Mr. Moran said, because those referrals can significantly lift the chance of being hired. “The more technical things get, the more you can get noticed by going old school,” he said. Source link Orbem News #Gatekeepers #RésuméWriting #tips

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agritecture · 8 years ago

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5 VERTICAL FARM PROJECTS INCUBATING AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

By Sierra Clark and Amy Ng

Young people want to be farmers, but not in the traditional sense. The emergence of vertical farming, hydroponics, and the local food movement are inspiring college students across the country to think about how to grow food sustainably. At Brown University, multiple groups of students are working on indoor agriculture projects. They are all connected by the desire to do work that matters in a growing field.

Industry Research Leaves Students Skeptical of Vertical Farming

Undergraduate senior Sierra Clark first learned about vertical farms after interning for Indigo, an agriculture tech company in Boston. She grew up on a farm, so it was initially difficult to comprehend growing plants indoors without soil or sunlight. After researching more, she was inspired by the way vertical farming touted to save resources. She kept thinking how her home state of California needed a water-efficient way to grow food, given years of drought. In order to learn more, she created two courses at Brown and recruited fellow students to learn with her.

Through the first course, Research and Education on Vertical Farms, Clark and Melissa Isidor focused on the question of whether vertical farms are a sustainable way to grow food in cities. After visiting multiple farms, speaking to experts, and reading books such as The Vertical Farm and Plant Factory, they were left undecided. Because vertical farms are expensive to build and maintain, the numbers suggested they made most sense in places lacking natural resources, such as the Middle East or Northern Canada. The two students shared their findings by holding monthly Lunch & Learn talks, creating a vertical farm field guide, and putting together a talk called “The Future of Food” which brought Dickson Despommier to campus.

The second course, Business Plans in Indoor Agriculture, was focused on identifying industry problems and needs. A team of four students––Clark, Davin Lewis, Amy Ng, and Zach Pockrose––interviewed 60 growers, suppliers, and academics to collect quantitative and qualitative data. They identified three major problems. First, a lack of standardization is decreasing efficiency of the industry. Many companies have individualized methods or have patented their work which makes industry “best practices” unclear to new and current farmers. Second, capital and operating costs are expensive, while margins are rather slim. Lights and labor are two major cost concerns, which ideally will be slightly alleviated as LED costs decrease in coming years. Third, there exists a huge knowledge gap. Farmers need help with business and marketing, while business people need help growing. The team is writing a business plan addressing this third concern.

Building Systems Illuminates Specific Costs For In-Home Projects

The Lunch & Learn Vertical Farming series led to two different build projects.

Clark, Ng, along with Brown Entrepreneurship graduate student Siddhant Agarwal and Rhode Island School of Design alumnus Ari Kohorn, are building a high-pressure aeroponics system in the basement of a non-profit student housing co-op. The system will use mist rather than a stream of liquid to feed plant roots. Aeroponics is more complex to build, but expedites plant growth due to increased oxygen root exposure. Like any system, aeroponics comes with its challenges such as clogged misting nozzles and the risk associated with power failure––both causes for quick plant death. The team sees the project as a fun learning opportunity that will teach them how to build systems and grow lettuce.

Basic aeroponic system set-up.

From left Sierra Clark, Sid Agarwal, Ari Kohorn. Amy Ng not shown.

Almost all materials were sourced from Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot. They chose T5 fluorescent-powered lights to reduce cost. The system will cost $1,300, and includes a reservoir and two tiers of grow units. The design eliminates a seedling site since seeds are grown directly on fleece attached to each grow unit. They plan to feed the co-op with the lettuce they grow. The students have also built smaller aeroponics systems and a hydroponics system.

Hydroponic system.

Cannabis cloning aeroponic system.

For the second build project, four students created a beautifully designed home-use hydroponics system for a course called Projects in Engineering Design. The team was comprised of four senior mechanical engineers: Cat Hebson, Carrie Manteiga, Josie Natrasevchi, and Kenny Volkmann, who were inspired to build something that could grow food year-round in a small space. This idea was originally sparked by an interest in permaculture and a Lunch & Learn talk which convinced them to use hydroponics instead of soil.

From left Kenny Volkman, Cat Hebson, Carrie Manteiga, and Jose Natrasevchi.

The team laser cut and pieced together the entire structure from scratch. The final product is tall––standing at six feet and made almost completely with wood. The system includes a hidden reservoir tank, a seedling bed and two rows of grow trays. Some neat design features include adjustable lights which can be shifted higher as plants grow, a hidden tilt that allows water to flow through the system while appearing horizontal to the viewer, and a temperature regulation system that notifies users to put in ice cubes when the reservoir water is too warm. The system cost $530 to build and requires $240 per month for energy and water.

PhD Student Project Turns Into A Business Venture

One year ago, Brown PhD Neuro-Engineering graduate, Jacob Komar, became fascinated with the idea of creating a vertical farming business. Komar and his team of three plan to be a major supplier of aeroponics growing systems through their startup Fresh Local 52. The company will sell 1,000 sq ft aeroponic turnkey farms that include an aeroponics system, hardware, and software––all of which function together but can also be purchased as separate pieces.

“Right now, people are buying from a bunch of different vendors. It will be easier and more efficient if people can buy everything from one place,” Komar says.

With four academic degrees in hardware and software, Komar believes Fresh Local 52’s greatest value add will be their control systems. “Currently, there are no turnkey farms that can aggregate data and analyze it in a meaningful way,” he says.

Another major issue with fully integrated systems, Komar found, is cost. Aeroponics systems can cost thousands of dollars, despite being relatively cheap to make. Fresh Local 52 is committed to bringing quality farm products at the lowest price possible.

About the Authors: Sierra Clark is a senior at Brown University graduating with a degree in cognitive neuroscience. Her work outside of school is focused on sustainable agriculture and nutrition. Previously she has worked for agriculture tech and digital health companies. In the future she plans on starting her own sustainable farm and offering educational services to future farmers.

Amy Ng is a senior at Brown University graduating with dual degrees in business and environmental studies. Amy is dedicated to food security and interested in providing sustainable agriculture services to undeveloped countries. They* plans to work with Sierra in closing the knowledge gap for future farmers.

*preferred pronoun

To learn more about these courses or student projects, please contact Sierra Clark at [email protected].

#Amy Ng #Sierra Clark #Brown University #Agritecture #Vertical Farming #Aeroponic #Hydroponic #entrepreneurship #student #Design #Cannabis Cloning #Brown Entrepreneurship #Indoor Agriculture #Business Plans #original content

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riichardwilson · 5 years ago

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Reducing Design Risk

About The Author

Eric is the founder of UX Culture Works. He has spent the past 19 years leading UX research and design projects for Fortune 500 companies in the finance, … More about Eric …

The pressure to rush market and usability research carries risk. We��ll offer four practical techniques to mitigate this risk and create designs that better serve customers and the company: context over convenience, compromise, better design decisions, design reduction.

Lean, agile, do more with less. Again, and again, design culture urges us to move quickly and trim research and design operations to the point where design becomes a mere thread in the larger corporate spool.

Author and designer Nikki Anderson explains the consequences of this pressure to conduct research at lightning speed:

“When we’re asked to synthesize at the speed of light, user research becomes a way for teams to take a shortcut — to invent assumptions based on quickly made correlations, opinions, and quotes.”

The result is design based on assumptions or incomplete information about users and customers. For example, a Fortune 500 company (let’s call it Company Q) hired me to conduct a usability test for a complex user interface (usability testing involves a series of one-on-one sessions with real users who are asked to complete specific tasks while using a product or piece of software).

The test yielded what would likely become recognizable patterns, and I was halfway through the analysis when I was ordered to pause and send the client the findings immediately. My explanation about the need for more time to conduct a thorough and nuanced analysis fell on deaf ears:

“Just send a short video.”

I reluctantly sent a video snippet showing a participant struggling with the user interface (UI).

Biased design decision based on observation of a single usability test participant. (Large preview)

There was no time for background, context, or nuance. The product manager at Company Q recognized the participant in the video from a previous encounter and dismissed his struggles:

“He’s a crank, we can’t base decisions on him.”

The company moved forward without addressing this serious UI issue.

This product manager had become emotionally attached to his product (see endowment effect below). This emotional attachment hindered his ability to assess the product’s strengths and weaknesses objectively. It’s not surprising that professionals develop strong feelings about their products.

Understandable, but also problematic. As UX guru Jared Spool explains in an article about the ROI of UX, dismissing user needs carries a high cost:

For example, say you get many support calls because the design doesn’t do something the users expect. That’s a high cost due to a poor design decision.

How costly? According to Jeffrey Rumburg of HDI, the average cost of a single support call in North America is $15.56. Even if support calls only increase by 83,000 each month, the annual cost is over $15 million.

In contrast, addressing design problems works. According to the McKinsey report, “The Business Value of Design”:

“One online gaming company discovered that a small increase in the usability of its home page was followed by a dramatic 25 percent increase in sales.”

Note: For this study, McKinsey tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies over a five-year period in multiple countries and industries. Their senior business and design leaders were interviewed or surveyed. The McKinsey team collected more than two million pieces of financial data and recorded more than 100,000 design actions.

These numbers demonstrate the direct financial costs associated with rushing market research and shortchanging user and customer concerns. They also illustrate the financial benefit of addressing customer concerns.

In this article, I’ll shed light on the techniques for addressing these concerns:

Carefully selecting a research location;

Compromising with stakeholders to allow sufficient time for analysis without delaying the design process;

Making sound, evidence-based design decisions;

Engaging in design reduction.

1. Context Over Convenience: Why Location Matters

Where you conduct research matters as much as the research method. Before booking a facility for your next user interview, consider the importance of location. You might not want to book a quiet meeting room if users work in a noisy environment with numerous distractions. In fact, the user’s environment will help you identify the best research method for gathering insights (interviews, diary studies, observation/contextual inquiry, usability tests, cognitive walkthroughs, etc.).

This is precisely what happened when our team conducted UX research for a manufacturer of large construction equipment. We could have brought machine operators to a quiet showroom to ask them questions about the equipment and what did and did not work well.

This would have been the easy but incorrect choice. Instead, we traveled to construction sites in the U.S., Mexico, and Colombia where we observed operators using the equipment outside where it was dusty, dirty, and loud.

Construction Site in Colombia. (Large preview)

On-the-ground observations included:

Risks of vehicle collisions due to noise and low visibility when winds were high.

The difficulty shorter operators encountered when reaching for certain controls in the cab (operators in Latin America were, on average, smaller than their U.S. counterparts).

The rapid corrosion of metal equipment caused by salt on a construction site near the ocean.

Observing users in their real-world work environment:

Reduced the risk of solving the wrong problem because we did not rely on second-hand information from sales or product (this happens more often than you might think).

Allowed us (the researchers) to hear the noise, see the dust, and feel the bumps while riding on these enormous machines.

Provided actionable insights that could not have been gathered in an office.

The author interviewing a machine operator in Colombia. (Large preview)

Our research at sites in Mexico and Colombia demonstrated the truth of the old adage. Meeting users where they worked every day yielded rich, qualitative data that our client used to inform important design decisions.

2. Compromise

This was a good outcome. The fieldwork in Mexico and Colombia identified real-world problems, and stakeholders acted on this information.

This is not always the case. There is a temptation to make design decisions quickly based on incomplete information as happened to Walmart when management decided to change aisle and shelving design based on a customer survey. When customers were asked if stores were too cluttered, they said yes. Walmart spent millions re-designing stores only to lose more than $1 billion in revenue. When Walmart reverted to the cluttered aisles, sales increased. What happened?

Two reasons for this fiasco were likely a poorly worded survey and incomplete analysis. Walmart relied too heavily on what customers said rather than what they did. The importance of placing considerable weight on what users and customers do is a bedrock principle in customer and user experience.

“Rather than just ask shoppers what they think they would like, I can follow someone through their shopping trip in a grocery or mass merchandise store like Walmart and Sam’s Club and then interview them as they load their bags into the car. What is striking is the wide gap between what they say they did, and what I observed.”

— Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy. New York Times Article about Walmart.

Underhill, a legend in consumer and market research, is exactly right. Unfortunately, even when stakeholders agree to fund observation (ride-alongs, shop-alongs, contextual inquiry), there is considerable pressure to move forward the moment a UX or market study is done leaving little time for thorough analysis.

The goal in these situations is to strike a balance between speed and thoroughness. Product managers and other stakeholders have a great deal of responsibility and are often under pressure to move products to market quickly. Rushing the design process, however, can result in overlooking key user needs emerging from research.

Analysis. (Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay) (Large preview)

Preliminary Design Work. (Photo by Syda Productions from Depositphotos) (Large preview)

Compromise during the transition from research analysis to design serves two purposes. First, it allows researchers sufficient time to review, reflect, and report accurate and actionable findings that will help the design team move forward. Second, as with any endeavor, a willingness to compromise establishes a degree of trust.

3. Better Design Decisions

Compromise and trust are a sound basis for establishing a constructive relationship between researchers, designers, and stakeholders. Such relationships contribute to an environment conducive to better design decisions. These points seem straightforward, even obvious.

Straightforward perhaps but not easily achieved. Why? Human nature. Humans are subject to what psychologists call the endowment effect, the tendency to overvalue objects you own simply because they belong to you. Selling a house is a classic example. As the homeowner, you are emotionally attached to your house because you’ve put effort into maintenance and improvements. The house holds fond memories. After all, you live there. None of this matters to the buyer. She only cares about the objective market value and getting the best house for the least amount of money.

Endowment Effect: Emotional attachment leads to an inflated sense of value. (Image by Pexels from Pixabay) (Large preview)

Once the endowment effect takes hold, it’s difficult for people to part with the object, a house in this example. In the context of design, changing a UI or physical product is roughly equivalent to parting with it.

For example, while evaluating a complex UI for a programmable logic controller, the product manager announced to me and a room full of stakeholders: “My name is Jim, and I love this product.” Points for honesty. As expected, when I delivered the report, Jim held firmly to his belief that the UI was fine and did not require modification. He was, understandably, attached to the machine and the UI. Unfortunately, the company’s customers did not share this attachment as illustrated by ongoing customer complaints.

The data supports this conclusion. According to the McKinsey report mentioned above: “Less than 5 percent of those we surveyed reported that their leaders could make objective design decisions.”

The endowment effect is one of many barriers to making sound design decisions. See A Designer’s Guide To Better Decisions to learn how to avoid other, common decision traps.

Awareness of the endowment effect and other decision traps contributes to better design because it allows us to make tough choices during the actual design process.

4. Design Reduction

One such choice is what to remove from an existing design or an early design iteration. For example, the image shown below left could easily be an early iteration of a mobile app.

Cluttered Layout: Fake Fitness App. (Large preview)

Cleaner Layout: Fake Fitness App. (Large preview)

Few will argue against the power of simple, elegant, and engaging design. Such successes are often the result of careful, thoughtful reduction. From the number and size of elements on the screen to the simplicity or complexity of the color palette, it all comes down to reducing the design to the point that it’s clean and easy to use without removing anything essential.

Even in the cleaner example (above right), a designer might ask if “This Month” and “165: Max Pulse” are necessary. If not, removing them would be yet another reduction.

The point is not to debate the UI details for this fake fitness app. Rather, designers must anticipate the “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” effect and make the case for removing unnecessary design elements. Effective techniques include:

Gently reminding stakeholders and other team members about the risks of a heavy cognitive load.

Sharing cluttered designs (any app or site will do) with the team and asking them to quickly locate a specific feature. Their struggle to find the feature will make the point.

Sharing video clips of past research projects for your company showing how easily users become confused when interacting with a crowded UI.

Adhering to this reduction technique early in the design process benefits the business by decreasing the chance of user confusion, task or cart abandonment, and unhappy customers.

Design reduction is essential to creating engaging, user-centered design but only works when coupled with rigorous user research that contributes to informed design decisions.

Conclusion

Because research, decisions, and the design process go together, the focus of this article has been to identify the risks of rushing user research and design. Mitigating this risk does not require doubling the size of research and design teams. Instead, we’ve proposed four practical techniques that teams can implement immediately:

Context over convenience Location matters. Whether at home, a café, or on a noisy construction site, conduct UX and market research where users will be when interacting with your product.

Compromise When business stakeholders cannot simply wait for a thorough analysis, compromise. At the stakeholder’s direction, the design team can move forward with limited design changes while agreeing not to make major changes until the final research analysis is complete.

Better design decisions Make better decisions by keeping an eye out for the all-too-human tendency to become attached to a design you have created.

Reduction Remove unnecessary UI elements leaving only what is necessary for users and customers to complete the task at hand.

(ah, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/reducing-design-risk/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/617546774440214528

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laurelkrugerr · 5 years ago

Text

Reducing Design Risk

About The Author

Eric is the founder of UX Culture Works. He has spent the past 19 years leading UX research and design projects for Fortune 500 companies in the finance, … More about Eric …

The pressure to rush market and usability research carries risk. We’ll offer four practical techniques to mitigate this risk and create designs that better serve customers and the company: context over convenience, compromise, better design decisions, design reduction.

Author and designer Nikki Anderson explains the consequences of this pressure to conduct research at lightning speed:

“Just send a short video.”

I reluctantly sent a video snippet showing a participant struggling with the user interface (UI).

Biased design decision based on observation of a single usability test participant. (Large preview)

There was no time for background, context, or nuance. The product manager at Company Q recognized the participant in the video from a previous encounter and dismissed his struggles:

“He’s a crank, we can’t base decisions on him.”

The company moved forward without addressing this serious UI issue.

Understandable, but also problematic. As UX guru Jared Spool explains in an article about the ROI of UX, dismissing user needs carries a high cost:

For example, say you get many support calls because the design doesn’t do something the users expect. That’s a high cost due to a poor design decision.

In contrast, addressing design problems works. According to the McKinsey report, “The Business Value of Design”:

“One online gaming company discovered that a small increase in the usability of its home page was followed by a dramatic 25 percent increase in sales.”

In this article, I’ll shed light on the techniques for addressing these concerns:

Carefully selecting a research location;

Compromising with stakeholders to allow sufficient time for analysis without delaying the design process;

Making sound, evidence-based design decisions;

Engaging in design reduction.

1. Context Over Convenience: Why Location Matters

Construction Site in Colombia. (Large preview)

On-the-ground observations included:

Risks of vehicle collisions due to noise and low visibility when winds were high.

The difficulty shorter operators encountered when reaching for certain controls in the cab (operators in Latin America were, on average, smaller than their U.S. counterparts).

The rapid corrosion of metal equipment caused by salt on a construction site near the ocean.

Observing users in their real-world work environment:

Reduced the risk of solving the wrong problem because we did not rely on second-hand information from sales or product (this happens more often than you might think).

Allowed us (the researchers) to hear the noise, see the dust, and feel the bumps while riding on these enormous machines.

Provided actionable insights that could not have been gathered in an office.

The author interviewing a machine operator in Colombia. (Large preview)

2. Compromise

This was a good outcome. The fieldwork in Mexico and Colombia identified real-world problems, and stakeholders acted on this information.

— Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy. New York Times Article about Walmart.

Analysis. (Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay) (Large preview)

Preliminary Design Work. (Photo by Syda Productions from Depositphotos) (Large preview)

3. Better Design Decisions

Endowment Effect: Emotional attachment leads to an inflated sense of value. (Image by Pexels from Pixabay) (Large preview)

The data supports this conclusion. According to the McKinsey report mentioned above: “Less than 5 percent of those we surveyed reported that their leaders could make objective design decisions.”

The endowment effect is one of many barriers to making sound design decisions. See A Designer’s Guide To Better Decisions to learn how to avoid other, common decision traps.

Awareness of the endowment effect and other decision traps contributes to better design because it allows us to make tough choices during the actual design process.

4. Design Reduction

One such choice is what to remove from an existing design or an early design iteration. For example, the image shown below left could easily be an early iteration of a mobile app.

Cluttered Layout: Fake Fitness App. (Large preview)

Cleaner Layout: Fake Fitness App. (Large preview)

Even in the cleaner example (above right), a designer might ask if “This Month” and “165: Max Pulse” are necessary. If not, removing them would be yet another reduction.

Gently reminding stakeholders and other team members about the risks of a heavy cognitive load.

Sharing cluttered designs (any app or site will do) with the team and asking them to quickly locate a specific feature. Their struggle to find the feature will make the point.

Sharing video clips of past research projects for your company showing how easily users become confused when interacting with a crowded UI.

Adhering to this reduction technique early in the design process benefits the business by decreasing the chance of user confusion, task or cart abandonment, and unhappy customers.

Design reduction is essential to creating engaging, user-centered design but only works when coupled with rigorous user research that contributes to informed design decisions.

Conclusion

Context over convenience Location matters. Whether at home, a café, or on a noisy construction site, conduct UX and market research where users will be when interacting with your product.

Better design decisions Make better decisions by keeping an eye out for the all-too-human tendency to become attached to a design you have created.

Reduction Remove unnecessary UI elements leaving only what is necessary for users and customers to complete the task at hand.

(ah, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/reducing-design-risk/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/reducing-design-risk.html

0 notes

scpie · 5 years ago

Text

Reducing Design Risk

About The Author

Eric is the founder of UX Culture Works. He has spent the past 19 years leading UX research and design projects for Fortune 500 companies in the finance, … More about Eric …

Author and designer Nikki Anderson explains the consequences of this pressure to conduct research at lightning speed:

“Just send a short video.”

I reluctantly sent a video snippet showing a participant struggling with the user interface (UI).

Biased design decision based on observation of a single usability test participant. (Large preview)

There was no time for background, context, or nuance. The product manager at Company Q recognized the participant in the video from a previous encounter and dismissed his struggles:

“He’s a crank, we can’t base decisions on him.”

The company moved forward without addressing this serious UI issue.

Understandable, but also problematic. As UX guru Jared Spool explains in an article about the ROI of UX, dismissing user needs carries a high cost:

For example, say you get many support calls because the design doesn’t do something the users expect. That’s a high cost due to a poor design decision.

In contrast, addressing design problems works. According to the McKinsey report, “The Business Value of Design”:

“One online gaming company discovered that a small increase in the usability of its home page was followed by a dramatic 25 percent increase in sales.”

In this article, I’ll shed light on the techniques for addressing these concerns:

Carefully selecting a research location;

Compromising with stakeholders to allow sufficient time for analysis without delaying the design process;

Making sound, evidence-based design decisions;

Engaging in design reduction.

1. Context Over Convenience: Why Location Matters

Construction Site in Colombia. (Large preview)

On-the-ground observations included:

Risks of vehicle collisions due to noise and low visibility when winds were high.

The difficulty shorter operators encountered when reaching for certain controls in the cab (operators in Latin America were, on average, smaller than their U.S. counterparts).

The rapid corrosion of metal equipment caused by salt on a construction site near the ocean.

Observing users in their real-world work environment:

Reduced the risk of solving the wrong problem because we did not rely on second-hand information from sales or product (this happens more often than you might think).

Allowed us (the researchers) to hear the noise, see the dust, and feel the bumps while riding on these enormous machines.

Provided actionable insights that could not have been gathered in an office.

The author interviewing a machine operator in Colombia. (Large preview)

2. Compromise

This was a good outcome. The fieldwork in Mexico and Colombia identified real-world problems, and stakeholders acted on this information.

— Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy. New York Times Article about Walmart.

Analysis. (Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay) (Large preview)

Preliminary Design Work. (Photo by Syda Productions from Depositphotos) (Large preview)

3. Better Design Decisions

Endowment Effect: Emotional attachment leads to an inflated sense of value. (Image by Pexels from Pixabay) (Large preview)

The data supports this conclusion. According to the McKinsey report mentioned above: “Less than 5 percent of those we surveyed reported that their leaders could make objective design decisions.”

The endowment effect is one of many barriers to making sound design decisions. See A Designer’s Guide To Better Decisions to learn how to avoid other, common decision traps.

Awareness of the endowment effect and other decision traps contributes to better design because it allows us to make tough choices during the actual design process.

4. Design Reduction

One such choice is what to remove from an existing design or an early design iteration. For example, the image shown below left could easily be an early iteration of a mobile app.

Cluttered Layout: Fake Fitness App. (Large preview)

Cleaner Layout: Fake Fitness App. (Large preview)

Even in the cleaner example (above right), a designer might ask if “This Month” and “165: Max Pulse” are necessary. If not, removing them would be yet another reduction.

Gently reminding stakeholders and other team members about the risks of a heavy cognitive load.

Sharing cluttered designs (any app or site will do) with the team and asking them to quickly locate a specific feature. Their struggle to find the feature will make the point.

Sharing video clips of past research projects for your company showing how easily users become confused when interacting with a crowded UI.

Adhering to this reduction technique early in the design process benefits the business by decreasing the chance of user confusion, task or cart abandonment, and unhappy customers.

Design reduction is essential to creating engaging, user-centered design but only works when coupled with rigorous user research that contributes to informed design decisions.

Conclusion

Context over convenience Location matters. Whether at home, a café, or on a noisy construction site, conduct UX and market research where users will be when interacting with your product.

Better design decisions Make better decisions by keeping an eye out for the all-too-human tendency to become attached to a design you have created.

Reduction Remove unnecessary UI elements leaving only what is necessary for users and customers to complete the task at hand.

(ah, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/reducing-design-risk/

0 notes

rafi1228 · 6 years ago

Link

JavaScript – Master the Fundamentals in 6 Hours

What you’ll learn

Understand the fundamental concepts in JavaScript

Learn problem-solving skills

Learn and apply the best practices

Avoid common pitfalls and mistakes other JavaScript developers make

Write solid JavaScript code

Requirements

No coding experience is required to take this course.

Description

WHAT IS JAVASCRIPT?

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and growing faster than any other programming language. As a developer, you can use JavaScript to build web and mobile apps, real-time networking apps, command-line tools, and games.

4 REASONS TO LEARN JAVASCRIPT

JavaScript is a key tool for front-end, back-end, and full-stack developers.

The average annual salary for a JavaScript developer is $72,000.

Companies like Walmart, Netflix, and PayPal run big internal applications around JavaScript.

Having strong JavaScript knowledge will help you land your dream job.

A STEP-BY-STEP, BEGINNER-FRIENDLY COURSE

This course is your first step towards a new career in web or mobile development. Here is what you get when enroll in this course:

6 hours of HD videos

Bite-sized and easy-to-digest videos with “no fluff”

30 exercises and challenges with solutions

Expert tips to become a JavaScript wizard

No more wasted time on disconnected, out-of-date tutorials

Learn at your own pace – take your time if required

Unlimited access – watch the course as many times as you wish

30-day money-back guarantee – try it risk free! You have nothing to lose.

Certificate of completion to present to your current or future employer

WHY THIS COURSE?

There are several JavaScript courses on Udemy. So, what makes this course different? Here are 5 reasons:

Taught by a senior coder and best-selling instructor – Mosh Hamedani

Mosh has 17 years of experience as a software engineer

He has produced 19 courses and many of them are best-selling courses

He has taught over 200,000 students in 192 countries

No fluff or unnecessary repetition – don’t waste your time on long courses

Clear, concise, and practical training – start coding right away

Learn how to think like a programmer – most, if not all, courses just teach you JavaScript features, not the art of problem solving

JavaScript interview questions – many of the exercises in the course are picked from popular interview questions

Fun and engaging – just read Mosh’s reviews and see what his students have to say

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?

Aspiring developers – perhaps you learned a little bit of HTML and CSS and want to take your first JavaScript programming course. This course is an ideal starting point.

Experienced developers with no degree in computer science – there are a lot of self-taught web developers out there who cannot solve basic programming problems, because they never attended a college. Don’t be one of those! This course teaches you the fundamental programming skills that every developer must know.

Anyone who wants to better understand JavaScript – chances are you’ve taken another course but didn’t understand certain topics well. You can take this course to fill the gaps and strengthen your understanding of JavaScript.

NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE NEEDED

You don’t need familiarity with JavaScript to take this course. You’ll learn everything from scratch, step-by-step. A very basic familiarity with HTML will be helpful but it is not required.

ARE YOU READY TO MAKE THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS BECOMING A WEB OR MOBILE DEVELOPER?

Stop wasting your time on disconnected tutorials or super long courses. Enroll in the course to get started. With a 30-day money-back guarantee, what do you have to lose?

Who this course is for:

Anyone who wants to become a web developer

Existing developers who need to strengthen their understanding of JavaScript

Created by Mosh Hamedani Last updated 6/2018 English English

Size: 2.67 GB

Download Now

https://ift.tt/2B816Tx.

The post JavaScript Basics for Beginners appeared first on Free Course Lab.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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deniscollins · 6 years ago

Text

Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force

If you were an Amazon executive would you: (1) spend $700 million to retrain 100,000 workers, about a third of its American workers, to do more high-tech tasks, moving a large swath of workers up one or two rungs on the skills ladder, such as turning warehouse floor workers into IT technicians and low-level coders into data scientists, or (2) dismiss those workers and hire on the open market? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

As automation technology has leapt ahead, workers increasingly worry about losing their jobs to robots and algorithms. Economists dismiss those concerns, by and large, arguing that workers can grab higher-skilled jobs with better wages.

Amazon may soon find out who is right.

The e-commerce giant said Thursday that it planned to spend $700 million to retrain about a third of its American workers to do more high-tech tasks, an acknowledgment that advances in technology are remaking jobs in nearly every industry — and that workers will need to adapt or risk being left behind.

Amazon said the program amounted to one of the world’s largest employee-retraining efforts. It will apply across the company, from corporate employees to warehouse workers, retraining about 100,000 by 2025. Amazon has about 300,000 employees in the United States.

The investment is a large-scale experiment in whether companies can remake their existing work forces to fit a fast-changing technological world. While government programs have tried to turn factory workers and coal miners into computer coders and data scientists, few of those efforts have succeeded. Corporate attempts have been limited.

But with unemployment low and workers scarce, companies like Amazon feel pressure to look internally to fill their labor needs. Their efforts could help answer a more fundamental question: Will automation be a solution for the great challenges of the 21st-century economy — low wages, rising inequality and anemic overall growth — or make those problems worse?

“The scale and pace of the changes in the work force are unprecedented,” said Susan Lund, an economist at the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. “They can’t hire off the street everyone they need. They have no choice but to retrain their own workers.”

Amazon already faces fierce criticism from politicians on the right and left, including President Trump and Democratic presidential candidates like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They have held up the company as a symbol of tech industry excess, saying Amazon avoids paying taxes, devalues workers and squashes smaller businesses.

And the fear that robots are taking jobs, and that automation will lead to mass unemployment, has grabbed the popular imagination. Magazine covers warn of a robot apocalypse. Andrew Yang, a former tech entrepreneur, is running for president partly on a platform of offering a universal income to offset jobs lost to automation. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that up to one-third of the American work force will have to switch to new occupations by 2030.

The prevailing view among economists and technologists is that for the next few years, digital technology, from clever software to warehouse robots, will mainly change jobs rather than destroy them. Tasks become automated, so people spend less time on routine work.

So far, there is little evidence of widespread displacement. Amazon and other companies have hired hundreds of thousands of workers for their warehouses. Manufacturers have added jobs after decades of cuts. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low, and companies are digging deep into the labor market to find workers — easing education requirements, waiving drug tests and hiring people with criminal records.

Many economists fret that there has not been enough automation. Productivity — the amount of value that employees create, on average, in an hour of work — has been rising slowly. That has helped drag down both economic growth and wages. When workers aren’t more productive, it is harder for companies to pay them more.

Amazon’s announcement on Thursday could be a sign that the strong labor market is finally pushing companies to make investments in both workers and technology to increase productivity.

Big companies, including Walmart and AT&T, have announced their own training programs in recent years. Companies are also raising wages — last year, Amazon committed to paying a minimum wage of $15 per hour — giving them more of an incentive to ensure that those workers are productive.

“A tight labor market really enables workers to be able to demand more,” said J. W. Mason, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. “When they have to pay higher wages, when they have to struggle to find workers, then they take the steps they need to make sure those workers are worth the money.”

Ardine Williams, Amazon’s vice president of people operations, said the company had more than 20,000 open positions in the United States. In November, Amazon selected Northern Virginia as the site of a second headquarters, after company executives said they needed to look beyond Seattle, its longtime home, to fill its need for talent.

Automation already plays a central role at Amazon’s huge warehouses. Devices tell workers which direction to walk to pick up a package from a shelf. And there are signs that technology is at least easing the company’s voracious appetite for warehouse workers: Last holiday season, it hired fewer temporary workers than in the previous year, and last quarter, its head count was up 12 percent, the lowest rise in years.

Amazon isn’t trying to turn warehouse pickers into software engineers. Rather, its new program aims to move a large swath of workers up one or two rungs on the skills ladder, turning warehouse floor workers into IT technicians and low-level coders into data scientists.

Ms. Williams said the retraining initiative was built on existing education programs at the company. Software engineering classes will be available for corporate employees without technical backgrounds, she said.

“When automation comes in, it changes the nature of work, but there are still pieces of work that will be done by people,” Ms. Williams said in an interview. “You have the opportunity to up-skill that population so they can, for example, work with the robots.”

Amazon’s announcement met with some skepticism from experts, They noted that American companies had long spent less on training than their European counterparts — and that when they did offer training, it was usually for college-educated, white-collar workers.

Amazon’s most prominent retraining program has had only modest adoption internally. In 2012, Amazon started a program called Career Choice to provide up to $12,000 in tuition and other costs for hourly employees to get certificates or associate degrees in high-demand fields like health care. Even though hundreds of thousands of people have worked at Amazon’s warehouses since the program started, only about 25,000 have participated.

Even if the retraining effort succeeds, some workers are bound to lose out. Not every one of them will be able to find a better job.

A report that the McKinsey Global Institute published on Thursday analyzed the impact of automation and the clustering of skilled workers in geographic hubs. The research paper concluded that 25 cities and high-growth hubs could generate 60 percent of the job growth in the United States through 2030. The 54 trailing cities and rural areas, where one-fourth of Americans live, could have no growth in jobs.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who recently wrote a report on automation and the work force, said increased training would, like higher wages, benefit workers. But he cautioned that there was no guarantee those policies would last when the economy cooled.

And he said that if Amazon did expect large job cuts in the future, offering training now would be a savvy public relations move.

“A less benign view of it is you’re pushing a lot of stuff out publicly at a moment where you know there’s going to be a real serious human accounting in the coming years,” Mr. Muro said. “It’s also good marketing now at a time when you’re beginning to contemplate major staffing changes.”

#Retraining #Amazon

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lakhwanabhishek · 4 years ago

Text

Reducing the risk of design

get in touch with us!

Source:

whizzystack.co

#b2b ecommerce

#b2b content marketing

#b2b seo

#Ecommerce

#socialmedia

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secretcupcakesublime · 4 years ago

Text

Reducing the risk of design

get in touch with us!

Source:

whizzystack.co

#b2b ecommerce

#b2b content marketing

#b2b seo

#Ecommerce

#socialmedia

#socialmedia #b2b seo

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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago

Link

Do I think ghosts are real? No, I’m a journalist! But do I think ghosts are real? Yes, it’s October.

When the air gets crisp and the leaves fall and everyone who sucks starts quoting the end of The Great Gatsby, it’s time to open your heart to the possibility that you don’t understand everything. You don’t even remember why leaves turn orange, probably. I know I don’t! You might buy some ghost-tracking equipment and play with it, and that would be an all right and possibly even admirable thing for you to do. Maybe better than a lot of other ways you could spend your money, hm?

I sat down with Kim Johnston, a paranormal researcher from Birmingham, Alabama, to find out what kind of money I should be prepared to spend on ghost-hunting apps and equipment this fall, and to get an expert opinion on which of the dozens of ghost-hunting apps available in the app store are rude scams that will only trick me and hurt my feelings.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

To start, could you give some background as to your experience in the paranormal field? What do you specialize in?

Kim Johnston

I have been either experiencing paranormal activity or investigating it and researching it for the last 10 years. It started when I moved into a house that I can only describe as haunted, back in 2008. So that’s where my journey into the paranormal began. I do have a day job — I’m a senior software engineer who designs and develops business web applications for an insurance company — so I tend to be pretty logical and skeptical. But there’s sometimes things that you experience that you have no other explanation for.

I write stories about local history and local hauntings, and then I also do a lot of residential cases where people call me because they’re experiencing paranormal activity and they need help.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Could you talk a little bit about the local stories you’re referring to? And when you’re helping people in their homes, what exactly does that entail?

Kim Johnston

Here in Birmingham, in the early 1800s, the Creek tribe was being pushed off the land by Andrew Jackson. There were numerous fights in the area surrounding us — battles and massacres and that sort of thing. We have that type of history here that I think causes some of our hauntings.

The city of Birmingham was also known for its pig iron back in the 1800s, when we were having the Industrial Revolution. We have mines everywhere. All the abandoned mines tend to be haunted because so many men died while mining. Sloss Furnace is located here in Birmingham and it’s one of the most haunted places in America, I would argue. It’s haunted because so many men would die, falling into the fires, or from smoke inhalation, or other industrial accidents. Those are some of the stories I’ve investigated.

“If you don’t have an EMF meter to detect these different electromagnetic waves, then there are apps that have that built in”

The first thing we do if someone thinks they’re having paranormal activity is, using an EMF (electromagnetic field) meter, I determine if there’s an electrical issue in the house. High EMF ratings have been linked to hallucinations and a feeling of paranoia, or making you feel like you’re being watched. These things can feel like they’re paranormal to the person experiencing them, but it can be just really high EMF and prolonged exposure to that. So the first thing we try to do is we try to debunk and rule out the paranormal.

If you don’t have an EMF meter to detect these different electromagnetic waves, then there are apps that have that built in. One of the apps is made by Laxton Ghosts; they’re some researchers out of Sweden. That app has several tools in it, and I find that one useful because it’s built by genuine researchers and not people who are just trying to have fun or make an app that’s kind of a joke.

A basic EMF meter, also called a K2 meter, you can find on Amazon or pretty much anywhere online. The cheapest model you can find is about $40 or so. It’s detecting electromagnetic fields, which are given off by anything electric: appliances, your power box at your house, power lines that go overhead. A TriField meter is a little more expensive. They’re about $150 or more, depending on what model you get. But that one can detect magnetic fields alone, and then electronic fields, and also radio frequencies depending on the settings you choose.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

I’m curious to hear a little more about how expensive this is as a hobby or as a research project. Other than the meters we’ve talked about, what kinds of things do you need to buy if you just want to try it out?

Kim Johnston

It can be a very budget-friendly hobby. All I started with was a flashlight and a voice recorder from Walmart that ran me about $30. Those were the two main tools I needed to get started in paranormal research. The voice recorder is used to capture electronic voice phenomena (EVPs). That’s all you need to get started. You can just go into a place that you know is haunted, or feel like might be haunted, turn your voice recorder on, and start asking questions, and see if any kind of voices show up on your recording afterward.

The next piece of equipment would be a decent camera. You can use your camera built into your phone, but if you want to do something like a night vision camera, those run about $200 for a good one from a reliable dealer. You’ll need the IR lights that help light up the room so the camera can see. I think IR lights are anywhere from $40 and up. That’s really all you would need.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Have you seen the BooBuddy teddy bear that has an EMF reader in it? I just stumbled across it this morning and really want one.

The BooBuddy bear has an EMF reader in his stomach to help detect paranormal activity. Bytown Paranormal

Kim Johnston

I have one!

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Do you love it?

Kim Johnston

I do like it. We did have a very interesting experience using it at an old mining village. It has an EMF meter inside it, so its belly will grow red if it detects any electrical fields. We were standing out in the middle of the woods of this mining village and the bear’s belly starts glowing red. We ruled out that there was anything electrical around to cause it to do that. One of the people with us said she felt like there was a little girl holding her hand. She was holding BooBuddy in one arm and then the other felt like a little girl was holding her hand. It has recorded questions inside of it. We’ve used that some but not with a lot of luck — at least not yet. But it does seem to attract childlike spirits.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

So once an EMF meter shows you something like that, what’s next?

Kim Johnston

Next, we’ll set up the voice recorders, and we use [what’s called] a spirit box. A spirit box is an AM/FM radio that’s been “hacked” to scan through all the radio stations at a high rate of speed and create white noise. It’s really noisy and makes a lot of racket, but the theory goes that spirits can [manipulate] that white noise to [make words or sounds] and communicate with us — real-time, where we can hear them. We can ask questions, and they hopefully will respond.

Some [apps that can also do this] scan internet radio stations and others just have a bank of sounds built in. We have a [classic] radio spirit box, and we also use apps that are spirit boxes on our smartphones. My favorite spirit box app that I’m using right now is SonoX10, which is one of those apps that just has a sound bank; there’s also a SonoX12 for people on Android.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Could you talk a little bit about how you go about deciding that a research team — and therefore their app — is reliable?

Kim Johnston

I had a conversation with the creators of the Laxton Ghost app. I did a little research on them and saw that they were serious investigators — they weren’t just trying to create something for fun, and this was a serious effort to create something that was useful for paranormal research. I really kind of go by whether these people are serious in the field or if they’re just out to make a buck and fool somebody.

“Avoid anything that has a built-in feature where you can take photos while you’re in the app”

I avoid [the popular free app] Ghost Radar or anything named similarly to Ghost Radar — anything that has a built-in feature where you can take photos while you’re in the app. That kind of app will manipulate your photos to make you think you’ve caught some kind of paranormal apparition or strange-looking orb in your photos. So those are not very credible to me.

I was kind of skeptical of iOvilus, which is an app that seemingly just spits out random words. Supposedly spirits can manipulate it and give responses, make it say a word that’s relevant to what you’re asking or where you are. I do like to play with that one. Not everything it says is accurate or even applicable to where we are or what we’re doing, but sometimes it’ll do something or say something that’s dead-on. It makes me wonder.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Since you are a software developer, is working on something related to the paranormal something you’d ever get into on the technical side?

Kim Johnston

I haven’t started developing the code for it yet, but I am in the research phase [of an idea]. I want to create something that will allow a spirit to be able to interact and give yes or no responses. I have an idea of how that can be done differently than it has been done in other applications. One day, I hope to get that developed.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

My big question around the app stuff is, obviously if you’re interacting with ghosts, they’re probably pre-iPhone. Does that seem like a barrier to you?

Kim Johnston

You’re saying that the ghosts are from long ago, how would they know how to use our equipment?

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Yeah. Sorry if that’s a dumb question.

Kim Johnston

No, no, I struggled with this question in the beginning of my paranormal research too. What I would do is I would explain to the spirits when we started a session how to use all the various equipment. Some of my friends would kind of giggle at me because I felt the need to do this. Supposedly once you’ve passed on and you’re on the other side, you’re kind of all-knowing and you don’t need those explanations, but I still explain it anyway.

I do think it is a barrier at times. Our equipment can be intimidating, it can be loud, I do think that some spirits are afraid to interact with us because of that. But yeah, I don’t know, some of them figure it out really quick and we get some good interaction.

Original Source -> Ghost-hunting apps and tools that are worth your money, according to a paranormal researcher

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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ianasennus · 7 years ago

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[Udemy] JavaScript Basics for Beginners

JavaScript - Master the Fundamentals in 6 Hours What Will I Learn? Understand the fundamental concepts in JavaScript Learn problem-solving skills Learn and apply the best practices Avoid common pitfalls and mistakes other JavaScript developers make Write solid JavaScript code Requirements No coding experience is required to take this course. Description WHAT IS JAVASCRIPT? JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and growing faster than any other programming language. As a developer, you can use JavaScript to build web and mobile apps, real-time networking apps, command-line tools, and games. 4 REASONS TO LEARN JAVASCRIPT JavaScript is a key tool for front-end, back-end, and full-stack developers. The average annual salary for a JavaScript developer is $72,000. Companies like Walmart, Netflix, and PayPal run big internal applications around JavaScript. Having strong JavaScript knowledge will help you land your dream job. A STEP-BY-STEP, BEGINNER-FRIENDLY COURSE This course is your first step towards a new career in web or mobile development. Here is what you get when enroll in this course: 6 hours of HD videos Bite-sized and easy-to-digest videos with "no fluff” 30 exercises and challenges with solutions Expert tips to become a JavaScript wizard No more wasted time on disconnected, out-of-date tutorials Learn at your own pace - take your time if required Unlimited access - watch the course as many times as you wish 30-day money-back guarantee - try it risk free! You have nothing to lose. Certificate of completion to present to your current or future employer WHY THIS COURSE? There are several JavaScript courses on Udemy. So, what makes this course different? Here are 5 reasons: Taught by a senior coder and best-selling instructor - Mosh Hamedani Mosh has 17 years of experience as a software engineer He has produced 19 courses and many of them are best-selling courses He has taught over 200,000 students in 192 countries No fluff or unnecessary repetition - don’t waste your time on long courses Clear, concise, and practical training - start coding right away Learn how to think like a programmer - most, if not all, courses just teach you JavaScript features, not the art of problem solving JavaScript interview questions - many of the exercises in the course are picked from popular interview questions Fun and engaging - just read Mosh’s reviews and see what his students have to say WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR? Aspiring developers - perhaps you learned a little bit of HTML and CSS and want to take your first JavaScript programming course. This course is an ideal starting point. Experienced developers with no degree in computer science - there are a lot of self-taught web developers out there who cannot solve basic programming problems, because they never attended a college. Don’t be one of those! This course teaches you the fundamental programming skills that every developer must know. Anyone who wants to better understand JavaScript - chances are you’ve taken another course but didn’t understand certain topics well. You can take this course to fill the gaps and strengthen your understanding of JavaScript. NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE NEEDED You don’t need familiarity with JavaScript to take this course. You’ll learn everything from scratch, step-by-step. A very basic familiarity with HTML will be helpful but it is not required. ARE YOU READY TO MAKE THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS BECOMING A WEB OR MOBILE DEVELOPER? Stop wasting your time on disconnected tutorials or super long courses. Enroll in the course to get started. With a 30-day money-back guarantee, what do you have to lose? Who is the target audience? Anyone who wants to become a web developer Existing developers who need to strengthen their understanding of JavaScript source https://ttorial.com/javascript-basics-beginners

source https://ttorialcom.tumblr.com/post/177492199408

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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An Airline Scans Your Face. You Take Off. But Few Rules Govern Where Your Data Goes.

By Catie Edmondson, NY Times, Aug. 6, 2018

WASHINGTON--The program makes boarding an international flight a breeze: Passengers step up to the gate, get their photo taken and proceed onto the plane. There is no paper ticket or airline app. Thanks to facial recognition technology, their face becomes their boarding pass.

“I would find it superconvenient if I could use my face at the gate,” said Jonathan Frankle, an artificial intelligence researcher at M.I.T. studying facial recognition technology. But “the concern is, what else could that data be used for?”

The problem confronting Mr. Frankle, as well as thousands of travelers, is that few companies participating in the program, called the Traveler Verification Service, give explicit guarantees that passengers’ facial recognition data will be protected.

And even though the program is run by the Department of Homeland Security, federal officials say they have placed no limits on how participating companies--mostly airlines but also cruise lines--can use that data or store it, opening up travelers’ most personal information to potential misuse and abuse such as being sold or used to track passengers’ whereabouts.

The data the airlines collect is used to verify the identity of passengers leaving the country, an attempt by the department to better track foreigners who overstay their visas. After passengers’ faces are scanned at the gate, the scan is sent to Customs and Border Protection and linked with other personally identifying data, such as date of birth and passport and flight information.

For its part, Customs and Border Protection has said it will retain facial scans of American citizens for no longer than 14 days. But the agency has said it cannot control how the companies use the data because they “are not collecting photographs on C.B.P.’s behalf.”

John Wagner, the deputy executive assistant commissioner for the agency’s Office of Field Operations, said he believed that commercial carriers had “no interest in keeping or retaining” the biometric data they collect, and the airlines have said they are not doing so. But if they did, he said, “that would really be up to them.”

But, Mr. Wagner added, “there are still some discussions to be had,” and federal officials are considering whether they should write in protections.

Privacy advocates have criticized the agency for allowing airlines to act as unregulated arbiters of the data.

“C.B.P. is a federal agency. It has a responsibility to protect Americans’ data, and by encouraging airlines to collect this data, instead they are essentially abdicating their own responsibility,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit.

Harrison Rudolph, an associate at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, voiced similar concerns in a report he helped write in December evaluating the agency’s use of facial scans.

“Are there privacy protections in the contracts that D.H.S. has reached with the airlines?” Mr. Rudolph said in an interview. “Do they require the disposal of any data collected? Do they require audits? Are there use limitations to ensure that travelers’ photos aren’t used in ways they don’t expect? Without any enforceable rules, it’s too easy for D.H.S. to break those promises.”

Biometric data, including scans of passengers’ faces and fingerprints, is among the most sensitive, according to privacy experts, because unlike other means of identification such as a Social Security number, it cannot be changed.

The program, which currently operates through four major airlines in international airports in Los Angeles, Detroit, Orlando and Atlanta, is not mandatory for passengers. But the airlines--Delta, Lufthansa, British Airways and JetBlue--have reported that a majority of passengers participate.

It comes as facial recognition technology has become both more widespread and more closely scrutinized.

Companies such as Apple and Citibank have leveraged the technology, and still more--including casinos, music festival organizers and retailers like Walmart--have used it to track customers and shoplifters.

Amazon has recently drawn condemnation for providing facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies, whose use of the technology has caused privacy and civil liberties groups to voice concerns about overzealous surveillance.

Questions about the technology’s accuracy have also arisen. According to the Georgetown report, federal data shows that the system used by Customs and Border Protection incorrectly rejects as many as one in 25 travelers using valid credentials. It also cited studies that showed that facial recognition algorithms fail more frequently in correctly identifying women and people of color.

#airport security #facial recognition data

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