Yet another 8 weeks and another course under the belt; this last 8 weeks was spent primarily looking for work and writing on the side. School is kind of pointless without a method to pay for it and well hence the reasons for lack in posting.
On a side note, contracting is erradic; yes you make a premium but when it all breaks down your after tax income / hour worked is about the same as a salary for a similar employee minus the benefits. The issue with contracting in Ottawa is everyone and their dog has a finger in your pie; and I don't like my pie pre-touched. Having anymore than one provider for a contract is costly and the contractor sees nothing of that huge federal perdiem.
So for those of you that do read this I am now working full time for a local company at a Tier 2 consulting firm ie; we aren't IBM or Deloitte and Touche but we can do what they do at a far more competative rate. (Thus providing the canadian tax payer a huge value).
I feel as though I've been at this crossroads a while now. I know the work ahead of me, I know the carrer path and I'm not feeling as gratified as I thought; perhaps it's the story of every motivated and driven individual? You trod down a path look where your standing and wonder, do I really need to be here now? Or is the grass simply greener elsewhere?
Then comes the idea of the subjective experence of green; If I was colour blind would I move to where grass is yellow? pontifacations aside; I still have another 15 courses left in my program, that is 15 + a dissertation and I still like the whole P=NP issue but I think I'll have to invent a ne w machine to solve that one, since turing was a nutter.
Turings madness lies in the fact that we as sentinent biengs expect our environment to react to us as we do each other. Perhaps the the turning test, chinese box and various other problems in modern computer science will always be there, and mabye when computers become sentient they wont want to talk to us because of our confidence issues?
The beauty of the internet is the simple fact that it contains hundreds of thousands of streams of consicousness already; verbatim streams like this one right here; left unto the ether for all to see.
I've been considering more higher education; schemes within schemes and plans within plans I was thinking weather or not an MBa or LLB would hold value post-masters. All my finance involved friends tell me an MBa is ueseless but most of my esteemed (highly paid) colleagues have one. As far as I can see an MBa is a reason to charge up to $150 / hour for your services; and LLB gets you in at $200 but they are diffrent beasts and the combined programs don't seem to do much in the way lessenting the effort. (LLB is 3years + articleing, MBa is two years).
Ahh yes "Level of Effort"; it's all about the Cost of time multiplied by the Level of Effort over the return! In short I like to think of eductaion as a means to an end; knoledge is it's own gratifacation but money is need and therefore value must be determined in all things educaiton included.
It seems to be roughly $50 / hour / year of education.
Everyone get's an education at some point, be it in life, in school, in the air or on the ground the world educates us all; and we simply choose to remain ignroant or learn in the process.
So like all financial decisions it's a matter of time and money. Time i won't have for two years and money I will mabye; but we shall see. The MBa may be sponsored; the LLB will be under my own will power, time and money; so I may go for it as it will be discounted (I hope).
But then selecting an MBa? I work with a lot of management consultants; and I've worked with a lot of Managers; i've heard tales of woe and dismay from all sides, employees, mid-level management, seinor level management. A lot of them will even admit to the amout of money wasted on litreal crap every year.
I remember hearing yesterday on the CBC an interview between the Deptuy Minister for HRSDC (Human Resources) was bieng interviewed in regard to Employement Insurance; The two times I have been elleigable for EI and attempted to go on it; it has failed me completely, I was accepted the second time but when time for my first cheque came I was in a huge amount of debt and employeed.
And now with the downturn in Ontario EI offers you %50 of your income yet they take money from everyone; I'm not against social programs like this espcially when they offer money to re-train people however one issue that did come to light was the fact that if EI pays for training it's taxed as income at the end of the year? (Training is partitialy deductable within both provincal and federal taxes but only partitialy). Apart from that one thing I did note was the ADM's ability to avoid a direct awnser; this is a typical ability that is a requried skill for CEO's, Poloticians, General Directors and the like.
When somone points out a huge gaping flaw in your system (during the interview one such caller from the east coast stated that because he only worked part time he could only collect 1/2 of a part time wage which is really not enough to live on at all, in fact he'd make more on municipal welfare if he had lived in a municipality that had it). You don't acknoledge the flaw you reiterate the mission and glorify it with some nice adjectives and then state where it's going; without ever awnsering the question.
In Ottawa insider news with regards to the consulting world; there are some firms bieng charged with bid price fixing; what I am unsure of is weather or not the Competition Beaureau sicked the RCMP on TPG as a result of TPG suing PWGSC for screwing up a 400M bid? It looks smelly; costly and the only people going to make tons of money on this are the Lawers. (score 2 LLB!)
I have seen this personally many times PWGSC is a large organization that acts as the single source for all of the contract work the government needs; from missle defence to facilities maintenence (even the janitor is a contractor); now they just like other government organizations (*cough city of ottawa council *cough) have been known to screw up big time and piss off corporations to the point of bieng sued (*cough siemens train bid *cough). The case with "The Powell Group" is interesting as TPG Suit actually does have merit:
http://www.ottawabusinessjournal.com/291348180781812.php
Since they were in a position and then a new senator comes in (with ties to CGI) and the contract moves to CGI from TPG?, worth over 428 Million it's not peanuts they are arguing over. Having worked with CGI in the past I can state they are an ok company; but as a Tier 1 they could learn a thing or two from IBM.
Score 2 for Rent Seeking Behavior.
So then the Competition Beaureau name TPG in a "Stinky Bid" fiasco:
http://www.ottawabusinessjournal.com/293820812226546.php
Essentially the Competition beaureau (which has no director at the moment); has after a five year investigation stated that these firms bid in a manner that does not foster competition.
Now the origional suit for the 428 contract was actually from 2002; TPG got started back then.
It's really too bad that we cannot take a look at CGI and TPG's campaign contributions over the last 10 years; i'm sure examinging the lobby would turn up even more juicy details.
Offically though these two matters are now in the hands of the courts; which means just like the Siemens vs City of Ottawa Suit it's the Canadian Tax payer's money on the line.
I wonder if the competition beaureau will investigate which law firms get to bid on the legal defence contract against TPG or are Law services any diffren than computer consulting ones?
In other insider news as per standard fare the job market in ottawa is glutted with applicants as many federal departments have recently removed or released most if not all contractors (and casual worksers too) pending budget consideration.
Why the federal government does this I will never know; I've seen it happen a few times in the past where the ADM's and DM's essentially dictates to the upper echelons of these organizations that they have no money; I'm still trying to figure out if it's from the Tresuary Board or the actual Ministeral office.
The people in those positions are needed and getting rid of them even for a short while only incurrs further HR and Resourcing costs but the exeuctive seems to forget this fact that a good chunk of the money spent on labour is spent on finding and hiring skilled labour; whith the federal competition process bieng the way it is (ie; broken) turning your contractors into haggard nervous wrecks by telling them they have to leave for no reason other than the fact that your departments budget is not up to snuff?
Again it could be the Mandate money problem all over again; (where parlement says "Here's a Mandate now go fourth and do stuff! then economic considerations are an after thought; ie; we have a mandate but no money for HR or Labour?).
Political Ideology must make room for the bean counters to play since it is they who often must determine the true cost of a political ideal, poloticians simply use the ideal as a means to gain office; the other big issue is the frictional cost, which increases whenever these vetting processes occur.
With Nortel gone; you'd figure that the local offices would go on a small spending spree to soften the local economic blow; oh well I for one hope that I weather this storm and do well enough to buy a house in the next year as the prices are comming down to reasonable levels (as a result of all these jobless people in the Naitonal Capitol Region).
If anything this will force the local workforce to diversify & retrain; perhaps some will go to law school?
