STONECPS

Mercurial: as defined by Merriam Webster, characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood. This is how some employees from Apple usually describe Steve Jobs, especially by those who have worked closely with him.

If they were to conduct, employee surveys, management would not be happy with the result as some employees might not give good feedback because some of them really can’t stand the work practice and etiquette of Steve Jobs. That is why there are some who resigned from Apple as they can’t stand the pressure and the “reality distortion field” that Steve Jobs is creating in Apple.

These are just some of the insights that I am getting as I read through the Autobiography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. Steve really has no skill when it comes to employee engagement as he can really be rude sometimes as he speaks his heart out about his observations on the project that they are developing.

But I guess this just goes to show how passionate he is with his work. Some say that the pressure that Steve has given them has made them pushed themselves to their limit and so they were able to create amazing and innovative product like the Macintosh.

Apple is a big name now in the Information Technology field, big thanks goes to Steve Jobs for his brilliance. I guess Apple could just have hired Infosurv instead of ousting Steve from Apple back then, so Infosurv can help them better manage their company by producing happy employees.

Infosurv is a company that provides online market research, employee surveys and more and this could have been Apple’s savior back then when everything was in chaos for the Apple company. But I guess, Apple bounced back and was able to recover from their mistakes in the past. Let us see now how they will continue to be successful now that Steve Jobs is gone.

Software development entails a lot of steps and processes and part of the steps that the company must take to develop highly reliable software is quality testing. Quality testing is a very important step in the software development because it helps organization detect bugs at the early stage of software development which can help them save on development expenses.

Programmers who wrote the program have the complete knowledge and background of the logic and the flow of the program so they are a good resource to use when conducting quality testing. They know what would be the required input and the required output for the software being developed so they can be the reliable person to conduct the unit, integration and system testing.

But programmers are still human and as much as they want to reduce errors in programs, they do unknowingly insert codes in the programs that they are writing that may cause errors in the software. Also, sometimes, they can be bias in testing the quality of the program that they have written. That is why if an organization can afford it, it would still be best to get an independent and separate team for quality testing. An independent team with a new perspective and is not bias, who can take a look at the program.

In my opinion, as long as the organization follows the standard software development methodology in developing a software, then quality testing done by programmers themselves is enough but this process is a strenuous job and requires more on numerous system tests as viewed in a different perspective. If the organization can afford to hire an external or separate team, then it is a plus for the organization since this will ensure that their software is being check by a different entity that can scrutinize the possible loopholes and advantages that can be exploited as compared to the knowledge of the developers.

Some companies have employed technical experts to scan, test and hack their system in order to determine how to implement a secure infrastructure such as ethical hacking, penetration testing, integrity checkers, vulnerability scanning and many more. This is an effort with permission from management and the supervision of system administrators. Other than this, this is typically falls in the category of an illegal act which is hacking. But even if systems administrators are aware of the test being conducted on their systems, they will still test and scan their systems of the possible effects of the hacking test that they conducted to their network infrastructure or retrace that nothing was changed or added. And these cost time and money from the organization.

So is there such a thing as a harmless worm? In my opinion, my answer is no, because no matter how little the effect of the program, it still causes us disruption on our work such as the latest Obama worm which shows his face every week in your desktop not unless you really love the guy but to many who has been infected, would they want it too? It causes time and money especially when we’re cleaning up our systems. When a computer “worm” was coined in our society few decades ago, it has been labeled as a malware causing a bad effect to your system or systems around the world and stating it as harmless; we’ll be making another definition for it.

So even if the worms’ intention is harmless, it will still do damage to the network. The problem with worms is that it doesn’t need user’s intervention in order to spread; it spread and multiplies on its own. The damage created by the worm can be as little as using an organization’s bandwidth and resources but as little an effect as this will still cost the organization time and money and thus can be considered harmful.

Of What use is a Certification to me?

For me, getting a certification definitely will give any IT Professional an edge against those who are not certified. I admit that when I tried for my first certification, I have a thinking that it is for everybody and that it is just a money generating thing for Microsoft, Cisco, etc because anyone who spends time reading the Technical books can pass and be certified. But when I finished the test, I learned that he questions given are a true test of experience of an IT professional, something that you will be able to answer if you have a deeper knowledge of the subject matter and something that you won’t acquire from reading and memorizing text books.

Most if not all companies, have use this as a gauge to measure the experience and knowledge of IT Professionals which I think is a very good tool to use since those who are certified really deserve to be called one as they have devoted a lot of time and effort in obtaining that Certification.

Yes, you have to pay Microsoft or Cisco or CompTia or other companies in order to be acknowledge as an experienced and certified IT Professional of their products but I don’t think this is money generating. These big companies have dedicated a lot in order to get the reputation and prestige that they have now in the IT industry and of course, if they awarded somebody their certification, it means that they are allowing that person to be associated with the reputation that their company holds. And of course I believe that nothing in this world is free so it is just okay for me to pay if what I will be getting in exchange is the equal amount of respect as what this companies’ are getting once I get certified with them.

Currently, I am already holding 3 Microsoft certifications and I am still pursuing other certifications because I believe that getting certified is one of a good proof that I am trying my best to update my knowledge and be regarded as a credible IT Professional who really knows her craft.