Jerk of the month award

[DimPrawn]

Goes to Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy.

http://management.silicon.com/govern...9150282,00.htm

The chief executive of Autonomy attacked the UK government on Tuesday for what he claims is its "parochial" and "crazy" attitude to immigration.

Mike Lynch, founder of the search and knowledge management specialist who at the height of the dot-com boom became the UK's first internet billionaire, said that the UK's IT economy could be set back irrecoverably unless the government relaxes its current stance on allowing the "brightest and the best" to freely move into the country.

"The idea that a bright student from Africa may be stopped from entering this country is a shot in the foot for both the UK and Africa," said Lynch. "The current parochial attitudes to immigration in this country are just crazy."

Lynch made the comments at the second day of the Commonwealth Technology Forum 2005 in London.

Addressing an audience from places such as Africa, China, Europe and India, Lynch said that ideas of regional competition were outdated, and that international co-operation was the way forward.

"I don't believe in regional competition. Technology is always about co-operation. In the modern tech environment you need to be able to open up to the brightest and the best," said Lynch.

The current UK immigration system is widely seen as overly complicated. The government is committed to replacing it with a points-based system for migrants who wish to come to the UK to work or study. Under this plan, IT specialists would be counted as highly skilled, giving them enough points to enter the country without a job before finding work or setting up a business. DP says - IT contracting

Lynch, whose company makes software designed to manage and organise unstructured data, also discussed future innovation and said that advances in storage would mean that it would soon be possible to catalogue an entire life from start to finish.

"We are about four years away from a disk drive that can store my entire life, based on a still shot every few seconds, and telephone phone quality audio."

Every article spouted from the gob of this **** is such bulltulip it's staggering.

[The Lone Gunman]

If he is so sure the talent doesnt exist here then why does he not take his company elsewhere?

What he realy means is he wants cheap labour to improve his profit margins.

I cant disagree with him in some ways, I think it may be a good idea to have a global economy and migratory work forces, but we have to have a level playing field some way of only allowing third world or cheaply produced goods sold at equivelant prices.

[xoggoth]

Don't necessarily disagree. If we really only allowed the "brightest and best" there would never have been a problem. It's the unskilled low wage types who form the majority of immigrants from some countries that cause the problems.

[DodgyAgent]

autonomy

Don't necessarily disagree. If we really only allowed the "brightest and best" there would never have been a problem. It's the unskilled low wage types who form the majority of immigrants from some countries that cause the problems.

I dont know hat he is moaning about. If there are not enough home grown people there are certainly enough EU accession state skilled graduates and workers. The truth is that these people do not want to invest in training, they expect to place an advert and for talented experienced people to walk in the door and offer their services for less than £20 k per year. I somehow think he may be touting for business from Nigeria?

[Fungus]

Don't necessarily disagree. If we really only allowed the "brightest and best" there would never have been a problem. It's the unskilled low wage types who form the majority of immigrants from some countries that cause the problems.

Obviously you haven't worked in a company that is using clever capable contractors from India, and which are replacing more expensive UK contractors.

In some senses Lynch has a point, though he obviously is thinking about his profit margin. But if we end up taking the most skilled and able people from Africa, aren't we screwing Africa (think about the case with nurses and doctors), in which case is this really ethical?

I could never trust anyone with a beard like his. It's too obsessively neat. Frightening.

Leif

[AtW]

Autonomy is a search related company. Here is what he said earlier:

Google has 'dumbed-down search', says Autonomy boss

There's more to search than typing a word in a box...
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By Will Sturgeon

Published: Monday 19 September 2005

Mike Lynch, founder and CEO of Autonomy, has accused Google of dumbing-down user expectations of search functionality, arguing there is far more to it than simply typing a word in a box and hitting 'enter'.

Lynch said companies such as his own have moved on from such notions and that discerning users are looking for far more than keyword searches.
We're starting to see an appetite for second-generation technologies. There is no point in trying to out-Google Google.

Lynch told silicon.com: "We're starting to see an appetite for second-generation technologies. There is no point in trying to out-Google Google."

As such Lynch said he is more intent on developing broader capabilities for search which will see users searching the content of phone calls and television programmes, as well as far more intuitive network searches within the enterprise.

He told silicon.com that Google will struggle to break into this area, even if its consumer offering will remain strong and added that internet search will "become commoditised".

"The important thing is to understand what Google does. Google is very successful at internet search. And when we talk about internet search we're talking about typing one or two words into a blank box," said Lynch.

"Google has very little impact on our end of the market. The one thing it has done is dumb-down how people search, which is a shame."

Lynch said users are still doing too much legwork for Google, searching with simple terms and then clicking through the hundreds or thousands of results returned looking for the content which best matches their needs.

"Say I'm interested in the effect of oil pollution on the penguin population of Alaska," said Lynch. "Although that's the idea someone is looking for they will walk up to a search engine and type 'penguin'."

"They would never walk up to a librarian and just say 'penguin' and that's the Google effect. We've been trained to assume the search engine is dumb and that takes a little un-training in enterprise."

http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9152404,00.htm

--

His search certainy does not scale to Internet levels and he fails to understand that a better search requries less words to produce good results.

He might have as well said that diesel cars are crap because they use less fuel.

[Not So Wise]

I would take anything that guy says with a pinch of salt, remember his search engines and "pull" search tools in the mid 90's, while not to bad they definatly were not that great either. Became popular more because they sounded cool rather than because they worked well (where google is the direct opasite)

Obviously you haven't worked in a company that is using clever capable contractors from India, and which are replacing more expensive UK contractors.

Thing is, if those contractors come over here and don't have their visa tied to a particular company their rates will not stay low for long because not only will they see what other contractors are earning but they will have the same costs/expences

While i don't consider to great the idea of bring a load contractors over here (skill shortage = total fantasy imo, never seen a contract with reasonable rates vs skill expectations not get flooded with cv's) it is definatly a lot better for us than them farming offshore all the work, because with the exteamly low cost of living and expences over there we can never compete.

[xoggoth]

a better search requries less words

Eh? How does that work then??? Seems contrary to basic logic to me. If I type in no words at all does it search perfectly?

[Tex]

Eh? How does that work then??? Seems contrary to basic logic to me. If I type in no words at all does it search perfectly?

Dagnabbit, no. It jus returns evy webtulipe in the world.