Election 2016

Wow , what a rollercoaster ride!
Let me declare up front that I am neither a dedicated Labor follower, nor a blue died Liberal supporter, although I would say I am Left leaning. All of the below are my personal opinions and do not reflect any positions regarding any organisations or businesses that I may be associated with.

However, Malcolm Turnbull has only himself to blame for the outcome of this election.  Over the next few days, there will be a lot of soul-searching within the Liberal ranks and investigation in Labor as to why they were unable to convince more people to vote against the Libs.

The results show that, in many cases, local issues overrode the Federal imperatives.  The Tasmanian result is a direct result of the Tasmanian unhappiness with the performance of the State Liberal Government.and the Labor party would have done much better in Victoria if the State Labor government had settled the CFA dispute before the election.

The Medicare Scare campaign, whilst a dirty trick (and a particularly good example of The Big Lie), showed that the people of Australia are distrustful of politicians in general and particularly the Liberals.  What the Tony Abbott mistruths about Education and Health showed is that political expediency will always have negative results in the long run.  We can look at Julia Gillard ("There will be no Carbon Tax under my government") and see this from the Labor perspective.  What the Australian people are sick of is the continual Liberal whining that the Labor party out tricked them in the dirty tricks department. Instead of whining about the past, start talking about how this has made you aware that many people are unhappy with your performance and you will stop chopping services that affect the more vulnerable in our society in favour of targetting those in the higher income brackets who are blatantly not paying their fair share of taxes.  Remember that every dollar given to a welfare recipient is money spent in the economy as versus being added to the zeros on the end of a wealthy person's bank statement.                              

Simply stating that Medicare was safe and that it would never be privatised, contradicted what people could see when the Liberals convened a committee to investigate options.  Like Caesar's wife, the Libs had to be seen not only to be protecting Medicare, but to actively be trying to improve it.  Steps like removing bulk-billing for pathology and medical imaging looks an awful lot like trying to introduce privatisation.  So as much as Malcolm claimed that they would protect Medicare, the actions of chopping various services was enough to put a scare into people that this could happen.

Add this to Malcolm's sound bite saying that sometimes politicians have to change their position regarding promises and you start to see why many people did not trust the Liberals.

On the other hand, Bill Shorten and the Labor party were particularly noticeable in their lack of solid policy statements.  It was almost like they did not want to commit to anything that may come back to bite them after the election.  We've seen this happen in the past, for example Tony Abbott's scare campaign in the last federal election as opposition leader.  As Opposition leader, all he did was snipe at the incumbent government.    Obviously it is not the Opposition's task to suggest policy to Government, only to suggest holes in the proposed policies.  The Liberals took this a step further and used possible errors in policy as cheap point scoring opportunities and quite often stooped to personal insults.  Bill rarely stooped to this level and certainly appears to have "played the ball, not the man" on most issues of debate.

Much as I hate to say it, the politics of personality is still alive and well in Australia.  Malcolm Turnbull has learnt from many years as an investment banker and business person that many people respond well when you are welcoming and come offering something that they want.  What you as a business person have to ensure, is that any offer is deliverable and cost effective for your side of the equation as well.  That being said, Malcolm Turnbull appears to be a likable fellow but more like the bank manager than a mate from the footy club.

Bill Shorten on the other hand is hamstrung by his background in the Trade Union movement.  The Trade Unions for all their worthy origins, have become an obstruction in a lot of businesses and as their influence wanes, they get more strident in their demands, to prove to their membership that "they are still fighting for their brothers and sisters." Unions still have their place but they must remember that at the end of the day, their task is to ensure that their membership is able to work a decent day's work for a decent wage.   Whilst most businesses have no argument with reasonable demands, the Unions coming in like an Aussie tourist bartering in Bali with extremely outrageous offers, sets the wrong tone in any negotiation.  Add to this the illegal activities of some of the Trade Union  members and you start seeing that "if you throw enough mud, some of it will stick".  In this case Bill had been in the Royal commission hearings and so some of the issues that were raised in this stuck to the Labor party.  Bill also seems to be a fairly harmless sort, the sort of guy you would meet at a Rotary meeting or Lions Club.

In conclusion I think the result is a combination of factors, and we will see in the next few days how well Malcolm has learned to negotiate, as he tries to convince the independents to support his government.  I do not believe that the independents are going to be as powerful as they were in the previous government , but that may be because of Malcolm's negotiating skills.  The Independents appear conservative enough to lean towards the Libs rather than the ALP but at the end of the day, it will take a lot of the "politics of the possible" for the Libs to get their more contentious items through parliament.

Job searching

Some Musings About Job Searching
(This was from a couple of years ago but is still relevant)

The following are some musings on the hassles of searching for work in today's environment.
Currently IT in Perth is fairly slow with many companies cutting back or mothballing projects, meaning that competition for positions is fairly fierce. This means you need to search smart, not hard.  Getting the word out by social networks and acquaintances can be the best way to ensure that you get the most offers you can.

1. Linkedin profiles are not a guarantee that the job will match my requirements or that I will match your position.  I have had multiple recruiters call me based on my profile, which is good, but when looking at the position, I can see that just mentioning a technology was enough to get me a tick on their checklist.  However by making sure that I include everything I have touched or tinkered with, I ensure that my breadth of knowledge is covered.

2. Many jobs are filled by word of mouth.  If you are not networking, you are likely not front of mind for most recruiters. This can be as simple as attending free IT seminars or getting on marketing lists for various technology vendors.

3. Recruiters are obviously under pressure to provide adequate choices to their clients, and sometimes the way they have written the job description means that they get many more applications than they can handle.  Obviously they need to winnow out the unsuccessful ones but please send your unsuccessful candidates an email letting them know. If I apply for a job that is obviously way out of my pay grade, then I expect a fairly quick notification that my application is not up to the demands of your position.

4. Many recruiters will get you to fill in the forms as if you have won the job, only to later tell you that you have not been successful (usually when you ring them to get an update).  Before I give you all my personal information, I want to know if I am going to get some work or if I am simply being added to your database for marketing purposes.

5. The Christmas/New Year period is terrible for trying to find work.  Australia effectively goes on holidays from Late December to Mid January, and HR departments are notorious for having skeleton staff.  If you apply for a job in late December, don't expect to hear anything until mid January at the  earliest.  This can be a problem if you do not have the financial resources to survive this long.  You may have to take that job at a retail store or labourer job to keep the wolves from the door.  Don't let this become your true job.  Keep applying, keep ringing recruiters.

6.  A confirmation email on receipt of an application, even if automated, lets the applicants know that at least they are in the mix.  Again, a simple email to the unsuccessful applicants is a way of letting them know without having to let them down personally.  Leaving an applicant hanging with no definite response is guaranteed to make them less likely to apply through your recruitment agency at a later time.

7.  If I apply for a job directly through a company and then later get approached by a recruiter trying to fill the same job, I have to assume that there are some issues with the person recruiting at the company.  If this person is in HR, I would tend to look at other companies.  One person is not necessarily the company, but in HR they tend to have multiple roles, and this is setting the wrong example from the start.

8. Seek jobs - many recruiters are broadcasting jobs or making the description vague so as to get as many applications as possible.  Many times this is simply another exercise in filling the marketing database.

9. Advertising jobs in the wrong geographical areas on Seek.  The number of jobs based in Adelaide that are advertised as Perth CBD makes me angry.  If I apply for this job and you ring me, it is a waste of time for both of us.  If I wanted to move to Adelaide, I would be looking for jobs advertised as being based in Adelaide.  Recruiters - please ensure that your locality information is accurate.

10. Business owners- I know your time is precious and you want to make the most of your interviewing, but don't rule out experienced workers, simply because they do not have a piece of paper.  Many times, the discipline, experience and stability they can bring to a role can save you thousands in dealing with younger employees who are only motivated by money and the excitement of the next project.

These are just some of the quick items I have noticed in a week since I finished my last job.
If this makes things easier for some job applicants then that is great.

Update

I now have a Casual position, at least for 6 months at this stage.  I've taken a significant pay cut and don't get sick or annual leave, but at least I am working and keeping my skills up to date.

In the current Perth market it appears that the majority of jobs being advertised are for IT service providers. This is a result of many companies downsizing their IT departments and outsourcing their support.  Much as this appeals to the bean counters, from a user perspective this is a negative step that can result in long wait times and sometimes ineffective support.

For those of us older people who don't have formal qualifications, much of your experience can be translated into exemptions when it comes to formal education.  Look up RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) and how much difference it can make.  Be aware that there are many companies out there that are trying to sell you a qualification based on RPL with minimal school time.  Check what school they are offering the qualification from ( If you have been offered a qualification from the Willeton school of Business Administration, then you may as well make up your own qualification as many of these "schools" are simply $2 shelf companies with no formal teaching staff or facilities other than a PO Box)

Update 2
It has been 18 months since I looked at this article, and in that time not much has changed.  The IT market in Perth is now picking up, and I have left my contract position for another full time position.  However I still stand by my comments to recruiters.  Keep your applicants in the loop and they will be happy to come back to you in the future.

Windows 10 impressions

By now many people have been prompted to upgrade their Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 machines to Windows 10.  This is a free upgrade (until July 2016) for the majority of home machines and should seriously be considered.

I have been using windows 10 on my Toshiba Satellite L10W for a few months now and overall I have been very happy with its performance and abilities.  I have upgraded a number of laptops and overall it has been a fairly painless process.  I know there were some reports of failures when upgrading but most could be tracked to antivirus updates or malware causing a glitch in the process.

Pros

1. Upgrade process was reasonably painless, provided you have a reasonable internet link.
2. Provides a start menu for users used to Windows 7
3. Handles touch screen and tablet functionality really well. 
4. Starts up really quickly compared to windows 7
5. Seems to recognise most printers without having to load extra drivers, and handles most USB devices really well.
6. Graphics and movies seem to work really well.
7. Patches are automatically installed as available. For enterprise networks this may not be desirable, but for the average home user this is a bonus.  

Cons

1. Privacy - one of the major issues that many people have is the amount of information that is pushed back to Microsoft with the default installation.  Luckily most of these intrusions can be turned off for minimal loss of functionality. See this link for an explanation of how to do this.
2. You will need to create a Windows (Outlook.com) login.  Some people find having another login to remember a problem.  
3. Some older machines can have driver issues.- fortunately Windows 10 checks for this during the pre-installation process, however given the wide variety of devices out there there is always scope for something to be sufficiently different to cause an issue.  This link provides some information on the basic requirements for the upgrade.
4. Make sure your antivirus package is compatible and updated to the latest version. One machine I upgraded had Symantec version 12 installed and this needed to be uninstalled before the update would proceed. 
5. The download is quite large (~ 3Gb) and can take quite a while.  If you are on a restricted link it can take many days for the Reservation process to complete the download.  Also if your download limit is quite small this download could easily exceed your download limit.  
6. The Windows Easy Transfer utility has been removed.  If you need to move from an older machine to a new machine, this was a great way to get your profile across.  Fortunately you can cheat and use the Easy transfer from your old machine to load your profile on your new machine. 

OK so you have decided that you want to proceed, what should you do? 

First of all I recommend doing a full backup and ensuring that any files that are irreplaceable ( those photos of your kids as babies) are backed up to a separate external drive or USB stick. This may sound like basic IT advice but even I, as an IT professional, have been caught out by an untimely hard drive failure.    Preferably you should have copies in multiple locations for redundancy. Make sure they are located in different places so that should the worst happen, you have a copy from which you can restore your data.  With the recent wildfires in WA , we have seen how quickly a location can be overun.  The use of services like Dropbox or OneDrive can ensure that you have an offsite backup of important files.

Click on the Windows 10 upgrade (Reservation) screen and select the option to reserve your copy.  This will start the download and the upgrade screen will pop up when the download has completed.  

Once you start the upgrade, Setup will check the compatibility of various softwares and drivers and signal if there are any obvious showstoppers.  Then it is a case of just clicking OK as required and letting the machine restart as needed.  

One thing that can be handy is ensuring you have a second machine with internet access should you run into a hitch and need to download some drivers.  It can be a terrible problem if the driver you need happens to be the hardware driver for your network connection and you have no other way to access the Internet. For this reason, should you have multiple machines, it is also recommended that you do each one individually,  and ensure that Internet access is available on the new machine before starting the install on the old machine.

A bonus is that Windows 10 gives you a rollback option should you find that you just can't survive without that specialised piece of software that has not been updated.

As an IT professional, I can recommend the Windows 10 upgrade as a simple way to improve your machine performance, with the added bonus that automatic updates will ensure that you are always up to date with system updates.  For a home user this provides a great way to ensure that you are protected against some of the nasties out on the Internet and don't have to call your friendly support person except to talk to them, especially when that IT person is family  :)

From an IT perspective, the remote access and remote assistance options are still available, up to the point where your device will not connect to the internet  :( .   At this point you are going to have to lay hands on, or talk your remote assistant through trouble shooting and re-establishing connectivity.