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Nagy Vilmos wrote: My father in law lived with us and he died from fecking cancer three years ago. I've been there, got the T
And you didn't get any help? I not, then you deserve a sainthood. When Mrs. Max was at death's door (she did, I have to say, recover eventually) I was completely shagged sideways for a while - and had nowhere to turn for help (believe me, I tried!) If her parents - or frankly anyone - had been available to help take some of the strain, I'd have leaped at the chance.
Alas, all the rellos are either dead or in another country - so I had no choice.
Nagy Vilmos wrote: It doesn't matter sh!t who you are, how you feel, what you want - the patient comes first every friggin time.
well, not nitpicking or anything, but taking care of yourself first is a bit of a mantra around carers. There's no point in you having a breakdown when you're trying to look after someone who just doesn't have a choice - so you need to stay well and strong. It takes a strong person to ask for help. Now, maybe your SIL is being a selfish cow and wants to go down the pub for the day while your Mama takes her son to the quack's - or maybe she's crying to herself every night while hubby sleeps, is at the end of her tether, and doesn't know where to turn to - I don't know - but having a bloke's Mum take him to hospital if his Wife is unavailable is maybe not too bad a thing?
I mean, maybe your bruv might have suggested Wifey might get Mumsy to accompany him?
Or, maybe, SIL is just a completely selfish biatch, who has been waiting 22 years for a moment to take off on the town while Hubby is being prodded by the quacks.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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_Maxxx_ wrote: I mean, maybe your bruv might have suggested Wifey might get Mumsy to accompany him?
Or, maybe, SIL is just a completely selfish biatch, who has been waiting 22 years for a moment to take off on the town while Hubby is being prodded by the quacks.
More the later then the former.
AS for the help we got, until the end - and I mean the last two months - we were pretty much on our own. Mrs Wife and I had to co-ordinate over his treatment, as he spoke very little English so someone had to normally go with him. At the end we had a lot of help from Trinity Hospice and for the last two weeks we had a nurse in 24/7.
However it was Mrs Wife and I who sat with him and held his hands as he took his last faltered breaths.
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Just remember, there were two of you. From what you have said, there is one of SIL - it's amazing how much support you and your Mrs. would have given one another that just isn't available to your SIL.
Not belittling your situation at all - rather looking for compassion for your SIL in her (and your Brother's) time of need.
Of course, if she is more of the latter, maybe he's better of having his Mum there anyway!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Sorry to hear of your family's troubles.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy.
I would agree with you but then we both would be wrong.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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Astonishing!
It's a zero-profit company as of now.
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Nish Sivakumar wrote: It's a zero-profit company as of now
Since when does that matter ? I don't expect toys to be profitable...
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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I just don't get it though. It's only an estimate, but they did refuse a $3 billion Facebook buy-out offer last year.
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Seriously now, this has already happened[^].
Either they are so confident with the product that they expect earning money with it, or they think they can sell it for more.
But I agree, this is crazy on both sides : to offer so much money for something with still no return on invest, about as crazy as the other side refusing the offer.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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Don't forget $FB refused a $1billion $YHOO buyout years ago. Zuck would have kicked himself in the pants now if he took that offer. There's more to it than money. There's a passion in the mission statement at $FB. But what is SnapChat's mission statement? Who knows.
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It's smelling an awful lot like 1997 out there on dem innernetz
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mikepwilson wrote: It's smelling an awful lot like 1997 out there on dem innernetz
Yeah, it's like seeing bubbles everywhere.
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Absolutely.
When people buying companies that have no revenue stream for numbers like "3/10 billion", you know there's a problem.
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Yes, it's insane. I wish I'd thought of it!
Will Rogers never met me.
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The last company I worked for closed. Now I am back at the first job (I've only worked 2 places as a programmer).
My job is mostly updating the old stuff. We have a dos POS type system, flat file data structure, etc. The systems we use are all separate, and we need them to talk to one another. Stuff like that.
We are nearly ready to start working on our tablet system. It's been a long year, but I been working my tail off. Anything new has been written in c#/MVC, and I've been replacing, updating, and maintaining all of the other stuff.
We are starting to lose our customers to a competitor who already has tablet ordering. The problem with that is that they pretty much go by word of mouth in that community, so it's safe to say if we lose one and it goes well, then we'll lose more. So, I have till January probably to make the splash, or this company may start down sizing.
I'm not even sure at what point it's too late. I know that we better have it on the show floors by January, but I'm not sure that will save us either.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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This is the point at which your sales/marketing team needs to engage with the customers you have left. Just because you've lost some customers, it doesn't mean that you'll lose them all. They need to be asking them what they need, and what they need that the competition doesn't offer - that's what you need to be building.
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loctrice wrote: The last company I worked for closed. Now I am back at the first job (I've only worked 2 places as a programmer).
Mybe time to search for a 3rd one with better perspectives of future?
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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If your competitor has a tablet and you are making a tablet, you already loosing. You need something they don't have as a selling point. Maybe a broader POS that seamlessly interacts with all the local, national, etc tax laws. Maybe something that interacts with more types of bar codes, more drop shippers, etc.
You have to find a hook they don't have while creating the features they already do. So, you are a programmer working on the legacy stuff. That kind of planning is not your job. So, somebody else dropped the ball (marketing, executives, maybe the other programmers couldn't hack it). Do the best job you can, learn as much as you can, and keep your ear to the ground for other opportunities. The days of company loyalty are gone (you don't get a pension for number of years worked). Take care of yourself, that is the way the corporate world works.
You are supporting the old product, which is your only customer base. You are safe, but make yourself available.
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Pualee wrote: Maybe a broader POS
For the sake of clarity, what exactly does POS stand for in your jargon ?
Because in my definition, a POS is a POS, no matter how many features it has.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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Exactly, it was covered by the OP, so I thought it needed no further clarification
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Interesting point about POS tax compliance; I bought a shirt from Proper Cloth in New York. They made it to order, not something I generally do except when British shirtmakers won't do a style for an old fat guy like me(good luck getting a non-slim Club Collar at any price), or they are frightened of a particular colour(Green, formal shirt? Has sir been drinking?)
Anyway, first shirt they didn't cover the tax in the EU, so I had customs charges and handling charges on delivery. It came by Post.
I mentioned this in my positive appraisal on the feedback page.
A few weeks later I ordered a second shirt; this time it came quicker, by courier, taxes paid in advance on the payments page.
Customer service stateside is a thing of beauty. This is the quality of service that rapid decisions at the top make.
Being around for the next 5 months working on a tablet POS sounds like 'Buggin's Turn' coming into play. Somebody in charge at this company needs to make a decision, create a specification and implement it, by throwing extra resources in if necessary. If you don't swim with the fishes, you swim with the fishes.
"That's 'School Bully' to you, Tomkinson, you snivelling little tyke."
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It's been too late for quite a while! Your company's flagship product is an obsolete, legacy POS (and I don't mean a Point of Sale; something else). Getting to the show floor on January will do nothing for them, because the product is (obviously) being rushed into production: you are ready to start a major project that needs a re-think, re-design (tablet UI's really are different!), re-code in a different language, re-test, re-document and re-market, all of it in four months, all by yourself (you and what army?). My opinion is that you should use the next four months to find yourself a new job ...
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I could not agree LESS... This is America! (Gosh, I hope he is in America<grin>)
Anyways, I have been there when I was young. We rewrote MAJOR sections of our code in weeks to fend off competitors. In another world, we switched to weekly updates and plowed past them in months, winning the mind-share of the market place first.
You have a working system, you need a tablet interface to that system. Treat the tablet as a View, do as much code elsewhere, and get it working. If they are going to have multiple tablets (assumed, even 1 per table, maybe, like Chilis Has, which we LOVE, just wish I could ding it for a re-order on a Soft Drink).
To me it seems simple. Setup a VPN (secure is required, you exist in a wireless public arena), get the smallest workable app you can, I would shoot first for HTML5 type interface, serve it up from the server (this makes it mostly testable without being on a tablet all the time). Implement the core 3-5 screens, test the bejeevers out of it. Put it in the hands of a customer to provide feedback. Build in an update system so they can REACH IN and get the latest version at will (controlling when they take any risks)...
Tablets talk to this "box" this box talks to your POS system.
From my perspective, you have MONTHS on the clock, you need to move like you have weeks on the clock. Management needs to be leading this charge, and getting the customers who will test this lined up. Setting up a person to actually USE the tablets on your behalf, on site, or simple watch what people get hung up on, and make notes, and get it fixed.
This requires Buy-in, Focus, commitment, and lots of effort...
But I would NEVER say to back down. Your existing customers need to see you do something like this to stop leaving, but honestly most people are so RISK Averse and CHANGE Averse that they don't leave until you stop answering the phones. Unfortunately, if the business owners feel this is true, they will treat those Months as Years... And then you are doomed!
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There is definitely some things to be concerned about here, but the biggest in my books is that this company was already a minimum of decade behind before you even mention mobile/tablets. You're not trying to catch up on the last couple of years of doing nothing - you're trying to catch up on over a decade of not upgrading the product. DOS-based? Flat-files? Can you create a tablet solution to show off at a trade show in the next few months? Sure. Can you create a working tablet solution that is connected to a "turn-of-the-century" POS solution in that time frame? Hard to say because I don't know how complex the system is, how many people have been working on it, and how much work has already been done. But I don't think it matters how many resources you have to throw at it at this point if you're not already very close to being there. The core concern though is the approach taken to this - is the system being updated or is the approach to make the absolute minimum changes necessary to "look updated". The phrase "lipstick on a pig" comes to mind if its the latter.
My two cents for the company - if the situation is truly as you have depicted it and they are this far behind, there is simply no way that the product will be brought up-to-speed with the competitor you mentioned in that short a time frame unless the POS is very simple or there's been a really good team working on it for the past year+. Otherwise trying to do it and push it to market has a high likelihood of failure - customers that may have been willing to wait for a decent solution will jump ship sooner once word spreads that the first attempt at entering the 21st century is a horribly designed, bug-ridden failure that lacks half the features of your competitors and your legacy system. Not that the company can afford a "take the time to do it right" approach given where they are! If they are this far behind in product innovation there is likely little you can do about many of the customers you're going to lose in the next 6-12 months, but that doesn't mean the business will close its doors either (though there are many factors we don't have here like the qty of existing customers, sales force activities, whether revenues streams are sales based or service based, the specific market this POS is targeted at, does the competition's product have the same features, product stability, and price, etc.). Get a good team together to work on a solid solution to bring to market in the next year and consider short-term plugs to satisfy existing customers that may be itching to leave (which can be anything from a lipstick website that runs off a tablet to "loyalty" discounts - remember, most people don't want to have to change because change is scary and expensive).
Advice to you - if they aren't prepared to tackle the problem correctly then there's likely little point in trying to stick around that sinking ship (unless, of course, you can't find another job quickly!).
On the plus side - you guys are not the first company to face this challenge. Someone needs to do some serious research and learn from the successes and failures of the other companies in the same situation. For some companies this may mean paying a consultant some stupid amount of money to tell the owners/management the exact same thing that they're employees have been telling them for years.
To carry forward the analogy... The ship IS sinking, but the crew and passengers aren't doomed - but you've got to build a better ship (and do it responsibly, but quickly) - one that runs on wind and solar polar instead of coal and steam. Building a quick life boat and shoving all of the passengers on it will do nothing more than make it clear to all of the passengers that the ship is in fact sinking, the lifeboat doesn't have near the amenities of the ship they paid for, and that the crew has no plans beyond that. At this point the passengers will just wait for the next ship that comes passing by to save them - and given the choice they'll jump on the competitor's ship at this point before jumping on one of yours.
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