Deb Perelman

IT Teched Off at the WSJ

Playing on the gap between what employees do with their work computers and their IT departments’ wishes that they wouldn’t, The Wall Street Journal ran an article titled, “Ten Things Your IT Department Won’t Tell You” July 30. Situation sound familiar? Really, how could it not be: There is no question that for a good […]

Zen IT for Demanding Employees

What do mainframes and networks have in common? Centralized control, and these command-and-control structures have long assured IT professionals that the technology game is played on their terms. Yet, in the age of the consumerization of technology, the effectiveness of centralized IT control has slipped. In fact, a report released by the Yankee Group Aug. […]

The Idol-ized Yahoo Intern Summer

Oh, to be young and a summer intern at Yahoo, where an easily competitive atmosphere is dampened by good management, where Fridays are reserved for community service, where executives have their doors—and ears—open at all times for new ideas. Chen Yang, a Yahoo intern during the summer of 2006, can tell you all about it. […]

Virtual Worlds Rife with Enterprise Threats

Corporate use of virtual worlds such as Second Life needs careful evaluation for security risks, according to technology research and advisory company Gartner. Gartner warned that media hype and general enthusiasm for virtual worlds has overshadowed a realistic assessment of the security and risk-management issues they can expose enterprises to. If a company is especially […]

Outsourcing Shifting to Full Service

Outsourcing firms that once focused solely on providing IT and software development services at a lower cost are increasingly reforming themselves as end-to-end IT infrastructure management firms. The latest evidence of this trend came this week with the announcement of yet another outsourcing partnership. Through its $600 million acquisition of the infrastructure management services provider, […]

Sun to Reduce Work Force, Again

Sun Microsystems will spend up to $150 million in the remainder of the year in severance pay, the Santa Clara based maker of servers and storage gear said in a SEC regulatory filing Aug. 7. Though Suns filing did not specify the number of cuts, some analysts estimate the slash-count at over 1,000. The company […]

Tech Competitiveness Bill Lands on President’s Desk

Late last week, the U.S. Congress quietly approved the “America COMPETES Act,” a bipartisan legislative effort to increase investment in basic research and improve the teaching of math, science and engineering. Winning overwhelming support in the House and the Senate, the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science) bill […]

In Big Cities, Young Women Outearn Men

Could the days of a gender wage gap be behind us? They sure seem to be for young, college educated women in big cities, finds an analysis of BLS data completed by the Department of Sociology at Queens College in New York, released Aug. 3. Salaries of full-time female employees in their 20s have surpassed […]

Slumping Market Shakes IT Confidence

The job market lost some luster last month as employers added only 92,000 jobs, the fewest in five months, the Labor Department reported Aug. 3. Employment growth fell off significantly from June, when 126,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy, and lagged notable behind the 135,000 job growth forecasted by economists. Even the unemployment […]

IBM Summer Interns Face Fierce Competition

IBM internships: If there is one word that could be used to sum up summer internships at IBM, it would be “competitive.” For some, this is a dream-come-true, for others it is just draining. Just ask Kenneth Bratland, a three-time IBM intern. “When working at [my second IBM internship] there was a little bit more […]