Category Archive:
Posted by Commie B on December 31, 2008 at 1:46 am
Until October 2009, I was a GoDaddy Partner / Wild West Domains Reseller, and although I made some money by selling their hundreds and thousands of unneeded services, I had a very hard time pushing a product which I myself had serious doubts about.
Over the 3 years that I’ve been selling Wild West or GoDaddy Services, I tried many different hosts, and I recommended GoDaddy hosting to many small businesses, because for a website that doesn’t really drive traffic, GoDaddy pricing really isn’t all that bad. However, I’ve never been too convinced about their hosting services and some of the functionality that comes along with it and today, I will give you the inside story, based purely on experience, as to why you should not use GoDaddy for hosting a website if you plan to build a reputable website.
So why haven’t I been comfortable selling GoDaddy Hosting? Well, put simply, because it just sucks. It fails terribly when it comes to speed, reliability and user friendliness, and if you ever have to depend on their customer service, well, you may have to ask Jesus to intervene, because GoDaddy or Wild West Domains Customer service is really, really lost. So lost, in fact, that they do need a Messiah for enlightenment.
Hosting with GoDaddy? Better Make Time…
Let’s put it this way: access to the GoDaddy Hosting Panel was so slow that at times I could brew a cup of good old Spiced Indian Tea before the page would load. It’s one thing to have the front end run slow, but to log in, create email addresses, or use their file manager, or create databases with their custom interface was the most painful experience I have ever had as a web designer. In addition, if you ever had to log on to the customized phpMyAdmin interface to access the MySQL Databases, well, you’d have to go make some more tea. Run time between queries with phpMyAdmin is very slow, and it makes for an over all pathetic experience as a webmaster.
Now, when you’re running the front end, it’s just as bad. I switched to several different packages as a reseller: from VPS Hosting to Semi Dedicated to Economy to Deluxe. They all run at stone-age speeds, and the front end experience is so bad, especially if you’re querying a database, that the website may occasionally time out. That’s bad news for those of us who wanted to do testing on the server, because oh my, we wasted some mighty precious time. In any case, it made for a bad user experience, especially if you’re running an ecommerce site, as no user wants to wait 3 minutes for the next window to load. AJAX could act as saving grace, but the minute your AJAX application would query your sever, well, you’re at GoDaddy’s mercy; and let me tell you, they really are running their hosting service like they’re in the Wild Wild West.
One of the reasons the database access is so painfully slow is that it sits behind an SSL connection. This is a rather silly move, as most successful hosts don’t employ it simply because it can drastically slow down the performance, of, say, a massive wordpress blog that could be pulling along the lines of 70 queries a page.
70 MySQL Queries, you say?
With GoDaddy, they claim to be able to monitor the simultaneous number of connections to the MySQL Database and the simultaneous number of active visitors (whatever in the hell that means) on the website. Now, GoDaddy staff isn’t clear on this, but apparently, if you have more than 50 consecutive MySQL Connectinos or 50 active users, well, you’re fucked. You’ll get a 503 site temporarily down error, and it can last for over an hour, because apparently, you have 50 active users who are consecutively glued to the MySQL Database. How awesome is that? And yet, neither google analytics or extreme tracking could detect more than 1500 pageviews in a day @ that point. But these daddy goners had their own agenda. According to some of the intellects at Wild West customer support, the number of open MySQL DB connections or the number of consecutive visitors would change based on which package you had, where as some claimed to have no knowledge of any such thing. But nobody really knew what triggered this 503 error. Apparently, as it turns out, all the staff needs maintenance.
FTP Access, you say?
This one really pissed me off. No more than 2 simultaneous FTP connections, and no FTP connections lasts more than a 120 seconds. So, if you’re testing on the server, you’re fucked! And if you’re hosting multiple sites on the account, you’re penetrated twice because more than one webmaster can’t upload files to the FTP server. That’s just bad; really, really bad.
Email?
Well, the folks over at GoDaddy may have developed their own email interface, but they still don’t have control over spam. Either that, or they’ve got too much. While I was at Wild West, I had several clients complain about their clients complain about how their emails would net get delivered, and the folks over in Scottsdale, Arizona really had it out for everyone. At times they’ll block hotmail email, even if originates from a valid SPF policy domain, and if you ever emailed them, they were just about as useful as, well, useless. Besides, if you didn’t pay extra money, you only got 10 MB per email inbox! Hello! Free email comes with 2 GB now. I know you guys are from the same state as McCain, but please keep up with what’s happening!!
Installing Applications
If you’re buying a third party software like an eCommerce Solution or blog etc., please let the party you’re buying from know you’re using GoDaddy, Wild West or Secure Server services, because for so called ‘security’ reasons, their settings are all screwed up. For instance, with several ecommerce providers, you’ll have to point to a specific URL to be able to use the curl() function in php with GoDaddy & Co., and it can be very frustrating if you’re new to this stuff and don’t know that your host is the one that’s been screwing you over for hours while you kept thinking your code was all screwed up.
Worst of all things with GoDaddy is the overall experience if you are a professional. Just like Sage has mesmerized the UK with it’s marketing and taken over as the defacto accounting software despite being the worst accounting package on the market, GoDaddy with Wild West has marketed itself extremely well, with thousands of affiliates, to the point where they can easily trap the newbie consumer with absolutely low quality service. Well, I’ll be having no more ofana part to play in that crime.
If you’re a starter, go with GoDaddy. If you want good, reliable hosting that works, go for cluster based hosting, and please don’t go with Servage. I’ve already cussed them out on this website a couple of years ago. I have finally settled with IMountain.com Solar powered Hosting, and they’re not paying me to write this, which is why there’s no link to them in this post. I’ve been using iMountain for a few months now, and I can tell you that I’ve been pleased with their speed, FTP, customer service, etc. etc. They’re not about giving you fancy marketing stuff or spending too much time writing their own cluttered interface. They’re using respected software in the hosting industry to run their service, and it comes with great speed. It’s not the cheapest hosting you’ll find, but it is definitely worth the money.
In about 4 months, I’ve only had downtime for a couple of hours one day, and this is the day it took a couple of hours for me to get a response out of them. But as it turns out, the problem was that someone had a launched a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on one of the servers, and they were busy trying to counter it. For those of you who’re not familiar with DDoS, it’s somewhat equivalent in cyberspace to what Israel is currently doing to Palestine; you can hardly blame them for fighting the terrorist off before responding, eh?
But that’s IMountain.com. With GoDaddy and Wild West Domains, I’ve never been able to figure out why I got a 503 error three times a week!
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Posted by Commie B on April 25, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I recently wrote an article about why London will never be New York. The article was met with lots of positive and negative criticism; some love London, and others love New York. One gentleman was so furious he dubbed me an American who doesn’t know any better, because New York is nothing but a concrete jungle (as opposed to Liverpool Street or Holborn?). Of course, we are all entitled to our opinions.
As some of you may already know, I have spent a couple of years in Dubai. Although my experienced, possibly jaded opinion says that London will never become New York, I can comfortably tell you why, and how, Dubai may one day actually become London, and take away a good chunk of the tourists that come to London (that’s great for some Londoners, eh!).
Living in Dubai made me quite Anti-Arab, and on many occasions, anti Muslim. Ultimately, I was extremely frustrated with the general incompetence of systems, the bad quality of service, general lack of common sense and common courtesy, and people’s undying, inevitible ability to do everything wrong an average of three times before getting it right. Hoarding money, overcharging, ripping off residents and immigrants, lying, cheating, deceiving, and not thinking through what the hell it is that they’re doing are among some of the common mistakes they made in Dubai. I’m sure they still make them. When I lived in Dubai, I compared everything, civil infrastructure, Information Technology, shopping experience, quality of life, cost of living, etc. with the US, and Dubai lost on practically every ground. I was never sure where the Arabs & Muslims had come up with their system, their costing & pricing, their inefficient ideas, and their con-like way of life in Dubai. I used to blame them and their kind for it.
And now, I realize, that on some level, I owe them an apology for criticizing them for making Dubai the way it is. Well, maybe not. But what I have realized is that comparing Dubai, or any other part of the world for that matter, with the US way was a mistake. I knew nobody in the Muslim world (except maybe Iran) would make effort to reinvent or recreate the wheel, but I always assumed that Dubai was trying to mimic New York (with Sheikh Zayed Road being their pride and all), but they failed miserably. Well, that was my mistake. I hadn’t experienced London yet.
And now that I have, well, Dubai is really not that bad. When I compare the way of life in London to the way of life in the United States, I see the same fallacies that I saw in Dubai. The same traditional cultural hoardiness, sticking to culture and tradition (which nobody really knows much about, in London or Dubai – don’t get me wrong, there are people who do, but most are pretty lost), sitting on money, enjoying other people’s misery, lying, deceiving the public, being overcrowded, etc. etc. My, I thought, am I making the same mistake that I did in Dubai?
Probably. Comparing London and New York is not necessarily fair. The cities emerged differently, were built by different people with different visions and served different purposes in different cultures for different people with different mentalities and ideologies. But Dubai, gosh! Dubai is a hotter, modern, dusty, inexpensive, (maybe) glamorous (dare I say), cleaner (definitely!) version of London. How, you ask?
Well, London is built with one aim and one goal in mind: impress those who visit and take as much money as you can from them. But what you build is what you get, i.e., that is also the mentality of the people who live there. I’ll continue this attitude of the people later, but Dubai does impress a lot of tourists, and with the certain allure it has created, people spend a lot of their money in Dubai, which what their ultimate goal is.
Dubai is ultimately built by the British. You see British civil engineering at work in the Dubai road infrastructure, you see the British bureaucracy/systems in place when dealing with most day-to-day things (getting a landline telephone – the equivalent of BT in Dubai is Etisalat, getting a mobile phone, paying your bills, banking, etc.). Basically, Dubai is a carbon copy of British systems, and that’s because it’s built by the British. In that British re-creation of Dubai, you see some efforts to rectify the mistakes in London, and as a result of that, the wow factor that Dubai offers for some people may be more than what London can offer. Of course, Dubai doesn’t really have a history, and it will always fall short of London in that department.
But where Dubai really succeeds is in having used the American system to successfully market. It seems like they may have solicited the British and other European nations for help when it came to developing their city, but the Arabs know and believe that no one is better at positive marketing than the United States, and this could be the one biggest factor why Dubai can cause quite a dent in London’s tourist revenues.
So, how does Dubai compare with London?
Just Visiting?
When you’re visiting or passing through, be it for leisure or business, you want it to be cheap, efficient and fun. You want to be pampered and you want to feel important, and you definitely want to make the most of it, right?
Hotels
Okay, London has a fine line of great hotels, but then so does Dubai. In fact, with the Burj ul Arab, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Madinat Jumeirah, Royal Mirage and a plethora of others, Dubai has a collection of modern five star hotels with a traditional touch that will dazzle just about any visitor. What else? Dubai offers add ons with your hotel service like buttlers, which will make even the most seasoned traveler feel like a king. Dubai can do this because they’ll charge you over GBP 500 per night for your hotel room, while the guy who will carry your luggage, clean up, and do all the dirty work will get paid less than GBP 300 a month! That may be a violation of human rights on some level, but it certainly works well for visitors and tourists. I remember an uncle of mine telling me about his visit to Grosvenor House in London in the 80s, and how he had to carry his bags up to the room himself. In Dubai, you’d never do that.
Shopping & Fashion
There were days when the world came to London for shopping for the latest fashions and gadgets. People still come to London for that, but I’m not sure they come with the same expectation or enthusiasm anymore. Dubai has successfully marketed and built itself several world class shopping centres, and interestingly enough, some products may even cost you more in Dubai than they would in London. But that’s not true of all the products, especially once you learn the right areas and the right places to shop in Dubai. Even though I’ve seen that the same shops in Dubai don’t get the latest products that they would stock in London or New York, Dubai has definitely entered this market, and quite possibly has a much better pricing position than London for a multitude of reasons (no tax, no excise and customs etc.).
We know that the fashion headquarters of the world are London, Paris, Milan, New York and maybe Los Angeles. Dubai has made a serious effort to enter this market, and they’ve certainly gotten somewhere. Dubai regularly hosts fashion shows, and the biggest designers do not mind hosting and displaying their products in Dubai. That’s a big attraction for tourists and visitors, as trivial as that may be for some of us practical people.
Living or Working in Dubai?
If you move to Dubai from London, you won’t find much of a difference in the culture. Neither of these places are by any means American in Corporate Culture, and that may very well be a cultural and traditional gap for the best. Londoners will not find it very different in Dubai, except that if you go to Dubai from London, chances are you will get VIP treatment and your quality of life may improve, although for someone who is well settled in London, the kind of life Dubai offers may very well be trivial.
The area Dubai lacks in professionally is, well, professionalism. There is a serious lack of professionally competent people in Dubai, and although London has its fair share of incompetence, it generally has a much better employee set than Dubai. So, naturally, for the striving, aspiring person, London has more to offer: access to a bigger market, access to more resources, better facilties, etc. etc.
Education, you say?
Education is certainly a developing area in Dubai, but it’s no where close to being acceptable at this point. I won’t say any more in this section, except that London and it’s surrounding areas house some of the world’s best educational institutions. Dubai doesn’t have any decent higher education yet, but I believe it is in the works.
Cleanliness
Well, Dubai takes the lead here easily. It’s very clean, especially the areas all the tourists and western people visit. All such areas are practically spotless, although they come at the expense of slave labour. Of course, most people are oblivious to things such as slave labour, so this is a big plus point for Dubai. Parts of London have become extremely filthy, and I needn’t comment more on this. I said plenty about it in the article that compared London with New York, and there’s no point in repeating myself.
Traffic
What can I say? Both London and Dubai suck. Road tax is killer. Tolls are killer. London has better public transportation, but Dubai intend to roll out their fancy planned metro in 2009. That will certainly create cultural and class issues in Dubai, the effect of which remains to be seen. This blending of the racial discrimination of the east and west sides of the Dubai Creek could make or break the comfortable working class of Dubai.
Why won’t Dubai Compete with New York?
Quite simply, because Dubai isn’t marketing itself as an American city. It offers facilties like London, it offers services like London. The flat, housing and apartments feel more like London than they do like any part of New York or other American cities. But Dubai is using the grace of New York. It is painting itself the metropolitan image that London lacks, and it’s doing a fantastic job.
Fancy skyscrapers, a tube / subway system, big roads and highways, the world’s biggest businesses (even if they don’t any business and get rent free buildings to fool everyone else), and the image of success. It’s a very well told lie, and a perfectly created fassad, created by the British and Europeans for and by the Europeans, and you can see it has been a successful venture so far. How long it lasts will be interesting, but Dubai may never make it because it’s very difficult to gain a sense of ownership or ‘homeliness’ in Dubai. A place that will never call you its citizen, a kingship that will never treat you as one of its own, will never get the dedication of the people who reside there to make money; it’s that simple.
Where Dubai Fails?
Well, there are several pitfalls Dubai needs to overcome before it can consider competing with London. Among them, a legal system, decent education, more condusive laws for business people, and less lying.
Major businesss in Dubai were given free buildings to move in in areas like Dubai Internet City, so that other striving and aspiring businessmen follow and pay the outrageous fees. The fassad worked, but I don’t know when people will start to see it isn’t what it claims to be. Most of the businesses, even if they are functioning in other countries, fail to take off in Dubai because they’ve bought into this lie. This needs to stop; Dubai needs to help develop business inside rather than make it fail.
Laws are important. Company law that is 4 sheets of A4 paper typed in 12 point font with more grammatical mistakes than my 2nd grade english paper will not suffice for complex international business. After all, how long will businesses settle disputes in and according to the law of the United Kingdom in Dubai? Lawyers are full of crap, trying to offer you legal help on law that’s 4 pages wrong. Please don’t fall for this trap in Dubai. Lawyers are pathetic everywhere, but in countries where implementation of law is non-existent, and even worse, in countries like the UAE where law is non-existent, lawyers need to be booted.
Dubai needs to be less racist. The racism and discrimination is unacceptable at all levels of human decency; just because you’re brown or Indian doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be respected; Arabs certainly don’t have the right to disrespect anyone; let’s avoid this discussion, shall we? But Dubai needs to be weary of this; once the metro in Dubai is complete, it could lead to a blending of the eastern and western population of Dubai, that could make the latter very uncomfortable, and I’m not sure Dubai has a ‘plan b’ for that.
There’s a lot more to be said on this, but it can’t be said without me not being nice. I’ll take up more issues in the future, but I think if Dubai keeps on the right track and focuses on the right things, it may very well compete with London. It is likely that Dubai will overcome its fallacies, although there certainly are no guarantees about when and how. Then again, given the level of competence in Dubai, London may not have too much to worry about.
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Posted by Commie B on March 31, 2008 at 2:26 am
Well, you could say that’s because London is London and New York is New York. Let’s be honest: in the last few years I’ve heard and read various things like London stealing the financial business from New York City, London seeing more growth, London becoming a better all over experience due to immigration and America’s terrorist obsession, etc. etc. But, lets face it, London does not give you the experience New York does, and it never will. Why? Let’s see why.
Filth / Garbage
Well, I’ve been to New York City several times, and I’m not saying it’s like Singapore, but hey, it’s relatively clean, especially when compared to London. Have you seen the trash on the streets of London lately? What’s with all the chewing gum stains on the pavements and the roads? I don’t think New York has that kind of a stain infested issue, does it?
Then, how come people aren’t supposed to clean their dog poo and pee? What in the world is that about? I know this is the land of royalty, but can we please tell people to clean up after their pets? It’s only polite.
Mind you, I’m not saying New York is immaculate, but unless it has become filthier the last few years, I certainly don’t remember it being this dirty. I mean have you been to Marble Arch, Edgware, or Edgware Road lately? I’m sorry, but Edgware reminded me of Karachi for a minute!
Customer Service, you say?
Okay, call me spoilt, but the American saying “the customer is always right” does have its treats. It is so frustrating when you walk into a store in London that no one really gives a damn. The quality of service is horrible. Have you ever been to a bank in London? No one is at the counter, and you have to wait for more than 5 minutes before someone will come to attend to you. It’s the same everywhere you go. Cell phone stores, grocery stores, restaurants, banks, offices, etc., the service is nothing short of horrible.
Customer Service staff, that takes less interest in their lives than probably anyone does, try and lecture you on things like the Data Protection Act and other laws, when they really have no idea what they are talking about. Everyone has an excuse for doing something the wrong way, and no one needs an excuse for not doing anything! It’s a privilege to to get any kind of service in London when you are paying for it. Be it NatWest, Barclays, HSBC, Orange, O2 or any other business, their customer service sucks, which makes for a very unpleasant shopping or service experience.
The US is great at this. I don’t know if it’s because of the out-of-whack US liability laws or simply because they’re smart enough to know that happy customers make good customers, but they do everything it takes to get the job done right. I’m not saying that the level of customer service competence is better in the US, but New York makes for a much more pleasant shopping experience than London. Ask any Brit who’s been to New York. They only have good things to say about it. So many of them want to move there, despite what they think of George Bush and US foreign policy. Well, who can blame them, right?
Ofcourse, outsourcing of customer service over the phone is a problem in both cities/countries. But given the fact that the liability of bad service in the US is greater than it is in the UK, US outsourced customer service is much better. I guess this strings from the fact that no major corporations in the US are government owned or government vested, as British Telecom is, say, in the UK.
Who’s more friendly? New Yorkers or Londoners?
Everyone in London is upset most of the time. This may be due to traffic, poverty, expenditure, tourists, or whatever. But hey, New Yorkers are just as fed up of the crap at their end. But my experience is that Americans are generally much more friendly than the British. In school, we used to read of British Hospitality and all that good stuff. Well, most of it has apparently faded, at least in the working class. Who knows why that is. I guess life in London is more difficult than in New York City, which makes for crankier Londoners than New Yorkers.
If you’ve seen the phrase “Welcome to New York” used in movies when something goes wrong with someone in New York, well, it is just as suitable for London, if not more. But maybe Londoners don’t share the same sense of humour!
Rowdy Kids
Okay, this has a lot to do with the low drinking age and the excessive use of drugs. That’s just not cool, because kids get rowdy and rude and puke all over the place in London, which ads more to the existing dirt, which isn’t cool either. I’m not going say too much about this, except that this needs to stop, and infusion of drugs into London teenagers needs to be controlled urgently, because this is not only a hassle for us who live here, but even for those who are visiting for fun.
The Fascination Factor
This may be subjective, but I clearly remember the first time I visited NYC (let’s not count Brooklyn or Queens, shall we?). I stepped out of the Subway Station o 5th Avemue and I stood in awe at skyscraper after skyscraper. The impression that New York makes on a new or first time visitor is far superior to the one that London makes, and Londoners will tell you that. New York is a City that’s built to look like a Metropolis, and it certainly feels like one. London may have big city life, but I think it fails to make that impression that adds to the initial buzz of being in one of the world’s most dynamic cities.
Food
Oh my! New York City has more variety in food than London does. New York City’s portion size is much larger (as is the rest of America’s), and the cost is far less. Also, since I think Americans are far more passionate about eating (compare the obesity rate between the US and UK at 38% and 33 %, respectively), the overall taste and experience of dining and food in New York City is better than in London.
And for those of you who say Americans pig out and don’t enjoy their food, well, the obesity gap isn’t that much, and here is news for some of you: New York City is the world’s first city to ban trans fat in restaurants. That’s right. I think the law kicks in in June, but now who cares more about the health of tourists and residents?
Bloomberg Vs. Livingstone
Come on now, there’s no comparison. The New York Mayor (Michael Bloomberg) is much cooler than London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Bloomberg, that just sounds much cooler than Livingstone. Need I say more?
The Experience (Corporate, mostly)
After having lived in the US for several years (and not really having lived in New York), I think that London, and forgive me for saying this, is like an American village. I’ve already mentioned that London doesn’t feel as Metropolitan as New York; but even Denver or Dallas feel more metropolitan than London. Well, maybe I’ll discount Dallas from that.
There are many reasons for that, but I think a lot of it has to do with British mentality and culture.
The Corporate Culture of London is, at best, outdated, compared to the corporate culture anywhere in the US. The technology in use, the ideology, the methodology all is about 20-25 years behind the US. I think the reason for that is the traditional approach of British Businessmen. They like to stick to what they’re comfortable with, and then British pride knows no end. Since the UK isn’t exactly the pioneer of new technology or British methodologies, British business is hesitant about adapting to it, with the result say, if the CEO or Managing Director of a major corporation has been in charge for 10 years, he technology in place is 10 years old. Until a younger crowd comes to manage the company, the technology won’t change, because each generation, I think, in this country, brings an update to technology and methodologies.
That’s not the case in the US, which is a dynamic environment that thrives on new processes, technologies, and methodologies. Things are always being improved, with the ultimate goal to weed out inefficiencies in the business processes.
When I was in the US, I used to hear how much ahead of the US Europe was in the cell phone market. Well, not really. Just because the US has a different release schedule for mobile phones and they use different cell phone networks doesn’t make their service or technology inferior. London has more mobile/cell phone signal problems than I ever had in the US driving from Colorado to New York. So, you shouldn’t really believe every such thing you hear.
In addition, the US, to this day, and even NYC, provides a positive corporate culture for new entrants. It is an environment where you can get a job or thrive on merit alone, at least upto a comfortable level, if not a super rich level. In London, merit doesn’t really count; you have to know people to get to even very junior places, and that kind of stuff is just not cool. But I think, again, it is something that comes out of the culture of royalty, and although it may be a bad thing, it has become a way of life that the locals are used to. More power to them! I guess as long as you know who you know, what you know is not really important.
Let’s just say that I’m trying to say that the Business Acumen of London is nowhere close to that of New York, or any other major US city. That doesn’t mean the London economy is very small, we’re just talking about business acumen and business intelligence.
Price
In a few words, New York provides MUCH BETTER value for money than London does. Living, shopping, partying, everything in New York City is half price of what it is in London. Throw in the other factors mentioned, and New York makes for a far superior experience.
Okay, this may not have been the most comprehensive guide to London and New York, but it’s just my opinion, which means it may be prejudiced, biased,or simply ill founded. But nonetheless, it is my opinion. Personally, I preferred Denver. It had most of the advantages of a big city without the rutt and problems. But then, it’s neither London nor New York.
What do you think?
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Posted by Commie B on March 14, 2008 at 2:00 am
With the plethora of accounting certifications and qualifications out there today, no matter what country you are in, it can be a daunting task to choose which certification is right for you. Gone are the days when if you were a young fellow who aimed toward getting the Certified Public Accountant Certification (CPA) issued by the AICPA in the US; gone are the days when you could just become a Chartered Accountant (CA) in the UK, or for that matter anywhere else in the world.
The typical certified public or chartered accountant today is just one of the many recognized, approved and qualified accounting certifications today. There are numerous others, irrespective of where you are: the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA, International) Certification, the Association of Accounting Technicians Certification (AAT, UK), the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) & the Certified Financial Manager (CFM) Certifications issued by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA, USA), the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants Certification (CIMA, UK & International) which is totally a tier based certification, starting with entry, managerial, strategic and TOPCIMA. If you dig deeper into the US & UK Markets, you’ll see many others, and each of them has their own following. I recently found out that there was an Institute of Financial Accountants (IFA) in the UK, and it’s a pretty major organization. Interestingly enough, I’ve never seen ANY job advertised asking for a certification from the IFA. Questionable? Who in the hell knows.
But here is what I can tell you. Accounting has become a diversified field. The certifications mentioned above are only some of the management/financial/public accountant type, and there are other new accountant types, which come with some fascinating certifications of there own. The upcoming accountant job titles you will come across now are forensic accountants, environmental accountants, project accountants, systems accountants, etc. etc. The list is never ending. Gone are the days when you trained to be a Director of Finance/CFO, Financial Controller, or simply strived to become an auditor in a public accountancy firm. However, in today’s competitive world, no matter what country you are in, it is VERY important to pick the accountancy field that you want to go into. Since each of these fields/job titles in accounting has its own relevant certification or qualification, it can sometimes be difficult to trespass from one into the other. Also note that some of these are not multinational certifications, and when going cross border, especially between 2 first world countries (the US & UK, for instance), having one kind of a background or certification can cause you quite the grief.
Take, for instance, the simple line of Financial & Management Accounting. There are people out there, and particularly recruitment consultant characters, who will try to convince you that there is a LOT of difference between Financial & Management Accountants. Well, I’m here to tell you: bull-fecking shit. Management Accountants are for incompetent business owners; financial accountants are for compliance. That statement is true, but what good is a financial accountant who can only comply? That’s no accountant; he’s a simple instruction taker.
Back to the topic at hand. If management or financial accounting is the field you want to pursue, well, CIMA is your certification for Europe and most parts of Asia. If you are in the US, CMA or CFM from the IMA is the direction you should be headed in; and despite the common ground between the two, do NOT be confused or deceived. One will not co-operate with the other. The two are essentially competitors, with the IMA fighting for international recognition alongside CIMA. But get this, the AICPA feels so threatened by the IMA in the US, primarily because they are rightly carving our a different role/job description for financial managers in firms (a very niche position that CPA/CA types aren’t meant for), that they went out of the way to cut a deal with CIMA, saying that CIMA is indeed a decent certification, and that CIMA is an institution they recognize. There was an entire article in the IMA Magazine regarding the issue, and the problem is, the AICPA cannot risk losing the value of its members within the US, so it refuses to accept the separate role or importance of Financial & Management Accountants.
But the US is not a country where all is lost. Quality matters. America is probably the only place in the world where at some level, it’s not who you know, but what you know, with the result that even today, you can succeed in industry/private sector in the US without any certifications, but only if you know what the hell it is that you’re doing. Ideally, if you are going into industry, stick to the IMA Certifications: CMA & CFM. They are relevant! AICPA has become bloated and extremely political, and let’s face it, most Certified Public Accounants really can get dull. It’s not their fault. If you sole purpose in life is to assure the work of others, your existence falls into the misery of being second for good! AND, due to the tactics and acts of Certified Public Accountants, today, if we creative financal & management accounting types get creative with our work, we get penalized. Way to go, AICPA!
Now, if you’re in the UK, CIMA is the way to go. I have seen, with my exposure to this market, and some Asian & Middle East ones, that being a Chartered Accountant always helps. It looks good, no matter what job you apply for, but it is not always relevant. Being a CA does by no means make you good at management or financial accounting; it just means you can dig yourself in papers for hours and hours and not get fed up, which, on a whole different level, is something admirable since I myself have difficulty with that. Certifications for Private/Industry Accountants in the UK with value are the ACCA, the AAT, and CIMA. Note that if you come to the UK with other certifications from other countries (other than a CA which is issed by an Institute which is authorized/accredited by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales [ICAEW]), like the ICMA you can get in India and Pakistan, which is the Istitute of Cost & Management Accountants, you won’t get too far over here.
For some reason, the ACCA is considered a medium level certification over here. I’m not sure why; maybe they haven’t advertised or marketed enough, but ACCAs are for some reason not given executive treatment, especially not to the level of the CIMA qualified personnel. CIMA, in the UK, is considered an executive level certification, and passing it in this country means that you have stood the accounting test of time, and deserve salary, whether or not you know anything is irrelevant. Although the basic content in ACCA & CIMA is comparable, as is the basic content of the CMA and CFM in the US (with an exception ot the differences between US GAAP, UK GAAP & IFRS/IASB), CIMA has marketed themselves well, and has forged business alliances that have given them the executive reputation. So, if you want to make it big in industry as a Controller, Director of Finance, VP of Finance, or a CFO, CIMA is the Certification you should be looking that. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you will get there with the ACCA too. It will just take longer than with CIMA. AAT, on the other hand, has been coming up with all the positive marketing they’ve been doing lately. However, I think AAT is still considered an entry level professional certification for non-accounting degree holders, and it makes you familiar with some of the technical aspects of accounting in the UK: VAT, PAYE, NI, etc. etc. Hence, the name Accounting Technician.
Let’s be honest, interesting or not, right or wrong, there is a big following that goes with the CPA and CA Certifications. So you’re always playing it safe by aiming for one of those. They may not be relevant for industry, but they will and have always held their importance, since auditing has become a vital part of big corporate money. Of course, if it has been your lifelong dream to become a public accountant, to project your affairs into other people’s business, and spend the rest of your professional life assuring others that their work is upto par, well, what can I say, by all means, go ahead. No offence meant. I have nothing against Certified Public Accountants or Chartered Accountants. I just think the role of Auditor is boring. I could never do it. I barely got through Auditing Class. Unto each his own, eh!
This article is written courtesy of VAFTA Solutions Limited.
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Posted by Commie B on June 13, 2007 at 2:57 am
Today, my HP dv2120US gave up. It refuses to function. I bought the notebook in December, 2006, and it started to give me problems in April, less than 5 months after I bought the machine. This is not my first HP laptop or desktop, neither is this my first ever HP device. I have owned several HP printers in the past, and owned a zd7140us, before I upgraded to a dv2120us, not because I wanted to, but because the zd7140 had given up. However, it lasted me 2+ years, although it took several trips to the HP support centre for hardware problems and repairs.
However, I’m not in the US anymore and that seems to be quite an issue, as HP is unwilling to provide any support for laptops purchased in the US internationally. Not even that, I know what the problem is, and these pricks KNOWINGLY sold defective hardware, and they accept that the hardware is defective (they can’t deny seeing as how thousands of people have run into the same problems), but REFUSE to provide support. Not only that, their customer service keeps suggesting I’m incompetent and stupid, which is why they can’t ship me the defective hardware at MY cost. I mean, how hard is it to change a mother board? The wireless card vanishing and disappearing, the problems with support for HP QuickPlay, defective hardware, equipment that produces enough heat for me to boil water on it, are all reasons why I have decided that I will NEVER buy an HP product again, unless I have absolutely no other choice. It is sad, since I once praised HP, but they have finally brought me to this. So, here are the 10 reasons why NO ONE should buy an HP laptop or PC:
1- Quality, quality, quality. HP most certainly compromises in this department. It has been my experience that HP laptops are always slightly cheaper than a Sony or Toshiba, and in fact, possibly even Dell. There’s a reason for that, they use the cheapest possible equipment. I own several laptops, including Sony, Toshiba, and Dell, and none of them have been to the manufacturer for repairs, except for me HPs. Sad, but true. It’s better to spend that extra couple of hundred dollars, because with a Sony Vaio or Toshiba Tecra, you won’t have a faulty HDD or defective motherboard or overclocked processors. You know what they say, you get what you pay for.
2- Support. Yes, HP has some awesome support features: like the support chat on their site, and they were one of the first to come up with that. But the competence of the support personnel has gone down substantially, possibly because they’ve moved support over to India, and are using Indians with Christian names like Jack and John, whereas the person you’re really talking to has the technical competence of a graphic designer, if at all. They’re really trying to deceive you, because all this online support does is copy and paste from pre-written text, and half the time their English is so fucking weak, that they don’t know what “my wireless card disappears, and does not show up in the device manager” means. Horrible support, and to back it up, they flat out tell you they can’t help you out with any repairs if you live outside the US. I said I would pay for one or both way shipping, but they still refused. Apparently, only FedEx can pick it up on a shipment scheduled by them and redeliver it to the same address. Why, exactly? Security reasons? Come on HP, product differentiation. Customer service! Where are your business basics, you monkies?! The company has lost its ability to think; they function on process only.
3- Defective Hardware. Compromise on quality is one thing, but its a whole new ball game for a company the size of HP to be pulling stunts like shipping defective hardware, then providing the wrong drivers for that hardware, and then quietly removing the new driver that supposedly provided a fix, and reverting back to the old driver and let people sit on defective equipment. Instead, they let people rot in agony on their forums, but refuse to help them or take acceptance for their actions. Hell, they don’t even discuss refunds. Maybe it’s time for a class action lawsuit? Interested, please send me an email. I’m compiling a list of people, and as soon as I have a reasonable number, I might actually go ahead with it.
4- HP QuickPlay. Can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent on this software. It’s a wonderful piece of software, no doubt, but the support HP provides for it is nothing short of horrid. Instructions for fixing QP issues on this and other sites are flat out rejected by HP support, and they claim that there is NO way to restore HP QuickPlay, at least not HP Quick Play Direct Play, unless and until you use the recovery CDs that come with the laptop. Bullshit, as most of you know, which brings me to my next reason to not buy from Hewlett Packard.
5- Vista Upgrade. Can someone please tell me why hp offers upgrades from XP Media Center Edition to Vista Home Premium? What common functionality do the two have? If the upgrade was from XP Media Center to Vista Ultimate, it’s a fair upgrade! I can’t even play DVDs on Home Premium; what kind of bullshit is that! Oh, and if you’ve lost your purchase receipt, forget it, you can’t get the HP Express Upgrade Kit. You have no proof of purchase, and neither do they. I wonder how they keep track of stolen laptops.
6- Recovery Discs? Whoever came up with the idea of making a recovery partition instead of recovery discs was a real son of a bitch! To save the cost of 2 CDs, he has made the lives of many of us miserable. What’s worst is that you don’t know that if you had a Vista Compatible laptop that you upgraded to Vista without touching that partition, it’s gone anyway. You can’t see that sucker. Here’s what’s even shittier: I ordered recovery discs from HP, and they’re defective. They keep getting stuck on 51% and nothing happens. I ordered them originally because some monkey with online support told me that the original recovery will solve the wireless card problem and the HP QuickPlay Direct problem. I ordered them and then paid someone more money to ship them to me internationally, but they don’t work. What kind of horse shit is that?
7- Tea, anyone? Both HP laptops that I have had produced SO much heat that they are barely eligible for lap top use after 15 minutes. I can actually boil water on my dv2000. I kid you not, the sucker heats up, and hello to Hewlett Packard, maybe that’s causing all the hardware problems.
8- Junk Software. I understand that HP writes a lot of software, and somehow they feel the need to wrap up all their advertising junk in them when we buy new laptops from them. I typically spend a day cleaning out a new laptop, or cleaning out a laptop that I have just recovered from workable recovery discs, if I can ever find them.
9- HP Driver Updates. Okay, this is rather shady. Only with HP have I seen this. HP update provides one driver update for a certain device on the notebook, and it’s different from the one provided by the manufacturer of that particular hardware device AND/OR different from the driver provided by Microsoft/Windows Update. Who is right? We’ll never know, because it’s not like there’s one defect. Upgrade one driver and you run the risk of another malfunction, as we have seen with the mystery of the disappearing wireless broadcom card in the dv series notebooks.
10- Average Life. In my experience, the average life on an HP notebook is as much as its warranty, if you have access to it. No access, no warranty, and you could run real short. Using support for one of my HPs and not for the other, for me the average life so far has been about 1.25 years per laptop. That’s pretty low. However, if I can somehow get my dv2120 to the US and back with a new mother board and replaced hardware, the life may go up, although it won’t be a very pleasant or happy life.
So, that’s all for now. You may wonder now as to why I’m displaying HP ads on my site, because naturally, adsense may pick up on this anti Hewlett Packard content. Well, figure that shit out for yourself. All in all, HP is a bad investment for any hardcore user. Support, quality, durability, ease of use are all BAD. I will not be recommending HP to anyone anymore.
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