Information Technology Reference
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tract specific data. Data can also be shown by industry such as banking, insurance,
telecommunications, manufacturing, and others.
It happens that self-reported data from clients are not always 100% accurate.
Leakage and data errors are not uncommon among the companies that have
provided data to the ISBSG repository. Several consulting companies that go
onsite and interview software development teams may have more accurate data,
but there are substantial consulting fees for onsite data collection, while the ISBSG
data are gathered for free. Also, the consulting companies charge a great deal more
for their data than does the ISBSG.
Overall, the ISBSG benchmark repository is a valuable resource for the soft-
ware industry. The data are widely used by many companies to calibrate estimates
and to compare methodologies. The ISBSG data are also published in various art-
icles and books. There are also special reports that might, for example, cover an
in-depth study of a major bank.
The software industry needs the kind of data that the ISBSG provides, and this
organization has become a valuable resource for academics, corporate researchers,
and government researchers.
Monster.com
Few companies discussed in this topic are better exemplars of the power of the
internet and web for influencing human life than Monster.com. Monster.com has
become the largest employment website in the world, with more than 1 million
résumés uploaded to it and almost 65 million job-seeking visitors per month. A
company like this could not have existed 20 years ago because the enabling tech-
nologies of the internet, the web, databases, and combinatorial search logic are all
necessary to make it work. Because this topic covers social phenomena as well
as technical topics, the success of Monster.com is one of the most significant job-
seeking and job-posting evolutions in human history.
Monster.com was formed in 1999, but it was created from a merger rather than
as a single-company startup. The two pioneering employment sites that merged
were the Monster Board (TMB) and the On-Line Career Center (OLC). Jeff Taylor
was a founder and CEO of the Monster Board. The organization started in Fram-
ingham, Massachusetts, but moved to Maynard, Massachusetts, where it occupied
space in the former office complex of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). (As
it happens, I lived only a few miles from the Maynard complex in the next town
over, Acton, Massachusetts.)
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