Slashdot Mirror

Could a thriving member-owned multinational, VISA, serve as some kind of organizational template for a global trade in ideas?

The SCSL, Jini and more recently the Liberty Alliance seem to be somewhat inspired by the member-owned "chaordic" model. What if such a model were applied to Napster? What if participants who added extra value could earn extra rewards? Could such a model decrease legal friction encountered when trying to add value to copyrights?

(btw -- Visa's founder, Dee Hock, believes that if member-ownership had been extended to all participants, including merchants and cardholders, Visa would be an $8 trillion business today.)

I see that the article links to several of the remixes ("Think Barney meets Metallica"). But, unfortunately, they all seem to be Slashdotted. Anyone got a mirror?

The story seems to be at http://www.fastcompany.com/launch/launch_feature/c orporate_songs.html.

Some highlights from that site:

... the firm commissioned a Frankfurt musician-songwriter to write a perky ditty for the annual consultants' conference in 1999 .... His KPMG challenge: to craft the right sound for a firm whose nebulous mission furrows the brows of even the brightest college grads ... "The song needed to balance between being not too hero-like, not too fast, not too smooth -- not extreme in any direction -- to stay true to the KPMG identity," ...

You're thinking of the shuttle flight software - the stuff that rides onboard.

here's an article.

It's funny you should link that, because I was going to cite it as a reference for why all software does have bugs. Read this quote from the article:

But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

Notice how they said it was bug-free, but then they immediately contradicted themselves. Yes, the software is very close to being bug-free. BTW, for those not familiar with the article, it's a description of the highly disciplined process that NASA goes through to develop software for the space shuttle. Indeed, this is a case where "mission critical" is to be taken quite literally, and they still can't achieve perfection. Nobody is perfect.

I must confess that I believe in certain absolutes when it comes to raising children. Kids should be taught to sit still, so they can make it through a piano recital without disrupting the entire event. They should eat what's put in front of them at dinnertime without complaint.
...
(http://www.fastcompany.com/solo/solo_feature/lego _gates.html)

I wonder if the last name Gates can be scientifically linked to expecting people to shut up and eat what you put in front of them.

Notionologist?

I'd trust this stuff a lot more than a lot of the things we have trusted on the road in the past .

I've read about some schools that have training in video game programming and apparently their grads are quite well regarded. There was a fast company story on one, DigiPen a little while ago, they seemed to think it was pretty good.

If you can't get right into the industry, perhaps these would be some ok options.

Here's a great article by Fast Company about the decidedly unglamorous world of programming for space flight purposes: They Write the Right Stuff

It kinda answers the question "what could software look like if somebody tried to do *everything* right?"

I was going to cite the Shuttle as well. Here is a great article about it.

Question: under the .NET program, would Microsoft be an ISP and/or similar service provider?

If MS becomes wildly successful with the .NET initive, and if it is a monopoly as ruled in court, does this legal action open the door to the government takeover of Microsoft down the road, in the Public interest, since they are a monopoly, since they will have made themselves essential to the welfare of America?

[Insert Fantasy sequence] And further, under such a take over, could they regulate the quality of code? such as making it some sort of criminal offense to write code with an excessive number of bugs. - think of it - microsoft code being reviewed and managed like they do it for the Space Shuttle. (see original story here.)

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Well, if you want really bug-free software, take a look at how the Space Shuttle software engineers do it..

And think about how many $$$ per LOC it costs, and think, "how many KLOCs are in Win2k"?

Software companies develop shoddy products because the consumer will buy them, and the mass-market consumer really hasn't voiced an interest at improved code (factoring in, of course, the added cost to software that improved code would imply), instead clamoring for more features they'll never use.

What the consumer doesn't realize is that most software is rewritten, and that if source were open, we would (do) have a rich set of reliable base components on which to build reliable complex packages. We know that. My mom doesn't. There's orders of magnitude more people like my mom, the checkout guy at the supermarket, et al. than there are of me.

Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)

Which of course doesn't invalidate what you said, it just makes it a poor simile.

Vermifax

"Anyways, the only bug-free program anymore might be hello world...."

OK, time for a personal rant.

I keep hearing this--hearing that bugs are inevitable, and that bug-free software is impossible. This leads to the development of software with bugs, because "we can't catch everything!"

Hogwash!

Check out this article for proof to the contrary.

We have become FAR too accepting of bugs in commercial software. It's only because we accept it that the companies can get away with it.

OK, rant over. Back to watching the snow.

Dunno about the ISS, but the Shuttle s/w is so intensively tuned and (dare I say it) perfected that you'd have to pry it from their cold, dead fingers. This has been posted before, but it's worth reading if you didn't catch it then.

Gay men, in large numbers (to make a gross generalization), tend to be drawn to fairly progressive urban environments (ever heard of a large gay community in someplace like Topeka Kansas?). So, in fact, are the type of people who want to work at new-economy companies. Thus having a strong gay community becomes a reliable proxy for all the other things in an urban centre which make it desirable for young professions to reside, not the cause of that. In fact, you could replace any number of things with gay-tolerance as the proxy (such as immigrant populations).

Which means that if you're setting up a company in an area which is gay-tolerant, you're probably going to end up employing some.

No wonder "it is a tough world out there", and
that Darwin's observation of "survival of the
fittest" was so readily accepted as self-evident
Truth by the Victorian English--and by any other
people who live within a money system of their
own design, such as us today. In fact, there is
not much "out there" that supports such a cynical
interpretation, claims Professor of bio-sociology
Imanishi, from Kyoto University. He has shown that
the Darwinian vision of nature as a struggle for
life simply has been completely blind to the many
more frequent cases of co-evolution, of symbiosis,
of joint development and harmonious coexistence
which prevail in all domains of evolution. Even
our own body today would not be able to survive
long without the symbiotic collaboration of
billions of micro-organism in our digestive tract
for example.

http://www.transaction.net/money/book/rethink2b.ht ml

Altruism breeds altruism, and reciprocal acts breed
reciprocal acts. "If we feel that other people are
only out for themselves, one is wary of being
altruistic. If we feel other people are not giving,
we say, 'I'm not going to be a sucker,' " says Cronin.
"The more people understand that we are evolved
altruists, and the more people feel that no one is
taking advantage of another, the more we will become
altruistic, and the more we won't take advantage of
one another."

Why has nature designed something so useless? As
useless as being nice to the other guy? As useless
as sharing information? As useless as committing
your life to pursuing an idea whose outcome you can't
possibly know? Reputation, says Cronin, is a key
element in competition. "Once you understand that
sexual selection is displaying qualities like kindness
or goodness, or is demonstrating that you can afford
to give things away, then you understand the close
connection between flamboyance and altruism. Altruism
can be one of those evolved peacock feathers in our
minds."

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/29/paranoia.html

What if "ownership" is defined as a "nontransferable right to participate" within an idea-trading community?


http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/what_des.html
http://www.partnershipway.org/unesco.html
http://technocrat.net/947223068/index_html

Huh? Believe it or not, a *shared ownership* model organizes the most successful global enterprise on earth: VISA International.

http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/res_choasgood.htm l
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/deehock.html
http://visa.com/av/who/main.html

Dee Hock, who founded VISA, tells a bit of the story like this:

"In the strict legal sense, VISA was a non-stock, for-profit membership corporation. In another sense, it was an inside-out holding company in that it did not hold, but was held by its functioning parts. The financial institutions that create its products were, at one and the same time, its owners, its members, its suppliers, its customers, its subjects, and its superiors.

"It could not be bought, raided, traded, or sold, since ownership was in the form of perpetual, nontransferable rights of participation.

"VISA espoused no political, economic, social, or legal theory, thus transcending language, race, custom, and culture to successfully bring together people and institutions of every political, social, and religious persuasion.

"It went through a number of wars and revolutions, the belligerents continuing to share common ownership and never ceasing reciprocal acceptance of products, even though they were killing one another."

! Dee Hock estimates that if equitable ownership had been extended to merchants and card-holders, (all users), Visa would today be *four times* more successful today. !

Something to consider when deciding whether "for profit" or "non profit".. Neither And Both =)

The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages.

They write the Right Stuff

I'd personally refute most of the stuff he says, 70 hour weeks lead to burnout and sloppy code. The wuality of my environment has never been as important as the quality of the people around me. Mentoring is probably the most important for me, and creating an atmosphere where asking questions is encouraged. Testing is part of the process, not something left to the last second. But the above link does all that pretty well.

Wells Fargo has excellent on-line services, ranging from on-line account access (for my business and personal accounts, credit cards, they can do mortgages and student loans on-line too, and merchant services). They also have an on-line brokerage though I've never used it. I've also used it from Netscape/Linux with no problem, and most Mac browsers. Their operation seems cool, read this article:

http://www.fastcompany.com/onli ne/ 38/models.html

don't think that's an option in Canada though, sorry.

-aaron

Looks like they were complaining about http://www.fastcompany.com/homepage/ although that looks nothing like FUCKEDcomapny.com

I demand you stop using the same table tag as me damn it... I'll sue..

I'd like to see the stats for fuckedcompany after this and that ebay thing... up up up..

Excuse me: American corporations do not DESERVE to be our communities.

All human beings have to a greater or lesser extent a hunger for community. It is an itch we all need to scratch, regardless of whether we are introverts or extroverts.

But just because we desire and enjoy and possibly even need it, does not make us stupid. And just as, even though thirsty we are smart enough not to drink poisoned water, many of us are clever enough not to try to sate our appetite for human connection on the poisonous pseudo-culture in the workplace!

In Western culture, there is this idea of not mixing business and pleasure. This isn't just some archaic uptightness -- it's a self-defense mechanism for employees. (See Miss Manners, of all authors, for technical explication.)

Community exterts tremendous power over its members. Your employer already controls your entire financial situation (and possibly your relationship with your doctor, and day care for your kids, etc.) The business/pleasure dichotomy keeps the business world from seizing the power of community, too.

Or put it another way, if the time you could have spent growing friendships outside of your place of employment you spend socializing with your co-workers.... if you try to leave that job, precisely whom do you know to network with to get a job somewhere else? If pissing off the boss means everyone you hang out with no longer wants to risk being seen with you, how often will you stick your neck out?

Of course corporations want more community in the work place -- they'd love for every time an employee thinks about quitting, they also think "but then I'd have to leave all my friends!" They want hostages!

And trust them (and apparently the author of this book) to deliberately confuse community with communications. Communications, boy-os, is something that starts from the top, and implies little about emotional interactions. Yah don't have to like each other to talk to each other about work. (That's called "Professionalism", BTW.) Community is completely about emotional relationships.

Yeah, corporate america keeps looking for ways to manipulate its workers into submission. Now it's community. Last year it was "family", and, get this, religion.

Companies don't deserve that kind of power over us. And we are not defective for refusing to grant it them!
------------------------------------------- ---

Y'all might be interested in the Fast Company article that's somewhat related, entitled "They Write the Right Stuff." I believe that there was mention of this on /. some months back. It's about the computers that actually control the shuttle and the process of writing that software. Pretty hard-core.

-Waldo

But you have to pay in time and money.

Read They Write the Right Stuff

A very readable article from a few years ago describing, at a high level, some of the efforts needed to become SEI 5. Use this as a benchmark to measure your software endeavours - and when looking at books describing the fragility of software.

Posting in case others don't get the joke of what the domain/logo/concept is parodying:
Fast Company is a rah-rah newspaper that tells how wonderous all the dot-com companies are doing and how successful they all are. F*cked Company is a rather logical nomenclature for FC's antithesis newsletter during these months of cleaning out the dot-com failures.
Fast Company actually has a feature headline today: "When the going gets tough, the tough get real". Those flipping through the dot-com carnage at F*cked Company may beg to differ.

---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."

If you aren't happy with Amazon behaving this way, you'll really be peeved with the kind of things that Credit Card companies do.

I don't really mind, myself.

Let's open up the control software for space systems? Insane. This kind of work is all about accountablity and making sure the system is mission critical. (Not nearly the same as programming a Gnome widget ;)

Did you not see the recent article "Space Shuttle Software: Not For Hacks"? It mentioned an oldish article about how methodical these people need to be, to ensure that everything is accounted for, thoroughly tested and all the code is signed off before it is used in the shuttle.

Sure, for systems used by a lot of people open source makes sense, but for space shuttles? I don't have a big enough garden...

wrighty.
"Sorry, nothing to see here"

I saw this story about a 'programming boot-camp' called Drop and Code me Twenty linked from the Space Shuttle software article and there's the lovely bit where they purposely try to overstress the programmers on the course to see how they react.
"These guys pushed back hard," says TeamworX's John Rae-Grant. "It was great."

I wish we could all do that when the management trolls figure that something can be done in X days without talking to the programmers actually doing the work..

There's that thing called a paycheck though, that tends to curb people's unwillingness to have to rush to do things because management fucked up AGAIN :/

--

One example of some very well designed software is the Shuttle OS that powers NASA's Space Shuttle. In 420k lines of code each revision has only had 1 bug each that wasn't caught by testing. If we *really* want to make some good software it wouldn't be a bad idea to take these lessons to heart. OpenSource software is already good, lets make it better. Full artical here.

This is the type of programming I am talking about
Do you believe it would be possible to have an open source software project that could be successfully and without any problems or risks utilized for a space station?

Do you think it would be possible for open source code to be implemented in this way: or are these software writing processes already used in OSS? Somehow I doublt that GNU/Linux community could be utilized for such serious work.
Go ahead, prove me wrong...

This article "They Write the Right Stuff" appeared in the December 1996 issue of Fast Company. It paints an interesting picture of the requirements and culture of NASA's on-board shuttle programming team (circa 1996.)

The article's main trope pits the discipline and insanely controlled, methodical management of the team and its product against the stereotype of the undisciplined, unruly geeks pounding mountain dews and hammering out bug-riddled code at all hours.

It's still worth a look, though.

They Write the Right Stuff

There have been 17 bugs total in the last 11 OS revisions of the Shuttle code, approximately 420,000 lines delivered each time.

Doing a quick Google search, I ran across this article praising the development of "interactive relationship managers" (IRMs) like the one developed by Predictive Networks. The author is all agog about the marketing benefits of using these IRMs to target exactly what the customers want. He says that 'the "best customers"...[will] make sure that the only advertising that gets through is advertising that they really want to hear.' But then he claims that the way to do this is to use IRMs that 'collect user data based on the surfing habits of ISP customers and then make appropriate suggestions as to what else those customers might like or need.

He also mentions the opportunity for companies to act as free ISPs to their customers so that they can easily gather the profiling information.

<RANT>
This "solution" is patently ridiculous (maybe it should be patented!). Am I a "best customer" in his terms, or not? I absolutely do not want my time and bandwidth wasted by any advertisement unless I decide that I want to see it. According to his definition, that makes me a "best customer".

But there's no way that I want any commercial entity, either software or meatware, to profile my actions and try to figure out what I might be interested in. I'm sorry, but this "best customer" wants to choose for himself what he's interested in seeing. I know best what I'm interested in. Any other "solution" is a travesty, and especially one that violates my privacy in order to provide a useless "service" that I do not want at all.

Not only is the IRM a violation of my privacy, but it's also ineffective -- my current interests are not determined by my previous interests. If I am interested in purchasing something, I will find the information I need for myself. And it will be good information -- not just biased marketing drivel.

How can someone be so clueless to think that IRMs are a solution for people who want to control what advertising they see? They are the same marketing solution all over again - "we will tell you what you should be interested in."

Sorry, but I'm not listening. I already know what I'm interested in.
</RANT>

The latest issue of Fast Company has an article featuring Tom and Ray of NPR's Car Talk. They discuss some common-sense approaches to car shopping on the Internet.

The latest issue of Fast Company has an article featuring Tom and Ray of NPR's Car Talk. They discuss some common-sense approaches to car shopping on the Internet.

An article at FastCompany on this very subject

An article at FastCompany on this very subject

The article discusses the process NASA uses in its attempt to write perfect software. And it does not require programmers to stay up all night

And the reason that there are so many bugs in the first place is because that is the nature of software. Any piece of code, even slightly complex, will probably be buggy until you take the time to debug it.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Bugs are not the nature of software, but a symptom of the nature of human beings.

Our software is faulty because we are fallible. And that's because our software development processes mostly suck. Is your software buggy? Your process was lousy, and your own fallibility got you.

I would like to ask every coder around here to read this great article, only to learn a little about what perfect software development takes, and how difficult it is to tame our own tendency to screw things up.

Of course it is possible to write perfect software, just eliminate the coders' ability to fail. Perfect software development is very non-human.

• Call this OS anything you want, but please include the name "linux" in whatever you call it.
• Please claim to your free subdomain (reputation) in our community-owned, mother-of-all-intranets at http://our.linux.org/dns (eg: va.linux.org = valinux.com etc)
• Let's chaorganize ourselves to free our idea exchange, while forging a commercial agreement to immunize ourselves from free-riders like Dr. Chiou.. This process might take us a year..

• Call this OS anything you want, but please include the name "linux" in whatever you call it.
• Please claim to your free subdomain (reputation) in our community-owned, mother-of-all-intranets at http://our.linux.org/dns (eg: va.linux.org = valinux.com etc)
• Let's chaorganize ourselves to free our idea exchange, while forging a commercial agreement to immunize ourselves from free-riders like Dr. Chiou.. This process might take us a year..

PAM_ALEXANDER == "A high powered and attractive female leader of a major PR house Alexander Ogilvy that has focused on High Tech and was started I believe in the Bay Area"

SEE ALSO:

#2 in the Upside Top 100 Flacks

Fast Company's April 1998 issue features Alexander Communications

1. chaorganize

propagate chaordic organization.. distribute equitable ownership to *all* /. participants, (in the form of non-transferable right of participation.)

2. open source

practice the preach, perhaps with a modified BSD/GPL requesting (requiring?) attribution, link.

3. decentralize

a. grant users subdomains within slashdot.com allowing us to discuss [rejected] topics, and distill signal from noise within [accepted] topics. (open our data to user recombination, including alternative graphic "skin" overlays.)

b. insert topic directories allowing users to distill and share opinions on daily topics, ie: GPLvBSD, patents, namespace/trademarks, privacy/accountability, etc. ie: http ://user1.slashdot.com/re/GPLvBSD (save us time, let us avoid repetition and share *distilled* conclusion/opinions)

c. reboot karma to transcend groupthink

d. invite languages other than the english

4. monetize

a. find ways to fairly direct revenue streams to all participants who contribute value to slashdot.com

b. let us openly measure logs to learn whose reputations* gather whose *attention*

c. create a /. community currency, fully fungible with any other, like saxas, but open source, (secure)

d. have your suits propose licensing guidelines allowing paid (fairly shared) republishing of user commentary in other channels

comments?

Why worry about the person of 1999? 1999 is already over. Whose vision is most important for the year 2000 and onward? Whose concept of community, ownership, collaboration, innovation and trade will prove most insightful, ethical and useful? Dee Hock.

only the pronoid survive..

I have not read this book, and I am glad it has been brought to my attention; I look forward to reading it. I will do so, though, with a certain amount of trepidation.

I have been a temp/contractor/freelancer for 8 years now; I have never held any other kind of job. And I am rather used to the warped media view of what I do. All stories in the press either take the stance that (less commonly) temps/contractors/freelancers/etc. are incompetant bloodsuckers who will take the client for all they're worth or (the vast majority) temps/contractors/freelancers/etc. are exploited by the system of temping/contracting/freelancing and duped into thinking there's something good about it.

My trepidation, then, arises from the bit Katz quotes on "Cab Drivers". Sounds like - and, no, I don't have enough information to really know - the same-old-same-old. "Oh, those poor benighted independents! Eeking out a hard-scrabble existence, chasing job after job, for a chance of getting paid! Oh, pity the poor contractor without health insurance, without 401(k), without job security!"

For what it's worth: I chose this lifestyle because it works for me. Most reasonable agencies in this day and age offer benes (health, 401k, etc.) to their W2 employees. I have, in some ways, more job security than most people: if my relationship with a client deteriorates, I call up my agent and say "Get me out of here" - and he does.

That having been said, on to the real point:

In the last eight years, I've worked on some 50 client sites, in just about every conceivable kind of workplace: businesses of every shape and size, univerisities, non-profits, the gummint, even a major religion (no kidding). Sometimes for a day, sometimes for a month, sometimes for many months at a stretch.

Part of what got me hooked on this kind of work was the opportunity to see the insides of so many different workplaces. I wanted an answer to "What is 'work' like for most people?" and I didn't want to generalize, as everyone seemed to, from a paltry handful of data points.

These are some of the things I have learned:

Everyone thinks their workplace is "normal", no matter how abusive it is.

Workplaces are like families in that, because people tend not to be in more than one or two at a time, they have no benchmark against which to compare them. So everywhere I went, from places with fantastic morale and loyalty to the pits of Hades, everyone thought that where they worked - their relationship to their boss, their relationship to their coworkers, their morale of their division/company/branch/department, etc. - was "normal", and that if they changed their jobs their new work experience would be just the same. If their current experience was bad, it wouldn't get better anywhere else; if their current experience was good, it wouldn't be worse (or better) anywhere else.

The major reason that's bad is that it allows people in positions of authority to get away with murder. It's fatalism pure and simple.

The minor reason that's bad is that it reduces the posibility for sympathy between workers of very different companies to nil. Say worker A, coming from The Eighth Circle, LTD, applies for a job at Elysian Fields, Inc. where they are interviewed by worker B. All worker B can tell is that worker A didn't get much accomplished, had a rocky relationship with their job, and seems pretty despondent/desperate. Worker B does not see that in the context of Elysian Fields, Inc. worker A could be a great employee, because worker B doesn't realize the existence of different contexts. This is one of the reasons people tend to move from cruddy job to cruddy job, and good job to good job!

People believe their bosses have the power of life and death over them.

Sometimes, I think that a whole lot of people try to use their bosses as substitute parents, trying to earn the love and appreciation and approval of absent parents through the proxy of their bosses. Cuz they act like kids: unwilling to say "no, I'm sorry, I can't do that for you", shameful and resentful at not doing things good enough, and in short completely manipulatable.

(Which is one of the reasons I suspect as crooked any company which makes a big deal of how much it is a "family".)

Self-determination (poo-pooed above) really is worth it

Self-determination, however, is not just a function of being independently employed. It is much easier to find self-determination when you're on your own - that's a good chunk of why I went that route - but not everyone (or even most everyone) manages to find self-determination in being a temp/contractor/freelancer, nor is it impossible to be self-determined while "employed directly".

Self-determination is a state of mind, or, if you will, a state of spirit. It is a deep undertstanding that you are, in the end, responsible for the course of your life.

Some people get to self-determination via paranoia and cynicism: "Ain't nobody looking out for me, ever, but me." Some people get there via religious faith or a strong sense of calling: "I have to do what I was put here to do." Some people get there via a brush with death: "I am not going to waste any more of my precious seconds of life in such misery." Some people get there via philosophy, some people get there via hunger.

Doesn't matter how you get there: get there.

Self-determination is the rope by which you can haul yourself out of the quicksand of bad employment situations. Self-determination is the difference between being pathetically vulnerable and being able to shrug off the crap.

This isn't some woo-woo newage neo-psychology about positive thinking. Self-determination is a tool for hacking on lives. And its old name is "liberty", and people fought and died for it.

Most people believe that the expression "Being your own boss" actually has relevant meaning

Look: you, every last one of you, are the captains of your own fates. You are your own bosses, already.

Ultimately, you have only yourself to answer to. Are you, upon your death bed, going to worry "Was I sufficiently obedient? Was I a good enough employee? Were my bosses pleased with my service?"

You are responsible for the course of your life. That doesn't mean it's entirely your fault, but it is your responsibility, same way that if your puppy messes on your rug, the mess is not your fault, but it's still your responsibility. Shit happens. What I'm talking about is how you then deal with the shit.

It is nobody else's job to rescue you from the misery of an abusive job, or a job you just don't like. It's nobody else's job to answer the question "What shall I do with my life?" It's nobody else's job to intervene and say "You're throwing the best years of your life away on a crummy situation."

It's your job to care about you . It's your job to care about you enough to stand up for yourself; to refuse to allow other to take advantage of you; to force yourself to get out of fatal ruts. It's your job to step back and take a good long look at your life so far and ask "Is where I am now on the path to where I want to be? Is this getting me where I want to go? Is this trip I am on worth being on?".

A staggering number of people entrust this job to their bosses, or to Lady Luck (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi!). But, ya know, those bosses don't care about you. That's not their job. You cannot abdicate this responsibility without suffering. To try and get someone else to do this for you is to look for parenting, to try to find someone to treat you like you're a kid and they're your mom-or-dad. But not even your parents can do this for you once you're an adult. This is what it means to be an adult.

Most (adult) people who are abused allow the abuse to happen

If your work situation is abusive - whether your boss is taking advantage of you financially or you are being sexually harassed by co-workers or your workspace is giving you an RSI - ask yourself "Why am I putting up with this?"

If the only answer you have is "I've gotten myself into debt up to my eyeballs and I'm terrified of being unemployed, so my current employer has me by the short and curlies", then I recommend to you the book Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin)

If your answer is "Because I am too timid to confront the problem/people", then you really do have a problem, because even if you get out of the current situation, you'll bring your fatal weakness with you. You'll be an abuse victim waiting to happen.

Only you can rescue you. The rest of us are powerless to. You have to decide to be brave and decide stop it for yourself.

And that's what I learned as a temp/contractor/freelancer.
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