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Culture

Benenfits

Comptencies
Obvious challenges include data maintenance and privacy. How to let an individual give comment without devolving into http://www.fuckedcompany.com/, and without fear of reprisal, and yet avoid a stuffed ballot-box syndrome, or overly self-selective responses, is an exercise left to a Wharton whiz-kid. Probably need a low subscription fee.
Having solved all of those challenges, though, it would be genuinely interesting to see which soul-sucking Dilbert-bins would implode due to inability to vacuum up fresh talent...

I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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I kid you not.

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You seem perfectly reasonable
It's an act ;)

people think that with enough work, those people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps
I used to stop to drop a $20, but before I knew many of them do it for a living and about the programs that have the potential to help them more than my cash. Sure, bad things happen to good people, but I can't believe the *only* choice is to beg. I originally mentioned begging to counter the GGGGGGP who doesn't want to pull his weight.

Bootstraps: I've never lost home, life or limb but have been close to all three. I worked for a company with free sodas that put a $6M renovation on a building when $1M max have worked. Paint many times the cost of good paint, just for trendiness and extravagance. Data center money squandered on hiring vice presidents as if hellbent on a Ripley's title. Friday-Beer-O-Clock and a game room. Perks were nice, but even then I questioned its wisdom, and I'd trade it for my job, but the place is gone. It was my first tech job, so my salary was less than half my co-workers' and a mere fraction of what some of the developers were making. Some were rumored to make over $350k.

When I had learned enough to keep things afloat as senior people kept leaving--1800+ employees 10/2000, 63 in 07/2002, we still carried all the same projects and products--there was no longer any provision for a raise to reflect my skill level. I'm bitter about doing the work of three people whose salaries had each been more than double my own, and stressing through a dozen separate layoffs sucked, but I survived all but the very last and am grateful for that. I'm sure my low salary was part of it. We defined "Dot Bomb: Rise And Fall." We made http://fuckedcompany.com/ twice inside a couple months.

A baby on the way, I was jobless within twelve days of a mortgage on a new home. The market in Q3 2002 was pathetic, so I started working on my own, also stressful because you never give yourself a day off until the business is established.

they see themselves as people who, through hard work, have become successful. But they work no harder than millions of people making minimum wage.
I'd agree 100%, but being paid more is earned through determination and diligence. It's not limited to school, which is why I mentioned plumbers above. A high wage, earned with hundreds of hours learning about keeping poop out of my tub. Any job a 'Brilliant math guy' might land will pay more than minimum wage, but after attending Reed, he'd deserve it. Work now reap later, suffer for one's art, et cetera.

a perfectly rational course of action for those who have bought into the American dream, but it is in reality cold and callous.
Double-edged sword. I've seen both sides, even if one didn't cut as deeply as it could have. I'm hoping your explanation of the ten percent can help grey a few B&W areas.

claim that I praise car jackers as noble rebels
Well, I have a problem with hyperbole (should I mention brevity?). I wasn't accusing as much as extrapolating where it seemed you were heading.

buying into the shared distorted image of American life and culture.
From my perspective, the "American dream" mirrored the cliche. For a while I was despondent and didn't work much (slashdot, gaming). Predictably, more money problems, ironically leading to more stress. It was a tough cycle to break, but only working my ass off fixed the problem, not complaining about taxes as per the G^5 GP. That's why I have a tough time feeling sympathy; I've been there (or almost there, depending on what portion of my post you're talking about), and it was elbow grease that saved me, nothing more.

SOrry for the delay; I hope the discussion isn't archived before you can reply...

Maybe letting the boards/comments sit in the gutter for years wasn't the way to run a site.

I'm actually afraid that that might happen with the veritas purchase.

Be afraid. The Veritas office layoffs have started.

According to the Libertarian ethos, I should be rewarded for my efforts to defraud someone by using misleading, but technically correct on some level, language to sell something, or by using knowledge only I have access to (say, as the director of a large multinational) to gain a massive advantage of others (say, by selling stock on the sly shortly before revealing losses, etc),

I'm not a libertarian really, but that's not important :)

First, the ability to defraud the public was much more accessible in the past -- which is why I understand the reason for laws. Now, we have the Internet, the instant access to information shared by the masses. Moderation of products is happening real time, in fact, we're receiving information about test products before they come to market. If you are an uneducated consumer even with all the reviews and moderations available, you're at fault for making bad decisions. Ebay and slashdot are good examples of market anarchism: there really isn't any force being used against consumers or producers, and both consumers and producers are able to rate the transactions made. Is it perfect? No, but it is becoming more perfect as time goes on, thanks to the market's ability to change at an instant.

but I shouldn't be rewarded for creating new music, movies, and novels.

Of course you do -- get a job with a company that makes those things. You're guaranteed a paycheck that way. If you want to be independent (just like an IT consultant or an independent hair stylist), you are accepting a much bigger risk in exchange for the chance of a much bigger reward. I became an independent consultant at 14 and for 3 years I made less than $0.50 per hour. At 17 I was making over $60 an hour and at 20 I was making over $150 per hour. At 21 I was bad to making less than $0.25 per hour for 2 years while I watched my old profession fall apart. Risks/rewards!

Much as I generally agree that personal liberty should be maximized, I can't get my head around the notion of a world being a better place because dishonesty and crookedness are rewarded, but creativity is for losers.

Dishonest and crooked producers will be judged by the market's moderation system in place. Look at Sony. Look at Enron. Look at http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ for a list of producers who screwed their customers and ended up with what they deserved. I'm losing one of my companies right now because we didn't focus on our customers, and in April that business was one of the top 100 in the nation. 8 months later and its bankrupt. I continue to learn lessons. If I didn't want such a big reward, I know I could go get a job for someone else and do very well, but I don't want that. My businesses that treat the customers with respect and concern grow -- slowly but surely. My business that took advantage of customers and lied grew VERY fast but crashed even faster.

Now I can dust off my plan to use Paperclips as intercontinental people launchers and my Fart powered hovercraft.

Lets all party like it's 1996!

Actually I do think somebody found a bunch of Cocaine on sale. Don't get me wrong, I think Bittorrent is a wonderful idea and a fine technology. However I am currently wearing a t-shirt from a DotCom that had an idea that they would put ads in their client and make big money. They were stable with a stock price of $26 and a bunch of buzz and lots of Clients, paying clients. Then somebody had a not so bright idea.

The company was Talk City, look them up on http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ one of the more telling posts was this one
http://fuckedcompany.com/comments/html/9373696332- 1.html

If Bittorrent was the owner of the tech maybe just maybe it could work, but there are better clients and they don't do ads.

Now I can dust off my plan to use Paperclips as intercontinental people launchers and my Fart powered hovercraft.

Lets all party like it's 1996!

Actually I do think somebody found a bunch of Cocaine on sale. Don't get me wrong, I think Bittorrent is a wonderful idea and a fine technology. However I am currently wearing a t-shirt from a DotCom that had an idea that they would put ads in their client and make big money. They were stable with a stock price of $26 and a bunch of buzz and lots of Clients, paying clients. Then somebody had a not so bright idea.

The company was Talk City, look them up on http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ one of the more telling posts was this one
http://fuckedcompany.com/comments/html/9373696332- 1.html

If Bittorrent was the owner of the tech maybe just maybe it could work, but there are better clients and they don't do ads.

Interesting site about dot-com companies.

also note the "Net Institutional Purchases"

So the big money funds are all selling too? 31.8% change from the previous quarter?

Actually, I say stay away from the stock market in general right now.

And dont forget to check out all the layoffs and what not that are occurring in this country STILL.

http://www.fuckedcompany.com/

This already exists: fuckedcompany.com

I thought you meant % of the remainder:

Nope, generally it's the percentage of the first round size. So if 1000 people get laid off of from a company of 25,000... the next round will see approx 600 layoffs. And then 240 after that. But that's only if the management is using a formula. Sometimes they just pull the numbers out of their butts (and when they pull the numbers from that lower region, you will see them linked proudly on this website.

His last business savvy enterprise, StreamSearch.com: paid AskJeeves $.05 per hit to use the SS database, spent $100k on a Playboy party, blew $40k on a House of Blues party where the front man for Godsmack "fell ill", then gave away >$100k in CDs and free movie tickets to Mission Impossible 2 just for giving your mailing address, and finally his marketing wizardry thought it was a good idea to change the identity from streamsearch.com to SS.com. got aryan?

The last "company meeting" had brainiac, with a straight face saying, "if anyone has any ideas for creative ways to bring extra money in, I'm all ears." Three days later, another .com folded.

It also garnered 1500+ posts over on f-dcompany.com. http://comments.fuckedcompany.com/phpcomments/inde x.php?newsid=22079&sid=1

With a track record like that how COULDN'T you invest in a boy genius like Shambro and pals?

Here's why: They're good salesmen. They've got tons of "research" that'll convince you they've got the next big thing. They've done it since Shambro was a graduate of the John Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Oh wait, that was his resume. I forgot that WashU asked him to stop saying he was a graduate. Nevermind.

Uh, hasn't friendster had a lot of performance problems over the past few years?

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default .asp?cmd=show&ixPost=108070

http://www.sickdoggy.com/archives/000372.html

http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/3341461 825857782/

http://bbs.fuckedcompany.com/index.cgi?okay=get_to pic&topic_id=1761473

corporate blogs are just another arm of their public relations department, everything needs to be positive, big whoop. Once in a while they might include *insider* information, but thats usually sanctioned..

Really, find a way to blog anonymously and rip your company to shreds. Fucked Company or whatever is probably a good way to go about it.

really? Click here for the animal sex

But seriously: why do you think these concerns are dismissed so lightly? I'd be happy to hear decent rebuttals and answers.

For example: Google does cache pages currently, I know; but when it shows you the cached version, it tells you in plain words that what you are seeing is a cache, grabbed on X/Y/Z, etc. If they're acting as a proxy, they will not be doing that.

And as far as child porn goes: assume, for the sake of the argument, that the porn site deliberately feeds the Google cache-grabber child porn; and to others it feeds normal porn (whatever that may be). Now if Joe User gets child porn via Google, who's responsible?

This scenario isn't as far-fetched as one might think. For example: the people at FuckedCompany.com have models modelling their t-shirts. If you link to the model images from some other page, you get bestiality porn. Similarly, the FC chaps could, for example, feed you bestiality porn via this Google proxy (if they thought it was illegal linking).

See, here's the problem: what Meetup did is really not that far beyond a good PHP programmer who knows a thing or two about MySQL. It's cool, but we're not talking about something like Salesforce.com or Turbo Tax Online. This is a simple web app.

And here's the thing, someone is going to recreate Meetup. Their new page will have less brand recognition, and people will probably pay $19 for the Meetup name for a little while. However, this will not last forever. Meetup isn't Microsoft -- they have no extended brand or monopoly power in the face of competition.

Prediction: Meetup.com will be appearing on the Dot-Com Deadpool shortly.

BTW, if I were running Meetup, I would have investigated a completely different approach. These little web apps that become big should think about extending their services for a fee. For example, something like customized invitations for $20 a box or a set of subscriber only options.

www.fuckedcompany.com

I've decided to personally boycott Google Adsense. I've switched over to Firefox and installed the Grease Monkey extension along with the Hide Adsense script. Works great. As far as other text based ad programs, AdBrite is a nice alternative with attitude. It's run by "Pud" from FuckedCompany.com

Back then fuckedcompany.com was like Slashdot - thousands of posts, hundreds of thousands of readers per day. But a few years later the site dwindled down to nothing and there were hardly any posts. That's when I knew the tech meltdown was over and now it's time to buy NAZ again ;)

Philip J. Kaplan has a site that was made to follow the dotcom bubble burst by keeping track of all companies that went bye-bye. He wrote a book that I am sure many of you have read. It's basically the 'worst of the worst' businesses that couldn't take MILLIONS of dollars and turn a profit. It's a darn good read.

Starting a company isn't always so easy, and following the plan is tough too.

CC

To check out Fucked Company for the latest dot-bomb companies.

If you have a thing for companies circling the drain, check out these guys." They have neither mercy nor shame (nor literate comment posters as far as I can tell.) Consider them the vultures looking for corpses in the desert.

We need an online resource that shows which companies are using which browser. Anonymous whistle-blowing allowed. Maybe Fucked Company could host it. We can point investors there (and our own IT departments). "Look, boneheads: The investors can see that we're wide open to attack!"

Beenz and Flooz called. They're laughing at the fact that you believe their business model might still work in the real world. However, they are happy that you've coined a term ("Paydols") that sounds even wackier than "Beenz" or "Flooz" did.

(Search for them on Fucked Company if Google fails you...)

FuckedCompany had it 12/3.

http://comments.fuckedcompany.com/phpcomments/inde x.php?newsid=109601&sid=1&page=1&parentid=0&crapfi lter=1

There have been other attempts at creating such a collection.

Indeed.

Fucked Company.

Agreed -- this is another one of those tech companies snowing clueless investors out of millions of dollars by describing ways technology can make life even more inconvenient. What's even more amazing is that they're pushing this idea in the UK, a country where the weather is not conducive to standing around loading files onto a music player. Whoever is investing in this scam must have no clue of what an mp3 is, or how much easier it is to just do this in a nice warm house as opposed to a cold, wet London streetcorner.

In twelve month the only web site talking about this one will be Pud's.