Slashdot Mirror

I was going to recommend Taos Mountain, because they did solid sysadm consultant work for me at a previous job. However, they appear to have reinvented themselves to the point that, after looking at their web site, I'm not sure what they do...

The reason I asked is because I used to work for Taos, Inc. and they laid off like 2/3rds or so of their workforce (including me) a couple of years ago. I was just going to be incredulous at their misuse (IMNSHO) of resources considering all the people they fucked over.

But nevermind :)

Notably, as well, they have gone from being "The Sys Admin Company" to "We can help you fire people but make the leftovers work twice as hard!". Nice.

They fired us by email. It was my birthday. Seriously.

• record +2 hours to every on-call day
• any calls/pages are billed in .25 hour increments
• you get to count transit time (but, of course, use the best available - you can't walk 60 miles and count it) [I generally just round to "fair" because I always forget to note it when I'm in-transit]

I have a friend who, upon being paged, charged a 2-hour "base", and then "real time" past the first two hours. and, whenever on pager duty, he billed half-time. An impressive sca^Hheme if you can pull it off.

The only downside is, we don't get stock in all these little startups we end up working for... a real bummer, but otherwise a great job...

Ender

Get paid by the hour, and get compensated for "pager duty". And, if you work for somewhere like Taos (my employer) or Andersen Consulting, you get paid hourly, but you also get benefits, interesting work (at least mine is), and no unpaid "down time". oh, and paid vacation. and other things.

*smirk* I come from a corporate environment. Ethical or not, if legal okays it, then it's going to happen. More than once, we got calls at my former employer's NOC that were the FBI, the State Police, the local police, the Secret Service, or the INS on the other hand, with siezed company property.

Anonymous reporting's been around for ages. And the schools use it. Some of them responsibly, others irresponsibly. Before I dropped out, my high school introduced a 1-800 help line to report bullying, to get help if you were depressed, etcetera. I know for fact that before I dropped out, the most action they took off information from that line was suspending someone for two weeks for fighting, and sending a LOT of kids off to a special school for kids with drug problems.

Since then, there have been *THREE* deaths at this school. One of them, this weekend, hit me very hard. It was someone I knew. He was stabbed to death at a party, trying to break up a fight. I don't doubt for a second that people will abuse these things. My school was so afraid of me, just because I was the "quiet kid" who was "smart," that they actively sought ways to get rid of me. I was threatened with expulsion repeatedly. Unjustly, I might note. ("What, you're going to expell me because some idiot who can't turn on a PC says I hacked his Macintrash? Shall we get the family lawyer on the phone?")

A school district basically FORCED a friend of mine to drop out. They continually harassed him, suspended him, etcetera. At the ADMINISTRATIVE level. And he wasn't a behaviour problem. He was a quiet kid who wore a lot of black. And they took ESPECIAL effort to make his life hell. This shit has been going on for years. In fifth grade, mind you, I had to memorize the family lawyer's number and tell them to call him every time they sent me to the principal's office for a bullshit reason. To this day, I have kept contact with at LEAST two lawyers - a contract/patent lawyer or firm, and a general counsel who can at the least, refer me to the appropriate lawyer should the need arise.

Yeah, the "if we don't do it somebody else will" argument is bullshit. But it's also true. It's CHEAPER to run a voicemail system that just takes messages than to provide ACTUAL HELP. Actual HELP requires ACTUAL PEOPLE. And people require MONEY. Pinkerton's profit margin will be in excess of 50%, with an error margin I'd guesstimate at in excess of 90%. Statistics be damned - offer a fifth grader a computer if he reports fifty violent students, and he'll be on that phone day in and day out till he gets that computer. No effort required - just lie about some kid you don't like.

This is unethical in that this is just a 'tattletale' line. And Pinkerton will NOT hire people to make it a HELP line instead. Then they would LOSE money on it due to the scope of it. (I hope you Pinkerton fools are reading this.) They KNOW this. They don't have the balls to admit that they're in this EXCLUSIVELY for the money. They can yank away those prizes any damn time they want for any bullshit reason they want. So they don't have to actually give away ANYTHING! Imagine the profit margins THEN!

It's time the whole goddamn world wakes up and realizes that playing catchup and tattletale is not only fucking STUPID, but just EXACERBATING the problem. It's like making a pinprick in a finger, then pouring sulfuric acid over it, and adding yeast. Then add some infectious diseases (WAVE) and pretty soon the only solution left is to cut off the ARM. I won't have kids, if I ever do get married, because I will not raise kids in this environment. Not by a longshot.

Obviously Americans can't take care of their own kids, the government's got it's head so far up it's ass it can't figure out how to make reasonable and intelligent changes and desicions, and the corporations could care less so long as they can post higher earnings estimates. Makes me want to move somewhere like Sweden or Finland. Obviously, people are far more responsible over there.

I don't know about you folks, but I've had it with this bullshit. If nobody's going to take a stand and point out who's REALLY at fault - the parents, the schools, the society, and America as a whole - then it's only going to get worse, and people know it. They're still in denial though. So nothing will be done till it's too late. Bah. I'm not disillusioned - I'm realistic. And if this is the way America will be, then every American on the face of this planet is SCREWED.

*steps down off soap box*

=RISCy Business email here

1. Move out of this rural hellhole and go to Silicon Valley. Get a motel in Palo Alto, Mountain View or Sunnyvale.
2. Stop sending out resumes. Everyone discards out-of-state resumes. The assumption is that you're not serious about relocating.
3. Put your skills at the top of your resume, above your fast-food job or whatever. Put everything up there that you have the personal experience and knowledge to discuss.
4. Visit several recruiters, job shops, and internet start-ups. Don't call ahead. Just tell the receptionist, "I'm a system administrator looking for work." If you get to see a geek or technical recruiter, you can prove your knowledge to him.
5. Taos is probably your best bet. Do yourself a favor and don't contact them remotely. You need to be there in person to back up your weak resume with knowledge.
6. 1. Anyhow, you will fit in fine in the Valley. People with real knowledge are respected here, not paper-qualified morons. It would suck if you stay in this rural wasteland and work for moronic rednecks for 1/4 of your real value. You have no idea of the income disparity between the Valley and where you are now. WRT getting jobs at LUGs, the SVLUG has so many people standing up announcing jobs that it's hard to preserve adequate time for the technical presentations. I typed this comment twice. Fucking lynx: why can't it pop up vi for filling in text boxes? Lynx users will know what happened.