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Techies Working for Peanuts
The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about laid-off techies getting desperate and going to work for, well, nothing. No offense to these people, if you're up against the wall you do whatever you can, but I hope they're aware that most of them are not going to get even the slightest compensation for their time.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine.
If you work unpaid overtime, or work for free, or whatever - you are devaluing yourself, you are devaluing your co-workers, you are devaluing every other computer worker in the world.
It's SICK that we've come to a point where most people think it's expected that one has got to work unpaid overtime just to hold a job.
With the rare exception of the people who love their job and would be doing the exact same thing whether there was pay or not - you WORK for MONEY. The company pays you X amount of money to do Y amount of work. When you start to agree to do more work for the same pay, you're devaluing the product (you, your work, your skillset).
The problem we have now is because people for too long have been too willing to be too accomodating.
Stop letting yourselves get taken advantage of or it'll just get worse. When companies are able to pay their tech employees NOTHING, why would they ever start offerring paying positions?
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
One of the most insighful and thoughtful posts I've read in a while. If I had mod points I would mod you up.
My favorite part:
This can apply to the "if i have to give up some privacy to fight terrorism it's worth it" argument that I hear all too often. Don't people realise that there can never exist a compromise when it comes to our rights? We either have them all, or we have none, because once you take away one, it sets a precedent for taking away more.
And what about this one:
What's the national dept right now? Man, we're already there.
Good post.
No sig for you.