Slashdot Mirror
Getting Over the Stigma of a Previous Job?
Subm asks: "Some friends-of-friends worked at a company with such a high profile downfall their past employer became a liability. They weren't involved in causing the downfall, but with the name 'Enron' on their resumes, interviews were spent defending their past employment. SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron, was and its reputation is in a downward spiral in that industry (Unix and GNU/Linux, not lawsuits, that is). SCO's staff will have to look for other jobs sooner or later, and most within the Unix/GNU/Linux community. Can good workers get over the stigma of an employer's reputation? How will working at SCO affect its staff's careers? Does anyone at SCO talk about this?"
SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron
Which industry is that? scamming and defrauding people?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If you can do the work, and do it well - - and you're reliable and honest and willing to take what's offered in the way of starting compensation - - many doors will open.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Probably not that much worse than leaving the last two years open...
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
the laywers, unless of course they win, in which case even Johny Cockran(?) will be kissing their collective asses. The tech folk won't haev to worry beyond the economic conditions that currently exist.
a friend worked at anderson accounting as an entry-level consultant. he's faced with a difficult choice-put anderson and his one year of professional exp. on his resume and explain his situation or leave it out and try to explain why he doesn't have any professional experience in his two plus years as a college grad.
oh, for the past year he's been trying to make it as a musician. that wouldn't help out for professional tech or business jobs.
Perhaps that would motivate employers to quit as soon as their company starts being vastly evil, which would in itself be a motivation for companies not to be evil.
Thoughts?
stigma lasts forever.
break out your rabbits' feet and hope you get lucky.
At least that's something respectable.
You're fucked. Shave your head and become a monk.
No, none of this is true.
In related news: George Bush was found cowering in a spider hole while encouraging his army of infidels to commit suicide in Iraq.
I think it's possible to overcome the downfall of a former employer. I had one myself. As long as you don't badmouth the company and stick up for whatever you believe .. it shouldn't cause much difficulty during the interviews.
With SCO accusing the OSS world of stealing their IP, many companies will be a bit fearful of hiring a tech. It is not beyond reason that evil axis may be trying to place programmers to introduce SCO (or someone elses) code.
The other issue that I see is anybody from Management should probably be avoided. These are the ones that took down Caldera, Unix, and SCO.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sound Careers Offered.
I'd imagine that pretty much the same would hold for SCO employees. If nothing else, being a former SCO employee makes the question "why did you leave your last position?" very easy to answer.
I used to work for a tobacco company.
"Extremism in defense of liberty is more fun."
Don't worry.
SCO's employment agreement bars them from working in the industry after leaving.
There's a big difference between leaving when you can still claim moral justification and leaving when they finally kick you out.
I wouldn't have a problem with hiring someone who worked for SCO if they were looking for a job now. But I'd have a different opinion if they were looking after SCO goes broke (or whatever happens).
What a load of crap! If you come across any prospective employer who thinks that time you spent as a low-lever paper pusher at Enron, Arthur Andersen, etc means you are somehow "tainted," just walk out of the interview-- if they obsess over shit like that instead of your job performance, they'll go under soon enough and you'll be back out on the street again anyway.
I don't remember seeing any company clerks of the Wehrmacht on trial at Nuremberg.
Wow, even corporate drones are being typecast.
"Sorry, I can only picture you in a corrupt company role."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
- Chief Financial officer of Enron: Not hiring
- Poor grunt at Enron who had no clue what hit him: Could look past that to his real experience.
- Lower level accountant at Enron: My get some questions asked in an effort to determine their position in all the mess
Obviously many don't think that way and wouldn't touch an ex-Enron employee with a ten foot telephone pole and I really feel sorry for them.However for every door closed there's a door open, consider writing a book about the mess or posing for playboy for example (they did a women of Enron IIRC)? You get the idea there...
IMHO there's always an opportunity for you...just look....
...in bed
I see that as an advantage if they quit before the company crashes'n'burns as it enables you to answer the 'why are you considering leaving your company' ( = 'why aren't you loyal?') question with a bombproof 'I don't agree with the ethical stance my company is taking'.
Now, if instead you wait till the company has gone bust, well, it gets much harder to defend yourself, you can always go the 'bills to pay, couldn't leave' route but it's not as convincing.
Companies like Enron where the rank'n'file probably had no idea about what mess the company as a whole was are not that big of a deal, OTOH nobody at SCO can plead ignorance about what their company is currently doing.
-- the cake is a lie
I'd say it depends. I worked at one company, and then several years later was applying for work at its direct competitor. The stigma didn't carry over (they offered me a job); instead, they were far more interested in what I had done and how it matched up with the job opportunity. They went out of their way not to ask me questions that tread on possible NDA (non-disclosure agreement) territory.
Unless your friends-of-friends are actively involved in upper management (director level +), they shouldn't have problems. If they are involved in upper-level management, then they already know several executive-level headhunters who will find them new jobs in a hurry. Sucks, but that's how it goes when you play at that level.
It's tough moving away from a former employer. I recently left a position to pursue better opportunities. My former employer (really the owner) was furious that I had the gaul to leave. They threatened me with lawsuites, they harrased me. They just couldn't let go.
I gave that company three long hard years, and developed some absolutely killer applications for them. Now, if an prospective employer calls them, they make me out to be some malicious, spiteful Developer who left them high and dry. Three years of stellar work... down the drain.
With that said, I guess the best advice is that employment is like a marriage, you need to check them out, just as much as they do you. Else your left with stigma of the former employer, either you on them, or them on you. Either case, it's not good.
Don't send resumes to places like this.
SCO's staff will have to look for other jobs sooner or later, and most within the Unix/GNU/Linux community
I think it's safe to assume that (1) probably not many people at SCO have much expertise except legal, (2) SCO's former Linux experts may not want to try getting hired by IBM or SuSE, or they might become eligible for disability in very short order.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So is McBride looking to get out while he can and using a Ask Slashdot article for tips?
SuDZ
That is just silly.
It assumes prospective employers will look at a qualified job applicant and say, "No, I just can't hire this person because he used to work for a jerk. Even though he had no control over the legal matters of his employer, somhow I have to take it out on him."
Come on people, be realistic.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Mod this down as Troll, please. And for the love of your eyeballs, do _not_ visit this link.
The preceding comment has been documented as containing no EPHI and is certifiable as HIPPA Phase II Compliant.
You can get over the stigma of working for an employer like SCO by quitting your job as soon as the employer "goes bad".
If you stay with them for a long time, the obvious conclusion would seem to be that you either approve of your employer's conduct or that you are really desparate for a job. Either way, it is not a recommendation.
*I'm* Michael Jackson's defense lawyer!
I know this might not be a popular answer, or even a hugely insightful one, but do you really want to work for someone that looks down on you because you worked at a high profile place that they don't particularly like?
For instance, let's say you worked at SCO, but you quit because you didn't agree with their business practices. While it should be easy enough to portray this in an interview (if you're lucky enough to get one), it shouldn't even be an issue because the potential employer should realize that _you_ didn't make the bad business decisions. If they do make that link then that might be a place to stay away from.
If you worked at Enron and you're looking for another job because the place you worked at went out of business--I think it would be very irresponsible of other businesses to (even indirectly) blame you for bad executive decisions (unless you were an executive, then I have to bad feelings for you having a hard time finding a job).
I know I'm probably just reciting some fairy tale, a pipe dream of true equal opportunity for those seeking jobs, but have hope that some company will see you for who you really are and really appreciate your talent in your field.
Seems like they would have already replaced the technical staff with more lawyers by now.
What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
In March of 2002, my company shifted three-fourths of our CUW Systems Team (kern-devs) -- which had been untouched, platform-wise, the previous two years -- onto a parallel development path with Linux 2.4.18.
This bold (in my opinion) decision was made despite Wind River International, the dominate embedded software technologist, matter-of-factly asserting at the time that they view Linux as inferior to their preferred platform, VxWorks, and would never include Linux in their product line. (They eventually changed their minds.)
Four months later, on July 19, 2002, my company, in consultation with our customers, announced that we were ending all new development for CUW, were placing it into maintenance mode, and were solely developing for Linux. On a personal level, myself and most of my team were ecstatic about the new direction the company was taking.
As we are all so evidently aware, the SCO Group began its grandiloquent and legal smear campaign against Linux in February, and March of 2003. Well almost four months ago, I was assigned the somewhat informal task of determining the validity of the SCO claims of ownership to Linux. Despite the seemingly preposterous evidence offered thus far by SCO, I'm saddened to reveal that they may have a solid case for copyright infringement in the 2.4 Linux kernel.
There are three code pieces that appear to be copied verbatim. The first is forty-two lines of packet handling code. Following the ip_vs_state_table variable is where most of the infringement takes place. Only the state transition handling seems to be original. The second is sixteen lines of VM allocation code. Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM, and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR. And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
It's possible, some would say probable, that this is actually code that SCO copied from Linux. Not the inverse. I'm not knowledgeable enough of the history to determine that, but it definitely needs to be looked into. Nevertheless, it's still accurate to state that the vast majority of the Linux kernel code is original. And that's really the only fact that matters to the nontechnical mass media.
You're probably safe, at least in interviews with me. If you were in mgmt for SCO, Enron, MSFT, Stanley, Tyco, etc, you should do the right thing.
Go to the nearest hospital, fill out an organ donor card, and blow your brains out in the lobby.
In his case, he really only has one choice. He must put it on. If not, he will be quized about the time period. If he says nothing, then he is a worthless bum and will not get a job.
Worse, assume he is hired. Later on somebody finds out that he worked at anderson but lied. Now he is fired for lieing on resume.
Now his is a 2 time loser with NO chance at a job.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Do what everybody else does: Lie. They can't check everything. Half the employers that you work for shouldn't even know your real name.
we should wonder will they want to work in the computing industry again. why are they even at SCO? is it just that the industry is that bad, or do they have reasons beond that, and would they come here as ACs and tell us what's going through their heads, i'd be interested.
(null)
The initial reaction I always see from the zealots is "Don't hire any of them!" and that always makes me a bit sad to know that this will be the first thing that a person that has worked for a company like SCO will more then likely have to overcome.
Having been in a bit of this position, I can say that the best approach is to put things in the context of doing the job that is given to you to the best of your ability. While your job may not be popular par se (imagine trying to land something after having the tile of Asset Reclaimer at SCO), if show that you are doing it within the best of your ability in line with what the company is trying to do, then you will show that are willing to things that, while contrary to your nature (one would hope), you are willing to do the things that are necessary in a very ugly world to get the cash on the table.
And yes, I realize that in some cases these folk are evil and deserve to be shut out, and I agree with that, but for example I know a good man at SCO in a high position. He hates what is happening there, but was there before the shift to this current strategy last year, and so is doing the job. His job is of a nature that finding a new one and getting out in the name of being on the "side of righteousness" is a difficult item to do with many considerations, not least of which are small things like his house, cars, kids schooling and the like. I can see why he stays, and why he would try to keep everything on the downlow. He is also hella good at what he does, and shold SCO decides to redundant him, or they go the way of all good trash, then I would hate to see that a name on his resume would get in way of the fact that he is very competent and good at what he does.
Flame away boys!
I mean "Cliff"
who in the FUCK moderated that as informative?!
If SCO stops and conciders this battle a loss then I see no reason to hold a grudge. If SCO is capable of taking money from Linux then No former SCO employee has a decent chance at working in a high profile open source job. I hear M$ is hiring programers with questionable skillz and no ethics.
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
I'd think the answer depends on when they left the job. If its before or even during the beginning phase of whatever nasty practice the company is in then they would have no problem explaining. However if they stay for a long time then I doubt they could get over the stigma (and I personally think they shouldn't) and I would have to ask why they did stay so long. Only so much time can be attributed to loyalty before other reasons apply.
In most employment contracts found at such firms as SCO, these employees would be banned from working in a similar field for a specified period of time, correct?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
My question is, who would want to work for a company that wouldn't hire you because of a former employer? I mean, if I worked for enron as a network guy - and another company doesn't want to hire me for that.... that management of the second company probably isn't the brightest in the world.
Perhaps the ones on Thinkgeek will get a few geek-flavored jobs....
This sig no verb.
Okay, Frymaster (if that is your real name): Why is it that you're not allowed into the United States?
Just change the name on your resume from SCO to Caldera. You'll probably avoid those conversations.
Remember, there is almost more than one way to say something, including identifying your previous employer.
Next!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
The toilets around here need a good scrubbing.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
(AC for obvious reasons!)
Last year when I was starving from my two dot coms killing over dead, I actually became a porn actor for a while. That's something I'll never get over. If my wife, family, or current boss ever found out, my life would be over!
I am in constant fear that somebody will notice me on the internet.
As "wonderful" as you think it might be, it really is not a good lifestyle. The producer had us guys taking high dose viagra to try to get as many "takes" in as possible. I walked around looking like a beet for days... I practically glowed red from the medication.
We guys really didn't even get paid that much. The chicks, however, cleaned up! My female counterpart would received 4 to 5 times more day than I would. The girls would mainly pretty but much, much older than they appeared. I worked with a couple of girls who looked 18-19 but we really thirty with several children between them.
I now worry about my health as well. Nobody would allow us to use condoms. All the actors received HIV viral loads looking for infection. Evidently this is much more sensitive than the routine HIV tests. We were also tested for hepatitis C, I think. A nurse would actually swab our various body parts once per week looking for the clap and other bugs. The swabs included our mouths and our tails as well for reasons I never quite understood.
Who cares about working for SCO or whatever! At least you were not degrading yourself for money. That is something that I can never get over.
AC
The employees of SCO (everyone except for upper management) really have nothing to do with how SCO operates. McBride and his board sets the tone and the direction of the company and the employees follow. A developer who works on SCO Unix is not to blame for the Linux/SCO battle. I believe most hiring managers know that.
I vas only following orders! Now take me to your nuclear wessels.
When your interviewer asks you what on earth a whorehouse was doing repackaging and integrating AT&T SYSV code, tell him it you were actually working at SCO back when SCO was a software company with a mediocre UNIX distribution, and that you left when you saw the writing on the wall when its then-CEO said Linux would never amount to anything.
Then say "But there's still less stigma that comes with saying you were a whorehouse piano player."
With SCO, the problem is the qualifications. SCO's market mainly comes from people who have been locked into it forever. I know I moved several hundred of my customers machines off of it. Early on, Sun cost more to acquire, but it became clear to customers who'd insisted on cheaping out with SCO that the support, quality of software and features were bigger issues. In the late Xenix/UnixWare time (93-94), features like "NIS support" were added that required /.rhost access so the box could rcp the "Servers" files and join them with the system ones. No RPC, just a sad little hack.
When Sun/AOL bought the wreckage of Netscape, the Netscapees were, widely, admired as qualified and innovative.
No, were I dealing with SCO refugees, I'd be letting them defend excessively mediocre software. But I'd not hold them too responsible for the FiaSCOs of DARL and all unless they WERE closely connected.
As Mr. Spock once said "constant exposure does result in a certain degree of contamination"
Under no circumstances do we want the slightest possibility of Darl McBride's "Mad Cow Disease" infecting our organization!
Would you really want to work for a company who looks so shallowly at candidates that they would raise questions just because you worked at SCO or Enron?
The only people who should have problems are Darl, the top execs, and the legal department. At Enron, I would only worry about Ken Lay, anyone in the financial depts. (CFO, accounting, etc.).
Having worked for a company that went down a less-than-reputable road before it imploded (a small investment firm that stopped investing in stocks and mutual funds and instead invested in the owner's Fla. vacation home), I've never found a problem, though that debacle was certainly lower-profile and in a different state than where I currently am.
At least you were not worried about being poor. You had something to do to keep you busy.
Enron eh? A money grubbing company willing to screw over millions just to make a buck?
I think those kind of skils are just what Microsoft is looking for
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
...that people should be held accountable for the companies that they worked for (provided they had some kind of insight into the shady practices in use). Once an employee has the information in hand showing that their employer is doing something wrong/illegal/immoral/etc., they should leave. Plain and simple. These stupid Enron people that hung around to the end should have a hard time getting a job, because they obviously have no business ethics. If they do get out of the company in a reasonable amount of time, the employer-to-be should recognize this by the dates of employment on the resume, and this should make the prospective employee look pretty good.
My 2 cents.
Nice try.
I would guess that they all have jobs back in Redmond helping M$ to migrate the Linux kernel into Foghorn:Windoze. It would seem to us that M$ *must* have bought SCO under the table and ordered them to go down in flames doing as much damage to Linux as possible on the way down, with the promise of cushy golden parachutes at the bottom. If not, well, they could always follow the old army joke, and get drunk and sleep in the gutter for six months to get their self-respect back.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
*I'm* Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon
From what I can tell from the published reports, the "smoke and mirrors" approach to financial disclosure was pretty pervasive at Enron. I think anyone who has experience of that kind of trading business would regard someone who claimed to have known nothing about it with a rather skeptical eye. (I know I would. Although I'm a geek, I do also have an MBA and spent ~20 years working in IT on Wall Street. Had I worked at Enron, I feel certain I would have known something fishy was up -- there just aren't that many secrets in that culture.)
SCO/Caldera, on the other hand, did have a legitimate, although not very successful, business before they entered the litigation industry. If I were hiring, I wouldn't touch any of the management with a bargepole, but a Unix support tech who just did a competent job is a different story.
In any case, in any interview, all you can do is to tell the truth (emphasizing your good points, of course), and hope that the interviewer will take things on the merits.
The only problem with a copany that went broke is getting in contact with a former manager who knew the individual in question and their work abilities/habits.
Perhaps for others it's difficult to not be cynical, but I doubt manager's care too much who you previously worked for, as long as they can see that you did good (ethical) work there, and you are a good fit for the new position.
This is a little like assuming that all French hate Americans. That's not true. Many hate the things the USA does, but they are able to (and do) divorce being American from the actions of the USA. Once they get to know a specific American, then they'll hate him (or her) for what he is, and not from where he came.
-Adam
Actually not everyone at SCO will have trouble finding a job after they bankrupt. I don't think their developers aren't good at theit job. It's just the hyperabitious and hypergreedy CEO who's ruining them and he'll be the one which will have real trouble finding a job.
Man, you were fucked!
Sorry, someone had to say it
I did work for some time for a firm that was crooked (in a big way), it took me some time to find out about it, but when it finally struck me (I was basically offered a Ferrari to look the other way), I quit.
Took some time off from working, and did a career change. In retrospect, probably the best thing I have ever done job-wise.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I'm pretty sure that being arrogant and semi-literate with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and a tendency to blame others for your situation doesn't help your chances in the job market much either.
I sure as hell wouldn't hire you, that's for sure.
Dude, I don't know if you are being serious or not. If you are, I am shocked.
I can not believe that you would put your wife at risk this way.
On the medical side of things:
HIV viral loads are more sensitive for early HIV infection. They were swabbing your various orifices because those are typical areas for gonorrhea and chlamydia that can be passed around during various sexual practices.
Davak
Well, when Microsoft buys out SCO and "generously" drops the lawsuit right before it goes to court, they can rehire all SCO's employees.
[insert witty sig here]
Yes, but
Of course, not all risks are created equal. Hiring an ex-SCO employee could be hiring a plant; someone who will be placing SCO code in their new employer's product for future litigation in exchange for financial consideration on the side, etc. This is a real risk, but a pretty remote one.
Far more likely than the possible-but-remote possibility outlined above, and far more troublesome, are the simple consiquences of having unethical people in your ranks, whether it be to moral (back-stabbing of fellow employees), effeciency (covering up one's own mistakes by shifting blame to another, resulting in incorrect corrective action being taken, etc.), or liability exposure of the company (unethical behavior towards clients to pad one's own performance, unethical behavior on behalf of the company but unbeknownst to its CEO), and so on.
Anyone still working at SCO, knowing what is widely known now, isn't someone with the kind of ethical or moral foundation I would want within my ranks. The risk of damage (to morale, to our firm's reputation, etc.) is far too high, and the possible reward (a decent employee hired on the cheap) is both not worth it (the difference between getting a cut-rate ex-SCO employee and paying someone with a less questionable resume something closer to market value doesn't begin to outweigh the risks) and far too fleeting (sooner or later that underpaid employee is going to want to be paid market value and demand a raise).
Does this mean all current SCO employees are unethical? No, it doesn't. But given the widespread knowledge within the industry of SCO's current behavior and its ethical implications, of which no employee can realistically or believably claim ignorance (and doing so would be quite telling in its own right), one can pretty much reduce their willingness to stay to a few possiblities, all negative qualities in a potential employee:
None of these possibilities bode well for the success of a potential hiree, or their contribution to the hiring firm. Indeed, they represent substantial risk to any future employer and offer no significant benefit to counterbalance that risk.
Sorry, SCO denizens. There's no work for you here, at any price.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Never mind Skills.
It is Important to know where one works.
Skills are secondary.
Take it from a guy who tried to develop his skills while the company went downhill.
Now, I must ask how the company is doing, rather than think about what I will be doing.
Someone from SCO isn't going to have trouble getting a job another UNIX company. SCO is tame compared to Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, K-Mart (ops, not retail), and Anderson consulting. Fraud gets attention, not copyright lawsuits. The person who submitted article included SCO to go along with the SCO bashing we've seen in the last few months on Slashdot, but frankly, the general public doesn't care about these esoteric hissy fits.
I have the same problem working for the Government. Largely Due to the wonderful economy, I've been stuck in the same stupifying contract job with the Government for almost three years. I work with the laziest, stupidest, most-weak kneed people humanity has to offer. The Government is stupider and more wasteful than I ever could have imagined. I hate every minute of this job, but when you need the money, sometimes you just have to take it. I am embarassed about working for the Government for this long. I sincerely hope that once the economy turns around, I'll be able to find employment in the private sector again. Government contractors have as bad a stigma as anyone who worked at Enron.
I was thinking of joining the SCO team. Seems everyone wants to kick a guy when they are down. They are still posting employment ops. http://www.sco.com/company/jobs/ I'm just not interested in the positions posted. In defense of SCO, they do offer many success stories. MacDonalds is no small company.
There are three code pieces that appear to be copied verbatim. The first is forty-two lines of packet handling code. Following the ip_vs_state_table variable is where most of the infringement takes place. Only the state transition handling seems to be original. The second is sixteen lines of VM allocation code. Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM, and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR. And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
There's another possibility. SCO and Linux may both have legitimately copied that code from the original source when that source allowed it. In at least one case (involving memory-allocation code), the code SCO claimed was copied from them actually was legally copied from the original AT&T Unix code. SCO's code was identical because SCO also legally copied that same original code.
Its only fair to look at what a person can do for your company. If a person directly affected thier previous employee negatively then they will have a rough time getting a job. If a previous employer has a bad reputation, then it is both the employee's job to defend thier position as different then thier employer as well as it is the prospective employer's job to find out if a new employee will bring a bad reputation to the their company.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
So let's see.
-You were paid to have sex
-with women
-and you're posting, looking for sympathy
-on Slashdot?
Talk about trying to get blood from a stone!
These days professionals don't form unions. They form associations.
Have you ever heard of the AMA? It's union for doctors but it's called the American Medical Association.
Another prominent example is the Bar Association which is a union for lawyers.
There is nothing wrong with banding together to fight for your interests.
War is necrophilia.
I would like to say that I'm above all that, but I have to admit I do harbor resentment against SCO and anyone who works there.
Anyone who did not quit after the lawsuites began, who stayed and is staying through this attack on the open source community will have a hard time finding a job with me or any company I work for if I can a say in it.
By not quitting, they are in effect supporting and endorcing SCO's activities. And I don't want to work with or for people like that.
This is not like Enron, many people at Enron were not aware. At SCO, everyone working there now knows the evil deeds they support by staying with SCO.
I've seen the same formatting glitch in multiple wordprocessors and a long-ago Dr. Dobb's review pinted out a typo in a popular textbook's source. This volume was described as the only textbook about word processing.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
While that statement could be seen as inflammatory, perhaps I should share two examples to clarify my strong feelings on the subject...
My point is this: If someone comes from SCO with a skill set that I need, they'll get the gig. If they prove to fail at their skill, they're likely to loose their job.
As an employer I care about results, not politics.
Will I hire Daryl? If I need a scum-sucking-bottom-feeder - or was that a fish?
|>>?
...in my development efforts and am willing to shred during off hours.
...or high in the financing department doing the number juggling, just focus on what they actually did. There's not much else you can do. Even if they knew that their sector wasn't going that well, it's not too uncommon in a big company. Unless they were in a position to know that the entire company was tanking, well they did their job, did it well (hopefully) and are not to blame.
If they need to defend it from before it started showing up in the press, try to show that you couldn't have been in a position to know (hopefully). And if they need to defend it after it became known, well you needed to put food on the table. You hadn't done anything illegal, weren't doing anything illegal, and you were getting a paycheck.
But if they were in positions that are suspicious, that might have known or at least suspected, or that even just sound as if they'd know that much, well... no, then they're out of luck, even if they're completely innocent in all this. People will always wonder.
At least, that's how I'd attack it. It might go against the common "I was so big and important and had all this responsibility" show-off you usually do at job interviews, but in this case I'd try to make myself seem small and insignificant.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They should simply be asked: Did you do your job to the best of your ability whether you agreed with management or not?
If they say yes, hire them, anyone that'll do a good job there will do a good one for you.
If they say no, I did my best to sabotage their antiGNU efforts show them the door and say thank you very much for taking your time to come down, then warn your buddies at lunch just in case the guy ever shows up at their business. If they have no more personal integrety than that you can't trust them enough to hire them, they'll do the same thing to you as soon as the coffee vender puts in a blend they don't like, their favorite candy is out at the machine, etc.
You hire people to get work done, not to go off on their own prima-donna crusades.
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
In my opinion, whether a person worked for SCO or not would have little to no bearing on future employment.
Actually, this article seems to me like it is an attempt to make current employees rethink their present situation rather than think of their future situations.
For the most part, the average SCO employee doesnt have anything to do with what the company is doing. They are simply making a living within the scopes of their careers.
I am not referring to upper management (i.e. Darl & Friends) as they are making all the decisions. Depending on the outcome of this whole thing they will be in a completely different boat than their employees.
....move along....nothing to see here....
From what little I know of maritime history, if a ship sank the officers were put on trial while the crew got assigned to new ships.
Makes sense.
Ships don't sink because crew memembers with well defined skills screw up.
Ships sink because of bad decision making by the officers and/or poor leadership overall.
Interestingly, several years ago during the dot.com crash I kept in touch with folks from my dot.com.
The people from middle management who destroyed the company to the tunes of tens of millions of dollars ( and the upper management who let them do this ) all got nice jobs from the old boy network.
I concluded that the only management next to worst then the dot.com leadership was the leadership that hired these failed managers.
I know, welcome to planet Earth.
Steve
In the tech industry, hiring managers tend to look at you strange if you've held a job longer than 2 years and wonder what the hell is wrong with you.
...so don't worry so much about which fscked up companies you've worked for in the past; instead, concentrate on getting that job and doing a *good* job if/when you get it... because god knows, Shehab over in India will do it for you at 1/5 the cost and quite possibly do a better job at it too.
Some of that is settling down now (people are looking for job security in an industry where this is none), but I've been through enough companies in the last 10 years to realize that each one is equaly fscked up in their own little way. That's why there are dilbert cartoons and dispare posters... because the experience is SO universal and SO ubiquitous.
Well, your life is over.
I would be more likely to hire someone who is capitalist and not collectivist. They would seem more likely to help me turn a profit and not give away my software for free. I am loath to try and recover my costs with services alone. I also program for me not for the good of society or some pseudo religious cause.
Evil Man.
If you have all those qualifications and you're willing to work cheap, I will presume that you'll still be interviewing while you're working for me and that you'll take the first job that offers you more money.
If you're over-qualified, then you'll have to explain to me why you're not seeking employment and compensation more in line with your experience level.
I don't want people who are just working here so they can pay the rent while they look for better paying jobs.
I've worked for far less than I could have made. But that was for a non-profit organization.
I have no idea what northern american unions are like since almost everyone talking about them seems to be on one side or the other. Here in europe they seem like a good idea. Disbanding them now that the fight seems to be won is like disbanding the fireservice because I haven't had a fire in the last two decades.
Unions would fight tooth and nail against the exporting of jobs. But hey, it is not like we highly valuable workers in the IT ever have to worry about that happening to us? That can only be done with low quality jobs like assembly lines.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I sure as hell wouldn't hire you, that's for sure.
I sure as hell wouldn't work for you. Sure working through a tough time adds character, but for Christ's sake, we shouldn't just have to stand by as corporations make life harder and harder on us. An American cannot compete with an equally skilled Indian because the Indian needs a ton less money in order to make a living. That has little to do with my character or personality. I am entitled to make a living in my home country where my family and history are.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
Fortunately it is easy to recognize a Lunix zealot in a job interview. Just ask him what he thinks of Microsoft operating systems in a company network.
;)
You'll have to be more specific than that or you may end up confusing Mac zealots with Linux zealots... similar, but different
I used to work for Sun Microsystems; an even more arrogant and masochistic company than SCO. I don't reflect the arrogance of Scott M., but many of the employees at Sun do. I remember a time when many people at Sun thought they were just the grandest things on earth. I left because I didn't like what I was seeing and I was starting to see myself assimilated into the same egocentric trappings that many who have worked at Sun have fallen into. Personally speaking, I wouldn't hire a former SCO or Sun employee. The primary reasons center around culture and grooming that every company passes onto their employees. I wouldn't want a Sun or SCO type working with or for me. There was so much backstabbing going on at Sun it is hard to frame into words. All companies dish a little dirt; but at some point responsibility should fall back to the employee. Unlike Enron; many of the people that work for Sun and SCO know what directions their companies are taking. If those directions seem to be immoral or do not fall in line with their belief systems then they need to get off the train.
It's all about who you know, are you known as a boat-rocker, and do you have the ability to stay warm to your employer no matter what.
-=Android=- Chew's Eye Shop http://www.chewseyeshop.com
I grepped all files in the RedHat 2.4.20-19.7 kernel sources for 'ip_vs_state', and didn't find any matches.
I'm sure there are hiring managers out there willing to turn down good and qualified SCO exers. We need remember in these days and times, people are working where they are not always because they want to work there, but because they have no other choice. You can bet there are SCO employees sitting in the same building as McBride saying, "Dude, this company is farked up."
You needed an ancient Frenchman to help you quit your job?
You cannot seem to make up your mind if you use Redhat, back up the SCO claims or damn them, and what your business does, imbedded or bank software support....
7 42 943d =6709 401
Fsck'ing liar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75388&cid=6
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=74902&ci
(first link text)
It's time that this FUD campaign come to an end. I own a small business that deploys five Red Hat AS boxes. SCO has already sent my legal department (2 lawyers) three letters (threats) regarding our "illegal use of the Linux operating system [sic]".
Like most users of Linux, we are at the point where we are not going to stand still while SCO trashes the entire Free Software movement. I have already authorized a payment of $10,000 to the FSF, and a payment of $5,000 to the Red Hat Open Source Now fund. If you want to do all you can during this waiting period before the trial, I would urge you to sign this petition [petitiononline.com] that signifies the unity of the Free and Open source communities against SCO's outlandish claims.
(second link text)
I work for a medium sized (137 employees) company that processes customer data for many retail outlets, as well as a multi-national bank. We were one of the first companies to drop our entire line of Windows servers (workstations unchanged) for a Red Hat Linux solution in the summer of 2000. Porting our internal applications was a real pain, but the significantly increased uptime and greater ease of administration made up for all initial shortcomings.
Fast forward to end of 2002, and we had become disgusted with Red Hat's road map for its' Advanced Server license. It seemed as though we had lost all of the benefits of the GPL.
There was no way we were going back to M$, but there was a movement from higher up top to change distributions. To make a long story short, we passed on SuSe and chose the often corporately overlooked Gentoo.
The benefits of this move are stunning. We have been able to hire 16 additional employees to handle our own fork of Portage, and 22 additional employees to provide support. Not only to we do a "ghost compile" for each box (many different Pentium and Athlon systems), we also take a minimalist approach. The combination of those two choices have enabled us to increase performance per box to something like 26% faster on average.
With the obvious help of the Gentoo open source community, we have created a low cost, self-sustained IT department that can function well into the next decade. Thanks Gentoo!
This site clearly states 'Ex SCO employees need not apply'.
Evil deeds, like paying their mortgages, feeding their kids, keeping their credit stable...
I hate to remind people - but there are a lot of unemployed people who would love a paycheck from SCO *or* Enron...
How would, say - a Java developer, have any influence on anything the bigwigs at SCO or Enron did? If anything - they are being hurt the most and the most unfairly, if not exactly by their company - by people like you who will hold it against a regular joe something that is/was decided by people who own yachts, have summer homes, and send their kids to private boarding schools.
Many chunks of packet handling code are taken from BSD. Without more solid information the exact linage of this code can not be determined but in general many of the network under pinnings seem to come from BSD.
This is the heart of the problem with SCO. They won't say what code is the problem. Therefore no one knows where it came from. The guts of UnixWare and Linux are complete different so what good is it to copy. You would work more on grafting and gluing things together than just writing it from scratch. The explaination that is more likely is that both UnixWare and Linux IP handling and other things came from BSD.
So here is a challenge to you since you are unwilling to actually name files: Go look at the BSD source tree and do your comparisons there. If the code exists line by line there then SCO has no basis.
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
If I worked at SCO, I don't think I'd want to work for you...
|>>?
... one can pretty much reduce their willingness to stay to a few possiblities, all negative qualities in a potential employee: Unethical: they stay because they value their income above personal ethics cowardice: they stay because they fear change more than hanging on to an ever-more untenable situation... Oh Yeah! I am sure that most of the overworked, underpaid staff who have no choice but to live from paycheck to paycheck and whose main concern is, "If I lose this job, my kids lose thier medical insurance," are just stupid, unethical or cowards. Before you jump all over this with, "I am talking about the programmers/techs, not the whole company..." Enter the real world - most people (programmers/techs/support, even admin assnt's) do not have the luxury of letting their ethics win out over a paycheck - especially when they are simply the innocent crew of a ship steered by a lunatic.
You also missed one important possible attribute that a SCO employee may have: the desire to feed his kids in a bad job market. The idea of explaining to your children why they're having to move into public housing and buy milk with coupons might be enough to make someone want to stick it out until their idiot CEO is replaced by someone more rational.
Talk about morality all you want, but given the current IT career options, it could be suicidal to quit a full-time job. If you're blind to the possibility that there may be good, talented people at SCO, then that's a shame.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In the extended edition of LOTR:TTT when we are first introduced to Faramir he has just shot a bunch of "bad" guys and one of them lays dead as he gives a speech (which I don't completely remember) debating if this young man he just killed thought he was doing the right thing. (I am sure someone else can expance this dialog for me. It is not in the book or I would quote it from there.)
I always wonder that. Sure, we all thing SCO is a bunch of lying thieves, but does anyone at SCO think that? Does Darl? Maybe he has convinced himself that they are in they right. It is possible that he has convinced all his underlings of that as well.
Reminds me also of war crime tribunals where underlings say they were only following orders when they did such and such atrocity. Now they find out they are actually liable for their actions. People need to realize that it really all comes down to their own responsibility to do what is right and stop letting other people think for them.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Why? Compatibility reasons. I want to be able to edit his/her manuscripts so that he can view them with "Track changes" option. No, I'm not going to learn a programming language (LaTeX) just to write a goddamn manuscript or use "diff" for tracking the changes.
We're not buying macs (too expensive) or installing Linux (no MS Office), either. Period.
The owls are not what they seem
Remember, the original SCO is now Tarantella, Inc., and a SCO employee of 5 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the current SCaldera. Do such people deserve the opprobrium anyway? Similarly, should Ransom Love be blamed for the actions taken by Darl McBride?
MCI/Worldcom was one of the early corporate adopters of PHP. If you were interviewing for an IT position and wanted a forward-thinking individual, would you pass over an ex-Worldcom employee based on the ethics problems of Bernard Ebbers and his (probably small) cabal?
A single individual can rarely take credit for large corporate efforts (i.e. implementing an ERP system, etc.). Similarly, outside of situations where corporate officers are legally responsible, individuals should not be blamed for corporate wrongdoings.
It isn't working for a 'tainted' company that's the problem in the today's 'restructuring' of the tech industry, it's the former managers or bosses that can be a real obstacle to future gainful and productive work.
For example, during the 1990's I worked for a small five person company that was the North American distributor of a computer-controlled machine made by a German company. I got good performance reviews all the time. Then one partner retired and the other decided to cut back on the work. The German company sent over a guy to run the North American 'division'. After about six months he had fired all the previous employees.
Now whenever I apply for a new job, the HR people call this guy and he goes on about what a worthless jerk I was to them. I'm not sure why he continues to do this nor do I know how to get around the situation.
I suspect that it's a German:American cultural dissonance. Do your job well 99.9% of the time and the Americans will exclaim what a valuable and productive employee you were: fuck up 0.01% of the time and the Germans will focus on this forever.
The Americans of European background are usually indentical in appearance to Europeans and this often masks deep and strong cultural differences. Most of the European-Americans are decended from people who were told a hundred years ago on no uncertain terms to either get the fuck out of town or be killed. Or, they were so poor that they we just as good as dead so they had nothing to lose by moving to the other side of the world. This is the primary foundation of the deep differences between German-Americans and Germans (and European-Americans and Europeans in general).
European companies should not post managers to America for their first overseas posting because there are so many superficial simularities between the two countries that it tends to encourage blindness to the strong cultural differences beneath the surface. They should first go somewhere where the cultural differences are all on the surface. After they get experience and expertise in different business climates then they should take command of the American divisions. Of course, the other way (Americans managing European divisions) also applies equally as well.
If European-Americans and Europeans were as actually simular in culture and outlook as they are in appearance then they would have not fought two giant wars with each other in thirty years.
Anyone have any insights into this situation?
employess if SCO looses.
Yeah, laugh..but would it be the first outragesly stupid thing a court has done?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you claim after having said why not just say, "I see some code that is identical, but I know nothing of its true origins" since there are obviously many, many more examples of identical code in Linux, BSD, and SCOwhatever. Moreover, many others have been making the same conclusions bases on the same scant evidence.
Linux's development model is "Open Source".
You can go back through and find out WHO submitted that code and WHEN it was submitted and in WHAT form it was originally submitted.
A lot of the stuff in Linux was originally submitted in very crude form and polished afterwards.
Tracking code in Linux is easy.
I have had good luck helping people that have had bad spots in their employment history. I suggest using a 'skills' based resume. This type of resume puts most of the focus on the job skills, projects, and other results. Finally, the actual employers are at the end with just the years on the job. Then make sure there references support the skills that the resume focuses on, rather than the employers.
This is helpful when you have had a non-career focused job or you have been out of the workforce. It can also be used to focused attention on FOSS projects, minor consulting work, or other experience that may be more relevant to your next employer that your work history.
I would suggest keeping a traditional resume handy if requested (some headhunters seem to be fixated traditional resumes).
Understand that there is no correct way to write a resume, except to say AFTER THE FACT that it worked. Remember that a resume is a sales document (selling you) it is not your life history*, or your C.V., a resume works if it gets you interview.
Being a Porn Star doesn't seem to have done Ron Jeremy's bank balance too much harm...or mine ;)
Yeah, right... like anyone would *want* to leave SCO !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
anyone who goes into a technical interview with me (or any other unix admin here) and starts ragging on microsoft gets an automatic thumbs-down.
there is no reason to bad-mouth microsoft when you are in an interview for a UNIX position.
most of the zealots who complain about other OS's and praise linux 24/7 are the kind of folks you can't stand to be around, much less work with on a daily basis.
they are the ones that, when a server is down and data is lost, sit there and start talking about how at home they've got their linux box in a beowolf cluster so that things like this don't happen, yet don't take the time to shut up and fix the down server in front of them and/or they always talk about what they can do..yet never seem to be able to apply it to their job functions at work.
Someone needs to try OOo 1.1.
+ Cowardice - again, homelessness is glorified in hollywood, coding hasn't given me the necessary skills to take to the wilderness
+ Incompetence - my company sued some people, I just make the buttons colors change when clicked man
+ Gullibility - yes, we're from Utah remember
+ Stupidity - I'm too busy working to read the shit on tech news sites, and when I get home I have 14 wives to service, come to think of it, I don't have time to do much of anything then refill the ink in my pen if you know what I mean.
Most common people have no idea what SCO is about, they didn't know anything about Enron until they were on the news for a month straight and the government started writing laws to stop other companies from behaving similarly. Until this things blows up, the masses won't care about the rep of SCO. Darl will certainly get his share of attention, maybe enough to deflect any taintness from spilling downhill to the cube monkies.
Unethical: they stay because they value their income above personal ethics
Is the desire to feed one's children unethical? Particularly given that jobs are not exactly thick on the ground at the moment...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Guess what, not everyone in the world reads slashdot. Not everyone in the world cares what SCO does, nor has reason to. I doubt that the office manager has the slightest idea what is going on. She/he might be a damn fine office manager though. But hey, you missed out cause you are so close-minded and prejudiced.
Oh wait, close-minded, set in your ways, ivory tower and out of touch with the real world is exactly what gets one modded up on slashdot. I forgot for a second.
P.S. Please tell me the company you work for so I make sure not to send my resume. I have worked for a number of corporations and one has probably done something obscure that you don't like. I don't want to be wasting my time now knowing your position. But then again, I bet you're some college professor without a real job or real work experience. Based on your history of high-horse karma-whoring posts, I think I'm right.
Agreed and seconded.
I'm sure folks will reply with, "Well you've got to feed a family. Sometimes 'I am just following orders' is a necessary excuse when it comes to putting food on the table."
I respond to that with a question: How long has it been since SCO started this whole mess? How unrealistic is it to get another job or even another job that is a little 'beneath you' while you move to a company that isn't practicing extortion?
Each to his own. Folks can stay on the ship (which will sink anyway, that's pretty obvious I think) as long as they want, folks who share my opinion and are in a place to will choose not to hire them.
Cheers
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Anybody who followed the Enron debacle knows that the average employees of the company did not benefit from the criminal activity that brought Enron down. Indeed, they were as badly screwed as anybody, due to 401K ripoffs, nonrefundable childcare fees, etc. But if somebody still subscribes to the mindless groupthink that made this larceny possible, you have to wonder where their head's at. Loyalty is all very well, but there comes a point when you have to acknowledge your mistakes.
There are three code pieces that appear to be copied verbatim. The first is forty-two lines of packet handling code. Following the ip_vs_state_table variable is where most of the infringement takes place. Only the state transition handling seems to be original. The second is sixteen lines of VM allocation code. Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM, and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR. And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
I suspect your post is nothing more than a high-class troll that somehow got modded up to +5 Interesting, but your claims are just about as fuzzy as Darl's. The symbols you mention appear in dozens for files. If you really have any such "evidence" state the file names.
Even if what you're saying is true, are you sure the code doesn't come from BSD or some other common source?
A student tried to demonstrate OOo 1.0 as a feasible alternative, but it completely failed to import math symbols and equations. I'm not going to forget about that any time soon.
The owls are not what they seem
Which is why I apply for jobs I'm just barely qualified to do. But then I hear:
Frankly, it doesn't matter. An HR employee who doesn't like you, or even their job, for that matter, is going to make sure you don't get the job. They've got a list of excuses for every possible scenario:
There's no silver bullet to getting hired. Just put down what you're good at and submit your resume.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You mention gullibility as a "negative quality", but isn't gullibility in a subordinate a good thing? I mean, isn't that how management works?
"Sic transeunt omnia."
Well, whoever wrote the original post did not understand what happened when Enron fell. Energy companies were champing at the bit to hire ex Enron employees. They assembled a hell of a talented staff and some of the best trading and analytical minds in energy. Their trading wasn't what took them down, and their people found jobs fast. Now, the energy industry subsequently imploding has cost many of those their subsequent jobs, but there are still opportunities out there and having Enron on your resume is nothing more than a notch.
I didn't do it.
Hiring an ex-SCO employee could be hiring a plant; someone who will be placing SCO code in their new employer's product for future litigation
I nominate this post for the Tin Foil Hat award of 2003...
The "friends-of-friends" thing is nice, but you can admit YOUR friends actually worked at Enron. It won't rub off.
You don't get kicked out of the nerd club by having friends, even if the company they worked for ruined the retirements of millions.
hmmm... you are married... you have kids... and you had sex with other women both putting them and yourself at risk.
You suck. There are other ways to make money. I feel no sorrow for you. I only feel for your family, since the Dad they think they have is really a lie.
Well, convinced me.
./*
rm -rf
d:\setup.exe
Looking back, the WAP place was typical of cash-burning zero-result startups from the dot-com era. All flash and no content. No wonder it failed! There is also something to be said about people who become so engrossed with themselves, just because they work at "company X" and get an indecently generous paycheck for no result. Kinda rhymes with cocktail lounges, dope and cheap girls. *shivers*
Luckily, I have more than one area of expertise up my sleeves, so I found myself a dreamjob in Network Security awhile after. The irony of it all is, that company also burned cash faster than it could find and retain customers (never mind that the products are also crappier than what any script kiddy could come up with) and, as such, according to former collegues, they are fairly close to filing for bankrupcy. *sigh*
ARGH!!! Don't the friggin suits ever learn anything?
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
- steadfastness: they have been working on UnixWare since before SCO became a legal bully, and since they have nothing to do with the top management or legal shenanigans they feel that they are doing the right thing by continuing to support SCO's software vendors and customers.
This is not to say that looking for a new job isn't a good idea, but someone who finds themselves writing UnixWare code for the Canopy Group through no fault of their own is not morally obligated to jump ship until they have another ship to jump to.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
You missed one: skill defecit - they have no effective choice but to remain where they are (ie. the person's skills are insufficient for them to find new employment quickly. If they weren't working in an IT job at an unethical company that can't get better employees, they'd be working as a parking station attendant).
Stigma? I think some of the people here need to get off thier high horses and live in the real world. Come on guys, the tech economy has really sucked for the past two years, and it has not shown any significant signs of improvement lately. I bet most of the technical staff as SCO is just happy to have a job. I doubt any of them will just jump ship without their next job in hand. I know I sure wouldn't.
-- Bob Honan I stand by the truth, which is why I never stand by Republicans.
Our bosses told us -- any Open Source projects we've worked on should be on the resumes sent to presumptive employers... This was in Europe, not US.
(My handle is too close to my name so I'll stay Anon here -- I don't do that for stupid or tasteless jokes!)
How was he putting his kids at risk?
Oh, he probably lives in Newfoundland.
Can good workers get over the stigma of an employer's reputation? How will working at SCO affect its staff's careers? Does anyone at SCO talk about this?
One employee did talk about it, but quickly went bankrupt after SCO forced him to get his Linux licenses for his home computer.
Davak
You are freakin sick. Keep your wet dreams out of the chat rooms. No wonder McBride thinks he can take the Open Source world. We are a bunch of freaks!
Enron was a huge corporation with thousands of employees, probably 99.9% of whom were innocent and hard-working individuals, unrelated to the "creative accounting" going on at the hands of certain executives and their accounting minions. Unless the job applicant was head of accounting at Enron or something, I don't think it would be a red mark against them at all.
SCO, on the other hand, is a company which now pretty much exists only to be litigious assholes. The entire company is rotten and is just a negative presence in general. There's no way that somebody could be working for them now in good conscience. I would absolutely not hire somebody who worked at that company during this time unless it was pretty clear to me that they left the company *because of* SCO's terrible practices...
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Obviously you don't work with me. I was just wondering what situation led to you not being allowed into the US? Will having this /. "conversation" with you lead to my being put on an enemy combatants list? Is that John Ashcroft at the door?
Just get canned from SCO/Enron or the like? Every employer avoiding you like the plague? Why not go work for the Next Big Evil Thing? Surely there are other companies that want a team player like yourself. Perhaps Dr. Evil or Lex Luthor is in need of your unique skills. If all else fails, there's always politics.
It really depends on what they did at SCO. I hope most people realize that downfalls like Enron and SCO are not the fault of the average worker bee but rather the fault of management. Executives might have problems, but your average receptionist, admin, and security guard should not have to answer for the actions of the company. In the case of SCO, if you are leaving because of the recent troubles, it might look good in your favor.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...would you want to work at a company that allows employees doing interviews to reject potential candidates based on their personal opinions of the candidates' past employers, and, subsequently, on the candidates' moral fiber?
Unless the candidates had influence over their company's business deals, holding past employers against them is ludicrous:
- Would the interviewers who based their decisions on this criterion leave their current positions if the company they work for "took a direction" they disagreed with?
o If so, then either this employee is extremely strong-headed and/or already disgruntled with his current position. What does this say about the company that they allowed this employee to do interviews? Is this employee going accidentally drive candidates away?
o If not, then this employee is a hypocrite. And, again, what does this say about the company that they have this employee representing them.
- Why would management want to hire someone who may quit as soon as they feel the company has "taken a direction" they disagree with?
- Doesn't this line of reasoning by a interviewer implies that the candidates' ability and experience doesn't count much to the interviewer.
(Again, this only applies if the candidate had no influence at their previous employer.)
I worked for SCO, and I've had at least 14 jobs since then...
In all seriousness, I did work for SCO, got out, and found another job successfully. Most interviewers who have half a brain will ask, "What do you think about what the management is doing at your old company." If you're honest, and they see that, it can actually work in your favor.
A post SCO re-education camp, much like the Chinese use for criminals... :) Now, you must not piss off the user base...you must not cheapen your name..you must not..whack..listen to me... :)
As someone else has pointed out, there is no ip_vs_state_table in RedHat 2.4.20 source. I did my own search in the Gentoo 2.4.20-r1 source, and found nothing as well:
find . -type f -name '*.[ch]' | xargs grep -i "ip_vs_state"
Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM
You are going to have to be more specific than this. CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM is a keyword for the C pre-processor, and I count 66 references by either an #ifdef or #ifndef directive:
find . -type f -name '*.[ch]' | xargs grep -i "def CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM" | wc
and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR.
VMALLOC_VMADDR is a pre-processor macro defined in 33 places, all to "((unsigned long)(x))". Again, would you care to be more specific?
And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
There is only one occurrence of the string "selfpower" (when I did a case-insensitive search) at line 346 of drivers/usb/hcd.c. Note that it is actually a comment:
case DeviceRequest | USB_REQ_GET_STATUS: // DEVICE_REMOTE_WAKEUP
ubuf [0] = 1; // selfpowered
ubuf [1] = 0; /* FALLTHROUGH */
case DeviceOutRequest | USB_REQ_CLEAR_FEATURE:
case DeviceOutRequest | USB_REQ_SET_FEATURE:
dbg ("no device features yet yet");
break;
case DeviceRequest | USB_REQ_GET_CONFIGURATION:
ubuf [0] = 1; /* FALLTHROUGH */
case DeviceOutRequest | USB_REQ_SET_CONFIGURATION:
break;
The formatting looks terrible, since Slashcode apparently strips out and . But, hopefully, it will be enough to give readers the ability to evaluate the accuracy of the parent posting.
My personal ethics would put feeding my children above working for a lying, litigatious employer. Idealism only goes so far when the house and college educations are on the line. It's only been some months since SCO has started to persue its new business model, and with a job market like todays it's not easy to find a job even in that period of time. Also, It's not like SCO is killing people. SCO is not that bad.
Many software people develop deep business relationships over the years. SCO still has clients.
What if, what if, what if??? To think this issue is black and white is hopelessly nieve.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
There are a few other reasons a person may continue at a crappy company:
Mortgage: Nothing like facing homelessness for your children to keep you coming back to work.
Health Insurance: A biggie for many people. My sister is battling cancer. It wouldn't be a great time for them to be loosing their insurance or trying to find another carrier.
Employers like you:Most people can't afford to quit a job unless they have already found another. Your post shows how tough that can be.
It's real easy to sound self rightous when it's all hypothetical. Reality is often somewhat different.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
I've been in the position of having to interview people with such qualifications. They ALWAYS act as if they are only there to get a salary once again (even if they say the low salary is OK -- it's only temporary to them). The second the market opens up, they're gone. This isn't sour grapes. It's a fact. Someone who's had a lot of training expects to be paid accordingly (and rightfully so, in my opinion).
Integrity is the willingness to do what is right even when no one is looking. I have deliberately made choices knowing I would lose my job and career but did so anyway because it was simply the right thing to do. So it should be with the SCO employees.
I am the CIO of my company. What do you think the chances of any post-SCO-implosion employee being hired by me? Slim to none.
I'm sick and tired of people who know only about situational ethics.
Depends on where you live. It took me about 18 months when my family moved to a new city, although I'd had many interviews. I'm a Unix guy in an AS/400 town and nobody was hiring without experience. I don't live in Utah, so I can't speak for the job market there, but it absolutely sucks in a lot places. If I quit this job for some reason, I'd pretty much have to move my family to get work.
search upper case ...
c lude /net/ip_vs.h
IP_VS_STATE is in
http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.4/23-pre8/in
If your main concern is paying the rent you probably would want to work for them. As other posters state many don't have the luxury of that kind of choice.
I think you're right though, any interviewer is going to realise that a programmer/sysadmin/etc from SCO had nothing to do with management decisions.
you should check your preferences. You've got a clear grey dot (neutral.gif) right now and you're not on my friends list at the moment.
Do you family members know everything bad you've done? If not, why - you don't want to live a lie, do you?
Where's your threshold of things to be forgiven for? It sounds like he's genuinely contrite and remorseful. Assuming he's tested clean since then, is there any reason he can't be allowed to move on with life and put this behind him?
By the way, no, I'm not him.
I make much more money selling magazines than I EVER did at SCO.... ;-)
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
the irs has a bad rep and is hated by most but my company has no problem hiring thier ex employees
...so,...how much sympathy do you have for an ex Baathist party member!?!
If they're looking for a job BEFORE they lose their job at SCO, that's one thing.
...Would it be MORE responsible of you to look for another job NOW or 6 months down the road?
If they're in debt that bad, they could be a risk. Do they have a gambling problem?
Health insurance is tricky. They can continue their coverage in many cases, but they'll have to pay for it.
That's why being proactive is important. I don't want some idiot who can't see what's coming because he's too busy worrying about his gambling debts.
If his life is THAT complicated (high debts, sick family member, etc) then he NEEDS to be proactive and he NEEDS to be interviewing now instead of HOPING that something good will happen with SCO.
If you have bills to pay and a sick wife to look after, and your job MIGHT be gone in 6 months....
...because I'm not enough of an asshole.
For a company that very suddenly turns ugly, like SCO, there is only one piece of advice: get out quickly. If you get out within a reasonable amount of time, the entire defense you need is "management changed the company and I wanted no part of that." End of story. The longer you stick around, the harder you're going to be able to claim to have nothing to do with it.
Enron is more unfortunate, because management there defrauded not only investors but their own employees; in the case of SCO there is no secret to anybody what kind of shit they're pulling.
I've heard some of the same concerns about ex-Microsoft employees. Skills are skills, regardless of where one applied them. But joining, or staying at any company after they are known for a quality you don't want your company to be known for, may reveal something about a person's character if not their abilities. And character is a legitimate factor to consider in a new employee. Would you hire a brilliant coder who used to work for Sanford Wallace? Maybe, but not if there was an equally skilled worker applying who hadn't worked for the Spam King.
;-)
Personally, I think questioning the character of an ex-employee from a questionable company is one of the best ways to guard against some of the detrimental corporate activity in world. If a coder knows that participating in something which will damage the tech world, will also damage their future employment opportunities, coders will be that much less likely to go along with nefarious plans, or even remain ignorant of what their company is doing. CEO's with evil plans will be that much less likely to carry their plans to fruition if they are restricted only to coders who don't care about anyone else, or even their own job prospects when their bosses unfurl their golden parachutes.
There is nothing wrong with holding people accountable for the choices they make. And there is a great deal wrong with not doing that. In technology, as it is in life.
That said, I don't think a low-level coder for Enron should be required to answer for the same decisions the high-level "death star" programmers should. But good luck getting hired by me if you accepted any work from Halliburton or Diebold during the last 3 years.
If you endeavor to be the best at what you do, and your record reflects that, why on earth would it matter where you worked as long as you did not participate in the chicanery. Companies always need highly motivated, hardworking, honest, smart people with integrity. As to people staying at SCO because they need the money etc. etc. (cue violins) Sure, if they can't find a better job a person has to do what a person has to do. However, they better damn well start looking when it becomes clear the company is a bunch of liars or they loose credibility with me. Laziness does not equal lack of choices. take care, Jester
Evil deeds, like paying their mortgages, feeding their kids, keeping their credit stable...
When you pay your mortgage, feed your kids, or keep your credit stable using blood money, you deserve to be marked as unethical.
SCO apologists (and those who apologize for the denizens of SCO who make up the body of the corporation engaging in this activity, as though being only a part of something bad somehow magically washes one's hands of it) seem to have difficulty differentiating in the ethics of how one obtains their money and the ethics of how one spends it.
If you had a job as secretary at Enron, making $20k year subsistance living, and knew what was up, you are unethical irrespective of how many brats' mouths you have to feed.
Ditto for anyone working at SCO, knowing what we know of SCO's current behavior. Using ill gotten gains (and providing support for a corporation whose business model is quintessentially unethical is an ill means of getting gains) for good purposes does nothing to change the fact that those gains are ill gotten, and you are an unethical person for having gotten them that way.
It may be a handy way to put a nice spin on what you are doing, that the gullible with limited skills in critical thinking may buy, but at the end of the day the fact that you choose to feed children (who will likely to grow up to be just as unethical) rather than, say, to buy hookers for a little afterwork play, in fact changes nothing: by continuing to work for SCO, and opting to continue to collect your paycheck with the full knowledge that the eight hours or more you put in each day is actively spent supporting and propogating (and pulling your own weight in) an unethical business engaged in widespread fraud and disinformation, you are behaving unethically.
That makes you an unethical person, by definition.
Hell, you can feed your children on welfare or unemployment: you do not need to sell out every aspect of common decency to keep the little tykes fed. Choosing to keep such a job, knowing its social and economic consiquences to thousands (perhaps millions) of others, is an act of greed, cowardice, or any number of other negative motivations: it is not, under any circumstances, anything remotely resembling a selfless act of sacrifice "for the children." So please spare us your platitudes and your spin: most of us aren't foolish enough to buy it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
... and I got a lot more hits on my resume when I was out of work by removing all the names of all the companies I worked for. Since I started looking when I was still working, I had already done that with my then-current employer, so it wasn't too hard to word (e.g., "Leading energy-trading company"), and didn't look too strange. Also, my history was largely with unknown startups anyway.
;-)
I would let on who the companies were in interviews if I thought it was necessary. It helped that my whole business unit was divested before the scandal broke, and that I'd been purely focused on technology.
Of course, the fact that I got hired by an ex-SCO VP adds a bit of irony to the discussion
This has to be a low point for slashdot, which is really saying something.
Other than all the lawyers who post here on slashdot who have reviewed all the evidence of the case the fact of the matter is that the SCO case(s) haven't had their day in court and all the hand waving and willy nilly zealotry of the anti-SCO bandwagon people doesn't mean crap.
Employess of SCO are not doing anything wrong and to hint that they are is pure bullocks.
I do some work for one of those 'ugly reputation companies'. Their employees told me what their CEO said for them to say to their friends and family who ask about them working there. Since the company went into bankrupcy, management spun the appropriate line for employees to share: "I'm part of the team helping to rebuild ____X____ and to bring it out of bankrupcy."
I think it is a little gray, but a little smart. Management actually helping employees with the kind of spin that they normally reserved for investors.
If you endeavor to be the best at what you do, and your record reflects that, why on earth would it matter where you worked as long as you did not participate in the chicanery.
Companies always need highly motivated, hardworking, honest, smart people with integrity.
As to people staying at SCO because they need the money etc. etc. (cue violins) Sure, if they can't find a better job a person has to do what a person has to do. However, they bette
r damn well start looking when it becomes clear the company is a bunch of liars or they loose credibility with me.
Laziness does not equal lack of choices.
take care,
Jester
Many things can be forgiven but not everything can be forgotten. Some actions change a relationship forever.
I imagine that if my girlfriend had an affair and was sorry for it I could forgive, and still love her. But if she had an affair and caught a serious STI [*] I could still forgive and love her but doubt that I would want to have sex again, and that would pretty much end the relationship because some day I would like to have kids.
*STI == Sexually Transmitted Infection.
FYI The term Sexually Transmitted Disease has been deprecated because it does not cover enough ground. For example HIV is not a disease it's a virus which causes the disease AIDS.
"I work for SCO. I hate it. Please give me a new job."
I don't think the guy is a lost cause, but as long as he keeps this secret from his wife their relationship is a sham. Think of all the lies he had to tell her to keep this under wraps. If he thinks that lying didn't distance them then he's never had a lying partner himself before. This type of dishonesty is very destructive over the long term.
I speak from experience.
He should go to a professional counselor and talk with them about coming clean with his wife. I wish him luck as it could mean the end of their relationship. Either way, that is.
For family and boss, whatever, they don't need to know everything. But for a spouse it is critical.
Cheers.
I saw both sides:
:-)
A friend of mine worked for a company which had an extrem bad rep inside our town. Working there was like being part of the mob. When she applied at other places she had absolutely no problems. People asked why she quit her last job she mentioned that it is obvious and that was that...
When I worked for a bigger life insurance we were looking for a new lawyer (yes, that happens...). A woman applied who was previously employed by a small law firm whos owner lost his license because he was found quilty in some money laundry affair. There was no way our company would hire her.
In the first case, there was the common consent that the employees were just the victimes of bad management. In the second case, everybody considered this law firm to be the pit of evil.
So, it depends
With supply of employees exceeding demand, employers often send final candidate resumes to verification firms. Corporate corruption concerns are a motivation too. Easy things to check are degrees, years and names of previous companies (though you cant get a reason for seperation), credit worthiness, and criminal record.
hate to say it, but that's more or less the reality and has been for some years in the NYC market. the way it's perceived here is that a positive reference introduces liability if the guy flakes out bigtime. and obviously a negative reference introduces liability from the former employee if he/she ever catches wind.
every single one of my previous employers (except the start-up that folded) made that their standard policy, including a very large financial services firm who was my previous employer. i'm actually surprised you got burned by this: i would think that recruiters and HR professionals would know this.
ed
The rub is that the issue really is black or white. You either get the job or you don't.
Extranneous factors do come into play. The most recent person I hired came from a place very well respected in my area, and that was a benefit to him. Other factors came into play as well, but in the end 1 person got the job, 50-60 others didn't.
Having SCO on your resume would not have ruled someone out as a candidate in my mind, but the question "What do you think of what your company is doing?" would certainly have been asked.
It seems to me they'd more likely get passed over because SCO Unix is a shitty OS than because SCO is scamming Linux users. They'd get more respect if they spent their time writing a driver or contributing code to a mozilla project.
I left one place I was employed at after my
supervisor decided to flex his muscles and treat
all the programming staff like minimum wage
replaceable cogs. Even after committing assault
and battery on one of his subordinates he stayed
employed and in a position of power. This person
was finally fired after he blew off the rich owner's
request to 'evaluate' something her fair haired
distantly related cousin produced.
What was the net effect? The effect of my pride,
my unwillingness to abase myself and accept abuse,
of my unwillingness to accept the moral low
ground?
I ended up being required to pay child support
of thousands of dollars even while not employed.
I couldn't get unemployment because I voluntarily
left that position. I paid over $1000 to lawyers
after the employer sued me for sabotaging
their business (it was later dismissed, but
I would have lost automatically if I had not
answered the suit). My savings were wiped out
and my career destroyed. Everyone around
me, but the people that did wrong suffered.
How about saving the judgements for those
who deserve it? Not those unluckly
souls trying to get to their next paycheck
intact?
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
can i have it, please??
Still not found in RedHat sources for 2.4.20. There is no file named ip_vs.h either. Is this code something that appeared after 2.4.20? Say in 2.4.23?
Although they generally seem to keep a low profile, I've seen posts around here (usually in reply to honest, well-though questions and not flamebait) who claim to be employees of SCO. There's probably plenty of geeks that work there (including ex-Caldera Linux developers), and I'd be surprised if several of them didn't check Slashdot at least once in awhile.
Needing to pay your mortagage or feed your kids does not give you free license to screw over other people. You can also get the money you need by working for a spammer, or an identity theft ring, or by mugging old ladies. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Seriously though, if you wanna hire people who believe that "The Ends Justify The Means", be my guest. And as soon as their low on cash, they'll steal whatever they have to from you. The rest of us prefer to staff positions of trust with people who can be trusted to do the right thing, not just cover their own butts. I'll take a wild gamble that our companies, on the whole, will put your companies out of business, because dishonesty and irresponsible behaviour are not good long term strategies. Plus, it's just more fun to concentrate on producing something good than to concentrate on not getting caught. And it's easier too. Half the reason I'm honest, and I restrict my relationships to people who are honest, is because I'm just too damn lazy to deal with the complex webs of deceit. But you go right ahead and indulge. It just makes me look that much better.
That is 1.0, try 1.1, it only costs the time to download it (on a decent connection 5 minutes max), and then you get the ability to read more formats than Office can *and* export to pdf or swf.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
see, here's what pisses me off about things like SCO - if you write code for them or do something else vaguely productive, then current events are turning your work into a resume liability. But if you're a lawyer or a CEO, this insane crap isn't going to be a liability at all.
"I worked as lead lawyer on the team that kept an entire industry on tenterhooks for over a year despite having no credible basis on which to do so".
Fuckers. Drown them all.
Here's a clue. Not everybody has the same high-minded ethical principles as you. Out in the real world and out of your parents basement, SCO's actions aren't judged to be pure evil. There are some that can disagree with their actions without becoming apologists, enablers or lackeys in your eyes.
You must be proud up in that safe perch of yours to automatically call others unethical for taking actions which they feel is best for them. Telling someone else they can feed their children on welfare and unemployment shows how little you understand the real world.
I don't know if you go around in real life telling people they're unethical or greedy, but I'd smack you upside your fucking head if you did. Take your holier-than-thou attitude and shove it up your asshole.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
We are employing one ex SCO person right now. In the past I have had two teachers who were working at SCO.
Anyone who did anything has long since left, all that is left is the lawyers and I doubt this will damage their job prospects.
nnooiissee
Hey, if a candidate hasn't hit Karma Cap, I don't want them working for me!
My personal ethics would put feeding my children above working for a lying, litigatious employer. Idealism only goes so far when the house and college educations are on the line.
1. A false dichotomy. You have other options (leave SCO and work for someone who will hire you, start your own business, change career paths completely, hell, even go on welfare if need be, and this list of alternatives to SCO v. the poor children is hardly exhaustive).
2. Your justification (putting your children's dinner above the ethics of your employer) can and has been used to justify doing virtually anything for money. It is no coincidence that crime goes through the roof when economic times are bad, and drops precipitiously when they are good, nor that most crime is committed by those in poverty. Desperation causes many to abandon any ethical or moral backbone they might have had. However, that desperation in no way negates what they have done. A crime remains a crime, a reprehensible act remains a reprehensible act, regardless of whether the money is used to feed a child or buy crack cocain.
The ethics of obtaining well are orthogonal to the ethics of how that wealth is spent, and ill-gotten gains remain ill-gotten regardless of how well the might later be used. The people harmed remained harmed, even if you turn around and choose to help others.
What if, what if, what if??? To think this issue is black and white is hopelessly nieve. [sic]
To expect any employer to consider hiring you out of pity (or compassion for your starving children) rather than for their own economic benefit is hopelessly naive. Employees who have continued to work for SCO knowing what we know now, these long months (nearly a year) since this has become widespread public knowledge within the industry, are a liability. They bring with them enormouse risk for any potential employer, and offer nothing of value to counter that risk.
So, whether those foolish enough to remain at SCO through all of this nonsense have chosen to support an unethical company out of greed, cowardice, or simple desparation to feed their kids (unlikely, as the kids can be fed any number of other, far more ethical, ways) is irrelevent. They pose a potential risk that other candidates do not, and offer nothing of additional value, therefor they lose and another, untainted, candidate will be chosen instead. And rightly so.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Now that you're outed, I'd like to know - what is the going rate for astroturfing these days? Do they pay you by the post, or are you employed as a professional?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Are you only looking for UNIX jobs?
Switching companies is a normal thing, nobody can blame you for taking that long.
But when you work for a company that practices extortion, I think there's cause for a little more haste. That's what this whole thread is about.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
The updated version would go something like this:
Dear Abby,
My mother, an alcoholic, is currently serving a life sentence for murdering my father after discovering that he was selling child pornography to support our family. I'm helping to raise the illegitimate child of my sister, who is in drug rehab and currently appealing a prostitution conviction. I spent most of my youth in foster homes and on the street, supporting myself and my cocaine habit by robbing the elderly. Finally I took a high school equivalency exam, enrolled in college and learned computer programming. I am now making a good salary working as a developer at Microsoft.
Recently I met a really wonderful girl. She is caring and loving, and I want to have a serious relationship with her, but I am afraid that if she finds out more about me she won't want to see me again. So the question is, should I tell her that I work for Microsoft?
As long as he tests clean of STIs (hadn't heard that one before, but I made "disease-free" a condition on my last post), and he's not tearing himself apart and distancing himself in fear of her finding out, then I think it's his obligation to suck it up, lead a clean life, and spare her the details.
Maybe it could be a fun surprise for their 20th aniversary:
...
Wife: Hey honey I think the sting of our love life is extremely low. I got us a little video to spice it up.
Him: It's not "Cowgirls Down Under" is it?
Her: Yes, how did you know?
Him:
Her: Well...
Him: Can I please get visiting rights, I really love our children.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
The poster is a SCO employee!! Burn him!!
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
I leave plenty of room for that concept... But outside the lowest ranks, I'm looking for someone who is dedicated to their career and not just "looking for a job."
If the individual is as dedicated to their career as I think they ought to be, then how could they be willing to work for SCO during the Linux Lawsuit period? Either they have "flexible" ethics or they're a nine-to-fiver. I don't want either type on my high-talent IT team.
Also, in a cost-heavy field like IT I'd prefer someone with enough fiscal sense that they're not living paycheck to paycheck. I've heard every excuse, and it just about always boils down to choices that individual made that they should have known better. Sometimes the choice was made 10 years ago, but it was always a choice. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd really prefer to hire a pinch-penny.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Employees at Enron didn't know they were getting fscked until the end when they umm, got it in the end.
Enployees at SCO know at this very moment that some funky shit is going down. If they don't jump ship now they don't deserve jobs elsewhere. Unless they truly believe like some crazy jihad zealots that SCO is right, they are gambling their livelyhood on the prospect that SCO will win and be able to rape the rest of the linux world with licenses.
i just used google and found some stuff.
smells like a troll, regardless : just enough info
to sound correct; but the tone threw me off.
I often work in the hiring process of bringing new developers to the company which I work for. This is not a position I enjoy much, but I'm quite thourough and therefore am respected for my ability in hiring.
Being that I work for a Microsoft competitor, it is often a problem for my employer when applicants send a resume/cv with Microsoft as a past position. What I must admit is that we rarely hire anyone simply through applications. With 100 developers on staff, we can find friends and friends of friends. These people are our preferred types. At that point, the past employment means less and the experience in general means more.
What I find very interesting is that while geeks are willing to bash the suits within a seconds notice for not knowing what they're talking about, the geeks are equally guilty. I know a lot of developers blaming India for taking thier jobs etc... The fact is that in my experience, people willing to point fingers blindly at people for ruining their job market etc.. are the ones I'm least interested in hiring. What I've learned from my experience getting jobs as well as helping others get jobs, it's what you know and who you know. I have no interest in hiring some schmuck that sends a resume and thinks that I shouldn't outsource to India when I can get more qualified workers there. For skilled workers, the market is still strong, unfortunately, most people I've read whinging on this site should spend more time making themselves special for their resume/cv and less time talking about that jerk that sent his job overseas. India can compete since they have skills and price. If you can't beat the price, then at least beat their skills.
When you pay your mortgage, feed your kids, or keep your credit stable using blood money, you deserve to be marked as unethical.
Blood Money? Get a grip.
We're not talking about a company that makes its living selling crack in schoolyards and beating up people's grandmothers. If everyone quit the instant that the company did something that didn't line up exactly with their idea of a correct decision, nobody would have a work experience with more than 3 months at a stretch. "They've put paper towels in the men's room now! Those things kill trees! Next they'll have disposible cups in the break room! I will compromise my ethics no longer!"
Oh, and you don't get unemployment compensation after quitting because you didn't agree with the CEO.
The whole lawsuit/license fiasco is business, not some personal vendetta. Pretty bad business, but business none the less. Lawsuits and their ilk is just how companies communicate with each other in our society. It will ultimately be either thrown out of court or defeated and open the way for SCO to be countersued, or their claims will prove to have merit.
The rank and file who work there should be quitting, not for ethical reasons, but because their employer is about to dry up and blow away. No one will be suprised when they are ultimately unable to produce evidence to back up their claims, the lawsuit is thrown out, and they file bankruptcy the next morning to protect themselves from countersuits.
"Our legal bills have bleed us dry!" they will say. "There's nothing left!" the leadership will cry, as they lug their cash-laden briefcases to the curb.
These are the actions of a company in its final hours. They have no other products to speak of, and they've pretty much bet the farm on their lovely retroactive "licensing" scheme.
There is no positive outcome for the company: even if they prove their claims and are able to enforce their licensing terms, they've priced themselves out of the game. The previous pricetag was $699 per CPU, with threats that we all had better snap up our licenses now, as the price will soon be going up. Windows, the various BSD varieties, Sun, all stand at the ready to provide alternatives for the 6 months it would require for Linux to regroup.
Reality to SCO employees: Get your resumes in order! The ship is sinking, and your leaders are short-selling the life preservers!
The parent post is a fine troll, but its weakness is that it is predicated on the assumption that SCO is wrong, unethical, and will shortly lose in court. What if it turns out that SCO is right in some measure, or at least wins in court? Will SCO employees then be sought out as having the virtue which is the reverse of all the imagined shortcomings listed?
If, somehow, this post isn't a troll, I would expect that any sane person would try to avoid working for an employer with views represented in the parent post. Those views sound like those of someone who is vindictive, unable to separate the professional and personal, has issues with "projection", as well as being smug, narrow minded, and quite silly. It would be interesting to find out what views would come out about someone who quit from whatever real or imagined company the poster posits. Are they traitors? Foolish? Short sighted? Unethical? Stupid? Will there be ugly or false comments made on background checks? One wonders.
And again, thank you.
Of the two, Enron and the future SCO, only SCO is an organization that is publicly using lies and deception as its primary business model. Anyone still at SCO should know this and should be avoided like the plague by any employer in the industry. At the end of the day, you've got to stand for something; working for someone you know is unethical is just as bad as actively participating.
Enron and AA aren't in the same category. Enron masterminded a huge deception with the complicity of a lot of people, including their auditors and investment bankers. Fortune did a great story awhile back, but it's not available on the web for free.
At the same time, Enron was a massive company that employed many, many people who had no clue what was going on. They were people who went to work every day and did a job that they thought was valuable. This included a number of acquired start-ups that were trying to build new technologies and business models. Unless someone was working in Enron's finance department or in some of their shady energy trading operations, it shouldn't matter. (And yes, I realize that there were many who deliberately avoided the truth because they were making a lot of money.)
If you have friends defending themselves based on the behavior of Fastow and Ken Lay, then your friends need to come up with a new answer. It should be a very simple, direct answer -- I was one of thousands of employees at Enron and I wasn't privy to any of the financial decisions. And that's the end of the story.
If someone persists and wants to go down the Enron road and you have to be more aggressive, then tell them you'll be happy to answer whatever questions they've got if they can tell you what their CEO worked on before lunch today and what their CFO discussed with their investment bankers the last time they talked.
At the end of the day, this shouldn't be an issue based on paranoid fantasies like, "Ex-SCO employees might plant code." It's a simple matter of the employee's ethics -- and an employee who is willing to cross the line, legally or morally, is a time-bomb. Sooner or later, he or she is going to screw you or your customer, because life is full of little temptations and opportunities to do the right or wrong thing.
I think all programmers at SCO should simultaneously quit without giving any notice of any kind, and simultaneously tell the management that unless all of the assets of SCO are divided evenly among all the programmers IMMEDIATELY, leaving SCO completely bankrupt, all of the programmers will produce evidence that will put SCO management in jail.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
Define fucking "underpaid". Most fucking IT people I know make > $10/hour, and they fucking bitch relentlessly about how they live paycheck to paycheck. Guess what, pal? At $10/hour, they're making MORE MONEY than a good majority of the citizens in this country. NO FUCKING SHIT. I used to be there, making minimum wage, living in a shit-hole, eating ramen and rice. But you know what? If it came to that or being a fucking coward because my Employer was an unethical piece of shit and I knew it, I'll be back to ramen. YOU choose your lifestyle. When you realize that a stupid movie called "Fight Club" was right on several points (you are not what you own, you are not your string-bean couch, you are not what's in y our wallet) and learn to live on LESS (and you'll find you appreciate those things even more), then you don't have to worry about living "paycheck to paycheck" because you've reduced your living expenses considerably. Do you really need that $400 SUV out in the driveway? Do you really need that 1600 sq ft house with the 1 acre yard? No, you don't.
Imagine this stupid scenario: You find out your company is doing business selling 12 year old little boys and girls into the sex trade. You need your paycheck. Are you such a fucking coward that you'll stay, just so you can keep earning a paycheck? What's that? You don't care? Fuck you. You're a fucking coward.
Wake up America.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Part of the reason I keep multiple jobs at any given time is to downplay the importance of a given employer. For example, I spent most of the last two years waiting tables. On all of my technical applications I listed my one part time near minimum wage tech job as my current employer, while just barely mentioning to the interviewer that I was moonlighting as a waiter to help pay the bills. They needed how my current work applied to the job I was interviewing for and have that relevance emphasized, not what I was doing for a living.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
I used to work at Edgewater Technology (remember, xmas a few years back, guy goes crazy with a few guns kills a bunch of coworkers).
Well, many of those who were murdered happened to be my supervisors.
Try explaining to a possible employer why they won't be able to call them.
"Where is my mind?"
I absolutely agree - let me say that up front. Given a such a choice, I would feed my family first.
Ethics, however, is a deeper topic than either/or in a given situation. While it is true that companies go bad (like SCO), this is somewhat rare, I think. At least, most of the companies I've worked with both as a consultant and as an employee (more than 100, easily) rarely was much more than disingenuous on the edge cases. When they were more than that, I was among many that pitched the argument in the other direction.
Truly nasty companies are easy to spot: they target a market that has a weakness they think they can exploit. SCO (at least publically) thinks it can use legal attacks against Linix; Telemarketers attempt to exploit old people; credit councillor companies prey on those in debt. Most (not all, but most) reasonable companies realize they are part of a chain of commerce. Think about how your company fits into that chain.
I believe evil employers are rare. Should you find yourself in bed with one, leave. Worse, should you be employed by one, leave quickly!
I must say, I'd be very hesitant to hire someone who tolerated, say, Enron or SCO's behavior. I've been the part of some creepy deals, and when they crossed the line, I stopped taking part. I've been involved with startups that wanted to "grow" though non-standard methods, and I have refused to take part. What "the line" is varies for various people, but one bright line is what gets reported in the news. On a personal basis, I've missed out on some things because I wouldn't be dishonest. And that's not only OK, but very important to me. Because that's important to me, someone who facillitated massive fraud would at the very least be subject to a good, hard look. At least until the EEOC comes down with the No White Collar Criminal Left Behind recomendation.
I suppose I can only say that if you find yourself at an ethically challenged company now, with constraints (family, debt, whatever) that don't give you much room, the single best thing you can do for yourself is to find a local company that can use your skills, think about how you can add value to their company, and go talk to them about your situation, and how you can help their situation. Odds are many will turn you down, but you will find a job with a company that doesn't fuck people over, and still be able to feed your family. And remember, for every company that turns you down, you're learning a lot by thinking seriously about the business they do.
I forget what 8 was for.
I propose the addition of a new entry into jargon files:
Enroned (v. p. p.), To have one's rsum or reputation tarnished by a former (or current) employer.
USAGE: Man, I was totally Enroned the second it hit the news that my CTO was skimming the pot I've got no chance at a good job until this dies down a bit.
The previous sig has been removed due to
Lazlo, I am now a fan, anyone with a Mike Patton lyric in their .sig is fine by me. Keep up the good work.
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
That being said, I wouldn't be put off by a ex-sysadmin from Enron or even Nortel. But SCO
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
well, if you want a family, or your kids to be educated, etc etc.. you can't exactly suddenly switch gears and move into a cardboard box -- your family depends on that paycheck.
and nice cheesy straw man at the end by the way, but most of these situations are a lot more subtle, and might only involve certain practices within a company, or certain individuals, or the employee in question might be completely unrelated, etc.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
While you can stretch the truth and obfuscate on a resume, its a really bad idea to lie. Generally you will get caught out and things can get really ugly.
Especially someone technical who had nothing to do with the decision processes that led to the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/SCO type insanity should put an accurate employment history on their resume and be prepared to bring an interview back to the correct subject: their ability to perform the job they are applying for. It would be a good idea to have answers for "questions" like: "Why did you stay there?", "Convince me that you had nothing to do with their accounting practices.", etc. These will be issues for some people so be ready for them.
Be prepared to address someone who keeps drifting back to the company and its policies directly with a "I had nothing to do with the upper management who did this stuff." This is also a good place to brown-nose a little and say that one of the things that attracted you to the company you're interviewing with is their good repuatation, etc. since this also puts your role at Enron or whoever into perspective to the person interviewing you. It should bring up for the interviewer how little control they have over such things.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
And what, exactly, do you think it is that Saddam Hussein's prison guards did? Or Enron's accountants? Or Darl McBride?
Unethical behavior is unethical, regardless of how the unethically obtained money is spent. A company hires an unethical person at their own risk. Hiring is as much about risk management as it is in finding the most skillful person, and a person with a proven track record of questionable ethics is, for a legitimate enterprise, a liability, and will generally be passed over for one who either has a proven track record of behaving ethically, or at the very least, a record clean of questionable behavior and associations.
SCO employees who left a year ago fall into one category (no reason to suspect their ethics or judgement). Those who remain, knowing full well what their employer is doing (or remaining willfully ignorant), fall into the other (their ethics, judgement, and quite possibly their intelligence are open to question). A competent person hiring for a legitimate company will not chose such a person over another candidate not so tainted.
Does that mean perfectly competent, ethical people who somehow kept their head in the sand these last ten months may get passed over? You bet. But it is the responsibility of those hiring to look out for the best interests of their firms, not to insure that every last, unfortunatel ex-SCO employee get the benefit of a tremendous and well-justified doubt.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Imagine this stupid scenario: You find out your company is doing business selling 12 year old little boys and girls into the sex trade. You need your paycheck. Are you such a fucking coward that you'll stay, just so you can keep earning a paycheck? What's that? You don't care? Fuck you. You're a fucking coward.
As my Dad used to say, "There's a difference between scratching your ass, and tearing it to pieces." If you're going to argue where to draw the line, perhaps stating a scenario in the same moral universe would be apropos.
Regarding your $10/hr+ IT friends; somehow I doubt they're all driving SUVs and living in comparitive mansions. They're, in all likelihood, much like my IT friends; living in rather modest conditions, at least by the standards of the society that they live in. And you know what, I bet they work hard for it, too.
If you actually want to race to the botton and thump your chest in moral certitude because you're some bastion of economic efficiency, by all means. But please don't be so disingenius as to suggest that anyone who's probably trying to avoid that diet of ramen and rice ('cause, you know, scurvy sucks), is somehow some ethical puppet, content to dangle on the strings of corporate sufferance, bleating "but, my job, my job!".
Like life is ever that simple. Or generic.
As the old fortune(6) goes: Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell, belongs there.
TFOAE.
Two problems with this tack:
First, you can't feed your kids moral fiber. By which I mean, which is the greater responsibility, that of a parent to provide for their children, or that of an employee to leave an unethical employer? Which is the better hire? The one who makes their decisions in view of all of their responsiblities, and makes the best of the situation after that, or the one that makes their decision on a single datum, without regard for the potential consequences of that decision. Short sighted not only applys to the people in the unenviable position of working at SCO, but probably more importantly, to the next person they interview with. Really, its the old adage about walking that mile in footwear not your own. I would suggest it is somewhat short-sighted to generalize that any SCO employee is still there for one of five (negative) qualities. Rather, I would counsel those interviewing former SCO employees to get some info on why they remained, and evaluate that, not the fact that they remained.
Secondly, your argument is predicated on the assertion about what is widely known now about SCO. What exactly is that? I would suggest that nothing you are going to answer with is "widely known", but rather that most of it is "widely accepted", a small, but you perceive, important difference. The truth is that the only widely known fact about this, is that SCO is not telling anyone enough (without an NDA, anyways) to establish what is factual, and what is fantasy. Linus doesn't "know" that there is no infringing code in the kernel. He can't "know" until SCO completely identifies the code. He can accept (as most of us have) that SCO's refusal to do so prior to this point is an indicator that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, but not even then can he "know" what is rotten? Couldn't the whole thing be a false flag. What if there are 66 files which SCO could cite, 65 fluff, and one true instance of IP theft? There is nothing requiring them to give all 66 to the press, in fact, in some ways, it would make sense to only give the 65 fluff files, and let the FOSS people gain (as they have) a sense that there is nothing to be worried about, then POW!, right in the dink. Sure, it would obviate their ability to collect damages, but that may not be the goal of this particular exercise. At the end of the day, there are going to be a lot of people serving face omelette (author included) if SCO can provide proof, even in one file, of positive IP infringement. I'm not saying any of this is likely, what I am saying is we don't "know" anything, because SCO won't tell us, so we make inferences from that reluctance, this is fine and normal, but let's not say that we "know" anything more than we do, which is pretty much nothing.
Without knowing the truth behind the claims, and indeed, without knowing how compelling any information provided to SCO employees on that score, I would suggest we simply don't know enough to make decisions based on fact about the merits of the case, or the deficiencies of those who chose to remain employed by SCO.
-"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
My point is that continued employment with SCO shouldn't be lead to automatic dismissal of job prospects. Let us not forget that the term FUD started with IBM, whose agressive IP stance (in the form of patents) is looked down upon by much of the software community. Some of what IBM has done was downright immoral.
Should people get up quit IBM or Microsoft or Intel? Maybe. But as a prospective employer your should at least ask why they stayed in the face of so much opposition. Their answer may betray more good qualities than bad.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
This got hashed out a few months ago. http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=78073&cid= 6934358
Yep, one man can define for everyone what ethics they should subscribe to. Thanks, buddy.
Blood Money? Get a grip.
We're not talking about a company that makes its living selling crack in schoolyards and beating up people's grandmothers.
Most people understand that in common parlance "blood money" is often used to refer to ill-gotten gains, and does not require physical assault to apply. We are dealing with a company that has publicly stated its intention to deny thousands of volunteer software developers the right to use the products of their own work, to defraud fifteen hundred "licensees" (at least) of $699.00 (or $1399.00, at least) for each Linux box they run for a license that clearly states (in the very license itself) that it offers them nothing (and clearly places them in violation of the license under which they can redistribute Linux, i.e. does place anyone purchasing it and then distributing Linux in a position of being guilty of copyright violation), wish to deny millions access to inexpensive and powerful software legally written and given away through a PR campaign of deceipt and deception, and is clearly and obvously defrauding their investors of a tidy sum each day their stock trades. Such gains are most assuredly ill-gotten, and refering to such as "blood money" well within the common usage of the phrase even if it does run afoul of your simplistic, literal thinking.
If everyone quit the instant that the company did something that didn't line up exactly with their idea of a correct decision, nobody would have a work experience with more than 3 months at a stretch.
Disagreeing with policy is one thing. Supporting a company and continuing to work for it when it is engaged in the kinds of activities outlined above is something else.
It is time you got a grip, and stopped justifying unconscionable behavior merely because doing the right thing happens to be difficult.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There are not that many employees at SCO these days.
h tml ...as Tarantula.
Lawyers maybe, but very few real software developers.
I cannot find the link to the press release,<G>
but remember it as being 350 worldwide.
Besides SCO now claims all the old SCO is really SCO/Caldera:
http://www.sco.com/company/history.
What this page ignores, is that "Old SCO" is now still around
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
1. A false dichotomy. You have other options (leave SCO and work for someone who will hire you, start your own business, change career paths completely, hell, even go on welfare if need be, and this list of alternatives to SCO v. the poor children is hardly exhaustive). Horseshit. Any major career change is a huge risk, and just because someone has options does not mean they're viable ones. Finding another job isn't as simple as just flipping a switch. Besides, asshats are already saying they won't hire former SCO types, so where does that leave them? Basically, you're saying (when it's boiled down) that a) anyone who works for SCO is unethical and should not be hired, and b) they should quit and find new jobs if they want to get away from that stigma. Are you beginning to see the flaw in your argument?
involves being threatened with physical violence because I wanted to set up my own booth at a Miami Boat Show (we'd paid for the booth, there was no mention of a requirement to kowtow to threats from thugs, and I was ready to pull my knife). It's easy to see both sides if you have been threatened by one of 'em...
Me
If you work for SCO (or some other scummy outfit) and feel that this will be a liability in the future THEN QUIT NOW! Don't wait any longer! The longer you stay the worse you look. Write a long resignation letter explaining why you feel you MUST RESIGN. If done tastefully that letter elevates you above [scummy company] and reinforces your image as a person of integrity. When you apply for new jobs and the topic of your past employer comes up you can demonstrate why you felt you needed to leave. A copy of that resignation letter will stand as your proclomation of values. Express in your letter the values you espouse and what you wish you could give as an employee (don't make it about what you want to GET. Prospective employers want to know what you can GIVE) and why [scummy company] isn't compatible with the contribution you wish to make. Offer to provide a copy to the interviewer if they wish to read it. That letter will have the effect of bearing testimony on your behalf. Think of it as a character whitness on paper.
Being able to demonstrate to a prospective employer that you were so uncomfortable with [scummy compay]'s practices that you had to leave voluntarily draws the line in the sand and demonstrates that you don't wish to be associated with [scummy company]. If you stay until the end it sends the message that you are more infuenced by greed than by principle, and that you were "one of them". That is a bad message to send to prospective employers. That's just my oppinion. (If you quit in protest and then can't find work don't blame me though).
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
"I did it because my poor family could not stomach poverty" - Saddam Hussein in a nightmare of mine.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
On the other hand, you know you have someone who will probably follow you into the mouth of hell. While I agree that a certain level of ethics are required in a hire, this quality should not be overlooked, particularly if you have a bellicose internal corporate culture.
Btw, I have no problem with nine to fivers on my teams. I only want them to work with and for me - I'm not trying to take over their lives.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
finding new jobs... They have one waiting for them that will last 10-20 years... stamping out state licence plates at the nearest minimum security prison....
On a side note since about last month everytime SCO has been mentioned all I see is a segway with a paper box around the bottom with a lawyer sitting at the bottom (hidden by the paper box) with his hand up McBrides arse like a puppet... maybe mcbrides IQ is lower than 10 or something because after the enron thing pulling an SCO (err I mean an Enron) is something I would think an exec would try to avoid...
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0011 .1/0909.html
A list of all the patches for IP Virtual Server can be found here: http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/software/ipvs.hGo not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
my last position was as a college lecturer, I now want to get back into development. This is causing a few problems. *Good* jobs don't want me because I have been out of the industry for a couple of years (not withstanding open source developments that they choose to ignore) and the lesser jobs don't want me because they think I am over qualified. The SCO people will at least have been working with unix over the last few years ;-)
blog and junk
I work with a fairly substantial number of ex-SCO (Tarantella) employees in the UK. I've often wondered whether they fear putting the name SCO on their resumes (more than one of them has been profiled on GrokLaw for their Linux contributions). They still use the SCO coffee mugs but they also have large, stuffed Tuxes :). Because of the time frames involved, I imagine a potential employer would be able to make the distinction in their cases.
/. earlier this year: why not present the [SCO|Caldera] employees with a public deadline for quitting (or else face a public blacklisting)?
However, one really does have to wonder about the [SCO|Caldera] employees of today. If you believe the anti-Linux 'protest' photos from outside their offices earlier this year, the employees are gettting behind these shenanigans. I have to say, I would have some pointed questions for any tech job applicant who had remained at [SCO|Caldera] during 2003. If they didn't have some really good answers I'd have to string them along for months without an offer. I posed the suggestion on
Is the desire to feed one's children unethical? Particularly given that jobs are not exactly thick on the ground at the moment...
The willingness to do something unethical to feed your children is most assuredly unethical. To lend aid, support, and help to those doing something unethical, which detrimentally affects the ability of others to feed their children, is harmful and, yes, unethical.
"Wanting to feed your children" with no further datapoints is neither ethical nor unethical. Feed them what? Soup from the local soup kitchen? Cereal from the store (bought with your $CO-written paycheck for helping defame thousands of innocents and affect their ability to make a living)? Your neighbor's dog? Your neighbor?
Being willing to destroy the livelyhood of thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of others through deceit and deception, to defraud your investors through public misinformation, in order to feed your little brats is very, very unethical. Exactly as unethical if your motive were to buy crack cocain, or a hooker.
In this case it is how some people (SCO employees) have chosen to earn their money that is unethical, and that has absolutely nothing to do with how they intend to spend their ill-gotten gains.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Oh, don't even get me started.
Well, I used to drive prostitutes around before I got my current job as a sysadmin 9 years ago. I usually just say I was a driver unless I am trying to make interesting conversation. Most non-geeks are woefully under-apppreciative of perl hacks, SF and fantasy, zoology, computers, slashdot, gardening, etc..
To me, the "problems" with unions is comparable to the "problems" with democracy: if your democratic nation/union is filled with apathetic ill-informed citizenry/members, corruption will not be a surprize. However, the solution is not to install fascism or anarchy, but rather to educate the citizenry and expunge any corruption.
I'm not going to say that all union organizations in existence are pure and good in everyway, but unions have as much a purpose today as they did in the thirties.
How is ensuring that one's members benefit from the profits of the company they work for out of date? Sure, some unions are corrupt, but generally unions fight to get good employment benefits for there members, like medical and pension, which I think most of us can appreciate.
Remember, business has a heavy interest in making people think that all unions are evil, corrupt, useless, or, god-forbid, anti-capitalist.
Ask yourself, what exactly is evil about a group of free people coming together to negotiate towards their common goals, using as bargaining chips nothing more than their fundamental rights and freedoms?
"well, if you want a family,..."
Then that is what is important to you. Is it more important than ethical behaviour?
"...but most of these situations are a lot more subtle,..."
No, they're not. But most people haven't really examined their belief system so things appear subtle that are not. But many people's belief system boils down to greed. They will do just about anything if you pay them enough.
Why not try rgrep? Instead of doing.... /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-19.7>find . -type f | \
xargs grep ip_vs_state ...you can do...
rgrep -i ip_vs_state /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-19.7 ...which is much shorter and succinct. Plus you get the filename printed out (unlike doing xargs grep -i ip_vs_state which wont give you the file :D)
Losers moan about not line numbers and filenames when using xargs. Winners go home and use rgrep.
Having SCO on your resume would not have ruled someone out as a candidate in my mind, but the question "What do you think of what your company is doing?" would certainly have been asked.
... steering company policy wasn't his job where he was, and it won't be his job if I hire him. I look for people who can do the job that they are hired to do, not second guess company policy, or demand that every decision pass their ethical muster. The company I work for has done things that I disagreed with, they have rectified some of them, and not others. If I quit every job where something that doesn't pass my ethical muster happened, I'd be living in a box, unable to even work at McD's.
If I were hiring a coder, I would not care one way or the other what he thought about what his company was doing. Its not his job. Just like I don't care if he's a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Communist
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
If the Gaul was Helvetian...well they're quite prized for their fierceness; so in that case we all could understand why the boss was pissed. Next time, leave your employer the Gaul and take a differnent barbarian. Take my word for it, no one would miss the odd Scythian or Thracian, but with Gauls it's just another matter altogether.
I'll say this much.
I used to be lead infosecurity engineer for a similarly financially-marred midwestern Telecomm corp.
I have a CISSP and I'm working at 7-11 right now because all the work in the field here in Colorado is either gov subcontract and I need a security clearance (as as anon-ctizen thats not an option for me), and all the private sector work comes down to me explaining that previous employer and the (growing) amount of time since the last real tech job I had.
Its not just financial misdeeds of a previous employer that can do you in, its also that companies percieved technical ineptitude as well. Nobody really holds much against you for working for a company with corrupt accounting. However if you're a tech person who worked for a company that has a reputation for technical incompetance, thats something that they will guilt-by-associate you with, however unconsciously.
Yeah, but how would that apply if i'm SCO's in-house tech, or network admin, or some such job as that. I can see your point, I think Darl better make enough to live comfortably off of this, because i'm sure it'll be damned hard for him to find a job once SCO crumbles under his fist, but the Sysadmin/Netadmin/Techs had nothing to do with Darl's scandelous steering at the helm. So long as you're not Darl, a board member, or someone in the Law dept, you should be fine.
Unethical behavior is unethical, regardless of how the unethically obtained money is spent. A company hires an unethical person at their own risk. Hiring is as much about risk management as it is in finding the most skillful person, and a person with a proven track record of questionable ethics is, for a legitimate enterprise, a liability, and will generally be passed over for one who either has a proven track record of behaving ethically, or at the very least, a record clean of questionable behavior and associations.
Again, here I am, the sysadmin for SCO. I do my day to day operations, and come up with some major time saving/money saving tactics, saving the company a million dollars a year. I'm not in the courtroom, I'm not the devil on Darl's shoulder telling him "Psst, ok, now sue these guys!". I'm a normal guy doing my job and doing it VERY well, saving my company (immoral it may be) a million dollars a year, would you still pass me by for a less qualified applicant who hasn't designed and implimented systems and policies that had saved his employer wheelbarrows of cash because I worked for SCO/Enron/Worldcomm?
SCO employees who left a year ago fall into one category (no reason to suspect their ethics or judgement). Those who remain, knowing full well what their employer is doing (or remaining willfully ignorant), fall into the other (their ethics, judgement, and quite possibly their intelligence are open to question). A competent person hiring for a legitimate company will not chose such a person over another candidate not so tainted.
Ok, so you, as an employer, would not see this person as totally loyal and willing to stick by and make sure your systems are up and running to the best of their ability through thick and thin? Shit if I didn't quit SCO for a 'better job' then you can feel pretty confident i'll NEVER leave your company. Either way, I agree with people earlier in the thread, a job with SCO is better than no job at all, you get to do all sorts of neat things when you're employed, like pay rent, and eat. I'm sure most employers SHOULD understand this.
Does that mean perfectly competent, ethical people who somehow kept their head in the sand these last ten months may get passed over? You bet. But it is the responsibility of those hiring to look out for the best interests of their firms, not to insure that every last, unfortunatel ex-SCO employee get the benefit of a tremendous and well-justified doubt.
Let's go back to my previous comment for this... Why again, would hiring a kickass forward thinking ex-SCO sysadmin who saved his previous company a million a year, was never late, always had the best interest of the company in mind, was loyal like a dog, and really -really- knows his shit, not be in the "best interests of their firms"
-matt
Ask my mother, she got forced out of Arthur Anderson (local office politics) about a year before they went up in flames.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Difference here... The bachelors in Fight Club didn't have to explain to their kids why they couldn't eat dinner that night. Your family can't live off of your morals. There are cases where you're going to have to just bite your lip and grind it out. That's a pretty serious situation you mention at the end of your post.. and to answer, if I found out my company was doing business selling 12 year old boys and girls into the sex trade, I wouldn't just up and quit my job that day -- I'd start looking for a new one and continue to grind it out until I found a new one. I would not, however, sacrafice the well being of myself and my family for pride. If it were just me and I were a 23 y/o bachelor, sure, why not, I can suck it up and dine on fine top ramen and rice and water until I find a new gig, but sometimes other people depend on you, and it's selfish to push the shitty situation you're willing to live in onto them as well.
-matt
Every time I read something by a porn star, I see that "oh it's not the wonderful thing you'd expect" line. Come on now, you're just saying that to scare off competition :)
Give me the quarter first. Close your eyes and wait. The sound of the door is just the camera crew coming in. BTW, if you peek I'll magically disappear and you'll never see your quarter again.
Sure, you give some viable options here, however, anyone who goes on welfare due to a moral disagreement with SCO deserves to have their ass kicked, here in California we've got enough people on welfare as is, anyone trying to catch a check on the basis that they work for SCO and SCO is suing people like it's the new fashion is an asshole.
2. Your justification (putting your children's dinner above the ethics of your employer) can and has been used to justify doing virtually anything for money. It is no coincidence that crime goes through the roof when economic times are bad, and drops precipitiously when they are good, nor that most crime is committed by those in poverty. Desperation causes many to abandon any ethical or moral backbone they might have had. However, that desperation in no way negates what they have done. A crime remains a crime, a reprehensible act remains a reprehensible act, regardless of whether the money is used to feed a child or buy crack cocain.
Ok, a couple other good points, although flawed -- The people who are justifying working for SCO in order to pay rent and feed their kids are not saying they're going to start robbing banks. They're saying they're going to continue being the techs and office managers for a company who is run by a bunch of idiots. I don't see the crime there.. I'd rather be, and have everyone else for that matter, be an SCO phone support tech than someone out there mugging people and stealing their kids' next meals. C'mon, that was an asanine comparison.
The ethics of obtaining well are orthogonal to the ethics of how that wealth is spent, and ill-gotten gains remain ill-gotten regardless of how well the might later be used. The people harmed remained harmed, even if you turn around and choose to help others.
And just how is working in the office at SCO (and probably not even knowing that they're doing all of this stupid shit, it's not like it's in the news all the time) ill-gotten gains? Now maybe if it were Enron you might want to start looking for a new job as soon as you start seeing your company sinking on the news every day.. but this is different, and even in that case you shouldn't be looked down upon for it... I think if I were an employer and someone from Enron were applying with me before the company collapsed i'd understand and not hold that against them.
-matt
It's unclear from the original post whether this happened before or after he got married. My interpretation was that it happened while he was married. If so, I find it hard to imagine he doesn't owe her an apology for the lying, deception, and doubtlessly her confusion and hurt while it was going on.
As a victim of infidelity, I can assure you that even if one doesn't know exactly what happened, there is a strong sense of trouble and hurt. The loss of trust is the hardest thing to recover. Complete honesty is the only way out in the long term.
Some of the more successful marriage counselors seem to agree with this.
I think he should talk to a professional counselor. They could certainly guide him better than the slashdot populous. But this is not the kind of thing that can be neatly swept under the carpet.
Cheers.
If the rank and file are informed by the grand mucky-mucks of exactly what is transpiring with regard to legal strategy, etc., then SCO is a very unique organization.
While your point is valid I'm a bit puzzled by your choice of cut-off point. I'm not sure that there are many people in the UK over 18 who make less than $10/hour and if they were they probably would not be paying rent/be the main earner (which is a major potential difference in people's circumstances). Does the US differ by a lot on its pay scales? Maybe my view of the UK is off...
Perhaps this is will cast a clearer light on my view of the situation:
Doesn't his wife have the right to decide whether she wants to be married to and raise children with an ex-porn star and liar?
Cheers.
Hmm upon recalculating, I was a bit off but I can say that $10/hour is in my view definitely underpaid (but I retract my statement that there are few people earning less than that).
Ex employee have just to say that they where only following orders... like did most of WWII Nazi war criminals.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
$10 can be underpaid for a skilled position. However, I know (and have been) one of the many people in this country who have lived on less for significant periods of time. It usually involves roomates and doing "without" for a lot of things (don't go see first-run movies, don't eat out a lot, etc), but its certainly doable. My real point is that money isn't everything and people make it out that if they don't have a paycheck, because they failed to plan in advance and prepare themselves for the worst and dug themselves so deeply in debt to satisfy some sort of sick, consumer lifestyle that they can't even bother to give a shit about what they do for a living. These are people who will bitch endlessly on this topic about being laid off, but if Mr. Ralsky, the spammer, were to offer them a job doing spam, they'd take it without hesitation.
/. readers of being spineless little rats who will use their "family" as an EXCUSE to continue working for unethical businesses. Go ahead /.ers, hide behind your kids, your family. They'll understand when they're 18 and you're yelling at them about their "lifestyle choices" and then point to you and say "Hey, you worked at Enron and you didn't do anything about that. Go fuck yourself, dad. You're a real winner, alright" and wonder why their kids or their friends or even their family doesn't respect them.
Basically, I'm accusing the majority of
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
"I used to work for Sallie Mae."
Many of the better auto-body shops hereabouts flatly will not hire a painter who has ever worked for Earl Scheib.
rj
Appart from certain specialised Windows applications, I personally don't see any need for Windows over Linux and some commonly associated Open Source solutions.
Someone please mod the parent up. This is precisely what we were taught in graduate business school - that former employers should never give any information about an individual to anyone aside from the dates of employment and the position title.
They saw a business opportunity, and had the balls to pursue it. All this claptrap about ethics is just a bunch of liberal losers whining because they didn't see the same opportunity before Enron did.
Quit SCO and go on welfare? Are you out of your mind? For someone who has no option but to work for SCO or go on welfare, going on welfare is not taking the moral high ground. Where do you suppose that welfare money is coming from? Going on welfare essentially means taking money from either the pocket of every working person in America or from the hand of a crippled single mother with three kids who legitimatly needs welfare to feed her family. How is that any better than sticking it out at SCO until something better comes along? (hint: while working at SCO you are not directly responsible for anyone getting screwed out of their money. OTOH someone who chooses to go on welfare is directly responsible, no better than a SCO executive.)
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I have a friend, an intelligent and hard-working woman who unfortunately used to be a manager at a Friendly's. I advised her to leave that one off her resume, or at least leave off the word "manager". There ain't no shame in having a McJob in your past, McJobs happen to many of us at some point, but most employers don't want McManagers, and you don't want to work for the ones that do want them.
What's this have to do with the topic at hand? Fuck if I know. I do know this: when hiring people, I tend to be more impressed by spectacular failure than by reliable mediocrity.
I know you're worried about your post-SCO job prospects, but fear not! Thanks to today's robust economy, you too can find gainful employment! All you have to do is memorize the following phrase:
"Do you want fries with that?"
By memorizing those six little words, a host of of job opportunities will open up for you at numerous local offices of several Fortune 500 companies! What's more, you'll be in an industry entirely ignorant of SCO's mephetic stench of evil! In fact, your high tech background will help qualify you to operate a sophisticated computerized order tracking system!
So don't dispair! A new job awaits you serving the public better than you ever did at SCO!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I don't even know why this is a question.
Hire an SCO programmer? Have you seen their products? Completely aside from the ethical aspect, the people responsible for that work product should be ashamed of themselves.
"I was under a 5 year nondisclosure with pay in escrow."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All us ex MCI/Wcommers had to take like $10M home in cash and store it somewhere. I haven't been able to park my car in the garage since !
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
All current and former emplyees of SCO are terrorists and should be sent to Gitmo for questioning and...'interrogation'.
I'm a former employee...and employed elsewhere! (-: When I worked there, it was still Caldera, had Mickey Mouse ears as a logo, and was pro-Linux. This was years ago. It appears that the buying of SCO and subsequent takeover by the bought company changed their views towards Linux a bit. I do not believe most of the former employees will have a difficult time. Many of the employees are grunts, having to defend the company now because they are paid for it. I'd be curious to hear the true feelings of many of their employees.
It's possible - just possible! - that SCO's employees don't read Slashdot at work
It's also possible that the SCO corporate firewall won't let you read Slashdot from work.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
As the sole provider for my wife and two little boys, and as one who is currently looking for permanent employment, I have to agree with that.
All this talk about whether one would diss an applicant because s/he has SCO on their resume, and we're forgetting that these people may be trying their hardest to escape to a more ethical employer, and can't afford to abruptly quit. Shouldn't we lend a helping hand and give them kudos for having the sense to put SCO behind them?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
you were modded down as redundant.
It seems as though the Uma is coming alive with the fire of sacred jihad.
The linux hacker
I know for a fact that many states allow the question "Would you rehire this person?" The only acceptable answers being "yes" or "no".
if you don't feel better tomorrow, we'll just cut your legs off about here. - Theodoric of York
I worked at DEC (Digital Equipment Corp for the kids in the audience) for 18 years, then API (Alpha Processor Inc/API NetWorks) for 2.5 years.
In all the interviews since I left DEC, the "country club" stuff comes up. I'll be the first to admit, DEC was a country club, but it was also a GREAT place to work with lots of opportunity.
Unfortunately, there's alot of people out there with a negative view of DEC and the people that worked there. One guy said "You don't have small company experience". Huh? I was #40 at an eventually 90 person company. I know small companies. They are just as fucked up as big companies.
Yea, working at DEC is a stigma. Oh well. It was a great run.
I'm now an unemployed marketing/techie who's a stay at home Dad.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
And the German soldiers were just doing their jobs ushering the Jews into the gas chambers right? They're just trying to make a living.
"Write a long resignation letter explaining why you feel you MUST RESIGN" = BAD ADVICE
Never write a long resignation letter, especially to a company that is hyper sensitive to legal issues and dominated by pig headed lawyers. They will be sure to send you on your way with a highlighted copy of your contract restrictions. Instead, go to your boss, have a little chat about how you feel it is time to 'move on', 'find new challenges', 'change of pace'. Never be vocal about why you are leaving if it is for a negative reason or if it highlights your future employer, you are only inviting trouble. A good resignation letter should be one paragraph stating why you are leaving, the date you are leaving and how you will wrap up existing projects to your current employers satisfaction and thanking them for their help. You then need to go around and thank all the people who helped you, who worked beside you or who could help you in the future. This will allow you to leave with a warm fuzzy feeling on the part of your current managers. When they ask you about future prospects, tell them 'you haven't decided everything yet'. This allows you to leave without BURNING YOUR BRIDGES.
If you don't care about trouble, and like bad advice, just try the 'asshole' approach as exemplified in the top quote. But do it right and in a way that allows you to work as little as possible. The goal of the asshole approach is to get fired, not quit. Quitters don't get workmans comp., which is like free paid vacation. There are several techniques to getting fired, each with its own drawbacks:
1. complete stupidity and laziness topped with sarchasm
2. alchoholol/druggs....
3. display transexual nudie pictures
4. trip and fall, "my back! my back!, I'm permanently injured"
5. Accuse your manager of sexual harrasment for staring at your nudie pictures and making derogatory comments about your personal art work. This way you can sue them and get even more money without having to work at all.
6. et cetera, et cetera
Don't do what I did at my last job when I quit. The CEO asked me what I would be doing in the future. I told him I would be getting drunk under a bridge somewhere. That didn't get me anything except a sense of satisfaction I will feel the rest of my life.
I want people who are working to make this the best company there is.
Sure, you can live in a squalid shithole and eat ramen noodles all day, ride a bike to your job at McDonalds, and generally live a pathetic life, but where is the fun in that? Most people LIKE to live above the level of a common beast.
[shrug] I've got Worldbomb...er, I mean Worldcom...on my resume and it's not a big deal for me. I just laugh and say the shenanigans started after I left, which is true (in fact, from what I've read, the book-cooking started just a few months after I left. Which just goes to show you, I quit and the whole damn outfit went to hell in a handbasket soon after!) I guess if I worked for Enron I would simply make clear exactly what it was I did there...lest they think I was one of those pretenders acting like they were in high-level discussions on the phone when visitors dropped by. Very often the poor drones don't know what's going on anyway. Why hold *them* responsible for what happened at notorious companies?
I love pompous hypocritical assholes like you. Shows that their are still people in the world who believe the world is flat. Yeah, as if you've never made a mistake.
I'd never work for the likes of you. You're too like my current ungrateful SOB PHB.
Having worked for a company that got acquired by Worldcom, and being a lowly sales peon, I would not want to be judged for Bernie Ebbers' sins. There *was* no evidence of wrongdoing when I left (and there probably wasn't any because AFAIK it started after I left), and at the very worst Worldcom could be accused at that time of not being the slightest bit interested in providing decent service to their customers - but in all honesty, not too many telecom companies really do. I would not judge ex-SCO people too harshly - I would at least want to know what they did there.
Especially when I consider how often mismanagement rebounds on the poor schmucks who don't know what's going on.
Umm, I hate to say it, but you sound to me like someone who either tried I.T. and failed, and now has a grudge to bear - or possibly someone who's still too young to be in a situation where it takes more than $7 or $8 an hour to make ends meet.
I've worked my share of near min. wage jobs, and I've worked in I.T. where I was paid well for what I did - and now, I can honestly say I work in computers (on-site PC service) where I feel like I truly choose my own destiny, salary-wise.
(If I want to work late evenings, weekends and holidays, I can bill people time and a half and rake in some good money. But it's at the expense of my time to spend with my family - so I generally opt not to do so.)
All things considered, I think anyone truly performing well in I.T. completely DESERVES to be paid upwards of $10/hr. Look at it this way. The local CompUSA store is going to bill for repair work at rates exceeding $75/hr. (I think it's $85/hr. last I checked?) Meanwhile, the techs doing all of that work are earning maybe $10/hr. or so, tops? Where's the fairness in that??
I agree with your assertion that it's wrong to keep working in a field where you know full well that your labor is going to ends you disapprove of. Problem is, it's rarely that clear cut. Most large corporations have their hands in so many different things that it's near impossible to claim that the little piece of the "whole" you perform directly contributes to the decline of Western civilization. Take a company like Monsanto, for example. Sure, some folks say they produce horrible chemicals and pesticides that cause huge environmental problems. Is that going to stop you from accepting an I.T. job there? I wouldn't lose sleep over it if I worked for them (and I don't/never did - BTW). They're the same folks responsible for plenty of useful and even life-saving materials they developed. It all depends on which details you want to focus on, I guess.
Amen. ^^
:D
but you got the point... and btw, just watched fight club for first time yesterday, it rocks
and yes, you are not what you own, it is only the lifestyle part of you.
and yes, most ppl is afraid to change job because of ethic reasons if they are not good enough.
Altho, in your scenarion, selling 12 year old little boys & girls to sex slaves, that would really give some serious bucks, and if you are a worked, and get also some serious bucks... well, there is large temptation to keep on doing it
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
I see SCO 2003 or later on your resume and you can just keep walking. Your job skills are not quite what we are looking for. Other applicants are better suited for employment with our company. These are the words to be heard crossing my lips. If you wish to interpret my body language however, you will find I consider you in the same league as a child molester.
.... I see you applying for the accounting position ... and your last employer was ... let's see here .... .Enron. You got any idea how much money I lost on Enron stock? Why were you here again. Yes I know that was past tense. Next.
Fair? No. I don't have to be fair. I don't want to be fair. Your about as welcome around here as the turd in the proverbial punch bowl. We will keep your application on file however, just in case we need somebody with your skill set and low morals. Until then, have a nice day.
Ok, who's next. Ahhh
Feed the children.... ... is a poor argument.
I'm sure many SS members decided to keep working to feed the family as well, but that doesn't make it right.
Ultimately, it is an issue of power. By working for a company that you know is doing the wrong thing, you are aiding this company.
If even 50% of the people in the world would use their conscience, there would be no SCO
If you leave such a company early on, you can use that to your advantage. It makes you look smart for jumping ship rather than staying and drowning to the last second...
I am a former Anderson employee. Never had been interviewd by anyone stupid enough to think that I, in my position, had anything to do with the scandal. Unless your job is in accounting or you're the former CEO, no one is going to think you're the cause of the troubles. If they ask why you didn't immediately leave, just say that you were comited to the project you were working on and did not want to abandon your manager and team mates just because the company was going through hard times. Be sure to highlight the success of your team/division and shift the conversation from having to defend your former employer, and maybe make it sound like you have some commitment to your work in the process.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
You Jackasses! The subject of the parent is "I was in prison"!!!!
Jeez.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
My Half Bro Mike worked for Enron as a CPA (NOT CROOKED) he did the sale of foreign investments to increase their income. Previeously though, he was a CPA for Auther Anderson (their former accountants), but not on their accounts...
He now works for a company that got sold to the competition due to them going bankrupt mere months after his hiring since the FDA started to investigate. He can't seem to get any sort of a break.
Shit pal, how old are you? Are you even out of high school or college yet? You've got a lot of growing up to do.
You are an idiot with an obvious anger management problem. Please get a clue, a little life experience, and move on. Thanks.
Either your skills are so indispensible that people are willing to hire you regardless, or else you somehow distance yourself from responsibility for the actions of your past associations.
It's obvious, then, that the real ethical problem is that people insist on feeding children.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I come from a business oriented family. I've worked in corperate environments, medium and small businesses. If you're in a bad place, a businessperson will see this as an indication that you have no clue. You can either work with this and express to the nth degree how technically adept you areand how socially inept you are (whether you are or are not, this is the easiest way to communicate the idea) or you start asking people if they want fries with that. If you're a professional, and you're not watching your resume -- you're in serious trouble. Period.
Perhaps one person will read this, but hey whatever.
"Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll"
FWIW, neither Saddam nor Hitler broke any laws. Instead they rewrote them. Think a bit harder about what that means.
Morals don't have any direct relationship to laws. If something is immoral, passing a law doesn't make it moral. If something is moral, passing a law doesn't make it immoral. In an ideal world the laws would align with morality, but I doubt anyone thinks we live in such a world. But it's morals and judgement that determines whether or not you want someone employed by your company. Someone who will find a slick loophole to siphon of all the company funds is not a good choice, even if the method choosen is perfectly legal.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
At current living costs in my area, $10/hour is underpaid for a janitor or a ditchdigger's assistant. It's a bit better than what many people have, but that's not saying bloody much. Many people are living on the street, too. That doesn't make that an acceptable choice to have forced onto them. (The few who actually choose that, and there are some, but not many at all [perhaps 1%, perhaps less], should have that right.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They're also one of the companies promoting the expansion of patent laws, and the forcing of US law onto foreign countries. And promoting monoculture in a way that is truly dangerous.
I genuinely feel that the way that Monsanto is monopolizing the genepools of the food crops is one of the principle dangers facing our society. One major accident + one major plant disease and we could lose an irreplaceable genetic heritage. You can't predict the accident, but major plant diseases *will* arise. This is as predicatable as the flu. You don't know where this year's strain will come from, or how bad it will be, but there'll be one.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
-
Define fucking "underpaid". Most fucking IT people I know make > $10/hour, and they fucking bitch relentlessly about how they live paycheck to paycheck. Guess what, pal? At $10/hour, they're making MORE MONEY than a good majority of the citizens in this country. NO FUCKING SHIT. I used to be there, making minimum wage, living in a shit-hole, eating ramen and rice. But you know what? If it came to that or being a fucking coward because my Employer was an unethical piece of shit and I knew it, I'll be back to ramen. YOU choose your lifestyle. When you realize that a stupid movie called "Fight Club" was right on several points (you are not what you own, you are not your string-bean couch, you are not what's in y our wallet) and learn to live on LESS (and you'll find you appreciate those things even more), then you don't have to worry about living "paycheck to paycheck" because you've reduced your living expenses considerably. Do you really need that $400 SUV out in the driveway? Do you really need that 1600 sq ft house with the 1 acre yard? No, you don't.
Do I need that health insurance under Cobra that's costing me $400+ a month? Can I afford to lose it since I have recurrent kidney stone disease and average 6+ ER visits a year? Can I afford to lose the used Toyota Camry with nearly 100,000 miles on it I bought used and have 3 more years on the loan? Can I afford to lose the car insurance that has to be full coverage until said loan is paid off? Can I afford to stop eating?Get real. I'm trying to fathom how you didn't get modded down as a troll. You pathetic attempt to claim working for a company like SCO means you must be making so much you have useless luxuries that you're unwilling to get rid of so you can leave and then hunt for another job is baseless at best, trolling at worst. Maybe they do make $10+ an hour, but what if the cost of living where SCO is phsyically based is 10 times higher than where you live? Then that $10 an hour is worthless, and they're probrably just scrapping by to pay for their necessities.
-
Imagine this stupid scenario: You find out your company is doing business selling 12 year old little boys and girls into the sex trade. You need your paycheck. Are you such a fucking coward that you'll stay, just so you can keep earning a paycheck? What's that? You don't care? Fuck you. You're a fucking coward.
Totally pathetic comparison, but in this you're the coward, since you'd just leave. I'd alert the authorities, make sure the business didn't know, and cooperate with them to help them get the evidence they needed to take them down. That's pretty heroic. Running away with your tail between your legs and leaving the problem behind is the worst kind of cowardice. What, you don't care enough to try to stop the crime? You just don't want to be associated? To quote your unelequont prose "Fuck you." If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.And since your snide comparison brought the issue up, how do you, or any of us, know that some of those current SCO employees aren't inside moles gathering info for the FBI, the SEC, or hell, even IBM, Redhat or Novell? We don't. Unless you're them, you'll never know the truth for sure, so get off your high hobby horse and take some Prozac, sounds like you need it.
a. no longer exists
b. I hated how the company encouraged preying on the lonely, elderly and intoxicated
c. did not want to explain to a future employer why I worked there in the first place (well sir my dad demand I have a job. and my pot habit was expensive. and the place didn't piss test. ect.)
Overall I gained valuble life experiance (and some good dealers) from working there. Also I got to taste corporate work before I had to for a living. All in all I don't regret it, but I'm not to proud of it either.
Open Source Sushi
Again, here I am, the sysadmin for SCO. [...] I'm not the devil on Darl's shoulder telling him "Psst, ok, now sue these guys!". [...] would you still pass me by for a less qualified applicant.
Probably. I can teach skills. Fixing your ethical handicaps is beyond me.
SCO is a good example. Spammers are another one. I would expect people who work for them to be ethically challenged. Either that or unaware of what their employers were up to, in which case they'd be too clueless to bother with.
Why again, would hiring a kickass forward thinking ex-SCO sysadmin [...] not be in the "best interests of their firms"
The overly dramatic choice you set up, between the inadequate but nice employee or the skilled former concentration camp guard, isn't the one hiring managers face. The reality is that the manager will end up with a bunch of people who will probably be fine; the challenge is in picking the best one in the long term.
There are a few reasons I'd lean away from somebody with an ethically suspect past.
One would be that ethical problems are hard to detect. If somebody is incompetent, I'll know in pretty short order. If somebody is casing the joint for embezzlement opportunities, I might not know until the bank account is empty. Or, less dramatically, I might not realize that he's really clever about covering up shoddy work.
The second, and probably the biggest for me, would be a concern that the person won't get the big picture. A person who doesn't mind making a living spamming can't have much sympathy for the fucking colossal amount of trouble they are causing for their recipients. Why would that person care any more about the end users of the new company's products?
And the third would be simple CYA. Even if there's a relatively small chance that a person working for a corrupt company is themselves corrupt, what happens if it turns out to be true? Then suddenly not only am I the guy who hired the thief, but I'm the guy who hired the thief who used to the sysadmin for Enron's accounting department. Hindsight will make me look like a chump.
Folks, you are forgetting that people that didn't leave SCO in the first quarter of their fraudulent activity simply deserve to be punished. They are complicit in the crime of fraud. If they aren't prosecuted in the courts, they can be at least black listed in the private sector. For the crime of fraud, continued employees of SCO should be denied the right to employment in I.T. They should be forced to pay for more college to train in a different field, preferably blue collar work, as I'll bet they think it's below them. Their families should be given the choice to leave him/her or share their financial destruction. Leave them lowly paid, under-educated in whatever new field, and utterly alone (no friends or family). Then they can start from scratch to earn those priviledges and earn the trust of their fellow man. If they can't take it, they should do the world a favor and commit some form of (non-messy) suicide.
Go ahead... ask me for a job... I *dare* you, former SCO worker.
By the way, there is a boycott of SCO going on... check around, you'll find it. I won't post a link as that'd be plugging my own website.
It's better, in an ethical sense, to approach a job interview as a test, testing the waters. People who give advice about getting a job tend to advocate getting your foot in the door with an interview and then making a wonderful impression to get the job. What good is a job if it's not the right job for you? A job interview is a chance to meet each other, get to know each other, and ask those questions to make sure neither one of you will lose their minds trying to make something work that wasn't meant to work for purely financial reasons. If you had enough money to never have to work again, would you never work again? If so, then maybe it's time to re-define what you call work. Ethically speaking, you should use a job interview as part of a filtering process to arrive at an appropriately long-term commitement where a contribution to the greater good can be made. Generally speaking, you will be more wealthy if you don't let other people treat you like dirt. Putting the horse before the cart is the hard part.
Look at the top-level post. We know for a fact that just because you worked somewhere before, that's not what makes you a bad employee. The question is whether or not someone will actually think, or be required by an official or unofficial policy to think, that this makes you a bad employee.
Do yourself a favor and don't work for people like that. That's one very good reason why human beings have brains; so that they can use them. If a policy requires the human resources person to be stupid and go against their own common sense, then it's a stupid policy for stupid people who work at a stupid company. Rest assured there are intelligent people who work at intelligent companies with intelligent policies. So it stands to reason that if you are an intelligent person, you will find it relatively easy to find work at an intelligently-run company with intelligent policies, where you can spend your days or nights working with other friendly intelligent people.
The answer is obvious: we already know that it's a stigma, if anything; and that companies that attach stigmas to things across the board will fail to attract the most talented people, and this will start a chain reaction that will eventually spare the rest of us from having to deal with that stupid company ever again.
Anyone who has continued with SCO through this chicanery effectively has no morals or at least none that will be acted on. Such people are not people I would want to chat with much less work with or for. There actions are elegant proof they are not trustworthy.
I would assume that any former employee from SCO or Enron that was looking for work couldn't possibly have been involved in the wrongdoing.
After all, everybody who did the really dirty deeds got dirty rich, and they aren't looking for work.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
You are comparing Saddam's guards to SCO employees. Are you stupid or what?
OK, he's a fucking coward, and guess what: you are homeless.
As the old saying goes: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her(The fish stinks from it's head)...
It's the management, that is responsible for this type of fraud. It was the case with Enron, it was with Worldcom and it is with SCO and now parmalat.
I can safely guess, that more than 97% of the employees of these companies had nothing to do with any of the crimes and fraud happening there.
And therefore, only the qualification and competence on the job should count, not the former employers name.
With best regards
Jadeclaw
You really are a twat, aren't you ?
You obviously don't have any family, or are as bitter as hell about some rejection somewhere.
I'm lucky, I'm in a good job I enjoy, I'm relatively well paid and I live in a country (UK) which at least has some safety net should things go bad (at least I dont have to pay medical bills).
I DO have an 18-month old daughter, and ethics or morals or any other crap can go out of the window regarding employment, as long as it keeps her in food and shoes on her feet.
One day when you are man, and have the responsibility of being part of raising a family, you'll understand (although with an attitude like yours, the only way you'll ever have sex is if you hand over money for it).
Is it more important than ethical behaviour?
In the belief system of khasim, is it "ethical" to stop supporting your children just because you found out your employer is no longer "ethical", and no employer willing to hire you at a rate sufficient to support your children is "ethical" either?
Guess what, pal? At $10/hour, they're making MORE MONEY than a good majority of the citizens in this country.
Ummm, no.
The 2003 median income in the United States is about $56,500.
This is a median (IQ 100) wage of $23.25/hr.
But forget for a minute about what the median income is -- let's see what $10/hr would actually get you in a technical field.
To a nonrural techie,
$10/hr is about
$8.5/hr after taxes,
$18.66 / day after housing ($600/mo - good luck),
$16 after utilities
$10 after cheap food ($2 / full meal),
$8 after commute costs (forget a car),
$6 after cell phone and internet access (line of work requires these),
$4 after mandatory investment in your tech skills (60/month on software, hardware, and books),
leaves you with $4 in your pocket for a hard day's work. (I predict you'll use most of this to fill in the gaps in your workplace health care coverage).
All ten dollars an hour is good for is the commute to stressful underpaid work, food and shelter, and a tiny subsidy on maintaining your technical skills (don't even think of doing this on your boss's time - remember, you're being driven like a slave). I've included NOTHING else!
The above breakdown is a starvation wage for a single person! By contrast, $20/hour (still below the median wage in the united states - see top of comment) would allow you to take care of each of the items above, and still pocket $60+ each day you work. That's enough to do most things a person would want to do in a day, or save up for a large ($600) expense every two weeks - by contrast, the initial ($10) breakdown wouldn't let you eat out a couple of times a month -- you would literally be making more money on a $20/week allowance from your mom than working full time as a $10/hr slave. It's not a reasonable wage for an independent, skilled adult -- it's a wage inappropriate even to a person with an IQ of 75 -- making less than half the median wage is unacceptable.
I'd say that it is reasonable to assume that the reason interviewers start talking about your former (possibly downfallen in an Enronesque way) is to provoke a stress reaction from you. So - spending the interview defending your former employer would be poorly spent time. (You should be selling yourself and your skills!)
What's the stigma associated with having no previous job for the past several years?
Come to think of it what's the stigma of listening to the voices in your head when they tell you to strangle the cute young thing interviewing you?
You have to pick your battles and it sounds like you have chosen your battle, but don't assume that everyone who wants to earn a good wage and live in a nice house is a sell out.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
chrisd left us to work at Damage Studios who say this on their jobs page.
Any resumes which include the SCO Group after September of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.
Harsh!You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
... yeeeeaaaa, every company in my resume no longer exists. Not only do I have to contend with potential employers wondering what a greedy, lieing, DOT.com bastard I might be... but all my references are to a disconnected cell phone in Cancun.
Since then I've made two major career shifts: from techpubs sideways into software development, then after about six years of that I downshifted completely and turned to freelance writing. Because I'm self-employed and not really doing anything in the software industry any more I'm reasonably well insulated from the damage Caldera has done to SCO's former reputation, but if I find the pickings are thin and have to go looking for contract tech authoring work I may have a problem. A big problem.
I have been tempted to sue SCaldera for defamation, given that they've basically turned my biggest technical writing CV bulletpoint into sewage. But if it comes to it, I'll basically target my CV. Non-software companies get the unvarnished SCO checkmark, while companies where an interviewer might have heard of Ransom Love's antics will get a footnote.
But in the long term, SCO is nothing more than a footnote. There is no job for life any more, and we're moving increasingly away from having a single career for life, too. Who lists jobs they held more than a decade ago for less than one year on their CV any more? The odds are high that any skills involved are long obsolete. Similarly, SCO won't blight current employees' work history forever.
"SCO's staff will have to look for other jobs sooner or later"
Why? Please prove your thesis.
"I bet you'd hire someone that didn't quite fit your needs knowing fully that you'd fire them later if a better suited individual came along if your company couldn't otherwise function without someone in the position."
Nope. I'd only fire someone if they couldn't or wouldn't do the job. Then I'd post the job, then I'd start interviewing.
We've only had to fire one person in the past 3 years and that was because he refused to work with the rest of the team. The person we hired to replace him had no prior contact with anyone at our company before the job was posted.
Seems that you're wrong.
"So why is it o.k. for you to put your company's needs ahead of your employees and not o.k. for them to do the very same thing?"
Your initial supposition was incorrect.
Because I would not hire someone knowing I would be firing them when I could get a better deal, I would not hire someone who would quit when he could get a better deal.
It seems that you're attempting to justify that behaviour on the part of the employee by claiming that they would be treated the same way by the company. That is not the case.
> I'm not going to forget about that any time soon.
So you will completely discount a program because an old version didn't import math equations? Sounds like your mind was made up before you even saw it.
Yeah, sheesh... At least Saddam's guards were brainwashed and actually thought what they were doing was right.
Clever signature text goes here.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html
I am sure that there are employers who would hire me that I consider to be "ethical" who would pay me enough.
It's even more unethical to leave one's job over who management is suing and leave your wife and children unsure of where their next meal is coming from. Get off your high horse.
Fuck. Fucking. Fuck. Fucker. Fuckest. Fuckfuckfuck. Fuck. Fucky-fucky. Fuuuuuuck. And while you're at it, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Did I leave any one of your points unaddressed?
You've pointed out what appears to be a false dilemma in that I haven't justified the "no 'ethical' employer willing to hire you at a living wage exists" premiss. A "no $foo exists" premise often comes from a lack-of-imagination fallacy. I'll confess to such an appeal to ignorance in this premiss, but remember that such appeals are not fallacies when one can show that the cost of obtaining such information exceeds one's resources. Let me reformulate my argument:
Under these premisses, what would be the appropriate action for JD to take? Or, which premiss lacks justification?
Try actually reading the article you quoted. The 2003 median family income in the United States is about $56,500.
Dumbass.
1600 square ft on a full acre looks like a cottage, Try 4000+ for the "American Dream" hyperbole you are looking for.
/., butt...) These guys have a series of BS lawsuits, it's not like they are sponsoring terrorism or commiting vast human rights abuses.
That being said $10 is not squat (around here anyways- NYC metro area). If you have a family to support, ramen is not an option. Plenty of fathers and mothers work at jobs they hate becuase of their families.
Let's keep SCO in perspective (I know this is
My point was that the answer to that question would provide a lot of insight into the person's character. What SCO is doing is particularly heinous and possibly illegal.
Now what you said is true, one answer that could be given is that "I just write code, or I only worked on internal systems, not any of the products." But what if they were a coder who worked on the Linux kernel? Then the question would require an answer that would prove to me that they do not share the ethics of their employer.
Sorry. Ideological reasons alone won't do.
If my mind had been made up I wouldn't even have given the student a chance to demonstrate that Open Office was up to the task.
The owls are not what they seem
Do I need that health insurance under Cobra tat's costing me $400+ a month? Can I afford to lose it since I have recurrent kidney stone disease and average 6+ ER visits a year?
I don't know of the seriousness of kidney stones (other than they hurt pretty damn bad), so I'm not going to comment.
Can I afford to lose the used Toyota Camry with nearly 100,000 miles on it I bought used and have 3 more years on the loan?
That's your fault for taking a bad loan leaving you in this situation. Many people take the bus or hitchhike/bike to work if they live in a rural area. Lesson is that you should not buy what you can't afford. You control where you live, and thus your commute length. Insurance woes are also your poor planning. Just because you can afford a vehicle's price tag doesn't mean you can afford the vehicle (see also, expensive to upkeep).
Can I afford to stop eating
No, but you can get food for damn cheap. A Tontino's pizza costs all of $1.50 , which is a pretty good price for a meal. There is a difference between not eating and not being able to go out to restraunts or shoping at World Foods/Central Market (probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I think the point is clear)
Maybe they do make $10+ an hour, but what if the cost of living where SCO is phsyically based is 10 times higher than where you live?
That's the company's problem. If they can't afford to pay employees to live near their company for what they want to pay them, they need to move the company. That's why sweatshops exist in certain parts of the world and not in others. This is beside the point of what the grandparent was trying to address (and I think you realized that before posting this)
Totally pathetic comparison, but in this you're the coward, since you'd just leave. I'd alert the authorities, make sure the business didn't know, and cooperate with them to help them get the evidence they needed to take them down
Now your just trolling. The grandparent was just trying to give a representative analogye, and you lambast him for, basically, an extended part of the analogy he didn't really need to extrapolate on
- Sig
Is it just me, or does anyone PREFER 9-5ers on their team? I LIKE people who are dedicated for their 8-9 hours a day, dedicated to getting a process and development schedule that only requires that, and only working that? Or do you actually like having people on a team who will often agree to overly ambitious deadlines and kill themselves for it?
Sure, that's only 4-5 hours of coding a day after subtracting all the other activities that go on at work, but man, its easy to do it right for those hours, and to get everyone else to as well.
--Michael
PS: I too sometimes will have 60-80 hour weeks. But that's far from the norm and usually involves schedules of outside parties that were not done with enough slack time to handle suprises.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Wow - who pissed in YOUR wheaties this morning?
Feed your children
-OR-
Work for an unethical company
That is so.
And examples of this can be found here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_by_lack_of_
I think you're using that backwards. I'm saying that there EXISTS a job with an ethical employer.
You're saying that there IS NOT a job with an ethical employer.
But you haven't shown that. All you've done is state it as a condition.
I'll use the polar bear example from that page. Your position would be that it isn't a fallacy if you set the condition that there is only one use for camouflage.
The same with the job search. You're trying to set conditions such that there are no jobs that he is capable of finding.
It is a false dichotomy even if you attempt to set criteria that would result in only two choices because your criteria are false.
OK, you win. You claim that there exists such a job in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So what is it? I cannot relocate from Fort Wayne because of family issues.
No, I did not claim that. Tell me what your family issues are so we don't end up playing "revealed knowledge". That's where I say something and you come back with some new "fact" that prevents it. So I say something that takes that new "fact" into account and you come back with another new "fact" that prevents it.
e ds /employment/
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/classifi
And I do NOT want to hear about "that doesn't pay enough". As long as it pays enough for basic food, shelter and clothing and it's ethical, it meets the criteria.
And THAT was the point. People will do unethical things because they're greedy. They value money and material possessions over other things.
"I cannot relocate from Fort Wayne because of family issues."
And that's another of your problems. You can relocate. You just don't want to make the sacrifices and commitments required for you to relocate.
Um...what if Maestro has to commute back and forth to and from a job that's about 20 miles away from his home? Where I live most of the buses run in a certain radius of the city in which I live, NOT going into the city where I work. And I can't even imagine how much the cab fare for this trip would be, let alone 10 times a week...
And the fact that it's a car with OVER 100,000 miles shows that it has been around for a while; maybe it's all this person can afford.
And your criticizing about buying 'Cheap' food? Maybe Meastro is!!! Did you ever think about that? And that a Tonino's Pizza is a $1.50, well that changes by region...'Cost of living'; ever heard of it?
And the thought that $10 per hour being low in some areas due to the cost of living (hey, there it is again!) is NOT the company's fault or the worker's fault. Just because the company is stationed in an area where to local economy has inflated at some ridiculous rate. Can a company just up and decide to move it's station to another city or state? Most of them would be a big 'NO'. And $10 an hour is a whole Hell of a lot different in Indiana than it is in Silicon Valley or Los Angeles...Think about it!
And lastly for the comparison about SCO or Enron to a 'Sex-Trade'; it IS completely ludicrous to think that these are valid comparisons! One is a company who scammed people out on millions of dollars, the other exploits, injures, and tortures children...Hmmmm...I'm sorry, but I see a HUGE difference between being a thief and a rapist. I'm not saying that Enron or SCO are right (or were right), but this is INDEED a very inane comparison. Also what about the people who worked at Enron who had NO IDEA about what was happening? Some fresh-from-college intern who's working in like, the HR department; should he/she feel the public outrage and anger of Enron? No; said person had NOTHING to do with it, let alone even KNEW about it!
Next time think about the whole picture before criticizing someone else's point of view...Otherwise you'll be called 'Troll'...
(Moderators: Before you reflexively moderate this comment as Offtopic, take time to recognize that having not had a job for an extended period of time between graduating with a four-year degree and the present can have just as much of a stigma as having worked for an unethical company.)
Tell me what your family issues are so we don't end up playing "revealed knowledge".
I currently rely on family for support (i.e. live with my parents) and have not had chances to network with other people outside the State of Indiana. I do not have the savings to pay the first year's rent and utilities on an apartment. How much savings do most people new to the workforce have before they relocate to another state halfway across the country for their first job?
In addition, I am a male under the age of 25 and cannot afford the higher rates that most auto insurance companies will charge their under-25 customers. Because I did the math and realized that my budget could not support car payments, car maintenance, petrol, and insurance, I never learned how to drive.
I admit I'm a dumb newbie in work. What else needs to be revealed in order for you to formulate meaningful help?
My degree is in computer science. I check the classifieds about every week, and nothing appears in the "Employment::Data Processing/Computer" section that doesn't require at least a year of experience with software that's too expensive for an individual in a working-class family to license for one seat to train himself.
As long as it pays enough for basic food, shelter and clothing and it's ethical, it meets the criteria.
If you expect me to look in "Employment Opportunities" as well for jobs that require less skill, is it reasonable to expect a person to apply for every single position for which he is qualified and which identifies the name of an "ethical" company, even if it pays only the minimum wage for employees of companies in U.S. interstate commerce, which I have determined is less than a subsistence wage? In fact, I have applied for some of those jobs only to be turned down after the interview for being overqualified.
You just don't want to make the sacrifices and commitments required for you to relocate.
And live in a cardboard box? Almost all of my income (which is from a state program rather than from employment) goes toward paying down my student loans.
It's not that at all. It's just that some people will justify everything for a "paycheck". If they were faced with collecting their paycheck and working for an unethical company or QUITTING (or whistleblowing or whatever) and being forced into downsizing their lifestyle (by getting smaller living quarters, using alternative transportation, quit eating out so much, etc etc), most people will gladly turn a blind eye towards the company's behavoir (and most likely keep their mouths shut because they're too scared that they'll lose their job) and continue on as if nothing happened. It's the fact that they choose LIFESTYLE over ETHICS that disturbs me, and yet that's what they choose.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
While listing quals you don't have is lying, not listing quals you do have is not lying - if they find out you just say that you were focusing on the relevant quals.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
You can't relocate because you are living with your parents.
Join the Coast Guard.
It pays, you have food, shelter and clothing and you're performing a worthwhile service (saving people's lives).
I don't give a damn what your degree is in or whether you can find work in that field.
You can get your student loans defered.
Again, you only think that you don't have options because you're focusing on other criteria.
AFAIK, Darl has never killed anyone or ordered anyone to be killed.
I don't like the SCO lawsuit thingy either, but my sense of perspective is not so twisted that I would lump SCO's actions together with those of brutal dictators.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Here is a real-world example of anti-SCO stigma:
m l
http://damagestudios.com/jobs.php
This was mentioned on Slashdot before:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/09/11/1437206.sht
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Saying a kidney stone hurts pretty damn bad is like saying a sink hole that swallowed a house is a pothole. Many people who have them pass out from the pain in fact. So trust me, it's a major medical condition, and it's chronic, it's not going anywhere. Besides that though, the fact is I'm likely to have around 6 ER visits this year as well. With each costing well over $1000 in billed charges, what I pay for a health insurance premium looks like a bargain. Not to mention I save about $500 a month on my prescriptions alone, which is more than my premium in a month. It's certainly not something I can do without. (Although I fervently wish the premium was cheaper until I can find work in my field that pays decent again.)
You know, jumping in, criticizing and making assumptions when you know nothing about the situation isn't a good idea. I bought it used, and had to as my last car (a 1994 Geo Metro that I also bought used) was on its last legs. Quite honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get the damn thing to the car lot, the alternator on it died again on the way there, the 4th one in a row to do so. It also had about 170,000 miles on it. At the time I had a job in my field (IT) that paid well ($46k a year). The car was certainly NOT unaffordable at the time I purchased it. Of coruse 6 months later I lost my job thanks to the economy. There was no real warning, the only signs something was coming happened a month before I lost it.
I know I'll definitely pass on advice from you when you think hitchiking (which can quite literally get you killed) is a valid alternative to keeping a car. And for the record, I do live in a rural area (not like all farms and all, but rural by big city standards). There is no bus service, there's about one whole taxi service in the whole county (And using a taxi each day to and from would likely cost more than the car payment + insurance each month). Biking to work is a bit out of the question because of the distance. Since I'm living with my folks to cut costs down, moving closer is not an option. And, quite frankly, neither is doing without a car.
Totino's pizzas are $.98 here, I eat them quite regularly. I also buy huge bags of fish sticks for $5 that I get about 6-7 meals out of. To give them some taste, I buy a bottle of generic barbecue sauce (at $.77). One bottle lasts for about 2 bags. I also eat peanut butter sandwiches, I forget the cost of the peanut butter, but I'm sure we can all agree it's cheap unless you try to get a gourmet brand (which I don't). For bread, I but Wal-mart's store brand for a total $.50 a loaf. In addition I'll make a goulash-type dish. For that I need ground beef (I buy huge family packs to save on the per-pound price, bag them up and freeze them), then elbow macaroni ($.99 a box for generic, one box per meal made) and tomato soup ($.89 a can for generic, one per meal) along with some seasoning. (I buy that generic too.). Now, seeing as I can barely afford to keep myself fed eating that cheaply, do you see any room to cut back? Quite frankly I don't, unless I went to all
- Some fresh-from-college intern who's working in like, the HR department; should he/she feel the public outrage and anger of Enron?
Or better (and more likely I'd suspect) that same intern is new and gets handed a box of papers and told to shred them. Being a lowly intern would you look through them and say "Hey, this is evidence, I can't do this!" or just start feeding the papers through the shredder while trying not to fall asleep? I suspect most everyone in that situation would just do what they were told and not even think about questioning, after all, why would someone tell you to do something illegal?> Until you organize you will remaim shmucks while the doctors get legislation passed
Umm, lawyers are the ones who get laws passed: that's what they do. And by "you," you do not mean me, even if you think you do. I am organized. But you just made assumptions to try & belittle me, as most do to others here.
From what I have seen, unions are to protect the workers' rights against their employers.
Associations are more general and lobby for bills, educate their members in recent technology, but I haven't heard of them doing any substantial legal representation for the lowest of their members (which is what unions were supposed to be about, although they are not).
> The geeks are shmucks
Eh, yes & no, depending on your meaning. Too smart to be fooled, too lazy to be active (but not too lazy to complain incessantly)...
> You keep calling them shit from your mothers basement
Actually, I said "shit" from the comfort of my job. Once. I didn't call anything "shit" and I certainly don't "keep calling them" anything. See, I made a statement that is not directly related to the conversation. You are supposed to think about it (not too long, hopefully) and come up with the reason I said it. I didn't call anything shit, I made ana analogy. I could have just as easily said "You can call a duck a quargle, but it's still a duck." You missed the point completely.
Your family can't live off of your morals.
Yeah, well - you're the one who decided to have a kid. There are many, many ways to have sex and not have children. If you didn't have the financial resources to have children, then you shouldn't have impregnated your signifigant other. I am really fucking sick of this. Having children is a choice. If I whined in the office that my sports car needs a new set of $4000 wheels, then I'm going to get looked at like I'm crazy. I'm expected to be sympathetic to the SAME rant, except subsitute tuition, braces, school, whatever for wheels. Kids are luxury items.
Don't cry to me. I'll do your job for half the money with a smile, and I like Ramen. I wouldn't dream of having kids until I was confident I could support them without relying on a "paycheck". Society doesn't owe you any more just because you have kids. If there's one thing the world DOESN'T need, it's more fucking people.
Life's hard, deal.
And what, exactly, do you think it is that Saddam Hussein's prison guards did? Or Enron's accountants? Or Darl McBride?
The words "smoking" and "crack" come to mind.
Consider Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that was practically destroyed as a result of its involvement in the Enron affair. It had 75,000 employees. Now, the reputation of Arthur Andersen lies in tatters, but how many of their accountants actually worked on Enron? 50? 100? What about the other 74,900 employees? Would you tar all of them with the same brush? Most of them had probably never even heard of Enron!
Organizations these days are simply too large and too diverse to draw meaningful conclusions from a mention on someone's CV.
"Umm, lawyers are the ones who get laws passed: that's what they do."
Yes bozo. Have you ever heard of lobbying? Are you aware that there are powerful organizations in the country that shape and frequently write the laws that get passed?
"But you just made assumptions to try & belittle me, as most do to others here."
Yes I did. By "you" I meant the plural "you" as in you geeks. Organzied also did not refer to how neat your desk was, it refereed to your ability to combine your efforts to benefit yourselves as a group.
"From what I have seen, unions are to protect the workers' rights against their employers."
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda. Keep thinking that.
"I didn't call anything "shit" and I certainly don't "keep calling them" anything."
And yet you used that word. Of all the words and analogies in the world you chose that one. It says something.
"You missed the point completely."
No you missed the point. Enjoy your job until it gets shipped to cambodia.
War is necrophilia.
> Are you aware that there are powerful organizations in the country that shape and frequently write the laws that get passed?
Yes, that is how "the system" "works." They write some laws that get passed, but they do not pass them themselves. The lobbyists would do very little if we were to actually vote good people into office. Although I suppose I am just as wrong as you, since lawyers aren't the ones who do it, it's poloticians -- most just happen to be lawyers, but many were lobbyists also.
> Keep thinking that.
I'll keep thinking that as long as I want because IT IS FUCKING TRUE, you dolt. I didn't say that's what they ACTUALLY did, I said it is what they are SUPPOSED to do. Try reading what I actually said before spouting off next time. Also, don't assume what I think. I think unions are outdated, corrupt organizations that steal money from their "members." (I put members in quotes because a lot of them are forced to pay dues, regardless of whether they actually join or not, and that money does nothing but line the pockets of the fucxers in charge.)
> Of all the words and analogies in the world you chose that one. It says something.
It says that I can make an analogy. If my analogy mentioned Michael Jackson, does that mean I am a child molester? Certainly not. You are the only one who read anything into it.
> Enjoy your job until it gets shipped to cambodia.
I see, if only you would have said "I am a Troll" beforehand, we could have saved a lot of time.
"Yes, that is how "the system" "works.""
The system works like this. People who are organized and are able to raise enough money to influence legislation do. Other people get the shaft.
Doctors and lawyers and other unions organize and influence the govt. Geeks are too stupid and spiteful to do such a thing so they get the shaft.
"I think unions are outdated, corrupt organizations that steal money from their "members.""
You keep thinking that if it makes you feel better.
"It says that I can make an analogy."
No it says that you know how to make shitty analogies.
War is necrophilia.
You know, jumping in, criticizing and making assumptions when you know nothing about the situation isn't a good idea. I bought it used, and had to as my last car (a 1994 Geo Metro that I also bought used) was on its last legs. Quite honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get the damn thing to the car lot, the alternator on it died again on the way there, the 4th one in a row to do so. It also had about 170,000 miles on it. At the time I had a job in my field (IT) that paid well ($46k a year). The car was certainly NOT unaffordable at the time I purchased it. Of coruse 6 months later I lost my job thanks to the economy. There was no real warning, the only signs something was coming happened a month before I lost it.
/. jumping into the argument is kinda the only option ;-). I was trying to point out a different viewpoint from yours. I still stand by my point on this paragraph. I owned a 93 Geo Prism (interestingly enough same problem with the altenator). Although I was making insane amount (55k, and I'm single) I bought something I could pay off in 3 months. And I'm glad I did, I lost my job 3 months after that. When I forsaw that money would get tight (insurance was $$$ still), I got a 1982 Ford for $700 and arranged to sell the new one. It was old and decrepid, but it could get me around for another 1000 miles until I had something to put together another paycheck. And the other thing was it was big enough to live out of if I needed to.
Yeah well, on
I know I'll definitely pass on advice from you when you think hitchiking (which can quite literally get you killed) is a valid alternative to keeping a car. And for the record, I do live in a rural area (not like all farms and all, but rural by big city standards). There is no bus service, there's about one whole taxi service in the whole county (And using a taxi each day to and from would likely cost more than the car payment + insurance each month). Biking to work is a bit out of the question because of the distance. Since I'm living with my folks to cut costs down, moving closer is not an option. And, quite frankly, neither is doing without a car.
Risk is part of life. I know someone who has lost a loved one while performing an act of automotive kindness and still suffers from it today. But I'd rather take a chance a taking a bullet or club to the head than starving to death.
[food]
One can get free food from colleges and universities also. (Sanatary) Food is probably the toughest to do on the cheap, and after some additional thoughon my side I will conceed this point to you and correct my own stance. My apologies
No it wasn't beside the point at all. The grandparent pretty much bluntly said that they should give up that fancy new car, etc. and quit to find a new job if they didn't like what SCO was doing. The reality of the situation is that most of those people still there are likely making just enough to get by, and cannot afford to quit until they find something else. And it's not necessarily anyone's fault that the pay rate is too low. In some areas (Silicon Valley especially), cost of living went up almost exponentially. Moving a company's physical headquarters is not an operation taken lightly. How many times have you heard of a major company moving in the past 10 years? I only remember one, Boeing, and I believe they're still working on finishing up the move.
In my opinion, yes it was beside the point. You may suffer a lifestile shift, perhaps a very,very dramatic one (eating from dumpsters and living in alleyways) for such an action. But is that a price you're willing to pay for what you believe in? You may not think so... the (great?) grandparent IMHO does, and that's what he's speaking out against--the people who are not willing to risk as much for what they believe in. I was merely tring to hold up his/her side. You may sink to very, very low levels of personal worth--but you can retain life. And thusl
- Sig
> No it says that you know how to make shitty analogies.
Or that you can't interpret analogies -- You seem to be the only one unable to grasp it.