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The Microsoft Salary and Review System
f1055man writes "If you can make it through the obvious bias, Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WASHTECH) has put together a revealing article on Microsoft's salary and review system. 'Internal Microsoft documents obtained by WashTech News show that Microsoft salaries have been stagnant or nudged only slightly higher over the past two years. Comments from current and former employees about the company's compensation and performance review system suggest a growing level of frustration among rank-and-file workers.'"
It may be for nerds, and it may at some level matter, but it's not news.
i thought M$ had the reputation of an employer that rewards staff pretty well. i didn't think that they were doing badly sales-wise, and that's the only reason i can imagine for a change in their behavior. does anybody know when their 10k is due? end of march, presumably?
ed
Whats the difference between a sweeper who is working very hard expecting a bonus at the year end and a programmer who does the same ? Whats is required is a difference in thinking. Never work expecting something. Work honestly and sincerely and do your best. In the end if u dont get the recognition u expected, move on... The important thing is being your own boss. Think of the value you are generating... If the company doesnt recognise it, maybe its time to realign yourself with the corporate goals, do some soul searching too. In the end, maybe it just maybe the time to move on...or better still start something on your own.
I have a big problem with salaries in the U.S. -- employees believe they have a right to a raise every year, even if they are not providing more service or helping the company with added efficiency.
The big problem in the States is the government's crazy dollar creation (what we call inflation is directly caused by the Fed's out of control printing of dollars). This inflation creates cost of living increases (including the housing bubble in my opinion). Because of this inflationary cycle, people demand cost of living increases.
For my businesses, I pay my employees the lowest salary possible, in some cases minimum wage. I myself only earn minimum wage. Yet my employees also get a much larger share of profits, up to 70% on a given project. They are directly tied to the performance of their work, as well as the performance of the market. I'm one of the lowest paid in my IT business (although I also do less work than most).
To get raises, your company has to be making more money in terms of net profits. Microsoft is a company that has to constantly find new ways to profit in order to grow. With the added competition in the marketplace, it surprises me that slashdot geeks constantly berate Microsoft for being a monopoly when they have one of the most volatile markets to sell to -- they're constantly having to find ways to keep customers happy.
I wouldn't work for (or invest in) Microsoft or any large tech company. The red tape and bureaucracy is enormous, and the management system is bound to fail at multiple places when their market turns.
If you are an employee of a company that isn't getting a raise this year, consider the realities of your market:
1. Is your company growing?
2. Is the growth reflected in real profits?
3. Does your company see a volatile near-future that they need to save for?
4. Are you personally more efficient or creating more income for your company?
5. Is your government printing more currency than the economy needs, causing inflation in consumer and housing prices? Does this inflationary cycle hurt your employer?
6. Is your employer's tax burden increasing even if they're paying you the same? Is this increased tax burden causing you to earn less?
When you're an employee, you put off the reward of a very high salary by hedging against the risk of running a business. Some people believe a business' only goal is to generate profits for the owners, but this in totally untrue. A business operates to generate profits in the long run, not the short run. The only way to profit in the long run is to make your customers happy and return for more. Also, the only way to profit is for your employees to be operating more efficiently (more work or less cost) than your competitors. Profitable years might be needed to cover unprofitable years, so you can not focus on only one year or 5 years -- you have to look at the overall picture. When you take a salaried job, you give up having to worry about these things in exchange for job security.
Sometimes you won't get raises, but the world will get more expensive around you. You can almost always blame across-the-board cost of living increases on the guys printing the money. Across-the-board prices don't go up unless the money supply goes up. Don't blame your boss for not being able to compensate for these mistakes made by the central banks.
I don't even have a job you insensitive clod!
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I know we think we are intitled... but come on... this is what every industry is doing. I mean, damn, I don't use M$ stuff either... but, I also don't think I am entitled. I am blessed to make some loot and have a job. I get raises that are good enough for me to live comfortably.
Evolution or ID?
But Boeing's engineers enjoy far more transparency about pay levels and their review system due to collective bargaining agreements between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace union (SPEEA). SPEEA represents about 22,000 engineers, the majority of whom work in the Northwest.
This whole article is just another call for collective bargaining agreements and a union.
These sorts of things often lead to something like Blue-Flu
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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"I love working at Microsoft but cannot stay in an environment where I am treated shabbily and afforded no opportunity to defend myself against such treatment."
So are we to deduce that this person at one point loved working in an environment where they were treated shabbily and could not defend themselves? Or they did not know this was the culture at Microsoft and later found out the hard way?
The whole quote about favouritism in reviews (unfortunately) rings true about many companies, not just Microsoft. My advice is if you are unhappy - leave, no one is forcing them to work for Microsoft. And it might just be the best move of your life.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It is a free market system, so they can always get a new job and be released by a "contractor" or summer intern. Assuming they do not have issues because of kids, preconditions, or some other factor that renders them unable to perform the way economic theory says they should.
For all the talk about the economy picking up, jobs being plentiful and it being an employee's market, I have to say the raises for the past few years have been dismal at best. A raise of about 3% has been pretty much standard this year, which doesn't even keep up with inflation, let alone the rising cost of keeping your home (presuming you've bought one in this crazy market).
The value of my home just went up by $146,000 this year alone -- and before you start accusing me of being too greedy, know that I'm not interested in selling, just living here. All that extra value is pure fluff, the stuff that dot-com stocks were made of. The problem is, I'm being forced to pay property taxes that are going up at the rate of 25% a year just to keep my house. Fat chance trying to find a job where my income increases commensurately.
I've no idea what to do, and I'm seriously considering moving to India, and joining the growing contingent of foreign workers there.
Somebody explain to my why it seems that despite the dollar figure of my salary that's far above what my parents earned at my age, I still feel poorer.... and I'm a good saver!
have you even looked at the benefits in addtion to the base salary?
I have a big problem with people like you who have that attitude. Have you heard of a cost of living increase? I have been working for three years without even one of those. In essence, although my value to my company has increased, they are lowering my salary.
For my businesses, I pay my employees the lowest salary possible, in some cases minimum wage. I myself only earn minimum wage. Yet my employees also get a much larger share of profits, up to 70% on a given project. They are directly tied to the performance of their work, as well as the performance of the market. I'm one of the lowest paid in my IT business (although I also do less work than most).
That may be great during good times, but what happens if your business falls on hard times? If you aren't compensating your employees appropriately, do you think they are going to stay? You see, salary is a form of compensation. If you don't pay your employees anything but or near minimum wage, you must not think very highly of your work. Just because an effort fails, does not mean that it was for lack of trying. Profit sharing should be an extra incentive to work even harder.
because expenses are up.
All those broken chairs at Redmond sure do add up.
Rudimentary economic theory would suggest that if there is a high tech worker shortage, which MS contends exists, then their employees' rate of salary increase would significantly outstrip the national average.
That is, this is another indicator of what we suspected all along: The only shortage is of experienced engineers under age 35 willing to work at the depressed wages offered by H1B and offshore laborers.
No big government program to train scientists and engineers to eliminate the "shortage" is necessary. Supply meets demand when prices fall in to line. Let the market work.
Its all very simple: if you are paid below your worth, look for an employer that will pay what you are worth. If you can't find one then adjust your concept of what you are worth.
There. One could even make a flowchart of that.
To be honest, I don't see a lot of reason for discontent over 'stagnant' pay comming from rank and file workers at Microsoft. I haven't noticed any major fluctuations within IT job market as a whole when it comes to pay rates in the last two years. And the whole situation becomes even less surprising if one takes into account these two factors:
Company size. Microsoft is not a small business, nor medium, nor even a large one. It's humongous. Thus, it is not really practical to talk about giving raises to i.e. top 5% or 10% performance employees like so many other companies do. In fact, even giving raises to just top 1% of employees still would bump the salary budget significantly every year.
Benefits. From what Net has been saying for years now, Microsoft's benefits and policies really don't suck. From stock options to silly things like 'nap time' during work hours, being a med-level employee for Microsoft doesn't seem to be really all that bad. Just as you check 401K and other benefits when considering work for Sun, IBM or any other IT (or non-IT) company, so too you should consider Microsoft's benefits before you complain about your stagnant pay.
Regarding elements of the article I find interesting: According to employees, who said they would be fired if they spoke on the record, the annual review amounts to little more than a closed-door popularity contest in which managers "fight" for higher scores for their team, or defer to higher-level decision makers who mandate how many workers drop to the bottom of the review scale. - this is definitely nothing unusual. In fact, if my manager didn't fight tooth and nail to prove that me and my team are better than other teams and get us raises or bonuses, seriously, I wouldn't have too high an opinion of him. Likewise, I have to notice that article focuses on salary itself - there is nothing in it about bonuses and incentives that I could find. Having a spouse who works for a major IT industry, I have to say I'm regularly stunned by the sums on her 'chrismas checks', 'yearly performance bonuses' and other 'small' things like that - they certainly make a significant portion of her yearly income (and regularly mess up our taxes, too).
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
"Large corporation with enormous bureaucracy has internal politics" Where's the story?
Yeah, I worked for MS for 5 years. Yes the review system runs largely on Politics - those who play the game get the rewards. How is this different from 99% of the rest of corporate America?
MS takes pretty darn good care of it's employees (my salary at MS was anywhere from 150% to 200% of industry standard for my position depending on whose numbers you looked at, and that doesn't even count top notch health benefits). In return, they expect you to buy into the company culture that your job is your only priority. I knew guys who would set up their Outlook to send emails at 2 and 3 in the morning to give the impression they were working late. I had a manager who's only measure of an employee's worth was whether or not they were working at least 10 hours of "overtime". Our Society as a whole tends to reward appearance over substance 9 times our of 10. Why is it a shock when corporations follow suit. If you were willing to spend the time and effort to play the game, you too could get the rewards. Personally, I couldn't stand the Company Culture at MS and that's why I'm not working there anymore and will not be working there for a long, long time (if ever) if I can help it. But just because that culture doesn't jive with my own standards and priorities doesn't make it immoral or illegal.
Now, there's business practices of upper management that are a whole other story as far as immoral and illegal, but I'm not getting into that here.
Heh, reminds me of my favorite joke while I was working there "The day Microsoft sells something that doesn't suck is the day Microsoft starts selling Vacuum Cleaners".
Raises every year went away around 1969 IIRC. The reason employees are clamoring for raises is their cost of living goes up every year. During the last year my property taxes have gone up 22%, health care went up 30%, deductibles doubled, gas went way up. My salary hasnt gone up at all. BTW the reason for inflation is not govt printing more dollars-- that's both irrelevant and inconsequential. You could do your business a favor by reading some basic book on macroeconomics.
They should kidnap people like you and force them to major in Economics at a Real School. Then you might not do so much harm to the world.
I strongly advise getting a passport and going to see how the rest of the world lives if you think 2-3% inflation is out of control.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I certainly agree raises are not an entitlement,
and businesses have constraints on how generous they
can be.
But one large factor that affects salary costs is
that hiring for top quality, highly productive people
is very competitive. You may have to match or beat other
employer's offers to get them on board and retain them.
Run of the mill folks may not get raises, but you need
to make sure your top talent is not walking out the
door.
Or, in the words of Bill Clinton circa 1992: "It's the economy stupid!"
My earnings have been flat since 2000, and significantly lower than what I made in 1997-8. The same (mostly) can be said for my staff. If I could pay them more, I would in a heartbeat, but we haven't been able to raise prices in 6 years, so revenues have grown, right along with costs which means profits remain... dismal. If I gathered up all the profit our company has made in the past 6 years, I MIGHT be able to purchase a small Korean sedan. Instead I've done what any smart employer can do, which is give rasies where I can (which means NOT to me sadly) and plowed the rest of it back into the company. We should all be earning 40% more than we are, but we're not. Deal with it.
I have a big problem with salaries in the U.S. -- employees believe they have a right to a raise every year, even if they are not providing more service or helping the company with added efficiency.
Typically, technical employees DO provide more service every year, based on constantly learning how to do what they do better, as well as commonly picking up other skills from surrounding employees. In addition to this, many times, when an employee quits, it is up to the existing employees to pick up the slack, because the company won't hire a replacement, or hires an entry level replacement which can only pick up a small amount of the work that was done by the outgoing person.
In addition, every year, the cost of living goes up. Many companies consider a Cost of Living Adjustment a raise, but it is absolutely not. It just allows you to maintain the same style of living you had last year. If you do not receive even a Cost of Living Adjustment, your style of living must diminish, and your company is saying to you that you are worth less to them this year than you were last year.
You mention several things that may be affecting the companies ability to pay raises. Well, that's life. We justify high CEO salaries by saying that they take all the risk in running the business. But in reality this is purest BS. The employees take all the risk because they will be fired, not the CEO. They will not receive raises if money is short. Even if the CEO gets canned, he will get a glorious severance package. Plus, the fact that he was a spectacular failure as a CEO is worth more on a resume than if hw was a spectacular success as a programmer.
You also mention that businesses have to look long term, over 5 years or more. In publically held companies, I observe that the "public" will not allow them to look more than one quarter in the future. Investors will not allow them to spend more money on research or developing new products. Everything is quarter to quarter financials until the old products you have become obsolete and your business fails.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...it has to be with all the chairs soaring through the hallways.
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The big problem in the States is the government's crazy dollar creation (what we call inflation is directly caused by the Fed's out of control printing of dollars). This inflation creates cost of living increases (including the housing bubble in my opinion). Because of this inflationary cycle, people demand cost of living increases.
I agree that the reasoning behind cost of living increases is somewhat circular. But this tail wagging the dog notion of inflation applied during the 1970's when US government fiscal policy was inflationary. That is no longer the case. We have plenty of other problems instead. The housing bubble was encouraged by persistent, historically low interest rates. It enlarged the number of buyers. It allowed people to buy up in value. Those same people continue to flip properties in the virtuous (I say vicious) cycle. Low interest rates are due to the insatiable appetite of export economies (like China and Japan) for US treasuries and other investments. They make enormous profits, they don't consume, so they have nowhere to put their money. You can't 'invest' in over capacity forever. They also have their own real estate speculation problems. At the moment we in the US are partying on their cheap money. Enjoy it while it lasts.
an ill wind that blows no good
Obviously you never heard of inflation, otherwise everything, and I mean everything in a free market society will be devalued over time. On the flip side I hope you can still charge 12$/hr to your customers (100% markup) in 15yrs. That's what more employers do: raise customer prices, lower employee salaries.
Companies that are owned by stock holders are only interested in profits, and then only as a way to boost stock share prices enough for them to sell for a gain. That means companies with stock holders do stupid things like fire 30% of their staff to make a profit or create short term gains at the cost of long term growth, thus threatening everyone's jobs.
I'd suggest anyone working for such a company to quit.
The company has no long term investment in you and would fire you in a minute if it meant their bottom line would increase their stock values. Half the time they aren't even looking to be more profitable... they just want to increase stock prices. The trend of not paying dividends has left public held companies in bad standing.
What you should be looking for is a small company that will value you and where replacing you would be painful and where making you a better and empowered worker wont threaten the employer with ideas that you'll run away with your new found skills.
Or better yet, start your own company. If you are working for a company (if a company pays you) you're obviously worth twice that. They can't make a profit on you if you aren't.
You can almost always blame across-the-board cost of living increases on the guys printing the money. Across-the-board prices don't go up unless the money supply goes up. Don't blame your boss for not being able to compensate for these mistakes made by the central banks.
Blame schmame. Who cares who's to blame? The central bank doesn't give anyone a raise, but your boss does. Inflation is here to stay, and your problem with a small inflation rate doesn't make it go away. Expenses will go up, and the vast majority of workers will expect cost of living increases. Maybe not ever year, but over the long run yes.
(oh, BTW the inflation rate is not largely an effect of the amount of currency printed, but largely controlled by the prime interest rate, among other things)
AccountKiller
^^
This idiot fad needs to end.
IANAE but it seems inane to me to blame inflation on printing of money. Surely it is the other way around, i.e. the only way one can get extra money out of a bank is because it has earned interest. So the extra printed money is actually used to pay people for interest earned. The fact that we work under an inflationary economy where people are expected to earn money for having money is the real underlying issue here. Inflation is therefore caused by the inflationary pressure of expected interest earnings which is passed on to the customer as added value (price) in the product sold. One can easily drive up inflation by increasing interest rates and the converse is true notice that inflation has been really low over the last few years when interest rates were low.
I just got hired at Microsoft India as an SDE (I'm straight out of college). My annual salary is US$15 K. Thats right - fifteen thousand dollars. And I'll be happy to work for that. I also get 70 shares that vest over 5 years.
Well, I am a Microsoft employee, but far from disgruntled :) Like you, I am a new grad, and honestly, I have no reason to complain as far as the salary or the perks go. It could be much much worse than this. Good luck at wherever you chose to go instead!
Retaining talent is one thing. Retaining your best talent is the key. In the IT industry your top 20% produce at a level many times the bottom 20%. There needs to be a means of identifying the best of the best...and rewarding them...and culling the herd.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
The parent poster did address cost of living increases, but he said that cost of living increases are formed by inflation. Some businesses are unable to keep up with inflation and therefore are unable to raise their workers' salaries. Inflation results in higher cost of living, because the money is worth less than it used to be.
Businesses generally want to pay their employees as least as possible but at fair market value in order to keep the workers happy and productive. They try to keep up with inflation and other market situations (such as cost of living), in order to keep their labor. However, businesses sometimes are unable to keep up (inflation, loss of profits, etc.) and make up for that via no raises (or worse, wage cuts), layoffs, etc.
Is there a mirror somewhere?
Wow, that's more than I get with 17 years of experience. You'll pardon me if I don't weep for the poor Microsoft employees.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I've pointed you before to Nick Corcodilos' Ask the Headhunter, which is a great way for salaried employees to start building the important perspective you're talking about. He's got an article about how to handle performance reviews that talks about basing your review on the profit you actually make for the company.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You are wrong. If the goverment prints more money and does not remove an equal amount from the market the price of a dollar will fall and with it your purchasing power. This leads to inflation. Look up some soviet states to see how well printing money served them...
You could do your business a favor by reading some basic book on macroeconomics.
You could do your personal financial situation a favor by checking out everything the parent poster has to say on the subject, as well as this book which I know he is going to point you to: http://www.mises.org/money.asp
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Morpheus: Welcome to the desert of the real.
I'm glad you're honest.
When your company has a "best year ever" because you busted your ass and you don't get a raise, you might not work as hard the next year.
A company has obligations to it's customers, it's owners and it's employees. If it ever screws one, it will eventually get around to screwing them all. That's what happens when you think it's OK to screw people. Microsoft has screwed all three repeatedly.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
the reason for inflation is not govt printing more dollars--
The reason for inflation is general appreciation of prices based on the (circular) expectation of increased prices. If your government prints money its increasing the supply of one commodity - dollars - which people want in order to buy things. If you oversupply the commodity, its price falls. So the value of the dollar falls relative to everything, or (from the other side) the price of everything goes up. Now thats inflation, so I don't know what planet you've been living on. Ah, except salary - yes well most of the US has been suffering an effective pay cut year on year for the last 20 years, pay packets have not increased and the dollar value is sinking. But strangely, its not gone down by as much as it really should given the profligate money printing that has been going on. The reason for that is that countries at the moment have to buy oil in dollars, propping up the value. What , Iran and Venezuela want to sell oil in Euros?? US = fucked.
Bill Gates obviously thinks 64k should be enough for anybody.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Nearly all people that seriously study economics agree that inflation is due to increased money supply. Traditionally people think of physically printing more money as the way to increase money supply. These days, the increased money supply is more a result of government interest rates.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
The employees take all the risk because they will be fired, not the CEO.
I work at a monstrously large company that fired its CEO a few years ago for screwing up big time. We are so much better off. I'm still here, and he's not. I've been here eight years.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
1: Inflation is far more complex that you make it out to be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InflatioN 2: If you don't get a raise equal or greateer then the inflation a yeear you are realy getting a pay cut.
This inflation creates cost of living increases (including the housing bubble in my opinion). Because of this inflationary cycle, people demand cost of living increases.
The housing bubble was created by a complete lack of confidence in the stock market. The investors then put more money into land, tying up a greater percentage of it and causing the prices to go up. If they sell land to put the money back in the stock market, the market will jump 10% in a month, and the price of land will drop 10-30%. Hopefully they won't all go at once and make the big popping sound.
But, back to the topic at hand, if you recognize inflation as something that happens, and something that won't go away, I can't see how you complain about raises as a matter of course. The employee costs you the same this year as last if you give them the 2% raise. You say they should get the same, unless they distinguish themselves, so you should be giving them a raise by what you said. However, it seems that you hate the government and take it out on your employees. Like you are trying to convert them to gold-standard nuts or something by blaming their lower wagers each year on the government. But, since it is a factor you are aware of and can correct for, your conscious decision to lower their buying power is the act that hurts them, not inflation.
Learn to love Alaska
> Don't blame your boss for not being able to compensate for these mistakes made by the central banks.
So you fucking want the employees to take a hit but not your company? What makes your company so special?!? I can suggest your companies goes put the blame on the guys printing the money, rather than whine that they made a bad investment in the workers and now need to pay them less. Of course, companies never make mistakes and should never expect to lose money!
...if you hadn't slept through Econ 101. Inflation is inevitable. If you don't get a raise, you're getting a pay cut. Welcome to the real world.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Their products have not gotten any better, their support has tanked, and the only thing keeping them afloat are their unreformed monopolistic practices. If it were truly a Free Market, then they would be downsizing....and the attitude of 'entitlement' would be the first indicator of whe needed to go.
I don't think MS is anything special here. This bullshit goes on at pretty much every company. You work at a cube farm, you get treated like an animal. Hell, my company sent out a company-wide email last week saying pay raises will be reflected in our next paycheck. There hasn't been one mention of reviews. In fact, reviews are sporadic at my co, apparently. Sometimes January, sometimes March. Eitehr that, or I'm getting fired next week since my boss hasn't mentioned one word about my review.
If you want control of your own pay, start your own gig. Plain and simple. That's what I'm in the middle of doing. I think it's absurd that millions of people bust their asses from 40-60 hours per week only to get a measly 2-4% annual raise. Why put in the effort for an extra $30 or so a week?
You will not advance over the 50% mark of your company's pay scale. Since the 1990s, personnel and payroll departments in companies have instituted a graduated pay structure often called "Banding" or "Leveled Pay" to save costs. The concept behind these systems is to organize employees into similar grades depending upon job category and responsibility. A secretary and a construction worker may be placed into the same grade, while their managers and engineers would be placed at a higher grade. These grades span a set amount of money, so for example the construction worker may earn anywhere between $30,000 and $50,000 per year.
However, this system was also structured to keep dangling a carrot in front of the eyes of the employee. The midpoint in these systems is designated as the "market average". Therefore, if you are near this midpoint, you are considered "paid competitively" compared to the rest of the people in that niche market. This makes the possibility for future raises smaller or nonexistent. For the sample construction worker, this would mean that he would not advance above $40,000 per year. While you may believe that you have the possibility of getting up to the top point in the grade, the system is intentionally designed to retard compensation.
I welcome any thoughts if this could be stated better.
--Chag
Bias? If Bill Gates lectured a room about wage structures at Microsoft, you wouldn't preface his remarks with a warning about his "bias".
The American english vocabulary lacks words for precision in this, but here goes. The word "bias", in use by rightists (don't believe in worker's rights to collectively, do strongly believe in corporate/business owner rights to pay whatever they like) is only used against, SIGH, "left-wing" views. Never is the term pejoratively used against the vast panoply of pro-rightists who permeate the entire media, business sector and political arena. I assume this is because the rightists who speak are always correct, and therefore cannot be biased.
It's a situation based in mob-hysterical truthiness. Anything to the right of Limbaugh is now biased and lefty and of course, wrong.
The rightists have a stranglehold on reality now. They are holding a bag over reality's head and will not let it breath until the body goes limp.
But reality really doesn't need a voice to be heard. The economy is collapsing from the bottom upwards. We've borrowed another 4 trillion. The interest rates will increase becaues of that, and the annual debt interest payments will top 25% of Federal spending, and we as a nation will go broke, WHILE raising taxes. The dollar will devalue. We're making nothing anyone wants to buy at the prices we can charge. New jobs are Wal-Mart jobs. Medicaid and Medicare are vastly underfunded and will collapse. And they still will cut more jobs and cut the wages they pay.
No matter how hard you try to silence reality with the nonsensical "bias" label, it will win because whatever memes cable TV news network and Regnery press pump into the culture, wages will still collapse, the housing market will both collapse in poorer areas and hyperinflate in the wealthy districts, and there won't be any real jobs to be had.
The readers of Slashdot, young, male, college educated and well employed, are largely insulated from the 90% of the population that will experience the collapse first. But even you all will notice things not working well, and soon. But will you be able to even frame the reality if you are semantically hobbled with rightist word games? Bias indeed.
Yeah, I wish I understood how inflation rates are calculated. Heating costs have doubled for many people in the last several years--that's hundreds of dollars a year. My health insurance went up about 10% this year--again, potentially hundreds per year. My mortgage escrow also went up about 10% (taxes and insurance). Yet, the newscasts still say inflation is amost non-existent. I suspect that inflation is much much higher for some people, and the average must work out fairly low.
*applauds*
Auron may be different, Cally, but on Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
Show me a union where the leaders of the union are actually currently working in the jobs that they claim to represent, make within a standard deviation of the mean income of the union members, and recieve no compensation for leading the union, and I might agree, for that particular union, anyway.
Some people argue that the union can't function that way, ignoring the fact that not only have unions worked that way, but they were started that way. Unions don't stay that way because they are so easily corruptible, and so useful to organized crime, politics, etc.
I was a union member, once. Once was more than enough.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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You are absolutely correct, starting a "gig" that becomes successful does indeed have more reward than working for Microsoft (now that stock options are thin and Microsoft's stock price increase is tepid). But there is the little caveat above: "becomes successful". In the last few years consultants have either been out of work or struggling. Consulting pay is down. Doing a product oriented startup also has risk, since most startup companies fail. So the rewards that you foresee (and hopefully will acheive) is coupled with risk. The only people who get big rewards these days without taking a lot of risk are big company CEOs.
So why does anyone work for someone else? Less risk. If you have a family to support, you may be unwilling to accept the level of risk required for a higher reward. It all depends on were you are in life.
Just like many others have said, I don't see this as news. Microsoft is just like every other big company? Surprise.
The problem with US companies - perhaps all companies - is that culture is completely upside down. People who run and own companies (executives and shareholders) are interested in more profits today. Or at least this quarter. Short-term, in any event.
In order to get those short term gains, the company cuts every cost possible. Considering that payroll and benefits is usually the biggest expense to a company, employees (the people doing the work that generates the profit) get to take home only as much as will keep them coming to work tomorrow.
A longer term view would be of benefit to everyone, including the people at the top who are interested in profits. The first aim of management should be to keep its employees very happy. Those employees will, in turn, keep customers happy. The customers will continue to purchase what you're selling, and will tell their colleagues about how great you are.
End result? Employees are happy and well-compensated. (Side note: I know that I would be more productive at work if I didn't have to worry about making ends meet at home.) Customers are satisfied and deliver profits with their own purchases and referrals. Management gets big bonuses. Shareholders get a higher value for their stock.
If your goal is to increase profits, the fallout is having to clean up after a short term gain. If your goal is to increase share value, the fallout is to clean up after shareholders take their short term gains. If your goal is to take good care of your employees, the long term benefits are substantial. This is how Japan took over the US auto industry; with five and ten year plans.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy for executives in the US to jump from one company to another, squeezing the life out of each until it's time to jump again.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
So in other words, this is MS SARS. Am I wrong in thinking that they claim that Windows Defender can cure it, or at least inoculate against it?
Money for nothing, pix for free
If it doesn't make Bill any money...it ain't happening.
And paying other people more than they're getting now doesn't make him any money - in his opinion, at least.
The Microsoft employees should form a charitable foundation and let Bill "donate" his stock to it. Then he'd go for it since he could use it as a PR and stock laundering and corporate investment scheme like he does his own foundation. The employees could be paid out of the income of the foundation like the charities get their money.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
There is a shortage of skilled IT workers who are willing to work for minimum wage.
As the law of supply and demand dictates, more workers in the market would mean lower salaries in general. Since M$ currently has to pay software developers more than it would like to, there is obviously a shortage.
i am currently an hp employee and got no pay raise and a very small one last year. What did I do, found another job with 20% pay raise. Although my paticular expertise and field is somewhat unique as I am almost guranteed a job for the rest of (as long as the federal government exists)
Personally I think one thing that lacks for programmers and other employee's with similar ideologies (testers.... IT) is that we are highly independent but can be a force to reckon with when we form together. I think the problem currently is that due to our independence we have a problem forming unions, we need to understand that to "stick it to the man" we need to unionize, even though this may mean lose of independence (even though in some ways gaining more power) we can not let ms or others run over you with a steamroller. Continually as new companies get larger, they all get stagnant and everything turns politically, so we need to do the same and fight back....
Its about time some type of union was created for geeks and nerds to fight back...
"Stick it to the man" time.. just watch out for flying chairs and angry managers
"Live long and prosper"
Actually, you Americans have such a low inflation rate despite the amount of paper money printed by your central bank because most of this paper ends up in the dollar reserves of foreign central banks. This happens because all those foreign central banks believe that having tons of dollar bills stored equals their countries being "rich" (much in the same way as the XVII century merchantilists believed that having tons of gold stored away meant their countries were "rich"). Since all these bills aren't running around in the real American economy, they don't make prices go up.
If (or when) those central banks decide spending those dollars by sending them back to the USA, the violent increase in the amount of bills in the economy will make the inflationary American bubble crash hard. Good prices will double, triple, or even more.
And why? Simple: because if you had 'x' tons of goods and 'y' tons of bills, thus 'y' being able to buy 'x', now you'll have the same 'x' tons of goods, but '3y' tons of bills, meaning '3y' = 'x'.
Now, guess which country is planning to do exactly that? If you guessed "China", you guessed right. They see themselves as enemies of the USA, and they see all the dollar bills they accumulated as just another weapon among many.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Could this be the exception that proves the rule?
emt 377 emt 4
"Bill Gates obviously thinks 64k should be enough for anybody."
With the obvious exclusion of Bill himself!
YOU could do yourself a favour reading some good criticism of macroeconomics nonsense.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I strongly advise getting a passport and going to see how the rest of the world lives if you think 2-3% inflation is out of control.
I just spent 3 weeks in Europe and Asia specifically to see how things are in the rest of the world. Inflation is a monster in every country, but just because all the other wolves are stealing the savings of the sheep doesn't mean it's correct.
That should be what standard of living does $15K afford you in Hyderbad, India vs. $75K in Seattle, WA? I think the answer is quite a bit lower. Rents in that area of India appear to be quite high compared to the rest of the country. That said, it seems to be a heck of a lot nicer than the rest of the country too! My guess-ti-math is in the 50% lower COL range, about like making $40K in Seattle. Still not terrible for right out of school.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I have a big problem with salaries in the U.S. -- employees believe they have a right to a raise every year, even if they are not providing more service or helping the company with added efficiency.
.. because even though the government may be fraking things up, it is still your problem to resolve. Otherwise, it is mine, and trust me - you won't like my answer.
Lets say I put in 110% for the company. Good for me, I get a bonus. The next year I put in that same 'above and beyond' level of effort - but now my effort only pays out bonus - cost of living. Do this for five years and I'm probably better off putting that extra energy into your competitor's company.
I'd argue that a cost of living increase is not a raise. While I agree many folks do not deserve a raise - or even the current salary they draw - I know I have the expectation that all things being equal my salary should also match the inflation rates. If not, I make that much less every year I work for the shop. If you are running a shop based on strict profit %, than I'd hope the profits will reflect the inflation, thus covering the cost of living increases as I'm sure your bill rates, etc, are also taking into account that money printing thing... If not, yikes! Or worse - I have to be more creative, put in longer hours, etc, just to keep up with my taxes and other costs just to tread water from a financial standpoint. Must be counting on turn and burn from an employment standpoint, because a highly motivated talent would be boned in less than a decade.
And yes, I would blame my boss for not sorting this, then the company. Then someone at the company gets to figure out what the efficiency loss is when you replace a dedicated employee who has been caring for your customers and making real profits for the company for the last 8 years finds a better gig somewhere else.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
-- Bridget
What you are saying is very close to what many Keynesian economists believe -- the same economists teaching ECON101 and teaching the general public a myth that is now a lie.
I'd highly recommend going and download Rothbard's free and tiny e-book: http://www.mises.org/money.asp
Inflation is directly caused by government printing money out of thin air. Then, they lower interest rates (the Fed policy) to give people easy credit and easy money. If I put $500 into your pocket today, you'd spend it. If I gave $500 to every person in this country that never existed before, they'd all spend it at the same time. All this new money in the system will make sellers raise prices (added demand, lower supply) which is how inflation sneaks in.
Even worse, government uses inflationary creationism to force a hidden tax on you. Every year, your salary goes up but not enough to cover the REAL costs of inflation. This means you slide into higher tax brackets, causing you to pay more taxes on less income.
Taxation is theft, plain and simple. Inflation by the Fed is an even bigger crime.
Wow - people are complaining about 3-5% inflation? You do know that there is a trade off between inflation and unemployment, right? So you are arguing for higher unemployment? Weird! (OK, the link is not obvious, but it is extremely strong - essentially if money is harder to get, less companies are formed / less projects are started, so less jobs are available - this is readily apparent in economic data)
3-5% inflation is normally regarded as a healthy level. One reason for this is that companies that need to cut employees salaries but can't just do not give wages (which is better for the economy in general than firing people, as long as the company recovers), much like what you said.
Of course, issuing debt causes many other problems, and of course if the debt is called due we would be forced into sky high inflation.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Then there's Google, which overshadows companies with unique, engaging work while paying half as much. But if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life. Payment isn't just monetary, it's in the chance of getting to do cool stuff as one wants. Maybe other companies could realize this.
I'm still here, and he's not. I've been here eight years.
Yeah, he's been lying in the sun all these years. Seriously, what did they pay him for being fired?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
The problem with getting minimum wage but sharing on the company profits is that employees aren't always in a decisive position when it comes to a company success. I feel that bonuses are important in making sure that employees do their best, but it shouldn't go the other way, because then your making employees pay the cost of bad management/sales/etc.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
I prefer this slow deflation versus inflation.
In a fixed money base (let us call it a 100% gold-backed reserve banking system), there will be more people and more products chasing the same quantity of money in the system. This means prices will fall as everyone tries to attract people to their goods and services. Over time, wages fall, but so do prices.
This is a GOOD thing. If you have $1 today, you want to spend it because you know in 1 year that $1 is worth less. In a free market, when you have $1 today, you want to save it because prices fall over time.
When you save money in a free market, you generally give it to a bank. In a free market with the Fed, banks that need money will offer better interest rates (not the 1% you get today). By investing that money in a bank, they are free to loan it to stable businesses with good business plans and equity, who are able to pay the loan back. They'll also loan it out to homeowners, but at a much higher interest rate than we see today.
Higher interest rates all around mean more wealth is created for everyone, rather than the quite theft that inflation takes from us, that confuses the entrepreneurs and that creates a massive amount of debt for your children and grandchildren to pay back. The US currenty has debt and off-book liabilities totalling over US$70 trillion. We can never pay this back, so we shove it to the next generations.
I'm a moral guy, and I think this is wrong. I'd rather live poorly than make others pay for my mistakes. The rest of the country would rather live beyond their means and let others pay for it.
I know, it's terrible.
I've bought two houses in the past five years, and they didn't increase in value at all.
I've also been working at my current job for almost 18 months, and my salary's only gone up 11.76% (rounded).
Also I don't expect my salary to go up more than 10-15% or so during the next year.
I won't get a bonus (expected 5-8% of salary) until a year from now.
My company only matches half of the first 6% of my 401K donations, and only gave me 6% of my salary in company stock as more retirement this year.
Plus, the company stock is only worth a little over 19 times what it was 9 years ago.
Maybe if I weren't a math major, I'd have found a better job.
I need a union.
"It's a situation based in mob-hysterical truthiness. Anything to the right of Limbaugh is now biased and lefty and of course, wrong."
That doesn't even make any sense.
"The rightists have a stranglehold on reality now. They are holding a bag over reality's head and will not let it breath until the body goes limp."
Metaphor alert... metaphor alert...
"The economy is collapsing from the bottom upwards."
I guess that's why 90% of welfare recipients nowadays have a car, color TV, cellphone, etc. etc. Anyway, the rest of your post is basically nonsensical. Sober up next time before typing.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
This happens because all those foreign central banks believe that having tons of dollar bills stored equals their countries being "rich" (much in the same way as the XVII century merchantilists believed that having tons of gold stored away meant their countries were "rich"). Since all these bills aren't running around in the real American economy, they don't make prices go up.
This is so true, and most people do not realize this. Our economy is _very_ fragile because of these foreign stores of our cash. I personally believe the Iraq was was entirely based to maintain this economy. Iraq in November of 2000 decided to start trading oil in Euros, not US dollars, which would have greatly watered down our foreign reserve bank status and inflation could start getting out of control. Do a search on "November 2000 iraq euro dollar" if you don't believe me. We will see what happens if Venezuela switches like they talk about from time to time.
Imagine having to use a shopping cart full of money to buy a loaf of bread? That's inflation.
Step 2 is not "bank prints more money"; step 2 is: "bank lends money at a higher interest rate".
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I have a big problem with people like you who have that attitude. Have you heard of a cost of living increase? I have been working for three years without even one of those. In essence, although my value to my company has increased, they are lowering my salary.
And this is your employer's fault? It is your job to work at the rate you're paid. If you want more money, you have to find someone willing to pay for it.
Your employee compensates you for what you are worth to them. If you want more money, you have to find someone else willing to pay you the increased amount. This is how competition works -- no one will just give you money because you think you deserve it. You have to warrant it.
If you don't pay your employees anything but or near minimum wage, you must not think very highly of your work. Just because an effort fails, does not mean that it was for lack of trying. Profit sharing should be an extra incentive to work even harder.
And yet I don't have people quit my businesses. I pay minimum wage plus a huge bonus because it gives people the added incentive to work really hard and get the job done. On top of that, they want to do a quality job so that we get rehired on contracts in the future.
You make a salary that is rarely tied to the amount of work you do. You feel safe and secure. My employees make more money than if they worked under a salary system -- they're tied directly to the work they do and the profitability of the project. On top of that, they want our customers happy.
Remember, I am the customer of the employee. I hate the term employer -- I am THEIR customer. They're working to satisfy me. I take all their work together, bundle it as a final product, and sell it to my customer.
If you feel you're worth more, shop around. I'm always looking for more people to hire, but the people I interview are 99% overpaid already, and have no desire to be good workers.
Then you have systems like where my dad works where everyone with the same job gets the same pay. If you happen to be really motivated & efficient you get paid the same as the guy who's playing solitare in the corner.
Are these results from two different systems inevitable? Is there a better way?
The inflation figure that the government (the BLS) creates is based on BS. Robert Blumen has a great article regarding this manipulation. They swap out numbers at will to hide the fact that they're creating money out of thin air, and depreciating the value of your money. The stock market has only gone up 500% in 90 years in terms of real value because of money printing.
There are a few links to Rothbard's book in this entire thread. It is a free and tiny e-book, I'd highly recommend reading it.
Note the source is a union organization wanting to organize unions of technical workers and make MSFT a union shop. Nothing wrong with that but it will make life fun for contractors like myself who occasionally get work there. And the programmers will be on salary schedules so no bright stars need apply, they won't be rewarded for their extra efforts. So this particular news source has just a bit of bias. MSFT used to have the best and brightest and paid for the priviledge. That has not been true for many years so this is not exactly news to the folks around here.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Let's see... the average salary in India is $3,400. In the US, it's $41,800. So, the Microsoft worker in India making $15,000 makes 341% more than the average Indian. The Microsoft worker in Seattle making $75,000 makes 79% more than the average American.
Oh, and rents around Seattle are also quite a bit higher than the rest of the country.
The big problem in the States is the government's crazy dollar creation (what we call inflation is directly caused by the Fed's out of control printing of dollars).
No. What we call inflation is caused by simple human greed. Prices are discreetly hiked by companies looking to make just that little bit extra. The cycle begins, inflation ensues. The governments job is to find a way to stop the cycle spiralling out of control.
Some people believe a business' only goal is to generate profits for the owners, but this in totally untrue. A business operates to generate profits in the long run, not the short run. The only way to profit in the long run is to make your customers happy and return for more.
Just to let you know, you're operating on a completely different set of principles to 99% of the companies out there. Most business is about the fast buck. If your rate of profit growth has not increased this quarter, you're classified as a failing business.
When you take a salaried job, you give up having to worry about these things in exchange for job security.
Salaried job security? What the hell is that!? I wasn't aware this was on offer. Can I get that in writing?
May the Maths Be with you!
Ughh... now you're only further feeding my deep sense of Fear and Loathing. I never quite knew what Hunter Thompson was talking about until this President. Now I feel it more every day when I read the news.
AccountKiller
What you said would be true if the government gave people money without having got it from somebody else but this just is not true. For example, I remember getting a temporary real estate loan from a bank and in the note there was an individual guarantor named who was putting up the money and if you think about it logically this is the way the system has got to work. In reality the cash one sees on the street is the physical manifestation of money that has been earned in the past and has nothing to do with getting money from "thin air". Also, taxation is not theft it is the cash payment for living in a well ordered structured society. Philophically we could have a discussion about the level or form of this payment but even the existence of a government necessitates a citizen contribution of some kind.
for a new 4-year school grad??
One employee in the company's Mobile and Embedded Devices group said when it comes to her review score, "my performance is about 10 percent of the whole equation."
This sounds like what someone that got a bad review would say.
No Sigs!
step 2: bank lends money at higher interest to govt at a higher interest rate in the form of bonds
step 2.5: gov't prints money to pay their debt
There fixed that for you
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This is a GOOD thing. If you have $1 today, you want to spend it because you know in 1 year that $1 is worth less. In a free market, when you have $1 today, you want to save it because prices fall over time.
If you and everyone else saves that $1 because prices fall over time, then no one is buying any of those goods and companies lay off workers and/or go out of business. Then you have thousands of people that don't even have that $1, so they either get to die off or live off government sponsered programs that increase your tax amount and the amount of debt carried by the nation. More money is printed to help pay for these programs and that $1 you saved is now worth less due to all those extra dollers in the market.
We can all pray that there will be some super magic financial cure, but the reality is that inflation is innevitable.
That article isn't great. It's a pile of shit.
The BLS had nothing to do with the 2004 election and the article has nothing to prove those ridiculous claims. Is this supposed to be satire? Or some sort of analogy? The author should know that analogies are supposed to make things clearer, not more confusing. Elections aren't economics and trying to compare the two is simply disingenuous.
The article links to LaRouche material to prove the BLS manipulates the CPI. The LaRouche material relies on ONE example to 'prove' the numbers are rigged. It also pulls out ONE portion of the statistical method to "prove" that the whole method is wrong. A BLS spokesman would never make political statements like the one quoted in the article and the article links to a 404. It also pulls out ONE data point to "prove" seasonal adjustment is wrong.
The BLS is made up largely of career statisticians and takes its work very seriously. The methodologies are public and, yes, there are criticisms, and BLS continually works to improve their methods. While the article has a point about 'core' CPI, the 'non-core' CPI number is still published and can be used by anyone who wants to use it.
These people are really idiots. Do you think computing an inflation number across a country of 300 million people and 3.7 million square miles is easy? Do you think there is a 'perfect' way to compute this number? Let's have it then. BLS would love to know.
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That looks like the same system that some Gov. employees are under now, called demo, and what the new rating system is going to be.
GATES: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!
I have a big problem with salaries in the U.S. -- employees believe they have a right to a raise every year, even if they are not providing more service or helping the company with added efficiency.
Sir, you are a toad, sir. Not providing more service ? So you think the experience they gather during working for your company is worthless (well, obviously you do) ? If so, then maybe you should be the one re-evaluating what your company is doing, that doesn't require your workers to evolve and gather precious (at least for you) knew knowledge and expertise in your field. At the least, you shall raise the salaries from time to time to show you value their time which they spend at your company and don't leave you to use their gathered knowledge to earn more at some other company.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Let them all leave. Microsoft doesn't care. They will just hire someone in India or China to take their place. Those engineers should be happy they have jobs in the first place.
It's amazing the kind of garbage the anti MS crowd can pull out of their asses sometimes. Wages at microsoft might be capped, but that doesn't mean much when they make a shitload of money. I have a college friend who they practically threw a job on. He wouldn't tell us how much he would get paid, only that it was "above 50 grand". Mind you he isn't some genuis programmer, he's good but still has a lot to learn. Trust me, the last people you should be sobbing about in terms of earnings are MS employees. Working for them will make you a lot more money than most software companies, -especially- when you're just starting out. Then if you really think they're not paying you enough, get bought out by google (just make sure to duck when the chairs start flying).
even if he was paid nothing for being fired, his earnings as a CEO is possibly many times greater than your 8 year earnings
When you save money in a free market, you generally give it to a bank. In a free market with the Fed, banks that need money will offer better interest rates (not the 1% you get today).
... or you could invest in the stock market. I've beaten those numbers so far this year already in my investments.
Several online banks offer 3-4%
By investing that money in a bank, they are free to loan it to stable businesses with good business plans and equity, who are able to pay the loan back. They'll also loan it out to homeowners, but at a much higher interest rate than we see today.
That's one way to do it but then you create an entry barrier to new homeowners, conficting with the american dream. Personally I'm glad things are the way they are.
Higher interest rates all around mean more wealth is created for everyone, rather than the quite theft that inflation takes from us, that confuses the entrepreneurs and that creates a massive amount of debt for your children and grandchildren to pay back.
I am not creating any debt for my descendants... how exactly does this work? How does a mortgage automatically put my descendants in debt? The only thing that puts my descendants in debt is irresponsible money management and that happens under any system. If anything your system makes it worse with higher interest rates.
The US currenty has debt and off-book liabilities totalling over US$70 trillion. We can never pay this back, so we shove it to the next generations.
I'm a moral guy, and I think this is wrong. I'd rather live poorly than make others pay for my mistakes. The rest of the country would rather live beyond their means and let others pay for it.
Irresponsible people exist now, they will exist then. Get over it.
Joel Spolsky, who has a nice blog called "Joel on Software",
wrote a very thought provoking article back in 2000. It is
called "Incentive Pay Considered Harmful".
He discusses how *not* to manage smart, highly educated employees.
Since Joel is a programmer who used to work at MS, his case comes directly
from Redmond.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
It seems much higher than what I've been hearing, although I really have not much to make judgment from. The people I know that have just graduated and taken jobs in the NJ/NYC area were probably more in the 50k range(but they weren't the greatest programmers). I'm close to halfway done with an MS program so I don't really have any firsthand experience with it(I was able to get a part time job, where the hourly rate equates to about 10k less than your number if it were 40hrs/week).
There are actually two critical issues here. The first is that should companies be obligated to give raises to a large percentage of their workers. The second is whether or not the company is creating an evaluation process that actually rewards performance. Almost all the quotes from employees at Microsoft were not against the idea of rewarding only the top performers but more the claim that the evaluation process is driven by politics instead of a fair-minded view of real accomplishment.
If you create a system where you give the majority of the money for raises to a select subset of your employees, you are sending a clear message to the other employees that they should consider working elsewhere. Whether your evaluations are fair or not, there is no way that all the employees who get the lower evaluations are going to be happy about the situation. Certainly Microsoft should not be surprised if an employee decides to leave because of an insufficient raise. In fact, Microsoft should expect it. I would consider receiving below a cost of living raise to be a clear signal that in a tougher economic climate I would be fired.
The real problem with running large organizations is coming up with fair methods of evaluations. I would very much like to hear from those in Microsoft who might defend their current methodology. A few quotes from unhappy employees who disagree with their evaluation does not even come close to a true indictment of the system.
the starting base salary is $75,500 for entry-level positions
Ouch. That made my eyes water. At today's exchange rate, that's nearly 43,500 pounds sterling.
I earn a lot less than that, but at least I never have to touch Windows, and the Windows people in the office bow and scrape at my feet and address me as "Mr. Unix Genius."
That in itself is worth many thousands a year.
Time for my pills.
Stick Men
Until MS buys that company, then fires you :P
Whats is required is a difference in thinking. Never work expecting something. Work honestly and sincerely and do your best. In the end if u dont get the recognition u expected, move on... The important thing is being your own boss.
Agreed, and this is what I *hated* about the review process. I spent a lot of time generating immense value for Microsoft. I helped bring success in a number of venues and yet any time I attempted to bring these up in review, I was *criticized* for helping out other divisions of the company. Something about me being an employee of my team rather than the company as a whole. My review scores were always 3.5.
I hated reviews. It was a process I generally barely tolerated because it turned the managers into backstabbing weasels. Interdepartmental politics always trumped the significant value of my contributions at a time when I was helping to write the strategy of competing against Linux (as a Level 54, no less). My managers would encourage me until review time and then cut me down in the review over it.
I personally will not consider going back to work at Microsoft. Even though I left largely due to personal issues that left me no choice but to quit, I would not willingly go back.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If you can make it through the obvious bias...
Heh. I'm reading slashdot aren't I? This article should be no problem.
Thank you. I remember smelling something fishy when they taught me in high school economics that we could magically pick the right box of goods and determine a number to show what inflation was.
Question answered.
Now I regard the price of gold as a better indicator. Or the M3 money supply divided by U.S. gold holdings, but too late for that.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I have started to calculate the rate of inflation in my life. This is the only one that matters.
I also have tied the costs of my daily purchases to the current value of gold in US dollars. This also shows me how well gold's value holds up over time. In just 4 months my gold has been very stable versus most consumer products. I will soon be plotting these graphs weekly at my blog.
"At Microsoft there is an unspoken code that co-workers not share compensation information with each other."
I've never worked at a job where it was OK to share this information. How about everyone else?
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
For a company like Microsoft to be losing good people due to poor compensation is bad management that borders on negligence. MS is sitting on billions of dollars. Are they doing anything with that money that's more worthwhile than retaining their talent?
No. The problem is more complex than that and boils down to interdepartment politics. The problem is not just that the process needs to be redesigned but that the company as a whole is too big to come up with something better. The upper level management often has *no clue* what goes on by those that actually do the work, and every effort is made to perpetuate this insulating environment.
The real problem, in my opinion, is the role that Middle Management have carved out for themselves. Most problems, including those of the review process, can be traced to them. In many ways they are the reason why the upper management doesn't really know what is going on.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The problem with the value of US gold holdings is that the US (as well as other foreign central banks) have been leasing their gold holdings off the books to industry at a measly 1% interest rate. Eventually this gold will have to be returned -- bought at a much higher price likely. This added supply of gold in the market has kept the price of gold down while still allowing the central banks to say they have gold reserves, when they likely are down over 70% of what they report.
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worked for MSFT for 1.5 years as contractor and blue badge. killed myself working nights, weekends, etc. for months on end. slept in office, all the usual shit. summary? no raise, no bonus, no "stock options" or grants. me? middle finger to them, made more than double as a contractor for another company. i'll never work for them again. they were a grist mill for smart, fresh compsci people. more of a pyramid scheme (inwardly facing of course).. friend who was an internal recruiter for them knew of the hemorraging of talent due to wages being silly low + employees fed up with the lowballing. it was so bad at one point there were several policies put in place to try and 'used car salesman' hard sell employees trying to leave into staying. saw too many people lose relationships, health and brains working for them. sadly most of my smart friends that had no interest in computers 5-10 years ago are now all working for them. reminds me of how badly boeing owned the puget sound region decades before.
Several online banks offer 3-4% ... or you could invest in the stock market. I've beaten those numbers so far this year already in my investments.
3-4% isn't enough to combat inflation. The Fed increased the M3 money supply by 10% in 2005, so 4% would be a 6% loss for many. No thanks. Even the stock market rarely pays that much over time (the average stock owner made 2.6% annually according to some recent analyses of real investors between the 80s and the 00s).
That's one way to do it but then you create an entry barrier to new homeowners, conficting with the american dream. Personally I'm glad things are the way they are.
Today the average homeowner owns less of their home than in any other time in US history. In fact, inflation makes it harder for people to pay off their homes quickly, and it gives people reason to think their homes are worth more than they are. To see homes go from $50k to $250k in just 15-20 years is ridiculous.
The American dream is to own a home but not fill it with junk. Today's American dream is to live like millionaires on borrowed time.
If anything your system makes it worse with higher interest rates.
US$70 trillion dollars is the estimated liability the US owes. Someone will have to pay for it. That's passing it on to our descendents. How about Social Security? We live high on the hog, getting fat and sick, and we pass those costs to the next generation. I think that is unacceptable. Consumer debt is one thing, but public debt is tragic.
Higher interest rates also pay out better savings rates -- encouraging savings. Savings gives banks money to make good loans, unlike putting money into the stock market that just ends up in the pockets of the management of the company as we've so often seen.
I remember smelling something fishy when they taught me in high school economics that we could magically pick the right box of goods and determine a number to show what inflation was.
The something fishy would be your economics teacher. The CPI is not meant to be an end-all be-all number, and if that's what you were taught then I'm sorry. In fact the CPI is not technically an inflation number. You'll note in most news reports the CPI is introduced with "widely used as an inflation indicator" or some other disclaimer.
Ultimately the CPI is an average of the cost of consumer items, so there will naturally be individual values that you can pick out and use to 'prove' the CPI is wrong.
2) The fed is very inflation-sensitive (they have been for the last 20 years), and I think they've done a pretty fair job (relatively speaking).
When the Soviet Union existed the workers had a cliche:
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
--------------------
Steve Stites
So essentially you're asking your employees to assume the risk for you, but not offering them the equity that should come with that risk. It's as if you bought stock in a company but couldn't receive any of the capital gains if the stock price increases, but hey, you might still get dividends if the company does well!
The whole point of working for a company is to let the company shoulder the market risk. If you're passing the buck down to your employees, those people would be much better off either finding another place to work or going freelance.
In short risk = reward. I don't see any reward (other than the minimum wage salary) that you provide your employees by asking them to expose themselves to the risk of market fluctuations. I think you're a bad boss.
Philophically we could have a discussion about the level or form of this payment but even the existence of a government necessitates a citizen contribution of some kind.
h ist1.txt
The average middle class household pays 50% of their gross income and benefit burden to governments in various forms of taxation. 50%. Half your year you work for others. This is not a "free society" any more.
And the money DOES come out of thin air. Let me explain how the Fed creates new money:
The Fed buys U.S. Treasury bills from a government approved dealer. They write a check for the amount, say $5 million. The dealer takes the $5 million and deposits it into their bank.
Where does the Fed get this money? They print it out of thin air. The U.S. Treasury bills are also an out-of-thin air creation given to preferred cronies of the government.
Look at the M3 money supply figure here http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/hist/h6
In 1959, there were US$ 292 billion in print.
In 1969, there were US$ 612 billion in print.
In 1979, there were US$ 1612 billion in print.
In 1989, there were US$ 3944 billion in print.
In 1999, there were US$ 6102 billion in print.
In 2006, there are US$10240 billion in print.
In less than 50 years, the Fed has creates almost $10 trillion out of thin air. Almost half of this was created in the past 8 years. Since the 1st of January 2006, if you base the current inflation rate of the Fed for this year and extend it for the rest of the year, the Fed will print more money in 2006 alone than the value of every ounce of gold in existance.
This is why I don't save in dollars, invest in dollars, or live on dollars.
I have started to calculate the rate of inflation in my life. This is the only one that matters.
If that's the only one that matters, then why would you bother to link to an article that attempts to show how the CPI is rigged?
If $75K sounds like a lot, understand the area has a high cost of living (about 20% higher than the national average), or compared to my area, about 35% more expensive.
The COL figures are lower than what I expected, however. Housing is extremely costly anywhere close to the Microsoft campus (less than 40-minute commute), with comparable houses in Bellevue/Redmond selling for more than twice what they do in my local area.
From the MS employees I spoke with (about 10 years ago, when I lived in the area), the real plus of working for MS was not the salary, which was average/below-average for the area, but the benefits (drinks, food, company store, activities, etc. in addition to what we often consider to be benefits, like 401K, options, health, etc.).
MS has inflated salaries for the last ten years at least - paying above and beyond market for people with mid-level skills.
There is definitely a shortage of highly-skilled engineers who can develop great consumer-facing products - and MS has helped create a market (along with a variety of others) where because you can be over-paid and under-skilled most people aren't developing the level of knowledge and skill set that companies need now.
Microsoft's employee performance evaluation scale is 1-5: most are 3s (meets minimum requirements) and less than 10% are 5s (exceeds all performance expectations and has "rescued" projects). Does a 3 deserve a $90k salary and 5% increase annually? Would you hire one?
It is ridiculous to think we should pay people based on their years of experience or how long they've been with the company. You pay people based on the value that they offer the company, that's it.
When I was young, my dad said the best years of my life to work are from 18 to 35. He said after that, I won't be as efficient, and I won't be worth what I am getting paid. I agree with him now, but I didn't agree with him then.
You don't just raise salaries to show you appreciation, you raise salaries to compensate people for performing more efficiently or enhancing the bottom line. If you raise salaries for no reason, people will have no reason to work better.
I can see most people here have never run their own business. It is really sad that people think they have "rights" as an employee. The only rights you have is the right to pack up and find a better job if you're unhappy.
... like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, another day for Joel to promote himself (by proxy). Yay.
If everyone saved $1, the banks would take this money and invest it for you in safe business loans and safe mortgages.
Today's stock market is nothing but safe. A P:E of 20 means the company will take 20 years to earn its price -- ridiculous! All my businesses have a P:E of 3-5. The stock market is inflated because of all this fresh easy money the Fed has created. They give out money at tiny interest rates, people put it into the stock market to earn more than savings. All this easy money flooding into the stock market causes prices to go up artificially. Just wait for the correction, the insiders will be even happier.
Today's housing market is worse -- when the stock market tanks, people starting putting all this inflationary easy money into homes -- artificially forcing the prices up. This mess will also correct itself.
You don't understand. Real Schools are part of the conspiracy, and the Economis they teach you are what THEY want you to believe. GP knows better; in fact, he knows everything. That's why they want to shut him up.
(Incidentally, that is also why I'm mocking him; I work for the conspiracy and we're scared shitless he might convince you).
This piece on DailyKos outlines why this likely isn't the case, written by a very well respected economist. Granted, that story is geared towards Iran, but the arguments apply to Iraq in 2000.
If you read mini-microsoft and some other blogs about MS, there is a weird, unhealthy sounding obsession with the details of ranking and how everyone thinks they are better than everyone else but they got screwed by the system. It must be a strange, depressing bureaucratic place to work.
It almost sounds like a civil service environment, where people focus on the science of how to work at the place, rather then the science of actually doing something.
In my way of thinking, I don't really care about the ersatz scientific details of the ranking/review system. If I am not paid enough or the work sucks and I have other options, I take them. If I have no other options, then it sucks to be me.
I'm sure people are just beating down your door trying to work for you too.
3 entire weeks huh? Wow you must be an expert on Europe and Asia now, afterall that only covers several dozen countries, plenty of time for indepth analysis of their economies and how they relate to the US.
- are a software developer (not a sysadmin)
- have 17 years of experience
- live in a major metropolitan area (>2 million people)
- AND make less than 75k per year
then you're getting screwed, unless those 17 years weren't very productive... IMO, you should be looking around at other opportunities if you meet those criteria.How many millions did he get while he was there and when he was fired? I doubt he's been hurting or living on food stamps even if he hasn't gotten another job in the last 8 years.
Considering I went specifically to research market viability, freedom to enter the business world for citizens, and an overall review of regulations, 3 weeks was more than enough. I spent nearly 18 hours a day spending time with business owners AND members of government to get my information -- people I had started relationships with over the past 4 years. I plan on repeating this step at least 3-4 times a year to get a better sense of the world market and how the US dollar's inflationary cycle affects other countries. I am amazed at what I learn by just stepping outside the country.
Nothing annoys me more than these whiners with this bloated sense of self-entitlement.
You have the privilege of working there, if you don't like it, go somewhere else, probably Burger King is hiring.
If you think the review process doesn't work the way it should, then figure out how it does work and try to get to the top of the list. If you don't think you should have to do that, then once again, go somewhere else.
An article about Microsofts internal politics and their effect on success may be of some interest, but this article is a bunch of disgruntled employees whining to journalists.
Little bitch developers like those make software teams miserable. Either get with the program or get the fuck out of the company.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Having just moved to Kirland and signed up with MS, I can say that the cost of living here is much much cheaper than where I was before, Honolulu. For the same price Im renting an apartment twice as big. My power is half the price, food is much cheaper.
Oh, and Im getting over 50% more pay.
75k is probably a nice salary almost anywhere, but in some places it will mean a lot more.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Don't feel too bad, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Starting wages for some positions might be $75k but certainly not entery level testers. They're making more like $45k to start. You'll also note he didn't actually go to work for MS, he said he was considering it. More like considering submitting his resume more likely.
Your argument is not right even if you DO capitalize the word. For starters, the money for Treasury Bills is not created "out of thin air" the bills are bought by people with real money. Because the people who buy them expect money to be earned from their monetary investment the bills earn interest. The only money created then is the interest on the bills (a fairly low interest at that - on a par with the growth of the overall economy). What we really are investing in is the future economic growth of the total country in increased taxation of real earnings.
Paying higher salaries doesn't make skilled workers appear magically Microsoft probably pretty much has scooped up all the skiled technical workers they are ever going to get; few other people are going to be willing to work for them even if they paid twice as much as they do now.
I know in my career, I have always chosen job offers with substantially lower salaries than the highest available offer, and I'm quite typical that way.
Furthermore, even if hiring IT workers were like buying widgets, there is a salary beyond which the cost/benefit calculations for hiring another IT worker just don't work out. At that point, the salaries stop rising and you have an IT labor shortage.
Yes, you buy some Treasury Bills -- but there are others issued based directly on thin air creation. Look at my M3 money chart and figure out where the money comes from and where it goes.
These geeks have trouble with the real world. In the real world, evaluations, rankings, and decisions are 90% politics, personal connections, popularity, and power. We may all wish that it were more rational and more based in quantifiable criteria, but it isn't. That's why we get the politicians and business leaders we do.
If you come up with a better system and manage to implement it, let us all know. Of course, the implementation itself will require you to become a politician using his personal connections, popularity, and power...
Microsoft like any large organization simply cannot help the fact that managing them properly takes a huge effort. The result is that almost all Fortune 50 companies have the same HR practices and compensation strategies.
Shhh, we're not supposed to mention such things here, lest the rest of the Slashdotters hunt us down for being evil. :)
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
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Well, I am not a software developer anymore. My title is product manager, but my work is more like that of an account manager, project manager, and software configurator rolled into one.
My city only has a little over 1 million population. I figure I am underpaid for what I do at the moment, but since I just took this job 6 months ago after ditching a job that was paying even less, I'll give them a year or two to live up to the 6 figures that they promised I'd be making within a few years.
I used to get about 2.5 times my current pay, but that was back when we still had the twin towers in NYC.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
--Chag
"Entry level" testers in Office come in around level 59.
Actually, $75K isn't far out of line for new grads from a topflight school. I assume he has a master's degree.
Word of advice man - start your OWN company if that's what they're offering you off the bat. Even if it fails, you get an automatic bump of 20-50% in pay at the next job you get, based on your experience alone. If it succeeds, you have something you can sell off.
$110K plus isn't out of line for someone who's in their mid-20's and has the experience of running a business. I did it (age 26) , but it's not easy.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Yes.
Keep in mind that in that saying, "proves" means something akin to "tests and invalidates". It does not mean "demonstrates the truth of", as that would be absurd.
PE is misleading because it only considers current earnings. A growing company with a PE of 20 could earn back its market cap in 5 years. Plus you have to consider any assets that the company has.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
"3-5% inflation is normally regarded as a healthy level."
In most Western countries such a level of inflation would now be seen as scandalously high. Inflation is typically 2% in most of Western Europe (with a recent spike above this due to oil and gas costs, but that is now settling back down - these prices are higher but increases are to a steadier level, not a sudden spike).
What else do you think all those Duck and Cover videos were created for?
All companies are effectively Fascist dictatorships. 1. Your government (boss) is unelected. 2. Your government (boss) has extraordinary control over you. 3. The state (company) is viewed as more important than the individual. In such a situation there is only one course of action. Armed resistance (skiving) is permitted under the UN Charter. Remember that companies try to make the most money while doing as little work for it as possible. It is only fair that the employees pursue the same policy. Your employer will screw you in the end (probably after years of loyal service), so screw them now in advance. P.S. You'll understand if I post anonymously :)
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"In fact, inflation makes it harder for people to pay off their homes quickly"
For those who have already purchased a home it makes it easier as the value of the debt is effectively reduced in real terms. For short periods, and short periods only, does housing value, for equivalent homes, rise in real terms. In fact many parts in the USA have experienced drops in real term housing values, depenidng on other economic factors such as local job growth.
One thing that will cause apparent housing inflation over time is the fact that homes are tending to get larger, and so a starter home now was not a starter home from 50 years ago. You would expect the larger home, which consumes more resources, to cost more (assuming that building costs have generally increased only in line with inflation - and some costs have reduced, and some increased over that period).
yeah, you make minimum wage... then you take out dividends from your company as a way to take advantage of the tax system.
if the tax changed so wages were cheaper that dividends, your pay would raise IMMEDIATELY.
don't be dishonest and try and come off a minimum wage business owner as a means to justify paying your people minimum wage and putting off most of your business risk onto their shoulders.
you can offset some of your selfishness by paying bonuses well above the going wage. i'mnot talking 10%, either. much higher.
btw, i do agree there is a balance. employees should benefit from business success and feel the pinch in the down times.
but off loading *your* business risk onto your workers, imho, is unethical.
obviously, some people put up with it, but my guess is that's due to a lack of real opportunities elsewhere and you are just taking advantages of the situation.
hm, in 2003 I was also offered a job as a tester after graduating. The starting salary was $50,000. I'm not someone who has no technical knowledge either. I'm not saying you're lying, but maybe I'm just not as talented as you are :p
The way this works at big companies is pretty simple.
Everybody is evaluated; the evaluation is political, it's painful, and managers don't want to do it, so the results are less than perfect. You should worry if you end up near the bottom, but that's all.
But, in the end, it doesn't matter that much: when times are good, those curves move up and everybody gets a raise.
When times are not so good, nobody gets a raise, except for people who manage to negotiate one. That's the situation Microsoft is in, because although they are still looking good financially, they know they're in trouble.
How do you negotiate a raise? You get a better offer from somewhere else and negotiate. If your company wants to keep you, they'll make a counteroffer. If you made yourself a nuisance or if they think you're not that useful, they'll wish you good luck in your new job.
When you see how Microsoft's internal politics (as governed by this incentive scheme) work, the company's ruthless behaviour towards it's competitors and partners alike is no longer surprising. This is the same kind of behaviour I have seen in many consulting companies. They view the world as a zero-sum game of attrition -- inside and out. The elimination process internally is only sustainable because they are very careful to present the image of a place where you can really "make it big", so the young, enthusiastic and gullible or ruthless are attracted. Externally, your partners are only such until you're in a position to take their cake away from them.
A large number of the rest of the world's companies operate with their employees working in relative harmony (aside from some fiercely competive areas such as sales). Microsoft's internal culture doesn't allow their staff to believe any other way could possibly be any better.
The movie The Corporation posited that modern companies are essentially psychopathic in their behaviour. Microsoft's executive seem to encourage the same behaviour in their employees.
Personally, I saw at an early age how these places worked, and while I was rather successful at it I decided money isn't everything. I'm glad I work in a different kind of company -- one where we genuinely try to everyone we work with whether they're in our team or not. I'm not claiming my workmates are all my friends, but that rather working peacefully towards the common good keeps us all healthier, happier people while still making more money than I really need.
You should be forced to take a real economics class before repeating garbage like this. The housing bubble -- if there is a bubble -- is being created by historically low interest rates as a result of foreign central banks buying US debt, an increasing population and an artifically limited housing supply. This last issue was addressed in long NYTimes article last Sunday about an economist named Edward Glaeser.
One good thing about living in California is that the property taxes are limited to the value of the home when you purchased it. I think the law allows some tiny increase every year, but in practice even a tiny increase rarely happens.
Of course, real estate here is insanely expensive, so any new buyers are paying quite a bit. Some retired person who bought their house back in the 1950s, however, is probably only paying about $150 a year in property taxes. That's generally a good thing, in my opinion, because the retired people living on social security would all be forced to sell their homes if they had to pay property taxes on current values.
In fact, even giving raises to just top 1% of employees still would bump the salary budget significantly every year.
Hmm ... really? Let's see, 1% of about 65000 employees is 650. If these 1% earn on average $100,000/year, and you give them each a (generous) 20% raise, then you are paying an extra $20,000*650/year, which is a whopping, um, $13,000,000/year. I hate to break it to you but that's absolutely nothing for Microsoft - they earn that much every three hours.
OK, but giving raises to only 1% is unrealistic. Let's say we give 10% raises to 10% of the workers - say $10,000*6500 - that's still only $65,000,000 - Microsoft earn that much in just 14 hours.
Sorry, but it doesn't sound quite so unrealistic to me.
I strongly advise getting a passport and going to see how the rest of the world lives if you think 2-3% inflation is out of control.
Please stop spewing propaganda. The reported CPI in recent history has been closer to 4%. The "core" CPI is not the CPI. The "core" CPI does not factor in gas and food. Therefore, the "core" CPI does not measure the rate of rising prices.
Second, the reported CPI is not the same CPI that was used in the 70's. The current CPI does not factor in house prices. If we were still using the same CPI that we used in the 70's, the CPI would be close to 7%.
7% sounds out of control to me. The CPI from the 70's is a much better estimate, since it attempts to measure a fixed basket of consumer goods. That's in contrast to the current CPI, which attempts to measure a changing basket of consumer goods minus the consumer goods that are rising in price very quickly.
If you are at Microsoft, and you feel like you are being undercompensated, go work for someone else. Either you are right, and someone else will pay you more for your skills, or you are wrong, and you should have kept your job at Microsoft.
Adding the expense of a union to your compensation arrangement may increase your wages in the short term, but in the long term makes your company less competetive and evenually causes your job to move somewhere where your cost is not inflated by a union.
The American auto industry has unions. And those union employees have great jobs - the few of them who still have jobs at all.
paintball
The average middle class household pays 50% of their gross income and benefit burden to governments in various forms of taxation. 50%. Half your year you work for others. This is not a "free society" any more.
Only if you're a short-sighted libertarian with delusions of being the one man who is, in fact, an island unto himself.
The rest of us out here do pay a great deal in taxes, but that money isn't loaded into a rocket and fired into the sun. It's spent on police officers, environmental cleanup, road construction, hospital expenses, etc, etc, etc. If you don't benefit in any way from anything the government does, well, congratulations, but for the other 99.9999999999% of the American public, we actually are provided with goods and services based on those tax payments.
It may not be our exact personal prefererred balance of a particular good or service, but that's what happens when 300 million people have to compromise on the best way to pool resources for economies of scale. It's still a lot cheaper for $100 of my taxes to be wasted on some pork-barrel project than it would be for me to pave my own road so I could get to the store.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
What was your degree in? I'm currently in blackbox testing in the Seattle area, making about $25k. My BA was in International Studies, but I could walk through a CS degree with my eyes closed. Is that all I have to do to triple my salary?
One thing you can do is handle your own mortgage escrow.
Set up a separate account and tell them you're taking it over.
Dilligently put away the correct amount of money for your taxes, etc., in that account.
Spend ten minutes a year dealing with it, save anywhere from $50-$200 in unnecessary fees.
+++OK ATH
Good god. I alwasy knew you were a bit on the fringe of rationality, but now you just blew straight past the fine line and right into lunacy. Let's look at some your theories, shall we?
1) People don't chase money. People chase goods. Money is simply a standardized means of exchange for goods and services. This means that in a world with a fixed money supply, you won't get more goods and services for the same amount of money. You'll get more people using a static money supply to trade for goods. End result? Money becomes more expensive, and people can afford less. Fortunately, money is not static, not even gold. More expensive money simply means that it buys more, and the effect offsets itself. End result though is that there is no wealth creation, but simply wealth redistribution. History corroborates this. Just take a gander at pretty much all of history until the turn of the century. Wealth was only created by discovering new raw materials, or exchanging time for money.
2) The idea of saving $1 because it will be worth more in the future is already being felt by one country: Japan. And it would love nothing more than to get rid of this pest, as this means guaranteed stagnation. What do you think happens to that dollar that someone doesn't spend? Nothing. Loans are unpopular because any loan that you take will be more expensive to pay back later, even if you just count principal. So nobody lends, nobody buys, everybody stagnates. Hey, look, it's really like Japan! You know, you might learn something if you'd look at the real world rather than how stuff should work in your head.
3) Higher interest rates do not create money by themselves. After all, if we're talking about a static money supply, where does that money come from. And as for inflation confusing entrepreneurs.... good lord, how stupid do you think they are? You seem to not think them too bright. Or do you really think that the concept of adding 2% to everything every year to keep real costs identical is a complex concept? Sheesh, you just might.
Finally, there is a reason the gold standard was abandoned: it's because it is impossible to grow beyond your gold reserves. Furthermore, any sudden discovery of more raw material produces a massive shock to the system that is impossible to foresee and impossible to mitigate. Read up on what happened to the spaniards when they did bring all that gold back from South America.... hyperinflation before hyperinflation was a fancy term bandied around by politicians with an axe to grind.
I do agree that there are certain problems associated with spending more than you make, but they have nothing to do with abandoning the gold standard, and they will certainly be made worse by going back to it. Oh, and try talking to some people who lived through WW2 and see what they think of your idea that WW2 was about saving banks. I'd be surprised if they don't run you out of town with a good ol' mob with pitchforks and stuff.
Seriously, you might want to check your theories against reality. Cuz right now, your reality-distortion field is pounding Jobs' into submission.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
And I have a big problem with people like you who have that attitude. Dada and I have clashed before, but here he's absolutely right. Here in the US raises and increases have become not something to work for, but have become something expected to occur automatically.
The most extreme example of this kind of thinking comes from the unions. While no one can deny their early results created better and safer working conditions and improved benefits, their job of late seems to have become little more than demanding an ever larger slice of the pie. Often, for even less work. Demands which also conveniently ignore the fact that the money they want has to come from somewhere.
And then they act surprised when management shuts down plants and lays off those workers because they'ree no longer competitive. Huh.
Has it? Shall we ask your boss? A tennis player once told coach Vic Braden that he'd been playing for eight years and didn't need his help. Vic replied that, in his opinion, most people have played just one year... eight times in a row.
Just because an effort fails, does not mean that it was for lack of trying.
Oh wow. Did you go to one of those schools where every kid--first and last--got an award and a pat on the head? Get it straight. The marketplace isn't going to reward companies just because they tried.
When was the last time you sent a check to Ford? Sure, for the most part their cars suck, but hey, at least they tried. Or did you, perchance, give your money to the company that actually produced what you wanted? (Of course, you may own a Ford. In which case how much have you voluntarily sent to Chevy and GM? I'm sure the people there tried too.)
Yes, in some cases your job, and the company, is on the line. But as Dr. Johnson said, knowing that you'll be hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Or in words perhaps more familiar: Do. Or do not. There is no try.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Been there, and seen it. Two 25kilo flour-sacks full of bills being walked out of the bank, in order to pay a monthly household grocery bill.
As for the actual facts re printing money: "37 million notes are produced in a day with a face value of approximately $696 million. 95% of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes already in circulation."
The US Mint apparently adds about 34.8 million dollars in paper money each day. If they run 365 days a year, that's about $12 billion added each year. The amount of cash in circulation is about $571 billion. So they're adding about 2% a year.
The US economy has been growing about 1.5 times that amount on average, so I don't see any runaway printing of US dollars, the opposite actually.
This is incorrect. China doesn't buy U.S. dollars for shits and giggles. It buys U.S. dollars in order to manipulate the exchange rate between the yuan and the dollar. Buying dollars with yuan keeps the yuan low (large supply of yuan, increased demand for dollars == dollars high, yuan low). Goods made in China are sold in yuan. As long as one dollar buys a lot a yuan, American consumers can afford to buy lots of cheap Chinese-made goods. This makes China an extremely competitive exporter when compared with any other third-world manufacturing economy. There's no intrinsic reason why the U.S. should buy so much from Chinese manufacturers, as opposed to Indian or Indonesian or Malaysian manufacturers. But Chinese goods end up much cheaper because of the exchange rate. Hence, the U.S. buys lots from China.
If China were to stop buying U.S. dollars, or to start selling U.S. dollars, their economy would collapse. The yuan's value would skyrocket compared to the dollar. Chinese exports would cease to be comepetitive. China's weak internal demand would be wholly insufficient to make up for the loss of export revenue. International investment from the U.S. and elsewhere would dry up. The banking system would then collapse under the weight of the 40% or higher bad loans that their banks have been giving out (because of the corruption of CPC officials pressuring the banks to give loans to their favorite old-boy-network projects). This would be a catastrophe several orders of magnitude worse that the U.S. savings and loan scandals, with no possibility of a bail-out or recovery. Of course, the U.S. economy would be hurt severely as the dollar's value dropped and the price of our imports rapidly rose, but not hurt nearly as badly as the Chinese economy.
In sum, the Chinese buy dollars for survival, not some fanciful notion of conspicuous consumption.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
3-4% isn't enough to combat inflation. The Fed increased the M3 money supply by 10% in 2005, so 4% would be a 6% loss for many. No thanks. Even the stock market rarely pays that much over time .
You are still caught up on the fact that this direct increase in money supply is a direct increase in inflation. It isn't. I agree I don't want a 3-4% interest rate when I was/am making 3-4 times that in stocks/mutual funds.
(the average stock owner made 2.6% annually according to some recent analyses of real investors between the 80s and the 00s).
Then the "average stock owner" did worse than the stock market average through some incredibly convoluted math I can't begin to comprehend. Do a quick google, the average return was 13%.
To see homes go from $50k to $250k in just 15-20 years is ridiculous.
Depends on where you are. They got for a lot closer to the lower number everywhere I've lived. The number I paid for my house is very close to the number my parents paid for their house 18 years ago when you adjust for inflation and when you consider I moved to a higher income part of the country I may very well have gotten a better deal.
The American dream is to own a home but not fill it with junk.
Again, you are speaking for some, not for all. Don't make generalizations. Not all of us max out credit cards and take out second mortgages.
All you said is what I mean by "rich". The modern version of this delusion is precisely exchange rate manipulation, the belief that by exporting more through artificially deflated currency you're achieving something.
The truth is that by doing so you're just forcing your population to subsidize (through work) the purchases made by foreigners. Why? Because if a gadget would sell for 'x' (in the foreign currency) under a market generated exchange ratio, now it'll sell for, let's say, 'x/2'. So, you'll have to produce 2 of those gadgets to obtain the same 'x' value, hence, to work double to gain the same real compensation.
And this is even more so, since by doing so and thus increasing exportation, you also diminish the amount of goods available in the internal market, thus producing inflation in the local currency (less goods, same amount of bills, more bills needed to purchase a given good).
One of the most insane nonsenses devised by macroeconomic economists is the notion of "trade balance" that fuels the above.
Now, China is a completely different matter. It uses the economy as a weapon, so much as to employing slave labor to make many export goods even more cheap. If they get to the point that using the "money weapon" becomes a reasonable option, they won't mind their people starving by using it. Search the 'net and you'll find tons of information on this, and more.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Don't bother. He's the guy who is proud of hiring 16 y/o highschool drouputs for minimum wage.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Hehe, so true, our (Russian) government is sooo proud of the fact the that have accumulated hundreds of billions of USD in their "stabilization fund". They are hoping not to sepnd any oif it while the oil and gas proces stay high, and only start spending to keep the busget balanced if revenue from oil taxes decreases.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
President Bush decides to sell a percentage of Congress to the U.A.E..
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
In a field like software development, the value of contributions of an employee tend to be directly related to how much experience they have with software engineering in general, and also with how much experience they have in the particular industry that they are presently developing for.
To put it another way, every year an employee's contribution to a company increases.
It seems fair that the employee receives part of that additional contribution.
This is especially true in a field such as software development where workers are expected to spend part of their own time (uncompensated!) improving their skill set and learning how to do their job better. The reason that they do this? There is an expectation from the employee, that if they make a determined effort to add more value to the company, and if they make a personal investment in their skill set that directly correlates to them being able to do a better job that results in the company earning more money, that they should receive part of the dividends on that investment.
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This presumes that foreigners would buy goods at price x from China. It quite clear that the market supports buying twice the goods at x/2, but the demand curve may be more elastic than you think. Doubling the price and slashing production in half isn't necessarily going to result in the same amount of revenue for the Chinese. Especially because the Chinese deal specifically in low-skill commodity manufactured goods (the market for which is *extremely* competitive, because nearly any unskilled third-world workforce can make them) and because commodity goods usually face very elastic demand, keeping the price low is of primary importance. It's not some nefarious scheme, or subsidizing U.S. consumer purchases, it's just how the market works.
You're saying this as if the Chinese wanted to hurt their internal market. This is manifestly not the case, and they're trying to increase internal demand for their goods. The problem is that A) most are still too poor to engage in larger amounts of consumption, and B) there's a cultural/confucian tendency to save far more than you consume/invest. Exports are the only real driving force in the economy, and China can't afford to give them up. Furthermore, there's no real dangerous phenomenon of internal inflation of the currency. China has a very respectable GDP per capita (PPP) for a developing country of its size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
This is paranoid conspiracy theorizing. China certainly is interested in very high levels of growth. It is not reaching the same levels of high growth that Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan reached in their high growth development phases 20 years ago. China has no interest in using the money weapon because the CPC is very well aware of its precarious position. There were over 80,000 riots involving 10,000 people or more in China last year. If there were a serious economic downturn we would see the CPC overthrown, and they know it. That's why President Hu has been engaging in a number of new initiatives to increase growth in rural areas, as opposed to just the coasts. The national party congress, going on right now, is addressing this. Wen Jiabao just made a speech on the topic. They know that since they've lost communism as an ideological jsutification for their rule, the only thing they have left is economic growth and competent governance to continue the CPC monopoly on political power. They would never be so foolish as to endanger that unless the United States supported Taiwan independence (that's really the only red line the Chinese government has).
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
I was offered 75,500 from MS for a PM position recently. I am graduating with a bachelors in Computer Engineering at a UC school (not ucla or berkeley).
Dear Catbeller:
I am impressed by your analysis of the current unsustainable debt load and its consequences for the future.
I would also like to point out that once our reserves of cheap oil run out, we are really really hozed. Cheap oil is propping up agriculture, industry, and de-centralization. Eventually Wal*Mart will die, because it will be to expensive to ship cheap textiles from halfway accross the planet, and sub-urbanites won't be able to gass up their SUV's to drive out to buy the "cheap" underwear. Eventually even senior citizens won't be able to get crappy McJobs and the economy will collapse on account of that too.
Another way the economy will turn on its head is with increasing sophisitcation of automation. Pretty soon McJobs will all be automated. It might be put in place as a "safety" device - after all who wants to be burned by hot fry oil? But soon, there will be fast food places the size of an ATM, and one or two technicians can service dozens. retail will also get automated, with robots stocking the shelves, and RFID scanners doing instant checkout. Every store will look like a wharehouse club, as people will always give up frills like decor and staff for low prices.
Other things will get automated for "safety" purposes as well: ariliners to reduce terrorism; ports and shipping container routing to promote safety and efficiency ; truck drivers can eventually be replaced by robot driving systems with vision systems and reduce accidents and loss; you get the idea.
Eventually middle-level management systems will become sophisitcated enough to handle information flow and resource allocation that even many white-collar workers can be replaced by a simple program. Just think of all the people in the typing pool that were replaced by word processing.
Automation will soon concentrate capital in the hands of the very few, and most people will be left out. Anger and unrest will spread through the general populace, but this is a problem that technnolgoy can solve too. By this time, automated fighting vehicles will have managed to become sophisticated enough that a few generals can command a force thousands strong, and all it needs is ammo and a few (million) gallons of disel. The unruly (subversive and anti-government) population can be suppressed and/or eliminated. After all the unemployed don't pay taxes, so they aren't really necessary. More likely they will just be maliciously ignored, left to starve and freeze.
So, there you go, even more ways by which our future looks bleak. All are possible, and even though the future may not come to pass exactly as stated above, elements of those scenarios certainly will.
So, it promises to be a bleak future.
I wonder if we will adapt soon enough to try and prevent the harshest of outcomes.
Probably not.