Finally! a rational thought in this discussion. Looking at it from the big picture point of view, this is not all that different from any retail model of physical goods, and Amazon more than anybody else understands this model well.
One difference being that with physical goods, the cost of keeping/maintaining inventory often drives discounts and final pricing. In the digital realm this driving force gets replaced by the exposure factor. Discounting/bundling creates exposure, which in turn drives more sales. Given the guaranteed minimum payoff to the developer, this may actually a good thing.
As a developer I would worry more about the perceived value of my product. If it gets frequently discounted to a certain value, I may still make the same amount of money (or more.. look at Angry Birds) however it also solidifies the value/cost perception of the product in peoples minds, and maybe I care about that perception.
Visit New York someday. Most escalator in crowded places like subways etc, will have a line of people standing still on the right, and a moving lane of people walking up the escalator on the left. It just feels natural after a while and people stop thinking about it. If you want to stay still, move to the right, or stay on the left and keep walking.
most "promotions" and position changes are a nice way of them trying to move you somewhere useful rather than just getting rid of you entirely.
I've seen this happen a "lot" in my industry..
Here's a couple of questions to figure out..
Are they doing this as part of a larger plan, or to keep you happy and give you more money?
If the the former, then you need to figure out what they plan to do with your current position. Hire an outsider? Promote someone from the team? Shrink the team?
If they plan to promote someone from the team, and you refuse your promotion, It could trickle down and you could end up reporting to someone currently in the team..
I agree, but with a slightly different take. One way age comes into play during the hiring process, is when people are assessing how well you will be able to work with, and fit in, with the rest of the team. Also, how you will respond to potentially reporting to someone younger than you. This comes down to your personality, and how you project yourself in the interview. At this point, age is only an issue if you make out to be one.
Beyond that, and after the first few years on the job, age can be used to your advantage, in your ability to rise much faster than your peers, based on increased maturity, ability handle responsibility, life experience etc.
Its the Hypothalamus, or the little brain, making these decisions. Any activity that we practice enough to the point where reactions become second nature (think braking while driving) really involves handing off that decision making process from the frontal lobes to the hypothalamus. Being directly linked to the nervous system, these decisions become reflex actions with a much quicker response time. I would guess an order of magnitude less than the 500ms.
That's why athlete's don't "think" about what they are doing
As Robert J Hanlon once said "Never attribute to malice that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity" or in this case probably "oversight, ineptitude, carelessness etc"
I believe there might even be a Firefox extension that does this..
Re:Yeah make it worthless, then I can afford one!!
on
Free the iPhone from AT&T
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Cool factor, User Interface, Wifi, Almost full featured browser, Full screen, Video player.
Granted its still an expensive, but there isn't another device that does all of the above with quite as nice a user interface, and which has quite as much cool factor.
The summary states a somewhat precise estimate for ultimate success.. but what is the objective? At what point does one declare "Mission Accomplished, we've achieved ultimate success". What are the outcomes that would make the mission fall into one of the 70% or 30% buckets of failure or success. "Supporting a weak government" is a highly relative and ambiguous objective, (even if that is the real objective), while success and failure are binary outcomes.
This seems more like knowing the answer to the Ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42, without really knowing what the question is..
Google.com takes 45 seconds to load. CNN.com, several minutes for just the text to load (haven't seen any images yet), I have yet to see the safari home page fully load. It has now been about 8 minutes since i started the browser and the home page is still loading and has a blank screen. OK CNN just finished loading 12 minutes later. Slashdot, about 2 minutes for just the text, and about 5 minutes for the whole page. (And yes, i've tried restarting/rebooting several times)
This is all on a 7 mbit cable connection, using Firefox, CNN.com, or mostly any other page for that matter, takes about 3 seconds or less to fully load, including all the flash animated ads. So figuring there must be something wrong with my PC, I install safari on my laptop. Nope! Same results. I upgrade ITunes, thinking there might be some strange dependency on the latest version of quicktime, but no difference. I disable my (software) firewall, and antivirus.. and again nothing.. still watching the grass grow faster than the page loads... Anyone else experience this?
Actually the statement that H1B's are underpaid compared to their US counterparts is both true and false at the
same time. It really depends on the criteria for the comparison.
The crux of the H1B application process is to document and prove that the employee is being paid "more" than the average salary for that job after taking into account Job Title/level, description, qualifications, industry and geographic region. By definition an H1B employee is not underpaid and is in fact earning more than the average employee.
What this doesn't take into account is the "ability" of an employee to do the job and willingness of employers to pay more for those abilities. I use the term ability loosely here, to include all kinds of intangibles like 1337 skillz, domain knowledge/experience, communication skills etc. The H1B rules do not account for the fact that salaries (especially in the more skilled areas) can vary by huge amounts depending on the "abilities"
A significant number of H1B's while being paid more than the average for their qualifications, are actually fairly underpaid compared to a US worker of similar abilities. In other words, the same individual could probably earn a lot more if not for the artificial H1B restrictions. Which brings up my second point.
Economics 101 - Protectionism doesn't work!
Consider for a minute why and H1B worker would accept a lower salary than his abilities would allow. Most likely it is because he is not in the US and doesn't have access to other employers and doesn't know what the market rate for his abilities are. Regardless, once he is employed and comes to the US to work, he would very quickly have all the access/knowledge he needs, and would immediately jump ship to a better paying job. The original employer would then have to replace the employee at considerable cost, and so to avoid that, would begin by paying a higher salary in the first place. Its simple market forces at work, and the H1B wage would naturally gravitate towards the true (higher) market rate.
However this market correction of salaries rarely happens, and the H1B salary stays lower than what it could be, and in turn drags the overall market rate down. This is all entirely a direct result of all the protectionist controls and restrictions that were ironically put in place by the program specifically to keep overall wages high.
These restrictions affect both prospective employers and the employee in the following ways.
1. There is a significant cost (both monetary, and legal etc) associated with hiring an H1B employee. Most potential employers would rather not go through the hassle. or they offer a lower wage for said abilities to offset these costs.
2. Because of 1. the employee has a harder time finding other jobs/employers willing to hire H1B's.
3. Finally, the extremely long and tedious green card application process is tied to a particular employer and switching jobs usually means starting from scratch all over again. This is a huge disincentive to switch jobs, and is a major cause of H1B salary depression.
All of this results in a class of workers earning less than their true potential, and the senators worst fears follow from there.
The solution however, is not "more" controls, but instead "Less" controls. It should be hard to obtain the initial H1B but beyond that, all employees should have complete freedom to switch jobs easily. The same goes for the Green Card process. No artificial barriers tying down employees to one company. The level playing field will also ensure that companies will only sponsor the best candidates, that are worth the additional hassle of the initial sponsorship.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally! a rational thought in this discussion. Looking at it from the big picture point of view, this is not all that different from any retail model of physical goods, and Amazon more than anybody else understands this model well.
One difference being that with physical goods, the cost of keeping/maintaining inventory often drives discounts and final pricing. In the digital realm this driving force gets replaced by the exposure factor. Discounting/bundling creates exposure, which in turn drives more sales. Given the guaranteed minimum payoff to the developer, this may actually a good thing.
As a developer I would worry more about the perceived value of my product. If it gets frequently discounted to a certain value, I may still make the same amount of money (or more.. look at Angry Birds) however it also solidifies the value/cost perception of the product in peoples minds, and maybe I care about that perception.
Visit New York someday. Most escalator in crowded places like subways etc, will have a line of people standing still on the right, and a moving lane of people walking up the escalator on the left. It just feels natural after a while and people stop thinking about it. If you want to stay still, move to the right, or stay on the left and keep walking.
most "promotions" and position changes are a nice way of them trying to move you somewhere useful rather than just getting rid of you entirely.
I've seen this happen a "lot" in my industry..
Here's a couple of questions to figure out..
Are they doing this as part of a larger plan, or to keep you happy and give you more money?
If the the former, then you need to figure out what they plan to do with your current position. Hire an outsider? Promote someone from the team? Shrink the team?
If they plan to promote someone from the team, and you refuse your promotion, It could trickle down and you could end up reporting to someone currently in the team..
I agree, but with a slightly different take. One way age comes into play during the hiring process, is when people are assessing how well you will be able to work with, and fit in, with the rest of the team. Also, how you will respond to potentially reporting to someone younger than you. This comes down to your personality, and how you project yourself in the interview. At this point, age is only an issue if you make out to be one.
Beyond that, and after the first few years on the job, age can be used to your advantage, in your ability to rise much faster than your peers, based on increased maturity, ability handle responsibility, life experience etc.
Don't fear age.. Use it!
Its the Hypothalamus, or the little brain, making these decisions. Any activity that we practice enough to the point where reactions become second nature (think braking while driving) really involves handing off that decision making process from the frontal lobes to the hypothalamus. Being directly linked to the nervous system, these decisions become reflex actions with a much quicker response time. I would guess an order of magnitude less than the 500ms.
That's why athlete's don't "think" about what they are doing
Now thats funny!
So Apple uses some undocumented OS features in their own products... how is that crippling other software?
As Robert J Hanlon once said "Never attribute to malice that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity" or in this case probably "oversight, ineptitude, carelessness etc"
You could also use Google apps for your domain and get the best of both worlds.
For an interesting take on human evolution, Please watch Idiocracy!
Firefox + GreaseMonkey + http://blog.persistent.info/2005/12/greasemonkey-christmas.html
I believe there might even be a Firefox extension that does this..
Cool factor, User Interface, Wifi, Almost full featured browser, Full screen, Video player.
Granted its still an expensive, but there isn't another device that does all of the above with quite as nice a user interface, and which has quite as much cool factor.
The summary states a somewhat precise estimate for ultimate success.. but what is the objective? At what point does one declare "Mission Accomplished, we've achieved ultimate success". What are the outcomes that would make the mission fall into one of the 70% or 30% buckets of failure or success. "Supporting a weak government" is a highly relative and ambiguous objective, (even if that is the real objective), while success and failure are binary outcomes.
This seems more like knowing the answer to the Ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42, without really knowing what the question is..
Google.com takes 45 seconds to load. CNN.com, several minutes for just the text to load (haven't seen any images yet), I have yet to see the safari home page fully load. It has now been about 8 minutes since i started the browser and the home page is still loading and has a blank screen. OK CNN just finished loading 12 minutes later. Slashdot, about 2 minutes for just the text, and about 5 minutes for the whole page. (And yes, i've tried restarting/rebooting several times)
This is all on a 7 mbit cable connection, using Firefox, CNN.com, or mostly any other page for that matter, takes about 3 seconds or less to fully load, including all the flash animated ads. So figuring there must be something wrong with my PC, I install safari on my laptop. Nope! Same results. I upgrade ITunes, thinking there might be some strange dependency on the latest version of quicktime, but no difference. I disable my (software) firewall, and antivirus.. and again nothing.. still watching the grass grow faster than the page loads... Anyone else experience this?
Actually the statement that H1B's are underpaid compared to their US counterparts is both true and false at the same time. It really depends on the criteria for the comparison. The crux of the H1B application process is to document and prove that the employee is being paid "more" than the average salary for that job after taking into account Job Title/level, description, qualifications, industry and geographic region. By definition an H1B employee is not underpaid and is in fact earning more than the average employee. What this doesn't take into account is the "ability" of an employee to do the job and willingness of employers to pay more for those abilities. I use the term ability loosely here, to include all kinds of intangibles like 1337 skillz, domain knowledge/experience, communication skills etc. The H1B rules do not account for the fact that salaries (especially in the more skilled areas) can vary by huge amounts depending on the "abilities" A significant number of H1B's while being paid more than the average for their qualifications, are actually fairly underpaid compared to a US worker of similar abilities. In other words, the same individual could probably earn a lot more if not for the artificial H1B restrictions. Which brings up my second point. Economics 101 - Protectionism doesn't work! Consider for a minute why and H1B worker would accept a lower salary than his abilities would allow. Most likely it is because he is not in the US and doesn't have access to other employers and doesn't know what the market rate for his abilities are. Regardless, once he is employed and comes to the US to work, he would very quickly have all the access/knowledge he needs, and would immediately jump ship to a better paying job. The original employer would then have to replace the employee at considerable cost, and so to avoid that, would begin by paying a higher salary in the first place. Its simple market forces at work, and the H1B wage would naturally gravitate towards the true (higher) market rate. However this market correction of salaries rarely happens, and the H1B salary stays lower than what it could be, and in turn drags the overall market rate down. This is all entirely a direct result of all the protectionist controls and restrictions that were ironically put in place by the program specifically to keep overall wages high. These restrictions affect both prospective employers and the employee in the following ways. 1. There is a significant cost (both monetary, and legal etc) associated with hiring an H1B employee. Most potential employers would rather not go through the hassle. or they offer a lower wage for said abilities to offset these costs. 2. Because of 1. the employee has a harder time finding other jobs/employers willing to hire H1B's. 3. Finally, the extremely long and tedious green card application process is tied to a particular employer and switching jobs usually means starting from scratch all over again. This is a huge disincentive to switch jobs, and is a major cause of H1B salary depression. All of this results in a class of workers earning less than their true potential, and the senators worst fears follow from there. The solution however, is not "more" controls, but instead "Less" controls. It should be hard to obtain the initial H1B but beyond that, all employees should have complete freedom to switch jobs easily. The same goes for the Green Card process. No artificial barriers tying down employees to one company. The level playing field will also ensure that companies will only sponsor the best candidates, that are worth the additional hassle of the initial sponsorship.