You are right, we do need to blame the people who are signing the checks that go to the Defence sector. And we need to call them out on the very obvious pattern of politicians who get campaign donations from defence contractors voting for the unnecessary spending.
However, that the way I see it, the Defence sector is doing what it can to make itself rich, not defend the nation. (As it should be doing because as corporations the goal is to make money not the opposite). The defence sector lobbying to continue producing military hardware that even the Pentagon itself says we don't need isn't protecting the nation, its filling a select few's pockets with sweet government cash.
Again, in a different time I could buy that the Defence sector is helping protect the nation. But when our military budget is larger than the next 10 nations combined and we literally outclass every potential enemy in military technology and spending I think the fallacy that continued levels of Defence spending is needed to defend the nation is a bit ludicrous.
I might have been in middle school when 9/11 happened but when I reached the job market I was old enough to have an opinion of the 10 years since 9/11. Maybe in the past working in the defence sector was seen as helping the security of the nation, winning the cold war and such. But for a lot of people my age the defence sector is the enemy. I'm probably not representative of the whole country but anecdotally thats my experience.
If I form a LLC and then commit crimes through that LLC, can I avoid any real punishment like corporations do? Like if I buy a car through my LLC, then I am "on the clock" when I'm driving home from the bar and get a DWI, can I just reach a "settlement" and walk away. I live in wisconsin so probably, DWIs are traffic tickets on your first offence.
When will people (as in the majority of people) start caring that there is a 2 class system of law in America, the haves and the have nots. Corporations and rich people dont go to jail.
I'm pretty sure I would fall in the category that we're talking about. I'm in the first half of my 20s and have a BS in Computer Engineering. I'm actually really interested in Cybersecurity, despite the vagueness of that term. I worked on a steganography project in one of my courses that I feel would provide the benefits of encryption combined with the benefits of steganography, and that would be of interest to a lot of groups right now.
However since the people around my age grew up under the Patriot Act, and now the NSA spying fiasco theres no way any of us want to work for Raytheon. We know what Raytheon does, we don't want to work for a company that profits from war and death. We want to work against Raytheon. I know I could make a ton of money anywhere in the Defence sector. I could also make a lot of money in the Financial sector. I turned down an interview at the CME on ethical grounds.
When Raytheon says "cybersecurity" they mean "helping governments (not just the US goverment) spy on domestic and foreign citizens, and helping Chertoff in his "cyber cold war". Sorry, some of us would rather feel at least indifferent about what we do instead of feeling like we are actively hurting real freedom and spreading conflict as well paid pawns of the Defence sector.
I would nap and probably do a bunch of much worse stuff too if I were them. My other buddies from the academy are stationed in tropical paradises picking up the locals when they go on leave, General Sleeps with His Biographer is getting some, and here I am stuck in America's asscrack buried deep in a bunker with another guy who won't shut up and keeps eating my lunch out of the fridge.
Seriously do these guys get hardship pay or anything? Is it a rotational program where they get to go somewhere better after they do their time in the bunker? Or is this really just the worst assignment in the Air Force?
Anecdotally by buddy's father who is in the Air Force Reserve was deployed somewhere in the Arabian Sea doing logistical support for the operations over there. He said it was the best vacation he ever went on. He loaded and unloaded planes, planes that sometimes came frequently and sometimes did not. When he wasn't loading and unloading planes he was playing golf, hitting the beach, or hanging out with his fellow airmen. I would be pretty envious if I were stuck in a bunker in Idaho.
Disclose that you have no control over the frameworks. Make sure all the stakeholders understand that the world of UI frameworks is always changing and that you will not predict what the market will look like in 5 years. Then make your best guess.
Privacy concerns aside, I think this may affect poorer people more than the affluent.
I base my opinion on some of the places I use to work. The offices, which were usually HQ or some other large corporate office, were always in very affluent areas. Great for professionals but not affordable for the laborers who worked in the restaurants and malls and such surrounding the offices. The affordable housing was further away, and if this kind of tax is passed it is going to affect the people who cannot afford to move closer to their job, or do not have the ability to get a job closer to where they live (low income areas usually have much less opportunity for employment).
There are a lot of people who don't really have many good options for living close to their place of employment. This kind of tax would unfairly impact them while sparing those who can afford to uproot and live closer to their place of employment.
The analysis is based upon two job categories as defined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics: network and computer systems administrator, and computer support specialist."
In other news, I did a study on the finance sector and determined that since the guy who works at the local Chase branch is in highschool that everyone in finance doesn't have a finance degree. I also found that I am also an expert statistician.
I think it frames it in terms of arguments of a federal website and program that is going to be gathering unprecedented personal and medical information on US citizens, and that is showing incredible ineptness of design and implementation through its first website portal is a fair argument to be brought up by anyone remotely concerned about their information, the safety of the information...and well frankly, what the govt does with that info.
Nothing is unprecedented. The government has been collecting all of your data for years, regardless of if the President has a (R) or a (D) next to his name. Bringing Obama into the discussion distracts from the fact that it doesn't matter who the president is, the government will continue being the government and continue doing whatever it wants.
No matter what you call it....there is justifiable cause for concern.
Remember the other day about the code viewable in the source of the ACA website about "no expectation of privacy"?
Yes I do, and in that discussion everyone whined about Obama and missed the opportunity to discuss the fact that the government and corporations have always acted as if you "have no expectation of privacy". Hence the fucking story we should be talking about here.
Yeah totally, that's why I never blamed the problems on the project being "government run" and instead said this is the first (in my memory) case in the government of a large organization failing at rolling out a software solution.
What I was trying to say is that the government is now experiencing the same challenges a lot of companies and other large organizations deal with. The government is just doing it on a national stage, while also forcing millions of people to use the site.
Brining Obama into it frames the discussion on partisan politics. The discussion becomes "Obama and the democrats are corrupt, look at this no bid contract" instead of "The entire goverment, regardless of political party, is corrupt; no bid contracts have been part of the goverment bidding process for years and we need to reform it now".
We get nowhere when we fight about one party over another. But thats how all the debates are framed, and partisan drones are programmed to jump all over the opportunity to blame opposing party while ignoring the same transgressions when it is their party being bad.
I think this might be the first goverment case of a large organization trying to execute a publicly facing software project and failing. For decades the goverment didn't do public facing benefit projects. If this all happened in the 90s you would have to sign up using paper forms and although it may have been slow and inconvenient by today's standards that's what the goverment had experience in doing, it probably would have worked just fine.
I think software/web centric failures like this are going to keep happening. Few organizations, especially those whose primary business isn't software, are good at implementing huge software projects. Most management doesn't know how to run software projects, budget departments dont know how to account for software projects. If the Social Security administration has a huge backlog of applications they just add more people to the workforce until they work through it. Now everything is different, it doesn't matter how many people and how much money you throw at it, it's going to talk a while to fix. Very few people in goverment, and very few members of the electorate understand how a software project is run, hence a "surge" to fix the problem. People understand that concept, they imagine tons of nerdy looking guys flowing into some building and typing furiously at a keyboard until the problems go away. Good imagery, not really accurate.
I'm actually really amused by all this, it's my job playing out on a national stage. Terrible software estimates, contractors failing to live up to contracts, unrealistic timelines, poorly understood requirements, angry management demanding all hands on deck, and unhappy users. Maybe now software management will become an academic subject and mandatory study for MBAs and such.
Just because I recognize the way it is doesn't mean I support it. I'm not a 1%er, I'm a 9 to 5 firmware engineer. I'm just not naive about how the game is being played. The sooner we accept that these are the rules governing corporations the sooner we as a society can have a constructive conversation about how to change it.
Attributing this behavior to greed is ignoring the problem. It's way beyond greed. Its systemic, the entire modern western way of life is based on exploiting someone or something for the gain of material wealth.
Then there are a lot of people who are immoral, because anyone who has a 401k is probably invested in mutual funds, and those funds are usually invested in at least Walmart or McDonalds.
Morals aren't real, their just things created to keep us in line.
I don't think that anyone sees the point. The corporate behavior doesn't seem legitimate. It is legitimate. It is law. It is how corporations have operated for over 100 years. It's the american way. We're all part of it.
We can't change something we are all perpetuating.
I think ideally that's what the government is for. I don't know if you are American or not, because it is laughable to think that the American government would punish "bad" corporations if anyone could even agree on what that means. The American government exists to preserve corporations. Why do you think they got the bailout.
And yeah the 401k isn't terrible. I have one, I like it and I decide generally where the investment goes. However most people dont look at their 401k, and usually just use the default fund, which is usually a broad based fund chasing the top stocks. AAPL is part of most people's 401k and most public retirement funds.
You know I bet a lot of people do think I'm trolling. That didn't even occur to me.
I'm trying to get people to move past the "fuck management" circlejerk and start talking about how America built, and is now built upon, the corporate capitalist system. If we wan't shit to change we have to look at our own spending habits and who we vote for (if we vote) and stop blaming people for doing their job.
I'm an engineer, I have worked for corporations who have laid my colleagues off. I have been threatened that my job would be outsourced. I don't think what Broadcom did was cool, but we can't all sit here an whine about Broadcom being dicks while were also gleefully watching our 401k (which Broadcom is probably a part of in some small part) go up in value. not trying to rant at you as Im sure you see this contradiction
The only problem, and it's a slight problem, is that mass murder is illegal and corporations maximizing shareholder value is actually the law. I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but if you don't like the game change the rules, don't be angry at people who play by them. (I know it's impossible to change the rules because the corporations own congress...)
Raise the minimum wage to living wage --> corporate profits take a hit --> your 401k goes down in value --> panic --> fuck the poor, the minimum wage should not go up.
I think that governmental regulation could address the problem. My fear would be that the government would just create loopholes for some corporations while applying regulations to others.
I think a big part of the problem is consumers. We want cheap stuff, we don't care who made it, how much they were paid, and how sustainable the process was. Until that changes, there will be no political will to regulate corporations so that they have to treat employees with dignity.
And it's not easy to try to be a "good consumer". I'm a member of a grocery co-op, and most of the stuff is way more expensive. My partner wont shop there because "I can just go to the mega chain down the street and get all this stuff cheaper". I'm in a position where I can choose to spend my money on a more expensive product because it's important to me that the workers are treated fairly and the product is sustainable. That's not a choice a lot of people can make. (And I still feel bad because the only reason I can make that choice is because I have a good salary at a company that offshores manufacturing because it saves money).
Another huge problem is the privatization of retirement. The 401k sucks for the average person while it is a huge boon to Wall St. If enough consumers got together and said "Mega Chain X, we wan't you to treat your employees well and only use sustainable products / processes, and we think it's ok that you only make 100 million in profit this year instead of 150 million if it means you are a sustainable company", then we will all shit our pants when our 401k goes down 20% in value. We are part of the system now, we cant just sit there and say fuck corporate profits because our retirement, and our public pensions depend on Wall St. doing well. Right now Wall St. doing well also means a lot of Americans aren't doing well. Unfortunately we don't see this dependency.
/ramble
Maybe, but I don't think observing the obvious says anything about me as a person. I never said it's good or bad, it just is. We all feel for people who get laid off, but it's not surprising in this case, it would actually be surprising if they didn't lay people off.
I think that the sooner we get past the "Corporations are evil" circle jerk we can start having a serious discussion about corporate governance reform and what as a society we expect from corporations. "I want a living wage" and "I want to get a meal for less than $5" should be mutually exclusive phrases, but in America consumers say both. Unfortunately it's usually the same people who are mistreated by Corporations that are supporting their behavior.
If adding incentives and benefits in turn leads to shareholder value then that's what a company will do. I don't disagree.
The current prevailing thought is leading corporations to consolidate operations in an effort to increase operating margin. During the recession companies have been figuring out ways to grow revenue without growing operational costs. You hear it all the time, companies are getting workers to be more productive.
If whatever operating assumptions the company operates under say that firing you will lead to greater shareholder value, they will do it regardless of all else. Some companies don't come to this conclusion, some do. It seems like Broadcom is assuming that letting these people go will increase their value.
Companies are amoral. Period. The people running the company have to do what will produce the most shareholder value. It's not an excuse, its reality. That's the rules of the game that we all play. Don't like it, join the non-profit sector (which is also really fucked up), or lead a revolution.
If somehow treating employees well lead to greater shareholder value, companies would do it. There are a few that try to leverage this, like Ben and Jerry's executive salary scheme. I can't think of many others though, especially not publicly traded companies. The problem is that (American) consumers demand the cheapest shit possible without regard to who and how it was made (of course thats a generalization but it is mostly true).
Most people would buy widget X over widget Y if widget X cost 5% less, even if the company that makes widget X is killing the environment and shitting on its employees. If you figure out how to make people pay more for widget Y, then you might be able fix the problem.
Mergers rarely help the greater social good and in the long run, that actually can run counter to shareholders (unless you are referring to micro-traders).
It's not about the greater social good, and it will never be about the greater social good. It's about adding the most shareholder value possible. It doesn't matter who or what the shareholders are: day traders, hedge funds, long term investors, its all completely irrelevant.
Also, shareholders are not all equal. You reference "the few greedy fucks that gain from the mergers." The few greedy fucks probably own most of the company. Icahn wants to destroy every company he invests in and sell it off piece by piece. Because he is a huge shareholder, he can demand that and replace the board with people that support his vision. That's the way it works.
This isn't people with MBAs being evil, this is good business. They are getting a ton of talented engineers from Renessas. So if you need 100 engineers and all the sudden you buy another company that has another 100 engineers, you keep the best 100 and let the rest go.
Don't ever expect a company to be loyal to you for a split second. If they can can your ass a day before your 40th year anniversary with the company to save a few bucks on the quarterly report they will. They legally have to. Corporations in America have to make the most money they can, and the officers of the company are bound to increase shareholder value.
It is completely amoral. McD and Walmart are not evil for not giving employees living wage, they are just doing their legal duty to increase shareholder value. To attribute the (mis)treatment of employees to anything besides American Corporate Capitalism is ignoring the reality of our economy.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right, we do need to blame the people who are signing the checks that go to the Defence sector. And we need to call them out on the very obvious pattern of politicians who get campaign donations from defence contractors voting for the unnecessary spending.
However, that the way I see it, the Defence sector is doing what it can to make itself rich, not defend the nation. (As it should be doing because as corporations the goal is to make money not the opposite). The defence sector lobbying to continue producing military hardware that even the Pentagon itself says we don't need isn't protecting the nation, its filling a select few's pockets with sweet government cash.
Again, in a different time I could buy that the Defence sector is helping protect the nation. But when our military budget is larger than the next 10 nations combined and we literally outclass every potential enemy in military technology and spending I think the fallacy that continued levels of Defence spending is needed to defend the nation is a bit ludicrous.
I might have been in middle school when 9/11 happened but when I reached the job market I was old enough to have an opinion of the 10 years since 9/11. Maybe in the past working in the defence sector was seen as helping the security of the nation, winning the cold war and such. But for a lot of people my age the defence sector is the enemy. I'm probably not representative of the whole country but anecdotally thats my experience.
If I form a LLC and then commit crimes through that LLC, can I avoid any real punishment like corporations do? Like if I buy a car through my LLC, then I am "on the clock" when I'm driving home from the bar and get a DWI, can I just reach a "settlement" and walk away. I live in wisconsin so probably, DWIs are traffic tickets on your first offence.
When will people (as in the majority of people) start caring that there is a 2 class system of law in America, the haves and the have nots. Corporations and rich people dont go to jail.
I'm pretty sure I would fall in the category that we're talking about. I'm in the first half of my 20s and have a BS in Computer Engineering. I'm actually really interested in Cybersecurity, despite the vagueness of that term. I worked on a steganography project in one of my courses that I feel would provide the benefits of encryption combined with the benefits of steganography, and that would be of interest to a lot of groups right now.
However since the people around my age grew up under the Patriot Act, and now the NSA spying fiasco theres no way any of us want to work for Raytheon. We know what Raytheon does, we don't want to work for a company that profits from war and death. We want to work against Raytheon. I know I could make a ton of money anywhere in the Defence sector. I could also make a lot of money in the Financial sector. I turned down an interview at the CME on ethical grounds.
When Raytheon says "cybersecurity" they mean "helping governments (not just the US goverment) spy on domestic and foreign citizens, and helping Chertoff in his "cyber cold war". Sorry, some of us would rather feel at least indifferent about what we do instead of feeling like we are actively hurting real freedom and spreading conflict as well paid pawns of the Defence sector.
I would nap and probably do a bunch of much worse stuff too if I were them. My other buddies from the academy are stationed in tropical paradises picking up the locals when they go on leave, General Sleeps with His Biographer is getting some, and here I am stuck in America's asscrack buried deep in a bunker with another guy who won't shut up and keeps eating my lunch out of the fridge.
Seriously do these guys get hardship pay or anything? Is it a rotational program where they get to go somewhere better after they do their time in the bunker? Or is this really just the worst assignment in the Air Force?
Anecdotally by buddy's father who is in the Air Force Reserve was deployed somewhere in the Arabian Sea doing logistical support for the operations over there. He said it was the best vacation he ever went on. He loaded and unloaded planes, planes that sometimes came frequently and sometimes did not. When he wasn't loading and unloading planes he was playing golf, hitting the beach, or hanging out with his fellow airmen. I would be pretty envious if I were stuck in a bunker in Idaho.
Disclose that you have no control over the frameworks. Make sure all the stakeholders understand that the world of UI frameworks is always changing and that you will not predict what the market will look like in 5 years. Then make your best guess.
Privacy concerns aside, I think this may affect poorer people more than the affluent.
I base my opinion on some of the places I use to work. The offices, which were usually HQ or some other large corporate office, were always in very affluent areas. Great for professionals but not affordable for the laborers who worked in the restaurants and malls and such surrounding the offices. The affordable housing was further away, and if this kind of tax is passed it is going to affect the people who cannot afford to move closer to their job, or do not have the ability to get a job closer to where they live (low income areas usually have much less opportunity for employment).
There are a lot of people who don't really have many good options for living close to their place of employment. This kind of tax would unfairly impact them while sparing those who can afford to uproot and live closer to their place of employment.
The analysis is based upon two job categories as defined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics: network and computer systems administrator, and computer support specialist."
In other news, I did a study on the finance sector and determined that since the guy who works at the local Chase branch is in highschool that everyone in finance doesn't have a finance degree. I also found that I am also an expert statistician.
I think it frames it in terms of arguments of a federal website and program that is going to be gathering unprecedented personal and medical information on US citizens, and that is showing incredible ineptness of design and implementation through its first website portal is a fair argument to be brought up by anyone remotely concerned about their information, the safety of the information...and well frankly, what the govt does with that info.
Nothing is unprecedented. The government has been collecting all of your data for years, regardless of if the President has a (R) or a (D) next to his name. Bringing Obama into the discussion distracts from the fact that it doesn't matter who the president is, the government will continue being the government and continue doing whatever it wants.
No matter what you call it....there is justifiable cause for concern. Remember the other day about the code viewable in the source of the ACA website about "no expectation of privacy"?
Yes I do, and in that discussion everyone whined about Obama and missed the opportunity to discuss the fact that the government and corporations have always acted as if you "have no expectation of privacy". Hence the fucking story we should be talking about here.
Yeah totally, that's why I never blamed the problems on the project being "government run" and instead said this is the first (in my memory) case in the government of a large organization failing at rolling out a software solution.
What I was trying to say is that the government is now experiencing the same challenges a lot of companies and other large organizations deal with. The government is just doing it on a national stage, while also forcing millions of people to use the site.
Brining Obama into it frames the discussion on partisan politics. The discussion becomes "Obama and the democrats are corrupt, look at this no bid contract" instead of "The entire goverment, regardless of political party, is corrupt; no bid contracts have been part of the goverment bidding process for years and we need to reform it now".
We get nowhere when we fight about one party over another. But thats how all the debates are framed, and partisan drones are programmed to jump all over the opportunity to blame opposing party while ignoring the same transgressions when it is their party being bad.
I think this might be the first goverment case of a large organization trying to execute a publicly facing software project and failing. For decades the goverment didn't do public facing benefit projects. If this all happened in the 90s you would have to sign up using paper forms and although it may have been slow and inconvenient by today's standards that's what the goverment had experience in doing, it probably would have worked just fine.
I think software/web centric failures like this are going to keep happening. Few organizations, especially those whose primary business isn't software, are good at implementing huge software projects. Most management doesn't know how to run software projects, budget departments dont know how to account for software projects. If the Social Security administration has a huge backlog of applications they just add more people to the workforce until they work through it. Now everything is different, it doesn't matter how many people and how much money you throw at it, it's going to talk a while to fix. Very few people in goverment, and very few members of the electorate understand how a software project is run, hence a "surge" to fix the problem. People understand that concept, they imagine tons of nerdy looking guys flowing into some building and typing furiously at a keyboard until the problems go away. Good imagery, not really accurate.
I'm actually really amused by all this, it's my job playing out on a national stage. Terrible software estimates, contractors failing to live up to contracts, unrealistic timelines, poorly understood requirements, angry management demanding all hands on deck, and unhappy users. Maybe now software management will become an academic subject and mandatory study for MBAs and such.
Just because I recognize the way it is doesn't mean I support it. I'm not a 1%er, I'm a 9 to 5 firmware engineer. I'm just not naive about how the game is being played. The sooner we accept that these are the rules governing corporations the sooner we as a society can have a constructive conversation about how to change it.
Attributing this behavior to greed is ignoring the problem. It's way beyond greed. Its systemic, the entire modern western way of life is based on exploiting someone or something for the gain of material wealth.
Then there are a lot of people who are immoral, because anyone who has a 401k is probably invested in mutual funds, and those funds are usually invested in at least Walmart or McDonalds.
Morals aren't real, their just things created to keep us in line.
I don't think that anyone sees the point. The corporate behavior doesn't seem legitimate. It is legitimate. It is law. It is how corporations have operated for over 100 years. It's the american way. We're all part of it.
We can't change something we are all perpetuating.
I think ideally that's what the government is for. I don't know if you are American or not, because it is laughable to think that the American government would punish "bad" corporations if anyone could even agree on what that means. The American government exists to preserve corporations. Why do you think they got the bailout.
And yeah the 401k isn't terrible. I have one, I like it and I decide generally where the investment goes. However most people dont look at their 401k, and usually just use the default fund, which is usually a broad based fund chasing the top stocks. AAPL is part of most people's 401k and most public retirement funds.
and I don't think you're trolling.
You know I bet a lot of people do think I'm trolling. That didn't even occur to me.
I'm trying to get people to move past the "fuck management" circlejerk and start talking about how America built, and is now built upon, the corporate capitalist system. If we wan't shit to change we have to look at our own spending habits and who we vote for (if we vote) and stop blaming people for doing their job.
I'm an engineer, I have worked for corporations who have laid my colleagues off. I have been threatened that my job would be outsourced. I don't think what Broadcom did was cool, but we can't all sit here an whine about Broadcom being dicks while were also gleefully watching our 401k (which Broadcom is probably a part of in some small part) go up in value. not trying to rant at you as Im sure you see this contradiction
The only problem, and it's a slight problem, is that mass murder is illegal and corporations maximizing shareholder value is actually the law. I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but if you don't like the game change the rules, don't be angry at people who play by them. (I know it's impossible to change the rules because the corporations own congress...)
Your exactly right.
Raise the minimum wage to living wage --> corporate profits take a hit --> your 401k goes down in value --> panic --> fuck the poor, the minimum wage should not go up.
Break that cycle, shit might get better.
I think that governmental regulation could address the problem. My fear would be that the government would just create loopholes for some corporations while applying regulations to others.
/ramble
I think a big part of the problem is consumers. We want cheap stuff, we don't care who made it, how much they were paid, and how sustainable the process was. Until that changes, there will be no political will to regulate corporations so that they have to treat employees with dignity.
And it's not easy to try to be a "good consumer". I'm a member of a grocery co-op, and most of the stuff is way more expensive. My partner wont shop there because "I can just go to the mega chain down the street and get all this stuff cheaper". I'm in a position where I can choose to spend my money on a more expensive product because it's important to me that the workers are treated fairly and the product is sustainable. That's not a choice a lot of people can make. (And I still feel bad because the only reason I can make that choice is because I have a good salary at a company that offshores manufacturing because it saves money).
Another huge problem is the privatization of retirement. The 401k sucks for the average person while it is a huge boon to Wall St. If enough consumers got together and said "Mega Chain X, we wan't you to treat your employees well and only use sustainable products / processes, and we think it's ok that you only make 100 million in profit this year instead of 150 million if it means you are a sustainable company", then we will all shit our pants when our 401k goes down 20% in value. We are part of the system now, we cant just sit there and say fuck corporate profits because our retirement, and our public pensions depend on Wall St. doing well. Right now Wall St. doing well also means a lot of Americans aren't doing well. Unfortunately we don't see this dependency.
You're a bitter husk of a person.
Maybe, but I don't think observing the obvious says anything about me as a person. I never said it's good or bad, it just is. We all feel for people who get laid off, but it's not surprising in this case, it would actually be surprising if they didn't lay people off.
I think that the sooner we get past the "Corporations are evil" circle jerk we can start having a serious discussion about corporate governance reform and what as a society we expect from corporations. "I want a living wage" and "I want to get a meal for less than $5" should be mutually exclusive phrases, but in America consumers say both. Unfortunately it's usually the same people who are mistreated by Corporations that are supporting their behavior.
If adding incentives and benefits in turn leads to shareholder value then that's what a company will do. I don't disagree.
The current prevailing thought is leading corporations to consolidate operations in an effort to increase operating margin. During the recession companies have been figuring out ways to grow revenue without growing operational costs. You hear it all the time, companies are getting workers to be more productive.
If whatever operating assumptions the company operates under say that firing you will lead to greater shareholder value, they will do it regardless of all else. Some companies don't come to this conclusion, some do. It seems like Broadcom is assuming that letting these people go will increase their value.
Companies are amoral. Period. The people running the company have to do what will produce the most shareholder value. It's not an excuse, its reality. That's the rules of the game that we all play. Don't like it, join the non-profit sector (which is also really fucked up), or lead a revolution.
If somehow treating employees well lead to greater shareholder value, companies would do it. There are a few that try to leverage this, like Ben and Jerry's executive salary scheme. I can't think of many others though, especially not publicly traded companies. The problem is that (American) consumers demand the cheapest shit possible without regard to who and how it was made (of course thats a generalization but it is mostly true).
Most people would buy widget X over widget Y if widget X cost 5% less, even if the company that makes widget X is killing the environment and shitting on its employees. If you figure out how to make people pay more for widget Y, then you might be able fix the problem.
Mergers rarely help the greater social good and in the long run, that actually can run counter to shareholders (unless you are referring to micro-traders).
It's not about the greater social good, and it will never be about the greater social good. It's about adding the most shareholder value possible. It doesn't matter who or what the shareholders are: day traders, hedge funds, long term investors, its all completely irrelevant.
Also, shareholders are not all equal. You reference "the few greedy fucks that gain from the mergers." The few greedy fucks probably own most of the company. Icahn wants to destroy every company he invests in and sell it off piece by piece. Because he is a huge shareholder, he can demand that and replace the board with people that support his vision. That's the way it works.
This isn't people with MBAs being evil, this is good business. They are getting a ton of talented engineers from Renessas. So if you need 100 engineers and all the sudden you buy another company that has another 100 engineers, you keep the best 100 and let the rest go.
Don't ever expect a company to be loyal to you for a split second. If they can can your ass a day before your 40th year anniversary with the company to save a few bucks on the quarterly report they will. They legally have to. Corporations in America have to make the most money they can, and the officers of the company are bound to increase shareholder value.
It is completely amoral. McD and Walmart are not evil for not giving employees living wage, they are just doing their legal duty to increase shareholder value. To attribute the (mis)treatment of employees to anything besides American Corporate Capitalism is ignoring the reality of our economy.