I pretty much begged my current employer to classify me as a contractor instead of a full-time employee when I signed up. If it wasn't for the horrible job market when I was hired, I would have probably walked and found a company willing to play ball.
I've been tech contracting on and off for years, but never heard of this law. Does it affect the contractor directly or only the company contracting with them?
In a population of N people, let's say we all have a risk (probability) P of having some misfortune that would cost us X as individuals. For the whole population, there is a cost N*P*X from this misfortune, and we can pay for it by having each of us may our fraction P*X = N*P*X/N rather than some of us paying zero and some of us paying X when misfortune strikes.
If you let people self select into smaller and smaller pools of similar probability P, as the pool (N) approaches 1, the expected value of everyone's individual cost approaches their individual P*X: what they'd pay without any insurance at all.
Insurance only works if the is large enough and includes people with different probabilities of incurring costs, otherwise, we might as well just self-fund.
Secondly, if that 2k a year is not coming out of his pocket, then whose pocket is it coming out of, mine?
Yes. Insurance is a risk pool. The less risky subsidize the more risky. If you don't like it, feel free to roll the dice: Opt out and self-fund. Let me know how that works out for you, especially when you get sick and end up with outrageous medical bills.
You think $2k a year is high? Seriously?? How about $2k a month? Can you suck that expense down without participating in insurance?
Maybe they should have showed a big spinning clock, or a caption at the bottom of the screen that says "IN CASE YOU CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT, TIME WOULD ACTUALLY BE PASSING BETWEEN EACH SEARCH!! GET IT?"
Count me among the people who wish the Rails guys spent more time on documenting, settling the framework and standardizing things... and less on making yet another Rails version that's different than the previous ones.
We're talking about a system where (to many) it is considered "best practice" to freeze your gems, including rails, to a particular version by copying them into your vendor directory, because of the breaking changes that happen from version to version. WTF??? It's like telling a C programmer he ought to copy the standard library headers into his source tree just in case the next version of C changes strcpy().
It doesn't matter how many peer-reviewed, controlled studies are done, or how much evidence is amassed supporting a claim, if the subject is something people are passionate about, there will always be a segment of the population (sometimes quite large and powerful) who won't believe it.
See also: Evolution, the age of the universe, anthropogenic climate change, vaccines causing autism, etc.
A lot of those "strengths" of small companies cut both ways, particularly the programming and change management ones.
Sure, you can competently go in and integrate sparse_hash into your code without getting approval from the tech lead and the business side. This also means Joe Junior Coder can integrate that awful code from his favorite newbie programming tutorial site with just as much ease and as little oversight.
If MegaCorp's product is used by millions of people across 10 platforms and 3 CPU architectures, that "little annoyance" you just fixed without the horror of going through the appropriate change control procedure might have broken the Sparc build in some subtle way the compiler didn't catch. Suddenly you've caused 2,000 new support calls. Bonus points if you leave the company soon after and it's up to a junior programmer to find and fix it.
I've just spent the last year implementing and formalizing much-needed process and controls at a small company because the existing system was pretty much "Russian-roulette" and cowboy coding.
Actually, I wish more people would respond with "I'd just look it up in the book" to those awful "programming trivia" type questions. I have never in my career encountered a situation where I had to know the parameters to strtok() by heart because the API documentation was more than a keystroke away.
In fact, I don't want a programmer who knows linked lists so well that he's eager to re-invent them all over the company's source tree. There are better things to do today besides re-implementing yet another standard library function--like BUILDING THE DAMN SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
Try working for a small company where your manager reports to the CEO. Talk about no room for advancement!
As someone who's never worked for an extremely large corporation, I think I'd kind of relish being "pay grade 8 out of 15" particularly if there is a clear, predictable and achievable path to 9, then 10, then 11, etc.
* worse pay/benefits
* little room for advancement, say the CEO is one manager above you--where's your career path?
* your actions have more visibility (this can be good and bad)
* more risk of the company getting into financial trouble
* more (sometimes nastier) politics, because everyone knows each other
If you want to have a nice safe job on the fourth floor where you can bide your time, do your job, attend your meetings, kiss your boss's ass, and slowly but surely grow and advance, a small company is not for you.
Perhaps your standards are too high or your compensation is too low. If you're trying to find that top 0.1% of talent yet pay "above average with competitive benefits", prepare to keep burning through candidates.
Linked list? Quicksort? You might as well ask them how printf() works. You'll get about as much information about the candidate's ability to think creatively and build large complex systems---basically nothing.
I was playing around with the idea of using SVG as a graphics file format for a recent project, but after having a look at the specifications, even SVG "Tiny" is way, way, way overcomplicated. With raster graphics formats out there that can be read and parsed with a couple lines of C code, there is definitely room for a truly SIMPLE vector graphics format.
I'd love to see a "SVG Tiny Tiny Tiny" for those of us that just want a few scalable icons and don't want to build a freaking XML parser into their project.
Alternatively, if anyone can recommend a good C or C++ based support library that takes the pain and suffering out of parsing SVG, I'm interested!
I don't really think that any modern revolution can succeed unless a significant portion of the trained military forces sent to oppose them sympathize enough with them to disobey orders or defect.
See Iraq and Afghanistan for examples of insurgencies making the best of small arms, improvised explosives and knowledge of their local environment, vs. the world's most advanced army.
How do you know he was texting if he was going 70mph, it was the middle of the night, and you ended up in a ditch (presumably not able to follow and identify the person or his activities). How do you even know it was a teenager, or that it was a "he"?
Let me guess: You're having an impossible time finding that guy with fifteen years programing experience, with five years experience on that niche program your company uses, a Master's degree in Computer Science, who needs no assistance relocating, willing to work 60+ hours a week, for $70,000/yr + crappy benefits?
There's TONS of talent out there right now. Get your H.R. person out of the resume-screening job and be a little flexible with candidates and you'll find them.
Everyone who responded to the grandparent post is making a strawman argument, but yours is the worst so I'll reply to you. When someone says get rid of 80% of the government, of COURSE they don't mean get rid of the truly useful and important services like police and fire protection. Who would start cutting essential services when there when there is so much real waste to get rid of?
Get a grip! Nobody wants to turn the place into Somalia--but a lot of people wouldn't mind paying less in taxes if it meant there were fewer people in city hall getting paid $40k + benefits to stamp papers all day or move memos from one stack to another.
I'd rather have an accountable but incompetent bureaucracy (government) regulate the industry than have an unaccountable greed-driven bureaucracy (corporation) self-regulate.
Slashdot Mirror
civil servants just carrying out their jobs
Must... resist... TOO.... EASY...!
The insurance company. They won't even sell you a policy if you've ever so much as skinned your knee.
I pretty much begged my current employer to classify me as a contractor instead of a full-time employee when I signed up. If it wasn't for the horrible job market when I was hired, I would have probably walked and found a company willing to play ball.
I've been tech contracting on and off for years, but never heard of this law. Does it affect the contractor directly or only the company contracting with them?
In a population of N people, let's say we all have a risk (probability) P of having some misfortune that would cost us X as individuals. For the whole population, there is a cost N*P*X from this misfortune, and we can pay for it by having each of us may our fraction P*X = N*P*X/N rather than some of us paying zero and some of us paying X when misfortune strikes.
If you let people self select into smaller and smaller pools of similar probability P, as the pool (N) approaches 1, the expected value of everyone's individual cost approaches their individual P*X: what they'd pay without any insurance at all.
Insurance only works if the is large enough and includes people with different probabilities of incurring costs, otherwise, we might as well just self-fund.
Secondly, if that 2k a year is not coming out of his pocket, then whose pocket is it coming out of, mine?
Yes. Insurance is a risk pool. The less risky subsidize the more risky. If you don't like it, feel free to roll the dice: Opt out and self-fund. Let me know how that works out for you, especially when you get sick and end up with outrageous medical bills.
You think $2k a year is high? Seriously?? How about $2k a month? Can you suck that expense down without participating in insurance?
Maybe they should have showed a big spinning clock, or a caption at the bottom of the screen that says "IN CASE YOU CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT, TIME WOULD ACTUALLY BE PASSING BETWEEN EACH SEARCH!! GET IT?"
Count me among the people who wish the Rails guys spent more time on documenting, settling the framework and standardizing things... and less on making yet another Rails version that's different than the previous ones.
We're talking about a system where (to many) it is considered "best practice" to freeze your gems, including rails, to a particular version by copying them into your vendor directory, because of the breaking changes that happen from version to version. WTF??? It's like telling a C programmer he ought to copy the standard library headers into his source tree just in case the next version of C changes strcpy().
It doesn't matter how many peer-reviewed, controlled studies are done, or how much evidence is amassed supporting a claim, if the subject is something people are passionate about, there will always be a segment of the population (sometimes quite large and powerful) who won't believe it.
See also: Evolution, the age of the universe, anthropogenic climate change, vaccines causing autism, etc.
A lot of those "strengths" of small companies cut both ways, particularly the programming and change management ones.
Sure, you can competently go in and integrate sparse_hash into your code without getting approval from the tech lead and the business side. This also means Joe Junior Coder can integrate that awful code from his favorite newbie programming tutorial site with just as much ease and as little oversight.
If MegaCorp's product is used by millions of people across 10 platforms and 3 CPU architectures, that "little annoyance" you just fixed without the horror of going through the appropriate change control procedure might have broken the Sparc build in some subtle way the compiler didn't catch. Suddenly you've caused 2,000 new support calls. Bonus points if you leave the company soon after and it's up to a junior programmer to find and fix it.
I've just spent the last year implementing and formalizing much-needed process and controls at a small company because the existing system was pretty much "Russian-roulette" and cowboy coding.
Actually, I wish more people would respond with "I'd just look it up in the book" to those awful "programming trivia" type questions. I have never in my career encountered a situation where I had to know the parameters to strtok() by heart because the API documentation was more than a keystroke away.
In fact, I don't want a programmer who knows linked lists so well that he's eager to re-invent them all over the company's source tree. There are better things to do today besides re-implementing yet another standard library function--like BUILDING THE DAMN SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
Try working for a small company where your manager reports to the CEO. Talk about no room for advancement!
As someone who's never worked for an extremely large corporation, I think I'd kind of relish being "pay grade 8 out of 15" particularly if there is a clear, predictable and achievable path to 9, then 10, then 11, etc.
I've found, the smaller the company, generally:
* worse pay/benefits
* little room for advancement, say the CEO is one manager above you--where's your career path?
* your actions have more visibility (this can be good and bad)
* more risk of the company getting into financial trouble
* more (sometimes nastier) politics, because everyone knows each other
If you want to have a nice safe job on the fourth floor where you can bide your time, do your job, attend your meetings, kiss your boss's ass, and slowly but surely grow and advance, a small company is not for you.
Perhaps your standards are too high or your compensation is too low. If you're trying to find that top 0.1% of talent yet pay "above average with competitive benefits", prepare to keep burning through candidates.
Linked list? Quicksort? You might as well ask them how printf() works. You'll get about as much information about the candidate's ability to think creatively and build large complex systems---basically nothing.
I was playing around with the idea of using SVG as a graphics file format for a recent project, but after having a look at the specifications, even SVG "Tiny" is way, way, way overcomplicated. With raster graphics formats out there that can be read and parsed with a couple lines of C code, there is definitely room for a truly SIMPLE vector graphics format.
I'd love to see a "SVG Tiny Tiny Tiny" for those of us that just want a few scalable icons and don't want to build a freaking XML parser into their project.
Alternatively, if anyone can recommend a good C or C++ based support library that takes the pain and suffering out of parsing SVG, I'm interested!
I don't really think that any modern revolution can succeed unless a significant portion of the trained military forces sent to oppose them sympathize enough with them to disobey orders or defect.
See Iraq and Afghanistan for examples of insurgencies making the best of small arms, improvised explosives and knowledge of their local environment, vs. the world's most advanced army.
I call shenanigans!
How do you know he was texting if he was going 70mph, it was the middle of the night, and you ended up in a ditch (presumably not able to follow and identify the person or his activities). How do you even know it was a teenager, or that it was a "he"?
Let me guess: You're having an impossible time finding that guy with fifteen years programing experience, with five years experience on that niche program your company uses, a Master's degree in Computer Science, who needs no assistance relocating, willing to work 60+ hours a week, for $70,000/yr + crappy benefits?
There's TONS of talent out there right now. Get your H.R. person out of the resume-screening job and be a little flexible with candidates and you'll find them.
So ya, go ahead tax the man with no money out of existence.
You must be joking.
So how many pirated copies = 1 lost sale?
How many apples = 1 orange?
Yet, we're still not taxing churches...
Everyone who responded to the grandparent post is making a strawman argument, but yours is the worst so I'll reply to you. When someone says get rid of 80% of the government, of COURSE they don't mean get rid of the truly useful and important services like police and fire protection. Who would start cutting essential services when there when there is so much real waste to get rid of?
Get a grip! Nobody wants to turn the place into Somalia--but a lot of people wouldn't mind paying less in taxes if it meant there were fewer people in city hall getting paid $40k + benefits to stamp papers all day or move memos from one stack to another.
Too many people- no value to society- 1% of people having stuff- 99% of people not having stuff. Historically that doesn't go well.
Solved with easy access to distractions and cheap entertainment.
NASCAR on TV = No French Revolution
Our whole system is set up for the express purpose of helping the top 1% take from the remaining 99%. The system won't ever fail.
Pet Peeve: What the hell is a "virii"? Don't you mean "viruses"?
Jeez...
I'd rather have an accountable but incompetent bureaucracy (government) regulate the industry than have an unaccountable greed-driven bureaucracy (corporation) self-regulate.