I'm not the sysadmin at the recruiting company we work for, the idiot is a raw MSCE who literally didn't know what the lights on a hub meant, and didn't understand what a traceroute shows when he started. When I found out by chance that the Exchange server at work was an open relay I had to spend 2 converstations and about 10 e-mails convincing him that it was indeed open and that it could be a problem. It took me 5 minutes to find this article, and I finally had to send him the link or he wouldn't have done anything about it.
I'd better stop now before I really start ranting about this idiot.
I am a technical recruiter in Silicon Valley with an established firm. We place a lot of software engineers, technical writers, and various other technical professionals.
The rule of thumb for contracting wages compared to perm salary is you should get 30 to 40 percent more for a contract, since you don't have paid holidays and other benefits. Many companies (all those that belong to the trade group NACCB) offer health insurance at group rates for their contractors who want to work as W-2 employees of the consulting company. The other advantage to working W-2 is if the company you are working at goes broke you are still paid by the consulting company.
You can also become incorporated. The downside is if the company goes down the tubes and doesn't pay you, you are screwed. You also have to do more complicated taxes, (and ask about 15% more than a W-2 contractor to cover self-employment taxes) but you can deduct quite a few things.
Things to look for in a consulting company:
They should tell you (you may have to ask) that they won't submit your resume to anybody without your explicit permission.
They shouldn't make a practice of contacting people who haven't either sent their resume directly or posted it on a board like Dice or Monster. If you think your buddy Joe might be interested in a job they have, the recruiter should ask you to let Joe know about it, not ask for Joe's contact information. A good recruiter won't try to raid companies for their employees. That is what a headhunter does, and to a good recruiter the term headhunter is derogatory.
The recruiter should share your resume with other recruiters in the company. Where I work it isn't uncommon for one contractor to be submitted to multiple jobs with multiple recruiters (with the contractors permission). This gives the contractor more options with us, and makes it more likely that the job he/she chooses will be with the company.
I haven't worked for an unethical recruiting firm so I'm not sure what else to check for.
When you talk to the recruiter about a job that you want to pursue, be honest about your salary requirements. Usually they will ask for you current salary, your asking salary, and the lowest you would take for this job. The recruiter will use that info to get the most money for you they can. It is in our interest in a couple of ways. For many companies we have a contract with a fixed markup, so the more you make the more the company makes. Also if we make you happy by getting you as much or more money than you asked for you will probably be happy to work through us again. Good contractors are valued at a good recruiting company. We have people who have worked for us off and on throughout the 90s.
A point to remember on how much markup the company use: the money covers your payroll taxes (about 15%) and the cost to search Dice and Moster, they charge companies thousands per year to search resumes and post jobs. The money also has to pay all the expenses, including the back office people who do billing and payroll. Industry standard gross margin (not counting the tax burden) is about 25% to 30%. If you don't like it don't use a recruiting company.
It doesn't seem appropriate to advertise the company I work for, but if you are in the Silocon Valley area and would like to send me your resume you can send it to me by private e-mail. It will be read and shared with the other recruiters, and placed in our database.
Denise
But health problems bind people together in a particular way, and people who are dealing with them form some of the most powerful virtual communities. For others, it's more problematic.
Perhaps a necessary (if not sufficient) condition to creating a virtual community is a group of people who feel ostracized, or at least "different" from the majority. Severe health problems can certainly make you feel that way, as much as being a computer geek does.
Everybody on/. is familiar with being regarded as strange because of your computer interests. People who keep and breed snakes get the same kind of treatment from most people. The small subset of snake keepers who keep giant snakes (Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, anacondas, amethystine pythons) are considered weird even by many people who keep smaller snakes.
I'm on 4 snake-related mailing lists. They all have something of a community feel, and one in particular was set up to be a small community of friends who have or want giant snakes. We have about 30 members, and people who join (invitation only) and then just lurk are removed. We discuss many part of our lives other than snakes - family problems, health concerns, movies, books, jokes, a lot of flirting, and all the kind of talk you get when intelligent and open-minded people get together. I care more about most of those people than I do my co-workers and neighbors.
None of the other mailing lists I'm on that deal with other interests have anything like the sense of community I get from my snake lists. What are the experiences of other people who have "strange" hobbies, or those with more common hobbies? Is there a difference in the sense of community based on how socially acceptable the hobby is?
I've had to pull the plug on my housemate's computer when he's left Gnutella running while he was at work. We have cable modem and things were slowing down so bad my e-mail kept timing out, or short text-only messages took 30 seconds to download. At first I blamed the ISP, but when I looked at the switch I could see all sorts of activity on his port. I made sure he wasn't doing anything critical and dumped it. That solved my problems that day...
It wasn't just his bandwidth being eaten up, but that of the whole household, and any of our neighbors using cable modem, too!
snakelady
Beome a locksmith's apprentice, or go to a school. There are a number of vocational schools, not to mention the really cheesy mail-order schools that are about as good as a mail-order computer school.
BTW, in California at least it is illegal to sell picks to anybody without a valid California locksmith license. IIRC all the license requires is a background check.
I still think the DeCSS/lock picks is a lousy analogy.
The pictures he has labeled as a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) are actually a Burmese python (Python molurus bivitattus). They are both large pythons in the same genus, and are found over much of the same places, so I suppose it is an easy mistake to make. I happen to have a reticulated python as a pet, and she is much prettier than that burmese.
Slashdot Mirror
Is Your Exchange Server Relay-Secure?
I'm not the sysadmin at the recruiting company we work for, the idiot is a raw MSCE who literally didn't know what the lights on a hub meant, and didn't understand what a traceroute shows when he started. When I found out by chance that the Exchange server at work was an open relay I had to spend 2 converstations and about 10 e-mails convincing him that it was indeed open and that it could be a problem. It took me 5 minutes to find this article, and I finally had to send him the link or he wouldn't have done anything about it.
I'd better stop now before I really start ranting about this idiot.
Denise
The rule of thumb for contracting wages compared to perm salary is you should get 30 to 40 percent more for a contract, since you don't have paid holidays and other benefits. Many companies (all those that belong to the trade group NACCB) offer health insurance at group rates for their contractors who want to work as W-2 employees of the consulting company. The other advantage to working W-2 is if the company you are working at goes broke you are still paid by the consulting company.
You can also become incorporated. The downside is if the company goes down the tubes and doesn't pay you, you are screwed. You also have to do more complicated taxes, (and ask about 15% more than a W-2 contractor to cover self-employment taxes) but you can deduct quite a few things.
Things to look for in a consulting company:
They should tell you (you may have to ask) that they won't submit your resume to anybody without your explicit permission.
They shouldn't make a practice of contacting people who haven't either sent their resume directly or posted it on a board like Dice or Monster. If you think your buddy Joe might be interested in a job they have, the recruiter should ask you to let Joe know about it, not ask for Joe's contact information. A good recruiter won't try to raid companies for their employees. That is what a headhunter does, and to a good recruiter the term headhunter is derogatory.
The recruiter should share your resume with other recruiters in the company. Where I work it isn't uncommon for one contractor to be submitted to multiple jobs with multiple recruiters (with the contractors permission). This gives the contractor more options with us, and makes it more likely that the job he/she chooses will be with the company.
I haven't worked for an unethical recruiting firm so I'm not sure what else to check for.
When you talk to the recruiter about a job that you want to pursue, be honest about your salary requirements. Usually they will ask for you current salary, your asking salary, and the lowest you would take for this job. The recruiter will use that info to get the most money for you they can. It is in our interest in a couple of ways. For many companies we have a contract with a fixed markup, so the more you make the more the company makes. Also if we make you happy by getting you as much or more money than you asked for you will probably be happy to work through us again. Good contractors are valued at a good recruiting company. We have people who have worked for us off and on throughout the 90s.
A point to remember on how much markup the company use: the money covers your payroll taxes (about 15%) and the cost to search Dice and Moster, they charge companies thousands per year to search resumes and post jobs. The money also has to pay all the expenses, including the back office people who do billing and payroll. Industry standard gross margin (not counting the tax burden) is about 25% to 30%. If you don't like it don't use a recruiting company.
It doesn't seem appropriate to advertise the company I work for, but if you are in the Silocon Valley area and would like to send me your resume you can send it to me by private e-mail. It will be read and shared with the other recruiters, and placed in our database.
Denise
Perhaps a necessary (if not sufficient) condition to creating a virtual community is a group of people who feel ostracized, or at least "different" from the majority. Severe health problems can certainly make you feel that way, as much as being a computer geek does. Everybody on /. is familiar with being regarded as strange because of your computer interests. People who keep and breed snakes get the same kind of treatment from most people. The small subset of snake keepers who keep giant snakes (Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, anacondas, amethystine pythons) are considered weird even by many people who keep smaller snakes.
I'm on 4 snake-related mailing lists. They all have something of a community feel, and one in particular was set up to be a small community of friends who have or want giant snakes. We have about 30 members, and people who join (invitation only) and then just lurk are removed. We discuss many part of our lives other than snakes - family problems, health concerns, movies, books, jokes, a lot of flirting, and all the kind of talk you get when intelligent and open-minded people get together. I care more about most of those people than I do my co-workers and neighbors.
None of the other mailing lists I'm on that deal with other interests have anything like the sense of community I get from my snake lists. What are the experiences of other people who have "strange" hobbies, or those with more common hobbies? Is there a difference in the sense of community based on how socially acceptable the hobby is?
PayPal just went international - Japan is included. Now you can can send him a dollar! Denise
I've had to pull the plug on my housemate's computer when he's left Gnutella running while he was at work. We have cable modem and things were slowing down so bad my e-mail kept timing out, or short text-only messages took 30 seconds to download. At first I blamed the ISP, but when I looked at the switch I could see all sorts of activity on his port. I made sure he wasn't doing anything critical and dumped it. That solved my problems that day... It wasn't just his bandwidth being eaten up, but that of the whole household, and any of our neighbors using cable modem, too! snakelady
Beome a locksmith's apprentice, or go to a school. There are a number of vocational schools, not to mention the really cheesy mail-order schools that are about as good as a mail-order computer school.
BTW, in California at least it is illegal to sell picks to anybody without a valid California locksmith license. IIRC all the license requires is a background check.
I still think the DeCSS/lock picks is a lousy analogy.
The pictures he has labeled as a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) are actually a Burmese python (Python molurus bivitattus). They are both large pythons in the same genus, and are found over much of the same places, so I suppose it is an easy mistake to make. I happen to have a reticulated python as a pet, and she is much prettier than that burmese.