and I'll argue your 'jobs' point right back at you, against you.
there is NO retirement here. none. you will work until you physically die. or even longer;)
there is no social safety net. not really. get sick or lose your job and you're homeless.
as you get older, jobs are harder to find. its not that way in other countries, at least in non-3rd world countries, but we go nuts about youth, but really hate our old folks. even middle age gets you rejected from many (most?) of the so-called hot jobs and hot companies.
you will have the least amount of time off, the most pressure to work, work, work! when you need to take a rest, they will fire you and hire a new fresh person. ie, they use and wear-out their workers, here.
jobs looked great to me up until I entered mid 30's and then things really changed. this is what happens when a culture favors youth to an extreme, like we do, here.
yes, there are a lot of top name companies here and many of their HQ's are here. but that does not mean that a job working for that same big-name co is not just as good (or better) overseas.
please don't give people the impression that work-life here is so great. its not. we kill our own people by overworking them and paying just enough to keep them there, but rarely do we employ people long-term anymore (at least in the bay area).
a steady job with workers rights overseas would be far preferable to the rat-race jobs in the US.
you talk about china? of course people in china want to leave. and, lets be honest, they have NO IDEA what the hell the US is really about. even when they move here, they stay together and don't mix (its true even though you may not like this fact) and after 5 years here, they will still not really know what the US is truly about. its a romantic view of what the marketing wants you to believe. it used to be true decades ago, but now, I would not suggest coming here.
now, lets talk europe. if you are in europe, you are already in a modern free society. why ruin that and come to the US?
seriously. the US has nothing over europe if you are already in europe and not used to living in the US. europe has jobs, good lifestyle, freedom, etc. I'm not seeing a good reason to give that up and move here.
I'm in my 50's and spent all my life in the US. I have traveled abroad (unlike most americans) and I do know what I'm talking about. I am not planning on leaving, but I can still see that for newcomers, it would not be a great place and where you are is probably already better than what you will FIND here once you get here.
the storybook is a lie. it was great marketing, but its still a lie. don't come here expecting the land of opportunity. unless you are already rich, white, christian and well connected.
we have failed. we are a failure. some may not see it, but we will implode sooner or later and then, all hell will break loose.
there is NO plan for sustainability, here. we keep spending on wars and hostility and yet we let 'home repairs' go undone. for decades, now, we have done this.
we are the country of 'dumbing down'; we have the worst healthcare system in the world; we let people go homeless if they lose their jobs and can't find a new one quickly enough; we have crime rates that are astronomical; we have half of the country thinking the world is a few thousand years old and that half also denies science whenver possible.
we are no shining example of what a good country is, anymore. our politics are a mess, our spies are ruining WORLD WIDE security for everyone and we are the main cause of this kind of escalation.
don't even get me started on the work environment here. very little maternity leave, no paternity leave, a recent push for no sick time or vacation time (they lump it all together) and we also have the shortest amount of vacation time compared to all the modern countries. our corporations work the workers to death and then dispose of them, IF you can even GET a job in the US (h1b, yes! born here, sorry.)
there are many good things about the US, don't get me wrong. but if you are not already 'stuck' here, I would certainly NOT entertain coming here, moving here, doing business here and certainly not becoming a citizen here!
(of course, I expect to be added to some watchlist given my comments here. and that's yet another reason to avoid the US. you can't trust the US anymore. we don't even follow our own laws uniformly. if you are rich, you have all you want; if you are not rich, then a 2nd set of laws will apply to you).
don't. just don't. we used to be great. maybe we will again in the future, but right now, its a disaster here.
what's to be gained by having US citizenship, when you both are living in europe?
I am born and raised (and living) in the US, but if I was not born here or already a citizen, I'm not sure I see any real benefit to being part of the US. my view has changed a lot over the last 20 years (world events and all), and so I'm not sure that being 'prisoner of uncle sam' (our version of POMMY, lol) yields a positive benefit anymore.
enjoy your life over there. in fact, I would not even travel here if you don't have to.
I'm pretty sure that the next time I fly across int'l borders, if I even bring any electronic devices with me (I'll probably mail them, in fact) - the ones I would bring would be dummy devices. ones I could afford to lose and ones with 'happy happy, joy joy' bullshit on it.
you want to see my login? ok. here you go. that's A login. and as far as you know, its 'my' login. can I go now? thanks. have a nice day. ossifer.
(sheesh. freedom to travel securely with your private papers is a long-gone idea. thank god we can still encrypt our devices and mail them physically or just transfer files around online).
I see lots of business travelers taking their laptops with them on flights. does no one seem to be annoyed that you are put into a tough situation if you have corporate info on there, your login is NOT supposed to EVER be given out to anyone and yet the country you are entrying is forcing you to compromise your company's security. I wonder if you worked for a big enough company, if they would go to bat for you, if you got stuck at a border and refused to let them break into your corp laptop?
interesting. I have not seen this but I heard about it.
a few years ago, I had an onsite interview (full day, quite exhausting) at nvidia and it was for a group that was doing the networking stuff for this whole architecture. they pitched the idea of network streaming from their own hosted supercomputer mainframes to users 'thin consoles'. lots of questions were asked of me about networking and optimization and even more about c++ corner cases (stuff that I rarely run into, but I guess they love 'gotcha!' programming questions, sigh).
I never got the job. it did look interesting, but they went with someone else.
maybe I don't feel so bad, if they really did botch the thing up. maybe they needed networking people more than they realized. of course, it was all young kids at the interview table and, of course, they 'know everything' (nvidia people do have a problem with ego; that came across pretty loud and clear during the interview).
perhaps they'll get it right in some followon product. its not a simple problem to solve, to be honest, but they sure do have enough money and manpower to throw at almost any problem.
I was recently watching 'moscow on the hudson' and thinking to myself, wow, we have not exactly switched sides, but we have become much more like the old dreaded russia than we ever thought we'd become.
If the DOJ makes a promise in a legal contract, it will have to follow that contract.
no one who has been paying attention the last few decades will believe this.
the US does not even follow its own laws. lets start with that quaint old paper, the constitution. its against the C to spy on citizens without cause. yet, they do it, they are bold about it and they show no signs of changing. each day, they break major laws doing this.
that should be enough for you to mistrust the government and how it applies its laws.
its a salad bar situation; they pick and choose what favors them and only follow what gives them the edge.
the US is a has-been. world-wide, we are a laughing stock. I HATE THAT, as I was born and raised here, but I do realize that we've lost all credibility and it will be a very long time coming before it returns.
to be fair, the women I've met from russia and ukraine were amazing knock-out beauties!
for some reason, I get a lot of 'you might know this person' on linked-in and they often are women from ukraine (more so than russia, for some reason). 95 times out of a 100, they are model-quality in their looks.
so, being in that region of the world could have its good points...;)
I'm thinking that the US is simply wearing him down. they can wait, they have time. but he's living in a kind of prison right now, anyway. his freedom is highly restricted. plus, well, russia is a shit-hole. who in their right mind would want to STAY there if you've known and grown up with better?
still, I would never trust this 'agreement'. the US has a hard-on for fucking him over and there will be NO fair trail, you can bet on that.
the US makes up its own rules and it would take an extremely lucky person to walk out of such a situation alive, in one piece and not be always watching over your shoulder.
his life is mostly over, as it is. really sad to have to say that, but living in the US will always be a 'look over your shoulder' kind of life. he will be hunted the rest of his life, if not by government thugs, then by CITIZEN thugs who think they are being 'patriotic' (dammit!).
there is no good move for him. I wish him the best, he's my ultimate hero, but I don't see this ending well at all;(
so few projects are REALLY collaborations, that old horse gets trotted out far too often.
in my 25+ years in software, I don't know of any single time that I've collaborated, NEEDING or even benefiting from an open office with all the noise and distractions it brings.
if we want to brainstorm, we go into a conf room, whiteboard, take notes and then go back and do our brainwork.
if you talk to me, I get annoyed. I'm deep in concentration. each time you bug me, you break my concentration.
what's so hard to GET about this?
anyone who supports OO is looking for a party at work, not doing real work. I'm 100% convinced about that. the reason every HR says that OO is 'great' is that 'new/young employees think it makes the work environment more like a dorm, which they relate to'. yeah, that gives the real reason right there; youngsters want that dorm feel. us old neckbeards just want to work in peace and not be distracted by every stupid thing someone wants to spout up about. socializing is needed, but go do that at the water cooler or break room. leave the work area QUIET, please!
what is the make-up of the US, these days? and actually, by area of the country, since it varies to much by region.
here in the bay area, whites are not the majority anymore. take a walk down cupertino or santa clara or san jose. its asian and indian, mostly. take a walk thru a silicon valley company; the managers (some) may be white but almost all the workers are from asian countries (counting india in that grouping).
when I would have lunch talks with a group of internationals, both contractors and employees, at the bay area companies - I would often ask them what they think of the mass surveillance that we are now seeing in the US, the fear and FUD from the government about 'terrorism' and they usually have NO PROBLEM with how the government acts, in fact, they want MORE government pressure and involvement 'to keep us all safe'. they have no point of reference of what it was like to grow up here, in schools and societal life, to be brought up with the notion that 'the evil commies' were the ones to ask 'papers please!' and restrict your travel, assume you did bad things unless proven otherwise, where neighbors spied on each other, no one trusted each other and the government was to be feared, not trusted.
what we learned in school, all those decades ago, the foreigners who now work and live here, have no experience with. their own home countries sucked so much worse, they were happy and glad to get a new chance here in the 'land of opportunity' and most still see it that way, even after being here a long time (ie, a decade or less).
and so, if you go by silicon valley populations, the stereotypical 'white guy' almost does not exist anymore. walk the bay area streets and you find mostly asians, and they don't have the same feeling about what made america great compared to someone who was born and raised here.
those born and raised here are pissed off and ready for a revinvation (maybe not revolution but certainly not a warming over of what we already have; we want a re-do!). but those from other lands will not be joining us in any such fight. they are not going to make waves, they are not going to 'bite the hand' and they are ok with how things are. its actually good for them, right now, with all the h1b friendly companies out there.
so, even if mr. white guy is pissed off, there just are not enough of them to even matter, anymore! and it shrinks every year, as more h1b's enter the country.
america, in the bay area at least, has lost a lot of what made it great; the knowledge of what the US was really about. generally you do have to grow up here to know, at the deepest level, what we are about and what we are supposed to be about. but as those who grow up here become the minority, our voice shrinks and we become irrelevant.
note, this is also an unspoken goal of the hi1b-IT-isation of america. sort of like gerrymandering.
not sure about flickr 'going strong'. I joined flickr when it first came out and most of the people I 'knew' back then are no longer active on flickr and their updates have stopped years ago.
each time flickr changes their site, it breaks stuff, features get dropped that were useful and stupid things get added that are of NO value at all.
I did have a paid membership to flickr but I had that just 1 year, flickr started to suck and I let the paid thing lapse. now, I post a few photos a year instead of the dozens per month that I used to post.
(and no, I have not gone to FB or the other sites. I don't have a FB account and never will.) flickr was my only 'social networking' site, if you can call it that, but all my friends have gotton fed up with yahoo and left!
I get nothing BUT 'indian tv' and 'indian flix' and other stupid spam. uhm, I'm not indian and don't speak the language, don't know the people and actually, don't even watch (broadcast) tv anymore. marking them as spam never stops them. clearly its spam but yahoo won't stop them from appearing in my yahoo inbox. I've given up on yahoo mail and only check it a few times a year. (it takes about that long to load those stupid web pages, too, even with adblock!)
I worked at both sun and sgi (that you mentioned in your list) and neither one required us to be at our desks. I was telecommuting about 99% of the time (even though my office was about 10mi from where I live, all my co-workers were 'remote' and all our meetings were on the phone, so there was no real reason to 'be' there). I stayed there 5 years and had a great time, did good work and enjoyed being at sun. well, up until oracle bought them and all hell broke loose...
at sgi, same kind of deal; I was allowed to work from home as-needed and sgi was a 'very online' company back in the 90's. before it was trendy, in fact.
so, not sure which bay area you worked at, but I've been here over 25 years and I know what the silicon valley culture is all about. and it used to be pretty open and flexible. it was the 'california way' (I moved from boston, so I knew the east coast 'uptight' way as well as the more relaxed calif way.)
I'm not seeing much choice, anymore. the last few years of interviews (off and on) have shown me that the bay area is swallowing the 'open office' idea, hook line and sinker.
my last gig was at cisco and they are converting (slowly but surely) to an all OO environment. and again, no one I talked to, there, was a tiny bit happy about it. they all talked about working from home (cisco still allows that) or just plain leaving.
make no mistake, companies do this to save money, save space and they don't care at all about your happiness! they at least acted like they did, years ago, but they don't even try that anymore. they know we all know what their plan is.
being a tech worker is really starting to suck. its becoming like factory work, many decades ago. churn and burn.
yes, silicon valley culture USED to be about the employees. I worked at SGI and I remember them allowing dogs into the offices, so that single folks who don't have anyone to watch over their pups can avoid having to kennel them during the day. we had hardwall offices, with doors (!) while managers had 'cubes'. it was the opposite of how most of the rest of the valley was, and it helped make sgi one of the best places to work at.
I also worked at sun. also had a hardwall office.
I was at fore systems (west coast) and many of us had offices with walls and doors.
now, the bad news. the last 10 or so years, I've seen a move to 'open offices' and so, you don't even get a cube anymore!;( really really bad move, HR morans.
every place that had an open office, sucked. everyone felt that way but HR, who would never admit they made a mistake (like politicians, never admit you were wrong, sigh).
if someone gets sick, YOU get sick, too. isn't THAT nice??
plus, the new trend is to not hire f/t but only hire contractors. guess what: contractors don't get sick time off, so they HAVE to report in and make everyone else sick.
I have never been at yahoo, but it sounds like I would hate it there if I went.
as for their products, their email is the worst/slowest and loads the most CRAP when you give it permission. its also the most unfriendly html/js code to filter on (on purpose, no doubt). adblock has a harder time with yahoo content since they intentionally make every fucking variable name unique!;( really unfriendly, which I'm sure they could care less about. obscurring the 'content' that gets downloaded via yahoo pages is part of what makes yahoo, well, 'a yahoo'.
taking away telecommuting - all the while, SHE has a private room next to her office for her little ones - that would be the most insulting thing to me if I was working there.
the sooner yahoo fails, the better. the whole internet would be better off without them, at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
and I'll argue your 'jobs' point right back at you, against you.
there is NO retirement here. none. you will work until you physically die. or even longer ;)
there is no social safety net. not really. get sick or lose your job and you're homeless.
as you get older, jobs are harder to find. its not that way in other countries, at least in non-3rd world countries, but we go nuts about youth, but really hate our old folks. even middle age gets you rejected from many (most?) of the so-called hot jobs and hot companies.
you will have the least amount of time off, the most pressure to work, work, work! when you need to take a rest, they will fire you and hire a new fresh person. ie, they use and wear-out their workers, here.
jobs looked great to me up until I entered mid 30's and then things really changed. this is what happens when a culture favors youth to an extreme, like we do, here.
yes, there are a lot of top name companies here and many of their HQ's are here. but that does not mean that a job working for that same big-name co is not just as good (or better) overseas.
please don't give people the impression that work-life here is so great. its not. we kill our own people by overworking them and paying just enough to keep them there, but rarely do we employ people long-term anymore (at least in the bay area).
a steady job with workers rights overseas would be far preferable to the rat-race jobs in the US.
you talk about china? of course people in china want to leave. and, lets be honest, they have NO IDEA what the hell the US is really about. even when they move here, they stay together and don't mix (its true even though you may not like this fact) and after 5 years here, they will still not really know what the US is truly about. its a romantic view of what the marketing wants you to believe. it used to be true decades ago, but now, I would not suggest coming here.
now, lets talk europe. if you are in europe, you are already in a modern free society. why ruin that and come to the US?
seriously. the US has nothing over europe if you are already in europe and not used to living in the US. europe has jobs, good lifestyle, freedom, etc. I'm not seeing a good reason to give that up and move here.
I'm in my 50's and spent all my life in the US. I have traveled abroad (unlike most americans) and I do know what I'm talking about. I am not planning on leaving, but I can still see that for newcomers, it would not be a great place and where you are is probably already better than what you will FIND here once you get here.
the storybook is a lie. it was great marketing, but its still a lie. don't come here expecting the land of opportunity. unless you are already rich, white, christian and well connected.
no, I agree with jeremiah.
we have failed. we are a failure. some may not see it, but we will implode sooner or later and then, all hell will break loose.
there is NO plan for sustainability, here. we keep spending on wars and hostility and yet we let 'home repairs' go undone. for decades, now, we have done this.
we are the country of 'dumbing down'; we have the worst healthcare system in the world; we let people go homeless if they lose their jobs and can't find a new one quickly enough; we have crime rates that are astronomical; we have half of the country thinking the world is a few thousand years old and that half also denies science whenver possible.
we are no shining example of what a good country is, anymore. our politics are a mess, our spies are ruining WORLD WIDE security for everyone and we are the main cause of this kind of escalation.
don't even get me started on the work environment here. very little maternity leave, no paternity leave, a recent push for no sick time or vacation time (they lump it all together) and we also have the shortest amount of vacation time compared to all the modern countries. our corporations work the workers to death and then dispose of them, IF you can even GET a job in the US (h1b, yes! born here, sorry.)
there are many good things about the US, don't get me wrong. but if you are not already 'stuck' here, I would certainly NOT entertain coming here, moving here, doing business here and certainly not becoming a citizen here!
(of course, I expect to be added to some watchlist given my comments here. and that's yet another reason to avoid the US. you can't trust the US anymore. we don't even follow our own laws uniformly. if you are rich, you have all you want; if you are not rich, then a 2nd set of laws will apply to you).
don't. just don't. we used to be great. maybe we will again in the future, but right now, its a disaster here.
what's to be gained by having US citizenship, when you both are living in europe?
I am born and raised (and living) in the US, but if I was not born here or already a citizen, I'm not sure I see any real benefit to being part of the US. my view has changed a lot over the last 20 years (world events and all), and so I'm not sure that being 'prisoner of uncle sam' (our version of POMMY, lol) yields a positive benefit anymore.
enjoy your life over there. in fact, I would not even travel here if you don't have to.
I'm pretty sure that the next time I fly across int'l borders, if I even bring any electronic devices with me (I'll probably mail them, in fact) - the ones I would bring would be dummy devices. ones I could afford to lose and ones with 'happy happy, joy joy' bullshit on it.
you want to see my login? ok. here you go. that's A login. and as far as you know, its 'my' login. can I go now? thanks. have a nice day. ossifer.
(sheesh. freedom to travel securely with your private papers is a long-gone idea. thank god we can still encrypt our devices and mail them physically or just transfer files around online).
I see lots of business travelers taking their laptops with them on flights. does no one seem to be annoyed that you are put into a tough situation if you have corporate info on there, your login is NOT supposed to EVER be given out to anyone and yet the country you are entrying is forcing you to compromise your company's security. I wonder if you worked for a big enough company, if they would go to bat for you, if you got stuck at a border and refused to let them break into your corp laptop?
I wanted to do some john belushi'ing of my money, but I wasn't sure if I should use pollen or dark sunglasses.
(yeah, right; 'why not both?')
interesting. I have not seen this but I heard about it.
a few years ago, I had an onsite interview (full day, quite exhausting) at nvidia and it was for a group that was doing the networking stuff for this whole architecture. they pitched the idea of network streaming from their own hosted supercomputer mainframes to users 'thin consoles'. lots of questions were asked of me about networking and optimization and even more about c++ corner cases (stuff that I rarely run into, but I guess they love 'gotcha!' programming questions, sigh).
I never got the job. it did look interesting, but they went with someone else.
maybe I don't feel so bad, if they really did botch the thing up. maybe they needed networking people more than they realized. of course, it was all young kids at the interview table and, of course, they 'know everything' (nvidia people do have a problem with ego; that came across pretty loud and clear during the interview).
perhaps they'll get it right in some followon product. its not a simple problem to solve, to be honest, but they sure do have enough money and manpower to throw at almost any problem.
that's just a pen name.
real name is pussy galore.
I was recently watching 'moscow on the hudson' and thinking to myself, wow, we have not exactly switched sides, but we have become much more like the old dreaded russia than we ever thought we'd become.
If the DOJ makes a promise in a legal contract, it will have to follow that contract.
no one who has been paying attention the last few decades will believe this.
the US does not even follow its own laws. lets start with that quaint old paper, the constitution. its against the C to spy on citizens without cause. yet, they do it, they are bold about it and they show no signs of changing. each day, they break major laws doing this.
that should be enough for you to mistrust the government and how it applies its laws.
its a salad bar situation; they pick and choose what favors them and only follow what gives them the edge.
the US is a has-been. world-wide, we are a laughing stock. I HATE THAT, as I was born and raised here, but I do realize that we've lost all credibility and it will be a very long time coming before it returns.
like other have guessed, he's very likely NOT seriously thinking of returning.
but, there may be something to be gained by ACTING like you are willing to return, to see what deals the gov is willing to make.
all info you get is useful. whatever they disclose, could be useful, now or later.
I'm 99% sure he has no plans to return. he's smart and there's something else he's got in mind, out of this. dollars to borscht, I would bet on it.
fwiw, do you think any of the 5 eyes (uk, oz, etc) would give him a fair trial?
no such luck!
any time you piss off the spymasters this much, you won't usually live very long, or have a good life. he ran for his life, very literally.
there cannot be a fair trail because you insulted the king and the king is very very mad at you.
to be fair, the women I've met from russia and ukraine were amazing knock-out beauties!
for some reason, I get a lot of 'you might know this person' on linked-in and they often are women from ukraine (more so than russia, for some reason). 95 times out of a 100, they are model-quality in their looks.
so, being in that region of the world could have its good points... ;)
shill detected!
"damage he did"...
you just gave youself away. the US did damage. he just reported it!
another one for the old killfile. thanks for IDing yourself as a stupid government shill.
we can clearly see who is being paid to write dissenting posts, here. its not hard.
he knew enough to be well aware of the fact that the government will not play fair, no matter what.
the fact that you THINK the gov would play fair speaks badly about you. or, exposes your agenda as a shill.
well, another shill to add to my 'sponsored morons' list. welcome!
I'm thinking that the US is simply wearing him down. they can wait, they have time. but he's living in a kind of prison right now, anyway. his freedom is highly restricted. plus, well, russia is a shit-hole. who in their right mind would want to STAY there if you've known and grown up with better?
still, I would never trust this 'agreement'. the US has a hard-on for fucking him over and there will be NO fair trail, you can bet on that.
the US makes up its own rules and it would take an extremely lucky person to walk out of such a situation alive, in one piece and not be always watching over your shoulder.
his life is mostly over, as it is. really sad to have to say that, but living in the US will always be a 'look over your shoulder' kind of life. he will be hunted the rest of his life, if not by government thugs, then by CITIZEN thugs who think they are being 'patriotic' (dammit!).
there is no good move for him. I wish him the best, he's my ultimate hero, but I don't see this ending well at all ;(
so few projects are REALLY collaborations, that old horse gets trotted out far too often.
in my 25+ years in software, I don't know of any single time that I've collaborated, NEEDING or even benefiting from an open office with all the noise and distractions it brings.
if we want to brainstorm, we go into a conf room, whiteboard, take notes and then go back and do our brainwork.
if you talk to me, I get annoyed. I'm deep in concentration. each time you bug me, you break my concentration.
what's so hard to GET about this?
anyone who supports OO is looking for a party at work, not doing real work. I'm 100% convinced about that. the reason every HR says that OO is 'great' is that 'new/young employees think it makes the work environment more like a dorm, which they relate to'. yeah, that gives the real reason right there; youngsters want that dorm feel. us old neckbeards just want to work in peace and not be distracted by every stupid thing someone wants to spout up about. socializing is needed, but go do that at the water cooler or break room. leave the work area QUIET, please!
what is the make-up of the US, these days? and actually, by area of the country, since it varies to much by region.
here in the bay area, whites are not the majority anymore. take a walk down cupertino or santa clara or san jose. its asian and indian, mostly. take a walk thru a silicon valley company; the managers (some) may be white but almost all the workers are from asian countries (counting india in that grouping).
when I would have lunch talks with a group of internationals, both contractors and employees, at the bay area companies - I would often ask them what they think of the mass surveillance that we are now seeing in the US, the fear and FUD from the government about 'terrorism' and they usually have NO PROBLEM with how the government acts, in fact, they want MORE government pressure and involvement 'to keep us all safe'. they have no point of reference of what it was like to grow up here, in schools and societal life, to be brought up with the notion that 'the evil commies' were the ones to ask 'papers please!' and restrict your travel, assume you did bad things unless proven otherwise, where neighbors spied on each other, no one trusted each other and the government was to be feared, not trusted.
what we learned in school, all those decades ago, the foreigners who now work and live here, have no experience with. their own home countries sucked so much worse, they were happy and glad to get a new chance here in the 'land of opportunity' and most still see it that way, even after being here a long time (ie, a decade or less).
and so, if you go by silicon valley populations, the stereotypical 'white guy' almost does not exist anymore. walk the bay area streets and you find mostly asians, and they don't have the same feeling about what made america great compared to someone who was born and raised here.
those born and raised here are pissed off and ready for a revinvation (maybe not revolution but certainly not a warming over of what we already have; we want a re-do!). but those from other lands will not be joining us in any such fight. they are not going to make waves, they are not going to 'bite the hand' and they are ok with how things are. its actually good for them, right now, with all the h1b friendly companies out there.
so, even if mr. white guy is pissed off, there just are not enough of them to even matter, anymore! and it shrinks every year, as more h1b's enter the country.
america, in the bay area at least, has lost a lot of what made it great; the knowledge of what the US was really about. generally you do have to grow up here to know, at the deepest level, what we are about and what we are supposed to be about. but as those who grow up here become the minority, our voice shrinks and we become irrelevant.
note, this is also an unspoken goal of the hi1b-IT-isation of america. sort of like gerrymandering.
A fucking drunk chimp could do as good of a job as most corporate CEOs.
agreed.
we had one as a president of the US for 2 terms. and half the country still thought 'things were fine'.
the value of leadership is HIGHLY over-rated. the workers are still the ones who do the real work, in ANY corporation.
not sure about flickr 'going strong'. I joined flickr when it first came out and most of the people I 'knew' back then are no longer active on flickr and their updates have stopped years ago.
each time flickr changes their site, it breaks stuff, features get dropped that were useful and stupid things get added that are of NO value at all.
I did have a paid membership to flickr but I had that just 1 year, flickr started to suck and I let the paid thing lapse. now, I post a few photos a year instead of the dozens per month that I used to post.
(and no, I have not gone to FB or the other sites. I don't have a FB account and never will.) flickr was my only 'social networking' site, if you can call it that, but all my friends have gotton fed up with yahoo and left!
excuse me??? spam filter works on yahoo?
ha!
I get nothing BUT 'indian tv' and 'indian flix' and other stupid spam. uhm, I'm not indian and don't speak the language, don't know the people and actually, don't even watch (broadcast) tv anymore. marking them as spam never stops them. clearly its spam but yahoo won't stop them from appearing in my yahoo inbox. I've given up on yahoo mail and only check it a few times a year. (it takes about that long to load those stupid web pages, too, even with adblock!)
so, what level of manager are you?
first line, middle mgmt or maybe c-level?
you are clearly not a working stiff like most of us, here...
I worked at both sun and sgi (that you mentioned in your list) and neither one required us to be at our desks. I was telecommuting about 99% of the time (even though my office was about 10mi from where I live, all my co-workers were 'remote' and all our meetings were on the phone, so there was no real reason to 'be' there). I stayed there 5 years and had a great time, did good work and enjoyed being at sun. well, up until oracle bought them and all hell broke loose...
at sgi, same kind of deal; I was allowed to work from home as-needed and sgi was a 'very online' company back in the 90's. before it was trendy, in fact.
so, not sure which bay area you worked at, but I've been here over 25 years and I know what the silicon valley culture is all about. and it used to be pretty open and flexible. it was the 'california way' (I moved from boston, so I knew the east coast 'uptight' way as well as the more relaxed calif way.)
I'm not seeing much choice, anymore. the last few years of interviews (off and on) have shown me that the bay area is swallowing the 'open office' idea, hook line and sinker.
my last gig was at cisco and they are converting (slowly but surely) to an all OO environment. and again, no one I talked to, there, was a tiny bit happy about it. they all talked about working from home (cisco still allows that) or just plain leaving.
make no mistake, companies do this to save money, save space and they don't care at all about your happiness! they at least acted like they did, years ago, but they don't even try that anymore. they know we all know what their plan is.
being a tech worker is really starting to suck. its becoming like factory work, many decades ago. churn and burn.
yes, silicon valley culture USED to be about the employees. I worked at SGI and I remember them allowing dogs into the offices, so that single folks who don't have anyone to watch over their pups can avoid having to kennel them during the day. we had hardwall offices, with doors (!) while managers had 'cubes'. it was the opposite of how most of the rest of the valley was, and it helped make sgi one of the best places to work at.
I also worked at sun. also had a hardwall office.
I was at fore systems (west coast) and many of us had offices with walls and doors.
now, the bad news. the last 10 or so years, I've seen a move to 'open offices' and so, you don't even get a cube anymore! ;( really really bad move, HR morans.
every place that had an open office, sucked. everyone felt that way but HR, who would never admit they made a mistake (like politicians, never admit you were wrong, sigh).
if someone gets sick, YOU get sick, too. isn't THAT nice??
plus, the new trend is to not hire f/t but only hire contractors. guess what: contractors don't get sick time off, so they HAVE to report in and make everyone else sick.
I have never been at yahoo, but it sounds like I would hate it there if I went.
as for their products, their email is the worst/slowest and loads the most CRAP when you give it permission. its also the most unfriendly html/js code to filter on (on purpose, no doubt). adblock has a harder time with yahoo content since they intentionally make every fucking variable name unique! ;( really unfriendly, which I'm sure they could care less about. obscurring the 'content' that gets downloaded via yahoo pages is part of what makes yahoo, well, 'a yahoo'.
taking away telecommuting - all the while, SHE has a private room next to her office for her little ones - that would be the most insulting thing to me if I was working there.
the sooner yahoo fails, the better. the whole internet would be better off without them, at this point.