The only reason I suggested it would be like a retainer is because it differs too radically from payment in advance for work in that it is paid out whether or not the future work (if any) is ever actually performed. If you are paid in advance for work that you do not actually do, then you have to pay it back. Even in this case, the severance would not have to be repaid if the company does not have them do any further work.
I would assume my rate for contract 'come back and fix' is a multiple of my previous full time employment rate. A 10x multiple.
You say that like you doubt the severance would be that much. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it were... or even more. I'd expect it to be something like at least 8 to 10 weeks worth of wages, if not more. That's a fair amount of money to get at one time for most people, so it might make even a very skeptical person's head turn and consider it. If a person is only ever asked to do some otherwise unpaid work only one or two days over the next two years, they've come out quite ahead.
I would imagine that he retains the rights, but rather is selling a promise to name it whatever the winning bidder wants.
So, however much this guy's word is worth, which may be negative, plus whatever it is worth to somebody to get to choose what to name something is actually how much one should bid.
I see your point... but that being the case, I would probably just decline the terms of severance in the first place unless the severance was really really large. They could either fire me on the spot or let me stay on without training my replacement (although I would start looking for other work immediately).
It's not unpaid.... they received severance. In this particular case, because of the requirement that they may be called upon to do additional work that is otherwise unpaid, this severance can be thought of either as a retainer, or as payment in advance for work that may be expected to be done later. If the bank is wrong and the amount of time required actually is less than what they would have paid in wages for the extra time actually worked in that period, then while they are apparently out money, that's not the employee's problem. If the bank is wrong and the amount of time required is more, then they will have to pay the person for extra time worked beyond that amount to be compliant with wage laws, regardless of what the contract says. The worst requirement of the severance is not that they should be available for two years, its that they should be expected to stay on for a period of time to train their lower-paid replacements.
Evenings and weekends, probably, but only to the extent that it does not interfere with current employment. If the employee has shift work, the former employer would be required to accommodate that, not the former employee. Further, it would not be 40 hours per week, it would be weighted by the estimated probability that they are even likely to call the person in at all. If they end up calling someone in more than that amount, such that the amount of severance does not actually cover the amount of time actually worked the employee could rightfully refuse any further service (or could work for more pay at a newly negotiated pay scale) but I expect that the bank does not anticipate this to happen.
Any requirement that interferes with other employment exceeds the parameters of "reasonably available", and would not be enforceable. As it stands, the contract even explicitly states that availability des not extend to that level.
Or you could, you know, just have a good work ethic and actually try to get the job done that they ask. Given that it isn't expected to interfere with other work anyways (and that includes time you would reasonably spend looking for other work), the amount of time that they will probably request from you is minimal anyways. Plus, if you do good by them, they will be that much more likely to provide a good reference to your next employer.
Unemployment compensation is weekly or bi-weekly. Severance is paid out all at once. Relating the two makes no sense unless you relate the severance to a duration of unemployment compensation. If it only for a week or two, I wouldn't even consider it... since any severance received only further delays when unemployment compensation may be received by effectively pushing forward the date of termination (ie, if you are paid two weeks normal salary as severance, then your effective date of termination is pushed forward exactly two weeks, and you must wait that much longer to receieve benefits). Severance is generally preferable to unemployment benefits in that it is money that is in your hands right now, and does not have any wait time associated with like unemployment benefits ordinarily does. Ideally, one will find new work before their unemployment benefits even start, and in that case, will be further ahead anyways.
And in this particular case, the employees that agree to the terms will get paid for the additional work that they do with severance at the time of termination, making the severance act like a retainer fee.
Based on the amount of time they would actually be called on to do further work for the company during that two years, the severance should obviously have to be enough to cover that time. If it is not, then that would still be covered by wage laws, and the company would have to pay them more money to do more work than what the severance package covered anyways. This is why I figure the size of the severance must be pretty big... probably amounting to no less than a quarter of a person's annual salary. If it were any less, nobody but those who felt they would be unable to find future employment would ever consider agreeing to it. Some others may not consider agreeing to it as well, but in the end, if the actual amount of extra time that they may need someone to do any work only amounts to an extra day or two over the next two years, they would be only shorting themselves. If it somehow amounted to more than what the severance could cover (in the case of my example of 1/4 of a person's annual salary as severance they end up working for more than 3 extra months after termination without further pay , then the company *STILL* has to pay them more money because of wage laws).
Ordinarily, you are right.... but since *THIS* severance is tied with a provision that the person should continue be available to work for them for two years without further compensation, essentially making the severance package act like a retainer fee, and why I suggested that it might be sizeable enough to consider it. Typical severance packages that I've seen are more like what you describe, such as "you agree not to sue us", etc, and have nothing in common with a retainer fee.
Of course not.... that's what the severance is for... essentially the severance is acting as a retainer fee.
Obviously, if you end up working more time for them beyond what the retainer can actually cover based on wage laws, they would be required to pay you more money, regardless of what their contract says.
Employees that don't agree to to it can obviously just quit, but I'd be willing to bet that the size of severance is attractive enough to make a person's head turn and at least think it over.
They are legal, but in practice, are still generally unenforceable. In most real-world cases, an employer would not have any way of knowing what a former employee was up to unless the former employee actively kept them informed of his or her whereabouts, or the company that the employee was working for did something that visibly demonstrated they had knowledge they could only have obtained if an employee or former employee of theirs had violated an NDA.
What they would do is sue them for the severance... being that they probably had to sign something waiving all rights to the money if they do not complete the term of the agreement, the judgement would be in the company's favor without them even having to go to court.
Just because something is "natural" doesn't necessarily mean it should be acceptable. That's the fundamental difference between a species and civilization.
Yes, they did add a data cap to the plan.... the cap being 23G. The fact that they merely throttle speed at that point instead of stopping service entirely or charging more money at that point is just a corporate policy decision, but ultimately it is still a decision made by the company based on the *quantity of data* that one has used, and at the end of the day that decision still amounts to a data cap.
I have no real objection to companies that want to throttle speeds of people who they have noted are consuming more than some certain amount of data monthly, but when they have the audacity to still call those plans "unlimited", those shenanigans need to be called out.
Sure they have... By having a decision on the quality of service to offer someone based on the *QUANTITY OF DATA * that the person has consumed. that's a data cap.... the fact that they just throttle speed rather than stop traffic entirely just amounts to a policy decision, but since that decision is based on the volume of data that was downloaded, that volume is still by all rights a data cap.
How is a school that cuts out half the population from even going there expected to make a significant difference in the number of programmers, unless the intent is to only pay women programmers less?
It would still be able to know where it last last knew that it was, and a combination of flight by dead-reckoning and trivial obstacle avoidance navigation will be enough to at least get it out of the area where it is being jammed.
That implies there is a problem, but women not wanting programming jobs is not a problem, unless you desperately need more programmers so that you can pay them less. Women don't want to work in mines, on oil rigs or behind the wheel of a truck either. And that is not a problem either. You SJWs are not fighting for women. You are fighting against men and hurting women at the same time. You are creating hostility and segregation in our place of work. So FUCK OFF.
This.
So much this.
Thank you, AC.
Let's assume for the moment that it's actually just some disguised effort to increase the pool of available programmers programmers so they can pay them less. I would suggest that a more effective solution to that is to just develop less inexpensive and more ubiquitous education options to serve that purpose. If those education options are as effective at training and producing competent graduates as more expensive ones may be, then it might even work. If such programs, which would by virtue of their lower barriers of entry be available to *MORE* people, cannot be made less expensive and more ubiquitous without compromising on graduate competence and thereby not tending to be taken as seriously by good employers, and thus not significantly reducing the potential salaries for computer programmers as their agenda is alleged to be, then how in the hell would making a school that cuts half the population out right off the bat be expected to do that, exactly?
If that were really the case, gender would not have been mentioned at all, and they would have been creating low-barrier education options that were available to a wider class of people by virtue of ubiquity and price.
For fuck's sake, you can't create gender equality out of thin air by just adding more gender segregation.... I mean, I get what they are trying to do... trying to "balance" the imbalance by adding more imbalance in what might superficially appear to be the opposite direction, but at the end of the day still amounts to people either being treated differently or feeling treated differently on account of some aspect of their person that should in actuality be entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Whether a person is a man or woman should have absolutely no bearing on whether they are interested in computer programming or how competent at it they might be, and there should be absolutely no reason that a person's gender should *EVER* factor into what kind of computer science education options are available to them.
However idealistic the intentions might be behind this, I perceive that they are ultimately counterproductive to the long-term goal of gender equality.
.... would be for the FCC regulations to ensure only that router manufacturers keep the firmware that controls the radio locked down, and nothing more. If the router manufacturer wants to be open-source friendly, as some currently do, they can have the main firmware of their router be upgradable, but have a separate, digitally locked firmware for the radio portion of the router that can only be updated with approved content. This may increase router costs for open-source friendly routers somewhat, but I would personally far rather pay a bit more for a feature that I desire than not have the feature available to me at all, at any price.
Bruce Peren's suggestion is an interesting one, but I think misses the point of something being open source in the first place.
The notion that complex life in the universe occurs only on earth is not actually that far fetched.... to be certain, it is the only planet that we definitely know that such life exists, and the existence of such life elsewhere, however appealing or likely it may seem, given the size of the universe, is not actually proven or even necessarily particularly likely, since we don't actually know what the real odds are that such life would develop in the first place.
We need a sample size of more than one planet with such life to even *BEGIN* to estimate what the actual odds of it evolving might actually be. Doing anything else has no mathematical or scientific validity.
Criminals don't think they'll get caught, but the fear of getting caught may deter someone from becoming a criminal in the first place (unless you want to argue that simply thinking about doing something that is illegal should also be illegal).
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The only reason I suggested it would be like a retainer is because it differs too radically from payment in advance for work in that it is paid out whether or not the future work (if any) is ever actually performed. If you are paid in advance for work that you do not actually do, then you have to pay it back. Even in this case, the severance would not have to be repaid if the company does not have them do any further work.
You say that like you doubt the severance would be that much. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it were... or even more. I'd expect it to be something like at least 8 to 10 weeks worth of wages, if not more. That's a fair amount of money to get at one time for most people, so it might make even a very skeptical person's head turn and consider it. If a person is only ever asked to do some otherwise unpaid work only one or two days over the next two years, they've come out quite ahead.
I would imagine that he retains the rights, but rather is selling a promise to name it whatever the winning bidder wants.
So, however much this guy's word is worth, which may be negative, plus whatever it is worth to somebody to get to choose what to name something is actually how much one should bid.
I see your point... but that being the case, I would probably just decline the terms of severance in the first place unless the severance was really really large. They could either fire me on the spot or let me stay on without training my replacement (although I would start looking for other work immediately).
It's not unpaid.... they received severance. In this particular case, because of the requirement that they may be called upon to do additional work that is otherwise unpaid, this severance can be thought of either as a retainer, or as payment in advance for work that may be expected to be done later. If the bank is wrong and the amount of time required actually is less than what they would have paid in wages for the extra time actually worked in that period, then while they are apparently out money, that's not the employee's problem. If the bank is wrong and the amount of time required is more, then they will have to pay the person for extra time worked beyond that amount to be compliant with wage laws, regardless of what the contract says. The worst requirement of the severance is not that they should be available for two years, its that they should be expected to stay on for a period of time to train their lower-paid replacements.
Evenings and weekends, probably, but only to the extent that it does not interfere with current employment. If the employee has shift work, the former employer would be required to accommodate that, not the former employee. Further, it would not be 40 hours per week, it would be weighted by the estimated probability that they are even likely to call the person in at all. If they end up calling someone in more than that amount, such that the amount of severance does not actually cover the amount of time actually worked the employee could rightfully refuse any further service (or could work for more pay at a newly negotiated pay scale) but I expect that the bank does not anticipate this to happen.
Any requirement that interferes with other employment exceeds the parameters of "reasonably available", and would not be enforceable. As it stands, the contract even explicitly states that availability des not extend to that level.
You have it backwards... it is *ILLEGAL* things that need to be enforceable. Legal is just whatever is not illegal.
Or you could, you know, just have a good work ethic and actually try to get the job done that they ask. Given that it isn't expected to interfere with other work anyways (and that includes time you would reasonably spend looking for other work), the amount of time that they will probably request from you is minimal anyways. Plus, if you do good by them, they will be that much more likely to provide a good reference to your next employer.
Unemployment compensation is weekly or bi-weekly. Severance is paid out all at once. Relating the two makes no sense unless you relate the severance to a duration of unemployment compensation. If it only for a week or two, I wouldn't even consider it... since any severance received only further delays when unemployment compensation may be received by effectively pushing forward the date of termination (ie, if you are paid two weeks normal salary as severance, then your effective date of termination is pushed forward exactly two weeks, and you must wait that much longer to receieve benefits). Severance is generally preferable to unemployment benefits in that it is money that is in your hands right now, and does not have any wait time associated with like unemployment benefits ordinarily does. Ideally, one will find new work before their unemployment benefits even start, and in that case, will be further ahead anyways.
It's not slavery if they are being paid for it.
And in this particular case, the employees that agree to the terms will get paid for the additional work that they do with severance at the time of termination, making the severance act like a retainer fee.
Based on the amount of time they would actually be called on to do further work for the company during that two years, the severance should obviously have to be enough to cover that time. If it is not, then that would still be covered by wage laws, and the company would have to pay them more money to do more work than what the severance package covered anyways. This is why I figure the size of the severance must be pretty big... probably amounting to no less than a quarter of a person's annual salary. If it were any less, nobody but those who felt they would be unable to find future employment would ever consider agreeing to it. Some others may not consider agreeing to it as well, but in the end, if the actual amount of extra time that they may need someone to do any work only amounts to an extra day or two over the next two years, they would be only shorting themselves. If it somehow amounted to more than what the severance could cover (in the case of my example of 1/4 of a person's annual salary as severance they end up working for more than 3 extra months after termination without further pay , then the company *STILL* has to pay them more money because of wage laws).
Ordinarily, you are right.... but since *THIS* severance is tied with a provision that the person should continue be available to work for them for two years without further compensation, essentially making the severance package act like a retainer fee, and why I suggested that it might be sizeable enough to consider it. Typical severance packages that I've seen are more like what you describe, such as "you agree not to sue us", etc, and have nothing in common with a retainer fee.
Of course not.... that's what the severance is for... essentially the severance is acting as a retainer fee.
Obviously, if you end up working more time for them beyond what the retainer can actually cover based on wage laws, they would be required to pay you more money, regardless of what their contract says.
Employees that don't agree to to it can obviously just quit, but I'd be willing to bet that the size of severance is attractive enough to make a person's head turn and at least think it over.
They are legal, but in practice, are still generally unenforceable. In most real-world cases, an employer would not have any way of knowing what a former employee was up to unless the former employee actively kept them informed of his or her whereabouts, or the company that the employee was working for did something that visibly demonstrated they had knowledge they could only have obtained if an employee or former employee of theirs had violated an NDA.
What they would do is sue them for the severance... being that they probably had to sign something waiving all rights to the money if they do not complete the term of the agreement, the judgement would be in the company's favor without them even having to go to court.
Just because something is "natural" doesn't necessarily mean it should be acceptable. That's the fundamental difference between a species and civilization.
Yes, they did add a data cap to the plan.... the cap being 23G. The fact that they merely throttle speed at that point instead of stopping service entirely or charging more money at that point is just a corporate policy decision, but ultimately it is still a decision made by the company based on the *quantity of data* that one has used, and at the end of the day that decision still amounts to a data cap.
I have no real objection to companies that want to throttle speeds of people who they have noted are consuming more than some certain amount of data monthly, but when they have the audacity to still call those plans "unlimited", those shenanigans need to be called out.
Sure they have... By having a decision on the quality of service to offer someone based on the *QUANTITY OF DATA * that the person has consumed. that's a data cap.... the fact that they just throttle speed rather than stop traffic entirely just amounts to a policy decision, but since that decision is based on the volume of data that was downloaded, that volume is still by all rights a data cap.
How is a school that cuts out half the population from even going there expected to make a significant difference in the number of programmers, unless the intent is to only pay women programmers less?
It would still be able to know where it last last knew that it was, and a combination of flight by dead-reckoning and trivial obstacle avoidance navigation will be enough to at least get it out of the area where it is being jammed.
This.
So much this.
Thank you, AC.
Let's assume for the moment that it's actually just some disguised effort to increase the pool of available programmers programmers so they can pay them less. I would suggest that a more effective solution to that is to just develop less inexpensive and more ubiquitous education options to serve that purpose. If those education options are as effective at training and producing competent graduates as more expensive ones may be, then it might even work. If such programs, which would by virtue of their lower barriers of entry be available to *MORE* people, cannot be made less expensive and more ubiquitous without compromising on graduate competence and thereby not tending to be taken as seriously by good employers, and thus not significantly reducing the potential salaries for computer programmers as their agenda is alleged to be, then how in the hell would making a school that cuts half the population out right off the bat be expected to do that, exactly?
If that were really the case, gender would not have been mentioned at all, and they would have been creating low-barrier education options that were available to a wider class of people by virtue of ubiquity and price.
For fuck's sake, you can't create gender equality out of thin air by just adding more gender segregation.... I mean, I get what they are trying to do... trying to "balance" the imbalance by adding more imbalance in what might superficially appear to be the opposite direction, but at the end of the day still amounts to people either being treated differently or feeling treated differently on account of some aspect of their person that should in actuality be entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Whether a person is a man or woman should have absolutely no bearing on whether they are interested in computer programming or how competent at it they might be, and there should be absolutely no reason that a person's gender should *EVER* factor into what kind of computer science education options are available to them.
However idealistic the intentions might be behind this, I perceive that they are ultimately counterproductive to the long-term goal of gender equality.
Bruce Peren's suggestion is an interesting one, but I think misses the point of something being open source in the first place.
The notion that complex life in the universe occurs only on earth is not actually that far fetched.... to be certain, it is the only planet that we definitely know that such life exists, and the existence of such life elsewhere, however appealing or likely it may seem, given the size of the universe, is not actually proven or even necessarily particularly likely, since we don't actually know what the real odds are that such life would develop in the first place.
We need a sample size of more than one planet with such life to even *BEGIN* to estimate what the actual odds of it evolving might actually be. Doing anything else has no mathematical or scientific validity.
Criminals don't think they'll get caught, but the fear of getting caught may deter someone from becoming a criminal in the first place (unless you want to argue that simply thinking about doing something that is illegal should also be illegal).