It's related to tech through science-fiction writing. Many authors based stories on the prospect of the world running out of space and alternative solutions being found (removing health and safety laws to increase death rates), allowing the population to eliminate each other to get birth permits. Star Wars even had an entire planet based on this problem (Coruscant).
Some countries like Bangladesh and Singapore have also run out of space. Bangladesh is begging other countries to take their surplus population. Hong Kong already has "coffin apartments".
One important distinction is that Singapore has a different economic profile than Bangladesh. Singapore's problems are about having a high population density on a small landmass which causes it to spend significantly more from its very rich coffers. OTH, Bangladesh is about high population density on not necessarily a small landmass combined with rampant poverty. Unlike Singapore, Bangladesh cannot meet with the challenges.
The next stage for them is to start building over the oceans or reclaiming land.
SK has already done this with Incheon International Airport.
Japan pulls these moves with even more impressive numbers. Pretty much some nice areas in the Shinagawa district (where I've been, very nice btw) are built on top of reclaimed land over Tokyo Bay. Chubu Centrair International Airport is another example. Everytime I go to Tokyo, the scope of ongoing land reclamation is impressive, almost right out of a sci-fi book.
I assume those countries have at least put into place a 1-child-per-family law to handle this problem. Otherwise anything else they do is a short term non-solution.
That's not a solution. Also consider that Singapore has a completely different economic profile than Bangladesh. Ergo, the problems Singapore experiences are differently than Bangladesh' (and Singapore is capable of meet them whereas Bangladesh currently cannot.)
You and others like you are the problem. You endorse payment of crap wages and get exactly your money's worth. They lost control of the classrooms because they don't get respect and adequate pay is part of that.
GP is right.
Dafuq are you talking about? I have personally known teachers in poor school districts that are barely making it having to buy fucking supplies out of their own pockets!
Forget poor districts. I live in one of the most affluent zip codes in the state, and to my fucking shock, my 3rd grader's class does not have science and social study textbooks. Her teacher has to do the damned photocopies, not out of her pocket, but certainly out of her own damned time (which is money.)
The notion that they are getting paid OK is ridiculous, and flies in the face of all we know. School administrators OTH, that's a different story.
My nephew has had to bring soap to wash his hands at school because it ran out of it all while damned admins have lavishly furnished offices, it shows you what the problem really is.
So why did most white voters with college degrees vote for Trump? Why did most of Trumps votes come from the suburbs and cities? Why did the majority of white women vote for Trump? Why did Trump win the majority of voters making over $50,000 a year by a wide margin. None of that sounds like a "working class" problem.
Bingo. It was all about identity. There are plenty of "working class" urban folks that make ends meet, gruely obviously, with 2 jobs or more. They didn't vote for Trump (and/or simply abstained in disgust at the Trump/Hillary choice). They didn't act on identity.
Not everyone that voted Trump voted for identity. But pretty much every damned identity idiot voted for him.
You have to provide authorization to "The Work Number" to release your salary information, so, no companies can't just willy-nilly get your salary information.
That's true. You need to give authorization. But if you do not give authorization, then the hiring process ends. No company that goes through such lengths is going to waive procedures just because an applicant doesn't want to participate. Perhaps only for C-suite level positions, but that's it.
So if an applicant does not give authorization, then there is no hiring process, rendering the issue moot (for there is no opportunity to lie.)
But if the applicant agrees, lying wouldn't get anywhere.
Negotiate instead. Learn how to negotiate.
Well... wouldn't step #1 of good negotiating be to not let them know the salary you are willing to work for before negotiations even begin? Just sayin'...
Part of the negotiation process is to walk away for good. A company that requires that number will not typically waive that requirement, so that position is pretty much a deal-killer.
If the candidate doesn't feel hot for the job, then that's no biggie. It's only when a) the opportunity is truly desirable, and b) the potential employer is something like Lockheed Martin or Harris (which surely will never waive anything in their hiring processes) that the candidate must consider whether to fullfill the requirement or not.
And, personally, whether to disclose your number a-priori, that depends on the situation. Sometimes it is a good thing, sometimes it might not be.
If I am talking with a 3rd party recruiter, I give them my minimum # with specific instructions not to bother me with anything below that. I don't want to waste my time, and I don't want them to waste my time. So I give my number before even starting an application, because my time is valuable.
OTH, if I am doing a direct hire interview, I typically do my research to know or predict what the salary range for the position is. I typically never get it wrong. If that's not possible, it is the first thing I ask in the hiring process.
Once I get the salary range, if it meets my minimum requirements, I echo that back to the interviewer as a "possible" salary range for me (just to provide a common ground). If it doesn't meet my minimum requirements, I tell them so and let them decide.
Once I get (if I get) an offer, I decide whether to give a counter offer or not. I never offer my salary range first, but I do not try to hide if if the potential employer asks for it. And even if I originally say, well X, I can always change my mind and ask for more. Up to them to accept, reject, counter-offer and/or receive my 2nd counter-offer etc.
So whether you disclose your number even before negotiations start depend on the nature of the potential job interview.
Actually, this is a common cycle. Post-WWII, Japanese stuff was considered crap. The country was war-torn and rebuilding its industrial base. Most emphasis was put on volume of production and expansion, little on quality.
As Japan modernized and "got" how to produce quality consistently, it earned a reputation for making the best stuff in the world. Korea and Taiwan followed the same pattern, about two decades behind Japan. (Most of the world's computer components are currently produced by Korean and Taiwanese companies. Even the stuff that goes into Apple's products.) China is currently in the first stage. The U.S. probably went through the same thing after it broke off from colonial Europe.
I suspect however that there's a third stage - complacency and mediocrity. The U.S. went into this in the 1970s and 1980s, which helped Japanese products to gain a fairly sizeable foothold here. Japan seems to be going through this third stage the last couple decades, allowing Korean and Taiwanese products to eclipse Japanese as considered "best" in the world.
The fact that one company got caught doing shitty work somehow translates into the state of quality of Japanese workmanship:/
Recruiters love to pigeonhole people. If you did the same kind of work for the last three positions and/or last three years, they assume that you want to do that kind of work forever. Never mind that the position you're applying for may be completely different.
They do, and they tend to fuck people up (and themselves). I had a situation once where I was doing C++ for a few years, but had more than a decade in J2EE/JEE (also preceded by bouts of C/C++ development).
When it was time for me to get a new gig, recruiters weren't willing to forward my resume to people I knew were going to hire me for Java work because "I was a C++ guy" or "you haven't done Java in a while."
Damn idiots cost me money in the form of lost opportunities. I ended up contacting people directly, do the job for them and got hired. And then they were surprised I got the type of Java job they were refusing to forward my resume for (and pissed and confounded why I wasn't using their services anymore.)
There are some head hunters that are worth knowing and working for. But those are far and few. Most of them are clueless at best, and ignorant, arrogant weasels at worst.
I had a friend who instead of putting his last salary added up all his benefits with his salary and provided them with that. It bumped his "wage" by a considerable margin. Ironically, it was a law firm that he went to, working in IT. He argued that if they found out they would actually be impressed with how he framed it to his favor instead of giving his base salary. I think he's right.
This is what I do, either implicitly when I'm giving a desired figure, or explicitly by explaining the minimum total compensation I want/need.
The way I see it, one should add everything out, base salary(*), benefits, 401k matching (typically 3%), HSA matching (also typically 3%), vacation time(*), gym/store membership discounts, etc. That's the true amount you make, what I call "total compensation".
Then I multiply that by 1.07 or 1.10, depending. That's the minimum for me to change jobs. And this is the mistake people make. They only compare base salaries and think "Yeah! I'm getting a 5% increase", but that's usually what, 3,4,5K extra on the base salary, but it is truly a lot less when comparing benefits (and sometimes, it can be a loss because a benefit is missing.)
Even an extra $6K or $7K is not that much, specially if you have kids. So people typically do not intelligently measure the salary trade-offs they make as they increase their risks when changing jobs.
(*) You, the generic you, should know your hourly rate, annualized. By this I mean, as an employee (not contractor, but employee), determine how many days of the year make up your base compensation (not the total compensation as I described above, but your base), then determine how much money you actually get in paid vacation.
See, there are 52 weeks a year, and as an employee, you probably get 2-3 weeks vacation, minimum. Say, you get 3 week vacation (or flex time/PTO). So you only work 49 weeks. Your "total compensation" is based on those 49 weeks.
Your 3-week vacation/PTO time is money. If your base salary is 100K and you work 49 weeks, then when you put your vacation $$$ into the equation, what you really make is: ($100K / 49) * 52 = $106.
In this example, you get 6% in the form of vacation. So your total, your real compensation is your (base compensation + paid vacation) + benefits. Or base compensation * (1 + ((52 - vacation weeks)/vacation weeks)) + benefits.
This is an important number to consider when you switch from full time employment to contractual, by-the-hour work. This is another mistake people make when they switch from full time employment to hourly-rated contract work; they never take into account paid vacation (a sure way to lose money.)
The best they could do is tax records, but that's sufficiently imprecise to cover you. They could do a credit check, but that only gives them a general range, not an exact salary.
But, if you don't want to lie, then just don't answer the question.
There's exactly no chance that I'm going to tell potential employers what previous employers paid me. That's very personal information that they have no legitimate need to know.
If that means I won't get hired for the position, that's fine -- if the information is that important to them, that's an excellent indication that I wouldn't fit in well in that company anyway.
Companies like "The Work Number" can (legally) find things out. This is specially true if as part of your job application you sign a disclosure agreement and approval for a background check (very typical of financial and defense companies.)
How would they ever find out? If they don't (somehow) check during the hiring process, I doubt they are going to try and go back later and check.
That information is not confidential. There are companies like "The Work Number" that some employers (specially in defense) use for employee verification. Those companies can get enough detailed information to present an accurate salary history.
Now, this is the thing. If this is a really good opportunity, don't lie. If it is a defense company, don't lie. If it is neither, either skip the opportunity or don't lie. Your time will come when an offer is given. If they low-ball you, throw back a counter-offer to them with the number you want
Then, a) the employer will give it to you, or b) counter-offer you with something more of your liking, or c) they'll say "well, you got paid less as per your salary history."
In case "c", you have to decide whether to walk away (because it is too detrimental to you) or take it (because you need the money or job change.). You can take it and make money (and maybe you'll like the job and stay or maybe because it is a lateral move to learn something new.)
Or you take it temporarily while looking for the salary you want.
But just don't lie. Don't blatantly lie.
Negotiate instead. Learn how to negotiate. Fight for what you want and learn how to make your case. You will get a lot further doing that than just lying for something that is easily verifiable (and whose outcome might not necessarily satisfy you professionally.)
Learn to find ways to win, even if by increments and with compromises. Lying is typically a sure way to actually lose firmly.
Yes many places ask for that information. I almost never provide any salary information (not usually relevant) as there is no upside to me in providing that information. Where I worked and when is fair game to ask but what I made at my last job really has no relevance in almost every case and providing that data really can only hurt me in most cases.
Yep, that's just part of negotiating skills....
In most cases, the first person that gives a number is the one that loses....
Depends on 1) the kind of number, 2) on how that person uses that number, and 3) who wants the hiring deal done the fastest (not always the applicant.)
I must have been lucky -- I've never been asked that. I get asked what soft of salary I'm looking for instead.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
I've avoided such applications whenever possible because I don't think they should be relevant. I get paid for the position I want at the bracket they are willing to offer based on my skills and nothing else. Only when it is truly a good opportunity that I bend to this.
The ability for a company to make such questions a requirement is just one more thing that tilts inequality of bargaining power to the applicant's detriment.
I'm glad this law is being passed in California. Hopefully it will spread. Inequality of bargaining power will always be there, but a bit of equalization is almost never a bad thing.
And when are the political narratives constantly being pushed now on this site going to end? I thought this was a tech site.
Alleged racial discrimination on a pre-eminent tech company, being discussed on a nerds site that has, since its inception covered such topics. Stop pretending that you only care for tech-new purity.
If there has been a formal complaint that got ignored, there'd be a pretty clear case.
From TFA:
Demetric Diaz complained about the regular use of epithets to the staffing agency and another supervisor, the suit said. The supervisor told him he was just a replaceable temporary worker. Diaz was dismissed less than a week later in October 2015.
Owen Diaz continued to work as an elevator operator. But over time, the suit claimed, the harassment grew worse. A co-worker regularly used the N-word. Diaz found an offensive “pickaninny” cartoon with the caption “Boo!” drawn on a bale of cardboard.
Owen Diaz also got into a heated argument with the supervisor who drew the cartoon, the suit said. He complained about the incident, and started to receive poor work evaluations. Diaz left Tesla around May 2016.
I'm not sure what you definition is of a "formal" complaint, but the employees own stories indicate that supervisors were aware of the harassment, and even took part in it. This despite the complaints to other supervisors and the employment agency.
Missing in all of this is Tesla's policy for reporting such behavior in a way that it does not jeopardize the reporter's position in the company. Anyone care to share that?
Even so, it seems implausible that nobody in middle management or upwards knew this was going on.
I remember when this kind of shit happened to my father and I when we worked at a factory in Burbank (when I was working to make ends meet while trying to get into college). The snarks, the racial remarks, the shit thrown to your face from afar, but no one knew who, the offensive pieces of papers left in the assembly lines for us to pick.
In the case of Tesla, if supervisors were aware of it, and if employers actually complained directly to them, multiple times, that's all the "formality" needed.
Though I predict quite a few assholes (here and elsewhere) will twist the conversation into something else, that nothing was formally filed, fake news or whatever.
People are so fucking invested in their Andy Griffit/Mayberry identity that will do anything to cast doubt to any allegations of racial wrong doing. Everything is fined, we moved on a long time ago, and so and so on.
It's a biased opinion. To me it seems that anytime someone says "The year of the Linux desktop never came..." simply means, "I have been using Widows, and I am use to it".
As I said, most of my work in in Linux (like you back in the early 90's), in addition to HP-UX, Sun, Irix back in the day. Even VAX and Pick Sys in pre-cambrian times,
and embedded work with Green Hills Unity OS.
But I guess I'm biased towards windows #rollseyes.
The city of Munich has suggested it will cost too much to carry on using Linux alongside Windows, despite having spent millions of euros switching PCs to open-source software... "
It's the typical problem in software regarding how to account for costs. It's the eternal battle between CAPEX vs OPEX. It is always cheaper to dump all windows licenses and install whatever happens to be the Linux distro of the day (CAPEX, sorta). It is quite another when it comes to the cost of operations, finding people who can use the software, training, familiarity, etc.
No matter what Linux distro you pick, it requires a lot of elbow grease to put it to a place where non-tech users can actually use it to get work done. You do not need that with Windows even when you factor out security risks, viruses, etc (And a lot of that get filtered out if you slap something like Citrix on front of it.)
I've done most of my development on Linux (and before that Solaris, HP and Irix, hell, even Vax in the day.) I prefer that (most of the time) over doing development in Windows. But for day-to-day non-programming work (or for media consumption or for, say, clerical/financial work). Sorry, Windows.
That's just the gist of it. The year of the Linux desktop never came, and (unless something radical happens), it never will.
That's all I have to say. I live in a gated community. You deliver shit to me? You go to the gate, so that the sec guard call me to get authorization from me to enter. Then you drive. Then you knock on my door, and, unless you are delivering a fucking refrigerator or something, I'll grab the stuff, tip you and close the door. You ain't gonna get pass the door.
Yes motherfuckers, it is. Same on the internet. It ain't pretty, but humanity never was. The results of freedom are not just a function of freedom, but the total sum of people exercising it. News at 11.
It's about time that they're ready for production.
Meh, their Weblogic middleware isn't Java8 ready yet. There is a lot of middleware and turnkey COTS systems out there that will simply not work if you move it to JDK 8 because of unknown regressions between JDK versions.
It is great to move to the latest JDK versions for fresh development using barebone containers,though.
The rest of us are stuck with Java 1.4.2, 6, and 7 due to poorly written apps using RMI to go to c:\program files(x85)\...to check version numbers and using == instead of = to run.
Or we left long ago to Ror.
What sort of cavern do you call "work"? Being on Java 7 is not bad, not even 6 if we are pragmatic. But what you are describing is just insane. Obviously, everything I'll say is annecdotal, but I've not seen such crap in a long time. Who does Windows-dev specific work with Java?????
What I do see is several of my buddies in dead end jobs (and a few acquaintances rocking recent CS degrees stuck in crap IT jobs)
Being in dead end jobs or being stuck in crap IT jobs at the start of a career is a given. The trick is to GTFO, hunt niches and develop a career. Easier said than done, but it is not impossible. The process can take years, but it can be done when pursued with diligence and purpose.
There are some people who are really complacent and lack agency, and as result end up in such jobs. But most people stuck at them aren't necessarily lazy or stupid. It is a matter of circumstances combined with a lack of direction.
Falling into a dead end job is almost an inevitability if you work in IT/software (or any field for that matter). Staying in one forever, it is not. I implore people not to look at the later option as an inevitability.
Gender or minority-based pay discrimination can be identified by answering just one simple question: are there any jobs in the company or organization that are performed both by people across the relevant demographics being compared with approximately the same level of experience where there is a difference in rate of pay? If yes, then there is discrimination. If not, then you cannot infer that there is any. Even when the jobs that pay the most are dominated by whiite males, for example, you cannot reasonably infer pay discrimination based upon that statistic because there can be a multitude of factors which can impact which people even both to apply for certain types of jobs, and which are entirely outside of the company's ability to control. The only thing you can reasonably expect a company to do is to pay its employees ethically and fairly for the work that they do, and this pay should be reflective only of the demands that the work places upon an individual. Trying to get companies to fix sociological and societal problems that might cause people of mostly one gender to apply only for certain types of positions in the first place cannot reasonably be expected to be a company's responsibility to mitigate. That responsibility falls on all of us... not to give women or minorities more incentive to apply for such jobs, but to not give them any disincentive to do so.
This. Always this.
I know I've been discriminated by race, and I've seen people throw away unread resumes of people they knew they were black (I've seen it with my fucking eyes.)
With that said, all accusations must come with evidence, and all defenses must come with evidence. And this question above, that is the only way to legitimize or invalidate a discrimination claim.
The EE degree isn't the problem. It's taking out student loans to get a MBA and not being able to find a job to pay off the student loans. I have several friends who graduated with EE in the 1990's, decided to get their MBA after getting laid off during the Great Recession, and now do IT support because they can't find a higher paying job. It's a bit of shock to go from $200K per year to $50K per year.
No. It's going to schools in other cities without consideration of costs, which causes ppl to take loans more than necessary, for pursuing fields of study that cannot possibly provide the necessary ROI.
If someone is going to get $80K in students loans, it better be for pursuing post-grad education at, say, a prestigious medical school. It should not be for getting a BA degree in psychology from an unknown but expensive private school (the later happens a lot.)
Most people could do well to pursue the first two years at cheaper, local community colleges and then transfer to (also local) universities. With the right grades people can do this with just pell grants or a scholarship combined with very minimal student loans.
Hell, most people would do well with getting a technical AS/AAS degree or a technical certificate at a community college and call it quits. I've never seen a good HVAC specialist or master plumber/electrician or 2-year degree nurse being out of work or saddled with impossible loans.
So it carries a lot of dead weight, doesn't quite achieve the level required and doesn't deploy properly?
Yup, sounds like my experience with Indian work.
Though I've have had bad experience with offshore teams from time to time, I wonder what kind of personal demons make people inject such jokes at every damned opportunity. It's not like we are swimming in a vast talent pool (the horrors I can tell regarding home-grown monkey code.)
You got that right. I'm 46 and for some reason I've never had so many 20 something women smile and acknowledge my existence. Far more than when I was in my 20s. Probably because I'm more built now, no bald spot, no gray hairs, no wrinkles and no gut. I look like a 30 something with confidence.
When I was young I was super-skinny, awkward, and terribly anxious and shy, especially around women.
No woman back then thought it might be worth it to get to know me. I built up quite a lot of resentment against women. I might just be able to finally live what I should have lived in my 20s.
I feel no great need to date women in their 40s, these are the same women that rejected me and even pushed me away and insulted me.
Women my age are pre-menopausal and either so demanding as to be comical, or so unattractive as to be repulsive. So the hell with them, they had their fun in their 20s while I was crying alone at home.
You were doing something wrong back then. I'm 48, not necessarily an Adonis, but my experience has been that attention fluctuates to the crowd you inhabit. Sometimes it was women my age, sometimes younger, sometimes women. Sometimes it was a lot. Sometimes it was a dry spell. Same with other men.
It is not an absolute thing. It is situational, and it depends mostly on 1) how we carry ourselves, and 2) what social circles we are in, and did I say 3) how we carry ourselves? Yes, I did because that shit is pretty important and eat all other factors for breakfast.
Slashdot Mirror
It's related to tech through science-fiction writing. Many authors based stories on the prospect of the world running out of space and alternative solutions being found (removing health and safety laws to increase death rates), allowing the population to eliminate each other to get birth permits. Star Wars even had an entire planet based on this problem (Coruscant).
Some countries like Bangladesh and Singapore have also run out of space. Bangladesh is begging other countries to take their surplus population. Hong Kong already has "coffin apartments".
One important distinction is that Singapore has a different economic profile than Bangladesh. Singapore's problems are about having a high population density on a small landmass which causes it to spend significantly more from its very rich coffers. OTH, Bangladesh is about high population density on not necessarily a small landmass combined with rampant poverty. Unlike Singapore, Bangladesh cannot meet with the challenges.
The next stage for them is to start building over the oceans or reclaiming land.
SK has already done this with Incheon International Airport.
Japan pulls these moves with even more impressive numbers. Pretty much some nice areas in the Shinagawa district (where I've been, very nice btw) are built on top of reclaimed land over Tokyo Bay. Chubu Centrair International Airport is another example. Everytime I go to Tokyo, the scope of ongoing land reclamation is impressive, almost right out of a sci-fi book.
I assume those countries have at least put into place a 1-child-per-family law to handle this problem. Otherwise anything else they do is a short term non-solution.
That's not a solution. Also consider that Singapore has a completely different economic profile than Bangladesh. Ergo, the problems Singapore experiences are differently than Bangladesh' (and Singapore is capable of meet them whereas Bangladesh currently cannot.)
> Teachers are paid ok.
You and others like you are the problem. You endorse payment of crap wages and get exactly your money's worth. They lost control of the classrooms because they don't get respect and adequate pay is part of that.
GP is right.
Dafuq are you talking about? I have personally known teachers in poor school districts that are barely making it having to buy fucking supplies out of their own pockets!
Forget poor districts. I live in one of the most affluent zip codes in the state, and to my fucking shock, my 3rd grader's class does not have science and social study textbooks. Her teacher has to do the damned photocopies, not out of her pocket, but certainly out of her own damned time (which is money.)
The notion that they are getting paid OK is ridiculous, and flies in the face of all we know. School administrators OTH, that's a different story.
My nephew has had to bring soap to wash his hands at school because it ran out of it all while damned admins have lavishly furnished offices, it shows you what the problem really is.
So why did most white voters with college degrees vote for Trump? Why did most of Trumps votes come from the suburbs and cities? Why did the majority of white women vote for Trump? Why did Trump win the majority of voters making over $50,000 a year by a wide margin. None of that sounds like a "working class" problem.
Bingo. It was all about identity. There are plenty of "working class" urban folks that make ends meet, gruely obviously, with 2 jobs or more. They didn't vote for Trump (and/or simply abstained in disgust at the Trump/Hillary choice). They didn't act on identity.
Not everyone that voted Trump voted for identity. But pretty much every damned identity idiot voted for him.
You have to provide authorization to "The Work Number" to release your salary information, so, no companies can't just willy-nilly get your salary information.
That's true. You need to give authorization. But if you do not give authorization, then the hiring process ends. No company that goes through such lengths is going to waive procedures just because an applicant doesn't want to participate. Perhaps only for C-suite level positions, but that's it.
So if an applicant does not give authorization, then there is no hiring process, rendering the issue moot (for there is no opportunity to lie.)
But if the applicant agrees, lying wouldn't get anywhere.
Negotiate instead. Learn how to negotiate.
Well... wouldn't step #1 of good negotiating be to not let them know the salary you are willing to work for before negotiations even begin? Just sayin'...
Part of the negotiation process is to walk away for good. A company that requires that number will not typically waive that requirement, so that position is pretty much a deal-killer.
If the candidate doesn't feel hot for the job, then that's no biggie. It's only when a) the opportunity is truly desirable, and b) the potential employer is something like Lockheed Martin or Harris (which surely will never waive anything in their hiring processes) that the candidate must consider whether to fullfill the requirement or not.
And, personally, whether to disclose your number a-priori, that depends on the situation. Sometimes it is a good thing, sometimes it might not be.
If I am talking with a 3rd party recruiter, I give them my minimum # with specific instructions not to bother me with anything below that. I don't want to waste my time, and I don't want them to waste my time. So I give my number before even starting an application, because my time is valuable.
OTH, if I am doing a direct hire interview, I typically do my research to know or predict what the salary range for the position is. I typically never get it wrong. If that's not possible, it is the first thing I ask in the hiring process.
Once I get the salary range, if it meets my minimum requirements, I echo that back to the interviewer as a "possible" salary range for me (just to provide a common ground). If it doesn't meet my minimum requirements, I tell them so and let them decide.
Once I get (if I get) an offer, I decide whether to give a counter offer or not. I never offer my salary range first, but I do not try to hide if if the potential employer asks for it. And even if I originally say, well X, I can always change my mind and ask for more. Up to them to accept, reject, counter-offer and/or receive my 2nd counter-offer etc.
So whether you disclose your number even before negotiations start depend on the nature of the potential job interview.
Actually, this is a common cycle. Post-WWII, Japanese stuff was considered crap. The country was war-torn and rebuilding its industrial base. Most emphasis was put on volume of production and expansion, little on quality. As Japan modernized and "got" how to produce quality consistently, it earned a reputation for making the best stuff in the world. Korea and Taiwan followed the same pattern, about two decades behind Japan. (Most of the world's computer components are currently produced by Korean and Taiwanese companies. Even the stuff that goes into Apple's products.) China is currently in the first stage. The U.S. probably went through the same thing after it broke off from colonial Europe. I suspect however that there's a third stage - complacency and mediocrity. The U.S. went into this in the 1970s and 1980s, which helped Japanese products to gain a fairly sizeable foothold here. Japan seems to be going through this third stage the last couple decades, allowing Korean and Taiwanese products to eclipse Japanese as considered "best" in the world.
The fact that one company got caught doing shitty work somehow translates into the state of quality of Japanese workmanship :/
Recruiters love to pigeonhole people. If you did the same kind of work for the last three positions and/or last three years, they assume that you want to do that kind of work forever. Never mind that the position you're applying for may be completely different.
They do, and they tend to fuck people up (and themselves). I had a situation once where I was doing C++ for a few years, but had more than a decade in J2EE/JEE (also preceded by bouts of C/C++ development).
When it was time for me to get a new gig, recruiters weren't willing to forward my resume to people I knew were going to hire me for Java work because "I was a C++ guy" or "you haven't done Java in a while."
Damn idiots cost me money in the form of lost opportunities. I ended up contacting people directly, do the job for them and got hired. And then they were surprised I got the type of Java job they were refusing to forward my resume for (and pissed and confounded why I wasn't using their services anymore.)
There are some head hunters that are worth knowing and working for. But those are far and few. Most of them are clueless at best, and ignorant, arrogant weasels at worst.
I had a friend who instead of putting his last salary added up all his benefits with his salary and provided them with that. It bumped his "wage" by a considerable margin. Ironically, it was a law firm that he went to, working in IT. He argued that if they found out they would actually be impressed with how he framed it to his favor instead of giving his base salary. I think he's right.
This is what I do, either implicitly when I'm giving a desired figure, or explicitly by explaining the minimum total compensation I want/need.
The way I see it, one should add everything out, base salary(*), benefits, 401k matching (typically 3%), HSA matching (also typically 3%), vacation time(*), gym/store membership discounts, etc. That's the true amount you make, what I call "total compensation".
Then I multiply that by 1.07 or 1.10, depending. That's the minimum for me to change jobs. And this is the mistake people make. They only compare base salaries and think "Yeah! I'm getting a 5% increase", but that's usually what, 3,4,5K extra on the base salary , but it is truly a lot less when comparing benefits (and sometimes, it can be a loss because a benefit is missing.)
Even an extra $6K or $7K is not that much, specially if you have kids. So people typically do not intelligently measure the salary trade-offs they make as they increase their risks when changing jobs.
(*) You, the generic you, should know your hourly rate, annualized. By this I mean, as an employee (not contractor, but employee), determine how many days of the year make up your base compensation (not the total compensation as I described above, but your base), then determine how much money you actually get in paid vacation.
See, there are 52 weeks a year, and as an employee, you probably get 2-3 weeks vacation, minimum. Say, you get 3 week vacation (or flex time/PTO). So you only work 49 weeks. Your "total compensation" is based on those 49 weeks.
Your 3-week vacation/PTO time is money. If your base salary is 100K and you work 49 weeks, then when you put your vacation $$$ into the equation, what you really make is: ($100K / 49) * 52 = $106.
In this example, you get 6% in the form of vacation. So your total, your real compensation is your (base compensation + paid vacation) + benefits. Or base compensation * (1 + ((52 - vacation weeks)/vacation weeks)) + benefits.
This is an important number to consider when you switch from full time employment to contractual, by-the-hour work. This is another mistake people make when they switch from full time employment to hourly-rated contract work; they never take into account paid vacation (a sure way to lose money.)
How can they verify it?
The best they could do is tax records, but that's sufficiently imprecise to cover you. They could do a credit check, but that only gives them a general range, not an exact salary.
But, if you don't want to lie, then just don't answer the question.
There's exactly no chance that I'm going to tell potential employers what previous employers paid me. That's very personal information that they have no legitimate need to know.
If that means I won't get hired for the position, that's fine -- if the information is that important to them, that's an excellent indication that I wouldn't fit in well in that company anyway.
Companies like "The Work Number" can (legally) find things out. This is specially true if as part of your job application you sign a disclosure agreement and approval for a background check (very typical of financial and defense companies.)
How would they ever find out? If they don't (somehow) check during the hiring process, I doubt they are going to try and go back later and check.
That information is not confidential. There are companies like "The Work Number" that some employers (specially in defense) use for employee verification. Those companies can get enough detailed information to present an accurate salary history.
Now, this is the thing. If this is a really good opportunity, don't lie. If it is a defense company, don't lie. If it is neither, either skip the opportunity or don't lie. Your time will come when an offer is given. If they low-ball you, throw back a counter-offer to them with the number you want
Then, a) the employer will give it to you, or b) counter-offer you with something more of your liking, or c) they'll say "well, you got paid less as per your salary history."
In case "c", you have to decide whether to walk away (because it is too detrimental to you) or take it (because you need the money or job change.). You can take it and make money (and maybe you'll like the job and stay or maybe because it is a lateral move to learn something new.)
Or you take it temporarily while looking for the salary you want.
But just don't lie. Don't blatantly lie.
Negotiate instead. Learn how to negotiate. Fight for what you want and learn how to make your case. You will get a lot further doing that than just lying for something that is easily verifiable (and whose outcome might not necessarily satisfy you professionally.)
Learn to find ways to win, even if by increments and with compromises. Lying is typically a sure way to actually lose firmly.
Yep, that's just part of negotiating skills....
In most cases, the first person that gives a number is the one that loses....
Depends on 1) the kind of number, 2) on how that person uses that number, and 3) who wants the hiring deal done the fastest (not always the applicant.)
I must have been lucky -- I've never been asked that. I get asked what soft of salary I'm looking for instead.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
I've avoided such applications whenever possible because I don't think they should be relevant. I get paid for the position I want at the bracket they are willing to offer based on my skills and nothing else. Only when it is truly a good opportunity that I bend to this.
The ability for a company to make such questions a requirement is just one more thing that tilts inequality of bargaining power to the applicant's detriment.
I'm glad this law is being passed in California. Hopefully it will spread. Inequality of bargaining power will always be there, but a bit of equalization is almost never a bad thing.
And when are the political narratives constantly being pushed now on this site going to end? I thought this was a tech site.
Alleged racial discrimination on a pre-eminent tech company, being discussed on a nerds site that has, since its inception covered such topics. Stop pretending that you only care for tech-new purity.
If there has been a formal complaint that got ignored, there'd be a pretty clear case.
From TFA:
Demetric Diaz complained about the regular use of epithets to the staffing agency and another supervisor, the suit said. The supervisor told him he was just a replaceable temporary worker. Diaz was dismissed less than a week later in October 2015.
Owen Diaz continued to work as an elevator operator. But over time, the suit claimed, the harassment grew worse. A co-worker regularly used the N-word. Diaz found an offensive “pickaninny” cartoon with the caption “Boo!” drawn on a bale of cardboard.
Owen Diaz also got into a heated argument with the supervisor who drew the cartoon, the suit said. He complained about the incident, and started to receive poor work evaluations. Diaz left Tesla around May 2016.
I'm not sure what you definition is of a "formal" complaint, but the employees own stories indicate that supervisors were aware of the harassment, and even took part in it. This despite the complaints to other supervisors and the employment agency.
Missing in all of this is Tesla's policy for reporting such behavior in a way that it does not jeopardize the reporter's position in the company. Anyone care to share that?
Even so, it seems implausible that nobody in middle management or upwards knew this was going on.
I remember when this kind of shit happened to my father and I when we worked at a factory in Burbank (when I was working to make ends meet while trying to get into college). The snarks, the racial remarks, the shit thrown to your face from afar, but no one knew who, the offensive pieces of papers left in the assembly lines for us to pick.
In the case of Tesla, if supervisors were aware of it, and if employers actually complained directly to them, multiple times, that's all the "formality" needed.
Though I predict quite a few assholes (here and elsewhere) will twist the conversation into something else, that nothing was formally filed, fake news or whatever.
People are so fucking invested in their Andy Griffit/Mayberry identity that will do anything to cast doubt to any allegations of racial wrong doing. Everything is fined, we moved on a long time ago, and so and so on.
It's a biased opinion. To me it seems that anytime someone says "The year of the Linux desktop never came..." simply means, "I have been using Widows, and I am use to it".
As I said, most of my work in in Linux (like you back in the early 90's), in addition to HP-UX, Sun, Irix back in the day. Even VAX and Pick Sys in pre-cambrian times, and embedded work with Green Hills Unity OS.
But I guess I'm biased towards windows #rollseyes.
The city of Munich has suggested it will cost too much to carry on using Linux alongside Windows, despite having spent millions of euros switching PCs to open-source software... "
It's the typical problem in software regarding how to account for costs. It's the eternal battle between CAPEX vs OPEX. It is always cheaper to dump all windows licenses and install whatever happens to be the Linux distro of the day (CAPEX, sorta). It is quite another when it comes to the cost of operations, finding people who can use the software, training, familiarity, etc.
No matter what Linux distro you pick, it requires a lot of elbow grease to put it to a place where non-tech users can actually use it to get work done. You do not need that with Windows even when you factor out security risks, viruses, etc (And a lot of that get filtered out if you slap something like Citrix on front of it.)
I've done most of my development on Linux (and before that Solaris, HP and Irix, hell, even Vax in the day.) I prefer that (most of the time) over doing development in Windows. But for day-to-day non-programming work (or for media consumption or for, say, clerical/financial work). Sorry, Windows.
That's just the gist of it. The year of the Linux desktop never came, and (unless something radical happens), it never will.
That's all I have to say. I live in a gated community. You deliver shit to me? You go to the gate, so that the sec guard call me to get authorization from me to enter. Then you drive. Then you knock on my door, and, unless you are delivering a fucking refrigerator or something, I'll grab the stuff, tip you and close the door. You ain't gonna get pass the door.
Yes motherfuckers, it is. Same on the internet. It ain't pretty, but humanity never was. The results of freedom are not just a function of freedom, but the total sum of people exercising it. News at 11.
"JDK 9 is a production-ready implementation..."
It's about time that they're ready for production.
Meh, their Weblogic middleware isn't Java8 ready yet. There is a lot of middleware and turnkey COTS systems out there that will simply not work if you move it to JDK 8 because of unknown regressions between JDK versions.
It is great to move to the latest JDK versions for fresh development using barebone containers,though.
I will let them know.
The rest of us are stuck with Java 1.4.2, 6, and 7 due to poorly written apps using RMI to go to c:\program files(x85)\...to check version numbers and using == instead of = to run.
Or we left long ago to Ror.
What sort of cavern do you call "work"? Being on Java 7 is not bad, not even 6 if we are pragmatic. But what you are describing is just insane. Obviously, everything I'll say is annecdotal, but I've not seen such crap in a long time. Who does Windows-dev specific work with Java?????
What I do see is several of my buddies in dead end jobs (and a few acquaintances rocking recent CS degrees stuck in crap IT jobs)
Being in dead end jobs or being stuck in crap IT jobs at the start of a career is a given. The trick is to GTFO, hunt niches and develop a career. Easier said than done, but it is not impossible. The process can take years, but it can be done when pursued with diligence and purpose.
There are some people who are really complacent and lack agency, and as result end up in such jobs. But most people stuck at them aren't necessarily lazy or stupid. It is a matter of circumstances combined with a lack of direction.
Falling into a dead end job is almost an inevitability if you work in IT/software (or any field for that matter). Staying in one forever, it is not. I implore people not to look at the later option as an inevitability.
Gender or minority-based pay discrimination can be identified by answering just one simple question: are there any jobs in the company or organization that are performed both by people across the relevant demographics being compared with approximately the same level of experience where there is a difference in rate of pay? If yes, then there is discrimination. If not, then you cannot infer that there is any. Even when the jobs that pay the most are dominated by whiite males, for example, you cannot reasonably infer pay discrimination based upon that statistic because there can be a multitude of factors which can impact which people even both to apply for certain types of jobs, and which are entirely outside of the company's ability to control. The only thing you can reasonably expect a company to do is to pay its employees ethically and fairly for the work that they do, and this pay should be reflective only of the demands that the work places upon an individual. Trying to get companies to fix sociological and societal problems that might cause people of mostly one gender to apply only for certain types of positions in the first place cannot reasonably be expected to be a company's responsibility to mitigate. That responsibility falls on all of us... not to give women or minorities more incentive to apply for such jobs, but to not give them any disincentive to do so.
This. Always this.
I know I've been discriminated by race, and I've seen people throw away unread resumes of people they knew they were black (I've seen it with my fucking eyes.)
With that said, all accusations must come with evidence, and all defenses must come with evidence. And this question above, that is the only way to legitimize or invalidate a discrimination claim.
The EE degree isn't the problem. It's taking out student loans to get a MBA and not being able to find a job to pay off the student loans. I have several friends who graduated with EE in the 1990's, decided to get their MBA after getting laid off during the Great Recession, and now do IT support because they can't find a higher paying job. It's a bit of shock to go from $200K per year to $50K per year.
No. It's going to schools in other cities without consideration of costs, which causes ppl to take loans more than necessary, for pursuing fields of study that cannot possibly provide the necessary ROI.
If someone is going to get $80K in students loans, it better be for pursuing post-grad education at, say, a prestigious medical school. It should not be for getting a BA degree in psychology from an unknown but expensive private school (the later happens a lot.)
Most people could do well to pursue the first two years at cheaper, local community colleges and then transfer to (also local) universities. With the right grades people can do this with just pell grants or a scholarship combined with very minimal student loans.
Hell, most people would do well with getting a technical AS/AAS degree or a technical certificate at a community college and call it quits. I've never seen a good HVAC specialist or master plumber/electrician or 2-year degree nurse being out of work or saddled with impossible loans.
So it carries a lot of dead weight, doesn't quite achieve the level required and doesn't deploy properly?
Yup, sounds like my experience with Indian work.
Though I've have had bad experience with offshore teams from time to time, I wonder what kind of personal demons make people inject such jokes at every damned opportunity. It's not like we are swimming in a vast talent pool (the horrors I can tell regarding home-grown monkey code.)
You got that right. I'm 46 and for some reason I've never had so many 20 something women smile and acknowledge my existence. Far more than when I was in my 20s. Probably because I'm more built now, no bald spot, no gray hairs, no wrinkles and no gut. I look like a 30 something with confidence. When I was young I was super-skinny, awkward, and terribly anxious and shy, especially around women.
No woman back then thought it might be worth it to get to know me. I built up quite a lot of resentment against women. I might just be able to finally live what I should have lived in my 20s.
I feel no great need to date women in their 40s, these are the same women that rejected me and even pushed me away and insulted me.
Women my age are pre-menopausal and either so demanding as to be comical, or so unattractive as to be repulsive. So the hell with them, they had their fun in their 20s while I was crying alone at home.
You were doing something wrong back then. I'm 48, not necessarily an Adonis, but my experience has been that attention fluctuates to the crowd you inhabit. Sometimes it was women my age, sometimes younger, sometimes women. Sometimes it was a lot. Sometimes it was a dry spell. Same with other men.
It is not an absolute thing. It is situational, and it depends mostly on 1) how we carry ourselves, and 2) what social circles we are in, and did I say 3) how we carry ourselves? Yes, I did because that shit is pretty important and eat all other factors for breakfast.