Why are they offering a different rate for
corp-to-corp than 1099? That doesn't make a
whole lot of sense. There is no difference in
the cost to them.
Are they not allowed to contract directly with
you if you are 1099? A third party getting a cut
in that case seems like the only reason for a
rate difference.
Not true my credit is pretty wrecked from college
but I got a cell phone from sprint pcs with no
problem. Only thing was I needed to pay a $125
deposit.
The problem with this is that you end up creating
a whole class of people who are probably
perfectly capable of being productive yet cannot
find work, get credit etc due to something they
did a long long time ago. These people are
probably more likely to commit more crimes since
they cannot survive otherwise.
In the old days if you screwed up you could
always move to a new town and reform your life
without anyone knowing your reputation, now it
is much more difficult. I am not sure what the
solution to this problem is, or even if there is
one in the information age, but I would much rather
live in a society where past sins are forgiven
after a certain period of time has passed.
Excuse me, but a few months ago about 10 cops
knocked the door down of my neighbor (while he
was on the way to answer it!) and smashed his head
open in the process requiring several stitches.
All this because he was helping out with people
trying to get medical marijuana (legal in
California!) and the cops wanted to harrass him
to get at his friends.
Not to mention that they regularly take people's
property without trial (the burden of proof is
on the victim to get it back!) The drug war has
led to the worst abuses of civil rights and
the constitution in this country in a long time.
In fact it has caused far more problems than
drugs ever could.
I am a pagan myself, and I totally disagree with
the idea that there can be only one "true" religion. My belief is that by the nature of
our finite brains, and the limits of logic (ie
Godel) it is impossible for us to know the
ultimate reality. Religion mearly serves as
a language for us to access aspects of reality
that we might not otherwise be able to access.
Sharing a common myth with a community can
draw that community closer and into tighter
connection with the divine.
I see the different religions as more akin to
different languages than different absolute
truths. They are maps rather than the reality
itself.
While I don't try to convert anyone, I do
believe some stories are healthier than others.
Christianity in particular I find to have a
lot very destructive beliefs (mankind has
dominion over the earth, the deity is transcendent, homosexuality is bad, men
are better than women, we are all sinners etc.). I would love to live in a society that lived in a pagan story rather than a Christian one. I also
feel that my atheist friends are missing
out on a vital part of the human experience,
but beyond sharing my experiences with them,
I do not try to convert them.
I agree that we need some sort of organization
to utilize our collective power (particularly
to fight things like H1B expansion) but I am
not sure a union is the best way to go.
Especially for us independent contractor/consultant types.
I think a better model might be similar to the
one used by lawyers and doctors, a "guild-like"
organization similar to the AMA or whatever the
equivalent for lawyers is.
Sure they claim that they have to pay market
rates to H1B workers, but the reality is that
the government posted "median salaries" for
programmers are far below what people are actually
getting paid especially in Silicon Valley.
Two years ago a company I worked for hired
a couple of H1Bs and they had to post a
notice for a week or so about it. One of the
things it listed was the government accepted
salary for the positition (a java developer
with 3+ years of experience). The salary
they posted was 37k! Any one with that
experience made a minimum of double that, and
most likely even more!
Personally I am not against importing foreign
workers if they can compete fairly. It is
just when they are imported in indentured
servant conditions and drive down rates for
development that I get upset.
Michelle
Re:I have to disagree with those statistics
on
Disconnected
·
· Score: 1
Wow, maybe your employees are so alienated
because the of the Orwellian tactics of
your company. I know I would quit instantly
if I ever learned that a company I worked for
installed cameras in the bathroom!!
Michelle
Re:Not Economics, Accounting...
on
Me-Commerce
·
· Score: 1
I know that they need permanent employees, but most software developers could make far more money contracting. I have been in that position
in the past where I was one of the only full-time
employees managing a whole slew of contractors.
That was the job that made me leave full time
employment, because most of my team was getting
compensated far better than I was even though I
had all of the responsibility.
Fulltime saleries for java programmers have
been shooting up a lot recently, I wonder if
companies are finally starting to realize
that they need to make it worthwhile to be
an employee so that they have some! I still
prefer contracting though, mostly because I
can take 3-4 months off a year if I want.:-)
Re:Not Economics, Accounting...
on
Me-Commerce
·
· Score: 1
Oh so this is the reason companies are willing to
pay so much more for contractors!! I was always
mystified by that. I get
paid something like 75% more as a contractor (and that is assuming 40 hour weeks!) than
I did as a fulltime employee even when you add
in the value of benefits.
What I don't understand is why everyone who can
do it doesn't. I know so many people who are
earning far far less than their potential for
some illusion of the security of a "full-time
job". To me the only real security is sitting
on a large reserve of cash that is made so
much easier by contracting.
Of course there are those who choose to be full
time for a pile of silly valley lottery tickets
which is understandable. It was when I realized
that the options I got had to be worth about
150k for me to just break even vs. contracting that I decided it just wasn't worth it!
Michelle
Re:Oh, community, wherefore art thou?
on
Technoromanticism
·
· Score: 1
I totally feel the same way. I live in the
San Francisco Bay Area and I find their is an incredible lack of community here. While I love the liberal tolerant atmosphere here, I found that
even Houston had more of a sense of community
(though I would never go back for other reasons!)
A few weeks ago I went to Burning Man and I
was astounded at the wonderful sense of community.
You could not walk 50' without people inviting you
in for food or drink or chat. I would *love* to
live in such a place all the time (minus the
desert). It is all the more perplexing considering a huge proportion of Burning Man
attendies are from here. Why cannot the same
sense of community be created here?
I do practice magick, read tarot cards, and go to
various pagan gatherings and rituals. I have
only been doing so for around a year, some
psychadelic experiences I had opened me up
to the idea of all of the different ways it
is possible to see reality.
I try very hard to neither believe nor disbelieve,
the experiences are incredibly valuable and
wonderful regardless of what the ontological reality of them is. When one casts a circle or
contacts a "spirit" the mood of the area shifts
and insights can be gained. This is valuable
regardless as to whether the spirits are beings
with objective existance or just constructs
of our own minds. The feeling of being in
a group doing a ritual that is really on cannot
be described! I also feel a much more heightened
connection to nature than I used to
Likewise I have gained many insights for the tarot, whether this is from the patterns of the
cards themselves being nonrandom or just the
exercise engage parts of my mind that are not
normally active I don't know, and ultimately
it really does not matter.
I have noticed a fair number of computer geeks
among the neopagan community (of course this
is the Bay Area where there are a fair number
of geeks in *every* community. I especially
love my fellow geek pagans they seem to strike
a good balence between questioning skepticism
and being able to get into that magickal space
where anything is possible.
I agree that there is not nearly the infrastructure for purely electric vehicles
doesn't exist and might not ever exist. However
the hybrid vehicles are truely fabulous. They
run on both a gas engine and a battery, and
they use the battery to do all kinds of cool
stuff. For instance, the battery can recapture
some of the energy from braking. This allows
for quite great gas milage. The Honda Insight
gets 70 mi/gal in the city, costs 20k, and
supposedly performs about as well as a Civic.
Personally I make the environment friendliness
of my vehicle quite a high priority, I only
wish more people would do the same. The problem
is people do not have to pay the real cost of
the impact of their gasoline use on the planet.
I think it would be great if we could have a
$3-4/gal tax on gas and use the money to make
public transit free for all. I mean why do we
use our tax dollars to pay for roads, and yet
expect public transit to somehow "pay for itself"
Michelle
One of the funniest lines to me in the first movie is when ObiWan says "These blast marks are too accurate for jawas, this must be the work of imperial stormtroopers!"
I don't think the guys hit anything for the rest of the series.
I disagree with you. Big business *is* inherantly more evil than smaller businesses. A large business can not have any degree of social consciousness under American-style capitalism because it is only held accountable to making profits. Even if a CEO did feel obliged to sacrifice some profits in the interests of sustainability it would actually be a violation of his "fiduciary responsibilities". A small company is not necessarily accountable to the corporate system, and can choose to act for other motivations than maximizing profits if it wishes to.
The second problem is that large organizations, especially hierarchical ones create ever larger and larger communications overhead with size. In a 20 person company everyone in the company can have a clear idea of what is going on and attempt to influence what is happening effectively. In a 10,000 person company with six layers of management, information gets distorted at each pass up the chain (as subordinates alter their opinions consciously or not to agree with the reality of their managers). by the time this gets up to the CEO it is so distorted that he often has no clue what is really going on below.
Large corporations also decouple decision making from the people who do the work. Developers generally know the most about development, Sales people know the most about sales etc. These are the people who should choose how to do these things. In a large organization they often can and in a small organization they often cannot.
The main problem I have with all of these background checks and the information that is gathered about us these days is that it becomes almost impossible to redeem yourself for some stupid thing you might have done when you were young.
If you are convicted of say shoplifting at age 18, that info will haunt you for the rest of your life. In the old days if you made some mistakes and wanted to redeem yourself you could easily make a new beginning by going to a new town and starting over.
Not to mention that I simply refuse to participate in drug testing (although I am lucky to be in demand and have that luxury). Just doing my part in the War on the War on Drugs!
Just a mini-rant about your comment that capitalism is good because a "socialist command" economy won't work. I totally agree with you about that but socialist economies do not necessarily equal command economies. I think socialist economies can work just great on a small scale (ie
I think the problem with both large governments and large corporations is that they are top down organizations where a few people at the top who are out of touch with and not necessarily acting in the interests of the people below them are making the decisions. Top-down organizational structures just don't work, and command socialism works worse than capitalism because it tries to make everything into one huge top-down structure. At least capitalism allows many top-down structures to compete.
My ideal view of government is a very decentralized central government that invests most of the power in small localities. These localities can decide how to manage their resources however they see fit (whether through collective or free market principles) and freely trade with the other communities.
The book Ecotopia (I can't remember the author)had a really interesting economic view. In the book there is a country that has a free-market economy but disallows employment. If you wish to grow your organization you need to add someone as a partner. This places an inherant limit on the size of organizations, as it become unprofitable to add someone as the organization becomes large.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are they offering a different rate for corp-to-corp than 1099? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There is no difference in the cost to them.
Are they not allowed to contract directly with you if you are 1099? A third party getting a cut in that case seems like the only reason for a rate difference.
Michelle
Not true my credit is pretty wrecked from college but I got a cell phone from sprint pcs with no problem. Only thing was I needed to pay a $125 deposit.
Michelle
The problem with this is that you end up creating a whole class of people who are probably perfectly capable of being productive yet cannot find work, get credit etc due to something they did a long long time ago. These people are probably more likely to commit more crimes since they cannot survive otherwise.
In the old days if you screwed up you could always move to a new town and reform your life without anyone knowing your reputation, now it is much more difficult. I am not sure what the solution to this problem is, or even if there is one in the information age, but I would much rather live in a society where past sins are forgiven after a certain period of time has passed.
MichelleExcuse me, but a few months ago about 10 cops knocked the door down of my neighbor (while he was on the way to answer it!) and smashed his head open in the process requiring several stitches.
All this because he was helping out with people trying to get medical marijuana (legal in California!) and the cops wanted to harrass him to get at his friends.
Not to mention that they regularly take people's property without trial (the burden of proof is on the victim to get it back!) The drug war has led to the worst abuses of civil rights and the constitution in this country in a long time. In fact it has caused far more problems than drugs ever could.
MichelleI am a pagan myself, and I totally disagree with the idea that there can be only one "true" religion. My belief is that by the nature of our finite brains, and the limits of logic (ie Godel) it is impossible for us to know the ultimate reality. Religion mearly serves as a language for us to access aspects of reality that we might not otherwise be able to access. Sharing a common myth with a community can draw that community closer and into tighter connection with the divine.
I see the different religions as more akin to different languages than different absolute truths. They are maps rather than the reality itself.
While I don't try to convert anyone, I do believe some stories are healthier than others. Christianity in particular I find to have a lot very destructive beliefs (mankind has dominion over the earth, the deity is transcendent, homosexuality is bad, men are better than women, we are all sinners etc.). I would love to live in a society that lived in a pagan story rather than a Christian one. I also feel that my atheist friends are missing out on a vital part of the human experience, but beyond sharing my experiences with them, I do not try to convert them.
michelle
The study about the marijuana basically said that monkeys would push a lever that would inject them with THC far more often than one with just water
That does not necessarily mean they were *addicted*, it just means they *enjoyed* it!
Michelle
I agree that we need some sort of organization to utilize our collective power (particularly to fight things like H1B expansion) but I am not sure a union is the best way to go. Especially for us independent contractor/consultant types.
I think a better model might be similar to the one used by lawyers and doctors, a "guild-like" organization similar to the AMA or whatever the equivalent for lawyers is.
Michelle
Sure they claim that they have to pay market rates to H1B workers, but the reality is that the government posted "median salaries" for programmers are far below what people are actually getting paid especially in Silicon Valley.
Two years ago a company I worked for hired a couple of H1Bs and they had to post a notice for a week or so about it. One of the things it listed was the government accepted salary for the positition (a java developer with 3+ years of experience). The salary they posted was 37k! Any one with that experience made a minimum of double that, and most likely even more!
Personally I am not against importing foreign workers if they can compete fairly. It is just when they are imported in indentured servant conditions and drive down rates for development that I get upset.
Michelle
Wow, maybe your employees are so alienated because the of the Orwellian tactics of your company. I know I would quit instantly if I ever learned that a company I worked for installed cameras in the bathroom!!
Michelle
I know that they need permanent employees, but most software developers could make far more money contracting. I have been in that position in the past where I was one of the only full-time employees managing a whole slew of contractors. That was the job that made me leave full time employment, because most of my team was getting compensated far better than I was even though I had all of the responsibility.
Fulltime saleries for java programmers have been shooting up a lot recently, I wonder if companies are finally starting to realize that they need to make it worthwhile to be an employee so that they have some! I still prefer contracting though, mostly because I can take 3-4 months off a year if I want. :-)
Oh so this is the reason companies are willing to pay so much more for contractors!! I was always mystified by that. I get paid something like 75% more as a contractor (and that is assuming 40 hour weeks!) than I did as a fulltime employee even when you add in the value of benefits.
What I don't understand is why everyone who can do it doesn't. I know so many people who are earning far far less than their potential for some illusion of the security of a "full-time job". To me the only real security is sitting on a large reserve of cash that is made so much easier by contracting.
Of course there are those who choose to be full time for a pile of silly valley lottery tickets which is understandable. It was when I realized that the options I got had to be worth about 150k for me to just break even vs. contracting that I decided it just wasn't worth it!
Michelle
I totally feel the same way. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I find their is an incredible lack of community here. While I love the liberal tolerant atmosphere here, I found that even Houston had more of a sense of community (though I would never go back for other reasons!)
A few weeks ago I went to Burning Man and I was astounded at the wonderful sense of community. You could not walk 50' without people inviting you in for food or drink or chat. I would *love* to live in such a place all the time (minus the desert). It is all the more perplexing considering a huge proportion of Burning Man attendies are from here. Why cannot the same sense of community be created here?
Michelle
I do practice magick, read tarot cards, and go to various pagan gatherings and rituals. I have only been doing so for around a year, some psychadelic experiences I had opened me up to the idea of all of the different ways it is possible to see reality.
I try very hard to neither believe nor disbelieve, the experiences are incredibly valuable and wonderful regardless of what the ontological reality of them is. When one casts a circle or contacts a "spirit" the mood of the area shifts and insights can be gained. This is valuable regardless as to whether the spirits are beings with objective existance or just constructs of our own minds. The feeling of being in a group doing a ritual that is really on cannot be described! I also feel a much more heightened connection to nature than I used to
Likewise I have gained many insights for the tarot, whether this is from the patterns of the cards themselves being nonrandom or just the exercise engage parts of my mind that are not normally active I don't know, and ultimately it really does not matter.
I have noticed a fair number of computer geeks among the neopagan community (of course this is the Bay Area where there are a fair number of geeks in *every* community. I especially love my fellow geek pagans they seem to strike a good balence between questioning skepticism and being able to get into that magickal space where anything is possible.
MichelleI agree that there is not nearly the infrastructure for purely electric vehicles doesn't exist and might not ever exist. However the hybrid vehicles are truely fabulous. They run on both a gas engine and a battery, and they use the battery to do all kinds of cool stuff. For instance, the battery can recapture some of the energy from braking. This allows for quite great gas milage. The Honda Insight gets 70 mi/gal in the city, costs 20k, and supposedly performs about as well as a Civic. Personally I make the environment friendliness of my vehicle quite a high priority, I only wish more people would do the same. The problem is people do not have to pay the real cost of the impact of their gasoline use on the planet. I think it would be great if we could have a $3-4/gal tax on gas and use the money to make public transit free for all. I mean why do we use our tax dollars to pay for roads, and yet expect public transit to somehow "pay for itself" Michelle
One of the funniest lines to me in the first movie is when ObiWan says "These blast marks are too accurate for jawas, this must be the work of imperial stormtroopers!"
I don't think the guys hit anything for the rest of the series.
I disagree with you. Big business *is* inherantly more evil than smaller businesses. A large business can not have any degree of social consciousness under American-style capitalism because it is only held accountable to making profits. Even if a CEO did feel obliged to sacrifice some profits in the interests of sustainability it would actually be a violation of his "fiduciary responsibilities". A small company is not necessarily accountable to the corporate system, and can choose to act for other motivations than maximizing profits if it wishes to.
The second problem is that large organizations, especially hierarchical ones create ever larger and larger communications overhead with size. In a 20 person company everyone in the company can have a clear idea of what is going on and attempt to influence what is happening effectively. In a 10,000 person company with six layers of management, information gets distorted at each pass up the chain (as subordinates alter their opinions consciously or not to agree with the reality of their managers). by the time this gets up to the CEO it is so distorted that he often has no clue what is really going on below.
Large corporations also decouple decision making from the people who do the work. Developers generally know the most about development, Sales people know the most about sales etc. These are the people who should choose how to do these things. In a large organization they often can and in a small organization they often cannot.
The main problem I have with all of these background checks and the information that is gathered about us these days is that it becomes almost impossible to redeem yourself for some stupid thing you might have done when you were young.
If you are convicted of say shoplifting at age 18, that info will haunt you for the rest of your life. In the old days if you made some mistakes and wanted to redeem yourself you could easily make a new beginning by going to a new town and starting over.
Not to mention that I simply refuse to participate in drug testing (although I am lucky to be in demand and have that luxury). Just doing my part in the War on the War on Drugs!
Just a mini-rant about your comment that capitalism is good because a "socialist command" economy won't work. I totally agree with you about that but socialist economies do not necessarily equal command economies. I think socialist economies can work just great on a small scale (ie
I think the problem with both large governments and large corporations is that they are top down organizations where a few people at the top who are out of touch with and not necessarily acting in the interests of the people below them are making the decisions. Top-down organizational structures just don't work, and command socialism works worse than capitalism because it tries to make everything into one huge top-down structure. At least capitalism allows many top-down structures to compete.
My ideal view of government is a very decentralized central government that invests most of the power in small localities. These localities can decide how to manage their resources however they see fit (whether through collective or free market principles) and freely trade with the other communities.
The book Ecotopia (I can't remember the author)had a really interesting economic view. In the book there is a country that has a free-market economy but disallows employment. If you wish to grow your organization you need to add someone as a partner. This places an inherant limit on the size of organizations, as it become unprofitable to add someone as the organization becomes large.
Michelle