Heh. You're reminding me of a certain middle manager's utter screw up from over a decade ago. I was doing this analytical work, and unbenknownst to me, the middle manager was taking credit for everything I did, and claiming she it as her own. I really didn't know she was doing that, but it became obvious to me that the Director was unhappy with me. I sort of instinctively felt out the situation, and simply started briefing her/first/ on my analytic work.../then/ the middle mgr. About three weeks later the middle mgr was fired, as in dismissed for cause, specifically for lying about work product.
Yes, Dorothy, there really are people like that. Go figure.
Stupid thing is, you don't have to do this. In a corporate setting, if you publically present and praise the work of an underlying, giving credit where credit is due, both your boss and the underling regard you as a "good manager".
Eventually, drop the "trust me" and you'll find you're just telling people what to do. This process takes some practice (and good instincts), but if you're careful and you do this right, you can create a situation where you can tell people, "I need you to do C," and they'll do it, [almost] no questions asked.
You're right on the button with this one. One (the proverbial "one", not you) can be very, very surprised at how credibly a confident person with a plan can be taken in by -- well just about anyone. They don't call it "confidence man" for nuthin'. The competent executives (these are the confident ones with plans, generally) will often be taken in by you by affinity; the softy-incompetent ones will be taken in by need (they need your confidence and plan), and hard-ass-incompetent ones (these are those who easily feel threatened and attempt to build turf) will become your tacit enemies.
Other posters who say to make sure you have the stomach for this are right. You have to have the nerve, ability to sideline people (some of whom consider themselves to be important, without a doubt).
Some will interpret this as saying it is important to suck up to management, but that is not correct. Most of middle management isn't much different than the rest of the employees
No, you're right. After the junior years, one should spend significant energy on making sure that executive knows what one does.
Who wants to work for a company that is driving itself out of business?
That can be true in a perversely reversed manner. I just worked for a company that basically destroyed a big part of itself/because/ it was so unwilling to lay people off. There was a huge chunk of "dead wood". Those who weren't dead wood ultimately paid quite a price for that. I see things differently now. Laying off a chunk of an organization is sometimes quite necessary. Let's call it a "deossificiation" of the work force.
You're generally correct, but it's also important to keep in mind that looking out for the company isn't always the same as looking out for your managment and the latter is much more important to keeping your job than the former.
Neither one is imporant. What's important is being perceived to be looking out for the company and management. No matter how effective you are, if you are not seen or heard, you do not exist. While this observation of mine may appear to be a bit sardonic, one should pay keen attention to it -- and the larger the company, the keener the need for the attention...
Those that I've spoken with who have gone into consultancy say that once ALL of the benefits are gone, you need 2X your former pay just to break even. That's vacation, health care, dental, sick days, etc. Not to mention that consultants need to provide some sort of office space, communications, etc. Those costs were formerly paid by the employer. That's why the burden rate for you usually ends up looking like somewhere in the realm of 2X your salary.
Your itemized list does not account for the primary reason to charge at or near a multiplier of 2X: business variance (i.e., the cost of down time between contracts, marketing, finding a new contract, and so forth). If you could count on having the same contract, year in and year out, 2X is generally an overcharge. Alas, one cannot count on that...
I know business that run on multipliers in the ~1.5X range, and they make a profit, by the way. What they do is send their employees to the employers site, offer no facilities (the faciltiies falls under contract), and the day the employee is not covered by the contract is the day the employee is not paid.
If I could turn my current job around at 1.6X, with a guarantee of employment, but had to conver all my own SS, medical, vacation, sick leave, etc, I'd take it in a heart beat. I'd incorporate as a California-S and be in $$$ city...
Setting aside the sun is a planet guy, I saw the question, thought up my answer, did a search, and yours is the first one I came to. So while I have no mod points at the moment, I say "+1, you're a genius" on the grounds you said the thing I would have. If gravity forces the mineraloid into a sphere, it's a planet.
Well, you have me there. Let's just say that, "in certain crowds, there are those who seem to believe that strong and static typing are the same thing." My explanation for which crowds those were, exactly, may have been a bit faulty...:)
A bit of history. The static languages people don't regard static and strong typing to be different. Hence, they'll say insane things, like assert that "C" is "strongly" typed, which it isn't. It's statically, but weakly typed, where "weakly" should be taken to mean that it really is possible to treat a value type as some other value type.
So while I'm with ya on the whole "python is strongly, dynamically typed," and "c is weakly, statically typed" thing, if you were to go out to textbook CS, you might have some 'splainin to do. Only the dynamic language folks tend to understand this distinction so well.
Why couldn't we have air dropped military personell onto the streets of New Orleans as soon as it was apparent that the local forces were overwhelmed and trying to survive on their own.
Here's how it worked out for me. While the various and sundry theory classes in CS weren't immediately useful in the first several years of my work, they provided me with a valuable base; this allowed me to outstrip my peers in later years, as I actually had an interest in and retained the fundamental bases of CS, pushing me to the top as they foundered.
Long term planning, fellow. Don't worry, capture this stuff, and move into an environment where it is appreciated.
Well, they possibly could. The other speculation is that they're hoping to make use of some of the Palladium infrastructure to keep people from pirating the OS. Frankly, I don't think they should.
I know that there have been screenshots out there proving that OSX works on AMD just fine. So who knows what Apple might do. Just be aware: Apple switched away from IBM for a variety of reasons, but chief amongst them was that they couldn't get low power G-whatevers out of IBM.
Isn't it too late? Hasn't Linux, as a brand name, been unprotected and unenforced for too long? I'm guessing that it's so, and that this trademark litigation initiative will run into a brick wall in court if someone elects to challenge it. Thoughts?
... since when is it insubordination to insist on sticking to the contract?... ----
No normal working contract stipulates 40 hour work weeks. Usually you are simply "exempt" and the contract avoids time specifications. If it doesn't say, and you are "exempt," the boss gets to pick your hours. One of the reasons that they sometimes won't do this is that one of the things that qualifies the employee legally for exempt status is having a job that is based upon qualitative work product and not time expended.
Specifically telling you how many hours you have to work takes them one step closer to illegally classifying you as exempt. If they get caught in an illegal qualification, they will owe you (and everyone else they abused in this manner) back pay for all overtime hours worked, according to hourly rules (time and half and what not). So they avoid it.
But they don't have to. You may qualify on other grounds. Salary for example. After a certain dollar figure annually, you legally qualify as exempt, regardless of other consideration.
...if they pay you to work 40 hours, then you only work 40 hours...
If you are told to work a 50 hour work week by your boss, and you fail to do so, you can be released from your job immediately. In most states, anyway. It's insubordination.
Find someone who cares when you're sitting in the holding cell waiting for your arraignment. "Oh, it's not illegal, huh? Tell it to the judge next week."
Um. If a cop arrests for something that's not illegal, it can be a career limiting move. The lawsuit will put him down for good. That's a "hand over the keys to your house" level civil mistake.
This is Sacramento, California - the capital of the most populous state in the country.
Won't protect him. Not if you can afford a lawyer, anyway.
Out of their archive, sure -- but not necessarily out of their search results...
You're right about that. Searches aren't covered, but content surely is. As for the idea of calling the redirection of one party to another "copyrightable," that's simply preposterous. There's no copy.
There's no franchise extension. Google has to honor no spider requests, and will take pages out of their archive if you can prove original ownership and request it. Current copyright law already demands that Google do this. Google knows this. That's why they do it. Google coming along didn't change copyright law!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I made the effort to keep management informed...
/first/ on my analytic work... /then/ the middle mgr. About three weeks later the middle mgr was fired, as in dismissed for cause, specifically for lying about work product.
Heh. You're reminding me of a certain middle manager's utter screw up from over a decade ago. I was doing this analytical work, and unbenknownst to me, the middle manager was taking credit for everything I did, and claiming she it as her own. I really didn't know she was doing that, but it became obvious to me that the Director was unhappy with me. I sort of instinctively felt out the situation, and simply started briefing her
Yes, Dorothy, there really are people like that. Go figure.
Stupid thing is, you don't have to do this. In a corporate setting, if you publically present and praise the work of an underlying, giving credit where credit is due, both your boss and the underling regard you as a "good manager".
Some people Just. Don't. Get. It.
C//
Eventually, drop the "trust me" and you'll find you're just telling people what to do. This process takes some practice (and good instincts), but if you're careful and you do this right, you can create a situation where you can tell people, "I need you to do C," and they'll do it, [almost] no questions asked.
You're right on the button with this one. One (the proverbial "one", not you) can be very, very surprised at how credibly a confident person with a plan can be taken in by -- well just about anyone. They don't call it "confidence man" for nuthin'. The competent executives (these are the confident ones with plans, generally) will often be taken in by you by affinity; the softy-incompetent ones will be taken in by need (they need your confidence and plan), and hard-ass-incompetent ones (these are those who easily feel threatened and attempt to build turf) will become your tacit enemies.
Other posters who say to make sure you have the stomach for this are right. You have to have the nerve, ability to sideline people (some of whom consider themselves to be important, without a doubt).
C//
Some will interpret this as saying it is important to suck up to management, but that is not correct. Most of middle management isn't much different than the rest of the employees
/because/ it was so unwilling to lay people off. There was a huge chunk of "dead wood". Those who weren't dead wood ultimately paid quite a price for that. I see things differently now. Laying off a chunk of an organization is sometimes quite necessary. Let's call it a "deossificiation" of the work force.
No, you're right. After the junior years, one should spend significant energy on making sure that executive knows what one does.
Who wants to work for a company that is driving itself out of business?
That can be true in a perversely reversed manner. I just worked for a company that basically destroyed a big part of itself
C//
You're generally correct, but it's also important to keep in mind that looking out for the company isn't always the same as looking out for your managment and the latter is much more important to keeping your job than the former.
Neither one is imporant. What's important is being perceived to be looking out for the company and management. No matter how effective you are, if you are not seen or heard, you do not exist. While this observation of mine may appear to be a bit sardonic, one should pay keen attention to it -- and the larger the company, the keener the need for the attention...
C//
Those that I've spoken with who have gone into consultancy say that once ALL of the benefits are gone, you need 2X your former pay just to break even. That's vacation, health care, dental, sick days, etc. Not to mention that consultants need to provide some sort of office space, communications, etc. Those costs were formerly paid by the employer. That's why the burden rate for you usually ends up looking like somewhere in the realm of 2X your salary.
Your itemized list does not account for the primary reason to charge at or near a multiplier of 2X: business variance (i.e., the cost of down time between contracts, marketing, finding a new contract, and so forth). If you could count on having the same contract, year in and year out, 2X is generally an overcharge. Alas, one cannot count on that...
I know business that run on multipliers in the ~1.5X range, and they make a profit, by the way. What they do is send their employees to the employers site, offer no facilities (the faciltiies falls under contract), and the day the employee is not covered by the contract is the day the employee is not paid.
If I could turn my current job around at 1.6X, with a guarantee of employment, but had to conver all my own SS, medical, vacation, sick leave, etc, I'd take it in a heart beat. I'd incorporate as a California-S and be in $$$ city...
C//
Setting aside the sun is a planet guy, I saw the question, thought up my answer, did a search, and yours is the first one I came to. So while I have no mod points at the moment, I say "+1, you're a genius" on the grounds you said the thing I would have. If gravity forces the mineraloid into a sphere, it's a planet.
C//
Well, you have me there. Let's just say that, "in certain crowds, there are those who seem to believe that strong and static typing are the same thing." My explanation for which crowds those were, exactly, may have been a bit faulty... :)
C//
A bit of history. The static languages people don't regard static and strong typing to be different. Hence, they'll say insane things, like assert that "C" is "strongly" typed, which it isn't. It's statically, but weakly typed, where "weakly" should be taken to mean that it really is possible to treat a value type as some other value type.
So while I'm with ya on the whole "python is strongly, dynamically typed," and "c is weakly, statically typed" thing, if you were to go out to textbook CS, you might have some 'splainin to do. Only the dynamic language folks tend to understand this distinction so well.
C//
Ha. You're being funny.
C//
Once the programmers are doing the scripting anyhow, you may as well do it in C or C++, as you'll have better development tools.
WHAT?!?!?!?
C//
Ignoring the obvious fact that Python is not a compiled language anyway...
It's compiled to bytecode, like Java. Just FYI.
C//
Why couldn't we have air dropped military personell onto the streets of New Orleans as soon as it was apparent that the local forces were overwhelmed and trying to survive on their own.
Illegal, perhaps?
C//
Here's how it worked out for me. While the various and sundry theory classes in CS weren't immediately useful in the first several years of my work, they provided me with a valuable base; this allowed me to outstrip my peers in later years, as I actually had an interest in and retained the fundamental bases of CS, pushing me to the top as they foundered.
Long term planning, fellow. Don't worry, capture this stuff, and move into an environment where it is appreciated.
C//
Well, they possibly could. The other speculation is that they're hoping to make use of some of the Palladium infrastructure to keep people from pirating the OS. Frankly, I don't think they should.
I know that there have been screenshots out there proving that OSX works on AMD just fine. So who knows what Apple might do. Just be aware: Apple switched away from IBM for a variety of reasons, but chief amongst them was that they couldn't get low power G-whatevers out of IBM.
C//
...Why intel?...
One word: laptops.
C//
Check up on FOUO "for official use only".
C//
Isn't it too late? Hasn't Linux, as a brand name, been unprotected and unenforced for too long? I'm guessing that it's so, and that this trademark litigation initiative will run into a brick wall in court if someone elects to challenge it. Thoughts?
C//
...Furthermore, we are the number one economy in the world (Japan is #2)...
Measured how? Last I checked, China's GDP was something like almost twice Japans...
Anyway, nitpicks aside, I agree with you.
C//
... since when is it insubordination to insist on sticking to the contract?...
----
No normal working contract stipulates 40 hour work weeks. Usually you are simply "exempt" and the contract avoids time specifications. If it doesn't say, and you are "exempt," the boss gets to pick your hours. One of the reasons that they sometimes won't do this is that one of the things that qualifies the employee legally for exempt status is having a job that is based upon qualitative work product and not time expended.
Specifically telling you how many hours you have to work takes them one step closer to illegally classifying you as exempt. If they get caught in an illegal qualification, they will owe you (and everyone else they abused in this manner) back pay for all overtime hours worked, according to hourly rules (time and half and what not). So they avoid it.
But they don't have to. You may qualify on other grounds. Salary for example. After a certain dollar figure annually, you legally qualify as exempt, regardless of other consideration.
C//
C//
I'm not being pushed around, just letting people know the law. How did this get to be about me?
C//
...if they pay you to work 40 hours, then you only work 40 hours...
If you are told to work a 50 hour work week by your boss, and you fail to do so, you can be released from your job immediately. In most states, anyway. It's insubordination.
C//
I. Don't. Think. So.
C//
Find someone who cares when you're sitting in the holding cell waiting for your arraignment. "Oh, it's not illegal, huh? Tell it to the judge next week."
Um. If a cop arrests for something that's not illegal, it can be a career limiting move. The lawsuit will put him down for good. That's a "hand over the keys to your house" level civil mistake.
This is Sacramento, California - the capital of the most populous state in the country.
Won't protect him. Not if you can afford a lawyer, anyway.
C//
Out of their archive, sure -- but not necessarily out of their search results...
You're right about that. Searches aren't covered, but content surely is. As for the idea of calling the redirection of one party to another "copyrightable," that's simply preposterous. There's no copy.
C//
There's no franchise extension. Google has to honor no spider requests, and will take pages out of their archive if you can prove original ownership and request it. Current copyright law already demands that Google do this. Google knows this. That's why they do it. Google coming along didn't change copyright law!!!!
C//