"Such an arrangement has been fairly common at places I've been when dealing with likely-to-move positions and pricey in-demand training. And I've never heard of anyone successfully challenging the contract after they've received the training."
No company that has to rely on contracts to retain people will ever keep people long term. So what if your contract is airtight? And it might not be if you coerce the employee (IE, you have to have this training/certification to keep your job, but you have to sign this contract) then it may NOT actually stand up.
You can't retain employees with lawyers and legal language. You have to give them a pleasant working enviornment, challenges, and pay them at least the average salary for what they do and are trained to do.
It's your kind of thinking that will eventually drive techs/engineers/administrators to form unions to deal with this kind of crap. I'd hate to see it happen, but the only answer to employers shoving lawyers and contracts in the face of their staff for the sole purpose of putting leg irons on them is for the staff to bind together in some kind of union so they can afford lawyers and sharks to keep them honest.
"he had hired five new employees, all of whom has less experience than I, and all of whom has fewer job resposibilities than I. Every single one of the new hires was paid between $1 and $7/hour more than he paid me, even after a "generous" (to him) raise."
This brings up a good point. Companies that do this are going to have an entire disgruntled staff. Managment often deludes themselves into thinking that you won't "know" that someone else junior to you without as much experience makes the same or more than you, but that is FANTASY. The rest of the staff ALWAYS knows.
Going back to my personal experience, when I got my annual review, with high marks and NO raise offer, I was 2nd in the entire company in time with the company (and 2nd only by 3 months). The VP pled poverty, then the Operations manager told me that I wasn't worth any more money.
Yeah right, a 7+ year A+ tech with Novell, NT and Linux experience isn't worth more than $10/hr?
I also found out that another tech, after his 90 day review, got a $3/hr raise to make what I made ($10/hr). Though I personally felt he deserved it (he came in raw and was getting very good), I also resented the fact that the company wouldn't even find $1 more for me, especially when I was being asked to TRAIN the new raw people (because they wouldn't pay enough to hire veterans).
Come to find out the main reason I didn't get a raise is because I'd have ended up making more than my 2 immediate supervisors.. Which speaks poorly of them. And of the company's chances. It either won't be there in 6 months, or will have nothing but entry-level people. And that won't sell in IT.
"And don't let saleman Bob define how things must work. An overview, perhaps, but not cramming specs down tech's throats. Give them some freedom and power to play (which is what makes them good techs) and you will be amazed. But don't let them go nuts either. Know when to put the breaks on things. Finaly, make them feel part of the team, not the stepchildren you have hidden in the server room."
That is exactly how my previous company started treating the technical department. Like a red headed step child. The company VP would come downstairs (to where work was actually done) and order techs to empty garbage cans and shovel snow. These same people would then order us to work a weekend building 150 computers and not pay us any overtime.
Salespeople (like this aforementioned VP of sales and marketing) would sell stupid shit like a server with no backup or mirrored RAID array. Then we'd get blamed if the thing broke (a server like that not only will break but will lose all it's data when it does.
Towards the end, just before I left, the company had me start reviewing and designing specs that the salespeople were bidding. Which also took away from my time being able to work on actual technical tasks. Naturally half the time the managers would then revise my specifications to eliminate some kind of vital component (like an UPS).
This coincided with my annual review, which came out near maximum, and I got no raise offer at all, despite having more than 5 times more experience than the next most senior technician. That made me leave. Money may not buy happiness, but it will buy more tolerance for abuse among your employees.... afor awhile.
1. REQUIRES me to get certified in two areas within the next year (I have 8 months left).
2. PAYS for all training, including expenses (books, classes, travel, hotel, meals, tests, etc.)
3. PAYS A BONUS when I actually receive certification.
4. PAYS ANOTHER BONUS if I can do it before 12/31/00. (My last test is scheduled for 12/29/00!)
I gave a verbal commitment to work for the company 2-years before considering anything else. (I didn't swear on a stack of Bibles; it wasn't written, recorded or otherwise made official.)
I was trained for 6 weeks (cram course) when I was first hired."
All I can say is who do you work for, and who can I send my resume to?
That would be the ideal situation for me, and it sounds like your company has a clue and knows what it has to do to be succesful in the highly competitive, for dollars AND people IT industry.
I asked my last employer to purchase me a RHCE self-training course ($1500) that could also be used by others, and basically was put off, put off, put off after they SAID they'd do it. Then I was told to write a 2 year contract to propose to them. That's when I thought about leaving.
"Actually, the IT market is so insane due to the lack of resources at the moment that anybody who has worked on a Unix machine to do some ftp for the website of his ISP company can write on her CV Unix administrator because 1. she believes it in her own mind, 2. she knows she can double her salary with another company, 3. she'll learn it in the next company anyway. These are the new rules..."
So, can I claim to be a "Unix Admin" because I've used/installed Red Hat and Mandrake for the last year plus, and acutally set up a FTP and telenet server on it so that myself and my friends can access stuff at work from my home network?
Of course, this is my goal, to become a RHCE and work as a Linux network engineer somewhere.
" don't know who said that there are 3 big levers to motivate your staff: money, power and acknoledgement of the good work done."
That's a good bit of it. Sure there are people to whom what they are paid is the top criteria, but I don't think that's even a large minority in the tech profession.
In general, we are different people than the norm anyway, part of one of FEW professions where we can love EVERY part of the job. I do, I absolutely love what I do. Computers are a drug to me, any company that increases my abilities is satisfying that addiction. I've also never worked with other techs I didn't like (managers are a different story).
But, when the company starts changing, or doesn't provide a good enviornment, then the salary becomes more important.. The bottom line is that the BOTTOM LINE is the only indisputable way to keep score.
Your IT people shouldn't be thinking about how much they make though, they are supposed to be well paid (market dictates this). So if you ARE making them think about their salary, then you are either grossly underpaying (like my former company was), or else providing a substandard work place (as my former company had started to do).
"Let's face it, there's not exactly a shortage of employers looking for Technology employees."
That is the truth. A lot of companies in IT don't realize this, they have management, etc that worked in other industries and don't understand the difference.
Good technicians are the foundation of the entire IT industry. We are like gold. The companies that have the best ones have a better chance of success. After all, it does no good at all for your salespeople to sell services your techs don't know how to do.
If you want to do something new, you either have to hire someone with the skills/experience or train your existing techs. I for one would rather work for a company that will train up myself and the other techs. I enjoy the challenge of learning and using new knowledge, I love doing things I couldn't do before.
But, if you then start putting restrictions like contracts, etc on your techs when you decide to go this route, you are changing the work enviornment. Money becomes more important to your staff. There are a lot of people who will work for less than the market rate if conditions are great, I'm one of them.
I can't speak for everyone, but here's my top criteria for job satisfaction:
1. Am I being challenged?
2. Are the people around me fun to be with?
3. Am I learning new skills? Does the company value their interest in the tech staff gaining new skills to invest in it?
4. Does management listen to me?
5. Does the company respect me enough to pay me a decent salary with decent benefits?
6. Does the company give me reasonable raises at least annually, or whenever I achieve a new certification?
7. Does the company attempt to keep good people?
"DOH! You get what you pay for.
Wages are the bottom line for any employer-employee relationship. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding himself."
Wages are the bottom line if the employer is grossly underpaying people (like paying veteran A+ techs barely more than 1/2 the prevailing wage). Otherwise it's just one of several factors.
At my previous company, they simply started refusing to pay ANY technician, regerdless of experience more than $10/hr, and they didn't pay you any overtime at all (it was pro-rated). They also thought nothing of having us work an entire weekend on a mass build (150 machines).
This pissed off a lot of people, and cost us 2 engineers and 2 very veteran techs within 3 months. I ended up being the only guy with more than 3 years experience left, and my eval came up and they did the same thing to me: no raise. I left and am now in NC.
Not to say that money is the ONLY criteria. Personally, I want a good work enviornment where there aren't any unrealistic expectations, good people to work for and with, and management that don't walk around like a bunch of buzzword-spouting paper pushing drones.
I also judge a company by the people they put around me. Where I worked before I was the last experienced technician left. So basically I was having to provide the training for all the new "green" people which were all that they could hire for what they were paying. When they refused to give me any raise at all at my annual eval, that was my cue to skedattle.
I didn't even start THINKING about how little I made until this happened. It's my former employer's loss. When what you do is thrown back in your face with "you aren't worth a raise" when you worked as hard as I did, you look at your salary as the score of the game, and see you don't have enough points.
My previous employer, a VAR type computer house that mostly served state government in West Virginia, changed training policies while I was there. We always had to train ourselves, but at least the company would pay for the tests (I think this is the LEAST an IT employer should do).
When we had some engineers leave (Our CNE among them) the payroll of course went down. The company then started talking out of both sides of it's mouths "yes we NEED you to get more certifications, then "we don't want to pay for your tests then have you leave".
They started asking for a 1 year contract to pay for ANY test at all. Then for any kind of training assistance, ANY kind (even for CNE which the company needed badly) they wanted a 2 year contract. When I wrote one up that read that I was guaranteed to be employed for 2 years and see reasonable raises, and that I was free of the contract if the company laid me off for any reasons, they had a SHIT fit.
Not only that, but when my annual evaluation came up, I got near perfect marks, but no offer of a raise. That's why I'm now in North Carolina:)
In response to the specific situation: Your company NEEDS better trained people to grow. It's an investment that has to be made. Yes, they have to risk losing people, but if they are honest with them and give them what raises they can WHEN they can, I think they will retain most people.
But, the company has to be realistic. IF someone gets experience/certifications that are worth $50K in the industry, and you are only paying them $25K, they are going to leave. And there is nothing you can do to stop it, because only an idiot will work under contract for that much less than they are worth.
This is the mistake my old company made, they stopped being forthcoming with training and cert tests, stopped giving raises, and their best talent is leaving, and the only new people they can hire is raw talent with no experience (who then leave after getting experience)
"Honestly, how do you think it would help if every German household had a few guns in it? Maybe we could have the great cd-rw revolution, where every good German grabs his rifle and shoots people until this awful law are repealed? That's both implausible and medicine-worse-than-cure."
No, the point is that if the citizens have the ability to overthrow the government, then the government rightly has to fear the citizens. As it should. Any government that does NOT fear the possibility of overthrow by angry and armed citizens has no restraints.
How about a compromise, arm all the Germans and allow them to go shoot LAWYERS until laws like that are repealed? 10-20 million lawyers dead would do nothing but benefit humanity.
(a joke, people before you get off, I don't advocate lawyercide, even though lawyers ARE the plague of humanity)
"RIAA: Recording Industry Association of America
MPAA: Motion Picture Associtation of America
You did realize the article was about Germany, right? The RIAA and MPAA aren't getting a dime of that money."
Not exactly true. The RIAA/MPAA have an interest in this law, and in fact have been pushing for laws like this both in the USA and internationally.
You don't think the RIAA/MPAA have any influence in Europe? Look at what the MPAA managed to do to the kid who wrote DeCSS. They got the Norweigin police to arrest and detain him.
"I stopped buying CDs for USD$19..$21 when I decided I'd had enough of companies ripping me off. We're talking about 1,000% markup on merchandise and these imbecilic law suits by RIAA & MPAA & others who can't carry a fucking tune and certainly don't want to pay the musicians a fucking cent."
That's WHY they want taxes like this. That way you pay them off no matter what you choose to do. An indie artist who buys equipment to produce their OWN CD also pays the RIAA/MPAA. It seems the RIAA/MPAA think they have some kind of fundamental RIGHT to ever increased profit.
"HP wasn't peddling illegal MP3's or inducing people to pirate music on the internet. They have profited on that, true, but they haven't done anything wrong."
Exactly. If I legally sell someone a shovel, or a baseball bat, or a car, I'm not liable for what they do with it. But then, when you unleash the lawyers, everyone's liable except the actual perpetrator.
ANY government that would pass laws to benefit corporate cartels (RIAA/MPAA) by taxing consumer products, assuming GUILT upon the citizens is a tyranny.
I forgot who said it, but an "Unjust law is no law".
Yes, the right to keep and bear arms is very important. Governments need to FEAR the citizens in order to be kept honest.
Consumers and a seperate Industry vs. Industry = Consumers and seperate Industry wins.
Pissing off HP might not be a good idea for the music industry to do."
Unfortunately, corporations (and HP is a huge one) don't behave morally or ethically, but financially. If HP can make a profit selling these things in Gernmany with this "RIAA Tax", then they will do so.
You are correct, "comsumer" vs corporation always ends up on the corpers side. However, laws are supposed to protect CITIZENS equally. Laws that favor corporations over CITIZENS must be fought at every turn.
"Go after the people who make the cd burners, what about the people who are using these 100% legal peices of hardware for their illegal use?"
Too expensive. So the RIAA/MPAA pulls some number out of thin air and says "this is how much money we lose because of piracy", then lobbys government to put a "tax" on devices. And give the money to the RIAA/MPAA of course.
Also, the RIAA/MPAA, etc want to avoid going after users because of the bad PR. I don't think they will ever do this on any large scale unless they manipulate law and technological standards to the point to make it very easy to do (and very HARD to defend against).
I know... It's about time for companies to grow some "cahunas" and stop dealing with places like this. If industry cabals like the RIAA are legal, why not an industry cabal of CD and DVD recorder ad MP3 player makers who boycott countries/states that presume guilt on devices (not lawbreakers) and "tax" them.
You are exactly right. Why should a product that has many legal. legitimate uses be "assumed" to be used for illegal purposes? Should there be a "tax" on screwdrivers because they can (and are) used to break into houses?
Why not go after the people who actually break the law?
The answer is simple: they don't want to. It's easier to "tax" the product and distribute it to corporate monopolies like the RIAA.
I guess they can tax paper, pens and xerox machines because they can be used to copy books.
BTW, isn't this German statute similar to one the RIAA/MPAA tried to get in the USA some time ago?
Something has to be done to get lobbyist influence OUT of government.
ROFL. I also was from Eastern Ky, and know what you mean.
I'm an AM radio DX'er, this will cause some strangeness there. Or will the storms heavily interfere with AM skywave? It may also be interesting to listen to the shortwave bands tonight as well.
It's true an event like this will cause more disruption than Y2K did (nothing), but it's temporary. Does anyone know how far south the aurora will be able to be seen? I doubt it will get as far south as North Carolina.
Definately put me down for one. I don't see HOW they can do it for $50 though. But then, there is no need at all to pay royalties for Linux. I'm sure licensing for CE and Palm constitutes a substantial cost for the CE/Palm PDA's.
If they can do all this in less than 1MB of RAM, and still have usable storage for your data, all I can say is WOW!. They must have found some of those miraculous Commodore 64 programmers who seemed to be able to produce quality sound/graphics out of 64K and a 8 bit CPU that similar programmers were doing on the much more powerful PC at the time.
I'd like to see them offer more RAM though, for no other reason than to increase the power of the PDA. If they can put together a cool little wireless-internet capable Linux PDA with 2-4MB RAM and sell it for under $200, they won't be able to make enough of them for the demand.
"Unfortunately news like "new rice saves million lives" tends not to make the major newscasts or papers. Now, "3 people sick from new rice" would get banner headlines and Congressional investigations and probably cause the company to go bankrupt from the bad publicity."
You are correct... Here's an example from history: DDT is a cheap pesticide the US used in many third world countries to kill the insects that cause malaria. This saved thousands from dying of that disease.
But what do you hear about, that DDT saved many many lives? No, you hear about how it killed off some jungle snake that no one except the Crocodile Hunter would love.
I have an aging Palm III, and really can't wait until Linux based PDA's are available.
Wearing the thing on your head though, would seem to be somewhat dangerous:) Especially if you decided to check your e-mail while driving.
Price will be the key, of course, but I see Linux PDA's as really offering something the Palm and CE platforms can't: TRUE scalability. Only the Linux kernel can run on your PDA, your desktop, your professional workstation, and your server. This is the OS's best advantage.
Re:Resistance to GM food
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Golden Rice
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· Score: 1
It doesn't surprise me that Greenpeace and other enviro-wackos oppose ANYTHING that may help Humans not die of starvation.
If Greenpeace were to practice what they preached (and get rid of those evil oil/gasoline burning watercraft) I might respect them. But like all leftist-wackos, they ride to protests in air conditioned limos, and fly to them in fuel guzzling 747's.
Technology is the KEY to all future survival. Greenpeace may want millions of children to die horribly of starvation, but I don't. We need MORE technology not less. Our future is not on this planet, and space exploration is the key to providing limitless living space and resources to the Human race.
The reason groups like Greenpeace oppose GE foods is REALLY because they want the population to be controlled or decline. They think Humans don't belong on this planet, and believe we are invaders of the natural enviornment, not part of it.
So they try to stop fishermen who are feeding people, and oppose stuff like this new rice that may END famine.
Re:Resistance to GM food
on
Golden Rice
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· Score: 1
" There are plenty of reasons why GM technology should be approached with caution; however I have to say I'm pretty repulsed by the means Greenpeace and similar organisations take to it. Their campaigns are almost entirely based around fuzzy, emotion-based appeals to anti-science sentiment. I am actually a member of Greenpeace, because I happen to think climate change is an enormous problem, but I nearly resigned over this."
I agree that genetically engineered food should be approached with prudent caution, as ANY new product should be, I have to add that resistance to stuff like this has happened before...
When vaccines first came out for polio, smallpox, measels, etc, diseases that massacred children for centuries, there was INCREDIBLE resistance among many, particularly the ignorant.
There are still people who refuse to get their children vaccinated, and even some who refuse to use ANY medical technology at all!
Modern medicine, farming methods, crops, etc is the reason why the average lifespan is now pushing 80, instead of 35 like it was 200 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
"Such an arrangement has been fairly common at places I've been when dealing with likely-to-move positions and pricey in-demand training. And I've never heard of anyone successfully challenging the contract after they've received the training."
No company that has to rely on contracts to retain people will ever keep people long term. So what if your contract is airtight? And it might not be if you coerce the employee (IE, you have to have this training/certification to keep your job, but you have to sign this contract) then it may NOT actually stand up.
You can't retain employees with lawyers and legal language. You have to give them a pleasant working enviornment, challenges, and pay them at least the average salary for what they do and are trained to do.
It's your kind of thinking that will eventually drive techs/engineers/administrators to form unions to deal with this kind of crap. I'd hate to see it happen, but the only answer to employers shoving lawyers and contracts in the face of their staff for the sole purpose of putting leg irons on them is for the staff to bind together in some kind of union so they can afford lawyers and sharks to keep them honest.
"he had hired five new employees, all of whom has less experience than I, and all of whom has fewer job resposibilities than I. Every single one of the new hires was paid between $1 and $7/hour more than he paid me, even after a "generous" (to him) raise."
This brings up a good point. Companies that do this are going to have an entire disgruntled staff. Managment often deludes themselves into thinking that you won't "know" that someone else junior to you without as much experience makes the same or more than you, but that is FANTASY. The rest of the staff ALWAYS knows.
Going back to my personal experience, when I got my annual review, with high marks and NO raise offer, I was 2nd in the entire company in time with the company (and 2nd only by 3 months). The VP pled poverty, then the Operations manager told me that I wasn't worth any more money.
Yeah right, a 7+ year A+ tech with Novell, NT and Linux experience isn't worth more than $10/hr?
I also found out that another tech, after his 90 day review, got a $3/hr raise to make what I made ($10/hr). Though I personally felt he deserved it (he came in raw and was getting very good), I also resented the fact that the company wouldn't even find $1 more for me, especially when I was being asked to TRAIN the new raw people (because they wouldn't pay enough to hire veterans).
Come to find out the main reason I didn't get a raise is because I'd have ended up making more than my 2 immediate supervisors.. Which speaks poorly of them. And of the company's chances. It either won't be there in 6 months, or will have nothing but entry-level people. And that won't sell in IT.
"And don't let saleman Bob define how things must work. An overview, perhaps, but not cramming specs down tech's throats. Give them some freedom and power to play (which is what makes them good techs) and you will be amazed. But don't let them go nuts either. Know when to put the breaks on things. Finaly, make them feel part of the team, not the stepchildren you have hidden in the server room."
That is exactly how my previous company started treating the technical department. Like a red headed step child. The company VP would come downstairs (to where work was actually done) and order techs to empty garbage cans and shovel snow. These same people would then order us to work a weekend building 150 computers and not pay us any overtime.
Salespeople (like this aforementioned VP of sales and marketing) would sell stupid shit like a server with no backup or mirrored RAID array. Then we'd get blamed if the thing broke (a server like that not only will break but will lose all it's data when it does.
Towards the end, just before I left, the company had me start reviewing and designing specs that the salespeople were bidding. Which also took away from my time being able to work on actual technical tasks. Naturally half the time the managers would then revise my specifications to eliminate some kind of vital component (like an UPS).
This coincided with my annual review, which came out near maximum, and I got no raise offer at all, despite having more than 5 times more experience than the next most senior technician. That made me leave. Money may not buy happiness, but it will buy more tolerance for abuse among your employees.... afor awhile.
"My current employer:
1. REQUIRES me to get certified in two areas within the next year (I have 8 months left).
2. PAYS for all training, including expenses (books, classes, travel, hotel, meals, tests, etc.)
3. PAYS A BONUS when I actually receive certification.
4. PAYS ANOTHER BONUS if I can do it before 12/31/00. (My last test is scheduled for 12/29/00!)
I gave a verbal commitment to work for the company 2-years before considering anything else. (I didn't swear on a stack of Bibles; it wasn't written, recorded or otherwise made official.)
I was trained for 6 weeks (cram course) when I was first hired."
All I can say is who do you work for, and who can I send my resume to?
That would be the ideal situation for me, and it sounds like your company has a clue and knows what it has to do to be succesful in the highly competitive, for dollars AND people IT industry.
I asked my last employer to purchase me a RHCE self-training course ($1500) that could also be used by others, and basically was put off, put off, put off after they SAID they'd do it. Then I was told to write a 2 year contract to propose to them. That's when I thought about leaving.
"Actually, the IT market is so insane due to the lack of resources at the moment that anybody who has worked on a Unix machine to do some ftp for the website of his ISP company can write on her CV Unix administrator because 1. she believes it in her own mind, 2. she knows she can double her salary with another company, 3. she'll learn it in the next company anyway. These are the new rules..."
So, can I claim to be a "Unix Admin" because I've used/installed Red Hat and Mandrake for the last year plus, and acutally set up a FTP and telenet server on it so that myself and my friends can access stuff at work from my home network?
Of course, this is my goal, to become a RHCE and work as a Linux network engineer somewhere.
" don't know who said that there are 3 big levers to motivate your staff: money, power and acknoledgement of the good work done."
That's a good bit of it. Sure there are people to whom what they are paid is the top criteria, but I don't think that's even a large minority in the tech profession.
In general, we are different people than the norm anyway, part of one of FEW professions where we can love EVERY part of the job. I do, I absolutely love what I do. Computers are a drug to me, any company that increases my abilities is satisfying that addiction. I've also never worked with other techs I didn't like (managers are a different story).
But, when the company starts changing, or doesn't provide a good enviornment, then the salary becomes more important.. The bottom line is that the BOTTOM LINE is the only indisputable way to keep score.
Your IT people shouldn't be thinking about how much they make though, they are supposed to be well paid (market dictates this). So if you ARE making them think about their salary, then you are either grossly underpaying (like my former company was), or else providing a substandard work place (as my former company had started to do).
"Let's face it, there's not exactly a shortage of employers looking for Technology employees."
That is the truth. A lot of companies in IT don't realize this, they have management, etc that worked in other industries and don't understand the difference.
Good technicians are the foundation of the entire IT industry. We are like gold. The companies that have the best ones have a better chance of success. After all, it does no good at all for your salespeople to sell services your techs don't know how to do.
If you want to do something new, you either have to hire someone with the skills/experience or train your existing techs. I for one would rather work for a company that will train up myself and the other techs. I enjoy the challenge of learning and using new knowledge, I love doing things I couldn't do before.
But, if you then start putting restrictions like contracts, etc on your techs when you decide to go this route, you are changing the work enviornment. Money becomes more important to your staff. There are a lot of people who will work for less than the market rate if conditions are great, I'm one of them.
I can't speak for everyone, but here's my top criteria for job satisfaction:
1. Am I being challenged?
2. Are the people around me fun to be with?
3. Am I learning new skills? Does the company value their interest in the tech staff gaining new skills to invest in it?
4. Does management listen to me?
5. Does the company respect me enough to pay me a decent salary with decent benefits?
6. Does the company give me reasonable raises at least annually, or whenever I achieve a new certification?
7. Does the company attempt to keep good people?
"DOH! You get what you pay for.
Wages are the bottom line for any employer-employee relationship. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding himself."
Wages are the bottom line if the employer is grossly underpaying people (like paying veteran A+ techs barely more than 1/2 the prevailing wage). Otherwise it's just one of several factors.
At my previous company, they simply started refusing to pay ANY technician, regerdless of experience more than $10/hr, and they didn't pay you any overtime at all (it was pro-rated). They also thought nothing of having us work an entire weekend on a mass build (150 machines).
This pissed off a lot of people, and cost us 2 engineers and 2 very veteran techs within 3 months. I ended up being the only guy with more than 3 years experience left, and my eval came up and they did the same thing to me: no raise. I left and am now in NC.
Not to say that money is the ONLY criteria. Personally, I want a good work enviornment where there aren't any unrealistic expectations, good people to work for and with, and management that don't walk around like a bunch of buzzword-spouting paper pushing drones.
I also judge a company by the people they put around me. Where I worked before I was the last experienced technician left. So basically I was having to provide the training for all the new "green" people which were all that they could hire for what they were paying. When they refused to give me any raise at all at my annual eval, that was my cue to skedattle.
I didn't even start THINKING about how little I made until this happened. It's my former employer's loss. When what you do is thrown back in your face with "you aren't worth a raise" when you worked as hard as I did, you look at your salary as the score of the game, and see you don't have enough points.
My previous employer, a VAR type computer house that mostly served state government in West Virginia, changed training policies while I was there. We always had to train ourselves, but at least the company would pay for the tests (I think this is the LEAST an IT employer should do).
:)
When we had some engineers leave (Our CNE among them) the payroll of course went down. The company then started talking out of both sides of it's mouths "yes we NEED you to get more certifications, then "we don't want to pay for your tests then have you leave".
They started asking for a 1 year contract to pay for ANY test at all. Then for any kind of training assistance, ANY kind (even for CNE which the company needed badly) they wanted a 2 year contract. When I wrote one up that read that I was guaranteed to be employed for 2 years and see reasonable raises, and that I was free of the contract if the company laid me off for any reasons, they had a SHIT fit.
Not only that, but when my annual evaluation came up, I got near perfect marks, but no offer of a raise. That's why I'm now in North Carolina
In response to the specific situation: Your company NEEDS better trained people to grow. It's an investment that has to be made. Yes, they have to risk losing people, but if they are honest with them and give them what raises they can WHEN they can, I think they will retain most people.
But, the company has to be realistic. IF someone gets experience/certifications that are worth $50K in the industry, and you are only paying them $25K, they are going to leave. And there is nothing you can do to stop it, because only an idiot will work under contract for that much less than they are worth.
This is the mistake my old company made, they stopped being forthcoming with training and cert tests, stopped giving raises, and their best talent is leaving, and the only new people they can hire is raw talent with no experience (who then leave after getting experience)
Note to Germans: Buy your CDR equipment and CDR discs over the `net.
If something isn't taxed in one country it can be bought without that tax everywhere else.
Governments have yet to grasp the fact that the Internet makes their ability to control information AND commerce irrelevant.
"Honestly, how do you think it would help if every German household had a few guns in it? Maybe we could have the great cd-rw revolution, where every good German grabs his rifle and shoots people until this awful law are repealed? That's both implausible and medicine-worse-than-cure."
No, the point is that if the citizens have the ability to overthrow the government, then the government rightly has to fear the citizens. As it should. Any government that does NOT fear the possibility of overthrow by angry and armed citizens has no restraints.
How about a compromise, arm all the Germans and allow them to go shoot LAWYERS until laws like that are repealed? 10-20 million lawyers dead would do nothing but benefit humanity.
(a joke, people before you get off, I don't advocate lawyercide, even though lawyers ARE the plague of humanity)
"RIAA: Recording Industry Association of America
MPAA: Motion Picture Associtation of America
You did realize the article was about Germany, right? The RIAA and MPAA aren't getting a dime of that money."
Not exactly true. The RIAA/MPAA have an interest in this law, and in fact have been pushing for laws like this both in the USA and internationally.
You don't think the RIAA/MPAA have any influence in Europe? Look at what the MPAA managed to do to the kid who wrote DeCSS. They got the Norweigin police to arrest and detain him.
"I stopped buying CDs for USD$19..$21 when I decided I'd had enough of companies ripping me off. We're talking about 1,000% markup on merchandise and these imbecilic law suits by RIAA & MPAA & others who can't carry a fucking tune and certainly don't want to pay the musicians a fucking cent."
That's WHY they want taxes like this. That way you pay them off no matter what you choose to do. An indie artist who buys equipment to produce their OWN CD also pays the RIAA/MPAA. It seems the RIAA/MPAA think they have some kind of fundamental RIGHT to ever increased profit.
"HP wasn't peddling illegal MP3's or inducing people to pirate music on the internet. They have profited on that, true, but they haven't done anything wrong."
Exactly. If I legally sell someone a shovel, or a baseball bat, or a car, I'm not liable for what they do with it. But then, when you unleash the lawyers, everyone's liable except the actual perpetrator.
ANY government that would pass laws to benefit corporate cartels (RIAA/MPAA) by taxing consumer products, assuming GUILT upon the citizens is a tyranny.
I forgot who said it, but an "Unjust law is no law".
Yes, the right to keep and bear arms is very important. Governments need to FEAR the citizens in order to be kept honest.
"Consumers vs. Industry = Industry wins
Consumers and a seperate Industry vs. Industry = Consumers and seperate Industry wins.
Pissing off HP might not be a good idea for the music industry to do."
Unfortunately, corporations (and HP is a huge one) don't behave morally or ethically, but financially. If HP can make a profit selling these things in Gernmany with this "RIAA Tax", then they will do so.
You are correct, "comsumer" vs corporation always ends up on the corpers side. However, laws are supposed to protect CITIZENS equally. Laws that favor corporations over CITIZENS must be fought at every turn.
"Go after the people who make the cd burners, what about the people who are using these 100% legal peices of hardware for their illegal use?"
Too expensive. So the RIAA/MPAA pulls some number out of thin air and says "this is how much money we lose because of piracy", then lobbys government to put a "tax" on devices. And give the money to the RIAA/MPAA of course.
Also, the RIAA/MPAA, etc want to avoid going after users because of the bad PR. I don't think they will ever do this on any large scale unless they manipulate law and technological standards to the point to make it very easy to do (and very HARD to defend against).
I know... It's about time for companies to grow some "cahunas" and stop dealing with places like this. If industry cabals like the RIAA are legal, why not an industry cabal of CD and DVD recorder ad MP3 player makers who boycott countries/states that presume guilt on devices (not lawbreakers) and "tax" them.
You are exactly right. Why should a product that has many legal. legitimate uses be "assumed" to be used for illegal purposes? Should there be a "tax" on screwdrivers because they can (and are) used to break into houses?
Why not go after the people who actually break the law?
The answer is simple: they don't want to. It's easier to "tax" the product and distribute it to corporate monopolies like the RIAA.
I guess they can tax paper, pens and xerox machines because they can be used to copy books.
BTW, isn't this German statute similar to one the RIAA/MPAA tried to get in the USA some time ago?
Something has to be done to get lobbyist influence OUT of government.
ROFL. I also was from Eastern Ky, and know what you mean.
I'm an AM radio DX'er, this will cause some strangeness there. Or will the storms heavily interfere with AM skywave? It may also be interesting to listen to the shortwave bands tonight as well.
It's true an event like this will cause more disruption than Y2K did (nothing), but it's temporary. Does anyone know how far south the aurora will be able to be seen? I doubt it will get as far south as North Carolina.
Definately put me down for one. I don't see HOW they can do it for $50 though. But then, there is no need at all to pay royalties for Linux. I'm sure licensing for CE and Palm constitutes a substantial cost for the CE/Palm PDA's.
If they can do all this in less than 1MB of RAM, and still have usable storage for your data, all I can say is WOW!. They must have found some of those miraculous Commodore 64 programmers who seemed to be able to produce quality sound/graphics out of 64K and a 8 bit CPU that similar programmers were doing on the much more powerful PC at the time.
I'd like to see them offer more RAM though, for no other reason than to increase the power of the PDA. If they can put together a cool little wireless-internet capable Linux PDA with 2-4MB RAM and sell it for under $200, they won't be able to make enough of them for the demand.
"Unfortunately news like "new rice saves million lives" tends not to make the major newscasts or papers. Now, "3 people sick from new rice" would get banner headlines and Congressional investigations and probably cause the company to go bankrupt from the bad publicity."
You are correct... Here's an example from history: DDT is a cheap pesticide the US used in many third world countries to kill the insects that cause malaria. This saved thousands from dying of that disease.
But what do you hear about, that DDT saved many many lives? No, you hear about how it killed off some jungle snake that no one except the Crocodile Hunter would love.
I have an aging Palm III, and really can't wait until Linux based PDA's are available.
:) Especially if you decided to check your e-mail while driving.
Wearing the thing on your head though, would seem to be somewhat dangerous
Price will be the key, of course, but I see Linux PDA's as really offering something the Palm and CE platforms can't: TRUE scalability. Only the Linux kernel can run on your PDA, your desktop, your professional workstation, and your server. This is the OS's best advantage.
It doesn't surprise me that Greenpeace and other enviro-wackos oppose ANYTHING that may help Humans not die of starvation.
If Greenpeace were to practice what they preached (and get rid of those evil oil/gasoline burning watercraft) I might respect them. But like all leftist-wackos, they ride to protests in air conditioned limos, and fly to them in fuel guzzling 747's.
Technology is the KEY to all future survival. Greenpeace may want millions of children to die horribly of starvation, but I don't. We need MORE technology not less. Our future is not on this planet, and space exploration is the key to providing limitless living space and resources to the Human race.
The reason groups like Greenpeace oppose GE foods is REALLY because they want the population to be controlled or decline. They think Humans don't belong on this planet, and believe we are invaders of the natural enviornment, not part of it.
So they try to stop fishermen who are feeding people, and oppose stuff like this new rice that may END famine.
" There are plenty of reasons why GM technology should be approached with caution; however I have to say I'm pretty repulsed by the means Greenpeace and similar organisations take to it. Their campaigns are almost entirely based around fuzzy, emotion-based appeals to anti-science sentiment. I am actually a member of Greenpeace, because I happen to think climate change is an enormous problem, but I nearly resigned over this."
I agree that genetically engineered food should be approached with prudent caution, as ANY new product should be, I have to add that resistance to stuff like this has happened before...
When vaccines first came out for polio, smallpox, measels, etc, diseases that massacred children for centuries, there was INCREDIBLE resistance among many, particularly the ignorant.
There are still people who refuse to get their children vaccinated, and even some who refuse to use ANY medical technology at all!
Modern medicine, farming methods, crops, etc is the reason why the average lifespan is now pushing 80, instead of 35 like it was 200 years ago.