It is true that technology companies expect un-sustainable levels of work, but in the vast majority of cases, these companies are fairly compensating their employees.
This is SUCH bullshit.
How do you compensate someone who is totally lost to their family because they're stuck in the office 7 days a week?
How do you compensate someone for the entire months lost due to crunch time, forced by the people who a) have the money to invest in realistic scheduling and b) aren't there with you the whole time?
You are right, there are companies and managers who are reprehensibly bad at scheduling and who feel that a hands-off approach (read golfing) is a proper way to lead a team. However, how long do you expect to work at this place? Are you seriously going to put up with this managerial bullshit for the rest of your life? What keeps you at this particular job? Are you at the only software company in your city?
I'm asking earnestly. I really can't understand why someone would stay at a crappy job when they clearly should be able to get another job at the drop of a hat. I understand that you have bills to pay, I understand that you have mouths to feed, but I don't understand why you would put your own sanity on the line in such a terrible work environment.
Do you think that a union would be able to help you in this bad company? If 'yes', how so? Would they force the company to limit your work hours to 40? Would they make it mandatory for all managers to read Rapid Development or Code Complete?
I don't see
1) Why you would put up with working at a crappy company. and
I have seen several friends on H1 Visas abused in the workplace. I would happily join a union that would address this - and other issues.
What you are interested in this case is passage of immigration laws which would punish companies abusing H1B employees. This is definitely an area in which the law can be improved. No company should be allowed to have coolie labor, and no foreign employee should be forced to accept such actions by an employer because they can't leave the company without getting shipped back to their originating country. But you don't need a union to do this, you need politicians with a backbone and conscience. Unfortunately, you can have one or the other, but not both.
* Tech companies expect un-sustainable levels of work from their employees.
* Tech companies will lay-off people without a second thought if it helps the bottom line.
* Tech companies will require unfair, new contracts to be signed by all employees, without any form of negotiation at all! (This is taken from real life experience - where a consulting firm completely revamped all employees stock option contract, without protection for wrongful termination / layoffs, and gave us no option but to sign or resign!)
It is true that technology companies expect un-sustainable levels of work, but in the vast majority of cases, these companies are fairly compensating their employees. If it is not palatable to work 80 hours a week for a significant chunk of coin, then you are free to quit and join another company that only asks 40 hours, but don't expect the same salary. Companies that require grueling hours will generally see a high turnover rate. Taken to the extreme (which is not so extreme, actually), these companies will eventually see that they are unable to attract new talent. The company will change or die.
If you are looking for a union to validate minimum work habits, then expect management to hire outside the union.
Layoffs are a fact of American business. But think of where a company would be if it was *forced* by a union to keep all of its workers in a downturn. The company would obviously have more expenses and, if the risk is high enough, eventually go out of business. Look at DSCM, they are doing everything they can to keep alive the company. A dead company hires zero workers. This is one aspect of capitalism that is bitter in the macroeconomic world and deadly in the microeconomic.
As far as your contracts are concerned, it would behoove you to see a lawyer. A class action lawsuit might be in order.
Might we actually get more than a week of severance when the filthy-rich board of our dot-com decides to lay-off half of the company?
It can surely be said that some companies are simply pumped to IPO and then run into the ground, but in the vast majority of companies, the founders view their company as their baby and are willing to sacrifice many things to help it grow. It is a little harsh to accuse the management of being heartless in halving the company workforce. It sure stings, and it sure feels unfair, but drastic cuts in numbers is a last-ditch effort to save a drowning company. You are likely better off getting laid off than being kept around to feel the brunt of corporate bankruptcy.
A union guarantees nothing that doesn't already exist, except that more companies are going to be leveraged underwater by the strong hand of the union. This is, of course, assuming that a union would be able to generate any power in the first place.
The traditional industries in which unions are strong all have the same achilles heel. It is near impossible to move those jobs completely out of the country. Unions derive their power from the fact that industries can't survive without their workers and can't easily move production to another locale without breaking the bank.
Information-based industry, though, has no trouble simply packing up code and shipping it off to Timbuktu. The cost of moving is trivial and developers are a dime a dozen. A modicum of training and voila! We've got XYZware.com now cranking out software from Swaziland.
Unions are bound to fail in this industry because developers are in a very different position than, say, an auto worker. Whereas any single auto worker is completely disposable, good software engineers are individually important to the well-being of a company. The auto worker can derive strength by turning his interests over to a union who will bargain with management using the threat of large-scale walkouts. The software engineer, OTOH, gains essentially nothing through collective bargaining. He, in fact, would lose out in the case where the company decides that it is in its best interest to fire all union members and hire new engineers or change company locale altogether.
Businesses are not interested in seeing unions form because they fear the strike. However, information industries have an ace up their sleeve, which is the relative (to other industries) simplicity of moving to another country whose laws may not favor unions as much as they do here.
It's a really difficult and touchy subject, but I think it's an issue that will come to a head some time in the next couple of years. In the end, I predict that we will see the entire information industry unionization drive cracked by the unwillingness of many (if not most) engineers to join. Without enough numbers, unions would be effectively powerless, and with management's very real threat of moving jobs, it is likely they wouldn't have much power to begin with.
What's the deal with getting these subscription cards in a magazine that I'm already subscribing to?
IMHO, this type of mail uses more resources than spam ever could. The inconvenience of a server outage pales in comparison to the number of trees getting cut down and jet fuel used to bring these lovely pieces of garbage to my door.
Dancin Santa
You're entering a big error, griffjon
on
Antitrust
·
· Score: 1
What kind of apps are available for it? What does its interface look like? Is the site down already?
On a completely different note, it's interesting to think of the reasons behind porting Linux to everything and its brother. You can parlay your programming skill on one platform for use on another platform. This is essentially the reason Windows CE uses the WinAPI.
Now if I could just figure out how to write love letters on toast using STDOUT...
Maybe someone ought to get a gaint list of these sucker's email addresses and spam them with messages saying "all these spam emails are scams, don't send a single penny and don't click their links, because idiots who get taken keep these slimballs in business".
That wouldn't be too hard, I get spam selling those lists all the time!
AMAZING OPPORTUNITY
Dear Consumer,
Have you had it up to here with unsolicited email (spam)? You have been emailed because you are on a list of potential spammees. Most of you are aware that spam contains no redeeming value and the products pushed in them frequently turn out to be scams. The problem is that some of you are still clicking through the links in these emails. If every one of you made a conscious effort to *NOT* respond in any way to these annoying emails, they *will* eventually stop.
This is not a task that can be done alone! Recruit your friends and neighbors by sending them this email. In all likelihood, they have already received this, but send it to them anyway. Also forward this to any web-enabled idiots that you may know. These are probably the people keeping spam alive on the net.
What is the return on investment of these spamming companies? Are there really enough people buying their products to make it worth the spammers' while? The stupidest ones (possibly the second most profitable ones) are the messages that advertise spamming services. I can understand someone clicking through porn spam, but I can't understand anyone clicking through pseudo-Viagra spam.
It's too bad they can't make a profit selling generic laptops with Linux loaded. Here again we see the real life problems with an Open Source OS in a capitalist economy.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can load the OS on their own laptop, if they are so inclined. Why pay a company to wipe an Inspiron clean and load Linux at extra cost when it's cheaper to get the laptop directly from the manufacturer and load an alternative OS yourself? Is it the hardware drivers? Is it merely the convenience of having someone else do the work for you?
Dancin Santa
Re:Greetings fellow Program!
on
Antitrust
·
· Score: 1
It's really an unclear decision to make, whether to fully disclose every security hole or to shut up about it until the hole is fixed (or forever, whichever comes first). Both sides have some good arguments justifying their case, but it is unclear which method results in the highest security.
The point of the full disclosure folks is that once a hole is found, it will be exploited by those who know. Therefore it is necessary for everyone to be aware of these holes in order to create counter-measures aimed at closing the hole. Exposing all security hazards also has the side effect of forcing software houses to release a security patch more quickly. Since no security hole is safe from hackers, it makes no sense in trying to hide them from the public since the public (or at least the malicious) is probably already aware of it.
The other side of the coin says that security holes should not be announced for the express reason of preventing massive exploitation of them. This line of reasoning has some solid evidence behind it. *Real* hackers with the ability to find these holes are few in number, but the script kiddies with virtually no skills whatsoever are legion. It is arguable that the damage caused by a few 'in the know' is far outdone by the damage of the kiddies with their point and click hacking devices. Likewise, by the time the exploits are known to places like Bugtraq and the various software houses, the hole has pretty much been well exploited by the discoverers. It then seems that hiding the exploits from the general public seems like quite the pragmatic thing to do.
So which is it? Disclose every exploit openly or hide them until they are fixed? I don't know.
I mean, yes, one provides a service whereas the other was primarily a distrobution provider, but together are they a lot stronger than they are alone?
A company that is able to provide a product AND service on that product is a much stronger company than the sum of two companies providing those things separately, generally.
Granted, this is a lot smaller consolidation than the AOL/Time-Warner thing, but it is consolidation.
Consolidation of two minor companies is what happened here. It's likely that they would have been run out of business by Redhat (the real champ in the commercial Linux distro camp) had they not pooled their resources.
I'm not sure that it's a healthy trend. The open market is supposed to create competition, not conglomerations.
This is not the creation of some powerhouse monopoly, you know. There is still competition in this market (Redhat and SuSE).
Turbolinux filed to go public in October, hoping to raise about $60 million. In the meantime, it laid off some of its staff and raised $30 million to keep operations going.
Linuxcare filed for an IPO but postponed it amid layoffs, the departure of chief executive Fernand Sarrat, and other problems. To keep the company running, Linuxcare closed a $30 million round of funding in August.
So we have two money-hemorraging Linux companies mergine to create a larger money-hemorraging Linux company. Sounds like quite the loser combination to me.
I imagine that it this stage of the game, though, neither company has much choice in potential mates.
I always wondered how many people actually read Slashdot...
If the pinball machines are designed to download information anyway, how exactly is this an 'impressive hack'? It seems like he's doing exactly what the designers of the machine expected: download play data and use it. What's to separate Bob and Joe's Circus of Fun's using these stats to determine their next purchase and this guy's posting his high scores on his website?
The main thrust of the Plaintiff's charge is that VA Linux and its underwriters sold IPO positions to certain people pre-IPO. In turn, these people dumped their relatively cheap shares resulting in many smaller investors left holding the bag. Link
Is this strictly illegal (it certainly seems a little unethical)? Does it happen frequently?
Have I missed the whole point of the suit, IANAL after all.
While our software is open source, and we encourage you to share and redistribute it, trademark protection means that you know where your software is coming from.
Are they saying that they want to own the code now? Why wouldn't I trust another source? It's just a diff away.
Slashdot Mirror
It is true that technology companies expect un-sustainable levels of work, but in the vast majority of cases, these companies are fairly compensating their employees.
This is SUCH bullshit.
How do you compensate someone who is totally lost to their family because they're stuck in the office 7 days a week?
How do you compensate someone for the entire months lost due to crunch time, forced by the people who a) have the money to invest in realistic scheduling and b) aren't there with you the whole time?
You are right, there are companies and managers who are reprehensibly bad at scheduling and who feel that a hands-off approach (read golfing) is a proper way to lead a team. However, how long do you expect to work at this place? Are you seriously going to put up with this managerial bullshit for the rest of your life? What keeps you at this particular job? Are you at the only software company in your city?
I'm asking earnestly. I really can't understand why someone would stay at a crappy job when they clearly should be able to get another job at the drop of a hat. I understand that you have bills to pay, I understand that you have mouths to feed, but I don't understand why you would put your own sanity on the line in such a terrible work environment.
Do you think that a union would be able to help you in this bad company? If 'yes', how so? Would they force the company to limit your work hours to 40? Would they make it mandatory for all managers to read Rapid Development or Code Complete?
I don't see
1) Why you would put up with working at a crappy company. and
2) What you expect a union to do for you.
Dancin Santa Searching for answers...
I have seen several friends on H1 Visas abused in the workplace. I would happily join a union that would address this - and other issues.
What you are interested in this case is passage of immigration laws which would punish companies abusing H1B employees. This is definitely an area in which the law can be improved. No company should be allowed to have coolie labor, and no foreign employee should be forced to accept such actions by an employer because they can't leave the company without getting shipped back to their originating country. But you don't need a union to do this, you need politicians with a backbone and conscience. Unfortunately, you can have one or the other, but not both.
* Tech companies expect un-sustainable levels of work from their employees.
* Tech companies will lay-off people without a second thought if it helps the bottom line.
* Tech companies will require unfair, new contracts to be signed by all employees, without any form of negotiation at all! (This is taken from real life experience - where a consulting firm completely revamped all employees stock option contract, without protection for wrongful termination / layoffs, and gave us no option but to sign or resign!)
It is true that technology companies expect un-sustainable levels of work, but in the vast majority of cases, these companies are fairly compensating their employees. If it is not palatable to work 80 hours a week for a significant chunk of coin, then you are free to quit and join another company that only asks 40 hours, but don't expect the same salary. Companies that require grueling hours will generally see a high turnover rate. Taken to the extreme (which is not so extreme, actually), these companies will eventually see that they are unable to attract new talent. The company will change or die.
If you are looking for a union to validate minimum work habits, then expect management to hire outside the union.
Layoffs are a fact of American business. But think of where a company would be if it was *forced* by a union to keep all of its workers in a downturn. The company would obviously have more expenses and, if the risk is high enough, eventually go out of business. Look at DSCM, they are doing everything they can to keep alive the company. A dead company hires zero workers. This is one aspect of capitalism that is bitter in the macroeconomic world and deadly in the microeconomic.
As far as your contracts are concerned, it would behoove you to see a lawyer. A class action lawsuit might be in order.
Might we actually get more than a week of severance when the filthy-rich board of our dot-com decides to lay-off half of the company?
It can surely be said that some companies are simply pumped to IPO and then run into the ground, but in the vast majority of companies, the founders view their company as their baby and are willing to sacrifice many things to help it grow. It is a little harsh to accuse the management of being heartless in halving the company workforce. It sure stings, and it sure feels unfair, but drastic cuts in numbers is a last-ditch effort to save a drowning company. You are likely better off getting laid off than being kept around to feel the brunt of corporate bankruptcy.
A union guarantees nothing that doesn't already exist, except that more companies are going to be leveraged underwater by the strong hand of the union. This is, of course, assuming that a union would be able to generate any power in the first place.
Dancin Santa
The traditional industries in which unions are strong all have the same achilles heel. It is near impossible to move those jobs completely out of the country. Unions derive their power from the fact that industries can't survive without their workers and can't easily move production to another locale without breaking the bank.
Information-based industry, though, has no trouble simply packing up code and shipping it off to Timbuktu. The cost of moving is trivial and developers are a dime a dozen. A modicum of training and voila! We've got XYZware.com now cranking out software from Swaziland.
Unions are bound to fail in this industry because developers are in a very different position than, say, an auto worker. Whereas any single auto worker is completely disposable, good software engineers are individually important to the well-being of a company. The auto worker can derive strength by turning his interests over to a union who will bargain with management using the threat of large-scale walkouts. The software engineer, OTOH, gains essentially nothing through collective bargaining. He, in fact, would lose out in the case where the company decides that it is in its best interest to fire all union members and hire new engineers or change company locale altogether.
Businesses are not interested in seeing unions form because they fear the strike. However, information industries have an ace up their sleeve, which is the relative (to other industries) simplicity of moving to another country whose laws may not favor unions as much as they do here.
It's a really difficult and touchy subject, but I think it's an issue that will come to a head some time in the next couple of years. In the end, I predict that we will see the entire information industry unionization drive cracked by the unwillingness of many (if not most) engineers to join. Without enough numbers, unions would be effectively powerless, and with management's very real threat of moving jobs, it is likely they wouldn't have much power to begin with.
Dancin Santa
I hope the guy under my couch and bed are interested in Dr. Dobbs...
Dancin Santa
What's the deal with getting these subscription cards in a magazine that I'm already subscribing to?
IMHO, this type of mail uses more resources than spam ever could. The inconvenience of a server outage pales in comparison to the number of trees getting cut down and jet fuel used to bring these lovely pieces of garbage to my door.
Dancin Santa
I'm going to have to put you on the game grid.
Dancin MCP Santa
What is Pocket Linux good for?
What kind of apps are available for it? What does its interface look like? Is the site down already?
On a completely different note, it's interesting to think of the reasons behind porting Linux to everything and its brother. You can parlay your programming skill on one platform for use on another platform. This is essentially the reason Windows CE uses the WinAPI.
Now if I could just figure out how to write love letters on toast using STDOUT...
Dancin Santa
Maybe someone ought to get a gaint list of these sucker's email addresses and spam them with messages saying "all these spam emails are scams, don't send a single penny and don't click their links, because idiots who get taken keep these slimballs in business".
That wouldn't be too hard, I get spam selling those lists all the time!
AMAZING OPPORTUNITY
Dear Consumer,
Have you had it up to here with unsolicited email (spam)? You have been emailed because you are on a list of potential spammees. Most of you are aware that spam contains no redeeming value and the products pushed in them frequently turn out to be scams. The problem is that some of you are still clicking through the links in these emails. If every one of you made a conscious effort to *NOT* respond in any way to these annoying emails, they *will* eventually stop.
This is not a task that can be done alone! Recruit your friends and neighbors by sending them this email. In all likelihood, they have already received this, but send it to them anyway. Also forward this to any web-enabled idiots that you may know. These are probably the people keeping spam alive on the net.
Thank you for your cooperation,
Dancin Santa
What is the return on investment of these spamming companies? Are there really enough people buying their products to make it worth the spammers' while? The stupidest ones (possibly the second most profitable ones) are the messages that advertise spamming services. I can understand someone clicking through porn spam, but I can't understand anyone clicking through pseudo-Viagra spam.
Whatever happened to 'targetted advertising'?
Dancin Santa
It's too bad they can't make a profit selling generic laptops with Linux loaded. Here again we see the real life problems with an Open Source OS in a capitalist economy.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can load the OS on their own laptop, if they are so inclined. Why pay a company to wipe an Inspiron clean and load Linux at extra cost when it's cheaper to get the laptop directly from the manufacturer and load an alternative OS yourself? Is it the hardware drivers? Is it merely the convenience of having someone else do the work for you?
Dancin Santa
Who you calling program, Program?!
**ZAP**
Doesn't Mitnick have a non-compete clause with the NSA?
Anyway, here's some good starting points on your journey to career nirvana.
Dancin Santa
Moebius? I'd hate to see how long this movie is going to be...
Hey, I think I just saw that part... Only in mirror image!
Dancin Santa
It's really an unclear decision to make, whether to fully disclose every security hole or to shut up about it until the hole is fixed (or forever, whichever comes first). Both sides have some good arguments justifying their case, but it is unclear which method results in the highest security.
The point of the full disclosure folks is that once a hole is found, it will be exploited by those who know. Therefore it is necessary for everyone to be aware of these holes in order to create counter-measures aimed at closing the hole. Exposing all security hazards also has the side effect of forcing software houses to release a security patch more quickly. Since no security hole is safe from hackers, it makes no sense in trying to hide them from the public since the public (or at least the malicious) is probably already aware of it.
The other side of the coin says that security holes should not be announced for the express reason of preventing massive exploitation of them. This line of reasoning has some solid evidence behind it. *Real* hackers with the ability to find these holes are few in number, but the script kiddies with virtually no skills whatsoever are legion. It is arguable that the damage caused by a few 'in the know' is far outdone by the damage of the kiddies with their point and click hacking devices. Likewise, by the time the exploits are known to places like Bugtraq and the various software houses, the hole has pretty much been well exploited by the discoverers. It then seems that hiding the exploits from the general public seems like quite the pragmatic thing to do.
So which is it? Disclose every exploit openly or hide them until they are fixed? I don't know.
Dancin Santa
It's just a witchhunt.
Dancin Santa
I mean, yes, one provides a service whereas the other was primarily a distrobution provider, but together are they a lot stronger than they are alone?
A company that is able to provide a product AND service on that product is a much stronger company than the sum of two companies providing those things separately, generally.
Granted, this is a lot smaller consolidation than the AOL/Time-Warner thing, but it is consolidation.
Consolidation of two minor companies is what happened here. It's likely that they would have been run out of business by Redhat (the real champ in the commercial Linux distro camp) had they not pooled their resources.
I'm not sure that it's a healthy trend. The open market is supposed to create competition, not conglomerations.
This is not the creation of some powerhouse monopoly, you know. There is still competition in this market (Redhat and SuSE).
Dancin Santa
Turbolinux filed to go public in October, hoping to raise about $60 million. In the meantime, it laid off some of its staff and raised $30 million to keep operations going.
Linuxcare filed for an IPO but postponed it amid layoffs, the departure of chief executive Fernand Sarrat, and other problems. To keep the company running, Linuxcare closed a $30 million round of funding in August.
So we have two money-hemorraging Linux companies mergine to create a larger money-hemorraging Linux company. Sounds like quite the loser combination to me.
I imagine that it this stage of the game, though, neither company has much choice in potential mates.
Dancin Santa
I always wondered how many people actually read Slashdot...
If the pinball machines are designed to download information anyway, how exactly is this an 'impressive hack'? It seems like he's doing exactly what the designers of the machine expected: download play data and use it. What's to separate Bob and Joe's Circus of Fun's using these stats to determine their next purchase and this guy's posting his high scores on his website?
I don't get it.
Dancin Santa
The main thrust of the Plaintiff's charge is that VA Linux and its underwriters sold IPO positions to certain people pre-IPO. In turn, these people dumped their relatively cheap shares resulting in many smaller investors left holding the bag. Link
Is this strictly illegal (it certainly seems a little unethical)? Does it happen frequently?
Have I missed the whole point of the suit, IANAL after all.
Dancin Santa
While our software is open source, and we encourage you to share and redistribute it, trademark protection means that you know where your software is coming from.
Are they saying that they want to own the code now? Why wouldn't I trust another source? It's just a diff away.
Dancin Santa
I changed my mind. Here is what IT is:
IT
The assembled with a hex wrench gave it away.
Dancin Santa
It's a wife? Uh-oh...
Dancin Santa
Here IT is again.
Dancin Santa
Something just like IT
Dancin Santa
That version would be 1.0, dammit!
Dancin Santa