What has the employer done wrong here? They fired him. They don't legally need a reason or a justification. Anyone can be fired at any time with no notice, justification, or recourse. Making a scapegoat out of someone is not illegal.
There is no winning if he files a wrongful termination lawsuit. He will lose the suit, and further destroy his employability. Being blamed for a data breach is one thing (he's probably unemployable just because he got blamed for it, right or wrong) but if an employer sees that firing someone will be harder than they think it should be, they won't touch him.
Unless you're a member of a "protected group", and/or you can demonstrate explicitly illegal behavior (like wage violations), you will not win a wrongful termination lawsuit. Being made a scapegoat is not illegal behavior on the employer's part. In the eyes of the law, there is no injury to the former employee here - you can be fired for any time for any reason, or no reason at all. That is what "at-will" employment means. The burden is on the former employee to demonstrate the true reason why they were terminated, which is nearly impossible to prove when the former employer has possession of any documentation that would tend to incriminate them (and records get "accidentally" destroyed all the time).
The theory is that "at-will" is fair because just as your employer can end your employment at any time with no notice or justification, you can walk away from a job with no notice or justification. The truth of the matter is that losing your job is much more damaging to the individual than an employer losing an employee that it has deemed a liability (or wants to make a scapegoat of).
This guy is radioactive anyway. He was a scapegoat for people above him in the hierarchy fucking up. This is what people in power that fuck up do - instead of admitting they don't know everything and are not perfect, they pick a drone that they can spin a narrative around (out of whole cloth, basically) and sell it to the angry mob who doesn't understand the issues involved. Yes, it basically ends someone's career, but the important thing is that it isn't their career like it should be.
So, since his career in IT is over, it doesn't matter if he blows the whistle at this point - he'd never get a job in IT again no matter what.
And I take issue with the fact that a terminated employee should be punished further for telling the truth about a situation. Any time someone is punished for telling the truth, we all lose.
EHR has been a problem for decades. Don't blame this on Obamacare, blame it on the asshole corporations that are more interested in money than patient care. If anything, the problem is that Obamacare lost its public option because Republicans are stupid. The government runs healthcare in most countries, and it can be competently done if people don't fight it based on the fact that their rich CEO buddies wouldn't be able to buy their third summer home should profits go down because they're forced to spend more money on care instead of funnelling it to numbered Cayman Island bank accounts.
Without those mandates, the insurers would be able to continue to abuse their customers freely. Imagine getting cancer, after paying exorbitant premiums for years, only to find your insurer has cancelled your coverage for no other reason than paying for your treatment would eat into the profits. Imagine getting denied health insurance because you used to have asthma.
Companies don't do the right thing unless they're forced to - and it's the government's (read: the people's) job to force them to do it. Health insurance is largely insulated from market pressures, so "free market" principles do not apply. I certainly wouldn't pay $850 out of my pay each month (with my employer picking up the other half of my premium) for coverage that didn't pay out a dime until I've spent $5000 out-of-pocket if I had a choice. Yes, I could go to the exchanges, but I'd lose the money that my employer pays towards what I do have - and I make too much money to qualify for subsidies, but not enough where I can pay $1700 a month for health coverage. Without a public option to drive costs down (or force better behavior), this is what we have. Conservatives tore all the value out of the bill and now they're pointing out all the problems that are caused as a result (which were their own doing.) It's like slashing the tires on a car and then complaining that the ride is bad.
No, he just thinks he's smarter than the Supreme Court and his interpretation of the Constitution is superior.
The reason that the government sometimes requires people to purchase a product or service is that without a law forcing people to get with the fucking program, we can't move forward as a people. Without helmet laws people wouldn't wear helmets, because they're stupid/cheap/selfish. Without seat belt laws, lots of people wouldn't wear the belts, increasing medical costs for everyone. Without mandatory car insurance, people would get wiped out when some drunken asshole plows into them.
The problem here is that for-profit companies can participate in our health care system. Their primary function is to make money, not improve patient care. Of COURSE company A is going to push their format which is incompatible with any other because then they lock in their customers, giving them no choice but to pay them ridiculous amounts of money in the future. EHR, done correctly, has distinct advantages, but without being forced to use one specific format by law, we have all this bullshit. So, either the state mandates a format, which I'm sure GP would hate, or we all suffer. But! So long as the "collective" is a thing, this guy won't be happy.
Observation: Most people are right-handed. Observation: Lots of people kill each other. Conclusion: Right-handedness makes you kill people.
Something like 75%-80% of the web runs on php (Wordpress, for example.) Naturally if you examine a large number of sites, most of which run on php, you're going to see more security problems coming from sites that run on php.
Now I'm not saying php hasn't had language-based security problems in the past (and currently), but anyone who still thinks it's as porous as it was when version 4 was current needs to do their homework. Nowadays most of the issues come from stupid code, not the language itself. php's low barrier to entry attracts people who don't know how to write a more-secure web app in disproportionate numbers. See this for how to do it right.
I disagree. In loco parentis allows a school to consider the well-being of the student in a role normally reserved for a parent or other guardian. If a school considers a student's home life to be dangerous, they can intervene with a number of methods, some of which may include medical, psychological, or emotional treatment of a parent.
But I'm guessing that your implied distaste of the "nanny state" will lead you to ignore any actual facts presented, and you would rather this girl die due to a shitty home life than the state act in any way at all.
If he said that, which I doubt, it would fly in the face of his stated position on gun rights. He's been criticized by the other candidates for being a moderate on gun control. Senator sanders has stated on many occasions that he favors a "middle-ground" approach to gun laws, supporting expanded background checks and restrictions on "assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines. However, he also voted to protect gun manufacturers from liability for gun violence. To say "Bernie Sanders wants to take your guns" is factually and demonstrably incorrect. Vermont, where he has been a senator for approximately 5000 years, is considered to be gun-friendly, and also boasts the lowest rate of gun violence in the country.
I have only ever heard of one elected representative at the federal level who has ever said anything approaching "gun-grabbing", and that was Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Interestingly, the NRA currently gives Senator Sanders an 8% rating; apparently being a moderate on gun issues is unthinkable to those maniacs.
You'd be trading shitty co-workers for shitty patients, shitty administrators, shitty insurance companies, and (at least at the beginning) shitty pay. I'd think about getting another job where there's fewer zealots instead of wondering if you should have chosen another field; the former you can do, while the latter can't be done.
When "install the latest Windows update" comes with a $261,388 fee to re-certify, any business is going to reject that idea unless they are required to do it.
And this is where the anti-regulation assholes drop in and start whining about the free market and the burdens of regulation, etc etc etc.
Hint: For-profit companies don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts. Until it starts to cost them money (fines for violating the regs) they do not give a single fuck. If people start dying, they'll just do a cost/benefit analysis based on how much they'd have to settle for with the dead person's family when they inevitably sue them vs. the cost of following the rules.
I'll sell any of them to you, if you'd like. Because if you really think that the department heads are selecting that book because it's the best on the market, or because that's the way they think the subject should be taught, instead of because they make money, then you are so monumentally naive that I'm amazed you still have a computer to post to Slashdot on, and haven't had it swindled away from you yet.
This assumes that the $180 book is better than the $75 book. If it is superior, then requiring that book over the cheaper version makes sense. However, that is clearly not the criteria here; the criteria is "does this book make the chair and vice-chair money", with no regard for the quality of the text.
But any plan that has the potential, as Mr. Price has put it, to “set the world on fire,” is bound to make some people squirm. Leah Brajcich, who oversees sales at Gravity, fielded complaints from several customers who accused her boss of communist or socialist sympathies that would drive up their own employees’ wages and others who felt it was a public relations stunt. A few were worried that fees would rise or service would fall off. “What’s their incentive to hustle if you pay them so much?” Ms. Brajcich said they asked. Putting in 80-hour weeks after the announcement, she called the mistrustful clients, stopping by their offices or stores, and invited them to visit Gravity to see for themselves the employees’ dedication. She said she eventually lured most back.
Emphasis mine.
Not nonsense. It's a symptom of just how offensive people find the idea of their employees getting higher salaries. Gravity went through a period where their customers were reluctant to keep working with them because they thought the raises were a "political statement'. They saw that as a bad thing, because if it got traction, their own workers were going to start expecting higher salaries, and that eats into the profits, which we absolutely can't have, the world would explode if that happened.
This person had to work harder because of the minimum salary. That is going to happen, and in my opinion, that is important work, as unless that work gets done, salaries are going to continue to stagnate while corporate profits are growing exponentially. The fact that most people would stop reading after the first part is a symptom of the myopia that is pervasive among American companies; it's all about RIGHT NOW, when their customers were bitching that they started treating their people better. (Apparently paying your people more makes you a communist. These folks are so blinded by greed and selfishness that anything that disturbs their worldview has to be called names immediately lest it gain traction.) But, a year, 18 months down the line, those customers are back, when they realized that paying your people more is not the same as jumping off a cliff; a company can do that and survive, even thrive.
That's tuition, fees, room and board. Students are required to live on-campus for the first two years; after that they can move to off-campus housing if they choose. They do this so students can't establish residency and therefore pay in-state tuition.
Well, technically, you're only required to PAY for room/board for two years, they don't do bed checks or anything.
No, you don't have to buy the lifted truck. No, you don't have to buy a house (but if you do, $2400 a month is not ridiculous - especially compared with rents in that area that are more than that), but if you want to go to a four-year college, you will be paying $100,000. My state university charges $24,000 a year. For in-state students.
No, you don't have to have a smart phone, or a house with a bunch of land, or travel for vacation. You can live like a monk and be happy with the impenetrable amount of smug you have surrounding you, while your landlord fails AGAIN to fix your toilet. These things are not necessary, but they improve your quality of life. And that's really all people want, they want a salary that allows them to have a life that they enjoy outside of work.. and for there to be an "outside of work" where you won't get fired if you don't answer the phone from some idiot VP at 9PM harassing you because you're not still at work.
For so long, we've just accepted the fact that your corporate masters are living off the sweat of your brow, leaving you with little to show for it other than massive debt (which they also make money on by investing.) It's been so long that we don't recognize what an equitable work arrangement looks like anymore - the "social contract" that used to exist between a worker and his/her employer has been demonized as socialism and laziness. Wages stagnate while productivity and profits rise, and anyone that points out this fact is immediately attacked for being greedy, lazy and/or socialist.
The Millenials don't want anything that wasn't considered reasonable 40 years ago. They want a salary that they can live on, and they want to share in the success of their employer. These are not unreasonable things. Things have gotten so twisted that the dude offering this $70k minimum salary was repeatedly harassed by his peers in the business community - one of them actually said to him "If you pay your people that much, what incentive do they have to work hard?" The whole concept of getting what you pay for when you hire workers has completely fallen off the radar, because it would eat into the profits. No, these folks think that the less you pay someone, the harder they'll work. Which is bullshit. It should be the other way around, but we've all been convinced that this needs to continue so companies can be "competitive" (read: the CEO's third mistress wants another Porsche.)
Slashdot Mirror
Or, I'm sick of people bashing php for things that aren't structural/language issues.
php isn't garbage, lots of code that's written in php is garbage.
What has the employer done wrong here? They fired him. They don't legally need a reason or a justification. Anyone can be fired at any time with no notice, justification, or recourse. Making a scapegoat out of someone is not illegal.
There is no winning if he files a wrongful termination lawsuit. He will lose the suit, and further destroy his employability. Being blamed for a data breach is one thing (he's probably unemployable just because he got blamed for it, right or wrong) but if an employer sees that firing someone will be harder than they think it should be, they won't touch him.
Unless you're a member of a "protected group", and/or you can demonstrate explicitly illegal behavior (like wage violations), you will not win a wrongful termination lawsuit. Being made a scapegoat is not illegal behavior on the employer's part. In the eyes of the law, there is no injury to the former employee here - you can be fired for any time for any reason, or no reason at all. That is what "at-will" employment means. The burden is on the former employee to demonstrate the true reason why they were terminated, which is nearly impossible to prove when the former employer has possession of any documentation that would tend to incriminate them (and records get "accidentally" destroyed all the time).
The theory is that "at-will" is fair because just as your employer can end your employment at any time with no notice or justification, you can walk away from a job with no notice or justification. The truth of the matter is that losing your job is much more damaging to the individual than an employer losing an employee that it has deemed a liability (or wants to make a scapegoat of).
This guy is radioactive anyway. He was a scapegoat for people above him in the hierarchy fucking up. This is what people in power that fuck up do - instead of admitting they don't know everything and are not perfect, they pick a drone that they can spin a narrative around (out of whole cloth, basically) and sell it to the angry mob who doesn't understand the issues involved. Yes, it basically ends someone's career, but the important thing is that it isn't their career like it should be.
So, since his career in IT is over, it doesn't matter if he blows the whistle at this point - he'd never get a job in IT again no matter what.
And I take issue with the fact that a terminated employee should be punished further for telling the truth about a situation. Any time someone is punished for telling the truth, we all lose.
EHR has been a problem for decades. Don't blame this on Obamacare, blame it on the asshole corporations that are more interested in money than patient care. If anything, the problem is that Obamacare lost its public option because Republicans are stupid. The government runs healthcare in most countries, and it can be competently done if people don't fight it based on the fact that their rich CEO buddies wouldn't be able to buy their third summer home should profits go down because they're forced to spend more money on care instead of funnelling it to numbered Cayman Island bank accounts.
Without those mandates, the insurers would be able to continue to abuse their customers freely. Imagine getting cancer, after paying exorbitant premiums for years, only to find your insurer has cancelled your coverage for no other reason than paying for your treatment would eat into the profits. Imagine getting denied health insurance because you used to have asthma.
Companies don't do the right thing unless they're forced to - and it's the government's (read: the people's) job to force them to do it. Health insurance is largely insulated from market pressures, so "free market" principles do not apply. I certainly wouldn't pay $850 out of my pay each month (with my employer picking up the other half of my premium) for coverage that didn't pay out a dime until I've spent $5000 out-of-pocket if I had a choice. Yes, I could go to the exchanges, but I'd lose the money that my employer pays towards what I do have - and I make too much money to qualify for subsidies, but not enough where I can pay $1700 a month for health coverage. Without a public option to drive costs down (or force better behavior), this is what we have. Conservatives tore all the value out of the bill and now they're pointing out all the problems that are caused as a result (which were their own doing.) It's like slashing the tires on a car and then complaining that the ride is bad.
No, he just thinks he's smarter than the Supreme Court and his interpretation of the Constitution is superior.
The reason that the government sometimes requires people to purchase a product or service is that without a law forcing people to get with the fucking program, we can't move forward as a people. Without helmet laws people wouldn't wear helmets, because they're stupid/cheap/selfish. Without seat belt laws, lots of people wouldn't wear the belts, increasing medical costs for everyone. Without mandatory car insurance, people would get wiped out when some drunken asshole plows into them.
The problem here is that for-profit companies can participate in our health care system. Their primary function is to make money, not improve patient care. Of COURSE company A is going to push their format which is incompatible with any other because then they lock in their customers, giving them no choice but to pay them ridiculous amounts of money in the future. EHR, done correctly, has distinct advantages, but without being forced to use one specific format by law, we have all this bullshit. So, either the state mandates a format, which I'm sure GP would hate, or we all suffer. But! So long as the "collective" is a thing, this guy won't be happy.
Observation: Most people are right-handed.
Observation: Lots of people kill each other.
Conclusion: Right-handedness makes you kill people.
Something like 75%-80% of the web runs on php (Wordpress, for example.) Naturally if you examine a large number of sites, most of which run on php, you're going to see more security problems coming from sites that run on php.
Now I'm not saying php hasn't had language-based security problems in the past (and currently), but anyone who still thinks it's as porous as it was when version 4 was current needs to do their homework. Nowadays most of the issues come from stupid code, not the language itself. php's low barrier to entry attracts people who don't know how to write a more-secure web app in disproportionate numbers. See this for how to do it right.
>WHACK Stop being a simplistic asshole!
Did it work?
I disagree. In loco parentis allows a school to consider the well-being of the student in a role normally reserved for a parent or other guardian. If a school considers a student's home life to be dangerous, they can intervene with a number of methods, some of which may include medical, psychological, or emotional treatment of a parent.
But I'm guessing that your implied distaste of the "nanny state" will lead you to ignore any actual facts presented, and you would rather this girl die due to a shitty home life than the state act in any way at all.
And that's Australia, where there's nothing like our Second Amendment. "Worth considering" is not an endorsement or a statement of position.
I should also point out that it worked.
If he said that, which I doubt, it would fly in the face of his stated position on gun rights. He's been criticized by the other candidates for being a moderate on gun control. Senator sanders has stated on many occasions that he favors a "middle-ground" approach to gun laws, supporting expanded background checks and restrictions on "assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines. However, he also voted to protect gun manufacturers from liability for gun violence. To say "Bernie Sanders wants to take your guns" is factually and demonstrably incorrect. Vermont, where he has been a senator for approximately 5000 years, is considered to be gun-friendly, and also boasts the lowest rate of gun violence in the country.
I have only ever heard of one elected representative at the federal level who has ever said anything approaching "gun-grabbing", and that was Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Interestingly, the NRA currently gives Senator Sanders an 8% rating; apparently being a moderate on gun issues is unthinkable to those maniacs.
You'd be trading shitty co-workers for shitty patients, shitty administrators, shitty insurance companies, and (at least at the beginning) shitty pay. I'd think about getting another job where there's fewer zealots instead of wondering if you should have chosen another field; the former you can do, while the latter can't be done.
That isn't necessarily a reason not to do it.
And this is where the anti-regulation assholes drop in and start whining about the free market and the burdens of regulation, etc etc etc.
Hint: For-profit companies don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts. Until it starts to cost them money (fines for violating the regs) they do not give a single fuck. If people start dying, they'll just do a cost/benefit analysis based on how much they'd have to settle for with the dead person's family when they inevitably sue them vs. the cost of following the rules.
I'll sell any of them to you, if you'd like. Because if you really think that the department heads are selecting that book because it's the best on the market, or because that's the way they think the subject should be taught, instead of because they make money, then you are so monumentally naive that I'm amazed you still have a computer to post to Slashdot on, and haven't had it swindled away from you yet.
.... right. Hey, there's this bridge in Brooklyn I'd like you to look at..
Yes, remember, all the ills in the world can be traced back to not being able to fire someone for no reason at all...
This assumes that the $180 book is better than the $75 book. If it is superior, then requiring that book over the cheaper version makes sense. However, that is clearly not the criteria here; the criteria is "does this book make the chair and vice-chair money", with no regard for the quality of the text.
Yeah, the New York Times disagrees with you.
Emphasis mine.
Not nonsense. It's a symptom of just how offensive people find the idea of their employees getting higher salaries. Gravity went through a period where their customers were reluctant to keep working with them because they thought the raises were a "political statement'. They saw that as a bad thing, because if it got traction, their own workers were going to start expecting higher salaries, and that eats into the profits, which we absolutely can't have, the world would explode if that happened.
This person had to work harder because of the minimum salary. That is going to happen, and in my opinion, that is important work, as unless that work gets done, salaries are going to continue to stagnate while corporate profits are growing exponentially. The fact that most people would stop reading after the first part is a symptom of the myopia that is pervasive among American companies; it's all about RIGHT NOW, when their customers were bitching that they started treating their people better. (Apparently paying your people more makes you a communist. These folks are so blinded by greed and selfishness that anything that disturbs their worldview has to be called names immediately lest it gain traction.) But, a year, 18 months down the line, those customers are back, when they realized that paying your people more is not the same as jumping off a cliff; a company can do that and survive, even thrive.
Dude I was agreeing with you :) I hope to have a boss like you someday. It seems like you get it; being cheap today bites you in 18 months or so.
It takes 2 years to establish.
Why do you hate America? /s
That's tuition, fees, room and board. Students are required to live on-campus for the first two years; after that they can move to off-campus housing if they choose. They do this so students can't establish residency and therefore pay in-state tuition.
Well, technically, you're only required to PAY for room/board for two years, they don't do bed checks or anything.
I'll forgo the obvious "get off my lawn" jokes..
No, you don't have to buy the lifted truck. No, you don't have to buy a house (but if you do, $2400 a month is not ridiculous - especially compared with rents in that area that are more than that), but if you want to go to a four-year college, you will be paying $100,000. My state university charges $24,000 a year. For in-state students.
No, you don't have to have a smart phone, or a house with a bunch of land, or travel for vacation. You can live like a monk and be happy with the impenetrable amount of smug you have surrounding you, while your landlord fails AGAIN to fix your toilet. These things are not necessary, but they improve your quality of life. And that's really all people want, they want a salary that allows them to have a life that they enjoy outside of work.. and for there to be an "outside of work" where you won't get fired if you don't answer the phone from some idiot VP at 9PM harassing you because you're not still at work.
For so long, we've just accepted the fact that your corporate masters are living off the sweat of your brow, leaving you with little to show for it other than massive debt (which they also make money on by investing.) It's been so long that we don't recognize what an equitable work arrangement looks like anymore - the "social contract" that used to exist between a worker and his/her employer has been demonized as socialism and laziness. Wages stagnate while productivity and profits rise, and anyone that points out this fact is immediately attacked for being greedy, lazy and/or socialist.
The Millenials don't want anything that wasn't considered reasonable 40 years ago. They want a salary that they can live on, and they want to share in the success of their employer. These are not unreasonable things. Things have gotten so twisted that the dude offering this $70k minimum salary was repeatedly harassed by his peers in the business community - one of them actually said to him "If you pay your people that much, what incentive do they have to work hard?" The whole concept of getting what you pay for when you hire workers has completely fallen off the radar, because it would eat into the profits. No, these folks think that the less you pay someone, the harder they'll work. Which is bullshit. It should be the other way around, but we've all been convinced that this needs to continue so companies can be "competitive" (read: the CEO's third mistress wants another Porsche.)