You'll never work again because once employers get a whiff of you valuing 'fun' over working hard for the company and making them money, you'll never get hired once the 'fun' job goes away because they thought 'fun' was important at all. Any effort to make the job 'fun' increases overhead, and therefore increases costs. Since companies that minimize costs and maximize revenues survive where others that don't do that as well don't, any company that voluntarily increases costs through an ill-advised effort to give a flying fuck about if their employees are happy or not puts themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
The only way 'fun' is tolerable at a company is if the company's business model itself gives them a competitive advantage. Take a look at Google; they spend millions on trying to keep their employees happy, and they are able to do so because they've cornered the search market. Their product is so far superior to their competition's, that they can survive voluntarily increasing costs. (And they only 'try to keep their employees happy' because it improves their image and allows them to steal valued employees away from a company that has its priorities straight. It's an offense to capitalism.)
And, of course, I'm making about a quarter of what I'd earn working in industry (based on the offers I had in hand when I took this job). I think it's worth it for the quality of life.
25%? Really? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you really think so little of yourself (or are so insane) that you'll allow yourself to get exploited like that?
I'll repeat the sentiment I posted above: "Quality of life" does not put food on your table or pay your mortgage. CASH MONEY does that. The more cash, the better, independent of ANYTHING ELSE. Not "quality of life" or "fun" or "feeling of accomplishment", CASH MONEY.
If your options are (hypothetically) a job that pays $50,000 a year, but you perceive as 'fun' (personally, I don't think any job that pays me 25% of my market value could possibly be 'fun', I'd be too busy trying not to become homeless to even consider if the job is 'fun' or not) or a job that pays $200,000 a year but is a miserable situation, GET OVER IT AND GET THE MONEY. The more money you have, the better you are. The more miserable you are, the more money you get. You are paid to do stuff that other people can't or don't want to do. If you work hard enough and play the game well enough, you will gain a position that allows you to profit off someone else's blood, sweat, and tears, and that's the REAL American Dream. (The concept of the American Dream being "work hard, play by the rules, and you'll get ahead" is invented from whole cloth. The people that tell you that are looking to either sell you something or take advantage of you. Your reaction to that statement should be to punch the speaker in the crotch.)
And if the job makes you so miserable that you start having physical symptoms (high blood pressure, ulcers, other things people whine about), you have the money to get them treated. So, again, GET OVER IT.
So you actually like sitting in a cubicle farm all day, having to deal with a boss and deadlines, having to waste lots of time in meetings instead of working on interesting things, having to commute in rush-hour traffic? I don't like any of those things. Those are the things that make work not-fun. I don't know of any jobs that don't have at least some of these things (I did manage to escape many of them by being a telecommuter, but I've found this has its own unique challenges). Would I like to do programming work as a hobby if I got paid the same for doing nothing? Sure. But I'll pass on the deadlines and pressure and all the rest. Why on earth would anyone sign up for that stuff if they weren't required to?
What does 'liking it' have to do with anything? Your happiness or level of 'like' for your job doesn't pay your mortgage or put food on the table. Work is not supposed to be fun, that's why it's called 'work' and not 'happy joy fun time #1'. If your job seems "fun", then someone is pulling something on you, or you're just deluded.
To address TFA directly: OF COURSE YOU SHOULD TAKE THE JOB IF IT MEANS MORE MONEY. Your worth as an individual is directly related to the amount of cash in your bank account. Nobody gives a shit whether you're happy or not. When people see someone that has taken a 'fun' job over one that would pay significantly more, but is pretty miserable, they laugh at them for being stupid. If your job pays well and is 'fun' (which, in reality, never happens), then there's something you're missing.
If you're playing poker, and you don't know who the sucker is, it's you.
Either 1) your pay isn't "good", it's "adequate", and you're just (willfully) ignorant of that fact, 2) you've convinced yourself that the work is interesting, when it's really just another case of someone making money off what you consider 'interesting', or 3) the people appear to be 'good', but will actually fuck you over on the slightest provocation if it means their getting ahead.
Welcome to the workforce. Please enjoy this complimentary propaganda pamphlet about your employer that we'll put between your feet so you can read it while you're grabbing your ankles.
It doesn't filter out any "wheat" if you define "wheat" as "someone who is more concerned about matching buzzwords and playing HR games than they are about describing their actual experience." If a job listing says "x years networking experience" and you describe "x years TCP/IP, y years administering Windows domain servers, z years maintaining Cisco routers", your resume gets shitcanned because you described your experience in a way that is useful to a hiring manager, but doesn't mean anything to some communications-major HR drone because the letters don't match. Conversely, if you say "x years networking experience", you get past the HR idiot, but the hiring manager (who really wanted to put "x years TCP/IP, y years administering Windows domain servers, z years maintaining Cisco routers" on the job description, but got shot down by HR because they didn't understand those words) looks at that and doesn't see the experience he was looking for described. Even if you put both "x years networking experience" AND detail said experience, you stand no better chance with the HR buffoon than someone who doesn't describe the experience, so your resume ends up in the circular file because someone else with the same words on their resume was in the HR jerk's fraternity.
So, to use one of your analogies, you've read the 'exacting' specifications in the job posting, and delivered on those expectations, but fail because the specifications were overly general and lacking detail. To use another, the hiring manager knows he/she needs someone who has worked on Chevy small-block truck engines, but the HR moron doesn't understand that the engine is a specific part of the car, and therefore asks for experience with cars. Not trucks, or Chevrolet trucks in particular, or even gas-fueled internal combustion engines, but automobiles in general. So, when the hiring manager conducts the interview with someone the HR schmendrick has put in front of him/her, and asks about their experience with Chevy small-block truck engines, they get a reply like "Oh, well, I've driven a car, and actually put gas in one once!"
TL:DR; HR has no business trying to filter candidates. It's like trying get a dog to understand long division.
No, it's fresh college grads that can't instantly perform at the level of seasoned veterans, want to learn but are forced to work 90 hour weeks with no training opportunities, and expect to be paid a living wage.
Analyze data on a nightly basis. Store the results. Scrub database after results are stored. The asshole MBA that your startup hires because it isn't making enough money then has nothing to turn around and sell for a quick buck.
If you have to store *anything at all*, hire the expert. Can't hire the expert? Your startup is inadequately funded.
Wouldn't work. If colleges didn't make people take useless 'general education' courses, most people could complete their degree in 2 or 3 years. Losing that year or two of tuition is painful for the university.
For example: What possible use could an electrical engineering student have for a geology class? Or for a remedial-level English writing class (required for ALL freshman at my university regardless of major)? (You can test out of that one, but unless you got a stellar score on your SAT or ACT test in writing, forget it. You'll take the placement exam, write something that is better than what the TAs in the English department could write, and find your submission inadequate. It's in the university's interest to make you take that class.) Or, a Communications major (read: Advanced Unemployment Studies major) for three classes in the Physical Sciences curriculum?
To make matters worse, you can only use ONE class that is in the curriculum for your major to satisfy a 'general education' requirement. So, out of the FIFTEEN 'general education' courses, only one can be relevant to your major. And you can test out of exactly two (the aforementioned writing class, and a basic math skills class.) You can spend four semesters just filling these bullshit requirements! (Also, AP courses taken in high school do not count towards these requirements. So, congratulations on passing the AP Physics or Chemistry exam, now go take three Physical Science classes, only one of which is relevant to your major.)
The concept of a "well-rounded education" is a total scam. Students (or their parents, or whomever gives them scholarships) end up wasting $40,000 to $50,000 (or more) on courses that are completely irrelevant to what your chosen major is. A bachelor's degree should be structured to enable the student to make more money upon graduation than someone without that degree (or at least enough additional money to cover their insanely high student loan payments). Do you really think that hiring manager considering you for a programming job cares if you took and passed a Sociology class which is so brain-dead easy as to have no value whatsoever?
I have a three-year old son. In fifteen years, if he chooses to go to college (and I'm definitely not going to make him go, by the time he's going to college tuition will probably be so expensive as to make the investment have a negative return) he's going to take the gen ed classes at a local community college at a fraction of the cost of a big-deal four year university. Then, if he chooses to continue on to a 'four-year' university, he'll only have to pay for the four or five semesters it'll take him to complete courses in his major. Getting a college education should be considered a financial transaction, especially as expensive as it is these days.
No, it's more like you put 20 thermometers at various locations in your house and took careful measurements once a day for several years, and then compared the data sets year-to-year.
Changes in temperature in one specific location do not model global changes. Climate change models predict that some regions will become cooler on average, while some others will get warmer. But, overall, the average temperature of the planet is rising year-to-year. You can argue about the cause (and there are legitimate arguments to be made on both sides of the man-made vs. natural variation argument) but the data tells the truth.
Get out of here with your 'logic' and 'sensible suggestions'! USA! USA! USA!
Seriously, though, I totally agree. I agree that welfare should not be a handout with no strings, but at the same time the helping hand should be there to help them change their lives to the point where they no longer need government assistance. Sometimes there are mental health issues that need to be addressed, or untreated medical conditions that aren't being adequately covered by our Medicaid/Medicare programs. Sometimes there needs to be skills training to make them more employable. The private sector can help as well; instead of exploiting the fact that the job market sucks by hiring these people into no-benefit, minimum wage jobs that nobody would take under normal circumstances, they could hire people into positions that have potential for raises and promotion based on hard work. I guarantee you that 99% of the jobs listed at your local unemployment office are dead-end garbage that only reward hard work with more hard work, and pay so little that frequently a person would be better off without the job at all. (At least then they might be eligible for Medicaid and have SOME health coverage.)
Your child care suggestion? You'd get laughed out of the room if you proposed that. The attitude is that they had the kids, it's their problem. They're literally being punished because they had children.
And yes, there are some who game the system to collect benefits without putting in any sincere effort. It's human nature for some people to want something for nothing (hell, it's probably human nature for all of us) but the baby shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater. The system isn't perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the alternative.
I believe it is wrong for anyone to be forced to accept any unwanted, invasive medical procedure, including vaccination.
And I believe it is wrong for your being an idiot (not vaccinating your kid) to result in another child's death.
But congratulations! You had a choice! I'm sure the grieving parents will find that to be quite comforting.
The goal of maximizing vaccination is only served by removing that choice from someone who would have taken it.
What's your point?
If anything, the choice itself (liberty) has positive value to society, even if no one ever chooses to exercise it, which means removing the choice from someone who would have chosen vaccination anyway is strictly detrimental.
What real benefit is there from having the choice? Anything that makes a difference in the real world?
The fact of the matter is that some people are choosing not to vaccinate their kids, because they're idiots. Why are you so emphatic about preserving people's rights to be idiots?
Is the heath benefit of maximizing vaccination of higher value than the cost in liberty to everyone, and in aggression against those who continue to refuse?
YES!!!!! This is the point I was trying to make.
There is no objective answer, of course, but from my point of view mandatory vaccination appears to be a very poor trade.
Really? An artificial construct that serves no purpose other than to make you feel a little better about yourself is so important that you're willing to risk lives over it? What right do you have to make that choice for them? If you want to die for your ideals, that's your choice, it's your life to throw away.
Requiring immunization will save children's lives. Do you really think that your ideals are worth dead kids? I think that other kids' parents (myself included) would disagree.
Who defines how much is "too much"? It seems to me like the prevailing attitude towards software development expressed by non-technical management is that no matter how much the software costs, it's too much. Telling management that a piece of software will take X hours to do and cost Y dollars leads to them stamping their feet and throwing a hissy fit about how high those numbers are, no matter how conservative the estimate is. Instead of trusting their technical folks to know what they're talking about (which is, in fact, why they pay them), they assume since they don't understand it, it must not be important, and therefore shouldn't take that long. They make wildly inaccurate estimates of how long something should take based on the function set they've requested, not how difficult or time-consuming developing those features might be. To them, it's just another place to type something in or another number on the screen. It can be as easy as changing a form (I'm assuming web development here, since that's what I'm most familiar with) to accept an additional input, or it can be massively complicated. To management, adding a field is the same under all circumstances, so if one field takes one man-day to add, then all fields should only take one man-day to add.
First-hand experience: I used to work for a company that developed a certain kind of security utility. We were approaching a major revision, 1.x to 2.x. We were discussing timelines in an interdepartmental staff meeting, and our QA guy was asked for a time estimate to test the new product. He gave a number. Our VP of marketing (who, in a devastatingly stupid piece of management decision-making, was in charge of development) then said that he could have half that number, and said "QA always wants too much time. If it were up to them, the software would never be released." He didn't ask the QA guy why he thought it would take that long, or what the sub-tasks were, or how it was broken down by feature, or indeed any information that was used to justify the estimate, he just cut it in half because he assumed the QA guy was padding his estimate because he was lazy. To him, it was perfectly OK to sell a poorly tested product, because the testing wasn't a selling point, and selling points were all he was interested in. Who cares if the product is any good, as long as we can use it as a tool to separate people from their money.
When management makes decisions based on artificial timelines or appearances, space shuttles blow up.
Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Not vaccinating your kid exposes mine to potentially life-threatening disease. If you think that the (vanishingly small) risk of complications from vaccination is more important than my (vaccinated) kid's risk of contracting a disease that has mutated inside your (unvaccinated) kid.. well, you're bad at math. And, a selfish short-sighted asshole.
I've never really understood why it is that something you were going to do anyway becoming mandatory means that you should automatically resist it. You've lost nothing except the choice you weren't going to make, and society has benefited. Making vaccinations mandatory is not the same as Hitler storming across Europe, get a grip. If the slope were really that slippery, we would have fallen down into the abyss a long long time ago.
Obligatory car analogy: Sure, you have the right to drive around with faulty brakes. At least in this state, you do not need working brakes to pass the yearly inspection. You can argue that you're risking nobody except yourself.. except, you're not. Your passengers, and the other people on the roads that you slam into because you can't stop, would disagree.
Part of living in a civilized society is recognizing when your actions have consequences for others that have no say in the matter. Yes, you can make the choice not to vaccinate your kid. But realize that your actions have consequences for others. (It may come as a shock to you that there are other people in the world besides you and your child.) One of the major problems we (USA) have as a society is the attitude of "I've got mine, fuck you." Take responsibility for your choice; keep your kid away from mine. If your idealism leads to my kid's death.. then it's not worth protecting. Die for your ideals if you want; it's your life to throw away.
In that case, the employer is not bound by contract with the union. They are still free to do whatever they wish, unless they sign a collective bargaining agreement, and there's no reason to if it's just one employee. And you can bet the farm that that employee will be escorted to the door immediately and their belongings sent to them in the mail. The company can still function without that employee; it's not the same as all the employees going on strike.
There are legal protections from retaliation for attempting to organize one's fellow employees into a union, true. See my comment above; the employer will do it anyway and see the resulting lawsuit/settlement/fine as a cost of doing business.
(I understand you state "occasional" so perhaps you negotiate these sessions given your other commitments).
That conversation goes like this:
Employee: "I'd like to talk to you about this overtime we're all doing. A lot of us have to neglect our other obligations to do it, and we'd like to find a way of having a better work/life balance." Boss: "You'll work the hours I tell you to, and you'll like it. Shut up and get back to work or you're fired."
Even if an agreement is reached during compensation negotiations on hiring the employee, there are no consequences for saying "I don't care what you were told. You're a salaried employee, we're not obligated to pay overtime. Now, get back to work, you lazy shit."
Yes, that's probably the time to get a new job. But, with the economy being in the toilet, jobs are pretty hard to come by, even for talented programmers. Since you don't want to go bankrupt (or lose your or your family's health insurance), you do what you're told.
I am fortunate in the fact that I do not have one of those bosses. My manager does not care when I come in or when I leave, as long as I take paid time off accurately when I hand in my time card. When we came under a ridiculous deadline recently from a Big Important Potential Client, I was given a budget and told to find a freelance developer to help out. When I had to get up at 0300 recently to fix an upgrade to Apache that had gone wrong, he gave me a gift card as compensation. But, I work for a not-for-profit company, and thus don't have investors or stockholders demanding that I be worked to death to make them money.
I disagree. It's not the government's business what store I go to, who I visit for dinner, or what church (or lack thereof) I go to.
Unfortunately, they're just collecting information that is publicly available, albeit more efficiently. I don't know what can really be done about this. We could pass a law that restricts law enforcement from storing or using this data unless there is a warrant issued for someone's arrest. But, as we all know, people don't always follow the law. Maybe the evidence couldn't be used at trial, but that doesn't mean law enforcement wouldn't use it to gather potentially embarrassing information on a person of interest with the goal of using it as leverage to persuade someone to cooperate.
But, come to think of it, they can do that now, it's just harder and more expensive. This doesn't really change anything. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary.
If your idea of "worth it" is primarily about compensation, I'd probably steer clear.
It should always be about compensation. Anyone who has as their goal 'furthering the field' or 'finding innovative ways of solving problems' as goals unto themselves is a total rube.
if you make it clear to employers that your interest is in the research, not the salary, you'd find a home pretty easily.
You would probably be able to save a bunch of time, money, and effort by putting the following, in big bold letters, on the top of your resume: "I'm a naive chump, please take advantage of me for your own gain." Of course indicating your primary motivation is not compensation will enable you to find a job more easily. Getting taken advantage of is core competency of its employees for most employers, and you don't need a PhD to be stupid. Think about it: Why should you spend four (or seven) years of your life living miserably, kissing up to egomaniac tenured professors, begging to be allowed into the treehouse, for someone else to be able to make billions off of your hard work?
Until our society decides that academic achievement and research that improves the human condition are more important than separating people from their money, financial remuneration is the only thing that is important, and anyone spending time and effort that does not directly work towards the goal of making more money than the other guy is wasting their lives.
In the end, the thing that keeps me intellectually satisfied (aside from the compensation, which is better than average for my area) is that every so often we get a high profile, fast turnaround project where I get to interface directly with the customer and develop stuff that goes live in near real time. Even then, though, I rarely get the sense that I'm advancing the field, which is really what I'd like to do.
Can you eat 'advancing the field'? Can you pay your mortgage with intellectual satisfaction? And you see direct interaction with the customer as a positive? (All that means is that your company doesn't have competent program managers to run interference between you and the customer that has no fucking idea what they want and expect you to give it to them anyway.)
I send them job openings and I get occasional updates.
Do you receive any compensation from putting people in touch with companies that want to hire them? No? I have a few recruiter friends that would like to kneecap you for setting the expectation that companies don't need to pay headhunters or otherwise spend money to hire qualified candidates, they can just get someone in the field to do it for free.
If your current employer has tuition reimbursement... your company will likely see the course as continuing ed that's worth reimbursing.
Take advantage of their idiocy, get the degree, then get another job somewhere else that pays more. They won't think twice about taking advantage of you, don't think twice about taking advantage of them.
If your degree path is Computer Science, you might consider an MCS (Master of Computer Science), which is a newer degree. It tends to be bit broader, and it has no research component. That might be more suitable if you're not looking at a "hard research" career.
Leaving aside the fact that unless you're independently wealthy (at least nine figures) choosing a 'hard research' career is moronic, if getting the "broader" degree is more immediately marketable, and has an ROI that isn't measured in decades, then that's probably the way to go.
Going back to school in your forties almost never ends well. Employers will wonder why you waited. (Yes, that's age discrimination of a sort, but the reality is that it happens everywhere, and there's nothing anyone can do about it,
in other words "you didnt write a bill that we like, so we are taking our ball and going home"
That's, um, kind of the way it works. Congressmen and Senators use parliamentary procedures all the time to advance their agenda. On both sides of the aisle. This is how the game is played. The fact that Reid has even acknowledged that the Ryan budget exists is fairly remarkable, considering how radical it is. By keeping the bill off the floor of the Senate, the Democrats don't have to vote to block it, and thus seem obstructionist. Follow the scenario: The bill makes it to the Senate floor. Democratic senators vote against it, not only seeming obstructionist, but potentially ticking off people in their constituency who were on the fence about who they were going to vote for based on budgetary policy. If they were to temporarily take leave of their senses, and vote in favor of it, it would be political suicide. Bringing the bill to the Senate floor is a losing proposition. So, Reid doesn't bring it to the Senate floor. He's within his rights to do that. It makes good political sense to do that. It's pretty much a no-brainer.
the Ds are all worried about the Rs "taking away the right to vote" from the avg american, yet they dont even want to have a vote.
Disenfranchising American voters is not the same as not bringing a bill to the floor of the Senate. What happens in the Senate is political bullshit, to be sure, but it's not nearly on the same level as the biggest effort to suppress the vote since the days of Jim Crow.
And they don't want to take the vote away from the "avg american". Just the ones that vote Democratic. They're not even trying to be anything approaching subtle about it. In Ohio, they tried to get away with making it harder for people in Democrat-leaning counties to vote by restricting the amount of time available to vote in their early voting program. Mysteriously, red counties got night and weekend hours, while the blue counties got "banker's hours".
You say that "we know it wont win" well, no we dont, it hasnt been voted on, therefore we do not know.
See above. There's no upside to bringing it to the floor, where it will, barring a bout of mass insanity or LSD being slipped into Congress' water supply, fail. It's a waste of time at best and politically damaging at worst.
Yes, it does matter if they're exactly the same. If that student doesn't go on to college (at least right away), and wants to get a job in the community that requires computer literacy, they won't be able to say that they have multi-year experience working in a Windows environment. Or, if they get sat in front of a computer as part of the interview, and the HR drone sees that they don't know where anything is, that is that.
Is it right? Probably not. Fair? No, but nobody said life was fair. Does this happen? Yes.
It saddens me that this is the case, but most workplaces don't know Linux from Lima beans. They almost certainly don't know there are other operating systems other than Windows (if, by some miracle, they even know what an operating system IS), so when the HR drone asks them to describe the computer classes that they took in high school, saying that they used LibreOffice on Ubuntu is about the same as saying they didn't take any computer classes at all. The HR drone can't tick that checkbox. Consequently, they don't get the job.
So, unfortunately, as far as making someone viably employable is concerned, a lab running anything other than Windows (or, MAYBE, OS X) may as well not exist.
Colleges are guilty of this as well. You could be the most talented programmer in your entire class, but if you don't develop on Windows, you have no marketable skills. Most software/development companies aren't this thick, and will probably have heard of Linux, but the odds are that that company 1) won't hire someone straight out of college (somehow, you're supposed to graduate with two years of full-time paid experience), and 2) writes software that runs on Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll never work again because once employers get a whiff of you valuing 'fun' over working hard for the company and making them money, you'll never get hired once the 'fun' job goes away because they thought 'fun' was important at all. Any effort to make the job 'fun' increases overhead, and therefore increases costs. Since companies that minimize costs and maximize revenues survive where others that don't do that as well don't, any company that voluntarily increases costs through an ill-advised effort to give a flying fuck about if their employees are happy or not puts themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
The only way 'fun' is tolerable at a company is if the company's business model itself gives them a competitive advantage. Take a look at Google; they spend millions on trying to keep their employees happy, and they are able to do so because they've cornered the search market. Their product is so far superior to their competition's, that they can survive voluntarily increasing costs. (And they only 'try to keep their employees happy' because it improves their image and allows them to steal valued employees away from a company that has its priorities straight. It's an offense to capitalism.)
25%? Really? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you really think so little of yourself (or are so insane) that you'll allow yourself to get exploited like that?
I'll repeat the sentiment I posted above: "Quality of life" does not put food on your table or pay your mortgage. CASH MONEY does that. The more cash, the better, independent of ANYTHING ELSE. Not "quality of life" or "fun" or "feeling of accomplishment", CASH MONEY.
If your options are (hypothetically) a job that pays $50,000 a year, but you perceive as 'fun' (personally, I don't think any job that pays me 25% of my market value could possibly be 'fun', I'd be too busy trying not to become homeless to even consider if the job is 'fun' or not) or a job that pays $200,000 a year but is a miserable situation, GET OVER IT AND GET THE MONEY. The more money you have, the better you are. The more miserable you are, the more money you get. You are paid to do stuff that other people can't or don't want to do. If you work hard enough and play the game well enough, you will gain a position that allows you to profit off someone else's blood, sweat, and tears, and that's the REAL American Dream. (The concept of the American Dream being "work hard, play by the rules, and you'll get ahead" is invented from whole cloth. The people that tell you that are looking to either sell you something or take advantage of you. Your reaction to that statement should be to punch the speaker in the crotch.)
And if the job makes you so miserable that you start having physical symptoms (high blood pressure, ulcers, other things people whine about), you have the money to get them treated. So, again, GET OVER IT.
What does 'liking it' have to do with anything? Your happiness or level of 'like' for your job doesn't pay your mortgage or put food on the table. Work is not supposed to be fun, that's why it's called 'work' and not 'happy joy fun time #1'. If your job seems "fun", then someone is pulling something on you, or you're just deluded.
To address TFA directly: OF COURSE YOU SHOULD TAKE THE JOB IF IT MEANS MORE MONEY. Your worth as an individual is directly related to the amount of cash in your bank account. Nobody gives a shit whether you're happy or not. When people see someone that has taken a 'fun' job over one that would pay significantly more, but is pretty miserable, they laugh at them for being stupid. If your job pays well and is 'fun' (which, in reality, never happens), then there's something you're missing.
No you don't.
If you're playing poker, and you don't know who the sucker is, it's you.
Either 1) your pay isn't "good", it's "adequate", and you're just (willfully) ignorant of that fact, 2) you've convinced yourself that the work is interesting, when it's really just another case of someone making money off what you consider 'interesting', or 3) the people appear to be 'good', but will actually fuck you over on the slightest provocation if it means their getting ahead.
Welcome to the workforce. Please enjoy this complimentary propaganda pamphlet about your employer that we'll put between your feet so you can read it while you're grabbing your ankles.
It doesn't filter out any "wheat" if you define "wheat" as "someone who is more concerned about matching buzzwords and playing HR games than they are about describing their actual experience." If a job listing says "x years networking experience" and you describe "x years TCP/IP, y years administering Windows domain servers, z years maintaining Cisco routers", your resume gets shitcanned because you described your experience in a way that is useful to a hiring manager, but doesn't mean anything to some communications-major HR drone because the letters don't match. Conversely, if you say "x years networking experience", you get past the HR idiot, but the hiring manager (who really wanted to put "x years TCP/IP, y years administering Windows domain servers, z years maintaining Cisco routers" on the job description, but got shot down by HR because they didn't understand those words) looks at that and doesn't see the experience he was looking for described. Even if you put both "x years networking experience" AND detail said experience, you stand no better chance with the HR buffoon than someone who doesn't describe the experience, so your resume ends up in the circular file because someone else with the same words on their resume was in the HR jerk's fraternity.
So, to use one of your analogies, you've read the 'exacting' specifications in the job posting, and delivered on those expectations, but fail because the specifications were overly general and lacking detail. To use another, the hiring manager knows he/she needs someone who has worked on Chevy small-block truck engines, but the HR moron doesn't understand that the engine is a specific part of the car, and therefore asks for experience with cars. Not trucks, or Chevrolet trucks in particular, or even gas-fueled internal combustion engines, but automobiles in general. So, when the hiring manager conducts the interview with someone the HR schmendrick has put in front of him/her, and asks about their experience with Chevy small-block truck engines, they get a reply like "Oh, well, I've driven a car, and actually put gas in one once!"
TL:DR; HR has no business trying to filter candidates. It's like trying get a dog to understand long division.
Which does you exactly no good if you can't get past some idiot recruiter who doesn't know Java from espresso.
Fixed that for you.
Analyze data on a nightly basis. Store the results. Scrub database after results are stored. The asshole MBA that your startup hires because it isn't making enough money then has nothing to turn around and sell for a quick buck.
If you have to store *anything at all*, hire the expert. Can't hire the expert? Your startup is inadequately funded.
I've got news for you, sunshine: Nobody gives a shit whether you're happy or not. The world measures you by the size of your bank account.
If you want to learn all that touchy-feely useless bullshit, go ahead. It shouldn't be a requirement for a technical degree.
Wouldn't work. If colleges didn't make people take useless 'general education' courses, most people could complete their degree in 2 or 3 years. Losing that year or two of tuition is painful for the university.
For example: What possible use could an electrical engineering student have for a geology class? Or for a remedial-level English writing class (required for ALL freshman at my university regardless of major)? (You can test out of that one, but unless you got a stellar score on your SAT or ACT test in writing, forget it. You'll take the placement exam, write something that is better than what the TAs in the English department could write, and find your submission inadequate. It's in the university's interest to make you take that class.) Or, a Communications major (read: Advanced Unemployment Studies major) for three classes in the Physical Sciences curriculum?
To make matters worse, you can only use ONE class that is in the curriculum for your major to satisfy a 'general education' requirement. So, out of the FIFTEEN 'general education' courses, only one can be relevant to your major. And you can test out of exactly two (the aforementioned writing class, and a basic math skills class.) You can spend four semesters just filling these bullshit requirements! (Also, AP courses taken in high school do not count towards these requirements. So, congratulations on passing the AP Physics or Chemistry exam, now go take three Physical Science classes, only one of which is relevant to your major.)
The concept of a "well-rounded education" is a total scam. Students (or their parents, or whomever gives them scholarships) end up wasting $40,000 to $50,000 (or more) on courses that are completely irrelevant to what your chosen major is. A bachelor's degree should be structured to enable the student to make more money upon graduation than someone without that degree (or at least enough additional money to cover their insanely high student loan payments). Do you really think that hiring manager considering you for a programming job cares if you took and passed a Sociology class which is so brain-dead easy as to have no value whatsoever?
I have a three-year old son. In fifteen years, if he chooses to go to college (and I'm definitely not going to make him go, by the time he's going to college tuition will probably be so expensive as to make the investment have a negative return) he's going to take the gen ed classes at a local community college at a fraction of the cost of a big-deal four year university. Then, if he chooses to continue on to a 'four-year' university, he'll only have to pay for the four or five semesters it'll take him to complete courses in his major. Getting a college education should be considered a financial transaction, especially as expensive as it is these days.
No, it's more like you put 20 thermometers at various locations in your house and took careful measurements once a day for several years, and then compared the data sets year-to-year.
Changes in temperature in one specific location do not model global changes. Climate change models predict that some regions will become cooler on average, while some others will get warmer. But, overall, the average temperature of the planet is rising year-to-year. You can argue about the cause (and there are legitimate arguments to be made on both sides of the man-made vs. natural variation argument) but the data tells the truth.
"There are no tanks in Baghdad!"
...
Does anyone else know what this guy is talking about? What do you mean by 'unsafe'?
Get out of here with your 'logic' and 'sensible suggestions'! USA! USA! USA!
Seriously, though, I totally agree. I agree that welfare should not be a handout with no strings, but at the same time the helping hand should be there to help them change their lives to the point where they no longer need government assistance. Sometimes there are mental health issues that need to be addressed, or untreated medical conditions that aren't being adequately covered by our Medicaid/Medicare programs. Sometimes there needs to be skills training to make them more employable. The private sector can help as well; instead of exploiting the fact that the job market sucks by hiring these people into no-benefit, minimum wage jobs that nobody would take under normal circumstances, they could hire people into positions that have potential for raises and promotion based on hard work. I guarantee you that 99% of the jobs listed at your local unemployment office are dead-end garbage that only reward hard work with more hard work, and pay so little that frequently a person would be better off without the job at all. (At least then they might be eligible for Medicaid and have SOME health coverage.)
Your child care suggestion? You'd get laughed out of the room if you proposed that. The attitude is that they had the kids, it's their problem. They're literally being punished because they had children.
And yes, there are some who game the system to collect benefits without putting in any sincere effort. It's human nature for some people to want something for nothing (hell, it's probably human nature for all of us) but the baby shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater. The system isn't perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the alternative.
And I believe it is wrong for your being an idiot (not vaccinating your kid) to result in another child's death.
But congratulations! You had a choice! I'm sure the grieving parents will find that to be quite comforting.
What's your point?
What real benefit is there from having the choice? Anything that makes a difference in the real world?
The fact of the matter is that some people are choosing not to vaccinate their kids, because they're idiots. Why are you so emphatic about preserving people's rights to be idiots?
YES!!!!! This is the point I was trying to make.
Really? An artificial construct that serves no purpose other than to make you feel a little better about yourself is so important that you're willing to risk lives over it? What right do you have to make that choice for them? If you want to die for your ideals, that's your choice, it's your life to throw away.
Requiring immunization will save children's lives. Do you really think that your ideals are worth dead kids? I think that other kids' parents (myself included) would disagree.
Who defines how much is "too much"? It seems to me like the prevailing attitude towards software development expressed by non-technical management is that no matter how much the software costs, it's too much. Telling management that a piece of software will take X hours to do and cost Y dollars leads to them stamping their feet and throwing a hissy fit about how high those numbers are, no matter how conservative the estimate is. Instead of trusting their technical folks to know what they're talking about (which is, in fact, why they pay them), they assume since they don't understand it, it must not be important, and therefore shouldn't take that long. They make wildly inaccurate estimates of how long something should take based on the function set they've requested, not how difficult or time-consuming developing those features might be. To them, it's just another place to type something in or another number on the screen. It can be as easy as changing a form (I'm assuming web development here, since that's what I'm most familiar with) to accept an additional input, or it can be massively complicated. To management, adding a field is the same under all circumstances, so if one field takes one man-day to add, then all fields should only take one man-day to add.
First-hand experience: I used to work for a company that developed a certain kind of security utility. We were approaching a major revision, 1.x to 2.x. We were discussing timelines in an interdepartmental staff meeting, and our QA guy was asked for a time estimate to test the new product. He gave a number. Our VP of marketing (who, in a devastatingly stupid piece of management decision-making, was in charge of development) then said that he could have half that number, and said "QA always wants too much time. If it were up to them, the software would never be released." He didn't ask the QA guy why he thought it would take that long, or what the sub-tasks were, or how it was broken down by feature, or indeed any information that was used to justify the estimate, he just cut it in half because he assumed the QA guy was padding his estimate because he was lazy. To him, it was perfectly OK to sell a poorly tested product, because the testing wasn't a selling point, and selling points were all he was interested in. Who cares if the product is any good, as long as we can use it as a tool to separate people from their money.
When management makes decisions based on artificial timelines or appearances, space shuttles blow up.
Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Not vaccinating your kid exposes mine to potentially life-threatening disease. If you think that the (vanishingly small) risk of complications from vaccination is more important than my (vaccinated) kid's risk of contracting a disease that has mutated inside your (unvaccinated) kid.. well, you're bad at math. And, a selfish short-sighted asshole.
I've never really understood why it is that something you were going to do anyway becoming mandatory means that you should automatically resist it. You've lost nothing except the choice you weren't going to make, and society has benefited. Making vaccinations mandatory is not the same as Hitler storming across Europe, get a grip. If the slope were really that slippery, we would have fallen down into the abyss a long long time ago.
Obligatory car analogy: Sure, you have the right to drive around with faulty brakes. At least in this state, you do not need working brakes to pass the yearly inspection. You can argue that you're risking nobody except yourself.. except, you're not. Your passengers, and the other people on the roads that you slam into because you can't stop, would disagree.
Part of living in a civilized society is recognizing when your actions have consequences for others that have no say in the matter. Yes, you can make the choice not to vaccinate your kid. But realize that your actions have consequences for others. (It may come as a shock to you that there are other people in the world besides you and your child.) One of the major problems we (USA) have as a society is the attitude of "I've got mine, fuck you." Take responsibility for your choice; keep your kid away from mine. If your idealism leads to my kid's death.. then it's not worth protecting. Die for your ideals if you want; it's your life to throw away.
In that case, the employer is not bound by contract with the union. They are still free to do whatever they wish, unless they sign a collective bargaining agreement, and there's no reason to if it's just one employee. And you can bet the farm that that employee will be escorted to the door immediately and their belongings sent to them in the mail. The company can still function without that employee; it's not the same as all the employees going on strike.
There are legal protections from retaliation for attempting to organize one's fellow employees into a union, true. See my comment above; the employer will do it anyway and see the resulting lawsuit/settlement/fine as a cost of doing business.
That conversation goes like this:
Employee: "I'd like to talk to you about this overtime we're all doing. A lot of us have to neglect our other obligations to do it, and we'd like to find a way of having a better work/life balance."
Boss: "You'll work the hours I tell you to, and you'll like it. Shut up and get back to work or you're fired."
Even if an agreement is reached during compensation negotiations on hiring the employee, there are no consequences for saying "I don't care what you were told. You're a salaried employee, we're not obligated to pay overtime. Now, get back to work, you lazy shit."
Yes, that's probably the time to get a new job. But, with the economy being in the toilet, jobs are pretty hard to come by, even for talented programmers. Since you don't want to go bankrupt (or lose your or your family's health insurance), you do what you're told.
I am fortunate in the fact that I do not have one of those bosses. My manager does not care when I come in or when I leave, as long as I take paid time off accurately when I hand in my time card. When we came under a ridiculous deadline recently from a Big Important Potential Client, I was given a budget and told to find a freelance developer to help out. When I had to get up at 0300 recently to fix an upgrade to Apache that had gone wrong, he gave me a gift card as compensation. But, I work for a not-for-profit company, and thus don't have investors or stockholders demanding that I be worked to death to make them money.
The United States of America. Where the rules are made up and the workers don't matter.
I disagree. It's not the government's business what store I go to, who I visit for dinner, or what church (or lack thereof) I go to.
Unfortunately, they're just collecting information that is publicly available, albeit more efficiently. I don't know what can really be done about this. We could pass a law that restricts law enforcement from storing or using this data unless there is a warrant issued for someone's arrest. But, as we all know, people don't always follow the law. Maybe the evidence couldn't be used at trial, but that doesn't mean law enforcement wouldn't use it to gather potentially embarrassing information on a person of interest with the goal of using it as leverage to persuade someone to cooperate.
But, come to think of it, they can do that now, it's just harder and more expensive. This doesn't really change anything. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Doesn't sound too paranoid. What GP is describing is possible. If anything, it's pessimistic.
It's not paranoia if they ARE watching.
It should always be about compensation. Anyone who has as their goal 'furthering the field' or 'finding innovative ways of solving problems' as goals unto themselves is a total rube.
You would probably be able to save a bunch of time, money, and effort by putting the following, in big bold letters, on the top of your resume: "I'm a naive chump, please take advantage of me for your own gain." Of course indicating your primary motivation is not compensation will enable you to find a job more easily. Getting taken advantage of is core competency of its employees for most employers, and you don't need a PhD to be stupid. Think about it: Why should you spend four (or seven) years of your life living miserably, kissing up to egomaniac tenured professors, begging to be allowed into the treehouse, for someone else to be able to make billions off of your hard work?
Until our society decides that academic achievement and research that improves the human condition are more important than separating people from their money, financial remuneration is the only thing that is important, and anyone spending time and effort that does not directly work towards the goal of making more money than the other guy is wasting their lives.
Can you eat 'advancing the field'? Can you pay your mortgage with intellectual satisfaction? And you see direct interaction with the customer as a positive? (All that means is that your company doesn't have competent program managers to run interference between you and the customer that has no fucking idea what they want and expect you to give it to them anyway.)
Do you receive any compensation from putting people in touch with companies that want to hire them? No? I have a few recruiter friends that would like to kneecap you for setting the expectation that companies don't need to pay headhunters or otherwise spend money to hire qualified candidates, they can just get someone in the field to do it for free.
Take advantage of their idiocy, get the degree, then get another job somewhere else that pays more. They won't think twice about taking advantage of you, don't think twice about taking advantage of them.
Leaving aside the fact that unless you're independently wealthy (at least nine figures) choosing a 'hard research' career is moronic, if getting the "broader" degree is more immediately marketable, and has an ROI that isn't measured in decades, then that's probably the way to go.
Going back to school in your forties almost never ends well. Employers will wonder why you waited. (Yes, that's age discrimination of a sort, but the reality is that it happens everywhere, and there's nothing anyone can do about it,
That's, um, kind of the way it works. Congressmen and Senators use parliamentary procedures all the time to advance their agenda. On both sides of the aisle. This is how the game is played. The fact that Reid has even acknowledged that the Ryan budget exists is fairly remarkable, considering how radical it is. By keeping the bill off the floor of the Senate, the Democrats don't have to vote to block it, and thus seem obstructionist. Follow the scenario: The bill makes it to the Senate floor. Democratic senators vote against it, not only seeming obstructionist, but potentially ticking off people in their constituency who were on the fence about who they were going to vote for based on budgetary policy. If they were to temporarily take leave of their senses, and vote in favor of it, it would be political suicide. Bringing the bill to the Senate floor is a losing proposition. So, Reid doesn't bring it to the Senate floor. He's within his rights to do that. It makes good political sense to do that. It's pretty much a no-brainer.
Disenfranchising American voters is not the same as not bringing a bill to the floor of the Senate. What happens in the Senate is political bullshit, to be sure, but it's not nearly on the same level as the biggest effort to suppress the vote since the days of Jim Crow.
And they don't want to take the vote away from the "avg american". Just the ones that vote Democratic. They're not even trying to be anything approaching subtle about it. In Ohio, they tried to get away with making it harder for people in Democrat-leaning counties to vote by restricting the amount of time available to vote in their early voting program. Mysteriously, red counties got night and weekend hours, while the blue counties got "banker's hours".
See above. There's no upside to bringing it to the floor, where it will, barring a bout of mass insanity or LSD being slipped into Congress' water supply, fail. It's a waste of time at best and politically damaging at worst.
Yes, it does matter if they're exactly the same. If that student doesn't go on to college (at least right away), and wants to get a job in the community that requires computer literacy, they won't be able to say that they have multi-year experience working in a Windows environment. Or, if they get sat in front of a computer as part of the interview, and the HR drone sees that they don't know where anything is, that is that.
Is it right? Probably not. Fair? No, but nobody said life was fair. Does this happen? Yes.
It saddens me that this is the case, but most workplaces don't know Linux from Lima beans. They almost certainly don't know there are other operating systems other than Windows (if, by some miracle, they even know what an operating system IS), so when the HR drone asks them to describe the computer classes that they took in high school, saying that they used LibreOffice on Ubuntu is about the same as saying they didn't take any computer classes at all. The HR drone can't tick that checkbox. Consequently, they don't get the job.
So, unfortunately, as far as making someone viably employable is concerned, a lab running anything other than Windows (or, MAYBE, OS X) may as well not exist.
Colleges are guilty of this as well. You could be the most talented programmer in your entire class, but if you don't develop on Windows, you have no marketable skills. Most software/development companies aren't this thick, and will probably have heard of Linux, but the odds are that that company 1) won't hire someone straight out of college (somehow, you're supposed to graduate with two years of full-time paid experience), and 2) writes software that runs on Windows.