"probably close to 95% of it" is one of those ass-pulled stats.
I co-owned a small business with my partner of the time about a decade ago. Revenue was never more than $17,000/month, most of which was from reselling products to consumers. Our best seller started off with a 600% margin, yet still undercut all competitors, because we adapted a solution normally sold in bulk to a different market.
Even as others emulated us, we could achieve 50% margin years later. Why? the big boys didn't want to sell "own brands" at all, and none of the smaller players would have been able to afford a race to the bottom with us - I in-sourced nearly everything technical (to me), made it an academic challenge to continually minimise overheads, tried to maintain the best possible relationship with regulars so they'd be keen to maintain a community on our web site, and turned part of the house into a warehouse. Hard work, but fun as hell.
Yeah but contactless really just means no need to give authorisation by touching a PIN pad. So it's limited it to £20/€25 purchases. The amount of time taken to tap 4 numbers is always dwarfed by how long it takes to authorise and take payment, print and collect receipt.
A small company with CC swipes of $120k / year with an assumption CCs only being half their income, and the rest cash or invoices (checks), barely supports 1 person if the net margins are very high, in the 20-40% range and tax sheltering is very good.
Barely? Either you live somewhere particularly expensive, or you suffer upper-middle, "Wait, you mean people can live on THAT LITTLE?" disease.
It's humorous for two reasons: 1) "Square" the business name can be confused with "square" the algebraic shape; 2) Executives and beancounters are often perceived as "glorified calculators".
Mod parent up for being funny. +2 very funny, I say.
In the sense of merging of corporation and state, America's as close as the world has got to sustained Italian corporatism, i.e. fascism in the pre-Hitler sense.
(Hitler wanted the same thing, but he also wanted a land war in Asia, and that's where he went too fa.. oh wait. Seriously though, America is fascist, for the traditional European definition of fascism.)
It tends to corrupt, but that doesn't mean everyone becomes equally corrupted.
It's easy to ruin any public figure's reputation, so powerful interests have them all by the balls. If humans weren't such a bunch of self-righteous sanctimonious cunts who want glorious heroes rather than efficient administrators, we'd have politicians expert at things other than propagandising ("PR") and lawyering.
The whole point of the "capital" in "capitalism" is to NOT have to work hard. It's an economic system which takes advantage of human laziness. You may think this is good or bad, workable or unworkable, but that's still how it is.
The hardest workers I've ever met are all dirt poor. They either lack the fortune or the inclination to make money - IOW they're either disabled, dumb or idealistic. (And note well that there's nothing wrong with being any of these, with the proviso that being thick does not include wilful ignorance.)
Of course, any intelligent psychopath will game the testing system...
The really insidious+evil people take a while to identify, if they're ever identified at all. Fortunately, most people *aren't* like that - although the ones that are tend to have the great impact in ANY social setting.
The right wing tends to be against regulation that erodes personal freedoms.
The right wing tends to be for private property for the wealthy (other classes will be taxed disproportionately to the benefits they gain from society). And private property is a restriction, not a freedom. It's one that works rather well at maintaining a modern society, but it's still not a freedom.
Then there's abortion, homosex, stem cell research, urge to mention God everywhere, drugs war, attack of Iraq (the regulations allowing that to go forward were as freedom-eroding as they come), and, of course, the EPA itself! But I do like the EPA, so Nixon gets one gold star for that.
It was a good troll, but have you ever actually tried to use a mobile 'phone for anything mission critical? And "4G" is mostly marketing hype, providing significant speed improvements only if no more than about three people in the area are saturating their connections at once, and a horrible recipe for RFI.
Give me satellite any day. If my dish can see it, I can transmit to it. And if I can transmit to it, I get the capacity I am expecting.
Also my 4G plan, for business and home use, costs £8 for 5GB. Yes, I negotiated it. Yes, fuck you EE.
Wow, all that time spent trying to rank people. Why did you hire all these bad employees in the first place? Seems like an HR/management problem to me.
This thread is about bad employers, but your attitude smacks of bad employee.
If you think you're the one great employee picking up everyone else's slack, I have two items of news for you: 1) You're not; 2) Mediocre employees all think the same.
Another argument is that performance bonuses don't work at all (basic repetitive labour excepted).
You're paying people to do a job. If they won't do the job unless you pay them extra to do it, why are you even giving them a salary? And if their game is the bonus, they will be sure to do the least possible for the bonus, rather than the most possible for the job. This is especially significant in the absence of employer loyalty.
A quick search for studies on performance related pay may be enlightening.
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"probably close to 95% of it" is one of those ass-pulled stats.
I co-owned a small business with my partner of the time about a decade ago. Revenue was never more than $17,000/month, most of which was from reselling products to consumers. Our best seller started off with a 600% margin, yet still undercut all competitors, because we adapted a solution normally sold in bulk to a different market.
Even as others emulated us, we could achieve 50% margin years later. Why? the big boys didn't want to sell "own brands" at all, and none of the smaller players would have been able to afford a race to the bottom with us - I in-sourced nearly everything technical (to me), made it an academic challenge to continually minimise overheads, tried to maintain the best possible relationship with regulars so they'd be keen to maintain a community on our web site, and turned part of the house into a warehouse. Hard work, but fun as hell.
I use "my cat" in the sense "my boss". Clearly you are not familiar with cats.
"...are essentially..."
"...is fundamental..."
Fundamental...ism.
My cat enjoys a number of protections under English law. The right to own property is not one of them.
The charges for anyone paying with hairs on my genitalia are also unchanged.
And that's a scarce resource produced at a decreasing rate, hard to counterfeit.
WHY AREN'T YOU ALL USING MY PUBES AS CURRENCY, LIBERTARIANS?
Yeah but contactless really just means no need to give authorisation by touching a PIN pad. So it's limited it to £20/€25 purchases. The amount of time taken to tap 4 numbers is always dwarfed by how long it takes to authorise and take payment, print and collect receipt.
And then you made purchases at various outlets in Prague, Adelaide and Ouagadougou, about 5 to 7 months ago.
A small company with CC swipes of $120k / year with an assumption CCs only being half their income, and the rest cash or invoices (checks), barely supports 1 person if the net margins are very high, in the 20-40% range and tax sheltering is very good.
Barely? Either you live somewhere particularly expensive, or you suffer upper-middle, "Wait, you mean people can live on THAT LITTLE?" disease.
It's humorous for two reasons:
1) "Square" the business name can be confused with "square" the algebraic shape;
2) Executives and beancounters are often perceived as "glorified calculators".
Mod parent up for being funny. +2 very funny, I say.
In the sense of merging of corporation and state, America's as close as the world has got to sustained Italian corporatism, i.e. fascism in the pre-Hitler sense.
(Hitler wanted the same thing, but he also wanted a land war in Asia, and that's where he went too fa.. oh wait. Seriously though, America is fascist, for the traditional European definition of fascism.)
This is the third world verion of "we are not poor", of course.
A cousin married into some Indian aristocratic family. They're not that poor either.
It tends to corrupt, but that doesn't mean everyone becomes equally corrupted.
It's easy to ruin any public figure's reputation, so powerful interests have them all by the balls. If humans weren't such a bunch of self-righteous sanctimonious cunts who want glorious heroes rather than efficient administrators, we'd have politicians expert at things other than propagandising ("PR") and lawyering.
For the hundredth time.
Capitalism does not reward hard work.
It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
The whole point of the "capital" in "capitalism" is to NOT have to work hard. It's an economic system which takes advantage of human laziness. You may think this is good or bad, workable or unworkable, but that's still how it is.
The hardest workers I've ever met are all dirt poor. They either lack the fortune or the inclination to make money - IOW they're either disabled, dumb or idealistic. (And note well that there's nothing wrong with being any of these, with the proviso that being thick does not include wilful ignorance.)
Meanwhile hippy veggies such as myself are swinging in the trees making suggestive motions with our bananas and flinging shit on the crowd below.
Of course, any intelligent psychopath will game the testing system...
The really insidious+evil people take a while to identify, if they're ever identified at all. Fortunately, most people *aren't* like that - although the ones that are tend to have the great impact in ANY social setting.
The lumber lobby can't be felled that easily...
Wood doesn't grow on trees, you know!
The right wing tends to be against regulation that erodes personal freedoms.
The right wing tends to be for private property for the wealthy (other classes will be taxed disproportionately to the benefits they gain from society). And private property is a restriction, not a freedom. It's one that works rather well at maintaining a modern society, but it's still not a freedom.
Then there's abortion, homosex, stem cell research, urge to mention God everywhere, drugs war, attack of Iraq (the regulations allowing that to go forward were as freedom-eroding as they come), and, of course, the EPA itself! But I do like the EPA, so Nixon gets one gold star for that.
Looking at your username, I'm sure there's a joke about Stalingrad in there somewhere.
It was a good troll, but have you ever actually tried to use a mobile 'phone for anything mission critical? And "4G" is mostly marketing hype, providing significant speed improvements only if no more than about three people in the area are saturating their connections at once, and a horrible recipe for RFI.
Give me satellite any day. If my dish can see it, I can transmit to it. And if I can transmit to it, I get the capacity I am expecting.
Also my 4G plan, for business and home use, costs £8 for 5GB. Yes, I negotiated it. Yes, fuck you EE.
And you also sound like you'd be great to work with.
Yeah, I'd be motivated to release by date X, even if it means cutting corners, or even being dishonest about readiness.
A magic formula to stop hiring so many bad employees that you need to fire ~10% every 3 months? Most companies seem to manage it already.
A bad employee is identified qualitatively, not quantitatively.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!
Wow, all that time spent trying to rank people. Why did you hire all these bad employees in the first place? Seems like an HR/management problem to me.
This thread is about bad employers, but your attitude smacks of bad employee.
If you think you're the one great employee picking up everyone else's slack, I have two items of news for you:
1) You're not;
2) Mediocre employees all think the same.
Another argument is that performance bonuses don't work at all (basic repetitive labour excepted).
You're paying people to do a job. If they won't do the job unless you pay them extra to do it, why are you even giving them a salary? And if their game is the bonus, they will be sure to do the least possible for the bonus, rather than the most possible for the job. This is especially significant in the absence of employer loyalty.
A quick search for studies on performance related pay may be enlightening.