You ain't kidding. I went to high school in california and got my first driver's license there. During the driving test, you start with 100 points, then they deduct points for each mistake. If you get below 70, you fail. I ran a red light during my driving test and didn't use my turn signal during a u-turn. I passed with an 83. A friend of mine (a girl) passed with a 72. She backed over a mailbox during a three point turn.
The problem I desperately want fixed is the bug that makes the browser window freeze and grey out every few minutes (on ubuntu heron). There's "solutions" to this problem all over the internet, but none of them really work.
IANAC (chemist), but I have 4 amigas and have been following this topic with great interest on the amiga forums. From what I understand, this isn't oxidizing anything. Rather, it's unoxidizing. The ultraviolet light destabilizes the oxygen atom on the fire retardant chemical. The peroxide ensures that there's a convenient place for the oxygen atom to go.
Also, you're right about the catalyst. It's added to speed up the process.
I'm not suggesting that pc repair would be a good business to get into now. But when the dollar collapses later this year or early next, those cheap computers will cost a lot more dollars since they're all made in taiwan or china. Suddenly it will be a lot more cost-effective to repair old machines
Capitalism and employment based on merit and all is fine for most banks, until they are sweating - then the government/nanny needs to protect them from any possibility of harm.
It wasn't that diet cokes have a lot of sugar. It's that they're just as evil. They contain phosphoric acid just like the real stuff. They're also a chemical soup with no nutritional value. And I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that diet soft drinks can trick your body into performing the exact same insulin spike, still contributing to obesity.
You must stop this now. Consider my experience. I used to love Coke as a kid. My parents limited it, but I still drank more than I should have. Once I became an adult, there were no more limits. I drank as much as I wanted, when I wanted. I was tall and skinny (6'5", 185lbs) and ran 2 miles a day so I thought I could get away with it.
10 years later, I weighed 300lbs. I finally decided to do something about it. So like a good analyst, I did a quick inventory of what I was drinking and eating. I had never done this before. I was astonished.
I could eat an entire 5lb chicken, or an entire large pizza by myself. My typical day started with a visit to the clown for a #2 with a large coke. I didn't drink coffee so I replaced it with coke. I'd drink another can before lunch. Then 2 or 3 of those mugs of coke a chili's. Then another can or two in the afternoon. Then maybe dinner out with something similar to the 2 or 3 chili's mugs. If we ate at home, it would be a large glass or maybe 2 cans of coke in the evening.
If you add all the ounces up and divide by 12, I was drinking the equivalent of 13 cans of coke a day. This is 1800 calories. It's the same as 196 of those white sugar packets. Just coke.
When you consider that both my parents are diabetic, and diabetes killed my grandfather, you can see how dangerous this is. Now, I drink maybe 4 cans of coke per year. I'm now 260 which is 20lbs more than I usually am, which i'm in the process of losing.
All soft drinks are evil. They cause insulin spikes, which contribute to obesity. They cause insulin resistance long term. And the phosphoric acid leaches calcium from your bones causing brittle bones in old age. Diet soft drinks are no better. Stop drinking them before it's too late.
Go to grad school while you wait for the economy to turn around. In fact, you might want to go for a PhD.
If you want a graduate degree for the sake of a graduate degree, then great. If you seek a graduate degree because you think it will make you more successful or earn you a higher salary, you'll be disappointed. I've been given jobs over people with advanced degrees because of my experience. That's all that matters in the real world.
If you "take whatever you can get" now, you will artificially hurt your earnings potential because generally you will only ever get a cost of living raise and 3-5% of 40k for 20 years puts you way way behind 3-5% of 60 or 70k over 20 years.
Do not ever consider the raises you get form salaried jobs a raise. 3-5% does not keep up with inflation. And I don't mean the CPI. The CPI is a made-up number designed to reduce social security benefits. They only way to get a proper raise is to change jobs in your profession.
And unless you can change your career, you won't get a big bump in salary when the economy improves. Even if the economy gets a lot better, they aren't going to suddenly give you a 20 or 30% raise for the same or similar job you've been doing for much less.
A salaried job will never give you a big raise for any reason other than a promotion. And even then, it's not likely to be much more. When times are good and they need to pay more to keep people, it will be in the form of bonuses. This way they can easily take it away from you when the economy tanks again.
I have not done this myself because some of my friends have. When I saw what they were going through I decided to avoid the idea altogether for several reasons.
First of all, if your job is stable you may want to read the contract or the NDA that the company had you sign when you became employed. Many companies forbid you from working for profit or working at all. Wanna risk your well paid job? Be my guest.
If you have an employer with this attitude, find a new job. You're either providing a level of service that's adequate for the salary they're paying you, or you're not.
Another good reason for not accepting the second job is because it is not going to be a second job for you. In the eyes of your client, your second job is going to be his primary or the only job. This means the client will not expect less from you by any means. Calls at work during business hours, meeting during weekends and weekdays, etc. Are you ready for it? And if you for some reason manage your time well and actually get both of the jobs done then say good-bye to your free time.
This depends entirely on the expectations you set with the part-time client. If you can't take calls during the day, and they're not ok with that, then it's not really a workable deal, right? Many part time spots are simply paid development work that doesn't need much interaction with the client.
And as for free time, if you want to work in your free time, so be it. If you want to work for some of your free time or none of it, then so be it. You're free to choose.
I have observed a friend of mine who made a good hourly rate at his part time job. No time to relax led to constant family troubles which are NOT worth anything in the long run. The extra money that he had made on the side essentially went to family therapy of the 21st century: Shopping sprees, vacations one can barely afford, etc. The net income was zero if you don't count the lost nerve cells. That's why I recommend you to look the other way and if you do need to save some money review your family budget.
Surely you didn't try to imply that all people would behave this way, right? Work/life balance is for each person to decide on their own.
We're at the beginning of the Second Great Depression. If you have a job that you think will survive the depression, keep it. Even if it sucks. Ten years ago, you could have moved to a hot job at a fun dot-com in a week. Not now. Google just had a layoff. Microsoft is rumored to be laying off 17,000 people.
If you think a salaried job will save you, just look at the numbers you posted. A good friend of mine just watched a major financial firm lay off 10% of it's salaried employees, but keep all their consultants. Consulting might actually be more secure.
US manufacturing activity is now down to its lowest level since 1948. That's right, we've lost 60 years of growth.
I think you have the cart before the horse. This is entirely because we devastated our manufacturing base over the last decade or two. This is contributing to the current mess, not caused by the current mess.
It's going to be a long recession. Japan's housing bubble popped in 1989, and twenty years later, Japan still hasn't recovered.
This is because of bad monetary policy on the part of the japanese in response to financial problems unrelated to the ones we're experiencing now, mistakes we're repeating by the way, not some indicator of how bad things are.
The Nikkei index is around a quarter of its peak in the 1980s. That's what a crash in housing looks like. Japan also has a better "safety net" than the US does in the post-Reagan era.
There are a lot of parallels between what happened to japan and today. But what's happing today is far worse. What we've seen so far is the result of the subprime mortgage backed securities blowing up. We had a good economy going into that, now we don't. And ahead of us still is the alt-A MBS blowup, the commercial real estate blowup, the credit card blowup, and the auto loan blowup. All of that exacerbated by the threat of a real world-wide collapse caused by the web of credit default swaps flying around. This has the potential to make the depression look like a picnic.
But life goes on. And who's to say that a salaried job was better than a consulting job if they both end after 6 months. So my advice is to make as much money as you can while you can. Get out of debt. Save your money.
Freelance PHP coders (of which I know several) can easily make $75 / hr, $125 with some experience and a decent customer base. I'd be surprised if java coders couldn't beat that quite easily. The trick is building a customer base, which starts to take care of itself after a while if you do a good job.
The H1s have devastated java. The only way to get $100+ doing java is if you're the architect.
As you're probably aware, Freelance Contracting can be quite profitable and allow you to get a decent wage and time off.
I've heard of plenty of people that work 3 months, take 3 months off etc.
I want to do this, but the cost of the lost opportunity is just too high. I'd rather keep working and retire early.
If you were to go this route, you'd need to ensure the following:
Your qualifications match your experience. JEE developer? Get SCWCD at least
I have no certifications, just a CS degree. I've been consulting for more than a decade. What matters more is the experience on your resume and the performance in the job interview.
If you're not in a large city, or near one that has a decent size business district, be prepared to travel
I agree. Living in a los angeles or new york will give you access to a larger pool of available contracts.
Sign up with a large but respectable contracting agency
Why just one? I switch consulting firms with almost every contract.
I'm not sure what part-time work is available in the IT industry: contracting would probably be the most representative of what you're requiring.
I currently have two side projects that could be called part time in addition to my main contract. In my experience, no one wants to work part time with consultants. I'm not sure, but I think this is because the perception by upper management is that salaried people are somehow more trustworthy, and therefore consultants need to be watched more closely. This is obviously crap. But I think this is what's happening. Because of this attitude, my side projects are almost always old customers that trust me now. That takes quite a while to build up.
Failing that, try and get qualifications and see if your current employer will support you financially (training, certification, degree?). If you're improving your CV, they may be more inclined to give you different work.
You're suggesting that his current employer will pay him extra to do side projects? Since you used the term CV, I'm guessing you're a Brit. And employer paying you for extra work in the US would never happen. They would just expect you to do the extra work for free.
My company needs Java developers. We're looking to build a list of available contractors to do work over the next year as demand for our services grows. If you want to work in S. Florida, e-mail me.
I'm sure there are similar opportunities elsewhere. You just have to find them. A recruiter might be a good place to start.
Why does he have to work in south florida? Can't he work anywhere? He's writing software, not painting houses.
For software development, and a lot of other professions, we really need to get out of this location based mind-set. It's totally unnecessary. It's a waste of time commuting. It's a waste of energy commuting. It's a waste of gas, office space, the expense of computers in the office, space on public transportation, business clothes. It goes on and on. We should all be working from home.
I've been a consultant for a long time. I'm currently writing a book on the subject. My advice to the OP is to wait until april, then take a job as a W2 consultant to start. Once the increased income from consulting is coming in, use that money to incorporate and set things up the right way.
My advice, if you are seriously considering going free lance and contracting....INCORPORATE YOURSELF!!
This will help you out in many ways...after all, this is a business. With incorporation, you can protect your private assets legally.
eh, not so much. If someone really wanted to sue you, your corporate veil will provide almost no protection. That only works for large corporations with large boards of directors who are making decisions as a group. If it's just you, they can easily pierce your corporation because it's obvious that you're making all the decisions. Instead, carry the proper liability insurance, and incorporate for the tax benefits.
And if you are wanting to 1099 contract, well most places for tax purposes, are very nervous about doing that to an individual, but are more protected by corp-2-corp contracting.
Body shops don't care about this. They're happy to work with you on 1099. It's a bad idea though. You'll get roasted on taxes.
This came about largely from an old MS case, where contractors came back and successfully sued for employment benefits..etc.
This is why most companies won't hire consultants directly, instead going through body shops.
You can also do some neat things like for health insurance...get a private policy...if you get one with a high deductible ($1200 this year?)...you can set up a Health Savings Account...and this year, you can sock away $2900 PRE-tax...pay your normal every day medical needs with this money...and what you don't use...can be invested to grow, and it is not use or lose...this money keeps going for you, and can be accessed even for non-health related expenses at retirement.
You're doing it wrong. (at least if you have a family) Private health insurance sucks. It's ridiculously expensive and doesn't cover anything. They won't even insure three of my children. Instead, switch to article C, then use an employer of record service and become their employee. Have the service bill your corporation for the time that you work. The money you pay to the employer of record is an expense and isn't taxed on the corporate side. The paycheck you get from the employer of record has normal withholding. You can adjust how much you send to the employer of record, but the lower limit with mine is $60k a year. They charge me 3% for the service which is made up for through tax savings from medical expenses, so it's free. I also get access to a 401k (over and above the SEP IRA limits) and their GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE.
You might also look into being a contract employee first. This will give you the taste of both worlds...and with this if you are a US citzen, you might can get into govt/DoD contracting, which is gravy. You can get LONG term contracts this way...starting out with an established place as a contract employee (make sure you get paid hourly, not salary)..they often will pick up the price of getting you a clearance. THAT can help you later on for jobs, and pay.
I agree, avoid salaried employment with a consulting firm. It truly is the worst of both worlds. But W2 hourly is a good way to start.
Anyway, good luck. ONe thing...before you make the total leap to inde...save, save, save money! You need to have some serious "Fuck You" money put back...and keep it back while contracting, not only for dry periods....but, for times when you just wanna take off 2-4 months, to do fun things or be with your kids if you like.
One thing that's not obvious when you first switch to consulting is where you're working in the cash flow strea
I have a few tips for anyone trying to revive an old game. First and foremost, don't screw up the controls. Don't try to recreate robotron for example on a console with only 1 directional control (gameboy sp, i'm looking at you)
Also, rather than a old version and a new souped-up version of an old game, I'd rather see 1 game that starts out looking like the old one, but with 100 little options that would allow you to customize the game. Extra visual enhancements would be great, like tempest on the jaguar, but make them optional. And what about more options? Xevious with 50 solvalous would be nice for example. Or speed ups/slow downs. Or new levels for an old game. New weapons. Be creative. Provide more options. Don't just churn out crap and hope to milk us old guys.
This might be a get-off-my-lawn moment, but I was recently signed up for a game cheat code "service" that was billed to my sprint account by a third party. $20 a month they wanted for this thing. And they way you sign up is by simply replying to an sms spam message. I was getting these at the rate of a couple a month for quite a while. And in spite of the 20c a crack, i ignored them. My wife finally caught that they had signed us up for the service a couple months ago even though I never replied to the messages. I complained and got everything credited, then they opted me out of half a dozen similar sms spam lists.
I think this is a scam that sprint is in on. I'm sure they get a hefty cut of that $20 a month. And I'm sure a lot of people don't realize they're getting dinged. This charge was poorly marked and buried in the bill. And I'm sure this is all by design. It should take more than an sms reply to get signed up for a $20 a month service.
I've heard that some of the British crown jewels are made from aluminum. And similarly, there is aluminum jewelry from the Tzars in the armory in moscow.
Slashdot Mirror
That won't work. Jeff Goldblum taught us that the aliens are all using apples.
I hear there's this guy named Zovi who can fix that for you in 30 minutes or less.
Sometimes I wonder whether we'd be better off.
Since I moved here, I've been calling it the People's Republic of Illinois.
You ain't kidding. I went to high school in california and got my first driver's license there. During the driving test, you start with 100 points, then they deduct points for each mistake. If you get below 70, you fail. I ran a red light during my driving test and didn't use my turn signal during a u-turn. I passed with an 83. A friend of mine (a girl) passed with a 72. She backed over a mailbox during a three point turn.
The problem I desperately want fixed is the bug that makes the browser window freeze and grey out every few minutes (on ubuntu heron). There's "solutions" to this problem all over the internet, but none of them really work.
IANAC (chemist), but I have 4 amigas and have been following this topic with great interest on the amiga forums. From what I understand, this isn't oxidizing anything. Rather, it's unoxidizing. The ultraviolet light destabilizes the oxygen atom on the fire retardant chemical. The peroxide ensures that there's a convenient place for the oxygen atom to go.
Also, you're right about the catalyst. It's added to speed up the process.
I'm not suggesting that pc repair would be a good business to get into now. But when the dollar collapses later this year or early next, those cheap computers will cost a lot more dollars since they're all made in taiwan or china. Suddenly it will be a lot more cost-effective to repair old machines
Capitalism and employment based on merit and all is fine for most banks, until they are sweating - then the government/nanny needs to protect them from any possibility of harm.
FTFY
It wasn't that diet cokes have a lot of sugar. It's that they're just as evil. They contain phosphoric acid just like the real stuff. They're also a chemical soup with no nutritional value. And I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that diet soft drinks can trick your body into performing the exact same insulin spike, still contributing to obesity.
You must stop this now. Consider my experience. I used to love Coke as a kid. My parents limited it, but I still drank more than I should have. Once I became an adult, there were no more limits. I drank as much as I wanted, when I wanted. I was tall and skinny (6'5", 185lbs) and ran 2 miles a day so I thought I could get away with it.
10 years later, I weighed 300lbs. I finally decided to do something about it. So like a good analyst, I did a quick inventory of what I was drinking and eating. I had never done this before. I was astonished.
I could eat an entire 5lb chicken, or an entire large pizza by myself. My typical day started with a visit to the clown for a #2 with a large coke. I didn't drink coffee so I replaced it with coke. I'd drink another can before lunch. Then 2 or 3 of those mugs of coke a chili's. Then another can or two in the afternoon. Then maybe dinner out with something similar to the 2 or 3 chili's mugs. If we ate at home, it would be a large glass or maybe 2 cans of coke in the evening.
If you add all the ounces up and divide by 12, I was drinking the equivalent of 13 cans of coke a day. This is 1800 calories. It's the same as 196 of those white sugar packets. Just coke.
When you consider that both my parents are diabetic, and diabetes killed my grandfather, you can see how dangerous this is. Now, I drink maybe 4 cans of coke per year. I'm now 260 which is 20lbs more than I usually am, which i'm in the process of losing.
All soft drinks are evil. They cause insulin spikes, which contribute to obesity. They cause insulin resistance long term. And the phosphoric acid leaches calcium from your bones causing brittle bones in old age. Diet soft drinks are no better. Stop drinking them before it's too late.
Go to grad school while you wait for the economy to turn around. In fact, you might want to go for a PhD.
If you want a graduate degree for the sake of a graduate degree, then great. If you seek a graduate degree because you think it will make you more successful or earn you a higher salary, you'll be disappointed. I've been given jobs over people with advanced degrees because of my experience. That's all that matters in the real world.
If you "take whatever you can get" now, you will artificially hurt your earnings potential because generally you will only ever get a cost of living raise and 3-5% of 40k for 20 years puts you way way behind 3-5% of 60 or 70k over 20 years.
Do not ever consider the raises you get form salaried jobs a raise. 3-5% does not keep up with inflation. And I don't mean the CPI. The CPI is a made-up number designed to reduce social security benefits. They only way to get a proper raise is to change jobs in your profession.
And unless you can change your career, you won't get a big bump in salary when the economy improves. Even if the economy gets a lot better, they aren't going to suddenly give you a 20 or 30% raise for the same or similar job you've been doing for much less.
A salaried job will never give you a big raise for any reason other than a promotion. And even then, it's not likely to be much more. When times are good and they need to pay more to keep people, it will be in the form of bonuses. This way they can easily take it away from you when the economy tanks again.
You think that's funny? Can you guess what his name means in japanese?
Baka
Piano Porn?
That gives "tickle the ivories" a whole new meaning.
I have not done this myself because some of my friends have. When I saw what they were going through I decided to avoid the idea altogether for several reasons.
First of all, if your job is stable you may want to read the contract or the NDA that the company had you sign when you became employed. Many companies forbid you from working for profit or working at all. Wanna risk your well paid job? Be my guest.
If you have an employer with this attitude, find a new job. You're either providing a level of service that's adequate for the salary they're paying you, or you're not.
Another good reason for not accepting the second job is because it is not going to be a second job for you. In the eyes of your client, your second job is going to be his primary or the only job. This means the client will not expect less from you by any means. Calls at work during business hours, meeting during weekends and weekdays, etc. Are you ready for it? And if you for some reason manage your time well and actually get both of the jobs done then say good-bye to your free time.
This depends entirely on the expectations you set with the part-time client. If you can't take calls during the day, and they're not ok with that, then it's not really a workable deal, right? Many part time spots are simply paid development work that doesn't need much interaction with the client.
And as for free time, if you want to work in your free time, so be it. If you want to work for some of your free time or none of it, then so be it. You're free to choose.
I have observed a friend of mine who made a good hourly rate at his part time job. No time to relax led to constant family troubles which are NOT worth anything in the long run. The extra money that he had made on the side essentially went to family therapy of the 21st century: Shopping sprees, vacations one can barely afford, etc. The net income was zero if you don't count the lost nerve cells. That's why I recommend you to look the other way and if you do need to save some money review your family budget.
Surely you didn't try to imply that all people would behave this way, right? Work/life balance is for each person to decide on their own.
We're at the beginning of the Second Great Depression. If you have a job that you think will survive the depression, keep it. Even if it sucks. Ten years ago, you could have
moved to a hot job at a fun dot-com in a week. Not now. Google just had a layoff. Microsoft is rumored to be laying off 17,000 people.
If you think a salaried job will save you, just look at the numbers you posted. A good friend of mine just watched a major financial firm lay off 10% of it's salaried employees, but keep all their consultants. Consulting might actually be more secure.
US manufacturing activity is now down to its lowest level since 1948. That's right, we've lost 60 years of growth.
I think you have the cart before the horse. This is entirely because we devastated our manufacturing base over the last decade or two. This is contributing to the current mess, not caused by the current mess.
It's going to be a long recession. Japan's housing bubble popped in 1989, and twenty years later, Japan still hasn't recovered.
This is because of bad monetary policy on the part of the japanese in response to financial problems unrelated to the ones we're experiencing now, mistakes we're repeating by the way, not some indicator of how bad things are.
The Nikkei index is around a quarter of its peak in the 1980s. That's what a crash in housing looks like. Japan also has a better "safety net" than the US does in the post-Reagan era.
There are a lot of parallels between what happened to japan and today. But what's happing today is far worse. What we've seen so far is the result of the subprime mortgage backed securities blowing up. We had a good economy going into that, now we don't. And ahead of us still is the alt-A MBS blowup, the commercial real estate blowup, the credit card blowup, and the auto loan blowup. All of that exacerbated by the threat of a real world-wide collapse caused by the web of credit default swaps flying around. This has the potential to make the depression look like a picnic.
But life goes on. And who's to say that a salaried job was better than a consulting job if they both end after 6 months. So my advice is to make as much money as you can while you can. Get out of debt. Save your money.
Freelance PHP coders (of which I know several) can easily make $75 / hr, $125 with some experience and a decent customer base. I'd be surprised if java coders couldn't beat that quite easily. The trick is building a customer base, which starts to take care of itself after a while if you do a good job.
The H1s have devastated java. The only way to get $100+ doing java is if you're the architect.
As you're probably aware, Freelance Contracting can be quite profitable and allow you to get a decent wage and time off.
I've heard of plenty of people that work 3 months, take 3 months off etc.
I want to do this, but the cost of the lost opportunity is just too high. I'd rather keep working and retire early.
If you were to go this route, you'd need to ensure the following:
I have no certifications, just a CS degree. I've been consulting for more than a decade. What matters more is the experience on your resume and the performance in the job interview.
If you're not in a large city, or near one that has a decent size business district, be prepared to travel
I agree. Living in a los angeles or new york will give you access to a larger pool of available contracts.
Sign up with a large but respectable contracting agency
Why just one? I switch consulting firms with almost every contract.
I'm not sure what part-time work is available in the IT industry: contracting would probably be the most representative of what you're requiring.
I currently have two side projects that could be called part time in addition to my main contract. In my experience, no one wants to work part time with consultants. I'm not sure, but I think this is because the perception by upper management is that salaried people are somehow more trustworthy, and therefore consultants need to be watched more closely. This is obviously crap. But I think this is what's happening. Because of this attitude, my side projects are almost always old customers that trust me now. That takes quite a while to build up.
Failing that, try and get qualifications and see if your current employer will support you financially (training, certification, degree?). If you're improving your CV, they may be more inclined to give you different work.
You're suggesting that his current employer will pay him extra to do side projects? Since you used the term CV, I'm guessing you're a Brit. And employer paying you for extra work in the US would never happen. They would just expect you to do the extra work for free.
My company needs Java developers. We're looking to build a list of available contractors to do work over the next year as demand for our services grows. If you want to work in S. Florida, e-mail me.
I'm sure there are similar opportunities elsewhere. You just have to find them. A recruiter might be a good place to start.
Why does he have to work in south florida? Can't he work anywhere? He's writing software, not painting houses.
For software development, and a lot of other professions, we really need to get out of this location based mind-set. It's totally unnecessary. It's a waste of time commuting. It's a waste of energy commuting. It's a waste of gas, office space, the expense of computers in the office, space on public transportation, business clothes. It goes on and on. We should all be working from home.
I've been a consultant for a long time. I'm currently writing a book on the subject. My advice to the OP is to wait until april, then take a job as a W2 consultant to start. Once the increased income from consulting is coming in, use that money to incorporate and set things up the right way.
My advice, if you are seriously considering going free lance and contracting....INCORPORATE YOURSELF!!
This will help you out in many ways...after all, this is a business. With incorporation, you can protect your private assets legally.
eh, not so much. If someone really wanted to sue you, your corporate veil will provide almost no protection. That only works for large corporations with large boards of directors who are making decisions as a group. If it's just you, they can easily pierce your corporation because it's obvious that you're making all the decisions. Instead, carry the proper liability insurance, and incorporate for the tax benefits.
And if you are wanting to 1099 contract, well most places for tax purposes, are very nervous about doing that to an individual, but are more protected by corp-2-corp contracting.
Body shops don't care about this. They're happy to work with you on 1099. It's a bad idea though. You'll get roasted on taxes.
This came about largely from an old MS case, where contractors came back and successfully sued for employment benefits..etc.
This is why most companies won't hire consultants directly, instead going through body shops.
You can also do some neat things like for health insurance...get a private policy...if you get one with a high deductible ($1200 this year?)...you can set up a Health Savings Account...and this year, you can sock away $2900 PRE-tax...pay your normal every day medical needs with this money...and what you don't use...can be invested to grow, and it is not use or lose...this money keeps going for you, and can be accessed even for non-health related expenses at retirement.
You're doing it wrong. (at least if you have a family) Private health insurance sucks. It's ridiculously expensive and doesn't cover anything. They won't even insure three of my children. Instead, switch to article C, then use an employer of record service and become their employee. Have the service bill your corporation for the time that you work. The money you pay to the employer of record is an expense and isn't taxed on the corporate side. The paycheck you get from the employer of record has normal withholding. You can adjust how much you send to the employer of record, but the lower limit with mine is $60k a year. They charge me 3% for the service which is made up for through tax savings from medical expenses, so it's free. I also get access to a 401k (over and above the SEP IRA limits) and their GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE.
You might also look into being a contract employee first. This will give you the taste of both worlds...and with this if you are a US citzen, you might can get into govt/DoD contracting, which is gravy. You can get LONG term contracts this way...starting out with an established place as a contract employee (make sure you get paid hourly, not salary)..they often will pick up the price of getting you a clearance. THAT can help you later on for jobs, and pay.
I agree, avoid salaried employment with a consulting firm. It truly is the worst of both worlds. But W2 hourly is a good way to start.
Anyway, good luck. ONe thing...before you make the total leap to inde...save, save, save money! You need to have some serious "Fuck You" money put back...and keep it back while contracting, not only for dry periods....but, for times when you just wanna take off 2-4 months, to do fun things or be with your kids if you like.
One thing that's not obvious when you first switch to consulting is where you're working in the cash flow strea
I have a few tips for anyone trying to revive an old game. First and foremost, don't screw up the controls. Don't try to recreate robotron for example on a console with only 1 directional control (gameboy sp, i'm looking at you)
Also, rather than a old version and a new souped-up version of an old game, I'd rather see 1 game that starts out looking like the old one, but with 100 little options that would allow you to customize the game. Extra visual enhancements would be great, like tempest on the jaguar, but make them optional. And what about more options? Xevious with 50 solvalous would be nice for example. Or speed ups/slow downs. Or new levels for an old game. New weapons. Be creative. Provide more options. Don't just churn out crap and hope to milk us old guys.
This might be a get-off-my-lawn moment, but I was recently signed up for a game cheat code "service" that was billed to my sprint account by a third party. $20 a month they wanted for this thing. And they way you sign up is by simply replying to an sms spam message. I was getting these at the rate of a couple a month for quite a while. And in spite of the 20c a crack, i ignored them. My wife finally caught that they had signed us up for the service a couple months ago even though I never replied to the messages. I complained and got everything credited, then they opted me out of half a dozen similar sms spam lists.
I think this is a scam that sprint is in on. I'm sure they get a hefty cut of that $20 a month. And I'm sure a lot of people don't realize they're getting dinged. This charge was poorly marked and buried in the bill. And I'm sure this is all by design. It should take more than an sms reply to get signed up for a $20 a month service.
I first read your response as "crap and poop". Maybe that's an accurate description.
not octo-pi
Yeah, that would be irrational.
I've heard that some of the British crown jewels are made from aluminum. And similarly, there is aluminum jewelry from the Tzars in the armory in moscow.