If you think that English is the only language with irregular plurals, irregular verbs, homonyms, and homophones, you need to study some more languages.
The point is that speaking passable English is easy, as in easier than many other languages. Speaking correct English is difficult, but many languages are more difficult.
P.S. I don't think the word "aught" means what you think it does.
Does anybody know where these habits are coming from?
They come from teachers who fail to make it clear that sloppy writing is unacceptable. When I was in school, I had an English teacher who took the worst examples from each writing assignment, anonymized them, and then went through them in front of the entire class. It took many iterations before we got it, but everyone's writing improved dramatically by the end of the year.
I think trying to get every kid to go off to a liberal arts college is a big mistake. I cringe when politicians use metrics like "percentage of kids who go directly from high school to college and graduate in 4 years" to measure the quality of the US public school system. For many kids, this is the wrong thing to do and by insisting that this is the only correct path to take, we are turning our youth into slaves to their student loans.
Kids need to learn about all the other options out there including taking a year to see the world. Done right, it doesn't need to cost a lot (I've stayed in places where my accomodations cost the equivalent of $3.50/night and that was split between 3 people), and the lessons you learn about other cultures can never be taught in a 500 seat lecture hall.
Other good options include trade school and apprenticeships. The avg. starting salary for the undergrad class of 2004 was $30,212. The starting salary for an electrician is about the same, but I have never heard of someone dropping $150,000 to become an electrician.
First of all, your friend from Germany is full of shit, and I find the tendency of Germans to make this rediculous claim to be highly amusing. You'll find pretty much anyone who went to university in Germany speaks English. But as soon as you leave the big cities, nobody speaks English worth a damn. Not that I really cared because I speak German. But I did put this "everyone speaks English" theory to the test, and it is an utter load of horseshit.
That being said, Germany has better English-language penetration than many other European countries. Take Spain, for instance. Good luck finding anyone there who speaks English. My wife and I had better luck between my German and her French when we attempting communication. Hungary was a similar situation. You get outside of Budapest and nobody speaks English. Many older folks there speak German, so we were ok, but there was one place we stayed where we communicated with the owner by means of a Hungarian to English dictionary (but not English to Hungarian).
It seems the countries most likely to have good English penetration are the ones where they have a small, but well-educated population. You can't really do a damn thing in the world if you don't speak English, so unless you life is confined to whatever little hamlet you grew up in, learning English is a requirement. For instance, in the Netherlands, I had no trouble finding English speakers (even though I speak roughly-passable Dutch). In Spain, it was impossible.
Not that I think everyone should have to learn English. I'm just pointing out facts here. Lord knows I don't speak the language of all 30 or so countries I've visited or lived in, and I'm not complaining about countries where people don't speak English. I'm just saying your friend is full of shit when he says everyone in Europe speaks English. I'm not saying that they should speak it, but I am saying that they do not speak it.
Judge: I see you are filing against the police or Victoria's Secret. What is the amount of your actual monetary damages?
bani: Uhhh... uhhhh....
Judge: Did I stutter?
bani: Well, I did not incur any actual monetary damages, Victoria's Secret did.
Judge: Let me get this straight, you are suing Victoria's Secret because they suffered damages?
bani: Well, someone on this website "slashdot" told me I should file in SCC against...
Judge: Get the fuck out of my courtroom you degenerate fuck. Stop wasting my time.
NDAs are and always have been enforceable. You are probably thinking of noncompetes in employment contracts, which are sometimes not enforceable.
Be that as it may, I would strongly urge you not to sign any agreement that you do not agree to, even if you believe that the offending items in it would not be enforceable. If it ever came down to it, it would cost you thousands of dollars in attorney's fees to get an answer in court as to what is enforceable and what is not, and you very well might lose! Especially if it can be shown that you signed the contract in bad faith.
The issue with ChoicePoint is that they are violating multiple provisions the Fair Credit Reporting Act. They are getting sued because of it and are losing.
If your previous employer gets a civil judgment against you for stealing office equipment, your prospective employers have a right to know that. Where ChoicePoint gets into trouble is that they do not use up-to-date data when they give their reports. This is a direct violation of the FCRA.
The reason this is so bad is let's say you are charged with a felony on 3/25/2005 and ChoicePoint pulls their quarterly criminal report from your county on 4/1/2005. Now let's say on 4/20/2005 the charge gets reduced to a misdomenor and on 5/10/2005 the charge gets dismissed because the cops caught the real guilty party.
If you applied for a job on 5/20/2005, and your prospective employer runs a ChoicePoint background check on 5/22/2005, that felony will come up on your criminal report, even though the charge was dismissed! And what's worse, ChoicePoint isn't even notifying the person whose background is being reported, as is required by the FCRA.
I read your other posts, and all I saw was you arguing that these contractors could probably get the IRS to reclassify them as HP employees. About that fact, we agree 100%.
But I've got a mountain of case law against your "Form SS-8" that says these poor saps are never gonna get HP bennies. This type of suit has been tried over and over again, with minimal success.
I still maintain that everything you wrote about the tax code was as engaging as the tax code could possibly be, yet completely irrelevant.
And, yes, obviously this legal action is still pending. There is no decision yet. But if HP loses this case, and they won't, but if they do, they need to take their entire legal department out into the parking lot and shoot them, because Vizcaino v. Microsoft tells them everything they need to know about how to fuck up one of these cases. (And MS still did pretty well in spite of themselves even though they did ultimately wind up settling.)
For more information on why the IRS rules are totally irrelevant to whether or not these contractors are entitled to benefits, see Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. v. Ratcliff, 141 F.3d 1405, 1409-10 (10th Cir. 1998). After a bunch of news carriers were reclassified by the IRS as common law employees, they sued to be included in the company's retirement plan. The carriers got their asses handed to them by the Tenth Circuit Court, however, because they signed agreements stating that they understood that were not employees and were not entitled to benefits. Same thing happened in Trombetta v. Cragin Fed. Bank for Savings Employee Stock Ownership Plan, 102 F.3d 1435, 1438-39 (7th Cir. 1996) to a bunch of loan originators.
Hopefully you didn't waste too much time reading irrelevant tax code. I hate tax code.
My best guess is that inept managers can't figure out how to justify the head count they need to get the job done, but somehow manage to get "temporary" funding for contractors.
Funding for contractors and employees usually will come out of different budgets. In some companies it's easier to get funding for contractors (overhead) than employees.
Also, FYI, SEPs are better than 401Ks. And you can take your tuition reimbursements and shove 'em. Good contractors make enough in a week to pay for a semester of college. Don't get me started about a gym membership.
Because no one other than the IRS gives a shit with the IRS thinks. Are these contractors/employees/whatevers really employees based on Form SS-8? Yes, they are probably employees. But look at the title of the form: "SS-8: Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding". This suit isn't about who should be paying employment taxes or withholding income tax, it's about benefits; and benefits law is not the same as tax law.
You can sign a contract to work for a big corp wherein you swear a thousand times that you're not an employee and you'll never seek employee benefits and you're not entitled to them and you'll never sue. You and your new bosses can sing from the mountaintops for a month that you are not an employee. And none of that matters.
Ironically enough, a signed contract matters a great deal. Check out Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. v. Ratcliff, 141 F.3d 1405, 1409-10 (10th Cir. 1998). After a bunch of news carriers were reclassified by the IRS as common law employees, they sued to be included in the company's retirement plan. The carriers got their asses handed to them by the Tenth Circuit Court, however, because they signed agreements stating that they understood that were not employees and were not entitled to benefits. Same thing happened in Trombetta v. Cragin Fed. Bank for Savings Employee Stock Ownership Plan, 102 F.3d 1435, 1438-39 (7th Cir. 1996) to a bunch of loan originators.
What really amazes me is how many idiot armchair attorneys there are here in slashdot who don't have the first fucking clue what they are talking about. I think some of my favorites are the ones who say, "Oh, yeah, go head and sign that contract, it's not enforceable, anyway." Well guess what, it often is enforceable. The Courts look at a number of different criteria to decide what is and is not enforceable and they often tend toward what is written in the contract. Courts will not interfere with a "meeting of the minds" without a good reason, so you'd better not sign something you disagree with, hoping to get unfavorable items stricken in court should a dispute arise.
You are a particularly funny example because you are so hostile toward those who correctly surmised that the contractors are not entitled to benefits since they signed away their rights before starting work. I sincerely hope that readers are more inclined to heed the case law from the Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts than the mindless pontification of some misinformed IRS employee.
I agree with you, you are probably an employee and not a contractor by IRS rules. Unfortunately, all that entitles you to is to have your income taxes withheld. It does not entitle you to any HP benefits because benefits law and tax law are different.
For more information, please see my previous post on the subject that points out to two similar cases were lost by the contractors/employees/whatevers.
Also, since I'm sure your lawyers are telling you all about how Microsoft lost a similar case back in '96-'97, please see a different previous post about why Microsoft lost and why HP is going to win this one.
Anyhow, the best of luck with everything. I know the market is tough out there, but hang in there!
1. Six years before the benefits suit, Microsoft officially conceeded to the IRS that those contractors were employees and reclassified the positions as employee rather than contractor. 2. Microsoft's benefit plan eligibility rules specifically referenced the IRS guidelines regarding who is eligible to participate and who is not.
Because Microsoft already conceeded that these folks were employees, they were not later allowed to argue that they were contractors (see legal concept of "estoppel"). And since they defined benefits eligibility based on the IRS rules, they were basically hosed. (But even with all that, Microsoft won round 1 but lost on appeal.)
I should hope that HP has learned their lesson from what happened to Microsoft in '96-'97 and revised their benefits plan language to exclude these contractors/employees/whatevers. Even on the offchance that they learned nothing from Microsoft's well-publicized defeat, HP is still probably fine since they never officially conceeded that these contractors were HP employees.
I have to side with HP on this one. This suit has no merit.
The contractors want HP benefits and are trying to get them through the tax law. This is not likely to work, since tax law, employment law, and benefits law are all different.
Check out Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. v. Ratcliff, 141 F.3d 1405, 1409-10 (10th Cir. 1998). After a bunch of news carriers were reclassified by the IRS as common law employees, they sued to be included in the company's retirement plan. The carriers got their asses handed to them by the Tenth Circuit Court, however, because they signed agreements stating that they understood that were not employees and were not entitled to benefits. Same thing happened in Trombetta v. Cragin Fed. Bank for Savings Employee Stock Ownership Plan, 102 F.3d 1435, 1438-39 (7th Cir. 1996) to a bunch of loan originators.
The only reason the IRS makes it so easy to reclassify contractors as employees is that they get more money that way! Employment and benefits law are not concerned with who the IRS thinks is really an employee for tax calculation purposes.
The fact is, even if these contractors can convince the IRS that they are employees of HP, all that will entitle them to is to get their income taxes withheld by HP. And wouldn't that be a huge victory for the little guy?
$50? An unreasonable amount? You're goddamn right that's unreasonable. You couldn't get me to change your fucking tire for $50/hour.
This guy is the company's entire IT department. If he's getting anything less than $100/hour he's being raped. If you think that's unreasonable, ask me what rate I change my clients.
BTW, if you can find me a plumber or electrician who only charges $50/hr, give me his number! I've got a ton of work for him to do.
Your days of being able to say this are numbered, buddy. Views are available in MySQL binary releases from version 5.0.1 and up. Feel free to DL and have a look.
If the IRS reclassifies these contractors as employees, all that means is that someone had better be paying employment taxes on them and withholding their income tax. That is what the "20 guidelines" are for. The IRS doesn't give a shit if you give your employees benefits or not.
These contractors are claiming that the IRS would consider them employees of HP so they are employees.
Well, guess what. Even if they get the IRS to reclassify them as employees, all these "employees" are entitled to is to have HP withhold their income taxes for them. That is the purpose of the guidelines. To determine HP's tax liability. For more information, please see IRS Form SS-8: Determination of Worker Status
for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes
and Income Tax Withholding. In it, you will find the infamous "20 questions" for determining whether or not your contractor is really a contractor for income tax purposes.
The IRS couldn't give two shits if you give your employees benefits or not as long as you withhold their income taxes.
Well, at least I don't have to worry about that one. I live in the Washington DC area, and if I said that I was stuck in bumper-to-bumber beltway traffic at 2:30am, no one would think twice about it.
Anonymous Coward had some good responses, but I want to add a little to what he said.
(1) As someone who, many years ago, regularly cheated on his girlfriends, I can say that using death is a great way to get out of a sticky situation. No one is going to fuck with "I have to be at a funeral so I can't go to your best friend's birthday party" or "I'm sorry I haven't had any time for you lately but my $relative is in the hospital and only has a month or so left to live and I am spending a lot of time visiting," etc.
It's also a great excuse for his refusal to commit to this other woman. My cousin's fiancee died in a plane crash 15 years ago. She hasn't had a stable relationship since then and has only flown a few times since then (and doing that required some serious drugs).
You get the idea. Death is a great cover for getting someone to back off. I feel guilty as hell now for using an actual dying and now dead family member as an excuse to keep together an impossible web of lies, but that is another story.
(2) Renting a car for long trips is not a strange thing to do. My wife (no, I have never cheated on my wife, btw) used to have to make a weekly drive to a city that is 100mi from our house and she regularly rented a car for the trip so she didn't put so many miles on her car. Many people rent sports cars for the weekend for fun. There are 100 reasons to rent a car when you already own one. Maybe he lent his truck to someone. Maybe he was trying to sell it. Maybe he just had it cleaned. Maybe he finds his truck to be uncomfortable to sit in for long stretches of time and prefers a car.
All I know for certain is that renting a car when you already own one most certainly does not make a person a murderer.
(3) If my wife were to suddenly disappear, to say that I would experience grief would be a monumentous understatement. You can't fault a man for grieving over his wife's disappearance.
I have not heard anything to make me certain beyond a reasonable doubt Scott killed Laci. If I were on that jury and this was all the evidence that I was given, I would have hung that jury from here to Kalamazoo.
I mean, really, motive plus circumstantial evidence is now proof beyond resonable doubt? I think not. That is way too easy. Are you trying to tell me that if my wife was murdered, all that would be needed to convict me would be motive (we have a $150,000 life insurance policy on each of us) plus a lack of an airtight alibi? I would not want to live in such a society.
Do internships while in school. Also, you can work for larger employers when you graduate. They won't pay as well, but they are more willing to hire and train someone. A small organization will have one sysadmin, if any. No way they'll take a chance on you. Also, work in your school's UNIX lab. They'll train you, and you'll have some experience you can point to.
But seriously, put yourself in an employer's shoes. Would you rather have someone with professional experience in a position similar to your need, or some greenbean who has installed a few gentoo boxes?
FYI, when I look at a resume, I do not fault someone too much for only having experience at nonprofits. If you find you can only get a job at a nonprofit, take it. By the way, there is no meaningful "working your way up" in a nonprofit. Get some experience and then go for-profit. Unless you want to work at a nonprofit for ideological reasons. BTW, nonprofits generally do pay. Just not very well. But your quality of life will generally be better. Very 9-5.
Slashdot Mirror
You have obviously never filed a lawsuit in small claims court before. Wake me up when you have.
Methinks the word "facetious" does not mean what you think it does. "Facetious" does not imply bad humor. It's more of a tongue-in-cheek.
The point is that speaking passable English is easy, as in easier than many other languages. Speaking correct English is difficult, but many languages are more difficult.
P.S. I don't think the word "aught" means what you think it does.
I'm pretty sure at this point, nobody knows how to spell segue anymore.
Kids need to learn about all the other options out there including taking a year to see the world. Done right, it doesn't need to cost a lot (I've stayed in places where my accomodations cost the equivalent of $3.50/night and that was split between 3 people), and the lessons you learn about other cultures can never be taught in a 500 seat lecture hall.
Other good options include trade school and apprenticeships. The avg. starting salary for the undergrad class of 2004 was $30,212. The starting salary for an electrician is about the same, but I have never heard of someone dropping $150,000 to become an electrician.
That being said, Germany has better English-language penetration than many other European countries. Take Spain, for instance. Good luck finding anyone there who speaks English. My wife and I had better luck between my German and her French when we attempting communication. Hungary was a similar situation. You get outside of Budapest and nobody speaks English. Many older folks there speak German, so we were ok, but there was one place we stayed where we communicated with the owner by means of a Hungarian to English dictionary (but not English to Hungarian).
It seems the countries most likely to have good English penetration are the ones where they have a small, but well-educated population. You can't really do a damn thing in the world if you don't speak English, so unless you life is confined to whatever little hamlet you grew up in, learning English is a requirement. For instance, in the Netherlands, I had no trouble finding English speakers (even though I speak roughly-passable Dutch). In Spain, it was impossible.
Not that I think everyone should have to learn English. I'm just pointing out facts here. Lord knows I don't speak the language of all 30 or so countries I've visited or lived in, and I'm not complaining about countries where people don't speak English. I'm just saying your friend is full of shit when he says everyone in Europe speaks English. I'm not saying that they should speak it, but I am saying that they do not speak it.
Judge: I see you are filing against the police or Victoria's Secret. What is the amount of your actual monetary damages?
bani: Uhhh... uhhhh....
Judge: Did I stutter?
bani: Well, I did not incur any actual monetary damages, Victoria's Secret did.
Judge: Let me get this straight, you are suing Victoria's Secret because they suffered damages?
bani: Well, someone on this website "slashdot" told me I should file in SCC against...
Judge: Get the fuck out of my courtroom you degenerate fuck. Stop wasting my time.
At least in the end she got what she wanted. 20 years worth of liquid subsistence.
Be that as it may, I would strongly urge you not to sign any agreement that you do not agree to, even if you believe that the offending items in it would not be enforceable. If it ever came down to it, it would cost you thousands of dollars in attorney's fees to get an answer in court as to what is enforceable and what is not, and you very well might lose! Especially if it can be shown that you signed the contract in bad faith.
If your previous employer gets a civil judgment against you for stealing office equipment, your prospective employers have a right to know that. Where ChoicePoint gets into trouble is that they do not use up-to-date data when they give their reports. This is a direct violation of the FCRA.
The reason this is so bad is let's say you are charged with a felony on 3/25/2005 and ChoicePoint pulls their quarterly criminal report from your county on 4/1/2005. Now let's say on 4/20/2005 the charge gets reduced to a misdomenor and on 5/10/2005 the charge gets dismissed because the cops caught the real guilty party.
If you applied for a job on 5/20/2005, and your prospective employer runs a ChoicePoint background check on 5/22/2005, that felony will come up on your criminal report, even though the charge was dismissed! And what's worse, ChoicePoint isn't even notifying the person whose background is being reported, as is required by the FCRA.
This is what is wrong with ChoicePoint.
But I've got a mountain of case law against your "Form SS-8" that says these poor saps are never gonna get HP bennies. This type of suit has been tried over and over again, with minimal success.
I still maintain that everything you wrote about the tax code was as engaging as the tax code could possibly be, yet completely irrelevant.
And, yes, obviously this legal action is still pending. There is no decision yet. But if HP loses this case, and they won't, but if they do, they need to take their entire legal department out into the parking lot and shoot them, because Vizcaino v. Microsoft tells them everything they need to know about how to fuck up one of these cases. (And MS still did pretty well in spite of themselves even though they did ultimately wind up settling.)
Hopefully you didn't waste too much time reading irrelevant tax code. I hate tax code.
Also, FYI, SEPs are better than 401Ks. And you can take your tuition reimbursements and shove 'em. Good contractors make enough in a week to pay for a semester of college. Don't get me started about a gym membership.
What really amazes me is how many idiot armchair attorneys there are here in slashdot who don't have the first fucking clue what they are talking about. I think some of my favorites are the ones who say, "Oh, yeah, go head and sign that contract, it's not enforceable, anyway." Well guess what, it often is enforceable. The Courts look at a number of different criteria to decide what is and is not enforceable and they often tend toward what is written in the contract. Courts will not interfere with a "meeting of the minds" without a good reason, so you'd better not sign something you disagree with, hoping to get unfavorable items stricken in court should a dispute arise.
You are a particularly funny example because you are so hostile toward those who correctly surmised that the contractors are not entitled to benefits since they signed away their rights before starting work. I sincerely hope that readers are more inclined to heed the case law from the Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts than the mindless pontification of some misinformed IRS employee.
I agree with you, you are probably an employee and not a contractor by IRS rules. Unfortunately, all that entitles you to is to have your income taxes withheld. It does not entitle you to any HP benefits because benefits law and tax law are different.
For more information, please see my previous post on the subject that points out to two similar cases were lost by the contractors/employees/whatevers.
Also, since I'm sure your lawyers are telling you all about how Microsoft lost a similar case back in '96-'97, please see a different previous post about why Microsoft lost and why HP is going to win this one.
Anyhow, the best of luck with everything. I know the market is tough out there, but hang in there!
2. Microsoft's benefit plan eligibility rules specifically referenced the IRS guidelines regarding who is eligible to participate and who is not.
Because Microsoft already conceeded that these folks were employees, they were not later allowed to argue that they were contractors (see legal concept of "estoppel"). And since they defined benefits eligibility based on the IRS rules, they were basically hosed. (But even with all that, Microsoft won round 1 but lost on appeal.)
I should hope that HP has learned their lesson from what happened to Microsoft in '96-'97 and revised their benefits plan language to exclude these contractors/employees/whatevers. Even on the offchance that they learned nothing from Microsoft's well-publicized defeat, HP is still probably fine since they never officially conceeded that these contractors were HP employees.
I have to side with HP on this one. This suit has no merit.
Check out Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. v. Ratcliff, 141 F.3d 1405, 1409-10 (10th Cir. 1998). After a bunch of news carriers were reclassified by the IRS as common law employees, they sued to be included in the company's retirement plan. The carriers got their asses handed to them by the Tenth Circuit Court, however, because they signed agreements stating that they understood that were not employees and were not entitled to benefits. Same thing happened in Trombetta v. Cragin Fed. Bank for Savings Employee Stock Ownership Plan, 102 F.3d 1435, 1438-39 (7th Cir. 1996) to a bunch of loan originators.
The only reason the IRS makes it so easy to reclassify contractors as employees is that they get more money that way! Employment and benefits law are not concerned with who the IRS thinks is really an employee for tax calculation purposes.
The fact is, even if these contractors can convince the IRS that they are employees of HP, all that will entitle them to is to get their income taxes withheld by HP. And wouldn't that be a huge victory for the little guy?
This guy is the company's entire IT department. If he's getting anything less than $100/hour he's being raped. If you think that's unreasonable, ask me what rate I change my clients.
BTW, if you can find me a plumber or electrician who only charges $50/hr, give me his number! I've got a ton of work for him to do.
For more information (as well as the list of 20 criteria), please see IRS Form SS-8: Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding .
Well, guess what. Even if they get the IRS to reclassify them as employees, all these "employees" are entitled to is to have HP withhold their income taxes for them. That is the purpose of the guidelines. To determine HP's tax liability. For more information, please see IRS Form SS-8: Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding. In it, you will find the infamous "20 questions" for determining whether or not your contractor is really a contractor for income tax purposes.
The IRS couldn't give two shits if you give your employees benefits or not as long as you withhold their income taxes.
(1) As someone who, many years ago, regularly cheated on his girlfriends, I can say that using death is a great way to get out of a sticky situation. No one is going to fuck with "I have to be at a funeral so I can't go to your best friend's birthday party" or "I'm sorry I haven't had any time for you lately but my $relative is in the hospital and only has a month or so left to live and I am spending a lot of time visiting," etc.
It's also a great excuse for his refusal to commit to this other woman. My cousin's fiancee died in a plane crash 15 years ago. She hasn't had a stable relationship since then and has only flown a few times since then (and doing that required some serious drugs).
You get the idea. Death is a great cover for getting someone to back off. I feel guilty as hell now for using an actual dying and now dead family member as an excuse to keep together an impossible web of lies, but that is another story.
(2) Renting a car for long trips is not a strange thing to do. My wife (no, I have never cheated on my wife, btw) used to have to make a weekly drive to a city that is 100mi from our house and she regularly rented a car for the trip so she didn't put so many miles on her car. Many people rent sports cars for the weekend for fun. There are 100 reasons to rent a car when you already own one. Maybe he lent his truck to someone. Maybe he was trying to sell it. Maybe he just had it cleaned. Maybe he finds his truck to be uncomfortable to sit in for long stretches of time and prefers a car.
All I know for certain is that renting a car when you already own one most certainly does not make a person a murderer.
(3) If my wife were to suddenly disappear, to say that I would experience grief would be a monumentous understatement. You can't fault a man for grieving over his wife's disappearance.
I have not heard anything to make me certain beyond a reasonable doubt Scott killed Laci. If I were on that jury and this was all the evidence that I was given, I would have hung that jury from here to Kalamazoo.
I mean, really, motive plus circumstantial evidence is now proof beyond resonable doubt? I think not. That is way too easy. Are you trying to tell me that if my wife was murdered, all that would be needed to convict me would be motive (we have a $150,000 life insurance policy on each of us) plus a lack of an airtight alibi? I would not want to live in such a society.
But seriously, put yourself in an employer's shoes. Would you rather have someone with professional experience in a position similar to your need, or some greenbean who has installed a few gentoo boxes?
FYI, when I look at a resume, I do not fault someone too much for only having experience at nonprofits. If you find you can only get a job at a nonprofit, take it. By the way, there is no meaningful "working your way up" in a nonprofit. Get some experience and then go for-profit. Unless you want to work at a nonprofit for ideological reasons. BTW, nonprofits generally do pay. Just not very well. But your quality of life will generally be better. Very 9-5.
I don't even look at certifications.