Some do, most don't. At least, not in St. Louis. About 2/3rds of the software people I know here are contractors and wouldn't take a direct hire position for twice the money. Those that would have reasons for needing the extra stability. The companies that hire direct here are old growth type corps that are hard to get fired from.
Well, the $/hr that you get from a direct hire job is still less. I started at my current employer as a contractor and when I converted to full-time, I took a 30% pay cut. Between the paid time off, yearly raises, and benefits, I'm actually making more now, but it hurt at first.
When I lose this job, if I have to get another software job I'm going to go for the contract jobs first. The nice thing about those is that nobody expect you to care about the company and its management or feel self-actualized through your work and all that other corp culture BS.
all of the above are moot points if he is going to be working for a consulting firm.
I think being a W2 consultant is the best of both worlds, if you get benefits from your firm. It pays more than a direct hire position, you don't have to fool with the 1099 paperwork.
If you're greedy go for the full 1099 or corp to corp contracting.
Disabling vsync can cause lag problems with USB input devices. If I turn vsync off on Madden 2005 my logitech gamepad picks up about half a second of lag - not exactly good for gaming.
(yeah, I know, the "you should be playing sports games on a console" speech - I'm a franchise mode guy, I just use the gamepad for the training camp drills)
System Shock 2 had that but they overdid it - everything was such junk that unless you had Repair skill maxed out nothing lasted longer than maybe an hour of in-game time. I think that scared everyone away from trying it in another game.
Everything about it, from the setting to the story, was horrific to me. I can't think of anything more frightening than being subjected to advertising no matter where you go or what you do.
I'm not buying HL2 because it sounds like this Steam auth bullshit is the 21st century internet-enabled version of dongles. It's a game, not a $10k commercial software package. Get the fuck over yourselves, Valve.
Your experience was definitely different from mine, then.
I spent 5 years on Paxil. I was a completely different person. I embraced the mainstream, I loved conforming (I saw it as the ideal way of life, to be part of something), I stopped being creative, and I was a consumerist yuppie pig.
Not to mention that I had all the sexual side effects, which ruined that part of my life.
I have a legitimate low-grade mental illness, so I need an anti-depressant medication to be functional. I dropped Paxil (cold turkey - talk about withdrawal, I doubt heroin is as bad) and tried Prozac, which just made me lethargic. Then I switched to Wellbutrin, and I have my personality back. I'm able to create again and things that are supposed to piss me off, do. The things that make me happy make me happy like they're supposed to. When I was on Paxil, it took over my life. Wellbutrin just treats my illness.
Another thing to note... I did not have a single successful relationship with the opposite sex when I was on SSRIs. I rarely dated and when I did it turned into disaster. When I switched to Wellbutrin, something in the change in my attitude caused my success level with women to skyrocket. I'm married now and couldn't be happier about it.
Sorry to sound like a Wellbutrin ad.. I just wanted to assure you and anyone else that might be reading (yeah, right) that I'm not talking out of my ass when I talk about SSRIs.
One positive thing that Paxil did for me was it let me experience happiness, and now that I look back on it, I believe that was for the first time. Now, I know the state of mind that I want to be in, and I can go find it on my own without throwing my identity away with SSRIs.
Yeah, well, just try stopping them:( The most prolific breeders are those who shouldn't, because they're too stupid to understand the concepts of responsibility.
Congratulations on making it out of that situation alive. There is no "right" way to grow up, and you did what you have to do. I admire you, if your story is true (I'm sure you understand why I'm adding that clause, this being the internet and all.)
I've known many kids that were in your situation, but not necessarily about sports. They invariably turned to drugs and/or burnt out before they finished their freshman year of college.
You're right about the shootings, too. School shootings happen because the kids are caged animals that have no other option in their mind than to lash out violently. School admin doesn't give a fuck, nor do their parents. Look at Columbine. Look at Jonesboro, AR. Look at Grayson, KY. That was the first in the big wave of shootings in the 90's and it happened at a high school near mine. The kid that was the shooter was one of these kids that I was talking about. I knew him and competed against him in our local academic competition league.
Such a fucking waste, because adults can't stop using their children to cover up their insecurities and shortcomings.
# Would belonging to a union really improve job satisfaction?
It would for me, because I would know that I'd have some recourse when management decided it was my turn to be screwed. Not 'if', but 'when'. It happens to everyone, no matter how much of a professional you are or how much value you bring to the table. To think otherwise is delusion.
# Do you only work for a paycheck or do you want personal satisfaction from accomplishing a task?
I only work for this place for a paycheck. I have hobbies for "personal satisfaction." The vast majority of the people that I know that work or have worked in a corporate environment feel the same way. Of course, the vast majority of people I know aren't programming hotshots, either, and are closer to my age than college-age.
# While an increase in pay would certainly be appreciated by anyone, would you stay at a job only for the pay if another challenging position were available?
I plan to stay here until they kick me out. I don't think I could make money as good as I'm making at any other job, especially with the market as it is, because I do not have a bachelor's degree. I have a mortgage and a wife and possibly children someday. Paying the bills is financial priority #1, and financial priority #2 is preparing to open my own non-IT-related business when I lose this job.
I seem to have given you the impression that I don't like my work. That's not the case, my work interests me a great deal, when I'm here. But when I'm not here, I don't want anything to do with it, and the less I'm here, the better. I have a home to enjoy and keep up, and hobbies that I wish I had more time to do. I don't want to live the IT Geek Lifestyle of 60+ hour weeks and obsessing over my work anymore. I can be self-actualized on my own time.
Well, legally they had the right to fire me, since a) it's in the bullshit contract that everyone has to sign and b) as far as they were concerned I was the liar. However, had they worked with me on my schedule I wouldn't have been so dismissive of the job. I was a kid living at home and didn't -need- the money like I would today with a mortgage and a family, so I could afford to not care enough to lie when I called in, and I called in because they refused to account for my schedule as agreed. But you can't really do anything in this kind of situation.
As far as dealing with school schedules, most places that hire unskilled labor will gladly work around a class schedule, and the official corporate policy was that this grocery store would, but the local manager ignored it. Sure, it's open to abuse, but if someone is immature enough to lie about school to get out of work they're easy to catch and obviously don't n eed the money.
Verbal agreements don't work legally because people are liars and unless it's on tape there's no way to prove that someone said something. If people cared about their word verbal agreements would be meaningful, but they never really have, and never will.
Slashdot Mirror
what do you have against rampant individualism?
Try the new version of Pirates! It's very old-school in its design, and the graphics are reasonably up to date.
thank you. I'd give you all my karma points if I could.
This to me is more proof that Bush and company are trying to trigger the Apocalypse.
Some do, most don't. At least, not in St. Louis. About 2/3rds of the software people I know here are contractors and wouldn't take a direct hire position for twice the money. Those that would have reasons for needing the extra stability. The companies that hire direct here are old growth type corps that are hard to get fired from.
Well, the $/hr that you get from a direct hire job is still less. I started at my current employer as a contractor and when I converted to full-time, I took a 30% pay cut. Between the paid time off, yearly raises, and benefits, I'm actually making more now, but it hurt at first.
When I lose this job, if I have to get another software job I'm going to go for the contract jobs first. The nice thing about those is that nobody expect you to care about the company and its management or feel self-actualized through your work and all that other corp culture BS.
all of the above are moot points if he is going to be working for a consulting firm.
I think being a W2 consultant is the best of both worlds, if you get benefits from your firm. It pays more than a direct hire position, you don't have to fool with the 1099 paperwork.
If you're greedy go for the full 1099 or corp to corp contracting.
Disabling vsync can cause lag problems with USB input devices. If I turn vsync off on Madden 2005 my logitech gamepad picks up about half a second of lag - not exactly good for gaming.
(yeah, I know, the "you should be playing sports games on a console" speech - I'm a franchise mode guy, I just use the gamepad for the training camp drills)
have fun with your dongled games that don't work. I'll be playing the new version of Pirates!
and some tennis balls, and a drill. homemade flashbangs! fun
System Shock 2 had that but they overdid it - everything was such junk that unless you had Repair skill maxed out nothing lasted longer than maybe an hour of in-game time. I think that scared everyone away from trying it in another game.
They should outsource their space program to Boeing.
"What labor deficit?"
Cool, I got something right! That was twice this week.
:)
It's almost like MS is trying to make Excel into a basic OLAP tool with this feature. Pretty soon it'll be a good enough word processor to write in
Everything about it, from the setting to the story, was horrific to me. I can't think of anything more frightening than being subjected to advertising no matter where you go or what you do.
From what I'm reading, and I may not understand correctly, a pivot table is something like the results of this SQL query:
select
category,
sum(values)
from categorized_values
group by category
order by category
The "pivoting" refers the ability to quickly change the grouped-by and ordered-by columns.
Now how wrong am I?
I'm not buying HL2 because it sounds like this Steam auth bullshit is the 21st century internet-enabled version of dongles. It's a game, not a $10k commercial software package. Get the fuck over yourselves, Valve.
Your experience was definitely different from mine, then.
I spent 5 years on Paxil. I was a completely different person. I embraced the mainstream, I loved conforming (I saw it as the ideal way of life, to be part of something), I stopped being creative, and I was a consumerist yuppie pig.
Not to mention that I had all the sexual side effects, which ruined that part of my life.
I have a legitimate low-grade mental illness, so I need an anti-depressant medication to be functional. I dropped Paxil (cold turkey - talk about withdrawal, I doubt heroin is as bad) and tried Prozac, which just made me lethargic. Then I switched to Wellbutrin, and I have my personality back. I'm able to create again and things that are supposed to piss me off, do. The things that make me happy make me happy like they're supposed to. When I was on Paxil, it took over my life. Wellbutrin just treats my illness.
Another thing to note... I did not have a single successful relationship with the opposite sex when I was on SSRIs. I rarely dated and when I did it turned into disaster. When I switched to Wellbutrin, something in the change in my attitude caused my success level with women to skyrocket. I'm married now and couldn't be happier about it.
Sorry to sound like a Wellbutrin ad.. I just wanted to assure you and anyone else that might be reading (yeah, right) that I'm not talking out of my ass when I talk about SSRIs.
One positive thing that Paxil did for me was it let me experience happiness, and now that I look back on it, I believe that was for the first time. Now, I know the state of mind that I want to be in, and I can go find it on my own without throwing my identity away with SSRIs.
You're giving reality TV too much credit.
IMO we are Rome, TV + drugs are our bread and circuses, and the muslim extremist terrorists are the Goths come to sack the Empire.
Advertising will continue to get more and more invasive until people finally have enough and actually revolt against it.
With the rise of SSRIs, people won't get enough. They'll just go on with life and 'not worry' about their rights being taken away.
These are scary times.
Yeah, well, just try stopping them :( The most prolific breeders are those who shouldn't, because they're too stupid to understand the concepts of responsibility.
This should help with the offtopic.
Congratulations on making it out of that situation alive. There is no "right" way to grow up, and you did what you have to do. I admire you, if your story is true (I'm sure you understand why I'm adding that clause, this being the internet and all.)
I've known many kids that were in your situation, but not necessarily about sports. They invariably turned to drugs and/or burnt out before they finished their freshman year of college.
You're right about the shootings, too. School shootings happen because the kids are caged animals that have no other option in their mind than to lash out violently. School admin doesn't give a fuck, nor do their parents. Look at Columbine. Look at Jonesboro, AR. Look at Grayson, KY. That was the first in the big wave of shootings in the 90's and it happened at a high school near mine. The kid that was the shooter was one of these kids that I was talking about. I knew him and competed against him in our local academic competition league.
Such a fucking waste, because adults can't stop using their children to cover up their insecurities and shortcomings.
I don't recognize her from VW, but IMO she resembles Mila Kunis of "That 70's Show" fame.
ve musht vatch der blinkenlights.
It would for me, because I would know that I'd have some recourse when management decided it was my turn to be screwed. Not 'if', but 'when'. It happens to everyone, no matter how much of a professional you are or how much value you bring to the table. To think otherwise is delusion.
I only work for this place for a paycheck. I have hobbies for "personal satisfaction." The vast majority of the people that I know that work or have worked in a corporate environment feel the same way. Of course, the vast majority of people I know aren't programming hotshots, either, and are closer to my age than college-age.
I plan to stay here until they kick me out. I don't think I could make money as good as I'm making at any other job, especially with the market as it is, because I do not have a bachelor's degree. I have a mortgage and a wife and possibly children someday. Paying the bills is financial priority #1, and financial priority #2 is preparing to open my own non-IT-related business when I lose this job.
I seem to have given you the impression that I don't like my work. That's not the case, my work interests me a great deal, when I'm here. But when I'm not here, I don't want anything to do with it, and the less I'm here, the better. I have a home to enjoy and keep up, and hobbies that I wish I had more time to do. I don't want to live the IT Geek Lifestyle of 60+ hour weeks and obsessing over my work anymore. I can be self-actualized on my own time.
Well, legally they had the right to fire me, since a) it's in the bullshit contract that everyone has to sign and b) as far as they were concerned I was the liar. However, had they worked with me on my schedule I wouldn't have been so dismissive of the job. I was a kid living at home and didn't -need- the money like I would today with a mortgage and a family, so I could afford to not care enough to lie when I called in, and I called in because they refused to account for my schedule as agreed. But you can't really do anything in this kind of situation.
As far as dealing with school schedules, most places that hire unskilled labor will gladly work around a class schedule, and the official corporate policy was that this grocery store would, but the local manager ignored it. Sure, it's open to abuse, but if someone is immature enough to lie about school to get out of work they're easy to catch and obviously don't n eed the money.
Verbal agreements don't work legally because people are liars and unless it's on tape there's no way to prove that someone said something. If people cared about their word verbal agreements would be meaningful, but they never really have, and never will.