Additionally, this keeps a union of drivers from forming. You've got hundreds of people managing 20-30 employees, instead of one company with a few thousand employees.
Also gives Amazon the out to say "we don't pay shit, it's these other companies"
Lots of companies now offer "unlimited" PTO- but that really just means there is less incentive to let you take time off, and you won't get paid out for unused vacation when you leave.
I've worked for companies that offer 2 - 3 weeks and unlimited. The companies with the unlimited policies ALWAYS track your PTO more closely than the ones that give a set number of days.
...and companies not investing in proper process creation, leading to duplicate or incorrect work because no one knows what is going on.
...and companies choosing to hire new management externally instead of promoting from within, creating management that has power and no idea how the company does things.
...and companies that think culture means free lunch and happy hour.
Yeah... go look at the people in some of the tent cities in San Francisco. You'll find college educated people in their 40s and 50s that have been priced out of housing but still have jobs.
After taxes and medical, his take-home is about $8,000 a month or so. He's spending a little more than 1/3 on his rent, which is not good. That $3,000 a month might not even be a super nice place in a good neighborhood, either. Those would be more in the $4,000 to $5,000 range.
So that leaves him with about $5,000 a month for his other expenses. Let's say he lives frugally and can live life on $2,000 a month. That leaves him $3,000 a month to put into savings. That's not bad!
Now, let's assume he wants to own his own home in the Bay Area someday. Everything is going to be in the one million rage, unless you are buying a tear down or a really small apartment. So you're going to want 20%, or $200,000 as a down payment. Saving at $3,000 a month means he'd have the money after working for five years. That's five years of frugal living, no car, no vacations, and then his mortgage payments would be in the $5,000 a month range.
Yeah, the numbers are big, but he's never going to be in a position to live "the American dream", with a house and kids for at lease five years, and then it'll still be kind of tight.
Yep. If you and your partner are both earning six figures and you have been lucky enough to afford to buy, then you can have a kid or two and make it work. But you're looking at $2,000 a month per kid for childcare, so both of you had better make enough to make that worth while.
If you move to SF with dreams of saving lots of money and buying a nice place around here, you're insane. Your only hope is to A) Marry someone that has property already (like me!) or work at a startup that hits it big enough that you get a a few hundred thousand in payout. There are a fair number of people in that boat, but it's not the majority. If you don't have equity in a company, you're never going to save enough to get out of being a renter in the Bay Area.
Assuming $400,000 (20%) down on 2 Million, with taxes and insurance you're looking at ~$10K a month. Monthly take-home on $150,000 a month is roughly $7,800. So you're $1200 in the hold just on your mortgage.
In the case of the space station, Earth is right outside the window, and accessible in a few hours time in the case of an emergency. That's not going to be true on a trip to Mars. There's no escape. There's also not just the trip there, but the time on the planet and the trip back. Those on the Space Station are in a much, much different psychological bucket than on a trip to Mars.
EA is a terrible company- it would rather run an amazing franchise into the ground rather than give customers what they really want. I'm glad to see that other companies are picking up what Maxis could no longer do.
There is also the management of the manager: If the manager has too many products/projects on their plate they can't dedicate the time and focus to being that detail-oriented manager that gets things done. A good manager can turn into a bad one if they can't focus. That's where even higher-level management needs to set expectations and manage proper headcount.
Sierra Nevada's design was a riff on the Space Shuttle, which is just a terrible way to get to space and back. Yes, you have a reusable orbiter, but you add a crapload of launch weight. That means you can carry less. The goal of these current projects is to act as a space-taxi for passengers, not multi-week flights like the Shuttle. No one wants your design, people.
I've JUST started using 8.1 for a project at work, and I'm constantly blown away at how much of a compromise the Metro Interface is. The defaults make it hard to find the things I'm used to, like the control panel, while the new interfaces are lacking in the features I need. Getting to basic features now takes more time than in WIn7. There are no advantages to the interface, and big detractions.
Just as companies held onto WinXP for a LONG time, I think they will do the same with Win7- there's just no huge incentive to upgrade. Home users are already turning towards iOS. MS has a hard road ahead of themselves if they want to regain what they once had.
SpaceX will make $2.6 Billion do way cooler stuff than $4.2 Billion to Boeing. SpaceX is a young, hungry company that is on the forefront of multiple industries. Boeing, while still a great company, is older an no doubt bogged down in more levels of bureaucracy.
We kind of don't need people up there.... yet. Putting a person in space is still really hard and expensive. However, if we can have robotics lead the way, and create good space infrastructure, then maybe it will become easier down the road.
I have a 1st gen Roku, and a Chromecast. When I stream Netflix with the Roku, I seem to top out at 2, maybe three quality bars. While there's no on-screen metric for the same stream in Chromecast, the picture is noticeably better. Perhaps the Chromecast is getting a higher-quality, lower-bandwidth stream, or there's some sort of throttling based on the streaming device going on?
Wouldn't getting access to Blizzard's servers make this a whole lot easier? Couldn't you just mine the player data and make Blizzard record the conversations that take place in-game, rather than actually walk around in WoW?
Managers are going to think like managers. The "upside" of stack ranking is
A) It fosters competition, which should also foster a better product (I don't actually agree this is the case, though)
B) It helps weed out the worst employees
C) It's easy to understand from a high level
It's an example of something that sounds good from the outside, but in actuality it has a ton of problems. Once you've had an organization the size of MS try it for as long as they did and see the results, no other company should need to go down that route... I would think Yahoo would be smarter than this.
I have a liberal arts degree, but have always worked in IT/Project Management. You know what is more important than an IT degree? Critical thinking skills and general creativity. This is what you learn in liberal arts. The technical ins and outs? Thanks to Google, any unknown information is a couple searches away.
I loved the movie "Sunshine", but I thought they missed a golden opportunity with physics and gravity. In the film, they ship is transporting a bomb roughly the size of Manhattan. The bomb is at the front of the ship, with a long crew compartment behind it, kind of like a bus. The bomb itself was large enough to have it's own gravity. In the film, the crew compartment's gravity is what you would think of on a bus- you can walk the length of it with the gravity being on the "floor".
With just some changes to set design, they should have had the center of gravity been the bomb, so that the crew compartment needed to be climbed up and down, like a bus on it's side.
Way, way past time to acquire. I had friends that just sold their 3 bedroom, mid-century home for well over a million dollars.... The house will likely be torn down and replaced with something larger. Had the house been newer or bigger, the property would have got for more. The 1+ million was essentially for the lot.
This reminds me of the book Oryx and Crake. This is essentially the first private, corporate community. There will be many more like them in the future.
These people will not be part of the community in which the buildings exist. They will not give back to the community. Hell, I bet some tax loopholes will ensure their money doesn't even make it into the local economy.
And the work is rewarding because Facebook has a mentality that they are changing the world. They are, of course, but not in the ways that they tout. They say they are making the world more connected. However, I feel way less connected to my friends and Family now that I see their updates on Facebook. All they have done is created a super awesome database of private information and given the keys to the Government, all while creating a new sort of loneliness among people.
Myst did run directly from the disc. Riven, the sequel, ran on five discs, each one containing one of the five islands. which meant frequent disc changing if you were jumping around. I can't imagine doing that today.
Riven did a much better job of incorporating the puzzle into the story. most of the puzzles were just broken or locked objects. you just needed to figure out what was wrong with them.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), which is basically anything that you find in a supermarket, has always struggled with how to approach the internet/digital. Their model for the last fifty years has been to blast ads all over TV, which was easily segmented into specific groups depending on the product. I spent some time working with these companies, and by and large they are not sure how to approach the internet.
Buying up lots of banner ads isn't the same as buying lots of time during specific shows. No one wants to sit through their commercials, and tracking Return on Investment on their ads is entirely different than what they are used to, and the jury is still out on effectiveness of those ads. Facebook lets anyone come along and build out some very, very specific segments and advertise their niche product. Also, as TV watching drops, CPG HAS TO find a better way to reach people online.
Because CPG still hasn't found something that "clicks" in the online space, and this looks like an experiment for Crest to see if this is an area that makes sense for them to explore long term... they can't reach people on TV because people are playing games, so why not advertise to them in the game?
Like previous attempts, it just doesn't really make sense to the audience. CPG still has some work to do to find a way to reach people, and there is a LOT of money to be made by the person that figures it out.
Slashdot Mirror
Additionally, this keeps a union of drivers from forming. You've got hundreds of people managing 20-30 employees, instead of one company with a few thousand employees.
Also gives Amazon the out to say "we don't pay shit, it's these other companies"
Lots of companies now offer "unlimited" PTO- but that really just means there is less incentive to let you take time off, and you won't get paid out for unused vacation when you leave.
I've worked for companies that offer 2 - 3 weeks and unlimited. The companies with the unlimited policies ALWAYS track your PTO more closely than the ones that give a set number of days.
...and companies not investing in proper process creation, leading to duplicate or incorrect work because no one knows what is going on.
...and companies choosing to hire new management externally instead of promoting from within, creating management that has power and no idea how the company does things.
...and companies that think culture means free lunch and happy hour.
Some of them are living 6-8 people in a small apartment, sleeping in shifts, and they are still paying more rent than they can afford.
Yeah... go look at the people in some of the tent cities in San Francisco. You'll find college educated people in their 40s and 50s that have been priced out of housing but still have jobs.
After taxes and medical, his take-home is about $8,000 a month or so. He's spending a little more than 1/3 on his rent, which is not good. That $3,000 a month might not even be a super nice place in a good neighborhood, either. Those would be more in the $4,000 to $5,000 range.
So that leaves him with about $5,000 a month for his other expenses. Let's say he lives frugally and can live life on $2,000 a month. That leaves him $3,000 a month to put into savings. That's not bad!
Now, let's assume he wants to own his own home in the Bay Area someday. Everything is going to be in the one million rage, unless you are buying a tear down or a really small apartment. So you're going to want 20%, or $200,000 as a down payment. Saving at $3,000 a month means he'd have the money after working for five years. That's five years of frugal living, no car, no vacations, and then his mortgage payments would be in the $5,000 a month range.
Yeah, the numbers are big, but he's never going to be in a position to live "the American dream", with a house and kids for at lease five years, and then it'll still be kind of tight.
Yep. If you and your partner are both earning six figures and you have been lucky enough to afford to buy, then you can have a kid or two and make it work. But you're looking at $2,000 a month per kid for childcare, so both of you had better make enough to make that worth while. If you move to SF with dreams of saving lots of money and buying a nice place around here, you're insane. Your only hope is to A) Marry someone that has property already (like me!) or work at a startup that hits it big enough that you get a a few hundred thousand in payout. There are a fair number of people in that boat, but it's not the majority. If you don't have equity in a company, you're never going to save enough to get out of being a renter in the Bay Area.
Assuming $400,000 (20%) down on 2 Million, with taxes and insurance you're looking at ~$10K a month. Monthly take-home on $150,000 a month is roughly $7,800. So you're $1200 in the hold just on your mortgage.
In the case of the space station, Earth is right outside the window, and accessible in a few hours time in the case of an emergency. That's not going to be true on a trip to Mars. There's no escape. There's also not just the trip there, but the time on the planet and the trip back. Those on the Space Station are in a much, much different psychological bucket than on a trip to Mars.
EA is a terrible company- it would rather run an amazing franchise into the ground rather than give customers what they really want. I'm glad to see that other companies are picking up what Maxis could no longer do.
There is also the management of the manager: If the manager has too many products/projects on their plate they can't dedicate the time and focus to being that detail-oriented manager that gets things done. A good manager can turn into a bad one if they can't focus. That's where even higher-level management needs to set expectations and manage proper headcount.
Sierra Nevada's design was a riff on the Space Shuttle, which is just a terrible way to get to space and back. Yes, you have a reusable orbiter, but you add a crapload of launch weight. That means you can carry less. The goal of these current projects is to act as a space-taxi for passengers, not multi-week flights like the Shuttle. No one wants your design, people.
I've JUST started using 8.1 for a project at work, and I'm constantly blown away at how much of a compromise the Metro Interface is. The defaults make it hard to find the things I'm used to, like the control panel, while the new interfaces are lacking in the features I need. Getting to basic features now takes more time than in WIn7. There are no advantages to the interface, and big detractions.
Just as companies held onto WinXP for a LONG time, I think they will do the same with Win7- there's just no huge incentive to upgrade. Home users are already turning towards iOS. MS has a hard road ahead of themselves if they want to regain what they once had.
SpaceX will make $2.6 Billion do way cooler stuff than $4.2 Billion to Boeing. SpaceX is a young, hungry company that is on the forefront of multiple industries. Boeing, while still a great company, is older an no doubt bogged down in more levels of bureaucracy.
We kind of don't need people up there.... yet. Putting a person in space is still really hard and expensive. However, if we can have robotics lead the way, and create good space infrastructure, then maybe it will become easier down the road.
I have a 1st gen Roku, and a Chromecast. When I stream Netflix with the Roku, I seem to top out at 2, maybe three quality bars. While there's no on-screen metric for the same stream in Chromecast, the picture is noticeably better. Perhaps the Chromecast is getting a higher-quality, lower-bandwidth stream, or there's some sort of throttling based on the streaming device going on?
Wouldn't getting access to Blizzard's servers make this a whole lot easier? Couldn't you just mine the player data and make Blizzard record the conversations that take place in-game, rather than actually walk around in WoW?
Managers are going to think like managers. The "upside" of stack ranking is
A) It fosters competition, which should also foster a better product (I don't actually agree this is the case, though)
B) It helps weed out the worst employees
C) It's easy to understand from a high level
It's an example of something that sounds good from the outside, but in actuality it has a ton of problems. Once you've had an organization the size of MS try it for as long as they did and see the results, no other company should need to go down that route... I would think Yahoo would be smarter than this.
I have a liberal arts degree, but have always worked in IT/Project Management. You know what is more important than an IT degree? Critical thinking skills and general creativity. This is what you learn in liberal arts. The technical ins and outs? Thanks to Google, any unknown information is a couple searches away.
I loved the movie "Sunshine", but I thought they missed a golden opportunity with physics and gravity. In the film, they ship is transporting a bomb roughly the size of Manhattan. The bomb is at the front of the ship, with a long crew compartment behind it, kind of like a bus. The bomb itself was large enough to have it's own gravity. In the film, the crew compartment's gravity is what you would think of on a bus- you can walk the length of it with the gravity being on the "floor".
With just some changes to set design, they should have had the center of gravity been the bomb, so that the crew compartment needed to be climbed up and down, like a bus on it's side.
Way, way past time to acquire. I had friends that just sold their 3 bedroom, mid-century home for well over a million dollars.... The house will likely be torn down and replaced with something larger. Had the house been newer or bigger, the property would have got for more. The 1+ million was essentially for the lot.
This reminds me of the book Oryx and Crake. This is essentially the first private, corporate community. There will be many more like them in the future.
These people will not be part of the community in which the buildings exist. They will not give back to the community. Hell, I bet some tax loopholes will ensure their money doesn't even make it into the local economy.
And the work is rewarding because Facebook has a mentality that they are changing the world. They are, of course, but not in the ways that they tout. They say they are making the world more connected. However, I feel way less connected to my friends and Family now that I see their updates on Facebook. All they have done is created a super awesome database of private information and given the keys to the Government, all while creating a new sort of loneliness among people.
Myst did run directly from the disc. Riven, the sequel, ran on five discs, each one containing one of the five islands. which meant frequent disc changing if you were jumping around. I can't imagine doing that today.
Riven did a much better job of incorporating the puzzle into the story. most of the puzzles were just broken or locked objects. you just needed to figure out what was wrong with them.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), which is basically anything that you find in a supermarket, has always struggled with how to approach the internet/digital. Their model for the last fifty years has been to blast ads all over TV, which was easily segmented into specific groups depending on the product. I spent some time working with these companies, and by and large they are not sure how to approach the internet.
Buying up lots of banner ads isn't the same as buying lots of time during specific shows. No one wants to sit through their commercials, and tracking Return on Investment on their ads is entirely different than what they are used to, and the jury is still out on effectiveness of those ads. Facebook lets anyone come along and build out some very, very specific segments and advertise their niche product. Also, as TV watching drops, CPG HAS TO find a better way to reach people online.
Because CPG still hasn't found something that "clicks" in the online space, and this looks like an experiment for Crest to see if this is an area that makes sense for them to explore long term... they can't reach people on TV because people are playing games, so why not advertise to them in the game?
Like previous attempts, it just doesn't really make sense to the audience. CPG still has some work to do to find a way to reach people, and there is a LOT of money to be made by the person that figures it out.