American laborers can't compete with labor from China, India, Vietnam, etc. The only way for American manufacturers to keep their doors open at all is to replace unskilled laborers with automated machinery. If they didn't do that then all of the jobs (including the higher end jobs) would be gone. This has greatly reduced the need for unskilled labor and greatly increases demand for people who can design and maintain this type of equipment.
Fortunately my job is to program these types of machines, integrate different machine into production lines, and design the underlying infrastructure that supports them. So far it's been a fun unintentional career path.
I doubt it's 'one fell swoop'. Companies don't just eliminate positions for the sake of it. It's not in their benefit to eliminate useful people and positions. There is careful thought given to each cut to see whether or not it is aligned with current needs. Quite often with acquisitions there is overlap in basic roles such as HR. You don't need 1 HR person from each company. That role can typically be filled by one to a few people in corporate. Even if they have familiarity with the company it doesn't make sense to keep them on because their expertise is in HR and they can better be utilized by someone else.
Often times these 'cuts' are unfilled open positions too. So they close the job and someone really isn't losing it.
It is quite normal that after a company has grown and hired more and more employees, that the time comes to get rid of those employees who didn't contribute the value that they are paid for. As uncomfortable as it is for someone to lose their job, most of the times it's not the productive people who are being let go - it's the dead weight.
Truly good employees are hard to come by so if you happen to just be in the wrong place at the wrong time then it sucks, but you won't have a hard time finding a new job. Even in a less than stellar economy really good talent is always in strong demand. If you are incompetent, all bets are off and good luck to you.
Here's a thought, how about the prices get driven down to reasonable levels, and you don't need taxpayer-funded programs to pay for Grandmas $7000 hearing aid when she can just BUY the damn thing for $500. Crazy concept this "reasonable pricing" thing is, I know.
The problem is, you allow private industry to set all the prices. If you had proper socialised healthcare like all the other first-world countries, what would happen is the nationalised health service would turn round to the manufacturer and say "You sell us ten thousand for $500, or you don't sell it at all. Decide."
All you're getting with private healthcare is the opportunity to pay for the director of your medical insurance company buying a new Jaguar.
So when said company says, "Well if we sell it for $500 we lose money so, no, we won't sell it", are you going to prevent someone who has the $5000 and deems the product to be worth the cost, from purchasing it? If you can't make money off of something, what incentive is there to develop a product?
If there really is a lot of money to be made selling hearing aids, you'd have a lot more people working on making hearing aids to cash in on all the profits. The way I see it, there isn't as much profit once ALL expenses are considered, not just component costs, to justify lowering the price.
The problem with our current health care system is that it isolates people from knowing the true cost of what they are doing. If everyone had more of a stake in their own health care, we wouldn't have a massive explosion in health care costs because there would be more exposure to true market forces due to people having to make decisions that have financial impact on them. Generic drugs are a great example. I bet you anything if you tell someone they can buy their generic Rx for $20 or buy BrandName Rx for $450, they'll spend the $20. But now you if you give someone insurance with the option to pay $10 vs $25, now the insurance company has a much greater risk of being stuck with a $425 bill that their participants have to collectively cover. That means costs go up for everyone.
I am not for national health care in any way, shape or form, but if it were to happen, I think the only fair way for it to happen is model health care on the FSA/HSA+High Deductible Model. Every citizen (including children, via their parents) would have to pay an equal sum of money into the government health care fund (say $4000 per person per year). Each year, every citizen would be given an allowance of say $1000 to spend on health care. If they don't spend it, it rolls over and becomes available in future years. Then to protect against a catastrophic event, there would be an cap to out of pocket expenses (say $5000 per year). Obviously this is greatly simplified but until people stop wasting money on unnecessary doctor visits and prescription drugs, there is no way to lower costs. There just aren't enough 'profit' dollars in the market to take away from the people who are doing the real work.
If they're going to the trouble of launching a rocket to intercept the satellite, why don't they build a small booster which could attach to the satellite and perform a controlled de-orbit? This would allow them to choose the point of re-entry to protect whatever secrets may be on board.
The problem with your idea comes down to it being far too complex of a process for the intended result. Launching a rocket to match up with another satellite is much more difficult than in sounds. The bottom line is that it's much easier to get close to something and explode than it is to dock with it and then try to control. In the end you get the same result so you might as well go with the cheaper and easier solution.
Ahem. Not to be too anal about your code, but this would certainly cause some issues (most notably with disgruntled workers at the office at odd hours.) Perhaps you should add some additional logic such as (time > eightam), (time <> lunchtime), etc.
But all of that is made up for when they blow up cement trucks.
I completely agree with you here. When they blew up the cement truck with a load of concrete in the back, and completely obliterated it, I was giddy for at least half an hour. I have never seen anything before turn from a large heavy metal object into virtually nothing, in the blink of an eye. Even standing over a mile away there was a noticable jump by the crew. I'd pay to see this one in real life for sure!
Perhaps H-Wood wouldn't be in such a dire financial situation if they came up with something NEW rather than just rehashing the same OLD unoriginal crap. Maybe they could earn a few billion extra dollars? Better make sure they DRM all the media that they distribute that movie on too to make sure all of the thieves out there don't "steal" their crap!
There are quite a bit of things that you can do in this situation, and most of it depends on the skill differential and the type of project. If your partner is not a very good programmer, expect to be their teacher. However, you can't expect to hold their hand the whole way and help yourself or them. They will have to contribute their share in one way or another.
As the more experienced programmer, you should have more control over the direction the programming starts off in. Don't leave your partner out though. Talk with them about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Give them tasks that you know they'll be successful at. You might need to do the most complex code yourself, but they can certaintly help fill in the gaps whether it be by writing and testing functions, doing research for the code you need to write, testing what has been written or doing documentation or other right-up related material.
I think the bottom line is that you need to excerise your superior skills in a way which positively impacts your partner. Don't be over bearing but don't give them enough rope to hang themselves (or you for that matter).
Are you the same Scott Swindells that did some work for distributed.net back in 2000? If so, your strategy isn't working.
Scott who? This could either be a chance to confirm my identity, confuse the situation further or throw people off my trail forever.... muahahaha. I'll leave that up to the reader to decide.
This is a very valid point that I haven't heard anyone else mention. Most people tend to use the same (or at least similar) alias wherever they go on the internet. Often times a little digging can provide correlation between a name and online alias. It is sometimes quite amusing what people like to say when they think they are being anonymous.
For example, Googling for my real name will reveal some rather off-color comments about Linux (or Linsux as i called it) as well as many unprofessional rants and raves on mailing lists and usenet. Most of this was from 1998-1999. After that my real name dropped off of the net. Once I realized that these comments could come back to haunt me, I quickly moved all posts under my current alias. Fortunately doing a Google search on my alias returns more hits for a british comic book character than anything I've written with this name. If any employer is willing to go through hundreds of pages of results they can find things that i've said. However, i NEVER put any reference to my alias on any resume, ever.
As a recent grad of UCSB, i'd have to say they picked the perfect place to develop a cocaine sensor. The students and faculty will have no problem finding suitable substances to test it on.
At least my chances of getting a job at Sony now are better since i won't have to compete with your dumb ass... not that you have the skills anyway i'm sure.
Would you take a pay raise for less interesting work? Hell yes! Make a bunch of money first, then use that money to do something that interests you.
Money isn't everything.. But it IS freedom..
It takes quite a long time to amass a fortune large enough to retire on then do whatever you want to do. To the type of person that ONLY lives for money i say, i hope you become a millionaire before you are 30, and then die when you are 31 only to have done it all for nothing.
According to internet sources this passage is: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
I have to say that i am probably the most anti-religious person that you will ever meet in your life but i do have to admit that this phrase (minus the G-d part), has a lot of merit to it. I used to think that the most important part of life was making money. That was until i took a job at about 20% less than i thought i should be making, and moved 2500 miles just because i thought the job was too perfect for me. Almost a year later i still love my job and love the work i do and i wouldn't trade it for twice the salary only to be miserable and regret getting up every day. My two cents: do what makes you happy and the rest will fall into place for you.
IMHO both parties in this case did exactly what they were supposed to do. You gave them the courtesty of a 2 week notice and they accepted that and decided it was time to move on. In work environments today that rely heavily on computers and networking, it is not worth it to them that you might be leaving because of a grudge you may have. They have no way of knowing if you are leaving on amicable terms or not. If you have a bridge to burn with them you could easily cost them thousands of dollars (and likely much, much more) in damages due to lost data and productivity.
If it were me I would approach my boss and let them know that if they won't give access, there is no need to be around, but you'll be happy to answer any questions that they might have. However tell them that you'd be more than happy to twiddle your thumbs (in a more polite way) for a couple weeks until you've given them their time. I'd guess that they'd be willing to let you go with pay. If not, Worst case you can try to improve your solitaire skills for a couple weeks and get paid to do it.
In any case, both sides have fulfilled their obligations to each other in a completely professional way.
And that is not even taking into account the fact that the orbit of the approaching space station needs to be "aligned". Extra fuel might be needed for this as well.
The alignment could likely be done with control moment gyroscopes that are powered by solar energy. However you raise a good point that it will take a lot of energy to slow the craft down from cruising speed to re-entry speed.
I couldn't help but notice while reading the article that this guy has a very similar opinion to that of many flailing freshmen engineers. I most disagree with him about how engineering schools cause anguish for students. I agree that TAs and instructors are often quite terrible at teaching the material, and there is often a language barrier. But you must remember that when you graduate and have a job, there will not be a teacher there holding your hand. You absolutely must be able to learn and work without the assistance of others all the time. It is perfectly possible to learn the coursework for an engineering degree using the resources of all TAs (no matter how shitty they are) and the instructor. If you still don't get it, the internet is extremely useful or face it, maybe you just aren't cut out to be an engineer. Not everyone can do the type of work that is required for it. If the schools aren't difficult enough, they are failing to make a student learn to their full potential.
I think this guy is a typical "smart" kid who thought he could be an engineer, but he didn't have the math skills to do the job. Obviously as he stated, his strengths are with words.
His comparison to getting easy As in liberal arts classes to getting Bs and Cs in engineering classes is also crap. As he even stated at the beginning of his article, he wanted to learn something useful. Engneerings are compared to other engineers. Not to business majors, econ majors, . And most engineers don't have straight As, or close to it even. What matters is how you do compared to other people. And even then GPA only matters for graduate school or your first job, but even then it might not even be brought up.
I thought winzip was always free... you just went to the website and downloaded the evaluation version while you were launching your favorite IRC application. By the time the download finished you had already found a free key generator in a l33t ju4r3z channel and had it cracked on the first use.
Slashdot Mirror
American laborers can't compete with labor from China, India, Vietnam, etc. The only way for American manufacturers to keep their doors open at all is to replace unskilled laborers with automated machinery. If they didn't do that then all of the jobs (including the higher end jobs) would be gone. This has greatly reduced the need for unskilled labor and greatly increases demand for people who can design and maintain this type of equipment. Fortunately my job is to program these types of machines, integrate different machine into production lines, and design the underlying infrastructure that supports them. So far it's been a fun unintentional career path.
I doubt it's 'one fell swoop'. Companies don't just eliminate positions for the sake of it. It's not in their benefit to eliminate useful people and positions. There is careful thought given to each cut to see whether or not it is aligned with current needs. Quite often with acquisitions there is overlap in basic roles such as HR. You don't need 1 HR person from each company. That role can typically be filled by one to a few people in corporate. Even if they have familiarity with the company it doesn't make sense to keep them on because their expertise is in HR and they can better be utilized by someone else. Often times these 'cuts' are unfilled open positions too. So they close the job and someone really isn't losing it.
It is quite normal that after a company has grown and hired more and more employees, that the time comes to get rid of those employees who didn't contribute the value that they are paid for. As uncomfortable as it is for someone to lose their job, most of the times it's not the productive people who are being let go - it's the dead weight. Truly good employees are hard to come by so if you happen to just be in the wrong place at the wrong time then it sucks, but you won't have a hard time finding a new job. Even in a less than stellar economy really good talent is always in strong demand. If you are incompetent, all bets are off and good luck to you.
Here's a thought, how about the prices get driven down to reasonable levels, and you don't need taxpayer-funded programs to pay for Grandmas $7000 hearing aid when she can just BUY the damn thing for $500. Crazy concept this "reasonable pricing" thing is, I know.
The problem is, you allow private industry to set all the prices. If you had proper socialised healthcare like all the other first-world countries, what would happen is the nationalised health service would turn round to the manufacturer and say "You sell us ten thousand for $500, or you don't sell it at all. Decide."
All you're getting with private healthcare is the opportunity to pay for the director of your medical insurance company buying a new Jaguar.
So when said company says, "Well if we sell it for $500 we lose money so, no, we won't sell it", are you going to prevent someone who has the $5000 and deems the product to be worth the cost, from purchasing it? If you can't make money off of something, what incentive is there to develop a product?
If there really is a lot of money to be made selling hearing aids, you'd have a lot more people working on making hearing aids to cash in on all the profits. The way I see it, there isn't as much profit once ALL expenses are considered, not just component costs, to justify lowering the price.
The problem with our current health care system is that it isolates people from knowing the true cost of what they are doing. If everyone had more of a stake in their own health care, we wouldn't have a massive explosion in health care costs because there would be more exposure to true market forces due to people having to make decisions that have financial impact on them. Generic drugs are a great example. I bet you anything if you tell someone they can buy their generic Rx for $20 or buy BrandName Rx for $450, they'll spend the $20. But now you if you give someone insurance with the option to pay $10 vs $25, now the insurance company has a much greater risk of being stuck with a $425 bill that their participants have to collectively cover. That means costs go up for everyone.
I am not for national health care in any way, shape or form, but if it were to happen, I think the only fair way for it to happen is model health care on the FSA/HSA+High Deductible Model. Every citizen (including children, via their parents) would have to pay an equal sum of money into the government health care fund (say $4000 per person per year). Each year, every citizen would be given an allowance of say $1000 to spend on health care. If they don't spend it, it rolls over and becomes available in future years. Then to protect against a catastrophic event, there would be an cap to out of pocket expenses (say $5000 per year). Obviously this is greatly simplified but until people stop wasting money on unnecessary doctor visits and prescription drugs, there is no way to lower costs. There just aren't enough 'profit' dollars in the market to take away from the people who are doing the real work.
The problem with your idea comes down to it being far too complex of a process for the intended result. Launching a rocket to match up with another satellite is much more difficult than in sounds. The bottom line is that it's much easier to get close to something and explode than it is to dock with it and then try to control. In the end you get the same result so you might as well go with the cheaper and easier solution.
I think you need to take a course in sarcasm detection algorithms.
while(time < fiveoclock)
Ahem. Not to be too anal about your code, but this would certainly cause some issues (most notably with disgruntled workers at the office at odd hours.) Perhaps you should add some additional logic such as (time > eightam), (time <> lunchtime), etc.
I completely agree with you here. When they blew up the cement truck with a load of concrete in the back, and completely obliterated it, I was giddy for at least half an hour. I have never seen anything before turn from a large heavy metal object into virtually nothing, in the blink of an eye. Even standing over a mile away there was a noticable jump by the crew. I'd pay to see this one in real life for sure!
www.netsuite.com
Perhaps H-Wood wouldn't be in such a dire financial situation if they came up with something NEW rather than just rehashing the same OLD unoriginal crap. Maybe they could earn a few billion extra dollars? Better make sure they DRM all the media that they distribute that movie on too to make sure all of the thieves out there don't "steal" their crap!
There are quite a bit of things that you can do in this situation, and most of it depends on the skill differential and the type of project. If your partner is not a very good programmer, expect to be their teacher. However, you can't expect to hold their hand the whole way and help yourself or them. They will have to contribute their share in one way or another. As the more experienced programmer, you should have more control over the direction the programming starts off in. Don't leave your partner out though. Talk with them about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Give them tasks that you know they'll be successful at. You might need to do the most complex code yourself, but they can certaintly help fill in the gaps whether it be by writing and testing functions, doing research for the code you need to write, testing what has been written or doing documentation or other right-up related material. I think the bottom line is that you need to excerise your superior skills in a way which positively impacts your partner. Don't be over bearing but don't give them enough rope to hang themselves (or you for that matter).
Scott who? This could either be a chance to confirm my identity, confuse the situation further or throw people off my trail forever.... muahahaha. I'll leave that up to the reader to decide.
This is a very valid point that I haven't heard anyone else mention. Most people tend to use the same (or at least similar) alias wherever they go on the internet. Often times a little digging can provide correlation between a name and online alias. It is sometimes quite amusing what people like to say when they think they are being anonymous.
For example, Googling for my real name will reveal some rather off-color comments about Linux (or Linsux as i called it) as well as many unprofessional rants and raves on mailing lists and usenet. Most of this was from 1998-1999. After that my real name dropped off of the net. Once I realized that these comments could come back to haunt me, I quickly moved all posts under my current alias. Fortunately doing a Google search on my alias returns more hits for a british comic book character than anything I've written with this name. If any employer is willing to go through hundreds of pages of results they can find things that i've said. However, i NEVER put any reference to my alias on any resume, ever.
I think this by itself might suggest that they were in fact a dope smoker, and it had severely impacted their ability to judge rationally.
As a recent grad of UCSB, i'd have to say they picked the perfect place to develop a cocaine sensor. The students and faculty will have no problem finding suitable substances to test it on.
At least my chances of getting a job at Sony now are better since i won't have to compete with your dumb ass... not that you have the skills anyway i'm sure.
It takes quite a long time to amass a fortune large enough to retire on then do whatever you want to do. To the type of person that ONLY lives for money i say, i hope you become a millionaire before you are 30, and then die when you are 31 only to have done it all for nothing.
According to internet sources this passage is: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
I have to say that i am probably the most anti-religious person that you will ever meet in your life but i do have to admit that this phrase (minus the G-d part), has a lot of merit to it. I used to think that the most important part of life was making money. That was until i took a job at about 20% less than i thought i should be making, and moved 2500 miles just because i thought the job was too perfect for me. Almost a year later i still love my job and love the work i do and i wouldn't trade it for twice the salary only to be miserable and regret getting up every day. My two cents: do what makes you happy and the rest will fall into place for you.
I couldn't have said it better myself!
And you could always lie to them.
If it were me I would approach my boss and let them know that if they won't give access, there is no need to be around, but you'll be happy to answer any questions that they might have. However tell them that you'd be more than happy to twiddle your thumbs (in a more polite way) for a couple weeks until you've given them their time. I'd guess that they'd be willing to let you go with pay. If not, Worst case you can try to improve your solitaire skills for a couple weeks and get paid to do it.
In any case, both sides have fulfilled their obligations to each other in a completely professional way.
first post to call bullshit! :: cough ::
The alignment could likely be done with control moment gyroscopes that are powered by solar energy. However you raise a good point that it will take a lot of energy to slow the craft down from cruising speed to re-entry speed.
I think this guy is a typical "smart" kid who thought he could be an engineer, but he didn't have the math skills to do the job. Obviously as he stated, his strengths are with words.
His comparison to getting easy As in liberal arts classes to getting Bs and Cs in engineering classes is also crap. As he even stated at the beginning of his article, he wanted to learn something useful. Engneerings are compared to other engineers. Not to business majors, econ majors, . And most engineers don't have straight As, or close to it even. What matters is how you do compared to other people. And even then GPA only matters for graduate school or your first job, but even then it might not even be brought up.
I thought winzip was always free... you just went to the website and downloaded the evaluation version while you were launching your favorite IRC application. By the time the download finished you had already found a free key generator in a l33t ju4r3z channel and had it cracked on the first use.