How does that work if they issue your parking ticket while you're waiting in line to pay for your parking? In that case, the timestamp on the parking ticket will be earlier than the timestamp on your parking receipt. The authorities will (somewhat reasonably) assume that you got a ticket, and then immediately ran over to pay for parking to try to get out of it.
I've been to Singapore, and I really do like the system you guys have there for that sort of thing. Unfortunately, while it works great in a small place like Singapore where the government has pretty tight control over everything, it's utterly infeasible in larger countries with independent, competing bureaucracies. Hell, even in a single city, if private companies are allowed to open lots that charge for parking (every large city in the US I've been in, anyway), it breaks that system.
Also, the fact that the government continues to print dollar bills (and does so in vastly greater quantities than it mints dollar coins) doesn't help.
Yeah, the problem is that bills are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, while coins are manufactured by the US Mint. The two don't really talk to each other (or perhaps they do, but can't agree), so there's no unified policy on whether "the government" should be pushing the use of dollar coins over dollar bills.
The US Mint *really* wants you to use dollar coins; you can buy them online at value, with free shipping.
There's also the idea that people generally prefer bills over coins due to weight. That's the reason I prefer dollar bills over dollar coins, at least. When I get a dollar coin, I try to spend it as quickly as possible to get it out of my wallet/pocket.
I always do my phone interviews via cell phone. I think we're at a point in time when that's accepted practice and interviewers will make allowances for dropped calls and the like without penalizing the interviewee. Then again, the interviews i participate in are very technical in nature, which might explain why the interviewers are more cell-phone-savvy.
Speaking of reading the article, the flaw isn't even *that* bad, especially for people mainly worried about servers. The article notes that support for various little-used network protocols must be compiled into the kernel for this exploit to work, such as IPX, Appletalk, Bluetooth networking, IrDA, or SCTP on IPv6. I bet many desktops have Bluetooth networking support enabled, however, though it's possible it's as an unloaded module.
Not saying it's not a big deal at all, but the number of affected systems should be much lower with this requirement.
If people are doing something that they wouldn't want someone to take a picture of them doing, then they should probably do it behind closed doors and not out in plain sight.
I believe that's one of the purposes of BM: to allow people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do in plain sight for fear of (what many believe are) unreasonable and unnecessary consequences. If you have a problem with that, the solution is simple: don't attend.
Lastly, even if they do let you bring in your $1000 aeron keep in mind that if you are asked to leave unexpectedly (laid off or fired) you may not be allowed to collect your chair/keyboard/etc and take it with you.
Really? Is that legal?
I agree with your other points for the most part (the pencil/pens question does indeed sound asinine), but I think each of these questions has to be looked at under the lens of, "would the answer to this question affect whether or not I'd accept an offer to work here?"
If you have severe back problems, for example, you might not accept an offer for a job that won't let you bring in your own chair. If you live somewhere where rush hour traffic means a 60 minute commute, but off-peak means 20 minutes, you may not be willing to work a job where they will require that you arrive and leave at such times when you'll always hit rush hour.
Regardless, even if these questions are considered acceptable, I don't think any of them are for the first interview. I'd say wait to ask these after presented with an offer. At that point they can also be used as negotiating points. Either you can give a little in salary to get what you want, or ask for extra salary as compensation for having to spend an extra 80 minutes in traffic every day.
I think you have to look at a few different things:
Does the "free" insurance cancel out the pay cut?
How much are you saving on your tax return because of being able to deduct mileage? If you lose that, is it a big deal to you?
Look around at other full/salaried employees doing similar work in the company. Do they seem to work many more hours than you because they're salaried and the company doesn't have to pay them overtime? If so, you'll likely end up working more if you take the offer; are you ok with that?
A little harder to quantify, but would the ability to get trained in different tech make up for any of the possible negatives above?
Of course, if you truly believe that your contract won't be renewed if you decline the offer, you don't have much of a choice unless you're willing to look for something else.
I suppose it depends on the shop, but that seems a little extreme. Simply being curious about the development environment in use sounds pretty benign. Any company that wouldn't hire me because I asked... well, I don't think I'd want to work for them anyway.
Perhaps I've never worked at a highly-organised company, but I'm surprised by how strict you seem to be with dev environments. Here we work on an embedded Linux product, and we all run whatever flavor of Linux on our dev boxes that we're comfortable with, as long as it runs the toolchain and build tools properly. We use whatever editor we want.
I'm a bit confused about your supposed strictness about.NET, though. If someone wants to come in and write C# apps using Emacs, what's the big deal? Personally I find MS Visual Studio to have a pretty terrible text editor; I'm much more productive using Vim. As long as I don't screw up code style/formatting for anyone else, why wouldn't I be allowed to code in a different editor? As long as I build using the standard MSVS tools and everything works fine, what's the big deal?
The original poster you replied to seemed pretty reasonable... I'm not sure why you think he's "pulling a stunt." Where I work now, I have a Windows laptop that I use for exactly two things: Outlook and a proprietary bug tracker that uses ActiveX controls. It's a pain in the ass, and it pisses me off. Would I have declined the job based on this? No, probably not, but I can certainly understand that some people might, or that some people would want to know these details and consider them as part of the larger decision. Any employer who has a problem with that line of thinking can frankly stuff it, in my opinion.
Unless of course I'm unemployed, and then quite honestly I would do anything up to and including burger flipping to get some level of income until I find something better.
Heh, last I checked, collecting unemployment (in California, at least) was more lucrative than flipping burgers. Of course, you can't collect unemployment forever, and you're not eligible unless you were laid off.
The reality is any job that you've applied for you should already have done enough filtering to have decided that you DO want the job.
Yes, but that doesn't cover all situations. I get unsolicited emails from recruiters pretty often, and I usually base my decision on whether or not to reply on the mini thumbnail job description sketch in the email (at that point they may not even tell you the name of the company). I generally don't know enough to decide if I'd accept a (reasonable) offer until I've had the first non-HR, non-recruiter phone interview. Perhaps that's just me, though. I value chatting with employees much higher than any research I can do about the company on the internet.
The problem with that is I wouldn't work at a shop where they require software developers to wear slacks, buttoned shirt, and tie. I'd be sure to ask about the dress code before accepting an offer. But of course, that would be a question I'd ask after I get an offer, certainly not a first- or even second-interview type question.
But others may not care about dress code... I guess the general rule is to ask about the things that could change your mind about accepting an offer, and leave the rest alone. As you say, the pre-offer interviews are about getting the company to like you enough to make you an offer. That's not to say you can't probe the company a bit to see whether or not you like them enough, but such probing should be done carefully pre-offer.
That's more because there's no economic or military need for things like semi-ballistic flight, etc. We're flying the airframes of old because they're making big payoffs still for the people using them.
That's precisely the parent poster's *point*. The reason behind the lack of "new stuff" in any industry is irrelevant. It's the effect on the lives of the people who invest their time in these industries that we're concerned about.
Yeah, good call... And not to mention that it's very difficult (impossible?) to start a business in China as a foreigner unless you have local (usually family) ties.
And... a boat? Really? They have planes that go there, now.
Jeez, I know some of the other responders are European and as such tend to have different (more enlightened, I'd say, in some cases) views on acceptable work terms, but as an American I'd still not want to work for you. And that's fine: you'd probably not want me as an employee, either. My life is my life, and my work is my work. They overlap occasionally, but I like to keep that at a minimum. Perhaps that's a sign that I haven't found the work I really love, or, perhaps, as you say of yourself... "that's just me."
It's great that you try to compensate with the semi-on-call status you expect from your employees with higher than average (for the US) vacation time, but honestly I'd feel a bit stifled: it's not really "my time" if my employer can intrude upon it and require my response within 24 hours. In fact, that requirement would have ruled out at least one vacation I've taken in the past year.
Sure, but I'd suggest waiting until the second interview to ask questions like that, or maybe even waiting until or immediately before salary negotiations begin. By asking about working hours up front, you could present the appearance of being a slacker who just wants to figure out the least amount of work he can do to remain employed. Whether or not that's the case is irrelevant; the employer has very little to go on when deciding whether or not to spend more time on another round of interviews. All other things being equal, the employer will likely look harder at the guy who didn't ask those questions over those who did. And while in some cases, sure, the employer might be looking to work their people to death, I'd say you can never know, and it's safer to wait. You lose very little (possibly a couple hours of your time) in reserving the more "controversial" questions for farther along in the process, and possibly protect yourself from being misunderstood.
As one of those young "single" (single in that I'm unmarried, at least, if not strictly "single") people, I tend to agree (and, unless I'm misinterpreting you, I'm a bit insulted by your dismissive tone). While I rarely have "weekend getaways," I do value my personal time quite highly. If I do book tickets before officially requesting the time off, I'm fully prepared for a "no" answer from my boss -- it's pretty foolish to claim free time before you know it's free.
Where I work, most family people and single people tend to put in similar hours (average is probably ~45/hrs per week). Family people probably greatly outnumber single people. Never have I been asked to work on weekends or put in more hours. And I would especially not expect to be "discriminated against" because I don't have a family.
However, I do get the impression that quite a few people do tend to work excessively long hours, and they all seem to be family people. I'm not sure of their reasoning behind this... perhaps they feel that their job security is increased by working more, and they feel safer because their family depends on that job as well (whereas for me, I'm the only person who depends on my job). Or maybe they're not happy, and use the job as a way to escape from family.
Or perhaps I just work at a reasonable company that cares more about results than in hours with my ass in a chair. Perhaps I work where the life part of work/life balance isn't defined differently depending on whether or not I have a family.
A little bit of a side note, but I tend to think it's ridiculous that so many people seem to think that regular overtime should be expected at all. What part of the "over" in "overtime" do people not get? Hell, especially if you're salaried, it's not like you're getting compensated for the extra time put in. I'm certainly ok with a job where occasional extra time is needed to make deadlines, but if I were to ever join a company and then later find that overtime is the norm, I'd be shopping out my resume the next day.
Ideally, you're correct. Unfortunately, unless they other 19 people believe and behave as you do, they're more likely to get the job than you are. It's more about supply and demand than anything else, I think. With an applicant pool of 20, with everything equal, each applicant has a 5% chance of getting what they want. Assuming the applicant pool is decent, the employer probably has close to a 100% chance of getting what they want. Even thinking much more pessimistically than that 100% figure, the employer has much better odds than you do just due to the size of the applicant pool.
I don't need offers from many companies especially ones that are a poor match. I only need one offer from a company that I wouldn't mind working for.
True, but other offers can be used as bargaining tools when they're better offers, and the offer from the company you like isn't going to cut it. Not saying you can or should wave the other offer in their face and demand more while wearing your best pouty face, but just knowing that you're evaluating other offers can make you seem more valuable to a potential employer.
I feel like the only thing worse than being rejected by my dream job would be to have to turn down an offer for my dream job 'cause it won't pay the bills.
I don't think the main issue here is the relative levels of security know-how between an in-house team (which I suppose often means "that guy over there") and some 3rd-party service. The idea is that once you give your data to a 3rd party, it's not under your control anymore. Even if Google's security is better than what your in-house IT guy can do, now any Google employee with access to the systems also has access to your data. In practice this may not be a big deal: hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people have their data up there, so you can always say, "why would they peek at my data over anyone else's?"... but... the potential is still there. And in industries where there are strict regulations about the confidentiality of customer data, storing your data with a 3rd party might be a no-no.
No, I wasn't. I was pointing out an interesting (to me, anyway) phrase in the license that could be extrapolated to cover more than people intend. I don't personally believe that it does or should cover more, but I was interested in the possible legal implications.
Slashdot Mirror
How does that work if they issue your parking ticket while you're waiting in line to pay for your parking? In that case, the timestamp on the parking ticket will be earlier than the timestamp on your parking receipt. The authorities will (somewhat reasonably) assume that you got a ticket, and then immediately ran over to pay for parking to try to get out of it.
I've been to Singapore, and I really do like the system you guys have there for that sort of thing. Unfortunately, while it works great in a small place like Singapore where the government has pretty tight control over everything, it's utterly infeasible in larger countries with independent, competing bureaucracies. Hell, even in a single city, if private companies are allowed to open lots that charge for parking (every large city in the US I've been in, anyway), it breaks that system.
Also, the fact that the government continues to print dollar bills (and does so in vastly greater quantities than it mints dollar coins) doesn't help.
Yeah, the problem is that bills are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, while coins are manufactured by the US Mint. The two don't really talk to each other (or perhaps they do, but can't agree), so there's no unified policy on whether "the government" should be pushing the use of dollar coins over dollar bills.
The US Mint *really* wants you to use dollar coins; you can buy them online at value, with free shipping.
There's also the idea that people generally prefer bills over coins due to weight. That's the reason I prefer dollar bills over dollar coins, at least. When I get a dollar coin, I try to spend it as quickly as possible to get it out of my wallet/pocket.
Looks like Canonical does contribute.
(Why does this matter, anyway? I don't care if a distro company contributes back to the kernel or not.)
If it goes UNDER the ground, nothing short of a cataclysmic earthquake/landslide should be able to put it out of commission.
Or a guy with a shovel.
I always do my phone interviews via cell phone. I think we're at a point in time when that's accepted practice and interviewers will make allowances for dropped calls and the like without penalizing the interviewee. Then again, the interviews i participate in are very technical in nature, which might explain why the interviewers are more cell-phone-savvy.
Speaking of reading the article, the flaw isn't even *that* bad, especially for people mainly worried about servers. The article notes that support for various little-used network protocols must be compiled into the kernel for this exploit to work, such as IPX, Appletalk, Bluetooth networking, IrDA, or SCTP on IPv6. I bet many desktops have Bluetooth networking support enabled, however, though it's possible it's as an unloaded module.
Not saying it's not a big deal at all, but the number of affected systems should be much lower with this requirement.
If people are doing something that they wouldn't want someone to take a picture of them doing, then they should probably do it behind closed doors and not out in plain sight.
I believe that's one of the purposes of BM: to allow people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do in plain sight for fear of (what many believe are) unreasonable and unnecessary consequences. If you have a problem with that, the solution is simple: don't attend.
Lastly, even if they do let you bring in your $1000 aeron keep in mind that if you are asked to leave unexpectedly (laid off or fired) you may not be allowed to collect your chair/keyboard/etc and take it with you.
Really? Is that legal?
I agree with your other points for the most part (the pencil/pens question does indeed sound asinine), but I think each of these questions has to be looked at under the lens of, "would the answer to this question affect whether or not I'd accept an offer to work here?"
If you have severe back problems, for example, you might not accept an offer for a job that won't let you bring in your own chair. If you live somewhere where rush hour traffic means a 60 minute commute, but off-peak means 20 minutes, you may not be willing to work a job where they will require that you arrive and leave at such times when you'll always hit rush hour.
Regardless, even if these questions are considered acceptable, I don't think any of them are for the first interview. I'd say wait to ask these after presented with an offer. At that point they can also be used as negotiating points. Either you can give a little in salary to get what you want, or ask for extra salary as compensation for having to spend an extra 80 minutes in traffic every day.
I suppose it depends on the shop, but that seems a little extreme. Simply being curious about the development environment in use sounds pretty benign. Any company that wouldn't hire me because I asked... well, I don't think I'd want to work for them anyway.
.NET, though. If someone wants to come in and write C# apps using Emacs, what's the big deal? Personally I find MS Visual Studio to have a pretty terrible text editor; I'm much more productive using Vim. As long as I don't screw up code style/formatting for anyone else, why wouldn't I be allowed to code in a different editor? As long as I build using the standard MSVS tools and everything works fine, what's the big deal?
Perhaps I've never worked at a highly-organised company, but I'm surprised by how strict you seem to be with dev environments. Here we work on an embedded Linux product, and we all run whatever flavor of Linux on our dev boxes that we're comfortable with, as long as it runs the toolchain and build tools properly. We use whatever editor we want.
I'm a bit confused about your supposed strictness about
The original poster you replied to seemed pretty reasonable... I'm not sure why you think he's "pulling a stunt." Where I work now, I have a Windows laptop that I use for exactly two things: Outlook and a proprietary bug tracker that uses ActiveX controls. It's a pain in the ass, and it pisses me off. Would I have declined the job based on this? No, probably not, but I can certainly understand that some people might, or that some people would want to know these details and consider them as part of the larger decision. Any employer who has a problem with that line of thinking can frankly stuff it, in my opinion.
Unless of course I'm unemployed, and then quite honestly I would do anything up to and including burger flipping to get some level of income until I find something better.
Heh, last I checked, collecting unemployment (in California, at least) was more lucrative than flipping burgers. Of course, you can't collect unemployment forever, and you're not eligible unless you were laid off.
The reality is any job that you've applied for you should already have done enough filtering to have decided that you DO want the job.
Yes, but that doesn't cover all situations. I get unsolicited emails from recruiters pretty often, and I usually base my decision on whether or not to reply on the mini thumbnail job description sketch in the email (at that point they may not even tell you the name of the company). I generally don't know enough to decide if I'd accept a (reasonable) offer until I've had the first non-HR, non-recruiter phone interview. Perhaps that's just me, though. I value chatting with employees much higher than any research I can do about the company on the internet.
The problem with that is I wouldn't work at a shop where they require software developers to wear slacks, buttoned shirt, and tie. I'd be sure to ask about the dress code before accepting an offer. But of course, that would be a question I'd ask after I get an offer, certainly not a first- or even second-interview type question.
But others may not care about dress code... I guess the general rule is to ask about the things that could change your mind about accepting an offer, and leave the rest alone. As you say, the pre-offer interviews are about getting the company to like you enough to make you an offer. That's not to say you can't probe the company a bit to see whether or not you like them enough, but such probing should be done carefully pre-offer.
That's more because there's no economic or military need for things like semi-ballistic flight, etc. We're flying the airframes of old because they're making big payoffs still for the people using them.
That's precisely the parent poster's *point*. The reason behind the lack of "new stuff" in any industry is irrelevant. It's the effect on the lives of the people who invest their time in these industries that we're concerned about.
Yeah, good call... And not to mention that it's very difficult (impossible?) to start a business in China as a foreigner unless you have local (usually family) ties.
And... a boat? Really? They have planes that go there, now.
But I currently have very little idea what "more safe" or "less safe" mean when describing a computer language. Any pointers?
You, sir, owe me a new keyboard.
Heh, depends on your definition of "suffering" :-P
Jeez, I know some of the other responders are European and as such tend to have different (more enlightened, I'd say, in some cases) views on acceptable work terms, but as an American I'd still not want to work for you. And that's fine: you'd probably not want me as an employee, either. My life is my life, and my work is my work. They overlap occasionally, but I like to keep that at a minimum. Perhaps that's a sign that I haven't found the work I really love, or, perhaps, as you say of yourself... "that's just me."
It's great that you try to compensate with the semi-on-call status you expect from your employees with higher than average (for the US) vacation time, but honestly I'd feel a bit stifled: it's not really "my time" if my employer can intrude upon it and require my response within 24 hours. In fact, that requirement would have ruled out at least one vacation I've taken in the past year.
Even a half hour commute to/from work really adds up to about an extra 2 hours a day dedicated to work.
Crap, 30 minutes plus 30 minutes equals 2 hours?! No wonder I felt like I was so far from the office at my old place!
Sure, but I'd suggest waiting until the second interview to ask questions like that, or maybe even waiting until or immediately before salary negotiations begin. By asking about working hours up front, you could present the appearance of being a slacker who just wants to figure out the least amount of work he can do to remain employed. Whether or not that's the case is irrelevant; the employer has very little to go on when deciding whether or not to spend more time on another round of interviews. All other things being equal, the employer will likely look harder at the guy who didn't ask those questions over those who did. And while in some cases, sure, the employer might be looking to work their people to death, I'd say you can never know, and it's safer to wait. You lose very little (possibly a couple hours of your time) in reserving the more "controversial" questions for farther along in the process, and possibly protect yourself from being misunderstood.
As one of those young "single" (single in that I'm unmarried, at least, if not strictly "single") people, I tend to agree (and, unless I'm misinterpreting you, I'm a bit insulted by your dismissive tone). While I rarely have "weekend getaways," I do value my personal time quite highly. If I do book tickets before officially requesting the time off, I'm fully prepared for a "no" answer from my boss -- it's pretty foolish to claim free time before you know it's free.
Where I work, most family people and single people tend to put in similar hours (average is probably ~45/hrs per week). Family people probably greatly outnumber single people. Never have I been asked to work on weekends or put in more hours. And I would especially not expect to be "discriminated against" because I don't have a family.
However, I do get the impression that quite a few people do tend to work excessively long hours, and they all seem to be family people. I'm not sure of their reasoning behind this... perhaps they feel that their job security is increased by working more, and they feel safer because their family depends on that job as well (whereas for me, I'm the only person who depends on my job). Or maybe they're not happy, and use the job as a way to escape from family.
Or perhaps I just work at a reasonable company that cares more about results than in hours with my ass in a chair. Perhaps I work where the life part of work/life balance isn't defined differently depending on whether or not I have a family.
A little bit of a side note, but I tend to think it's ridiculous that so many people seem to think that regular overtime should be expected at all. What part of the "over" in "overtime" do people not get? Hell, especially if you're salaried, it's not like you're getting compensated for the extra time put in. I'm certainly ok with a job where occasional extra time is needed to make deadlines, but if I were to ever join a company and then later find that overtime is the norm, I'd be shopping out my resume the next day.
Ideally, you're correct. Unfortunately, unless they other 19 people believe and behave as you do, they're more likely to get the job than you are. It's more about supply and demand than anything else, I think. With an applicant pool of 20, with everything equal, each applicant has a 5% chance of getting what they want. Assuming the applicant pool is decent, the employer probably has close to a 100% chance of getting what they want. Even thinking much more pessimistically than that 100% figure, the employer has much better odds than you do just due to the size of the applicant pool.
I don't need offers from many companies especially ones that are a poor match. I only need one offer from a company that I wouldn't mind working for.
True, but other offers can be used as bargaining tools when they're better offers, and the offer from the company you like isn't going to cut it. Not saying you can or should wave the other offer in their face and demand more while wearing your best pouty face, but just knowing that you're evaluating other offers can make you seem more valuable to a potential employer.
I feel like the only thing worse than being rejected by my dream job would be to have to turn down an offer for my dream job 'cause it won't pay the bills.
I don't think the main issue here is the relative levels of security know-how between an in-house team (which I suppose often means "that guy over there") and some 3rd-party service. The idea is that once you give your data to a 3rd party, it's not under your control anymore. Even if Google's security is better than what your in-house IT guy can do, now any Google employee with access to the systems also has access to your data. In practice this may not be a big deal: hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people have their data up there, so you can always say, "why would they peek at my data over anyone else's?" ... but... the potential is still there. And in industries where there are strict regulations about the confidentiality of customer data, storing your data with a 3rd party might be a no-no.
No, I wasn't. I was pointing out an interesting (to me, anyway) phrase in the license that could be extrapolated to cover more than people intend. I don't personally believe that it does or should cover more, but I was interested in the possible legal implications.