Sydney is not cheap compared to the rest of Australia - Salaries in Sydney are 10-20% higher because of cost of living than Melbourne.
Here's some salaries in Melbourne:
Graduate 30-45k $AU (50-55 if you're lucky) Few years exp (1-3) 40-60k 10-15 years 100-200k (and up and up).
However these are going up fast. I have been offered up to 75k.
However given this cost of living your already living pretty good by this point. Money isn't everything. I stayed where I was because the conditions are very good and I am one of the initial employees of a startup so its worth my while to wait a see how things progress.
This may not be such a great idea. I've meta moderated a few times. I find that the are two ways to think about it and only one is allowed under the current system.
Almost every moderation I've looked at seems a good moderation. I feel that in general the moderation on single posts is good.
However there is another way to think about it and it's (as many people have pointed out) in the context of the discussion. Most people seem to be saying that context is so that you can see if something really was off-topic or really was interesting. What I haven't seen talked about is how context introduces relative decisions. I look at a comment during meta moderation that has been rated interesting and I think "yep theres some interesting points in there". However If I look at the other comments that were rated interesting for the discussion I might think that relatively this one wasn't interesting.
If I look at it in that context I might not agree. This causes problems because 'in context' an early comment might not be as interesting as a later comment and so some might consider that moderation bad. The moderator of the earlier comment may have done it before the later comment existed and may not have known about it.
The current (non-integrated) style of M2 moderation allows you to only look at the comment and decide on the merits of the comment alone whether the moderation was good. I think this sounds more like what M2 moderation is about. the intial moderation was done based on context so it should handle that.
If you really want to know context for your M2 moderation you can browse the discussion on the article or if you have previously done this base it on your memory.
Given this I'm not sure if I support M2 moderation in the discussion or not. I expect it will affect how I M2 moderate in a way that may not be desirable
From my own experience as a contractor the only reason documentation is done is because the management doesn't want ot pay for it. On my current project we keep complaining there is no time allocated to documentation. I personally have been pushing for 6 months to update our documentation. Other divisions in our organisation are using our underdocumented software and we still can't convince them to do it. If the run out of money and can't pay us they are going to find that the have a huge chunk of useless software that no one knows how to use or maintain. Whenever I aks management says that there are other priorites and that some new feature was needed last week. What can you do?
As a contractor I must say that, where I work, if the didn't use contractors things would take 10 times longer. There are two reasons for this:
1. I work for the Australian government. The public service has a ridiculous class structure that means that new staff can't get employed at higher than the lowest level and getting increased pay for a particular level is hard. What this boils down is that that can't pay enough to get good software engineers on staff. If the don't have good software engineers there projects come in way over time and over budget. With good software engineers that come in only a bit over time and over budget:)
2. Software isn't core business. If the had to pay the required rates to keep good software engineers on staff that'd only be able to employ half the staff and the extra they are paying for SE's is wasted when the don't have work for them.
Admittedly there are a few problems with contractors. Most of these are to do with the fact that they don't have the same commitment to the company. What I've fund works well is if you have a few employees on the development team with the contractors. This means the contractors are invloved with the company. The employees don't have to be software developers they can be people who are there for requiremets and for ideas on what is required.One of the employees should also be a manager who is dealing with the admin side of management. This person should work closesly with the Technical Manager who should probably be a contractor. This approach will mean that the contractors work on your site all the time.
The company that I work for has established this method of contracting as our standard operating proceedure and when we bid for contracts we explain to the customer this is how we do it and we explain why. Most of the appreciate it and it helps us win the contract.
Slashdot Mirror
Why oh why does everybody drink VB - the only Australian beer that tastes worse is Fosters and we get rid of most of that by exporting it.
Sydney is not cheap compared to the rest of Australia - Salaries in Sydney are 10-20% higher because of cost of living than Melbourne.
Here's some salaries in Melbourne:
Graduate 30-45k $AU (50-55 if you're lucky)
Few years exp (1-3) 40-60k
10-15 years 100-200k (and up and up).
However these are going up fast. I have been offered up to 75k.
However given this cost of living your already living pretty good by this point. Money isn't everything. I stayed where I was because the conditions are very good and I am one of the initial employees of a startup so its worth my while to wait a see how things progress.
"If ignorance is bliss the wipe the smile off my face"
Cryptonomicon is available as an import in Australia. I seen it in a coup0le of stores. I would've bought it myself except its about $A 55
This may not be such a great idea. I've meta moderated a few times. I find that the are two ways to think about it and only one is allowed under the current system.
Almost every moderation I've looked at seems a good moderation. I feel that in general the moderation on single posts is good.
However there is another way to think about it and it's (as many people have pointed out) in the context of the discussion. Most people seem to be saying that context is so that you can see if something really was off-topic or really was interesting. What I haven't seen talked about is how context introduces relative decisions. I look at a comment during meta moderation that has been rated interesting and I think "yep theres some interesting points in there". However If I look at the other comments that were rated interesting for the discussion I might think that relatively this one wasn't interesting.
If I look at it in that context I might not agree. This causes problems because 'in context' an early comment might not be as interesting as a later comment and so some might consider that moderation bad. The moderator of the earlier comment may have done it before the later comment existed and may not have known about it.
The current (non-integrated) style of M2 moderation allows you to only look at the comment and decide on the merits of the comment alone whether the moderation was good. I think this sounds more like what M2 moderation is about. the intial moderation was done based on context so it should handle that.
If you really want to know context for your M2 moderation you can browse the discussion on the article or if you have previously done this base it on your memory.
Given this I'm not sure if I support M2 moderation in the discussion or not. I expect it will affect how I M2 moderate in a way that may not be desirable
da brig
From my own experience as a contractor the only reason documentation is done is because the management doesn't want ot pay for it. On my current project we keep complaining there is no time allocated to documentation. I personally have been pushing for 6 months to update our documentation. Other divisions in our organisation are using our underdocumented software and we still can't convince them to do it. If the run out of money and can't pay us they are going to find that the have a huge chunk of useless software that no one knows how to use or maintain. Whenever I aks management says that there are other priorites and that some new feature was needed last week. What can you do?
dabrig
As a contractor I must say that, where I work, if the didn't use contractors things would take 10 times longer. There are two reasons for this:
:)
1. I work for the Australian government. The public service has a ridiculous class structure that means that new staff can't get employed at higher than the lowest level and getting increased pay for a particular level is hard. What this boils down is that that can't pay enough to get good software engineers on staff. If the don't have good software engineers there projects come in way over time and over budget. With good software engineers that come in only a bit over time and over budget
2. Software isn't core business. If the had to pay the required rates to keep good software engineers on staff that'd only be able to employ half the staff and the extra they are paying for SE's is wasted when the don't have work for them.
Admittedly there are a few problems with contractors. Most of these are to do with the fact that they don't have the same commitment to the company. What I've fund works well is if you have a few employees on the development team with the contractors. This means the contractors are invloved with the company. The employees don't have to be software developers they can be people who are there for requiremets and for ideas on what is required.One of the employees should also be a manager who is dealing with the admin side of management. This person should work closesly with the Technical Manager who should probably be a contractor. This approach will mean that the contractors work on your site all the time.
The company that I work for has established this method of contracting as our standard operating proceedure and when we bid for contracts we explain to the customer this is how we do it and we explain why. Most of the appreciate it and it helps us win the contract.
dabrig