"Third, salary, salary, salary, and benefits (particularly insurance and family coverage). Move 'em if you have to. We've even bought houses outright for our programming team members. You can't expect to hire a superstar by treating them like a drone."
You have to treat them right, but "throwing more money at them" is often not the answer. Truly creative brilliant people are motivated by very different things. For instance, one of the silly things that keeps me at my current job is a private office with a closing door and an opening window. Creature comforts, opportunities to socialize (or not socialize), free food that costs way less than the salary bump you're talking about, interesting decorations in the office are all wonderful and cheap motivations.
Another example: I will not accept a job offer from a company if I don't see Dilbert cartoons (or some moral equivalent) posted in personal areas, because that means they squelch dissent and Management is insecure. I can't work in an environment that I can't constructively criticize
See the book "1001 Ways to Reward Employees" by Bob Nelson.
If an animal had a human brain, with something approaching human intellect (could you have usefil human-like brains without human-like intellect>), the the list of what is cruel to do to them and what is not has to move more towards the human end of the spectrum.
In fact, it might be cruel simply to have a creature with our level of intelligence but without the ability to do anything with it. It would be like shoving a kid in solitary for their whole life. Clearly they would go crazy in short order. That's what really bored humans with too little stimulation do.
Don't forget that having half a dozen ushielded computers running a few hours a day on either side of your groin might eventually limit your child-bearing options....
The privacy issues either way about the same. The real issue is how easy would it be for an employee to steal your signature?
With a paper recipt, any pimple-faced cashier can palm your carbons and have your signature. With a digital signature, it would take a few geeks in collusion to get access to the files and a suitable output device. Making a "loopback device" that would allow them to charge things using that signature directly would be even harder, unless the system was written by M$FT. Granted they could steal as many as they wanted, but it would be all so much harder and obvious than pocketing carbon copies of paper signatures.
But as others had said, hardly anyone verifies signatures anymore. Most of the time I have my credit card back befure I even get the paper to sign.
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Shame on the author for comparing MSFT's net profit/loss to Google's gross sales.
"Third, salary, salary, salary, and benefits (particularly insurance and family coverage). Move 'em if you have to. We've even bought houses outright for our programming team members. You can't expect to hire a superstar by treating them like a drone." You have to treat them right, but "throwing more money at them" is often not the answer. Truly creative brilliant people are motivated by very different things. For instance, one of the silly things that keeps me at my current job is a private office with a closing door and an opening window. Creature comforts, opportunities to socialize (or not socialize), free food that costs way less than the salary bump you're talking about, interesting decorations in the office are all wonderful and cheap motivations. Another example: I will not accept a job offer from a company if I don't see Dilbert cartoons (or some moral equivalent) posted in personal areas, because that means they squelch dissent and Management is insecure. I can't work in an environment that I can't constructively criticize See the book "1001 Ways to Reward Employees" by Bob Nelson.
... of those Apple ads on TV with the PC computer locking up two or three times, while the Mac keeps running.
I guess they didn't have the right DRM to move themselves off the elevator and into the building. They should try reinstalling.
I think cuz brains is different.
If an animal had a human brain, with something approaching human intellect (could you have usefil human-like brains without human-like intellect>), the the list of what is cruel to do to them and what is not has to move more towards the human end of the spectrum.
In fact, it might be cruel simply to have a creature with our level of intelligence but without the ability to do anything with it. It would be like shoving a kid in solitary for their whole life. Clearly they would go crazy in short order. That's what really bored humans with too little stimulation do.
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Abbey.... normal?
Don't forget that having half a dozen ushielded computers running a few hours a day on either side of your groin might eventually limit your child-bearing options....
The privacy issues either way about the same. The real issue is how easy would it be for an employee to steal your signature?
With a paper recipt, any pimple-faced cashier can palm your carbons and have your signature. With a digital signature, it would take a few geeks in collusion to get access to the files and a suitable output device. Making a "loopback device" that would allow them to charge things using that signature directly would be even harder, unless the system was written by M$FT. Granted they could steal as many as they wanted, but it would be all so much harder and obvious than pocketing carbon copies of paper signatures.
But as others had said, hardly anyone verifies signatures anymore. Most of the time I have my credit card back befure I even get the paper to sign.